Great minds think alike

by Courtney Martin                             

In a robust democracy the likes of which we are trying to create, there is room for everyone's bright ideas about fostering dialogue. That's why we've been so excited to run across so many different approaches to strengthening the public life as of late. One of those approaches is Living Room Conversations, formed in the last couple of years to promote more civil dialogue among people with differing political ideologies. Their goal is to create conversations that root out that shared space--the overlapping circles in the old Venn Diagram--where Republicans and Democrats can find common ground. Here's a bit more about their model:

Habits of the Heart of Healthy Congregations - Part 3

by John Fenner                               

How are we, as members of communities of faith, called to welcome the stranger?

In previous posts I introduced the Habits of the Heart as described in Parker Palmer's Healing the Heart of Democracy , pondered their importance to healthy congregations, and explore the first habit, the understanding that we're all in this together. In this post I'll explore the second habit: An appreciation of the value of "otherness."

Leadership and the heart

by Rose Yu, Assistant Director           

I couldn't help laughing out loud throughout Margaret Atwood's New York Times piece entitled, "Hello, Martians. Let Moby-Dick Explain." Her humor helped illuminate a painful truth that our culture worldwide continues to devalue women and girls. No wonder we continue to exploit Mother Nature and our environmental troubles continue unabated. How would we regard the earth differently if our planet were called "Father Nature?" 

When healing our democracy gets messy

by Courtney E. Martin        

Healing the heart of democracy, as we are collectively setting out to do, is not always easy or straight-forward work. In fact, most of the time, it's fraught, messy, and complex. I was reminded of this, once again, as I read about a controversy that cropped up this week regarding advice columnist Dan Savage and a speech he gave at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle.

Savage told the students that it was high time that Christians learned to ignore the parts of the Bible that condemn homosexuality in the same way they have learned to ignore what the Bible says about shellfish and slavery. He went on: "The Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong: slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100%."

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Healing democracy through heartfelt apology

by Courtney E. Martin            

As much as we might like our work as citizens to produce immediate results, sometimes it takes a very long time. 

No story revealed this truth more poignantly lately than this one, appearing in The Oregonian, about a student and a teacher, reunited 39 years later because of a heartfelt apology. In short, the student had asked to be removed from the teacher's class because other students were teasing him about his status as teacher's pet, and further, intimating that this was all made much worse by the fact that the teacher was allegedly gay. The young man, rather than standing up for the teacher who he really did learn so much from, asked to be removed so as to avoid any further humiliation. The boy, now a man with a stronger sense of his own convictions and values, searched for his long lost teacher and, upon finding him, wrote a long letter of apology.

Step right up for creativity and renewed citizenship

by Courtney E. Martin            

Nine-year-old Caine Monroy doesn't have much. He is young. Not particularly popular. His dad owns an auto body shop. But Caine is rich in imagination, and as it turns out, nothing could be as important. If you haven't yet seen this powerful video about this Los Angeles-area kid whose ingenuity led to his dreams coming true, and the prospect of a fully-funded college education, you simply must:

Habits of the Heart of Healthy Congregations - Part 2

By John Fenner                                                  

How well does your community of faith understand the principle that "we're all in this together?" In my last blog posting, I introduced the Habits of the Heart as described in Parker Palmer's Healing the Heart of Democracy, and pondered their importance to healthy congregations. In this post I'll explore the first habit - the understanding that we're all in this together.

Nearly eight years ago I learned some important lessons about community and its challenges through the PBS experiential history series Colonial House. The show chronicled the lives of twenty-eight volunteers participating in a re-enactment of 17th century colonial life. These 21st century citizens agreed to live under the conditions and laws that would have governed their real-life counterparts nearly 400 years earlier.

Healing Democracy One Circle at a Time

by Courtney E. Martin                         

We've been so moved by the comments and emails we've been getting from those of you embarking on the Healing Democracy Action Circles this spring. We decided to start a series in which we'll interview rabble rousers across the nation who are gathering their neighbors, friends, co-workers, and colleagues to be reanimate public life.

The series kicks off with Cat Greenstreet, the Director of Teacher Education at Sunbridge College, a graduate center based in the work of Rudolf Steiner in Spring Valley, New York, where her students learn to become Waldorf teachers. She is also a Courage & Renewal facilitator. Here's what Cat had to say about the process so far:

As you've been meeting in your group, how has your notion of "citizenship" evolved?

