We just found out that other people are also blogging about this event. Carl Auer Verlag, the publisher who translated the book on World Café have just started a blog too and they wrote already a lot! For English readers, it is in German!
Eden is a Conversation
Barry Lopez talks of Eden as a Conversation. What a wonderful metaphor. Note to self 1: Have co-evolutionary conversations with sunlight, birds and flowers more often. Note to self 2: Remember that giving and receiving care and attention is co-evolutionary conversing.
"But Eden, we should be at pains to point out, is not a place. Eden
is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine.
And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense
of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made
visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of
good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to,
imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty."
"We cannot save things. Things pass away. We can only attend to
relationships, to the relationships between things. It is here that we
see the most beautiful images we are capable of apprehending or
imagining—the relationship between a mother and a child, the racket of
sunlight on pooling water, a bird alighting on a limb."
From Barry Lopez, Eden as a Conversation
The Choreography of Communication
Hellerau, the Garden City, next to Dresden was started around the turn of the previous century (I mean: more than a hundred years ago) with people who wanted to live and work in a different way. It was a kind of alternative movement and they did a lot of work to integrate the arts and to connect with nature. They build what is now called the Festspielhaus, on the principle of ‘spatial rhythm’. Of course World War I interfered with the whole project…
This is the perfect place to hold this World Café on The Choreography
of Communication. Like these people a hundred years ago we also try to
re-integrate, to re-connect what has been separated. The convening team
of this World Café was in itself an integration of artists,
body-workers, facilitators; and they did a good job!
First question we were offered: What moments in your life can you
remember when your body helped you communicate with yourself and with
others? Before that we had been going through a whole sequence of
relaxing in the body and becoming more present. Then there was a basic
movement and even a little song, which would guide us through the whole
afternoon. We came back and back to it, until it was something of our
little community of this afternoon. The next question was reflecting
one: What is emerging from the stories that we heard?
Of course, for people knowing me, this café is right on the spot for
me. What was once again confirmed: the inner, physical knowing is so
important! It is an intelligence of its own. Movement and body
awareness are opening us in a deeper way; movement makes us aware; our body
is an antenna… and much more was shared.
For me it came down to: The next phase in listening is learning to
listen to and with the body; and not only to each others words. As Bo
was saying: Listen with your eyes what other bodies are telling! And
Juanita shared how important and powerful it is for the collective
intelligence to happen, that we realize that conversations happen in so
many ways!
There was a third question and then a fourth: What IDEAS could
transform ordinary social interaction? I found it a strange question in
this café on movement. Why was the question not: What MOVEMENTS could
transform ordinary social interaction? That was what I shared in the
collective harvest at the end. And then… some silence came in, just
naturally… nobody spoke… some started humming our little song… Stephen
stepped in. He tried a few days ago to translate ‘meaningful
conversations’ into Chinese. He came up with: Intelligent Conversation.
And for describing our experience here he came up with: Physical
Delight! Right on the spot! And he concluded by showing a picture of
this beautiful Chinese city he is living in, next to the most beautiful
lake of China and with a lot of nature in the surroundings. He invited
the World Café to come over there! To him World Café is to let resonate
the beauty of cities around the world. Juanita was moved to tears; and
we closed again in circle, with the attention on our body… sigh… this
was good work! It gave me a lot of inspiration to bring my background and expertise in dance and bodywork into these kind of conversations.
Later on I heard from Bo that he first met Juanita on a dance floor,
and later he came to help her with her dissertation, which was pretty
much the beginning of the World Café! So maybe it is becoming full
circle…
Peace Café
The first World Café of the first day, addressing Peace & Forgiveness, was aptly housed in the crypt of the newly restored Frauenkirche, itself a powerfully vibrant example of peace and reconciliation.
This photograph by the extremely talented Ulrich Soeder captures the sense of intimacy and power in the space, and the conversation under its arches was worthy of the setting.
We started with the question “What is Forgiveness and what does it mean for me personally?” and the ancient stones gave a requisite strength and the stability to hold the mixed emotions and personal vulnerability that was part of the response. One thought that stands out for me from this round was someone saying that forgiveness is like a muscle that must be exercised, like that of courage, which is essential to support the truth-telling that seems to be a pre-requisite to real forgiveness.
The next question, “How do I adopt a more forgiving attitude and support others to do the same?” took the inquiry deeper and in several cases revealed the depth of pain that can come with truth telling. But perhaps, my table wondered, the pain and anger and blame needs to be experienced and ‘burned’ in order to make space for the love and compassion of forgiveness to enter our hearts.
Another response that struck me during this round was the recognition that to forgive means to know and fully accept the whole human experience, and to bestow the grace of forgiveness is both a selfish act of self-interest and a generous expression of love.
The final round, “What can I do with this renewed understanding of forgiveness to help me make the world a more peaceful place?” yielded a wonderful question from our elder, to take us forward into a future: “What new child can be born from the painful stories of the past?”
On the Train
On the train to Dresden yesterday I asked a gentleman sitting near me for directions and it turned out that he too was coming to the World Café! Reinhard Kuchenmüller, for that was his name, is a visual facilitator coming in from Tuscany to facilitate today’s World Café on Education for the Future. His work for that café will be up on the World Café Europe site soon, but for now here is one of the images he shared with me on the train (there are more of Reinhard’s graphic images on the World Café Europe Flickr page):
Almost in Dresden…
Here I sit on a bench in the sun, outside Berlin Spandau train station. A ‘Rathaus’ with a tower is in front of me. My night train from Belgium to Berlin was delayed, so I missed my connection and have to wait. But the sun is here, beautiful: not too hot, just perfect to sit on a bench in a strange town.
This is Berlin where East and West were so close to each other; where East and West hardly could reach on another…
Can World Café, and all what it stands for, help in this process of
re-connecting? The World-as-Café is probably a saying that we don’t
understand fully (yet)? What is the powerful question for this
World-as-Café? How can we cross-pollinate across walls, borders,
divides…, inside ourselves and in between us, in-between you and me?
Can I see the human-being-ness in the young Moroccans speaking,
shouting, laughing on the bench behind my back? They probably don’t
understand my Dutch nor my English, and I don’t understand their
Moroccan and only a little of their German. Can I really open my heart
and soul for them… with nothing holding back? For me that is how I
understand in this moment the World-as-Café.
In Dresden they already started talking – conversing – turning to
one another – one hour ago. Let’s imagine the highest future that can
come out of this!
