Peggy

P.S. We'll have 3 wireless microphones to share among you.

Invocation circle

Purpose: A collective invocation: calling ourselves present from each of our roles to our individual and collective potential for facing the challenges and opportunities of our times.

The process:

Participants gather in two concentric circles -- an inner circle of five chairs, and an outer circle, with ample walking and aisle space.

The four of you will begin in the inner circle, along with one empty chair. The chairs are labeled with the role from which we ask you to speak – leader (Henri), activist (Brandon), scholar (Jean) and practitioner (Carolyn). The fifth chair is labeled "Wild Card or Rarely Heard Voices".

I will explain the context and process and offer an opening question as the focus for the conversation among you. It will be "What is our potential?" or some modification of this question based on what happens in the session that precedes it. I'll give my one-sentence introductions of each of you and then sound a bell for a moment of reflective silence. When the bell sounds again, whoever wishes to start the conversation begins.

From that point, anyone wanting to speak may do so by standing behind the chair labeled with the role from which they wish to speak. This signals the person in the center circle to relinquish her/his chair – when s/he is complete. You then move out of your chair, making room for the person standing behind it. You are always welcome back into the center when/if you have more to say.

Having said that anyone is welcome to speak, know that I will ask that they be mindful about choosing to do so. I will encourage people to listen for a while to the voices of the people currently in the center. And if they decide to come forward…they do it because they are compelled to speak, in a sense called from their own center to speak from their unique voice on behalf of the whole.

As the conversation flows and topics change. each speaker says what has heart and meaning. Speakers are not restricted in what they say, but may speak only when in the inner circle.

We will end when it is over or at 12:30pm at the latest. (We will know it is over because there is no longer anyone standing behind a chair ready to speak. Empty seats are taken away one by one until there are no more chairs.)

Brief bios

Scholar – Jean Bartunek is a professor of Organization Studies at Boston College. She is a former president of the Academy of Management, and has been doing research with practitioners and on practice for many years.

Activist – Brandon WilliamsCraig – is of the new breed of activists, who, rather than advocating for or against something, are process activists – bringing people with diverse perspectives together so that wise answers emerge.

Leader – Henri Lipmanowicz, retired CEO of Merck subcontinental, came to an appreciation of process through the complexity sciences. He is a co-founder of the Plexus Institute, which works with what complexity can teach us about leadership and social systems.

Practitioner – Carolyn Lukensmeyer is the creator of AmericaSpeak's 21^st Century Town Meeting, a deliberative practice that has made itself excitingly visible to the mainstream, perhaps opening the door more widely for the power of participative practices to be of service.

Wild card – for the rarely heard voices - the fifth seat is for unheard/rarely heard voices: the future/the artist/the natural world/the unknown/the child.

{I hope Iris McGinnis will accept (should it be required) support to sit in the WildCard seat. I can't think of anybody who belongs there more or might be less likely to claim the spot. - ed.}