The World Cafe

Appreciation

by Amy Lenzo | Oct 1, 2008 | Community, Gift Economy, Relationship

In the September issue of TableTalk, I spoke about the challenges & uncertainty of the times we’re in now and how it’s in these times that we become even more appreciative of things like the power of conversation and the blessings of community. In the spirit of harvest and thanksgiving, I invited us all to take a moment and think about the things we most appreciate about this work we’re all engaged in.

Note: The remarkable photo above was shared freely under a Creative Commons license. It came from Gregory Smith‘s work on the CARF (Children at Risk Foundation) page on Flickr.

I’ve already started getting some wonderful responses by email and on the online community forum .

Alice McGillivray sent in two photos of a World Café on leadership within park and protected areas, wordlessly voicing what she appreciates, and our friend FireHawk Hulin from Resonance shares this video of David Cooperrider’s thoughts, which he taped in a 1990 interview at his home in Illinois:

From Sharon Joy Kleisch, the World Café regional steward in Florida:

"The World Café opens a world of possibilities. Connecting is easy and leads to the most interesting people, passionate about doing important work in their communities and on this planet. Local cafes offer the gift of meaningful conversations that haven’t happened in quite this way before. Sometimes the local and the larger network interface, creating potentials for sharing and the delight of new insights.

As much as I appreciate these qualities, perhaps even greater is to experience a living system and to be part of a healthy example of how and why such a theory works."

From Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café:

"One of the things I’m most appreciative about in relation to the World Café is the truly amazing and beautiful community of heart and spirit that is stewarding this work forward into it’s next generation of life and creativity. I am truly humbled and blessed to sense the love, commitment, creativity and capability with which so many around the world are co-evolving this beautiful “being” that is the World Café in service to life affirming futures in local communities and regions around the globe.

With my deep appreciation and respect."

You, too, are most warmly invited to use the comment function below to share your own thoughts on what you most appreciation about the World Café work. Thank you!

Civic Reflection and Democracy

by Amy Lenzo | Sep 18, 2008 | Politics, World as Cafe

Juanita Brown has been asked to speak at an academic symposium on “Reflection and Democracy” in Chicago early next month. The following is an excerpt from the reflection paper she wrote in preparation, the first and most personal of three little stories about conversation and civic engagement that couldn’t be more timely:

“Democracy begins in human conversation. The simplest, least threatening investment any citizen can make in democratic renewal is to begin talking with other people, asking the questions, and knowing that their answers matter.”
~William Greider, Who Will Tell the People

I remember as a child in Miami, Florida our home was always alive with conversations. They weren’t just any kind of conversations. They were conversations about the “big questions”—questions of justice, democracy, and civil rights. They were conversations about philosophical issues, social action, and campaigns to elect public officials who had integrity and guts. From those early conversations the civil liberties movement in Florida was born, nurtured, and grew into a potent force for decency and fairness at a time of great turmoil in the South.

How did that happen? How did my parents and a small group of kindred spirits find each other, begin to reflect on their democratic ideals, find the courage to survive cross-burnings, ostracism, and opposition, while nourishing friendships imbued with a spirit of community and commitment that have lasted a lifetime.

My dad, Harold Cowan, is 90 years old. My mom, Millie, is 87. They came to Miami in the 1940’s from an immigrant ghetto in South Philadelphia. Recently we filmed them talking about those days and the seminal role in their lives of the “Jefferson Club,” named for the Jeffersonian ideal of participatory democracy. My mom, Millie Cowan, spoke of the impetus for the Jefferson Club with the same passion she’s demonstrated for more than half a century:

“Right on the street in Miami where my sister lived they had signs that said No Negroes, Jews, or Dogs Allowed. And at the beaches there were signs that said all blacks had to get off the beach before dark or they would be subject to arrest. Can you imagine? We were very, very shocked and very incensed. It was also the McCarthy period and they were going after known liberals. We found out that the Unitarian Church had a social action committee, and we began to meet others who were also concerned about what was going on.

That’s when the Jefferson Club started. It was primarily a discussion group that met every other week in various people’s homes. We would assign a question or issue and people would bring in readings they thought illuminated the subject. It wasn’t always political. Sometimes it was philosophical. We had questions like “What is happiness? But more often than not, it turned to the political things that were happening in Miami.”

My dad continued:

“Those conversations were very inspiring. They raised me to a different level of thinking. The Jefferson Club made me start thinking about things outside of my own survival. And, being very pragmatic I said, hell, let’s start doing something about it! The Jefferson Club became a nucleus for social action in the community, so when an issue came up, you didn’t have to form an organization. The people and the friendships were already there. All you had to do was make a few phone calls and you had a ready made organizing committee. We each supported the others’ efforts. It was really a miraculous thing.“

My mother added:

“And it was during that period in the 1950’s that we founded the first local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida. Today, fifty years later it’s still going strong with a lot of brilliant and wonderful young people–– young leaders who are working so hard to keep our democracy alive. We’ve seen tremendous social change take place over the years. All I can say is that we’ve had a lot of fun being involved with all these community betterment activities. We’ve enjoyed the most wonderful and meaningful relationships as a result of the Jefferson Club days with people who really had a lot of heart and cared about everyone having a voice.”

