The future is in our past -
Every once in a while one hears a story that is worth repeating. This happened to me yesterday, while sitting on the veranda of a villa on the French Riviera. Forty Masters and PhD students and their professors had gathered for lunch. According to the principles of self-organization, it had worked out perfectly, with a mixture of students and organizers at each table.
Self-organization is my baby, having pioneered the concept at the Barbour Heritage Site in Newtown for 10 years. It is surprising to find it's being promoted 18 years later in a new interdisciplinary doctorate school funded by Liliane Betancourt, the founder of L'Oreal and the richest woman in France, who has take a personal interest in the school she is funding.
But I digress! We are talking about good stories. Our table was engrossed in a conversation with the food server about the difference between vegetarian and pescatarian. She had just brought a fish dish to a vegetarian. Food is one thing that doesn't interest me much, so my mind was definitely not on the exchange.
And then the conversation behind me turned interesting. One of the professors was telling stories. The story that caught my attention was about a five-year-old girl. He said he was babysitting a child who was engrossed in drawing a picture. When asked what she was doing, she replied, "I am drawing a picture of God."
"But how can you draw a picture of God? No one knows what God looks like." To which she replied, "They will in a minute (when I've finished my picture)." It's a profound story and it illustrates that children are curious, creative creatures until the creativity is educated out of them.
Stories of children having an opinion about God touch my heart. My life was shaped in a very big way by the non-answer to my childish question, "Who made God?" I was encouraged not to broach the subject again. Nor did I until I was taking a philosophy course years later and dared to ask the professor. His answer was classic, "There are some things we're not supposed to know."
Somehow that seemed to be a better answer for a professor of religion. Yet it illustrates how firmly we believe there are some things that are just not up for discussion. Surprisingly, that is the same with science. If your ideas don't follow the accepted norm, don't ask the questions or make the statements.
This, I suppose, is why it has taken a couple of decades for someone, other than a fool like me, to embrace the idea of self-organization and begin another experiment. My experiment was entirely successful, while it lasted. Keeping the idea going longer than the experiment isn't so easy. Lessons learned aren't always transposable to a new set of organizers who do not really see the point.
The professor finished his story and no one asked the question going around and around in my head. And then after what seemed an eternity, a student asked timidly, "What did God look like?"
But it wasn't a question for a long discourse. The professor remarked, "It wasn't like a human. I can't tell you what the picture looked like but it was scary." To me, his answer was presented in a dismissive way that left no room for further discussion. Obviously in a room full of the 'brightest and the best' the time is still not right to ask the serious questions, even with scientists who think they've solved the riddles and have the answers to life.
People are still far too serious about what topics can and cannot be discussed, it seems. Is it a carry over from a time when some people were perceived as having all the answers and a direct line to God? Ordinary people couldn't discuss deep questions. They had to seek out scholars for advice.
We are in a transition period, from the idea that scholars have all the answers to an understanding that no human has answers, though they may be able to give solid advice purely from experience... or out of their creativity, like the five-year-old child.
This week I found myself having Walter Mitty dreams that it's possible to assemble a team of creative thinkers that would find innovative ways of interacting with each other. Has anyone ever included children in teams?
My team would include the child who was confident that she could draw God and the student who asked what God looked like when her picture was finished. I would add Marilyn Goodyear from Lumsden who is not only creative but has the ability, like Jay Steiner from Gander/Lewisporte, to brush aside the obstacles and get a job done.
Others who have displayed innovative thought and novel ideas on Facebook recently have been Breta Sturge-King from New-Wes-Valley and Nancy Gray and Damien Gibbons from Lumsden. The list goes on, but this would make an interesting Team, don't you think?
It's a nice dream but for now I will have to stick to my volunteer work. Still, if you have any questions, give me a minute!
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