Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:27:08 -0800 (PST)
From: Raffi Aftandelian <raffi_1970@...>
Subject: Living Peace- an invitation
To: arturfsilva@...

Living Peace: the open space of our lives

An invitation

 

 

November 18,2007

 

Dear Artur, 

 

We are writing you to invite your contribution for an e-book, tentatively entitled Living Peace: the open space of our lives. OST facilitators from around the world, experienced and people new to the practice, are being contacted for this project.

 

Harrison’s last book was The Practice of Peace. It was a thoughtful, playful, compelling, and engaging invitation to consider that the everyday practice of Open Space in organizations is the practice of peace. If that is so, then perhaps, taken together, those who work with OST have something to offer the world about living peace on a day-to-day basis?

 

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There have been many conversations about the personal practice of open space, but to our knowledge this has not been captured as a book. Chris Corrigan and Michael Herman have elaborated an invaluable perspective on that practice. And I credit them, Wendy Farmer-O’Neil, Birgitt Williams, and Harrison Owen as inspiration for this book.

 

This book aims to deepen the conversation about the personal practice of Open Space.

 

For the book, we’d like to invite you to answer one question:

 

“What is your practice of Open Space?�

 

This is an inquiry into how each of us bring open space into our lives, how we live Open Space.

 

In addition, you are invited to submit resources for a resource section at end of the book on practicing Open Space in life. We welcome any materials you see as valuable in deepening the personal practice of Open Space.

 

A maximum length of two pages for each contribution is suggested, and this is more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule.

 

We’d like to ensure a broad representation of voices in the book, both in terms of perspective, experience, and geography. This invitation will also be posted to English-language OSlist and other OSlists around the world.

 

If you have any particular suggestions of people who should be contacted to participate in this initiative, let me know!

 

If you think you will be able to make a contribution, please email Raffi at raffi@... (or raffi_1970@...). We’d like to receive submissions by February 1, 2008.

 

Your piece can be anything that can be presented on a printed page, a story, an essay, a parable, a word, a sentence, a picture, a diagram, anything that can convey on paper what you understand your practice of Open Space to be.

 

If you’d prefer to share your practice of peace in a telephone conversation that can be later transcribed into text, we’d be more than happy to do so.

 

The book will be made available for free online. Perhaps at a later point, it might be available for sale in print form, in which case a significant (50% at least) of proceedings will go to support the spread of OST around the world.

 

Contributions will be selected by a committee (anyone with experience of OST is welcome to participate in its work). All pieces will be available for reading online, regardless of whether or not they are chosen for the book.

 

Vera “Dyomka� Vakulenko, a Moscow artist and community activist who designed the Open Space on Open Space XIV logo and brought much spirit to that conference will be illustrating this book. The drawing in this invitation is hers!

 

We intend to publish the book in both English and Russian. If you can circulate this invitation in other languages, it’d much be appreciated.

 

Your thoughts, questions suggestions and collaboration in this project are welcome!

 

If you can submit something for this book, please let us know by email!

 

Respectfully and in appreciation,

Raffi Aftandelian

Vera “Dyomka� Vakulenko

 

p.s. Greetings Artur! If you could forward this invitation to other regional OST colleagues, I'd much appreciate it! warmly, raffi