Category: Putting Community In

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I started the process of developing this application paper as a way to think more about connecting the specific community to the larger, but quickly came to realize that there is as much if not more need for the specific community to engage with itself. My focus as a member of the community, a participatory action researcher, was to think about how to engage the specific community in activity that would connect with the larger communities in which the specific participated, such as connecting to the May Day protests, to the larger pagan community through public events, etc … Through my own process of thinking about large group interventions, I have come to more fully realize that there are important benefits to be gained from the specific community being more fully engaged with itself, such as sustainability and depth of practice, as well as sense of identity.

I also have in some ways crystallized the growing realization that what I have developed as the environment within which dialogue will flourish, the enabling dialogical space, is perhaps a more general theory about the foundation of space in which any transformative process can occur, and by transformation there is an overall domain which I have taken to be dialogical in nature. In fact, it appears that the overall domain is transformative, and dialogical processes are an example of a practice within the domain. I have come to realize that many transformative processes fail to explicitly and intentionally develop a transformative foundation within which to work, but very often take this formation as a given and concentrate instead on the process to be enacted. While I clearly indicate that dialogical, and thus transformative processes, are naturally occurring, I hold that these processes are more likely to occur and transformation is more likely to emerge if there is definite intentionality toward the foundation of the enabling space, comprised, as I have outlined, of qualitative time & space, willingness and good faith. Like so many things in life, simple to learn, but something I suspect takes a lifetime to master.

I believe that the conclusion of this application inquiry is that I must endeavour to have a first hand experience of the “Witchcamp” process which is native to the specific community and attempt to discern if it would be the most appropriate method to use in a local event for the purpose of community building in the Olympia Reclaiming community.

There is a method of engagement culturally specific to the Reclaiming community itself, which I wanted to suggest. I have not had the opportunity to experience this process myself, but in the course of this application inquiry, I have come to think that it is even more important that I do so than I thought previously. While local examples of this method have not occurred within the Olympia community, many of the individuals within the community have participated in this method when offered elsewhere, primarily the one that occurs in British Columbia and draws practitioners from all of Cascadia and beyond. As a method native to the community itself, it would make sense to consider implementing the method for the application envisioned in this paper.

An example of the organizing principles of a Witchcamp is offered by the organizers, the teaching teams, of BC Witchcamp 2006:

“Our intention for co-creation at camp is to foster collaborative efforts between campers, organizers, teachers and the many realms to work the magic of camp. Stepping into the full Sun of co-creation we empower personal authority and acknowledge that we all are and have always been co-creators. Co-creation requires that we steward our selves — tending our Divine Twins of light and shadow with compassion, honesty and responsibility. We invite each member of this community to bring awareness, transparency and intention into the ritual of this week. To weave today what we choose for the future. So mote it be.” (BC Witchcamp 2006 info)

A Witchcamp is a gathering of practitioners for a week-long engagement with the principles and ideas of Reclaiming. Typically, there is an overall theme chosen and several options are offered for specific topics and /or skill levels.

Along with the topical /skill sessions are group activities that involve small, large and full participation levels. This offers a practical implementation of the “diverge / converge” model of engagement as well as opportunity for something like max-mix groups to form across topical and skill boundaries. As with Reclaiming classes, each session, or path, is co-facilitated to model consensus decision-making and also to offer broader perspectives on the materials.

For this application, developing and offering a Witchcamp locally in Olympia could strengthen the community’s connection to itself and deepen the practice that is at the core of the community identity. Included in the event could even be space for future visioning and connecting local practitioners in ways that would be familiar from the “creating the future” methods. Contained in the structure of the Witchcamp are many opportunities for the participants to engage in participatory design, especially when it comes to the small and whole group ritual creation process. The opportunity to collectively experience, many times over the course of a week, the visioning and action of ritual events is an example of the kind of Simu-Real practice leading to understanding and skills for the future. So, this particular methodology offers rich engagement that matches some of the goals of each of the three categorical divisions of method made by Bunker and Alban.

There is a methodology that was developed in Olympia for a specific event, which I would like to suggest as an interesting, and important method of large group intervention within communities, especially when good faith is uncertain to be present. Although this method was designed for an issue that is not directly related to the specific community in focus for this application paper, the method is one that was developed in the greater community in which the specific community resides, as therefore it seems reasonable to consider the method for this application.

I participated in the application of this methodology and, while I was not part of the overall planning committee, I was part of the planning and facilitation of the dialogue groups that were part of the method. I also was a member of the panel that presented our experience of this innovative methodology to the National Conference of Dialogue and Deliberation in Denver, CO, 2004.

