Making and Holding Space: Transformational Tools
My friend Julie has done it again! Another brilliant article over at her website, www.thebalancepoint.org.
Check out “Making Space: Offering You Room to Bloom” by Julie Cramer.
An excerpt:
A Language of Space
One of the most important reasons to share this concept and give it a word, is that it creates a language, that then becomes a tool in relationship. Utilizing the language of space in actual day to day life relationships is worth a whole article in itself. For now, it is helpful even just to recognize it as a word, and start to ask yourself, what kind of “space” do I need right now to give what is inside of me room to bloom? Maybe you need to be heard, to be understood, to rest, to take action, to explore and so forth?“Space” as a Transformational Tool
The idea behind “space” as a transformational tool is simple. In fact,it is one of my favorite life paradoxes; the more we attempt to change or fix something, the more it stays they way it is, and, conversely, the more we allow things to be what they are, the more they begin to change and transform on their own!Oh, I definitely run into doubters on this one! As a matter of fact, this simple concept, if one really gets it, is a complete life paradigm shift, and it is my belief that, when we can all truly understand what it means and how it works, we will live in a world of ever-transforming harmony, beauty and flow. In some ways, it is counterintuitive, but once you really understand the depths of what it means to “make space”, you will see how very profound indeed it can be.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Willem,
Thank you for posting this.
After reading Derrick Jensen’s ” Walking Water”, do you think he was making space for his students at Pelican Bay State Prison? Or does the acts of grading and taking roll call change the defintion of what he was doing?
Take care,
Curt
July 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Intriguing question! I think he understood, on an instinctual level, that grading and roll call, by its very nature, conflicted with what he wanted to hold space for. He could not both offer a free space for innate creative expression, and demand obedience and “measuring up” to an outside standard.
In this sense, Julie and I (and most of my colleagues too, such as Scout) have come to terms with the reality that people you hold space for will learn the shape of the space, not your words or content. The medium embodies the message; the system enacts the curriculum. You cannot teach with lecture the ability to have a conversation.
[just as a clarification, I do think, according to Julie’s coining of the terms, Derrick purposed to “hold space” (something you do for others, witnessing their story, without affirming or denying the value of what they fill the space with), rather than “make space” (something I understand you do for yourself or your current relationships, making time and room for the expression of your needs/feelings/story).]
July 12th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Willem,
You wrote: ” In this sense, Julie and I (and most of my colleagues too, such as Scout) have come to terms with the reality that people you hold space for will learn the shape of the space, not your words or content. The medium embodies the message; the system enacts the curriculum. You cannot teach with lecture the ability to have a conversation.”
And this comes back to the point that Jerry Mander made in “In the Absence of the Sacred”: Technology is not neutral, it all has social consequences. The clock in the classroom teaches us about giving our time away to authority figures. The school building walls we sat behind taught us about our relationship to the nonhuman community. The textbooks they handed us taught us about who holds the knowledge of what we NEED to know.
Am I on the right track here?
Take care,
Curt
July 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am
From my perspective, you have it exactly. The periodized clamor of the school bell, the rows of student’s (worker’s) desks facing the teacher’s (foreman’s) desk, all these and more came into use specifically to create the effects they created, thus the supernatural reliability of schools to create illiterate citizens who can’t read bus schedules.
But we’ll fix ‘em next year, for sure!
Haha. Sorry. A mini-rant there. Yes - the system teaches the curriculum, not the information in the textbooks, or the information coming out of the teacher’s mouth (except of course, in so far as the teacher further informs the system, by calling out certain students as “lazy” in front of others, controlling whether or not they can go to the bathroom (control over someone’s ability to relieve themselves! monstrous!), etc.).
You know, I’ve repressed thinking about school for a few years now - I don’t go into them, I don’t teach at them, I don’t support or try to fix them in any way. Their sinister, pernicious, and pervasive agenda absolutely repels me. Probably more folks need to write about this, but for myself the bile rises in my throat so quickly I wouldn’t enjoy writing about it at all.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Willem,
You wrote: “You know, I’ve repressed thinking about school for a few years now - I don’t go into them, I don’t teach at them, I don’t support or try to fix them in any way. Their sinister, pernicious, and pervasive agenda absolutely repels me.”
I’m really sorry for bringing the subject up. I hear what you’re saying though. Looking back on my schooling experience I feel like a lot of my time was stolen from me. I could have been out fishing with my friends instead of learning how to pretend to act interested in subjects that I didn’t give a shit about (Like learning how to balance a checkbook in sixth grade!) And the fifteen years after graduating from high school haven’t been a walk in the park either.
I’m really glad that we are able to give our son the oppurtunity to NOT go to school.
Curt
July 15th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
No worries, Curt. I enjoy the taste of bile now and then. I know that sounds really gross, but hey.
I too absolutely CELEBRATE what you have given your son. A thousand congratulations.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Willem,
Thank you for the thousand congratulations.
Keep up the great work.
Curt