Dialogue Fellows Come Together for Inaugural Sessions

Dialogue and discussion sessions linking members of the community in dialogue and discussion have begun at The Xenia Institute. All 30 fellows of the Institute came together Sept. 19 and 20 and met during an inaugural workshop to discuss the difficulties and merits of deep, meaningful communication. Xenia Institute Executive Director Clint Williams presented three formal sessions on the principles of dialogue, drawing from the works of Margaret Wheatley and David Bohm, both luminaries on the subject.

Four dialogue meetings have been held since the workshop, bringing forth fruitful and meaningful conversations that went deeper than many participants had experienced before.

“To me, one of the more surprising elements of a dialogue group of this type was that differences of opinions did not automatically fall on presumed lines, such as gender or age,” said Jack Hobson, the assistant director for program development in the Office of Education Abroad at the University of Oklahoma, and a faculty/staff fellow at The Xenia Institute.

“This type of dialogue group seems to reach to the very root of others’ worldviews, attitudes on the nature of humans and how we interact as in a collective.  This reaches far beyond the type of conversation that most of us would have with even our most intimate friends and family members,” he said.

Those conversations and understandings also brought forth new friendships, said Lynne Levy, managing editor of The Chaucer Variorum and a Xenia faculty/staff fellow.

Participating in the dialogue groups, she said, went beyond the “normal ‘cocktail party” atmosphere that occurs in traditional discussions, she said.

“We as a group are starting to be comfortable with our differences and are exploring those as well as delighting in our similarities. I don’t want the experience to stop now; it is just the beginning of what I think will be a meaningful and fulfilling part of my life.”

Student fellow Jacob Peterson said the workshop helped him see that learning about people in one’s own community can be the first step to making global connections.

“Through gaining a better understanding of the people in our community we can hope to someday have a better understanding and compassion for all people of the world; this is at the heart of what we are seeking to accomplish through dialogue,” Peterson said.

Photo, top left: Xenia Institute fellows met Sept. 19 and 20 during the inaugural workshop on dialogue and discussion.

Photo, bottom right: Lynne Levy, center, a University of Oklahoma faculty/staff fellow at The Xenia Institute, attended the first workshop on dialogue and discussion.