This event was a series of lectures, several weekly events over the course of a month. Each lecture was two speakers who, at least nominally, were representatives of different opinions about the conflict. The lectures were followed by a period when a moderator would filter questions from the audience for the two speakers together. Then, the community was invited to participate in one of several dialogue groups that were formed and facilitated. During the series, I was one of the dialogue group facilitators. These groups were inspired by the philosophy and theory of the Compassionate Listening Project.

I attempted to distill what I believed was the essential philosophy of the Compassionate Listening Project by saying:

“Compassionate Listening is not about an emergent shared meaning, but is about reawakening shared humanity.” (Bell, 2004, p4)

and:

“The foundation of Compassionate Listening then is not that it is a step toward dialogue or reconciliation. In the face of emotionally charged polarization, dialogue is part of the problem not a solution because listening compassionately, without judgment nor agenda, must re-humanize and connect humans in conflict.
Polarization then is not the problem, but a symptom of something more primary – a lack of awareness and awakening to the fundamental and positive interdependence between humans that is larger than our conflicts and our skills at reconciliation or dialogue.“ (Bell, 2004, pp 4-5)

So, if this foundation is effective, then it follows that the awakening of shared humanity would help lead to the greater connections I hope to develop through the application in this paper. Further information about the ideas and tools of Compassionate Listening are available in Carol Hwoschinsky’s Listening with the Heart. (2002), but as I admit elsewhere, the Compassionate Listening project was the inspiration for the groups, but in practice they were a mélange of techniques brought to the event by the facilitators.
I primarily see this methodology as a community building process, where the community is able to develop a stronger relationship with itself over time and also to learn more about itself. Primary benefits of using this methodology are that it takes place over a period much longer than the typical LGI method, over several weeks instead of days; that the multi-modal engagement allows for participants to be engaged at a level with which they feel comfortable; and, of especial importance for this particular application, participants are able to engage with a level of anonymity or self-identification with which they are comfortable. A corollary to the last, is that this particular method, along with notable few others, such as Open Space, do not require that the facilitators know the participants or need the participants to self-identify in order for the engagement to take place.

For me, some of the most important elements of the “Searching for Peace” series were the mixture of engagement technologies used, the extended relationship the community formed with itself over the month and the reflective practice that I engaged in with my colleagues among the facilitators. By the mixture of engagement technologies, I mean the way in which large and small groups were organized to encourage different modes of engagement by the participants.

These two examples are reflected for me what I have been able to read of the Whole-Scale Change methodology. Specifically, but not exclusively, I mean the Converge-Diverge model. In the Whole-Scale Change Toolkit, the Converge-Diverge Model is explained as a “flow that integrates individual, small group and large group work.” [DTA, 2000, p 7] In addition, the terms “differentiation” and “integration” are used. The most obvious model in the western tradition for this is the alchemical “solve et coagula” or to break apart and put together. The alchemical model implicitly includes transformation between this pair. Taking this as an antecedent for the “Converge-Diverge Model” is to understand that there is an opportunity for transformation in the process of flowing from differentiation through integration and back and so on.

From all this I mean to say that I have come to believe that large scale engagements are a series of events within the context of a relationship that a community has with itself. This series is also in the context of sub and super communities in which the community is connected and related. That is to say, trying to forget for a moment my dislike of the notion of microcosms in methodologies, that a community is a microcosm of a larger community and comprised itself of microcosms. Each community is a fractal of larger community in which it participates.

I suspect that large group interventions should have a mixture of engagement methods within the context of a long relationship. This dialectic between the immediate event and that event’s context in a larger pattern are what I see echoed in the Whole-Scale Change methodology through the Diverge-Converge Model.

During the dialogue sessions attached to the lecture series, and the month that we held them, I think the primary reflections shared between the practitioners were our disappointment with an apparent of a lack of diversity present in the groups. This relates to the topic of “radical inclusivity” I have mentioned and to the notion of “widening the circle” from Axelrod. (2002) In our post event reflections as we prepared to present ourselves as a panel at NCDD ’04, I think some of the biggest realizations were that we were not being as compassionate with ourselves and the our ability in the work as we were willing to be compassionate to the others, the participants, in the work with us; another realization was that dialogue, which can occur without radical inclusivity and without crossing thresholds, can be more problematic and disconnecting than a radical approach to listening, such as that practiced by the compassionate listening. There were many important and amazing things within the experience and through the reflection that came out of our preparation and presentation at NCDD.

In summary, the use of an event, a large group intervention, modeled on the “Searching for Peace” method might be useful for engaging the divergent communities in Olympia on a variety of topics.