To facilitate – to make an action or process easier.
In some ways this feels, has long felt like my calling. The thing I am meant to do.
My teaching is a case study in active facilitation. I set the stage for practice. Offer a few instructions and a brief demonstration and the remaining time-space is for doing the thing. Over and over again.
Make it easier. I make it easier to try. To give it a go. Perhaps to keep at it for a bit.
I facilitate groups. Of adults. I set the stage for practice. Participant interactions with each other are usually at the core of my workshops. They should do more talking than me. Everyone should practice lots of listening. I create the conditions for fruitful conversation and exchange to take place. Then I get out of the way.
Getting out of the way is a habit. Especially when working with adults, it feels important to leave them space to engage each other without an audience. Their conversations are their own. When we come together as a whole group we typically reflect on the process, not the content. In some ways I want to stimulate an internal process for each individual. The conversations with others animate and stretch our own thinking.
I get out of the way and participants don’t owe me their enlightenment.
I will continue to wonder if and when I have taken myself too far out of the way. My faith is tested here and will continue to be.
I facilitate. I want to make it easier for each of us to try, to listen, to bear witness, to reflect, to take action. I practice getting out of the way.
And still I am learning.
It’s a process.
edifiedlistener 