Author Archives for Miriam Messinger

August 1, 2022

Sacred Space

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I went to synagogue last week to support friends who were leading the service and I got a gift in return. My friend Hilary shared some words that really resonated with me. I’ll translate them here as “this space is sacred.”

We create and move through spaces every day and all the time, at work as well as at home and in community. And, we are in times that can feel challenging, frightening, or even dangerous. And so how do we nourish ourselves and find the belonging that is a basic human need? Without being trite, I left synagogue reminded that I am already in those spaces and that I can do more to notice when the spaces I am in have elements of the sacred: belonging, grace, wonder, possibility, joy.

Here are some of the spaces I’ve been in just in the last month that I realize now were sacred, even if only for a moments:

  • At the dinner table in western Massachusetts, surrounded by the laughter of family who have only known one another for at most eight years, creatively weaving our connections as we anticipate the next generation
  • Floating in the ocean, swaying in the waves
  • Recently at a staff gathering where we were together in person for the first time in two and a half years…feeling the presence, seeing more than just the faces.
  • In a zoom room of white anti-racists sharing vulnerable stories of failure and intentions to be in deep partnership and sibling-hood in multi-racial spaces
  • In a zoom room of mostly strangers exploring generative conflict

Perhaps harder to conceive, and problematic if held in the wrong way, I wonder how we can find or create sacredness amidst a world or workplace that feels challenging. One way I saw that was in a beautiful interaction between two clients. One is leaving their job; another, in tears, processing the endless change and loss, spoke to how much they appreciated that person and how in seven months the departing person had pulled them into community and increased their capacity for important work.

I know that I, and many of our clients, yearn for and need wonder and sacredness as we move through a world full of challenges, violence, and fear. And, in discussing how we sometimes choose what we see, I would be remiss not to also name that it is a world full of beauty, changemakers, and organizing, with much to celebrate.

At IISC, we try to bring joy and foster belonging as we work on challenging issues, thereby creating and noticing the sacred space in which to do our work. Please join us and share your stories of sacred space.

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June 16, 2022

MICRO-BLOG: Honoring our Ancestors

When I am feeling overwhelmed or disheartened, I remind myself that amidst the violence, many people are leading gorgeous campaigns for change. I also remind myself that there are white people who have done the work for freedom and anti-racist futures over the last 200 years. As white activists and consultants, we don’t always acknowledge or see our own lineages. So, here I name here a few, including some women and Jews, my ancestors, who stood up and took risks for their beliefs, acting in their historical context, often against the grain.  

Peter Norman stood with John Carlos and Tommie Smith while they raised their fists and donned black clothing in support of Black Americans and Black power, and they all wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges (also calling out white supremacy and indigenous policies in his native Australia) at the 1968 Olympics.  

Vito Marcantonio, an Italian-American congressperson from NY in the 1930s and 40s who stood with Blacks and Jews and against anti-communism.

August Bondi, an Austro-Hungarian Jew who was a close associate of John Brown and helped to liberate slaves

Lydia Maria Child, an author who wrote “An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans” where she raised the complicity of the north in maintaining slavery and was a member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, which called for the immediate abolition of slavery (as some call for the immediate abolition of prisons).

Ernestine Louise Rose (early 1800s) who was a Jewish abolitionist and suffragette and (from a short reading of Wikipedia) a general badass who won a court case against a forced betrothal, traveled the world, married a non-Jew and sold perfumed paper.

These are just a few white anti-racists who I found online or had heard stories about. Who would you add to the list? Either white activists or people from one of your ancestries?

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May 26, 2022

On Overwhelm: Why we cannot avoid it and why we cannot drown in it

Especially for my white colleagues, white family and white friends…and for me.

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Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, wrote: “I don’t know how many different ways I can express how it feels to know that this country will always offer up the violent destruction of our lives to young white men angry at their lack of purpose and power. We will never be safe until white manhood is defined by something other than the quest for domination over others.”

While we have varying political inclinations and levels of activism, we can probably agree that not speaking out or otherwise addressing “the quest for domination over” is not what white people ought to be doing in response to the murders in Buffalo and the racist violence that preceded it and will follow.

Many of us want to be a part of something larger such that our feelings, thoughts, statements and actions contribute to a movement of white people who are working collectively for a future of freedom and connection. This is a lifetime of work and, for many of us, our daily mission. 

One thing that gets in the way is being overwhelmed.

As I awoke last week with a heavy heart about so many personal, local, national, and global issues, one option was to fall into being overwhelmed and to stay there. For many, it is a habitual response. One of my habitual responses is related: to avoid overwhelm and to carry on or push through, ignoring the depth of the pain. Neither is useful if the task is to be a part of a movement for change.

