Image Description: Illustration of a person with dark brown skin, wearing a pink shirt and red shorts, sitting on large green leaves beside oversized white flowers, against a soft blue sky with clouds. By Owl Illustration Agency.
In 2020, the world had shut down, and George Floyd’s murder had sparked a global “racial reckoning.” Nonprofit organizations rushed to release statements about racial justice, boards scrambled to diversify their leadership, and suddenly, Black and brown women were being elevated into executive director and CEO roles at an unprecedented rate.
But behind the public commitments and DEI statements was a different story. These newly appointed leaders were calling IISC, exhausted and isolated, because they were inheriting organizations deeply embedded in racism, with fragile budgets and boards that didn’t understand or trust their leadership styles. They were expected to repair harm, transform systems, and lead boldly – all while navigating inadequate resources and limited support. Our movements cannot survive without these leaders, and yet far too many were and still are leaving.
Inside IISC, a group of Black and brown women began talking and recognized what was happening. These leaders didn’t need another technical training; rather, they needed space to exhale, to speak honestly, to be affirmed rather than questioned. They needed room to reset, reflect, and rebuild confidence in who they already were.
Out of those conversations, the first cohort was born. And today, that work continues as Gathering to Rise, now open to Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders.
Building Space During Hard Times
Beginning in 2020, IISC launched a leadership cohort specifically for women of color executive directors and CEOs, made possible through partnerships with the Boston Foundation and Boston Women’s Fund. Across three cohorts through 2023, 45 women of color leaders participated in two online cohorts during the pandemic and one in-person.
Facilitated by Kelly Frances Bates and Aba Taylor, and enriched with coaching from IISC affiliates Adeola Oredola, Eugenia Acuña, Andrea Nagel, and nisha purushotham, the program was intentionally designed to be different from traditional leadership development. Participants weren’t expected to perform professionalism or leave parts of themselves behind; instead, space was created for humanity, honesty, and rest. Leaders gathered in ways that felt embodied and relational, sharing openly about what leadership was costing them and what it was offering them.
Through a blend of coaching, online and in-person cohort sessions, and small “sister pods” for deeper connection, the program explicitly affirmed culturally grounded leadership styles rather than pressuring participants to conform to dominant norms. Leaders spoke about growing confidence and power, setting boundaries, and feeling less alone than they had in years. One participant shared that the program had saved their life during a period of intense stress.
At the time, there were very few programs designed specifically for BIPOC women leaders through a liberatory lens. Applications exceeded capacity in every cohort.
Where the early cohorts asked how leaders could sustain themselves before burnout set in, today’s context feels different. Many leaders are already carrying years of accumulated exhaustion, so the question has shifted to: how do we recover, reconnect, and continue without losing ourselves?
Carrying the Lineage Forward
Gathering to Rise is not a replica of the original cohorts; it’s shaped by this moment while maintaining clear continuity. Adeola Oredola and nisha purushotham, who served as coaches and advisors to the original pilots, are now stewarding this next chapter, bringing deep connection to the lineage of care and relational leadership that defined the early programs. C. Payal Sharma, an IISC Affiliate Consultant/Trainer, and Amy Casso, a Senior Associate at IISC, were also integral to iterating and evolving the offering, helping ensure it remains responsive, grounded, and true to its purpose.
The current cohort expands the original vision, now welcoming Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders. We’re carrying forward: a space centered on care rather than performance, the integration of personal and leadership transformation, coaching as a core element, community over competition, the affirmation of culturally grounded leadership styles, and an honest space for grief, joy, exhaustion, and imagination.
This current version also responds directly to where we are now, centering ancestral wisdom, radical imagination, liberatory practice, and collective leadership at a time when old systems are unraveling.
It’s intentionally built first for an online experience – a choice rooted in access. Online participation allows caregivers, parents, people with disabilities, leaders with limited travel budgets, and those balancing demanding workloads to engage fully.
An Ongoing Commitment
This work has always been grounded in real need. We’re continuing because when leaders are supported in culturally grounded, relational, and affirming spaces, they’re more likely to stay connected to their work, communities, and sense of purpose. Rather than trying to preserve a program, we’re trying to keep our people going.
Gathering to Rise stands on the shoulders of what came before. It carries forward a simple intention: to help leaders reconnect with their gifts, strengthen their capacity to navigate change, and ensure that those who carry so much for our movements don’t have to carry it alone.
If you’re interested in learning more or being notified about future cohorts, please sign up for updates. If you’re a funder, partner, or ally, we welcome conversations about how we might collectively sustain and expand spaces like this over the long term. Get in touch with us.
Image Description: Illustration of a hand holding a lit match, with a small red-orange flame against a warm gradient background of orange and gold. By Ubaid E. Alyafizi via Unsplash.
This year, I’m having an especially hard time saying “Happy New Year” given all that has transpired in just the past three weeks. The list would take up an entire post of its own, but I’ll name the bombing in Nigeria, the military-interevention-called-law-enforcement-action to capture of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores and threats against Columbia and Mexico in a jingoistic revival of the Monroe Doctrine, threats to take Greenland, the murder of Renee Nicole Good and subsequent lies about it, and symbolic actions like renaming the Kennedy Center and the proposal to put the president’s face on US currency. Are you exhausted yet?!
“Recognize that we are already living under an authoritarian regime.” This is not just toxic, polarized politics as usual, and the solutions will have to go well beyond winning seats in Congress in 2026 or the White House in 2028. Among other things, there are institutions and norms to build and rebuild, and hearts and minds to shift and inspire. She reminds us that authoritarianism is not coming; it’s already here. The murder of Renee Nicole Good and the brazen lies about the situation by the president and his minions give more evidence to that fact, on top of all the other mess of the past two weeks alone.
If you’re not convinced, just reflect on all the Trump regime has done to consolidate presidential power and use government institutions to enact retribution and silence dissent, dismantle institutions and norms, upend alliances, exit international institutions, vilify public and civil society efforts to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion, accelerate gerrymandering in an attempt to further consolidate power, strong-arm, threaten, and use military power against leaders around the world, and use symbolic actions to deepen a cult of personality.
