[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Guernica & Conversation Roots & Shoots

Thu May 3 09:04:29 PDT 2012

Can no longer resist jumping into this stream. John's observation that  
this conversation method isn't "ours alone" is so right. My bilingual education 
 mentor, Alma Flor Ada, whose mentor was Paulo Freire, called her version  
of the methodology Creative Education. Its four  phases are Descriptive, 
Personal Interpretive, Critical and Creative. I  shared this material with Jo 
Nelson when she was writing The Art of  Focused Conversation. You can find 
more about it on page 24 of  that book.

Matthew Fox's description of the fourfold path of Creation Spirituality  
also takes one on a deepening journey: Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via  
Creativa and Via Transformativa.

I'm taking an online course, Integral Enlightenment, with Craig  Hamilton. 
Quite intense. The response of the thousand-plus participants around  the 
globe reminds me of how some of us responded to RS-1. The evolutionary  
spirituality movement, with its call to be "pioneers on the point of evolution,"  
has a familiar feeling tone. On my third reading of Evolutionary  
Enlightenment by Andrew Cohen, I'm charting it, rather  laboriously, as I tend to do 
things. I think it brings Kaz's  Spiritual Exercises into the 21st century 
with a  rather practical application.

We're living in exciting times.

Blessings, dear colleagues,
Jann McGuire

Illness as Initiation: An Unlikely Heroine's Journey at 
_http://booklocker.com/books/5100.html_ (http://booklocker.com/books/5100.html) 
_http://jannsjewels.blogspot.com_ (http://jannsjewels.blogspot.com) 

In a message dated 5/3/2012 8:22:01 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
jlepps at pc.jaring.my writes:

Colleagues:

Since this stream has involved a bit of  ORID-bashing (or de-sanctifying if 
you prefer) I’d like to say a little on its  behalf. 

O-R-I-D is simply the sequence in which the mind works. We  perceive 
something, we react to it, we make sense of it, and we act  appropriately. When a 
facilitator sequences conversation questions in that  order, the dialogue 
flows naturally. The “depth” to which it goes depends on  the subject and the 
group and, to some extent, the facilitator. 

We  recently presented this “method” to a group of judges in Singapore and 
invited  them to try it with a scripted conversation at their 5 tables. The 
topic was  “mentors.” The bottom dropped out; All five table conversations 
went deep, and  awe filled the room. On reflection, the people gathered 
said the reason it  worked was the sequence of the questions: they flowed 
naturally. Often that  type conversation yields pious or abstract characteristics 
of mentors; this  one was specific and based on experience of group 
members. As an outside  observer during this conversation, I thought it became a 
spirit conversation  under the category of meditation. 

ORID, though belonging to the ToP  suite of methods, is not “ours” alone. 
I attended a workshop at an IAF meeting  in Germany in which the workshop 
leader (from the UK) presented a conversation  method entitled 4-F (facts, 
feelings, findings, future). The leader had never  heard of ORID. 

When you see what passes for group conversations in  most situations, 
having a sensible sequence that considers how the mind works  is a major step 
forward. How “deep” we let it go depends on how well  thought-through our 
questions are at the “I” and “D” levels – and what is our  aim in conducting 
the conversation in the first place. 

I look forward  to your responses.

John Epps

At 05:06 AM 5/3/2012, you  wrote:

Steve,

I revere the  "art form" methodology as much as and appreciate its 
contribution over the  years to our "knowing."  However, in more recent years I've 
arrived at  a slightly evolved understanding of knowing, having not so much 
to do with  clarity, awareness, consciousness and all of that as we used to 
define those  words.  For me knowing now has more to do with "metanoia," what 
the  late Willis Harman called "mind change," which I take to mean seeing 
the  world differently to the extent that one revises ones stories of reality 
and  as a result, lives life differently.  The NT translation of "metanoia" 
 is "born again," and it can occur again and again in the course of a  
lifetime.