The history of this country is, in fact, overwhelming. It is overwhelming to recognize that this country is formed in the “quest for domination.” White colonists killed indigenous people for land and enslaved, abused, and killed Africans as a means of creating wealth and maintaining power. It is overwhelming to know white people brought their children to view lynchings. And equally overwhelming to know millions watched the video and listened to the words of Payton S. Gendron, the white man who killed or wounded 13 people, most of them Black, in Buffalo.

As a white person I know I/we need to hold this history, without excusing or dismissing it. It is hard and also both problematic and hard not to wrestle with it. 

We need to build our emotional strength and integrity to name the violence and oppression and to confront it. It doesn’t mean that we wallow in it; it means we can’t ignore it or rely on silence or denial (“it wasn’t that bad;” “the US has good ideals;” “that’s so negative, can’t we just move on?”). And, partly as a result of the ways we have detoured from these heavy realities, the current-day level of racism and violence is incredibly overwhelming. That is why we need to act and create new ways of being

This week, as I continued to grapple with the mass murders in Buffalo, a white man gunning down our Black elders, and I learned of so many babies and teachers murdered in Uvalde, I am trying a new habit: I am creating space for grieving and also space to talk and strategize about steps I can take in response. Yesterday, I shed tears before a meeting.  I am in fact overwhelmed but not stopping at that way station. 

The number of issues and problems around us can indeed be overwhelming. But they are perhaps less overwhelming when we see that they are connected. The quest for domination, racism, and misogyny are the drivers of an array of issues: Payton and Kyle Rittenhouse and other white people who use guns to slaughter (often Black and brown people), police murders of Black people, policing in general, prisons as our form of punishment, anti-trans laws, occupation in Palestine, inequitable COVID deaths, and so much more. 

When I am able to see white power, racism, misogyny, and concentrations of wealth as interconnected problems, I am reminded that our actions for freedom are also connected. You can be working against anti-semitism, seeing the root of othering and racism, or holding organizations accountable to building pro-Black practices and cultures, while someone else works on prison abolition. Prisons hold disproportionate numbers of BIPoC, trans, and poor people, and are rooted in control and punishment; hence, these issues are connected. And on it goes. As a white Jewish person in a multi-racial family I feel particularly pulled to work against racism, prisons, and anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim issues. Others may choose to show up in other places. We need to see the interconnectedness of these many issues.  

And so, to white people who seek a better future for all, let us not be overwhelmed to a point of inaction or numbness, but instead speak out and take action. Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. As my mother, Ruth Messinger, a white anti-racist shero of mine, often says: “We cannot retreat to the convenience and the luxury of being overwhelmed.”  

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May 18, 2022

MICRO-BLOG: The Smell of Smoke: Are We Burning or Rising from the Ashes?

Photo credit: Mark McDermott, webinar for United for a Fair Economy

16 months ago, I wrote this piece and it is just as relevant today, not surprisingly. 

I wrote:  “We have to decide, particularly white Americans, if we are willing to step into a real period of reckoning and not just a temporary increase in awareness that is evidenced by the formation of committees and our participation in marches.” 

I continue to be in the belief that we have to take the small steps and we have to find places of dreaming and action where we get clearer about the big steps. Those who are fighting and killing for white supremacy and power are getting ever more drastic. I hope to write about what a drastic yet grounded and loving white response looks like in this moment…and then to take that next step. 


March 19, 2021

A friend said that as the snow melted in her Minneapolis neighborhood last week, the smell of smoke from the fires after Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd last summer was released anew into the air. This, as the trial of Derek Chauvin begins in Minneapolis.

This month is a cacophony of anniversaries and markings. It is a year since Louisville Police killed Breonna Taylor, about that since two men killed Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, a 25-year old unarmed Black man, and the start of the trials of Derek Chauvin and Kyle Rittenhouse.

Note that I am trying here to use an active voice after listening to a powerful podcast with Baratunde Thurston and Yahdon Israel talking about how racism and anti-Blackness is built into our use of the passive voice and tendency to make those impact the actors of a sentence[1]. [In other words] George Floyd was not killed by Derek Chauvin; Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.

This is an important time in our country. While our courts are a far cry from sources of healing or justice, it is critical that we use this system for positive change as much as possible, while we create better systems.

What will happen? We must:

  • Use this moment to make the courts an instrument of justice.
  • Work from outside the courthouse to say that we are ready to be a society with real accountability for wrongs that we have committed, both historically and recently.
  • Shift how we use language to ensure we are attributing actions to the perpetrators of the harm, in this case the death of another human.
  • Ask, each day, “what can I do differently in my organization to dismantle anti-Blackness and the destructive myth and perpetuation of white supremacy?” and then act on it.

