Discernment in In-Between Times: The Magic in the Middle
At CPL’s Fall Retreat, the focus is “Navigating Thresholds of Change. We will welcome 5 Conversation Starters to co-create the conversation. Ahead of the Retreat, we thought to invite Juanita Brown for a deeper dive conversation focused on the 3rd Threshold of discernment, and how discernment and commitment co-exist.
Juanita asks, “How do I discern the sourcing of my commitments, whatever they might be? Do they come from an inner energy of devotion, which is from a spiritual source, versus a ‘driving forward’? What is the source that is energizing me and my commitments?”
OUR CONVERSATION STARTER
Juanita Brown: Co-Founder, The World Café; President, Whole Systems Associates
Conversation with Juanita Brown
MORE ABOUT THE EVENT
How is The World Cafe aligned? It’s a philosophy, container and process to look at and consider our questions and the context of Navigating the Thresholds of Change. Using seven design principles and a simple method, the World Café is a powerful social technology for engaging people in conversations that matter, offering an effective antidote to the fast-paced fragmentation and lack of connection in today’s world. Based on the understanding that conversation is the core process that drives personal, business, and organizational life, the World Café is more than a method, a process, or technique – it’s a way of thinking and being together sourced in a philosophy of conversational leadership.
The method is very aligned with The Art of Convening flow:
1) Setting: Create a “special” environment
2) Welcome and Introduction: The host begins with a warm welcome and an introduction to the World Café process, setting the context, sharing the Cafe Etiquette, and putting participants at ease.
3) Small-Group Rounds
4) Questions: each round is prefaced with a question specially crafted for the specific context and desired purpose of the World Café.
5) Harvest
ABOUT JUANITA BROWN
Co-founder of the World Café & co-author of the award-winning World Café book, Juanita is a thinking partner for senior leaders across sectors in creating innovative forums for strategic dialogue on critical business and societal issues. She was also a senior affiliate with the MIT Center for Organizational Learning. Juanita & her husband David Isaacs are currently collaborating in stewarding a living place of meeting & learning in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
“Discernment is required when we are at a moment of choice.I feel as a society and as a globe as a nation and as a planet where we're in and in between time. We're in critical moments of choice. I think we need each other for that process. We need both the collective processes that enable us to come together in authentic ways. And we also need deep personal reflection
And I feel like I'm there in my own life at this time, really in a process of discernment, given my entire life history with birth of the World Cafe with social movements with our work with community of asking myself the question in the midst of all of this. What is mine to do and what is worthy of my best effort at this stage of my life as I approach 80 years old?
The power of discernment actually lies in the distinction between commitment as we normally understand it, and devotion as a source for crossing thresholds and moving forward in whatever is the endeavor. Each individual has a need collective context for individual discernment and collective discernment. Individually together.
Of the relationship between individual and collective discernment, coming from that spirit of devotion, is another level from committed action.This kind of subtle difference between commitment, which can be sort of contractual, and devotion, which is relational. And sourced in connection and it has more like a covenant, you know, like a relation.
What emerges is the magic in the middle and how it sets the stage for intentional discernment. What is the power of the question? The framing of questions that matter that attract collective energy is crucial. And then what is the collective context? A setting that enables people to feel safe enough together to actually delve into powerful questions in such a way that both individually and collectively a field is created. That is enabling of deeper inquiry at a collective and an individual level.
And that's what we call the magic in the middle. When it happens, you can feel it. Oftentimes you don't know how to say it, but you could tell when that energy begins to move. You know, in a room, whether even if it's with you with another individual person. Where you really feel safe and comfortable to explore what's really important to you. And what's important to that other person where you can go deeper.
And the World Cafe is one among others that have developed in these last 30 years.”