Remembering Anne Stadler
March 7, 1931 — October 28, 2023
I spoke these words during the two online memorial celebrations held on December 8 and 9, 2023 for Anne Stadler.
When I met Anne Stadler in 1996 it was love at first sight. Harrison Owen, creator of Open Space Technology, nagged us both to meet until we set up lunch. We never stopped meeting after that. Just in case you are not familiar with OST, it is a practice for groups to self-organize around what matters to them. And putting it to work was central to my bond with Anne.
Perhaps one of the earliest and most important lessons I learned from Anne was when I called her my mentor. After all, she was 65 and I was almost 41 — around the age of her children. She stopped me and said “I am not your mentor. We are learning partners.” She said it so fiercely that I still her voice! I don’t think I fully appreciated what a gift that was until years later when I understood that she set us up as equals, each with things to learn and things to teach. Now, at age 68, it is my offering when working with younger people. As learning partners, Anne gave me the gift of the freedom and fun of a partner who saw the world from a different perspective. We’d listen to each other, offer our opinions, no doubt it would sound to others like fighting. We just kept at it until we had an approach that satisfied us both.
As I’ve been thinking about what to say today, I have been asking myself what made Anne so special? It wasn’t just her brilliance and creativity. Or her courage to be her own person. Or her ability to laugh and play and bring others with her. What I realized is that she was the one who connected me to so many of the people I know, love, and work with. She was the best connector I’ve ever met….
My best story about that comes from Spirited Work, an open space community of practice that Anne shepherded into being. Spirited Work met at the Whidbey Institute 4 times/year for 7 years. It was a place where we explored being spiritual beings in a material world. Not in an intellectual way. But in a beautiful place with music, dancing, and art. Where we played together as we explored life. Not just intellectually but sharing our struggles and the big, existential questions of our lives.
To the story…we were in our second day of the weekend and Anne and I crossed paths. And she was so excited as she said, I just met these new folks…who have you met?
It stopped me in my tracks. While I had hung out with people I knew, Anne had spent her time talking with strangers, drawing out their stories, finding out who joined us. Anne was so gifted…at making you feel like you were a vital, interesting person with something to contribute. It made her one of the impactful people I know. It’s a gift that I suspect has touched virtually everyone here.
I have struggled for a word to describe that. And then I heard the 2023 Oxford English Dictionary word of the year and it hit me: Anne had “rizz.” It’a Gen Z word that is used in social media and is a derivative from charisma.
With Anne, rizz was part of something much larger: Cultivating the Radiant Network. I’ll say more about that in a moment but I want to put it in context. When we ran the Practice of Peace in 2003, I think it was Anne who coined that term. Practice of Peace as a conference was an Anne-Peggy brain-child hosted by Spirited Work and inspired by Harrison Owen, who had been running a workshop by that name. We brought together 130 people from 25 countries, many from high conflict zones, like Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Burundi, and Israel and the Palestinian territories. People connected in ways that have ripples to this day.
We became a Radiant Network. It’s the idea that we are all connected. When our hearts are open, we can feel it. By giving it a name, I, and I suspect others, came to trust its presence even in those times when our hearts are closed.
When I think about the through line of the 27 years of knowing and playing with Anne, what I see now is that everything she said and did cultivated the conscious knowing that we are a RADIANT NETWORK.
There’s so much more I could say. So many lessons that shaped my work and my life came from things Anne said and did.
[The following section was not part of what I spoke. Just a part of the story.]
I can’t resist sharing a few of them…
She consciously sought out disruptions because that is where the action was. I think I took to following her around at Spirited Work for a while, much to her annoyance, I suspect. I did it because wherever she went, interesting things happened. I don’t know how she did it but laughter and play always followed her in untangling whatever was broken.
With Spirited Work, Open Space went from a meeting methodology to a life practice for several of us. Mark Jones spoke it as “What does it mean to live your life in Open Space?” It was Anne that saw the heart of Open Space as taking responsibility for what you love. What we discovered through Spirited Work was that by doing so, it sparked a way of living that brought heart and spirit centered presence to how people organized to get things done. And it wasn’t that there were no obstacles. There were plenty — budget shortfalls, being good stewards, handling differences….We learned to be generous with each other as we laughed, cried, and created. We discovered the value of silence to recenter on what matters. And that when we showed up authentically, being willing to speak what was true for each of us, we would find our way through together. It gave us a glimpse of how humans can organize to get stuff done that drew on the best each person had to offer and led to creative responses to whatever we faced. It gave me the confidence to move past the linear sequential approach to project management that had been my default. It taught me that creative work always starts with purpose. And when you lose your way, remembering purpose provides a compass to find your way.
Over the years, Anne and I did many convenings together: Women’s Ways of leading in 1996, a gathering in Iona, Scotland (2001), the Radiant Network with Arun Wakhlu, in Panchgani, India (2004), the StoryField Conference (2007), Leadership in a Self-Organizing World with Harrison Owen at Sleeping Lady in Leavenworth, WA (2009). We were both instrumental in forming the Open Space Institute-US in 1997-ish when Harrison came visiting with the idea. Journalism That Matters, work I’ve done since 1999, all grew out of what we learned together. And so much more.
[End of section]
If I were to sum it up, Anne had a gift for brilliant, creative ideas, deep insight into cultivating community, the ability to draw out the YES from those she met, and a way of bringing laughter, music, and dance to whatever we did. What I realize now is that it is all part of the secret sauce of growing a radiant network.
Next to my parents, she shaped me more than anyone else I’ve known. I have told several people that my conversation with her continues. I expect she’ll be my learning partner for the rest of my days.
For more on Anne Stadler, visit AnneStadler.love.
