Dialogue With RCS: Your Dialogue Practice Group

I do not have a dialogue pracice group, but I can still write about them.

               In the kind of dialogue practice I write of there is no agenda in the ordinary sense. The purpose is mostly the practice. The practice is the honest and just sharing of meaning and development of coherence. The group practices certain methods and skills for thinking together. So in the practice there are practically no decisions to make. However skills may be honed.

              So, the practice is not without purpose, it is to practice skills and learn rules of effective dialogue. I hope that you will come to see how this mere practice builds and supports our culture even as we listen and speak.

              Over time the practice can evolve and change form. They take forms suggested by names such as Dialogue for Peace and Magic Table Dialogue. What ever the the name the skills stay much the same. I have begun to outline and picture an example of a beginning group in action and hope to continue doing so. The typical group may look leaderless from the outside because leadership is so widely shared. The group doesn't stall because a leader doesn't show up.

People around the world are practicing a similar dialogue. However, you are unlikely to find an active group near you. So, to have a group, you may have to participate in making it. You will probably need to speak with another about the dialogue. If the two of you find a third you may have started a group. You can talk it over, maybe discussing what it is a why you are interested, what it means, how you can do it, and like that.

Take a good look around this blog.

More to come.

by Richard Sheehan