“Be louder.” “Articulate the harm that is being done.” Communicate effectively so that people believe that “democracy can deliver.” Be authentic and trustworthy. She reminds us that the authoritarians are intentional about repeating lies so often that they become accepted as truth. We’ve got to keep telling the truth, in clear and compelling ways, even if we don’t see an immediate response. And, she reminds us that more voters sat out the 2024 presidential election (almost 90 million) than voted for the winner (a little over 77 million). There are so many people who need to hear a compelling message about a vision of a better world and the power they have to help create it!
Part of this is being loud about the wins. In a communications landscape that features bad news so prominently, we need to develop the discipline to tell the stories of progress. Here are just a few other reflections on recent progress.
Ordinary people are coming out in larger and larger numbers to protect democracy and to bear witness to aggressive immigration enforcement actions and support their immigrant neighbors.
Several foundation CEOs created United in Advance with the theme that what happens to one of us happens to all of us.
More Black women are being elected to office at all levels of government, reminding us “that representation isn’t symbolic. It’s structural. It’s policy-shaping. It’s democracy-strengthening. And it requires all of us, from the halls of Congress to local organizing meetings to keep building together.”
Find your lane and get busy. “Remember, we don’t have to do everything. You know Everything, Everywhere, All at once. Fantastic name for a movie. Terrible mission statement, but we can all do Something Somewhere Soon.” I love that turn of phrase as an antidote to furious, exhausting effort. Increasingly, we are coming to understand that exhausting ourselves isn’t good for us or for our movements.
I’m on many email and action alert lists and receive requests almost daily to take action on a wide range of issues. Sometimes it’s exhausting, but the good news is that there are a LOT of people doing a LOT of things to block and build. If you’re not sure where to put your precious time and energy, check out networks like MoveOn, 50501, No Kings, Healthcare Not Warfare, Democracy Docket, 18 Million Rising, Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund, Indivisible, Working Families Party, to name just a few. And, these readings could help with some specific action steps to get you started.
And, no matter what lane you’re in, check out Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century for lessons that can help us move forward. You’ve probably heard some of the lessons – like “don’t obey in advance” – even if you haven’t seen this book.
I’d add a few final bits of encouragement from IISC.
Collaborate and strengthen networks. In addition to finding your lane, find ways to connect with folks in other lanes. This could be connecting across issue areas, demographic or geographic communities, or action strategies. This is a moment to deepen and strengthen the collaborative ties that bind and build both the skills and infrastructure to move forward together, even when we don’t agree on everything.
Keep love at the center of it all. Love is the strongest force we have for positive social change. This love isn’t a sentimental feeling. It’s a deep commitment to building a society and institutions that embody shared values. Check out PolicyLink’s A Revolution of the Soul: To realize the unfulfilled promise of our democracy as one where we can all thrive, we must commit to developing an individual and collective soul that can love all. And remember the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a Birmingham jail. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ” Let’s commit and recommit to caring for our own spirits and for one another as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
In the year to come, may we each do our part to effectively guide people to clearer understanding, deeper resolve, more strategic action, compelling visions of a just, equitable, and sustainable future, and meaningful relationships that sustain our individual collective souls. And may we remain open, grounded, and welcoming to fellow travelers, new and old.
Notes from Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025
Image Description: An illustration of a person with brown skin and long dark hair against a yellow background. A cloud-filled sky bursts through the middle of their face as if the space is torn open, revealing blue sky and white swirling clouds bordered by black night sky with stars. By Mariana Cuesta via Unsplash.
Years ago, in my first nonprofit communications role, a colleague asked me why I was shaping my work around what the system allowed (what I thought was “realistic”), instead of imagining a system that actually served us. That question changed everything for me.
At Race Forward’s Just Narratives for Multiracial Solidarity 2025, it felt like the whole convening was grappling with that same tension: What possibilities are we leaving behind because we’ve accepted the limits we were handed? If harmful systems were imagined into existence, what could happen if imagined something better?
Throughout panels, performances, research sessions, and even late-night conversations, imagination wasn’t framed as a soft skill. It was treated as political power, and one we need to take seriously if we want to build something better.
Imagination is the Starting Point
The opening panel reminded us that pointing out what’s broken is only step one. Movements can’t grow without a shared picture of what comes next. Fear can ignite urgency, but it rarely sustains people. It shrinks our sense of who belongs and narrows what feels achievable.
Hope, on the other hand, builds the kind of community that lasts. It expands our sense of belonging, creates room for collaboration, strengthens trust, and helps people stay in the work through long periods of uncertainty. And choosing hope doesn’t mean we just ignore the compounding crises we’re in – it means recognizing that hope requires action, discipline, and a willingness to stick with the work even when progress is slow.
Monica Roa from Puentes put it plainly: “The world is indeed shit, and we can choose to compost it together.” The circumstances are tough, but we are not powerless. And if harmful systems were imagined into existence, then new systems can also be imagined.
Later, a Palestinian dabke performance from Canaan Wellspring reinforced that imagination can also be embodied. Culture, rhythm, and collective movement are forms of political storytelling.
Nikko Viquiera from Race Forward added a grounding point: imagination without action is just delusion. Naming and posting aren’t enough – dreams require steps.
Infrastructure Shapes What Imagination Can Actually Do
Rinku Sen from Narrative Initiative grounded the conversation by discussing infrastructure – not in an abstract policy sense, but in terms of what allows imagination to become reality. We at IISC wrote about the importance of infrastructure a few months ago here. Infrastructure is not only organizations or reports. It’s people’s stories, their capacity, their confidence, their relationships. It’s whether everyday people (not only professionals) have what they need to share narratives that matter.
Jennifer Ng’andu from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added that infrastructure also includes trust, support for leaders who are under-resourced or targeted, and the relational glue that keeps movements going.
Anna Castro from the Transgender Law Center reminded us that infrastructure isn’t just the bones, it’s the joints. It’s what makes movement possible. And she pointed out that the South has been living with disinvestment long before national headlines caught up. Southern organizers have had to imagine new solutions out of necessity, and there’s a lot to learn from that.