That was a key theme of my youth … the people’s democratic voice and our responsibility as citizens to keep our democracy alive. From leafleting in political campaigns, to creating social and legal services for poor people, to enduring cross burnings on our lawn because my parents invited African-Americans to our home–-I knew that the Jefferson Club readings and conversations I overheard in my parents living room, the thoughtful reflection that was integral to their discussions, and the committed actions my family and their friends took were because democracy was not a distant ideal. Rather democracy was a tender, vulnerable, living “being” that needed nurturing and protection by those who loved her.

Read the whole paper here: Download civicreflectiondemocracy.pdf

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Elaine Johnson on Maturana, Language, Prejudice & the Brain

by Amy Lenzo | Sep 18, 2008 | Language, Science

These words from educator and World Café researcher Elaine Johnson:

I’m just beginning to work on a brain workshop I’m presenting to the Northwest Regional Conference of Mathematicians – and Juanita’s summary of Maturana’s comments touched a chord.

Maturana says that emotions and language, intertwined, shape our culture. Words especially, he points out, lead to actions. Words, then, have the power to shape our human community, our culture, our “manner of living.” In fact, so inextricably bound are language and community that scientists think
the longing for community, for intimate communication, gave rise to language.

Of course Maturana, a world authority on the brain, speaks to the heart of World Café. Café allows language to bring forth new actions and inspire new communities.

However, the brain presents obstacles to a Café’s success, and it is these that I wish to address. The human brain has evolved to reflect–it is the universe reflecting on itself. The problem is that the brain does not think very well. Reason is supplanted again and again by raw emotion, or by our emotional attachment to our beliefs. Each person’s brain holds beliefs, values, and attitudes that have been shaped by parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, and even television commercials. These beliefs and values are
actually contained in brain circuits. They’re part of the physiology of the brain. As such, they act as “frames” or “schema” that shape our response to everything. What we believe decides what we are able to see or hear or are willing to think.

Just as surely as an arm is part of us, and we will fight to protect and keep our arm, so a belief is part of us, and we will fight to keep it, even when it’s wrong. We humans are so emotionally attached to our beliefs–they are wired in our brains, remember– that we first embrace them and later search for reasons to justify them. We would rather be wrong than sacrifice a conviction.

Part of the problem, as neuroscientists explain, is that communication in the brain runs mainly from the emotional center to the thinking part of the brain, and not very much in the other direction. We feel more than we reason. We have great trouble diminishing our emotions.

One of the challenges of World Café, then, must be to see that people think well–that they are truly mindful of deep-seated biases and able, somehow, to say, “This is a prejudice, and for the sake of our dialogue, I am going to set it aside.”

I teach advanced argumentation at university, and I’ve written about the steps involved in reasoning well. However, brain research compellingly insists that we regard the call to reason as more than an interesting
academic subject.

Reasoning well is the only source of those words we need so badly–the powerful, true words that can guide constructive actions, actions that will allow individuals, communities, and Earth to flourish.

Helping people ask good questions, and expecting that from considering good questions insight will arise makes sense. But . . .it especially makes sense among people who in all humility recognize that they are wired with circuitry that makes them biased and narrow and who are eager to set aside their biases, at least for the sake of a rich conversation.

A hopeful discovery is that the very act of thinking can change the brain. That means that words–true and valuable words reflecting keen insights–will emerge if we use practice them. Practice and reason lead to words that can change society.

Maturana

by Amy Lenzo | Aug 15, 2008 | Conversation, Relationship

Juanita Brown was among those who had the pleasure of meeting with Humberto Maturana and others from the Matriztico Institute at their workshop in Boston earlier this month. She shared her notes and insights with us over on the Conversation as a Co-Evolutionary Force blog … Here’s an excerpt from her post:

"As humans we are born in the trust of loving and in being loved–within
an ecology of the natural world and within the larger living cosmos."
Love is the legitimate co-arising of the other in the relational space
between us. What we understand as humanness are relations conserved on
and in love over many generations of our co-existence."
For more…

Loveblossoms

Maturana & Humanness

by Juanita Brown | Aug 15, 2008 | Co-Evolution

I’ve recently returned from a week of truly inspirational and profound learning with Humberto Maturana, Ximena Davila and their colleagues at the Matriztica Institute learning about the cultural-biological foundations of human existence and our co-evolution as loving beings through the relational spaces and networks of conversation in which we participate.

Let me share a few seed ideas that relate to our work with the World Café to give you a flavor of this workshop on cultural biological matrix of human existence, and then provide a brief description of how I see the World Cafe embodying some these powerful scientific insights about the origins and conservation of our very humanness.

