Words of EnCOURAGEment #16
Finding Common Purpose
by Terry Chadsey, Executive Director
Sitting in my neighborhood coffee shop Sunday morning, I am struck by a fundamental human dilemma. On one hand we constantly seek and settle into those places where we feel at ease: our clan, our tribe, our neighborhood, our community, our city, our nation. These places are where we feel our survival needs are met—food, water, physical safety. This familiar place carried that feeling for me. Fear of those not like us and of losing our place of security often lead us to exclude, prey upon, and oppress. History is one of vicious cycles where we perpetuate violence upon others and thereby sow the seeds of further violence.
On the other hand, the human species would not have survived if we did not have another contradictory capacity: the ability to engage the other to learn about knowledge, perspective, and experience different from our own and to forge how we might together build a greater collective good. If suddenly confronted with a need, the group of strangers gathered in this coffee shop would find ways to work together. Of course, the greater good for some has often been furthered at the expense of others. Yet neuroscience now documents that we are hard wired through evolution not only with the fight, flight or freeze reflex that drives the first capacity but also with an innate capacity for connecting that encourages the second.
Sustaining the Human Spirit: Another Way of "Going Green"
by Parker J. Palmer
I’ve admired and applauded the sustainability movement from afar but—true confessions—I’ve not been a close student of it or an active participant in the organizations that represent it.
Because of my ignorance, I assumed that the movement was exclusively focused on things like clean air; an adequate and potable water supply; soil conservation; the fuels we use to transport ourselves and our “stuff”; the flora and fauna that inhabit the earth; the earth itself under the impact of rapid and devastating climate change and species extinction; and, of course, our ability to survive as a species on this resilient yet fragile orb.
To say the obvious, everything on that list is more than important—it is urgent. But it never occurred to me that the sustainability movement might also have to do with sustaining the human heart and spirit or that the Center for Courage & Renewal might be a sustainability organization. Then I got a wake-up call from some people at the heart of the movement. Partly because of my own work, but largely because of the Center’s work, I was named one of five 2011 Wisconsin Bioneers by Sustain Dane, a sustainability organization in my hometown of Madison, which is located in Dane County.
Where Do You Find Community?
by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Karen Erlichman, LCSW
Recently I have had numerous conversations with friends, colleagues and family members who are earnestly “looking for community.” When I have inquired more specifically about this —their desire, their search-- people often find it challenging to describe exactly what they are seeking. Some of the responses have been:
“I want a place where all of who I am is truly welcomed.”
“I want my partner to feel at home there too.”
“I don’t want to be guilt-tripped about how I’m not doing enough.”
“I don’t want to have to choose allegiances in order to belong.”
My experience and training as a therapist reminds me that we bring all of our disillusionment, wounding and idealism to the search for community: times when we felt alienated, judged, or disappointed; memories or fantasies of a community in which we just fit effortlessly.
As I consider where and how one might locate such a seemingly elusive, perhaps idyllic, place or gathering of people, I can’t help but think about the current political backdrop for this question: economic and political challenges around the globe, street activism and demonstrations from Wall Street to Cairo and beyond, climate change and catastrophe, an upcoming election year, to name but a few issues on the hearts and minds of so many people.
The “Tragic Gap”: A Concept That Needs No Translation
by Marcy Jackson, Co-Founder and Senior Fellow
Finding … peace requires us to hold perhaps the most subtle and yet most difficult tension of all—the tension between reality and possibility. I have come to think of this “holding” as “standing in the tragic gap,” the gap between our knowledge of what is and our knowledge of what might be. If we find ourselves unable to stand in that place, we will be pulled to one side or the other, toward the paralyzing cynicism that too much “reality” can breed or toward the irrelevant idealism that is bred by too much “possibility.”
—Parker J. Palmer, from “The Politics of the Broken Hearted,” p 254-256, Deepening the American Dream, Mark Nepo, editor, 2005.
I’ve often wondered “How would what we explore in Circles of Trust (as well as how we “do” and “be”) translate across cultures and geography?” Recently, I was able to live into this question with a circle of young global leaders (ages 26-41) who are in Seattle as part of an International Fellows Program sponsored by iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service. Thirteen of us were gathered in the circle—6 were from Central America, 1 from India, 1 from Papua, New Guinea, 1 from Indonesia and 1 from The Philippines—along with the extraordinary iLEAP leaders, Britt and Izumi Yamamoto (Japanese-American and native Japanese, respectively) and myself. While most in the group had proficiency in English, it was a second language for all but two of us. There was a wonderful “buzz” throughout the day as the Latina women offered simultaneous translation where needed and engaged in playful banter about what this or that strange word in English might mean.
Healing the Heart of a New Generation
by Erin Lane
Parker Palmer’s new book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, couldn’t be more relevant for my generation of 20-and-30-somethings high on idealism but short on sustenance.
Whatever you call us – Millennials or Boomerangs, Generation Y or Gen-Buy – we are highly motivated, collaborative, and productive. By all statistical accounts, we volunteer in record numbers. As just one example, the applicant numbers for AmeriCorps – which includes programs like the PeaceCorps and Teach for America - has almost increased three-fold in the last two years. While some analysts blame the flagging economy for the recent boom in “extra-curriculars,” I am more optimistic about the motivation I see in my peers to become enfolded in something larger than themselves, something more captivating than the nine-to-five workday, something more real than the ten o’clock news. We are not “means to an end” kind of people but, if we’re being honest, it’s sometimes because we do not know the means by which we can reach the end of the common good. In the tension between our hopes and our realities, Healing the Heart of Democracy shows us the way forward.
Thinking the World Together
by Marianna Cacciatore, Executive Director of Bread for the Journey International
Ed.: The following message was sent from Marianna Cacciatore to colleagues and friends via email and is reprinted here with the author's permission. You can listen to Marianna's interview with Parker Palmer about the new book here.
I have just finished reading Healing the Heart of Democracy – the Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit by Parker Palmer. I am so touched by it, I had to write and let my friends know.
Parker is one of the few people I know who can write about the heart and politics in the same sentence and not diminish either but, in fact, deepen our understanding of both. He does not offer a schmaltzy version of the heart. Rather, a very hardy and honest description that includes atrocities driven by emotions. He goes to the core when he writes of heartbreak and asks what we can do “so that it yields life, not death?"
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