Let’s be active now. In our language[2] and our actions.

In our organization and many others, people are tired and grieving. We have lost loved ones and we have lost access to aspects of our lives that we hold dear. And yet, we need to save energy for the important work and rebuilding ahead. We have to maintain energy in organizations so that the commitment and work does not end after a workshop, or after a team is set up, or after we hire a director of equity. These are just the first steps…

We have to decide, particularly white Americans, if we are willing to step into a real period of reckoning and not just a temporary increase in awareness that is evidenced by the formation of committees and our participation in marches. The smoke could be the signal of us all going down in flames or it could be the olfactory symbol of rising from the ashes and rebuilding our country.


[1] Baratunde called the podcast: “a meditation and conversation on analyzing the structure of headlines to reframe/revert the gaze away from the victims as racial objects back to the racial subjects perpetuating the problem….[in other words] George Floyd was not killed by Derek Chauvin; Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.” (We’re Having a Moment” Podcast, Episode 4, 2020).  

[2] In the same Podcast, Yahdon Israel (@yahdon on Instagram) reminds us that even well-intentioned campaigns like “Say her name” which helps us to hold up people who were killed and to focus on women as well as men; it doesn’t name the subject or actor and doesn’t name what we are doing or why. Don’t put those impacted in the passive action role: “Black people earn less than…”; “women are killed by men”; “George Floyd was killed”. Who did the killing and why?

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March 19, 2021

The Smell of Smoke: Are We Burning or Rising from the Ashes?

Photo credit: Mark McDermott, webinar for United for a Fair Economy

A friend said that as the snow melted in her Minneapolis neighborhood last week, the smell of smoke from the fires after Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd last summer was released anew into the air. This, as the trial of Derek Chauvin begins in Minneapolis.

This month is a cacophony of anniversaries and markings. It is a year since Louisville Police killed Breonna Taylor, about that since two men killed Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, a 25-year old unarmed Black man, and the start of the trials of Derek Chauvin and Kyle Rittenhouse.

Note that I am trying here to use an active voice after listening to a powerful podcast with Baratunde Thurston and Yahdon Israel talking about how racism and anti-Blackness is built into our use of the passive voice and tendency to make those impact the actors of a sentence[1]. [In other words] George Floyd was not killed by Derek Chauvin; Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.

This is an important time in our country. While our courts are a far cry from sources of healing or justice, it is critical that we use this system for positive change as much as possible, while we create better systems.

What will happen? We must:

  • Use this moment to make the courts an instrument of justice.
  • Work from outside the courthouse to say that we are ready to be a society with real accountability for wrongs that we have committed, both historically and recently.
  • Shift how we use language to ensure we are attributing actions to the perpetrators of the harm, in this case the death of another human.
  • Ask, each day, “what can I do differently in my organization to dismantle anti-Blackness and the destructive myth and perpetuation of white supremacy?” and then act on it.

Let’s be active now. In our language[2] and our actions.

In our organization and many others, people are tired and grieving. We have lost loved ones and we have lost access to aspects of our lives that we hold dear. And yet, we need to save energy for the important work and rebuilding ahead. We have to maintain energy in organizations so that the commitment and work does not end after a workshop, or after a team is set up, or after we hire a director of equity. These are just the first steps…

We have to decide, particularly white Americans, if we are willing to step into a real period of reckoning and not just a temporary increase in awareness that is evidenced by the formation of committees and our participation in  r marches. The smoke could be the signal of us all going down in flames or it could be the olfactory symbol of rising from the ashes and rebuilding our country.


[1] Baratunde called the podcast: “a meditation and conversation on analyzing the structure of headlines to reframe/revert the gaze away from the victims as racial objects back to the racial subjects perpetuating the problem….[in other words] George Floyd was not killed by Derek Chauvin; Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.” (We’re Having a Moment” Podcast, Episode 4, 2020).  

[2] In the same Podcast, Yahdon Israel (@yahdon on Instagram) reminds us that even well-intentioned campaigns like “Say her name” which helps us to hold up people who were killed and to focus on women as well as men; it doesn’t name the subject or actor and doesn’t name what we are doing or why. Don’t put those impacted in the passive action role: “Black people earn less than…”; “women are killed by men”; “George Floyd was killed”. Who did the killing and why?

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March 16, 2020

The Pandemic’s Silver Lining

Constitutionally,  I tend toward remaining calm and seeing possibilities. This might not be true for everyone. I do know, however, that there is clear evidence that what we talk about influences our moods.

