My journey to Community Weaving

I’ve lived much of my adult life, and perhaps even childhood, with two not unrelated inquiries, one on learning, the other on community:

How can we as humans learn joyfully and meaningfully?

How can we be in meaningful and loving community with one another?

The first query brought me to group facilitation, training, teaching, and consulting. After more than five years working with different interactive approaches, I finally saw that I could not bring my whole self, neither physically, intellectually, emotionally, nor spiritually to the group. Nor, it seemed, was the group capable of being itself either. It was very frustrating to both facilitate and participate in groups, seeing that people were not allowing themselves to be themselves!

In 2001, I stumbled upon Open Space Technology (OST), a very simple, powerful, effective, and economical way of convening groups of any size to tackle even the most challenging of issues. Was this what I had been looking for all along?

For the uninitiated here’s a (very) whirlwind tour of the approach. OST events best work with an open invitation to a meeting with no prior agenda . All who care (passionately) about the theme of the meeting show up and sit in a circle. The facilitator invites anyone who cares to to announce a topic (or topics) to discuss in sessions. Together the group creates the agenda, the Community Bulletin Board, by posting the session topics on a wall, indicating the time and place of each session with a post-it. After that, the Village Marketplace is opened for participants to determine what they want to participate in. And then they get to work in self-organizing groups. People manage their own time, space, and energy. Sessions might have reports posted on a wall, which may be later used for a convergence phase, to plan future actions. At the end the group gathers in a circle to share reflections.

OST works on one Law, the Law of Two Feet:

“If you feel like you are neither learning nor contributing, you are responsible to use you your two feet and leave, perhaps move to another group!”

This is how life seems to always work, whether or not we like it. Even if we are in an unsatisfying situation and don’t think we can leave, our body might stay, but our head, heart, and spirit take off in a red hot Ferrari!

And there are four principles:

• Whoever comes is the right people.
• Whenever it starts is the right time.
• When it’s over, it’s over.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.

Essentially, they are an invitation to appreciate and trust the resources of the group to get the work done in the time and space available. And, to let go.

It took a few years and a lot of breathing, but eventually, I was convinced that this form of group work - which requires that the facilitator either pick up coffee cups or nap, really lets control go, and lets brilliance and breakthroughs come- …works!

Since then, Open Space (OS) as not only a method, but also a frame and lens, and as a personal practice has served as a very helpful and fruitful way of engaging with the world. And it has become an initial answer to my first question.

It is such a simple way of engaging people to work together that its incredible simplicity seems to lead people to think sometimes that it won’t work or can’t work!

Now, how on Earth is all this connected with Community Weaving?!

Well, we are getting there!…Being an active member of the world OST community since 2001 when I signed on to the Open Space electronic discussion list (OSlist), I followed much of the very rich conversations carefully. And one fine day in 2005, Cheryl Honey showed up on the list. I saw the words “Community Weaving” and “Family Support Network.” I noticed tremendous excitement, energetic exchange around Cheryl’s posts. I checked out the Community Weaving website and the Family Support Network websites.

I didn’t get it.

Then, my new Open Space friend and colleague from Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Wendy Farmer-O’Neil, who took the Community Weaving training the following year, came to Moscow where the XIV Annual World Open Space on Open Space Conference was held, the annual gathering of OST pracitioners. She offered a one day post-conference event, an Introduction to Community Weaving in my studio apartment overlooking a pond where ducks from Canada spend some of the year.

Our small group of community leaders included Russia’s leading restorative justice specialist, human rights activists working in Chechnya, a facilitator from Ukraine, and an ecologist from Siberia. People were very excited by the approach and saw that this had tremendous transformative potential.

But, I still didn’t get it…

Then, this September I took the Community Weaving workshop with Cheryl in Seattle.

Without getting too much into the details of what transpired in the workshop…I think I got it. And I think Community Weaving is a very big part of the answer to my second life question.

And I realize now why it was so difficult for me to get it. Community Weaving is so simple that it’s hard to believe that that’s all there is:

Ask others for what you need to live joyfully, serve others, and grow

Offer what you care to to others

What do you understand Community Weaving to be?

Seattle OST facilitator Peggy Holman has framed the Law of Two Feet as:

Take responsibility for what you love.

Those six words seem to be just another way of framing what I see as the above-mentioned twin elements of an essence (and form) of Community Weaving.

…Getting back to my story…I began to “get it” more as I spent a few weeks in Seattle and experienced firsthand how community weaving was helping me and others, including helping me find a place to stay. And hearing stories of how Cheryl had taken people into her home who had been homeless. There were many stories.

…Getting back to Open Space…Harrison Owen, originator of OST, says that Open Space has been around, oh, since the Big Bang. All systems – including human systems- are self-organizing, he explains. And humans have been gathering in circles to organize and get work done for millennia.

Might Community Weaving also date back to the Big Bang? That the laws of community weaving also apply to matter and everything else? Might it be how we have always been as people? And that the time has come to remember it?

Upon reflection, I realize that I have woven community all my life, or at least tried to.

And now, from where I sit, I see Cheryl has extended an invitation to all of humanity to:

Ask others for what you need to live joyfully, serve others, and grow

Offer what you care to to others

But, but…that’s scary! Oh, yes! It was so important in the Community Weaving workshop that we spent time discussing and flipcharting all the reasons why we don’t ask for what we need. My main reason: IT’S SCARY!!!

Indeed, I think this is one of the big challenges to (and opportunities for) the spread of Community Weaving:

How do we turn the fear of asking for what we need into the fuel for growing Community Weaving?

I’m really excited about becoming part of the world of Community Weaving, to help myself and others remember this ancient practice.

I have many, many other questions that I look forward to exploring!

Cheryl, Wendy: Thanks for bringing me along for the ride!