Together, these points made something clear: imagination is powerful, but it needs structure. Without infrastructure, imagination never makes it off the page.
The Hope Gap: When People Support Change but Don’t Believe It’s Possible
One of the clearest connections between imagination and political power came from folks I deeply admire: the BLIS Collective. Their workshop introduced the Hope Gap, the distance between what people support and what they believe is achievable.
Their research shows major gaps in belief:
76% of Black Americans support reparations, but only 21.5% believe it can realistically happen.
80% of Indigenous people support Land Back, but only 19% believe it’s possible.
This pattern extends across many bold policies. People want transformative solutions, but decades of disinvestment, backlash, and political messaging have convinced many that big changes are unrealistic. When people don’t believe change is possible, they disengage or lower their expectations. The Hope Gap isn’t just a barrier to action, but a crisis in political imagination.
The BLIS research is ongoing, so instead of presenting final answers, their workshop taught us how to identify Hope Gaps in our own issue areas. We worked collectively to explore narratives that invite participation rather than resignation.
My biggest takeaway was this: we don’t have to start from scratch. We can learn from what already exists. We can amplify the wins, from reparations efforts to LandBack victories, so they feel possible, repeatable, and real. When we lift up these examples, we normalize the idea that what we imagine together can take root.
Imagination Grows Through Community
Outside the formal sessions, the theme of imagination showed up again in the way people gathered. I spent time tending to old and new relationships, eating and dancing together, laughing through a spontaneous mini-makeover session. At one point, nearly everyone said some version of, “This is why we come.”
These moments truly were the heart of the gathering. They confirmed that narrative work, hope-building, and movement strategy grow through connection, the kind you build by showing up, sharing space, and remembering that people are the reason this work moves at all.
ALOK’s Call to Choose Humanity Over Convention
ALOK Vaid-Menon’s brilliant keynote tied the theme together. They asked why our sector continues to choose convention over humanity. They reminded the audience that our values come from the people who have held and supported us through our lives.
Their central point was that all justice work is connected. Trans justice, racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, disability justice – these are not separate fights. When we act like they are, we weaken all of them. And there are systems intentionally built to keep them separate.
ALOK also named the funder-industrial complex’s role in encouraging fragmentation, but insisted that collaboration is where our movements gain power. We shouldn’t need to justify why justice movements are linked. We should care because people matter.
What I’m Taking With Me
Imagination is political power
Action gives imagination meaning
Infrastructure makes imagination possible
Relationships make imagination sustainable
Hope must be intentionally built, protected, and nurtured
It is not enough to critique the systems we live in. Just like we need better messaging, we also need better imagination to actively build alternatives. And we need the conditions that allow people to believe in what they already want for the world. If fear built the systems we’re fighting, imagination can replace them.
Take a moment to ask yourself and your team:
What possibilities have we dismissed because we assumed they weren’t realistic?
Start naming them, imagining them, and then start building the infrastructure that makes them real.
Image Description: An illustration of Earth surrounded by an explosion of colorful, stylized foliage and flowers. The continents are marked with small red hearts, and the colorful leaves and petals radiate outward in all directions against a black background. By Getty Images via Unsplash+.
There’s a quiet revolution underway. You can see it in church gatherings and small-town meetings, on Zoom calls between elders and young organizers, in community art projects, healing circles, and protest planning sessions.
Across the country, IISC has had the deep honor of supporting and witnessing this movement: the call for food justice in Mississippi, the fight for immigrant rights in Florida, and unincorporated towns in California’s Central Valley organizing and standing against corporate land grabs with the memory of ancestors alive in their bones.
This June marked 32 years since IISC was founded to build collaborative capacity for social change. As we reflect on more than three decades of work, we are clear that real transformation is rooted in the relationships, strategies, and structures that make long-term change possible.
This is what power-building looks like – not only marching or resisting, but reimagining how we live, lead, and make decisions together.
We’re living in a moment full of pressure and possibility, where movement leaders are not only responding to harm but also building blueprints for belonging, designing ecosystems of mutual care, shaping decision-making structures that reflect their values, and challenging the status quo about who leads, who benefits, and who gets to be fully seen.
And in the background, behind the chants and policies, something quieter (and often invisible) is also happening: Movements are collaborating in deeper, more intentional ways. And we are helping to seed and shape that work together.
Power Building Is Infrastructure Work As capacity builders, we’ve learned that what sustains movements isn’t just energy or the rightness of the cause – it’s the infrastructure that doesn’t always show up on a stage, but holds everything in place. While people typically think of “infrastructure” as technology, tools, funding, and flows of information and resources, there is a deep need for relational, human infrastructure and the skills that enable people to make and sustain change together.
Behind every campaign or viral hashtag, there is slow, deliberate work. Networks negotiating values, grassroots leaders navigating conflict and decision-making, and organizers choosing to stay in relationship when things get hard because they know liberation isn’t a solo act.
This is the kind of power that movements are building and that we co-construct with them. Power built through:
Clear strategy rooted in shared values
Equitable decision-making across lines of difference
Leadership that centers collaboration, healing, and shared accountability
Networked action that multiplies impact rather than fragments energy
This kind of infrastructure does not emerge overnight or from passion alone. It takes facilitation, training, culture-building, relationship tending, strategic clarity, and people who are willing to hold space for discomfort, emergence, and transformation. It takes collaborators who understand that the right kind of structure does not limit people; it liberates them to move together toward something more powerful than any of us could hold alone.
Movement Work Is Evolving, and So Must Our Support In this era, the most critical support for power-building groups is not marketing or messaging or a one-time DEI workshop – it is long-term, trust-based relationships coupled with visionary strategy that build the muscle of collaboration, collective care, and self-governance. It is support that meets movement leaders where they are, with tools that are grounded in deep equity, shaped by experience, and designed not just to help organizations “function” but to help them thrive in alignment with their purpose and people.