With that in mind, I am sharing a list of things I have seen amplified in the last week – things  that contribute to social health and well-being and long-term survival, even as we adjust to a world that feels topsy turvy.

Intersectionality

Some people are taking this moment to recognize that the Coronavirus, like all things, affects us differentially. There is some attention to the fact that those who are already burdened because of chronic health issues, or because fewer resources are invested in their communities, or those who experience racism day in/day out, are experiencing this moment on top of these existing inequities. And it is important to see the resources and resilience that these highly impacted communities do have! 

Lived expertise

We are reminded that, in fact, there are people who have lived through similar times of epidemics and uncertainty and lack of attention. How can we turn toward those who lived through and created through the start of HIV/AIDS? What can we learn from disability rights activists and people living with chronic illness? How can we use this moment to honor the wisdom of those who have related life experience….and pay them for their knowledge?

Slowing

Many of us experienced an extra busy week—our regular work and then we’re being called to use our personal or work leadership to think well about others, to plan for drastically different economic models, and to attend to family and colleagues. Amidst that, I also experienced a sense of radical slowing as I realized that my current pace of life is changing. I had a long business trip planned for March that would have allowed for slowing and I know I was craving that. I am going to ask myself how I can get that need met while staying put. This weekend, I let myself wake when I needed to wake rather than setting an alarm, and I then  settled into each day at a slower pace.

Interconnectedness

There are people who are able and willing to lead with generosity. I spoke with a stranger yesterday who said she had purchased two rolls of paper towels so that she might share one with someone who needs one, even though she had been laid off recently. I’ve asked a family member if he would be willing to help parents working at home with baby sitting if doing so can be done safely for all.

What are the ways that we can continue to connect even if we are not in proximity? What are the ways that we can look at those maps of disease spread and vectors and use it not to become fearful but to see how we are connected globally?

Within a work sphere, we are connecting with others in similar work to share best thinking and talk about everything from joint responses to pooled resources. We are looking at networks that we support and seeing how they are activating for mutual support and for the sharing of ideas. We are asking how we can support one another as colleagues in an increasingly virtual workplace. More on this as it emerges.

Care for our planet

Is there a way to live through this public health moment and not be more aware that our planet needs our attention and love? We should all know about the climate crisis and that shifts in behavior on a massive and structural scale are needed to heal. And, I believe that this global pandemic is a concrete example of what climate crisis in an interconnected world looks like.

Humor

Laughter is curative! I have been relaxed and relieved this week with humor, from hilarious memes about bras as masks and lesbians with lanyards solving the world’s crisis to silly jokes about farting in public as a way to mask a cough. And laughter on the phone with friends and colleagues about the absurdity of the moment. It is helpful that I live with a very funny human being (thank you,son!). 

Not knowing

There is a lot we do know and yet COVID-19 is surely a reminder that so much is emergent and not known. We are reminded that knowing can only happen collectively—from decisions about whether and when to close an office to determining how best to support an organization through challenging times and how best  to support hourly workers, many of whom have no access to benefits. We must think together, more than ever, during these challenging times. I’ve experienced the power of  this all week at work as we navigate in this moment, asking what individuals need, how we can support networks of leaders to think together, and – all along the way – as we remember to admit what we don’t know.

Creativity

Here at IISC we have been interacting virtually more and more over the last two years, facilitating meetings and connection through video applications. Colleagues are generating a lot of ideas and willingness to share knowledge with one another and more broadly with the world. Let’s be creative and equitable, thinking well about how to connect and how to support those most vulnerable in this moment.

And, given that words matter so much, I am adopting a rephrase that I heard this morning from my daughter: Let’s practice physical distancing. Socially, let’s work, think, laugh and slow down together, albeit remotely! Let’s be hyper-connected, spending time with one or two people in our households or our apartment buildings or neighborhoods, connecting by phone and text, with video when possible, and by taking walks and smiling at others along the way

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December 6, 2018

When love comes to work

This week, my boss told me she loved me. It was not problematic, in fact it was beautiful. It was following a few days we had taken as the IISC network to get clear on our next strategic steps, considering how we are part of a movement of racial equity change makers.

While we have spoken for several years about how love is a central part of our collaborative change lens, we are doing an ever-better job of embodying it, first with ourselves and then with our clients.

