To Bob Williams and the List:
Thank you Bob for sharing that. I was saddened to hear about Schoen's
passing, along with Georg Solti and so many others. Our intellectual
elders are being slowly silenced by the movement of history. My people
say that the spirit of the person will visit the many places of their life
and influence over the next year. Perhaps we will feel him for a moment
on this list as he gathers energy to move to the Nightland. But that is
our myth and I don't mean to do any more than share it.
Donald Schoen (Schon) allowed me to introduce the reflective ideas of the
arts to a class of Ph.D. Nursing candidates at Columbia University
Teacher's College for a couple of years in the early 1990s. The idea of
using the artistic processes to work with the sick was an outrageous
premise that only an MIT professor would have the power to suggest.
His discussion of Bernie Greenhouse's lessons, with Pablo Casals, opened
many doors. He had a unique clarity on the history of specialization in
the West. He taught the health-care practitioners that reflecting on the
process of the history of a situation was not an act of living in the past
but a sensitive movement toward creating a future through an intelligent
knowledgeable present.
That little door, on the process of "professionalization" and its limits,
is one that he opened but has been resolutely slammed shut by the powers
of most present corporations. What a pity since he read the roots of the
current employment dilemma, caught in a historic cul de sac, more clearly
than anyone else that I am acquainted with. And he wasn't even trying to
do that. This "Reflective Practitioner" will be missed.
The skills that he brought to different professions, in synthesizing the
connections between the disciplines required by all, are now found only
within his books. These are the gifts, the artifacts of this life.
Although the guide to opening the memory contained in the books is gone I
nonetheless am grateful that he had the generosity to leave an artifact
for the future.
We have a ceremony where we write all of the deceased person's
accomplishments on a page and each one takes the accomplishment that they
feel closest to and places that page within the fire as a pledge of not
letting the energy disappear from the community.
We are taught that the final act of a death is not complete until the loss
is healed. That healing involves the individuals touched by the life
making a commitment to honor the person through continuation of the
community meaning of their life. To that end I place within the fire the
pledge to continue the reflection and dedication to understanding the way
things fit and happen within an artistic context in this community.
Donald Schoen helped me with that, through his writings, when he was alive
and I will honor that in my own life.
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
mcore@idt.net
--Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@IDT.NET>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>