By The Stream

The Bus Ride Story Adventure and the Chinese menu

By the side of Sue (and Paul’s) gently burbling trout stream, we spread out our notes, handout papers and chairs. An old stone wall behind us serves as a teachers’ desk while a great maple tree canopy shades us from the hot midday sun. The setting is picture perfect and we are well-prepared to offer our personal best.

Be in the flow with us.

This day, again, our Bus Ride Story Adventure moves forward, heading in the right direction, strengthened personal and communal well-being, with Sue and I certain we will sparkle this day as we have done many times before.

So we set ourselves, optimistically and energetically, out on our course, presenting our program to a generously attentive audience. Still we do not sparkle, we do not shine. We have a well-worn map to the magic kingdom. We have traveled there many times before. But we have no magic wand to materialize it before us this day, not quite yet with our typical shine this day.

The right elements we have come to depend upon for our usual successes are served up. However, they don’t quite come together and crystallize into fairy dust as they have before. Somehow they are not yet arranged to best advantage. So we come off a bit like a feast with too much to eat.

I am the chef and I, too, leave hungry though still happy and satisfied, knowing that something delicious has been imbibed although there was more that we wanted. Having access to the menu as well as each ingredient, in a day or two I will know what is missing. As insight comes, I realize we have served up something, a bit like an all you can eat Chinese buffet.

Hungry as we finish, we have had our feast yet still yearn for more without knowing what else it was that we want. By Tuesday, our regular weekly meeting day, Sue and I, are already .planning for our next feast, having discovered some of our missing ingredients

We set off last Sunday on rehearsal day #3, discovering, as we progressed, that viable teachers, particularly in this day and age, must, first and foremost, always be as ready to learn as to teach. From the teaching position, we learned that the source of greatest fulfillment that we can offer, as taken from Murat’s translation of how exceptional communities function (see “Building Up A Kebzeh Community”), is to instruct our travelers on how to pack their travel bags with the essentials of exemplary human virtue and character.

Each time we present, we keep being vividly reminded of this; people are eager to find out what we know and can share to better ourselves as individuals and collectively. These essentials are the key. Our Possible Human, Possible Study findings, thus far, underscores the lesson:

How we treat one another on a day-to-day basis is the foundation of an exceptional community.

How starkly reminded we are of this as the most fundamental of principles. How difficult the application, the essentials, surprisingly, unclear to most, especially as a formula for systemic change, societally. (Read Murat’s original “Bus Ride Story”, as edited by Sue, to see the brilliance of how he presents this formula within the context of an imaginary “social game”, the Bus Ride adventure.)

Sue and I are priming ourselves to place our new Small “Zones of Peace” product, the Bus Ride Story Adventure, in the full public domain before long. However, for just a bit longer, we must linger in our semi-public preview, our rehearsal “public” made up of an audience of friends.

For now, who else can we count on to contribute the patience and generosity of their time, astute insights and caring respect for our still somewhat stumbling performance as we continue to polish our travel package? Charity – and exceptional community building begin at home.