Cornel West tells us that justice is what love looks like in public. He and others have revitalized a tradition that is more holistic and does not segregate love, both in the feeling state and the action state, from our work for equity. Many have preceded us who carry that wisdom. In gatherings of activists and change makers, I hear people yearning for our full humanity, to be able to have emotions as we work, to feel whole in our beings, to feel like we each belong. In our work spaces, especially when we are working at our life purpose, we yearn for satisfying and impactful spaces where we are paid what we need, can bring a wholeness, and can enjoy people and art.  One of our labor foremothers in Lawrence, Rose Schneiderman, put it this way– “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.”

Over the past five years, we have been trying to center love. We do that in light ways, by using the word, and by bringing a variety of practices to our IISC and client spaces: intentional breathing and meditation, appreciations, embodying joy and love as we start a day, reclaiming space and time for fun and playfulness and relaxation. While these can be light touch, they are also not to be underestimated. Too frequently, we and others, make it through many a work day without any of this.

And this year we have been committing to dipping our toes in further. Some of the ways we are experimenting with and aspiring toward love at IISC:

  • We prioritized a small group of practitioners to imagine what equity work with love at the center looks like and how that differs from an organizing or facts-based strategy
  • We let each other know that everyone belongs and that everyone is loved.
  • We take pauses before entering difficult work or conflict settings
  • We try to start our own and other gatherings from a place of vision and abundance
  • We are embedding more practices into our training and consulting and coaching work

Love is definitely an emotion and can be expressed in words. It can also be felt more fully if it is in everything we do from how we interact throughout the day, to how we design spaces, to how we use time and build in pauses, to how we deal with mistakes and conflict.

This week, as we gathered around what might be heady material, editing our theory of change and planning our next strategic steps, we used half a day to get to know each other and our cares through honoring ancestors, building an altar, and talking about our fears and anger. And this intent was spread throughout our time.

One activity that many found deeply connecting is described below. I am calling it “Greeting with love and joy.” It was intended to ground, to center joyfulness, and from there to greet one another in silence and with a depth of connection.

These are some of the ways the activities and spaciousness made me feel vulnerable, more willing to share more truth, more open to hearing others and more open to seeing them fully, less reactive, loved.

Love surely is the answer to many questions. And it is not easy. We need to honor the time it takes, and we need to take seriously how to prioritize and integrate love, especially during times of conflict, and in all our work, including finance!

We are curious how love comes to work for you. What are some examples? Where are you feeling challenged?

 

Greeting with Love and Joy

This activity starts with time in a standing meditation to get grounded and connected to the world around us, to “gather” some elements we might need and to recall a time of joy. We then spend time in silence, connecting to others in the gathering, by walking around and stopping to gaze at another person from that place of joy or love. We end with some music or a chant to allow people to shift back into sound and return to the circle.

Guided breathing to center and to gather elements.

Ask people to stand with legs shoulder-width apart and either eyes closed or gazing down. Lead them through a series of deep breathing:

  • into their centers.
  • into their length, grounding into the floor and connecting through the head to the sky, gathering an element from each place.
  • into their back bodies to feel supported by ancestors and into the front body thinking about their commitment to the work.
  • into their side bodies to connect to people on either side of them and in the broader community.
  • back to center to imagine a moment of joy or love, to envision the sound and smells and feel that so they can carry that into the next piece of the activity.

Walking activity

Now let that picture and feeling of joy expand in your body from a kernel in your belly, out through your body, and to begin to expand beyond you.

Walk around for a minute with your eyes mostly down, feeling your joy in your step.

Now, raise your eyes and with the joy throughout your body, stop as you encounter another person. As you encounter each person, you are invited to pause for 10-30 seconds, as you are comfortable, and gaze directly into their eyes. You are bringing your joy & love to the greeting, you are seeing them in their joy, and you are receiving the love and joy in how they are silently greeting you.

Continue this for at least 5-10 minutes so that people can greet most others in the room. Consider integrating virtual participants by having multiple video stations so that participants in the room can stop by those stations to gaze at their colleagues who are remote.

Invite people to return to the circle/their seats. I ended with a short song/chant that I know as a way to bring sound back to the room and transition out of this intense moment of connecting. You can also ask people to journal or share feelings or an appreciation after they return. The intensity is both in insisting that we are connecting from love and in the silent but powerful eye gazing.

 

 

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October 10, 2018

Reclaim for Liberation: A way to start your day

The board and staff of Interaction Institute recently gathered to learn from others working to bring about racial equity and to talk about how we build a board structure that supports or propels our work in new ways. To start the day, we did an icebreaker I called, “Reclaim for Liberation.”

A colleague planted this seed. What are the qualities or traits we once had that have been taken from us—by family dynamics or trauma, by histories of oppression, or as we have become adults and try to live in the dominant culture? And which of these do we actually want back?