This is the kind of capacity-building work we at IISC and many peers in the practitioner ecosystem are committed to:
Facilitation that invites truth and transformation
Strategy development that is relational, emergent, and rooted in values
Cohort design that cultivates brave space
Network weaving that strengthens interdependence
At its core, this work is about building the capacity for collective liberation, and doing so in ways that reflect the values and visions of the people who are most impacted.
Deep Investment and Choice We are witnessing a moment of both resurgence and retaliation in the U.S. and globally. While movement leaders dream and deliver bold new futures, political parties and their supporters are doubling down on repression. And yet, movement leaders keep showing up. They keep convening. They keep trying to do the impossible: imagine a future where everyone can thrive and build together toward that day while under attack.
What would it look like if we, as capacity-builders, met their courage with our own?
What if philanthropy prioritized sustained infrastructure for movements instead of short-term wins?
What if intermediaries slowed down to listen deeply and moved at the pace of trust instead of deliverables?
What if everyone pursuing justice understood that strategy, facilitation, and organizational development are not extras but essential nutrients and foundation for the long road to justice?
The Invitation If you are building power, thank you. If you are funding frontline power building, consider funding infrastructure as well, to resource the ecosystem as a whole. And if you’re an infrastructure-building organization, be humble, be bold, and be in right relationship with folks who are building power.
Change is already underway. And what grows next will depend on who is willing to hold it with both courage and love.
“You are democracy defenders. You are patriots. Dissent is patriotic.” – Rep Ayanna Pressley at the April 5 Hands Off Rally.
Photo of a large ACLU red sign that says “Dissent is Patriotic.” Taken by the author on April 5, 2025, at the Hands Off! rally in Boston.
I started to write a post on the occasion of Patriots’ Day (April 19). I had planned to write about:
The history of the day (commemorating the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord and the lesser-known battle at Menotomy-now Arlington, MA, which launched the colonists’ war for independence);
The values for which they fought (individual liberty, freedom from tyranny, the natural and legal rights of people – or men anyway – and for some, the abolition of slavery);
The nature of freedom (and especially FDR’s four freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear, plus the remaining freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment: freedom of association, the press, assembly, and to petition the government), how these freedoms require great responsibility, and how they are being trampled daily by the current Administration;
The power ofshared values and civic culture to knit together a diverse country and the need to awaken a sense of patriotism built on a vision of the U.S. as a thriving, sustainable, generous country that guarantees rights and defends vulnerable people at home and abroad; and,
A reminder about the importance of collaboration and network weaving to build the civic culture, institutions, relationships, and moral imagination needed to move forward in these dangerous times.
After that, there isn’t much more for me to say! I invite you to read the entire poem for yourself. Take in how breathtakingly beautiful, painfully poignant, and remarkably relevant it remains today. May we find ever more powerful ways to enable America to be!
Let America Be America Again Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
“Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.
I started my day today with my regular spiritual practices and the music of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Their music was the soundtrack of my political and spiritual awakening. I found wisdom there for this day, and borrowed the title of this post from their song of the same name.
It’s important for me to acknowledge the disappointment, anger, and fear that I and many people feel in this moment, and to hold one another gently as we grieve. Rumi wrote: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” And so I enter this day with resolve, looking at the wound and also looking for the light that can enter through it. Sweet Honey shines a light through their song I Remember, I Believe.
I don’t know how my mother walked her trouble down I don’t know how my father stood his ground I don’t know how my people survived slavery I do remember, that’s why I believe
While we face hard times today, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. Our ancestors faced even harder times. They, and our descendants, are counting on us to weather this storm.
The late love warrior John Lewissaid, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we must all take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”
I am asking myself, What must this generation do now? What do we – the larger movement for justice and also IISC – need to learn? What do we need to change? How do we protect those most at risk and encourage those who feel despair? How can we “block and build” in this moment and the season to come?
As we live our way into the answers, let’s remember that we are in this together and we cannot give up. And as the lyrics of another Sweet Honey in the Rock song remind us,”We who believe in freedom cannot rest … Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot, I’ve come to realize that teaching others to stand and fight is the only way our struggle survives.” (Ella’s Song)
“When all hope for release in this world seems unrealistic and groundless, the heart turns to a way to escape beyond the present order.”
Howard Thurman (philosopher, theologian, educator, civil rights leader, author)
“The entire self-generative process is supported by compassionate acceptance extended through the relational field. This requires the felt experience of the heart, as distinct from compassion as an idea or an ethical imperative.”
Doug Silsbee (author, founder of Presence-Based Coaching)
“To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.”
“The longest journey you will ever take is from your head to your heart.”
Attributed to various sources, including the Sioux people
About five years ago, my dear friend and colleague Melinda Weekes-Laidlow turned me on to the writings of Father Richard Rohr, and in particular his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. As Melinda and I are of a similar age and stage, I think we were both contemplating in our own ways what life held for us during what felt like a time of significant transition. The timing of this gift ended up being quite auspicious, as I would then spend the next number of years (up until now) going through something of an unraveling, precipitated by work burnout that revealed unaddressed patterns in my psyche and body that were begging for attention. It was not a complete breakdown, but something of a slow crash. Control freak that I have often tended to be in my life, I spent a fair amount of time trying to direct the descent.
All my efforts to manipulate and steer really did was make a bit more gradual what has been at times an excruciating experience. That said, it has also been very rich, putting me more deeply in touch with my feelings, my body, and (as hard as it is for me to use this word sometimes), my soul. Interestingly enough, about a year after starting the book, Melinda and I (along with Jen Willsea) found ourselves working directly with Father Rohr and his staff at the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in New Mexico, guiding an internal equity learning and change process. If you know anything about the nature of this work, and especially in these times, you will not be surprised that this only added more fuel to what was at best a “cool burn,” not because of CAC in particular, but because it is a fractal of the hurting whole that is the broader culture, and because that process dared to approach this work from a deeper contemplative place.
