Replying to LO29068 --
Dear LO
At wrote in his recent post titled LO in Public Schools LO29068
> am now strongly suspecting that an organisation is not TALKED into
> becoming a LO, but is WALKED into emerging as a LO. This is very important
> in transforming public schools into LOs. It is most promising that
> children still care far more for each other than in the case of adults.
> Thus the walk ought to be much easier than in the case of adults.
in March of 1997 you wrote in LO 12843
>Thus I now wish to stress explicitly that your own understanding will not
>be in terms of what you will look up in my forthcoming book or any other
>book for that matter, but in terms of your own emergent learning! It is
>not what I say what is important, but that you first walk (create) and
>then talk (report).
> >As I understand it, an LO is such a system (by either interpretation of
> >the definition - presumably) - an organisation with masses of potential
> >but really grinding slowly to a halt, or an organisation that is working
> >to its full potential, realising its full potential and manifesting it in
> > its work ... and presumably there are all the shades between.
>Leon, it does seem that even LOs do grind to a halt. But a few of them
>actually prepares themself for initiating their own next cataclysm needed.
>This means that each one of them needs a flooding or inundating of newly
>created entropy. They will do this themselves if it does not happen
>irrespective of them. Thus, through them the new orders will arise, come
>hell or high water. Those longing for the old orders will call them the
>crazy disturbers. Unfortunately, much time has to pass before it will
>generally be understood that they are not the disturbers of all order -
>only of old orders almost ready to die.
I have a friend called Miriam, she posted me this yesterday, I have
lightly-heartedly edited out a few terms in the sentences. They are too
fruitful for inclusion here.
Note: Miriam is currently studying LO and doing LO with no formal
understandings beyond occasional readings from the digest, when she can
access a computer. For me, one thing about Miriam is she seems to have no
beginning and no end. She works with local disadvantaged (sic) young
people many of whom abuse a variety of substances;-)
"Andrew.... How are you, my little m b? Still just as radiant as the p's
p, and twice as fragrant, I hope.
You will be pleased to know my pumpkin is doing well, and my tomatos are
many. (Miriam has taken to growing things before she lived for a number of
years in a basement with a concrete yard about ten square metres for a
garden)
You'll also be pleased to know that today you cheered me up - without even
trying, oh ... Of late, I have been exercising my right to be a miserable
..t, with a whole variety of reasons/justifications to chose from. And
then, today, I went down to Gainsborough Green to work on the mural for
the day. This is proving to be a huge success. We have had up to 25 kids
a day, and are well on our way to producing some fantastic images, made
entirely by kids aged between 6 and 16, and a couple of other local
residents. But today, the kids were bored, rude, fractious, easily
distracted and unproductive. We got very little done, much of it was too
poor to be used, most of it got thrown around, time and materials were
both wasted and we ended up further behind than when we started. I left at
4.30 and headed back to open up the "Bridge" for the evening session.
A few hours later, before heading home, I suddenly decided, rather
randomly after several months if not a year, to check out the LO. A brief
search got me there, and I decided to start by checking out your latest
posting, which was essentially an apology for having sent the wrong file
with a previous message (along with your repeated insistence on using the
word "knot" for "not")
Your message also contained the location of the correct file, so off I
went, to a page of confused, fragmented and over printed text... and cried
as amongst it all, I read, "...about art, but about human relationships in
general. This was quite true. One cannot separate creativity from its
social basis. The child's creativity accompanies and sustains his
developing human relationships. In order to enrich ourselves as
individuals we have to re-shape and change our human relationships without
respite by projection and introjection. A frequent failure in human
relationships is due to the same ego rigidity that impedes creativity.
We have to give our substance freely, project it into other people or
creative work for further transformation. As in creative work we must be
humble and grateful to receive back far more than we ourselves have put
in. Our personality will grow through this creative interchange, which
underlies the metabolism of our social life."
And there I saw the mural, what it is and was meant to be all along, and
why today I had deemed it a failure. What we have spent the last week and
a half building is not a picture, not a piece of public art or a
decoration, it is not a project of some kind. No, what we have spent the
last week and a half building is people, their personality, their
creativity, and community. People are not our tools in building the
mural, the mural is our tool in building people. Today I had forgotten
this, and seen only failure. I had wondered why I bothered spending so
much time and effort organising the event, and getting paid so little for
it, for a bunch of kids, primarily the group of teenage lads we work and
struggle with, when all I was going to get from them was a few minutes
half-hearted effort and a load of abuse. But suddenly, I remembered the
value and the miracle of the fact that they spent that many minutes making
so much as half an effort at something. That they engaged is something,
and though they won't realise it, actually gave something to their
community. (I nearly added "however small", but the fact of it alone
makes it immense). A relationship has been built, an act undertaken, a
gift given and received, and through it, a person - their place in their
community, their abilities, their understanding, their thoughts, their
boundaries - has been enlarged, has grown. (I nearly added "however
slightly", but the fact of it alone makes it immense). And If that isn't
creativity, isn't success, isn't a job worth doing, then I don't know what
is. I think it also helps that it's sunny...