Sometimes, as we are reaching for liberation, we find ourselves fighting against what exists. What we need more of is the vision of what we are heading toward. And sometimes, we imagine that we need completely new tools and skills and ways of being to get to our vision. What if we actually know (or used to know) most of what we need for transformation?

Growing up in this culture and transforming ourselves to fit, particularly as women and/or people of color and/or queer people, we shed things that are not only elemental to us but deeply important for our ability to move forward. Much of this is related to how white supremacy impacts our ways of being and asks most of us to be much smaller than nature would have us be.

When we did the exercise below, people told each other short stories of what they wanted to reclaim for the journey. The words that came up included play, song, dance, carefree, silly, laughter. And then the members of each small group used their bodies to create a sculpture embodying the words and feelings of their group.

It would have been even more effective if we then had kept those ways of being fully present throughout the day, particularly when more challenging conversations emerged. I would like now for us to practice bringing those skills into difficult conversations and see if they help us to speak and solve together.

Try this meditation and share what you see in the group. Do more possibilities or new pathways forward emerge as a result?

Reclaim for Liberation

Allow 20-30 minutes, ideally.

Let people know that in this work for liberation we sometimes feel that we don’t have all we need for change. And perhaps some of what we need we have lost on the way or was taken from us. We are going to spend time individually and as a group reclaiming some of the lost qualities that can be important to us now.

1. Start with a guided meditation (5-6 minutes to set up and lead people in and out)

  • Ask people to take up space in the room; to spread out; can stand or sit
  • Get planted—feeling souls of feet on ground, butt on chair if seated; close eyes or soft gaze
  • 10 deep breaths
    • Feel your body planted—feel the souls of your feet touching the ground, feel your hands resting on your legs or by your side
    • Roll each shoulder back—breath into your full breadth, feel connected to those around you
    • Hear the sounds of the room
    • Breathe to elongate—feel the roots shooting down from feet, up from the crown of the head reaching toward the sky—feel your full length and integrity
  • Ask people to travel back in years; begin to imagine a place you felt joy or lightness, a sense of freedom
    • What sounds do you hear?
    • What are you seeing around you?
    • Are there any smells?
    • Look around
      • Are you inside or outside?
      • Is this a place you recognize or a specific setting that is important to your childhood?
      • Are there people around you or are you alone?
    • Play in this space, enjoy the feelings.
    • Is there a piece of yourself that is present that you may have left behind? Is there a feeling or essence of that self that you want to bring forward and reclaim? Is there something (playful, clear, relaxed) that may be useful for your liberation today?
  • Draw people back to the room – come back into your body, hear the sounds around you, become more conscious of your breathing again, take time to come back into the room, and – when you’re ready – open your eyes.

2. In Trios (8-10 minutes) [decide in advance if there are any instructions needed about how to form trios—such as with people you don’t know or with whom you work less frequently]

  • Each person gets a minute to share the quality that you want to bring forward. Ask yourself: What did I see in my younger self that might serve me in my liberation work today? Share a picture, words or a posture.
  • Each group decides on a way to share back with the full group—encourage a physical sculpture or representation that captures everyone’s words or the quality of what was shared

3. Share back with group—up to 1 minute per group.

4. Ask people to call out some of the other words or feelings they want to carry into the day. You may want to capture some on a chart so you have a visual for your time together.

5. Decide as a group how you will keep pulling in these useful ways of being. This can be particularly useful if you have decisions to make or tensions to address. Ask people to consider an embodiment of their word or quality before engaging in such a conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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April 16, 2018

Dayenu: What is enough? White people confronting racism and privilege.

At Passover, there is a song about being thankful for each thing we are blessed with. Dayenu means “it would have been enough.” It is a call to appreciate the small things and to recognize that they are enough. And yet, within the “enough” there is a simultaneous recognition that the first gift or step is not enough without the next one.

In a world where racism is rampant, and where the impacts are real – often deadly, even – is there an “enough” in terms of being collaborators for change? It feels like it is never enough when lives are at stake.

On the one hand, there is never enough until we have envisioned and called into being the liberated and equitable and pleasing community that allows us all to thrive. This reality requires a commitment that is bone deep. It is the kind of commitment that requires constant thinking and action to live into new ways. It is held knowing that upending racism and racist systems is something to die for.

On the other hand, each action, each change to the individual and to the system, needs to be celebrated. For that one moment, it is enough. As long as we know that a new moment emerges when more is needed, and the past action is certainly no longer enough.

What is the first step and what is the next one? For many white people striving to be collaborators, the work begins with learning and knowing and then shifting awareness, then teaching, then ultimately embodied anti-racism practice in relationship with other white people and people of color. Perhaps a move from external to internal; from pointing out the faults of others to seeing how, despite best intentions, we are each implicated in racist systems; from tight vigilance to looser living and correcting.