This was a blessing in many ways. Melinda and I, and other IISC colleagues, discovered that there is a crucial need to put in place certain structures and supports for the organizations with which we work, as well as for ourselves, as we undertake this kind of learning and change facilitation process (see this post “An Ecosystem of Resourcing for Racial Equity Culture Change Work”). During one of our early trips to New Mexico, Father Richard gave us a copy of his book Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation, which I received gratefully and with intention to put straight to use as a part of our support ecosystem. During the plane ride home, after completing a silent meditation, I was skimming through the last half of the book, when I came across what might otherwise have been a throw away line. It mentioned that doing contemplative work was not meant to be heady, and really needed to be centered on the heart. Heart-focused. “Heartfulness practice.”
Image by Eric Ferdinand, “Heartful,” shared under provisions of Creative Commons attribution license 2.0.
I tucked this away and then a few months later found myself in a situation that I would say is the closest I have come to a “mystical” experience (another word that does not come very easily to me). I will spare the details here, but essentially what happened was that for the first time in my life I understood what my heart is, to have a direct experience and view of the world through it. I don’t remember ever having that feeling of being so unconditionally held, enveloped in love. Not to say that I was instantly transformed. The experience passed and my body memory faded. But not completely. It has been rekindled by a few other experiences, not quite as intense, and also through my own ongoing practice.
What I’ve found in doing heart work is that it brings me warmth in varying degrees, an actual physical feeling, as well as something emotional. This often leads to a subtle smile, if not an outright grin. And with that comes a sense of softening, letting go, loosening my grip. I’m reminded of what Barbara Fredrickson, who runs a research lab dedicated to the power of emotions (including love), once wrote, that love constitutes “moments of warmth, connection and openness to others.” Fredrickson and her colleagues have discovered that when love is in effect:
“Your outlook quite literally expands as you come under the influence of any of several positive emotions. With this momentarily broadened, more encompassing mindset, you become more flexible, attuned to others, creative, and wise. Over time, you also become more resourceful.”
While I cannot claim wisdom (another one of those words), I can vouch for the others when I am tuned into my heart – a sense of being renewed, that has implications not simply for how I feel personally, but how I see others and interact with them. It feels, in many ways, like a more right way of relating. See, in this vein, the short video below for some thoughts about how support for the regeneration of our oceans might link to the heart, and love.
It turns out that this is all very much in alignment with longstanding wisdom traditions and what those who are dedicated to contemplative practice experience. Father Rohr has defined contemplation as “a long loving look at what is real.” That long look is not simply about time, but also depth. It is about sinking below the neck, into the heart and other regions of our bodies. Without that sinking, Father Rohr says, we can simply fall into “stinking thinking,” addictive repetitive thought that is more circular than anything and often leaves us more disconnected and unreconciled – split, at the mercy of overly analytical and fractured thinking. When we come from the heart, we come from more of a place of wholeness or natural inclusion (to borrow a phrase from Alan Rayner).
“Facing the sorrows of the world requires that we remain intimate with the world.”
Francis Weller (psychotherapist, author, specialist in grief work)
And the heart is not all. It turns out there are other seats of intelligence and wisdom in our bodiesthat can also be easily neglected, including our guts. Over the past couple of years, I have become more familiar with the power of tuning into my lower abdomen through practices taught by Joe Weston and The Weston Network. Just before the pandemic locked things down in March of 2020, I attended an in-person Respectful Confrontation workshop with Joe in New York City. It was a profound experience. Through the use of different techniques, including the “core exercise” which centers our attention and breathing on the Taoist energy core in our bodies – three inches below our bellybuttons and a third of the way into the body – I was able to ground myself in ways that feel, well, very grounding. From that place, and breathing into that part of the body, we were then invited to explore our selves (sensations, emotions, thoughts), our relationship to our surroundings, and our relationship to others. Even on Zoom, I have experienced how re-charging this is, that my energetic batteries fill up, and I am able to engage with a fuller sense of self and of boundaried presence.
In a particularly powerful moment during the in-person training, Joe invited us to face some of our articulated fears, represented by other people in the workshop physically approaching us. We experimented with standing in our “strength pillar” by concentrating on our abdomens, stamping our feet and saying out loud, “No!” This was initially a bit awkward, and slowly I got the hang of it. That said I did not expect the visceral shaking that then happened and took over my whole body. It sent wave after wave through my esophagus and solar plexus, each time I spoke more solidly from the gut. While initially a bit unsettling, I realized that it was actually a long overdue release and reclaiming of what Joe would call our authentic personal power.
Image by Beth Scupham, shared under provisions of Creative Commons attribution license 2.0.
As outlandish as this all may sound to some, those more familiar with the intelligence of our amazing bodies will not be surprised. As one of Bessel van der Kolk’s trauma book title states, our bodies know and keep the score, and are incredibly intelligent at protection and expression. Science is showing us that a stable and solid sense of self is in fact rooted in our hearts, our lungs and our bellies. A recent article in the Psyche Newsletter points out:
“An important limitation of contemporary psychology and neuroscience is that scholars replaced the old Cartesian dualism – mind versus body – with a new dualism: brain versus body. The new dichotomy was even cruder than the old one, and certainly no less rigid. Experimenters refused to take note of whatever happened south of the neck because the scientific picture of the day dismissed what previous ages had carefully noted – the wisdom of the heart the power of breathing, and the intelligence of the gut. Now, thanks to a wave of new research findings, with more to come, we know that these intuitions can be fully reconciled with a scientific outlook on the self. Your consciousness really does have deep, rich roots in your bodily feelings.”
Of course, this is validating what many spiritual traditions and indigenous peoples have honored for a long time. I continue to be very influenced by my reading of Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, which I finished about 18 months ago, during the first pandemic summer in the US. Yunkaporta is an academic, arts critic and researcher who belongs to the aboriginal Apalech clan in Queensland, Australia. Towards the end of this book, Yunkaporta sums up what he and a number of other indigenous people with whom he “yarns” see as an indigenous approach to engaging and being in right relationship with living systems – respect, connect, reflect, direct. Interestingly, he offers corresponding embodied centers for doing this work as: gut, heart, head, hands. He also makes the point that Western colonizer cultures tend to reverse this progression, leading with action and control (direct/hands) and intellect (reflect/head), and only perhaps later capitulating (connect/heart, respect/gut), if at all. More rooted cultures suggest that right relationship begins in our guts, not our heads!
re·gen·er·a·tion rəˌjenəˈrāSH(ə)n/
Renewal, revival, restoration; spiritual transformation; an aspect of living systems without which there would be no life; a process through which whole new organisms may be created from fractions of organisms; an adaptive and evolutionary trait that plays out at different systemic levels.