Apologies to Humberto and his colleagues in advance for any
misinterpretations that I might have had, as they are quite precise and
I may not have interpreted it fully as they intended.

"As humans we are born in the trust of loving and in being loved–within
an ecology of the natural world and within the larger living cosmos."
Love is the legitimate co-arising of the other in the relational space
between us. What we understand as humanness are relations conserved on
and in love over many generations of our co-existence.

Humanness is not a genetic mutation. It is a manner of living where
there is pleasure in each others company, sharing food, nearness,
caressing and tenderness – nor is the capacity for language a genetic
mutation – it is an evolutionary drift emerging from the intimacy of
human community and the coordination of actions in language together.
It is in the intimate community where humanness arises as a network of
conversations that is conserved over generations as a lineage through
the raising of children over hundreds of generations in manners of living that are conserved in that lineage. Humanness did not arise
in competition, struggle etc. It arose in intimate family/community co-existence.

We live in the braiding of emotions and languaging in our manner of
living together. In this coordination through language, certain
consensus or agreements appear as"reality" and the objects we understand as "real" appear.

"Words are not trivial – words are the nodes or elements of networks of
conversation. Language is the coordination of doings, not a symbolic act as we commonly understand it. With one word I can follow one path
and with another a different path. Our languaging distinguishes a way of inhabiting a human community and culture.

As human beings we find ourselves living in communities in recursive coordination of doings, generating different worlds and realities as different manners of living together in networks of conversation.

A person who reflects creates new worlds. All distinctions are made by
an observer. Our capacity for reflection in language is one essence of
our humanness. We are human beings that emerged with the capacity to
reflect in language and conversations and in that we generate worlds.

"A key question is – how, in a human system, living what it is living, does pain and suffering arise from that manner of living? Culture is a network of conversations that both generates and conserves
states and manners of living and co-existence, even painful ones.

We have a choice and can be intentional about what we want to conserve in our manner of living and what we don’t.

Everything changes and evolves around what we want to conserve. Do we
want to conserve our essential nature as loving beings?

Homo sapiens amans amans?

The Matriztic Institute invites reflection on our
fundamental nature as biological-cultural loving beings who arise in language and who live in conversation as our manner of living (our doings) in conversation. Organizations, for example, are not the organizational chart, but arise in the living network of conversations that conserves certain manners of living together.

What is intelligence? It is the behavioral adaptability/plasticity that we show as the world around us changes – in our manner of living in co-existence with a changing environment.

As a co-inspirator, I can be intentional about the nature of the
conversations I introduce into the conversational network that is the organization or the culture I am part of. This is serious,
responsible, daring and playful work! How I open spaces of
conversation is of the utmost importance to our capacity to co-inspire worlds we choose to live in.
All cultural change, for example, is a change in the network of
conversations and the manner of living that arises in it. Language and
conversations are "doings" that lie at the heart of our capacity to
intentionally bring forth worlds that are life-affirming and ethical.

Everything changes around what we want to conserve.

And, here is a brief reflection on how I might now interpret the network of conversations that is a World Cafe!

In a World Cafe dialogue, intimate (4-5 people) circles engage in deep
listening and reflective conversation, where each member is seen, heard and honored for their unique contribution. This creates a relational
space and dynamic in which what is conserved from round to round is what has life from each conversation that is taken into the next
round. As the conversation unfolds through these multiple
cross-pollinating rounds of respectful dialogue in an intimate relational space (the
small circles), a living network of conversation emerges in which what
is conserved and spread through consecutive rounds becomes part of the embodied experience of that living network.

Collective intelligence (the "magic in the middle") begins to arise as
more and more people, in the intimacy and caring of the small table
groups, are truly seen and heard in the evolving "doings" of that Cafe’s
network of conversations. A World Cafe dialogue is, in a sense, a
small lived experiment in the cultural biology of love and our fundamental
humanness with each other (love is defined as a relational space where
the other arises as a legitimate other simply for who they are in their
"being" and their contribution) at increasing levels of scale.

The whole group reflection and harvesting at the end makes visible to the whole what is being conserved (patterns, insights, deeper questions, possible coordinated actions) that holds the life
(and the living) that has emerged through the network of conversations
embodied in that particular Cafe.
_________

I think Maturana and Davila’s work provides wonderful insights and I look forward to learning more over these next years.

What kinds of insights come to you in response to these words?

Paradise Unpaved

by Amy Lenzo | Aug 15, 2008 | Creativity

FireHawk Hulin ‘Stumbled" me a link to this great visual story by illustrator/author Franke James. Franke’s story of battling the powers that be to create a little beauty and health in her front yard is the perfect antidote to Joni Mitchell’s famous lament "Pave paradise, put up a parking lot."

Click the image to "read" the rest of the story (and while you’re there, check out the others she’s created on the subject of global climate change and what we can each do about it).