  • Reading books and learning by black artists and intellectuals who have created parts of the world we want Dayenu
  • Understanding the history of racism and how it got institutionalized in the US and globally Dayenu
  • Bringing a new consciousness to my actions as I walk through the world Dayenu
  • Naming racism in all-white spaces Dayenu
  • Building authentic relationship across difference Dayenu
  • Helping other white people along the journey through openness and kindness Dayenu
  • Showing up as a vulnerable person who can acknowledge my mistakes and own my racism Dayenu
  • Ongoing learning through books, workshops, conversation, community Dayenu
  • Contributing to and investing in multi-racial community at work and at home Dayenu
  • Putting my life on the line Dayenu

The work of a white ally or accomplice is never ending, to be sure. It requires a lot of effort. And yet, it should not be a slog. We are doing this for ourselves as much as for anyone else. We recognize that ending white privilege and white supremacy allows us to be full human beings as we disrupt the notion of superiority on which this country was founded.

In my work in trainings and coaching, I encourage both the ongoing effort and the need to celebrate.

Maybe this is one way to be gentle and joyful in our work for liberation – to celebrate each small step as if it were enough while also knowing that it is never enough until we are all free and that we need to want and to create more.

What does it mean to you to do equity work with both insistence and gentleness, step by step?

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach…  What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.”      – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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December 18, 2017

Aligning: It’s a verb (part two)

I wrote last month of my own work to take more pauses, to pay attention to my body, and to ensure that how I work is more aligned with what I do and what I care about. I started with a story of how slowing down actually allowed me to see my agitation and what was not aligned. I began to understand that not being aligned was partly external– the ways our country is out of synch with justice– and partly internal– my mind was still moving at an unrealistic pace…although my body and breath were beginning to slow.

Let’s consider how this work of aligning, and often of slowing the pace of work, might play out in social change organizations and networks.

We live in a culture that dissuades us from attending to ourselves and to our alignment. I have learned this lesson as a woman in this society that has been taught to attend to others even at my own expense, from a family that is great at doing and acting and less so at being, and as a white person raised in a white supremacy culture that values efficiency, productivity, and movement regardless of impact.

What is at danger, as change agents, if we are not attending to our internal condition and are not aligned?

Everything!

First, our relationships are at stake. We cannot truly be effective if we are operating in ways that are not healthy for ourselves or for our colleagues. When we make unrealistic promises, get too little sleep, or are short with someone because we are stressed, we are not aligning ourselves with our commitment to justice.

Second, our effectiveness is at stake. If we are working in community and not taking the adequate time to build relationship, we ignore a critical step; even if the event or work gets done, it is not truly as effective as it could be. It is not deep justice work.

Third, our ability to create impact is at stake. We teach people to create great meetings as one of the practices in our Facilitative Leadership for Social Change course. We also teach about the importance of attending to one’s interior condition. A great agenda facilitated by a person who does not hold themselves and others with love will likely fall short of its potential.

Lastly, our integrity is at stake. There is no time like the present to see that many people, especially men, in social change work have been of the belief that they could work in movements or in politics and “do good” while simultaneously abusing their power and assaulting colleagues. These are people deeply out of alignment.

As people involved in social justice work, we each owe it to ourselves, our organizations, and our movements to attend to our interior condition and work on aligning such that our values, our mindset and heartset, and our work are functioning in concert.

The simplest way I know to do this every day – and something I continue to grow in – is to take time. That can be time to talk to people and express our kindness, time to express appreciation and gratitude for what we have and what others do, and time for breathing. In a time of assaults on justice it feels counter intuitive to slow down and to breathe more. And yet, what we have been doing for years is not working. Let’s try something new.

 

 

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November 27, 2017

Aligning: It’s a verb (part one)

I slept in a platform tent hearing the burbling brook, the food at the progressive retreat center was delicious and made with love, we learned life-shifting somatics exercises with wise teachers,* and I meditated each day. And yet, in the time since I left this beautiful restful setting, I have been more agitated than is my norm.

I first understood it as a principal of physics. While I slowed down physically, my cells and mental functioning continue to operate at their usual faster pace, and are hitting against a now constrained container.  While I may be moving into alignment, it is not a simple shift of all systems at the same time. It will take patience to live into focused and productive energy.