All of this to say, that in many places people may be approaching the work of regenerating and renewing ourselves, one another, and the larger living systems of which human beings are a part in the wrong (or certainly an incomplete) manner, if they are trying to at all. Case in point, I was once in a weekend workshop with a long-time teacher of so-called “regenerative development” and was joined by my wife. During one of the exercises, my wife began to cry, and this made the workshop leader very uncomfortable. Em (my wife) was essentially told to get herself under control, as this was not in the spirit of the disciplined approach we were learning. Now if you knew my wife (a therapist who does a lot of work around trauma), you would know how amazingly embodied she is and attuned to her environment and to other people. This regenerative “guru” was in essence asking her not to be herself, not to access a crucial part of her wisdom and intelligence, which is a wisdom and intelligence our species shares. That did not sit well with either of us.
Flash forward a few years … During the March 2020 Respectful Confrontation workshop with the Weston Network that I mentioned earlier, we engaged in deep somatic/embodied work, individually, in pairs and in the group as a whole. This was done with great care, consideration and skillfulness by the facilitators, and also with a spirit of encouraging us to push on the edges of our physical, psychological and emotional resistance. There were moments of great energetic release throughout those few days. I remarked at how rare this is in a group setting, how uncomfortable it felt to many, and also how liberating it seemed to be to everyone- tapping into fuller and more resilient sources of power, connection and expression. What is more regenerative than that?!
A quote I am known for by some of my colleagues at the Interaction Institute for Social Change is “we are not simply brains on sticks.” And yet for many, this image seems to be the dominant vision and sense of who human beings are. As a result, many people are disconnected from a fuller sense of belonging to themselves, others, and the rest of Life. Social and cultural dissociation. In her book How to Be Animal, Melanie Challenger chalks this kind of dissociation up to a false belief in “human exceptionalism” that attempts to separate us from our basic animal nature. Having a category of “non-human” allows animals to be objects for disgust and victims of mistreatment and control. The same goes for parts of our selves (our “disgusting bodies”) and humanity (“the unclean”, “bad others”). This is literally and figuratively rejecting our roots and appendages.
All of this considered, questions I lean into in some form each day, at times with others, include …
What do I/we need to reclaim and repair?
How can I/we practice re-spect (looking again) for who I am and others are?
How can I/we ground in our guts, orient to our hearts, and align our brains with that more ancient foundation?
What might I/we re-member that has otherwise been forgotten?
The Food Solutions New England 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge for 2021 is moving into its last week and shifting from the theme of “Reckon and Repair” to “Regenerate.” And it just so happens that the Revolutionary Love Conference happened this past weekend, providing amazing array of speakers, deep wisdom, inspiration and what feels like a rich transition that aligns with where the Challenge is heading (both thematically and in its encouragement of learning and action that takes its thousands of participants from 21 days to 365). This year’s theme of Revolutionary Love was “The Courage to Reimagine,” and while I was not able to attend all of the gathering, what I did catch was nourishing, and the social media stream (#RevLove21 on Twitter) was on the best kind of fire. What follows is a harvest of 21 quotes from the presentations and conversations.
“We have become a people who accept racism and poverty as conditions, when they are actually crises.” – Rev. Traci Blackmon
“We all know someone who is more outraged by Colin Kaepernick’s knee than Derek Chauvin’s… No one hates like a Christian who’s just been told their hate isn’t Christian.” – John Fugelsang
“Public confession without meaningful transformation does nothing.” – Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
“Too often, our framing of God prevents us from moving toward a just society—just as capitalism uses theological vocabulary but centers predatory self-interest.” – Otis Moss, III
“How can we retrain the eye to see all others as part of us, one human family. We can train our eyes to look upon the face of anyone and say, ‘You are a part of me I do not yet know. I will open myself to your story. I will let your grief into my heart.” – Valarie Kaur
“White people need to stop being white and start being ethnic again. When you leave the US no one is seeing you and saying “Oh hey you’re white!” They’ll want to know where you’re from, ethnicity carries stories – what is your STORY?” – Otis Moss, III
“I would like to get rid of words like inclusion and say democratization. I’d like for us to get rid of words like diversity and say democratization.” – Ruby Sales
“We must demand a society that will not withhold from others that which we would not want withheld from ourselves.” – Dean Kelly Brown Douglas
“I want white evangelicals to stop talking about reconciliation and talk about justice and repair.” – Robert P. Jones
“I want to stand as a bulwark that things can be different, even in the most stalwart, white supremacist, bigoted families.” – Rev. Rob Lee
“Change is possible when we stop seeing others as needy and start seeing each other as necessary.” – Rev. Traci Blackmon
“Speaking truth to power isn’t only about taking on the President or the GOP, it’s also about taming the power of our own ego.” -Irshad Manji
“Too often, our acts of moral courage go unacknowledged—even by ourselves. We don’t realize the impact we have on others who observe us, and benefit from small mundane acts of resistance in the face of unimaginable daily horror.” – Wajarahat Ali
“I love my enemies for purely selfish reasons. It moves me toward a cure for the life-denying disease of returning hate for hatred. Love may lead to defeat. It may lead to death. But it will not let hatred have the final word.” – Dr. Miguel De La Torre
“White relatives, we’re not asking for a handout of charity. This [reparations] is an invitation—a lifeline to your own humanity and liberation.” – Edgar Villaneuva
“This is a time of reckoning and reconstruction, and policy is my love language. . . . There’s been hurt and harm legislated for generations. Long before our pandemic, our nation was already in crisis.” – Ayanna Pressley
“What would you do? What would you risk, if you truly saw no stranger? How will you fight with us? … It is the practice of a community, and we all have a different role in the work at any given time.” – Valarie Kaur
“Love is always asking: How do I tell this truth and still stay in relationship?” – Krista Tippett
“Think of how much change we leave on the table when we assume that the other will never see things from our point of view, so we must get in their face and humiliate them. Think of how much social change we may be leaving on the table.” – Irshad Manji
“There are so many awesome people in every political party, every demographic of age, sexuality, gender, etc. – these awesome people have GOT to find each other.” – Van Jones
“Racism is a putrid, festering hole in our nation’s soul, and that will only change when we have the courage to love a different way. That love must become an everyday spiritual practice, like flossing or brushing our teeth.” – Dr. Rev. Jacqui Lewis
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are [people] who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”
– Frederick Douglass
On April 1, 2019, the 5th Annual Food Solutions New England (FSNE) Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge will officially launch. We at IISC are excited to once again partner with FSNE in offering the Challenge as a tool for advancing the conversation about and commitment to undoing racism and white supremacy in our food and related systems.