And now, as I type this several hours later (1am) another sentence strikes
me from my print out of your now not only confused, fragmented and over
printed but also slightly crumpled file;
"At certain periods the township cleansed itself by casting out scapegoats
laden with the sins and ills of the community. Marginal members of
society, such as vagrants or criminals would be kept ready for the
occasion."
No idea what township or society you meant, but I would suggest that in
this society, amongst that list of marginal members, the most popular
scapegoats would be the young. Certainly it would seem so in my
experience through my work, and if so, how sick, suicidal,
self-destructive, blind and condemned is a society that cleanses, purges
itself, believes itself to have brought reparation and healing, by casting
out its young, its future, its hope? And how fantastic is it, that
through this mural, we are taking those people, those scapegoats, lifting
the sins and ills of the society, along with its hope and future, and
plastering the whole lot across the entire length of a 30 metre wall, at
the most prominent, central point of the community. The mural consists of
several large pictures and scenes, designed by the kids, each made up of
several hundred individual tiles, made by the kids. Whilst we have
maintained fairly strict editorial control over the large images, the kids
have been allowed to carve pretty much what they want into the small
tiles. And yes, there is plenty in those designs that speaks of hope -
patterns, little poems, names, innocent kids drawings - but if they look
closer, the sins and ills are self evident too. The graffiti names of
local kids people may sooner forget, initials and symbols of some fairly
unsavoury organisations, profanities, and more gange leaves and
drug-related symbols than you can easily wave a spliff at. And I'm sure
that there will be people who, if we have failed in our discretion and
artistic licence and they look more closely at the fine detail than we
predicted, will be offended by that, but then, won't they be proving the
point? Won't they simply be again trying to kick the scapegoat into the
desert to die? Perhaps by bringing the scapegoats so blatantly back into
the town, we might force people to see the issues, to address them, and if
they don't like what they see, to ask exactly whose sins and ills they are
that so appal them, what and who has caused this predicament, that they
are so eager to dump on the young scapegoats and to be rid of.
More likely they'll just write angry letters to the local press, petition
the council and scapegoat the kids when it all gets vandalised six weeks
down the line. But hey, at the very least we've all got to sit in the sun
and play with clay for three weeks.
-------------------------------------
Which reminds me of an incident on Sunday. I went up to my allotment on
Sunday, which at the moment is a place of splendour. Not only is my
pumpkin spreading and my tomatoes increasing, but my beans are plentiful,
my lettuce is crisp, my spinach is never ending and my beetroots are
enormous. My onions, carrots and cabbage are all doing as they should.
Despite this, I was bemoaning my poverty. Later, I was reminded of the
story of Naboth's vineyard. King Ahab looks out from his palace window,
and sees the vineyard, and wants it to be his vegetable patch. He offers
Naboth a better vineyard in return, or to pay him any price he asks for
it. Yet Naboth refuses to sell the land of his ancestors. Ahab returns
to the palace and sulks. His wife points out that this is fairly absurd
behaviour for a king - the problem can be easily rectified by killing
Naboth and claiming the land, which Ahab promptly does. Ultimately of
course, Ahab dies and gets his comeuppance. Yet the thing that struck me
was that here is Ahab, the most powerful man in the land and the richest,
with immense wealth and all he could want, yet the one thing he wanted and
for which he risked it all was a vegetable patch. Here's me on the other
hand with no wealth, no power, but the one thing I do have and which I
love to bits is a vegetable patch. Sometimes we find that the thing we
most long for is what we already have, and sometimes we find that what we
have is more precious than all we could long for. The trick is not to
scapegoat our future, cast out the only hope we have in favour of the
things we may think we want, but can't have."
End Miriam's contribution
Somewhere this yesterday morning, this morning and tomorrow morning in a
ramshackle unheated 'township' cabin, without water somewhere near Jo'burg
sits a woman who is attracted by a strange calling. Childless and
husbandless, landless and jobless, she sits for hours writing poems into
the night on sheets of transparently thin paper. Occasionally when she can
she joins similar women who gather to read aloud what matters in their
minds. They are no longer prisoners, but are free. When she goes home and
extinguishes the single oil lamp that she both reads and writes by another
light illuminates the poems, sitting together on her small bedside table.
This is a 'unearthly' light, one by which all the poems she has written,
is writing and will ever write conjoin, darkburning. "- The past, about
which the object is holding information, is the past of the object itself.
In fact, an object becomes memory for an observer when the observer
examines certain features of an object and explains how those features
were caused." Michael Leyton.
Here is something by Tom Heureman, quoting Robert Greenleaf;-)" - too many
critics and experts with too much intellectual wheel spinning, too much
retreating into research, too little preparation and willingness to go
into the guts of an organization and undertake the high risk tasks of
building great organizations in an imperfect world. Observe what people
live and what they do rather than what they profess and exercise your
judgement in choosing your prophets The world and organizations will be
changed by countless solitary and anonymous artists who get their hands
dirty expanding the boundaries of the possible, not by those who spend
their time pontificating."
Love,
Andrew
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