Then I read a wonderful piece on creativity and connection by Elissa Sloane Perry at MAG. She helped me to understand this agitation in a metaphysical way as well. In her article, she reminds us that at a time of instability and insecurity, agitation might be a sign of alignment. She quotes Jiddhu Krishnamurti: “It’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Today I am choosing to practice embodiment – the work of aligning myself, attending to the spiritual, intellectual, and physical manifestations of myself and my work as the interconnected sphere that it is—as an ongoing activity as the word “practice” implies. I don’t leave a retreat aligned. I choose to take steps toward alignment each day. I choose to slow down and to rest when my body reminds me I am tired. I choose to pause and think about how my actions impact others. I choose to listen better to feedback, be it from my son or a coworker. I choose to take in the emotion of a movie about liberation and not just intellectualize the political activity.

Today I recommit to aligning, knowing that does not mean that I will always feel grounded or that I am acting with my fullest purpose. I choose to acknowledge how off-kilter our world is and allow that to affect me, not just to plough on as if all is normal.  I then keep trying to align internally, and to work to make the world one I want to be aligned with.

This balance is critical to our social change work; as participants and leaders in change, we need to attend both internally and externally. What are the ways you are experiencing this tension?

 

*Note: I highly recommend #practicingJUSTICE, a somatics (“soma: the body in its living wholeness”) retreat, sponsored by Universal Partnership and led beautifully by Rusia Mohiuddin and Reverend angel Kyodo Williams

 

 

 

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July 18, 2017

What I Learned From My Kids About Work

One recent night, my son stomped out of the house, hurt, telling me that I should stop defining who he is and what he can do. My daughter followed after him, asking that I think about what I had done to cause the blow out. I meditated, cooked dinner, and two hours later we were eating a great puttanesca together.

That evening – and other parenting moments – have led me to recognize that my best liberation and change work these days is mothering. While there is so much to write and share about parenting, here I will glean what I can from my children about ways to improve work.

Here are five things I do with or learned from my kids that might work for you as well.

  1. Play

Just do it. Be silly, open up new parts of the brain, laugh, release endorphins. Do it at home and do it at work. Brain science tells us that laughter and play opens us and what flows is much more effective than working from worry and constriction. It does not mean that there are not real-life worries and real dangers everywhere—poor health and racism, for starters—but it is an invitation to play along the way. I re-learned how to play from my kids. I invest time in being as goofy with them as possible and bringing some of that spirit of laughter and fun into my work. We work a lot, it should be fun and fun generates new possibilities. What is the work equivalent of running through the fountain or blowing bubbles? What do you do at work to create fun and be creative?

  1. Honor who they are and not only what they do or how well they do it

In work settings and movement building efforts we of course need to keep our eye on results. In racial equity work, that focus is particularly important as we have seen how changes in laws do not necessarily lead to changes in heart, nor does understanding lead automatically to reducing disparities. And yet, we know from parenting that honoring who a person is and valuing them for that is so much more important for long term well-being and success than a good grade or accomplishment. How can we keep our eye on the big changes as we honor ourselves and our co-workers for who we are and the spirit and talents we bring and not just what we produce?

  1. Be present

Walking down the street, it is often the adults walking with children—holding hands or skipping or watching the trains – who seem most present and look happiest. It is a reminder that of how critical presence is for all of us. At a recent convening, The Confluence sponsored by MAG, someone offered this gem: “less prep, more presence.” Let’s make sure that we bring impeccable presence to our workplaces. Whether at large gatherings, staff or member meetings, or one-on-one conversations, bring your full presence. How do you stay present, planting seeds that flourish in the moment and over the longer term?

  1. Show love and caring

While this may be an “of course” in family, it needs to be just as much so in the workplace. At a network gathering last week, I went to the bathroom, tired, after facilitating a challenging session on health equity. I found someone there in tears, having just lost a family member. I was able to show her some tenderness. The next day she reminded me how important the care I offered was for her and, in fact, opened her to learning. These moments, large and small, present themselves daily. What is the workplace equivalent of the schnuggle? Can you find more moments to show love to your co-workers and partners? What might that elicit?

  1. I don’t need to be in something with my kids to know how incredible it is for my kids.

While my daughter plans a social justice orientation program for students at her college, I can simply watch her and her peers create and experiment; I can stand aside and watch it blossom. I have to let my kids experiment in the world and experience their ups and downs. I don’t have to help or be in it to know it will be an incredible learning experience. This is a good reminder to allow people to try new things and to flourish and stumble with their work, and learn from it all along the way. How do you practice standing aside?

People in organizations – just like in our families – need this level of tending and love. We all need play, space, and autonomy to create great things. It is a truism that change starts at home. Perhaps it is less clear that home can improve our work. Let’s garner those lessons.

What else can we learn from the kids?

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