Terry Chapman's - Sabbath Journey

inspired field of connection

Speaking of "connectionalism", I love this post from a mentor of mine, Otto Scharmer, whose book Theory U and teaching, is foundational for my thinking. (Emphasis mine)  I so desperately long for new "fields of inspired connection" within our church.  The time is ripe for us all to be open to the Spirit who creates these fields.  I really get the sense that this is what the PC(USA) has to offer the world.... if we can find our way.

igniting fields of inspired connection

Monday, March 29th, 2010 | Uncategorized

I just spent an amazing week here at MIT with a group of 30 young leaders from all sectors of Indonesian society: deputy ministers and top civil servants of several ministries, mayors, governors of small regions, CEOs of medium-sized companies, editors of major newspapers and TV news programs, deans of three major universities, members of the national and regional parliaments, leaders of environmental and human rights NGOs, and so on. An amazing group.

With 230 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has the world’s largest population of Muslims. Spread over 17,000 islands, it takes 10 hours of flying time to from one end of the country to the other. Indonesia is a bit like our whole planet wrapped into a single country: it has every type of conflict that you can imagine (religious, gender, class, ethnic, colonial –you name it). A real microcosm of our planet. Given this complexity, no wonder the leadership challenges are daunting. The challenge is to transform the relationships between the three sectors (government, business, civic sector) from mistrust to trust, from blaming and blocking to system-wide cooperation, innovation, and change.

What was so amazing about this week was watching how the group (and the relationships between sectors) progressed on that journey of transformation. This week was the beginning of a ten-month (U process) innovation journey with this group that will involve deep sensing, connecting to source (presencing), and exploring the future through prototyping new forms of collaboration.

I have guided two other tri-sector groups through a similar ten-month transformative leadership journey. What has struck me most is that, even years later, the inspired field of connection and collaboration among them is still as alive and vibrant as ever. We have seen some major innovations from these groups already. More innovations will follow. To me it feels as if we are touching the deeper power of human evolution and creativity. Once they touch that deeper place, there is NOTHING on earth that such a group can’t do. That’s how it feels, anyway. Since we are now in the process of co-creating similar platforms and programs for China, Brazil, and some other places, I wonder where all this will lead us. Will these new fields of connection be able to generate new forms of global collaboration and governance? Have you seen similar developments anywhere? Have you experienced fields of inspired connection that change how we relate to each other, to our context, and to ourselves?

Nurturing Diversity

I thought I would post an excerpt from a conversation I'm having on the Presencing Site about Theory U and Diversity.  

Hi Terry,
First of first, I love how you called your reflection theme. Diversity is most of time at the origin of transformation. When you go all the way back to chaos theories, organic systems, Darwin's blind spot and the notion of symbiosis, it is because a strange attractor or some sort of response to an outside event or being, has ocurred, and acted as a catalyst of disruption, leading to transformation.
Now, in my own field and work, I feel that the biggest challenge is the daily experience of diversity. After the conversation I always find myself in a better place. But during the conversation, it is often uncomfortable for parties involved. Transformation means you accept to be a different person after the conversation, right? And most of the time, if this is not the intent of the stakeholder, this is the biggest challenge: participants want to enjoy the diversity of point of views, but are not always ready to let these points of view change deeply rooted beliefs values. So it requires nurturing. Because it's like gardening, it never ends.

Fabienne, Thanks for your comments. Your phrase, "it is because a strange attractor or some sort of response to an outside event or being" is particularly powerful. Is this one way of describing the Source? Staying with the U paradigm, is the deepening conversation on the left side a response to the attractor? Can one really encounter diversity, that is from a generative level, and not experience transformation? Is there, in these conversations with the "other" a time when we come to a tipping point, and transformation becomes inevitable, even irresistible? And yes, the nurturing of the potentiality, so critical. On the left side it is at first like hospice, nurturing something that needs to die. On the right side it is like a midwife helping the new to be born. Such liminal moments, be it death or life, are very laborious and cannot be forced. Oh how we need each other in these places.