The FSNE Challenge is a remixed and more topically focused form of an exercise created by Dr. Eddie Moore (founder of the Privilege Institute), Debbie Irving (author of Waking Up White), and Dr. Marguerite W. Penick-Parks (Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh). A small design team saw the potential of using the Challenge to invite more widespread conversation about the connection between race, racism and sustainable food systems and ultimately greater action for racial and food justice.
Furthermore, we saw an enhanced on-line version of the Challenge as a way of creating “network effects” around the justice work that many are already doing in our region and beyond. Participation in and the complexity of the Challenge have grown significantly and organically over time. In 2015 we had 200 participants, mainly from the six state region of “New England.” Last year we had over 3,000 people participate from most states in the US and some places in Canada. As of the writing of this post, we already have over 2,000 people registered.
The point of Challenge is not simply to spread but also deepen the commitment to racial equity and food justice. As such, we hope that participants return each year, and many do. Accounting for this, no two Challenges are exactly alike in terms of content, and we are continuously nudging people to go from learning to action. See the image below as one way that we have thought about encouraging people to move up a “ladder of engagement” through their involvement.
Over time, numerous organizations have self-organized to take the Challenge in-house, convening staff colleagues, fellow congregants, community members and classmates to reflect together on learning and making commitments to action. We have heard from groups such as Health Care Without Harm; the Wallace Center at Winrock International; Michigan State University’s Center for Regional Food Systems; Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University; Southside Community Land Trust (Providence, RI); Agricultural Sustainability Institute at University of California-Davis, Georgia Organics and many others who have convened around the Challenge and are planning to do it for the first time or again.
This year the Challenge is being widely promoted in a variety of places, including through sessions that Karen Spiller and I offered at the White Privilege Conference in Rapids City, Iowa, and at the New Hampshire Food Alliance state-wide gathering. In addition, the Challenge is being promoted campus-wide to students, faculty and staff at the University of New Hampshire, where FSNE’s convening team, the UNH Sustainability Institute, is located.
So what exactly is the Challenge?
It is a self-guided learning journey examining the history and impacts of racism, different kinds of racism, how it is connected to our food systems, examples and tools on how to undo racism and build racial equity and food justice.
How does the Challenge work?
People sign up (YOU can register here) and then starting April 1st, they receive daily email prompts focused on a different theme along with links to related resources (readings, video, audio) that take about 10-15 minutes each day. In addition, there is a robust Resource List for people to look through and continue their learning. Those who register also have access to an online discussion forum for those who want to talk and think out loud about the daily prompts and other learning along the way.
How is the Challenge evolving?
To meet the demands of a growing number of participants and the expressed desire for many to go deeper and to replicate the Challenge in different ways, we have developed a variety of additional supports. This year we again offered an orienting webinar that featured Drs. Moore, Jr. and Penick-Parks along with testimonials to the value of the Challenge, including perspective from Sister Anna Muhammad who works for NOFA/Mass and is on the FSNE Network Team and the FSNE Racial Equity Challenge Committee.
In addition, this year we have produced a Discussion Guide to support groups at schools, colleges, businesses, churches or other organizations that may want to do the Challenge together. The Guide along with the Resource List essentially form a ready-to-use “bake box” that groups could use to run their own exercise if they would like, or to keep the Challenge going 365 days a year!
Another feature this year is a robust Outreach Kit that has been pulled together by FSNE Communications Director, Lisa Fernandes. The Kit includes sample communications that can be used to recruit others to participate in the Challenge through email, social media (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook), as well as a one page information flyer.
All of this is in line with how FSNE sees itself evolving as a network into its next 8 years, creating resources that might be shared easily through aligned, diverse and robust connections and adapted by others in the region and beyond (stay tuned for a New Food Narrative Messaging Guide).
What next?
Please join us, and spread the word, the invitation, the conversation and the commitment to others!
Image by Adam Meek, shared under provision of Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0.
Two pieces of art have been working me over lately. And I have been sharing them with others in different social justice spaces. One is a poem by Simon J. Ortiz, “Culture and the Universe,” shared with me by Mariana Velez Laris of The Nature Conservancy’s Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Network. The second is the book Race and the Cosmos by Barbara A. Holmes, that I know through the good people at the Center for Action and Contemplation. Both works invite the reader to stretch and open in different ways for the sake of change and … evolution.
Here is Ortiz’s poem:
Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.
We are measured
by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.
I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.
With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.
We stop.
Lean into me.
The universe
sings in quiet meditation.
We are wordless:
I am in you.
Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.
And the stone wall
I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.
It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.
Very recently I brought this poem to a group of community organizers from a state-wide political action network, and after hearing it, many said they were really touched by this notion of there being a vastness they do not enter, and are therefore limited by. References were made to systems of oppression, to antagonism, to fear and lack of love. There is so much more to this world and by extension to ourselves that we do not tap into that keeps us repeating patterns of behavior and systems that do not serve our fuller humanity.
“We use language not so much to convey factual information as to construct worlds.”
– Barbara A. Holmes
Image by NASA Goddard, shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0.
