The Rose Garden Forum

About The Rose Garden Forum

The human family is like a rose garden. If you only have one color of roses in the garden it is monotonous, but with many colors of roses the garden becomes much more beautiful. The Rose Garden Forum addresses the heart, and not the head, in solving this problem of the academic achievement gap, reducing the effects of racism and the extreme disparity of wealth and poverty. “Men hate each other because they fear each other, and because they fear each other they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they are often separated from each other.” Dr. Martin Luther King Our method is to ask illicitative questions that are designed to engender feelings of affect in a person. We operate by having people ‘share’ rather than ‘report’ what is true for them. We provide a safe and welcoming space and encourage people to share their stories with others. These stories are meant to do two things. First, it educates others about the true situation of their neighbors’ lives, and thereby often engenders a profound sense of connectedness and understanding. Second, by sharing, the person experiences some relief and, and thus creates a new clearing from which to take on new aspects of his or her life. We employ Chardin’s idea that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but rather that we are spiritual beings having a human experience” as the important fulcrum around which The Five Movements revolve.

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