Citizenship is becoming a word to mean responsibility out of our deepest integrity and love for life on the earth. We agree on certain things: we live where we do for deep reasons; we are painfully insulated from our closest neighbors; it takes tremendous efforts to break through the barriers of this isolation.

Vulnerability, courage, and renewal

By Courage & Renewal Facilitator Karen Erlichman, LCSW                         

I like to think of Brene Brown as my holy sister. A social worker, researcher and story teller, she is warm, funny, and self-effacing, but not in a manner that makes you wince. Why do I call her my holy sister?

1. We are both social workers and truth tellers.
2. We care deeply about the healing and repair of the world.
3. We understand in our kishkes (i.e. viscerally) that in order to foster the well being of others, we have to travel our own journey of vulnerability. No exceptions. (note: kishkes is Yiddish, not Texan.)

The soul is extremely clever, and has lots of wily ways of hiding out to avoid vulnerability and to dodge the demon of shame. In her most recent TED talk, Brown refers to shame as the "swampland of the soul." She also noted how doggedly determined people can be in avoiding our own vulnerability, despite the fact that when we see it in others, we name it pure courage.

I would imagine that Brene Brown would feel right at home in a Courage & Renewa retreat, because in these trustworthy circles, there is safe terrain for the soul to speak its truth.

Think of a time when you witnessed someone else's vulnerability and courage. What did you notice about them and about yourself?

What is one step you can take to create a safe environment for your own soul?

Thank you, Brene, for reminding me that "vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change."

Living at the crossroads

by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Winton Boyd

A year ago, our state [Wisconsin] was in turmoil around the questions of what constitutes democracy and leadership.  A proactive governor and weeks of protest on the part of citizens from around the state have left the social soil rich for conversation and reflection on the role of compassionate citizens.  In the wake of the publication of Healing the Heart of Democracy, a group of concerned religious leaders has embarked on a promising journey of discussion, interaction and community building. 

In late 2011, a network of clergy gathered for lunch on two occasions to talk the role of faith in supporting and encouraging democracy.  From this emerged an afternoon with Parker Palmer in which 100 religious leaders from around the state shared a time of ‘conversation and exploration.’ 

"We need educators who are alive and awake..." Please join us!

By Terry Chadsey, Executive Director 

I did my student teaching on the south side of Chicago in 1975. I'll never forget that first time my mentor teacher left me in charge of the classroom and chaos quickly descended. I had carefully observed her every move and was able to articulate the strategies that served a successful classroom. How hard can this be, right? Yet there was clearly something she had that I didn't. Remember that moment in your own teaching?

I'm thrilled to announce that we are launching a Courage in Schools blog to actively engage educators who are hungry to explore and nurture the inner resources we bring to teaching and leadership. Working in schools will always require vision and passion as well as strategy and technique. All are important but without continuously cultivating our own internal resources, we will be as lost as I was years ago with a set of newly minted tools and techniques but an underdeveloped human container to hold them.

There is a startling finding in the 2011 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: "Teacher satisfaction has decreased by 15 points since the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher measured job satisfaction two years ago, now reaching the lowest level of job satisfaction seen in the survey series in more than two decades. This decline in teacher satisfaction is coupled with large increases in the number of teachers who indicate that they are likely to leave teaching for another occupation and in the number who do not feel their jobs are secure."

To me this says that our profession in crisis. To quote Parker Palmer and Tom VanderArk's introduction to the book Teaching With Fire, now more than ever "...we need educators who are alive and awake, who own and relish the most important work in the world, who understand what it means to 'teach with fire.' We need teachers and administrators who are listeners and learners, poets and storytellers, people who can draw out, lift up, lead, and follow. We need professionals who can move the debate about education reform far beyond test scores toward a vision of human possibility."

Every young person who walks through the doors of our schools or universities deserves such educators waiting to welcome them. Every community deserves such lively centers of learning that only courageous and awake educators can create. The future of healthy communities and a healthy democratic society depends upon it.

The lessons of that morning many years ago (when I was left understanding the limits of tools and techniques) are that the most important part of any classroom is a teacher who brings his/her full self to the moment-by-moment challenge of life in classrooms and that the most important part of any school is leadership that understands that the very best strategies to improve learning for students depend upon building a trustworthy human community. After 20 year of leading programs for educators, we at the Center know that this is not easy and that it requires ongoing, explicit intention and support.

Visit and subscribe to our Courage in Schools blog. Keep in touch as you tend to your own fire and to those closest to you.