Holmes’ book extends this same theme of vastness, drawing from the fields of quantum physics, cosmology and ethics as a way of inviting a broader perspective and creating new language and thinking that points in the direction of a world where everyone belongs. She writes, for example, about “dark matter” and “dark energy,” which is pervasive and cohesive in the universe, the essentially creative energy that holds things together. Considering this profound and primordial force, Holmes says, we can only wonder at and celebrate “darkness,” not fear or denigrate it.
Holmes also invites us to consider that physics and cosmology point to the fundamental nature of reality as existing in relationship and interdependence and that systems of oppression go against the grain of the unfolding cosmos. She writes, “Our desire for justice is deeply rooted in systems that are holistic and relational. We have not forced, created, or dreamed this shared destiny; it seems to be the way of the universe.”
In times of breakdown and cynicism, both Ortiz and Holmes tell us that creativity and hope are to be found by looking more deeply into nature and more widely into the heavens to re-member who we are and that there are so many more possibilities than what we have created and perpetuate.
What vastness have you not yet entered, what wonders in our world and beyond have you not allowed to grab hold of you that might liberate and generate new possibilities in your change agency?
“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.”
Image from Charles Patrick Ewing, shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0,
The quote above has been cited every now and then over the past dozen years or so that I have been with IISC, including a later line – “The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace.” Some combination of these words seem to come to mind and lips more frequently as many of the organizations and networks with which we work are are dealing with oppressive dynamics of overwork and urgency, whether they identify as activist or not.
These dynamics are increasingly recognized as an aspect of white dominant and supremacist culture and hyper-capitalist fervor that reduces many people to “producers” in the workplace and extracts as much labor as they can give. In our race equity and social change work, we see this as part and parcel of the structures that must be named and addressed for justice, liberation and sustainability to be realized.
In a recent workshop with an organization we are supporting through a two-year race, equity and inclusion transformation process, we invited the predominantly white staff into a dialogue circleto unpack their self-identified culture of overwork and urgency, to look more deeply at what they are gaining from this (and who in particular gains most), what they are losing (and who loses most), and what it would take to do commit to creating something different. Here is some of what we have heard, aspects of which are being echoed in various other organizations, networks and communities (curious to know what resonates): Read More
“I need love Not some sentimental prison I need god Not the political church I need fire To melt the frozen sea inside me I need love.”
– Sam Phillips
I started this year with a post focused on love, and this idea that 2018 would be the year of love. This thinking wasn’t offered through rose-colored glasses, but from a shared sense and conviction that love would be required to see the year through. And not just any kind of love. In that original post there were a few definitions and quotes that we have been playing with at IISC, including these:
“All awakening to love is spiritual awakening… All the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic.”
– bell hooks
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
– Cornel West
“To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him [sic] an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.”
– William Sloane Coffin
“Love is seeing the other as a legitimate other.”
– Humberto Maturana
“The ultimate act of love is allowing ourselves and others to be complex.”
– Nora Bateson
Well, all I can say is that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Turns out that the writing of that post was a step into a full-bodied exploration of what love really is. And it has been profound.
Around about mid-February, the bottom fell out for me personally, both emotionally and spiritually. My head could no longer protect my heart and soul from what continues to unfold and be revealed around us, and I was taken into a world that I did not remember having experienced before (but that I now know I have known very intimately) – fear/terror, grief, guilt, overwhelm. I was fortunate (very fortunate) to be able to engage some skillful supports that, rather than lift me up, took me deeper, into old and age-old wounds.
I was reintroduced to the wisdom of the body and feeling. I took a hard look at damaging dynamics of internalized individualism, defensiveness, hyper-productivity and over-work. I was invited to take seriously the importance of self-care, and perhaps more importantly, community care. As I got more courageous to share with others what was happening, I found the unexpected grace of support and resonance in friends, near and far, seen and (previously) unseen.
And I met amazing contemplative teachers, including Father Richard Rohr, whose writings (including his book Falling Upward – thank you, Melinda Weekes-Laidlow) consistently call on seekers of spiritual maturity to follow a path of “descent” into the shadows, the “false and small self,” the fuller truth of historical and present suffering and injustice. With that came new awareness and experiences of trans-generational and vicarious trauma. Little seemed solid or certain or assured anymore. Following that, staying with that, held and witnessed in that, I have been guided to feel some glimmers of a deeper underlying ground. It’s hard to name it exactly (The Growing Edge. God. Creation. Life Itself.) though I know it has everything to do with love. And it’s still revealing itself, step down by step down.
What it has required is an excruciating letting go of what I thought sustained me, survival skills for a different time and me. It has also required an opening to others that I didn’t know was possible. And at this point and from this place, love has less to do with words and thinking and so much more to do with being.
“True love is radical because it requires us to see ourselves in all people.”
– Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
I am grateful for the amazing leadership and modeling of my colleagues at IISC, which has invited us as a collective over this past year to lean more boldly into spaces of feeling, of honesty, of vulnerability, of slowness, of spaciousness (see Kelly Bates’ recent post on why creating space is crucial to the work of justice), of love (see Miriam Messinger’s post on how we have been bringing love to work). And we are not alone!
At the recent Facing Race conference in Detroit, Michigan, racial equity OD practitioners collectively articulated a need to practice courageous and fierce love in these times and around our work for equity. So 2019 is bound to be a further venture into love as it relates to racial and other forms of justice, to sustainability, to regeneration, to well-being and to what it means to be human in the best sense and as a species worthy of survival.
May all beings be granted with the strength, determination and wisdom to extinguish anger and reject violence as a way.
May all suffering cease and may I seek, find and fully realize the love and compassion that already lives within me and allow them to inspire and permeate my every action.
May I exercise the precious gift of choice and the power to change that which makes me uniquely human and is the only true path to liberation.
May I swiftly reach complete, effortless freedom so that my fearless, unhindered action be a benefit to all.
Registration is Open!Join us April 20 – May 10 for the FSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge: a daily practice to build the skill, will, and courage to advance racial equity in our food system and beyond. $21 for 21 days.