To allow this to happen, I'm finding conversational  approaches like 
Bohmian (physicist David Bohm) dialogue to be more  effective.  It is much less 
structured than ORID, and therefore more  open-ended and less prescriptive 
about desired outcomes.  It is more of  an art than an art form.  The 
conclusions arrived at by the individual  participants are less important than the 
communal bonds established in the  process, built not on the basis of having 
arrived at a common mind (read  "consensus") regarding the subject at hand, 
but on the foundation of  discovered and acknowledged interdependence and 
shared destiny, i.e.,  community.  ORID, which still has a valuable role to 
play in our work,  depends more on the discipline of the facilitator.  
"Dialogue" seems to  me to depend more on the discipline of the participants, with a 
skilled  facilitator way over on the side.

I think generally we ICA  types need to loosen up a bit, occasionally put 
away our work sheets with  prescribed outcomes, and acknowledge that good 
things can happen, and are  happening, without our having to engineer them--in 
the midst of which we can  be participants with meaningful contributions to 
make in our role as  partners.  

Randy

"Listen to what is emerging  from yourself to the course of being in the 
world; not to be supported by  it, but to bring it to reality as it desires."
-Martin Buber  (adapted)
From: steve har  <stevehar11201 at gmail.com>
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net  
Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 1:08 PM
Subject: [Dialogue]  Guernica & Conversation Roots & Shoots

Regarding  Wayne's assertion: "The basic phenomonology of the conversation 
method has  not changed. It has always been oriented toward the ontological. 
If it  isn't, it is some other method - put it that way."

With respect, I'm afraid I disagree with Wayne's  assertion that the basic 
conversation method has changed. What has changed  is the the emphasis of 
the conversation. 

In the Art Form method the  conversation is "for" being. It is 
ontological-existential and ethical. In  the ORID format [as articulated in ToP] the 
focus is knowing and sharing  something inside the context of a 
facilitator-client agreement with a  particular group of participants. the conversation is 
"for" knowing i.e  epistemological.

Brian Stanfield's wonderful book of Focused  Conversations really 
highlights this shift to the client-consultant  workplace -which was a new field of 
engagement in which to practice  conversation making. 

Reading Brian's workplace conversation models  is like reading the music 
scores for Bach's Well-tempered Clavier.  Publishing those models really did 
change the conversation focus in my view.  Of course there is other music to 
score and play besides Bach's and there  are other conversations to model 
besides conversations for knowing  [epistemology].

JWM's NRM monastic  distinctions  are really powerful:  Knowing | Being | 
Doing are actually  phenomenological distinctions for sorting out the 
internal and social  experiences that open up in conversations and dialogues. 

A conversation "for Being" [ontology]  is an  entirely different score and 
it creates an entirely different kind of  conversational "music" that has a 
much wider and deeper expression - like  the original Guernica Art From 
conversation did or like the Tombstone  conversation did. In these 
conversations, you get to declare something, you  get to take a stand and say what you 
value. The questions can reveal  personal character, what was lost, what was 
gained, who you are being in  this moment as a human being. The conversation 
can be profoundly existential  i.e. ontological. It can also contain 
varieties of ontological language like  mythological and religious expression.

There are 2 wonderful  "Tombstone Conversations" for being done recently by 
Charlie Rose in  commemorating the death of 
_http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12297_ 
(http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12297)   and Christa Tippitt Contemplating Mortality 
_http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/contemplating-mortality/_ 
(http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/contemplating-mortality/)   

A conversation for Doing -using JWM's  NRM phenomenology is Largely 
unexplored in my opinion. John Epps wrote some  brilliant and new Other World in 
This World conversations in 1996 which I  found in the 6th floor Archives last 
summer. last summer we tried some over  skype. Bruce Hanson gave a 
wonderful talk using the other world charts and  Hoksai's pictures to describe an 
Appreciative Inquiry assignment at Hitachi  Company on the outskirts of Tokyo. 
He talked about himself as being a  navigator on an otherworld trek.

In my view the Jenkins's book on the  9 disciplines is a clearheaded 
translation of the old monastic categories.  What remains is to see clearly the 
Knowing Being and Doing phenomenology in  practice and in roles like the role 
of a facilitator and the new roles of  pedagogue, story maker, coach, 
navigator

So in sum, the point wasn't  to jump on Wayne's good thoughts. The point is 
to make some new distinctions  about conversations that freshen the wind 
and hear new music...

Steve  

-- 
Steve  Harrington

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