tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12523519534820133842023-06-20T06:42:17.735-07:00turning towards humanFaith. Complexity. Development: human flourishing on a transforming, finite planet. We're turning, alright - but towards what? Seeking: dynamic living alignment.Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-11775164387584169552012-10-06T00:40:00.002-07:002012-10-06T00:40:24.849-07:00From London to Chennai: when comparisons are impossible<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘How does Pakkam compare to London?’ the
young professor at Hindu College asked me. We were walking over a bridge in
Pakkam, which means ‘garden’ in Tamil. In the night darkness a small light lit the
outline of a reed-hut beneath a large tree on the edge of the river below us.
Like most of the rivers around the city,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a sharp smell of urine and shit rose to greet us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a flash of a walk across River Ouse in
Lewes, the small town which housed me for over three years in England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sighed.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘You can not compare the two,’ I said. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘It must be much better where you are from,
right? Cleaner.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we walked we moved
into the centre of the road to avoid the uneven pavement of the sidewalk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘Cleaner, yes,’ I said. At this point my
feet automatically step around the cow dung, random sandals that are no longer
useful and general garbage – small paper cups once used for tea, bits of paper,
plastic bags, and the rest of the debris that most of London puts in trash cans
that are, in general, removed by garbage collectors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘But not better.’ His mother had just fed
me. A friend had noted that I hadn’t had dinner. He gave me three choices.
Later I realized that each of these choices was related to a different house in
the area – he happened to know what each of them were having for dinner – and
based on my selection (dosa) we went to the small house in Pakkam, a 10 minute
walk from the Farm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His mother had
welcomed me with a large smile and a small laugh, brought me one of the few
chairs in the house and fed and watered me; her chief concern was for me. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘Can you compare an apple and an orange?” I
asked him. ‘Sometimes you might want an orange, and sometimes an apple. But you
can’t compare them. So it is with Chennai and London; Lewes and Pakkam.’ </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Indeed, I am increasingly moving away from
comparisons that might have any notation of ‘better’ or ‘worse’. It is simply
different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The history of Chennai and
its surrounding areas is so different from that of London and its surrounding
areas<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that I almost don’t want to do any
kind of comparison at all. Let them each exist: separate and equal and
interconnected.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And yet comparisons are intrinsic to the
human mind. During the beginning stages of the development of consciousness
they are probably impossible to escape from. We say ‘oh yes this is familiar,
this is different’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some ways yes, in
some ways no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We seek patterns to gain understanding
and to respond appropriately.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">So: what is the best use of our inherent
capacity to compare?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Comparing to the
past <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>brings with it the risk of assuming
that what was is what will be. And that, I am daily reminded, is inherently
inaccurate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Climate change is only the
latest aspect that requires intense awareness to a continually changing
environment (including people). I think of the ideal state as being poised,
waiting even while moving, fully awake and alert. The martial arts master who
is ready for anything even as he is still; the daoist master whose action never
disturbs his meditation.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Pattern recognition remains important –
more so now, perhaps, than ever. Pattern recognition arises, in part, from
comparisons. </span></span>So what is the appropriate use of comparisons? And w<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">ithout comparing, what can I say? Well
what’s the point of my writing?</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I write to an American, English, European,
Indian, Asian and African friendship group. I write to give images and
questions and something that resembles answers to the questions that you keep
asking me about my life –what is it like out there, on the other side of the
world? I can offer images between these cultures, strung together like a many
different colored beads, or like suras, mixing and matching patterns, in hopes
that something beautiful may arise. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Here people string their laundry on strings
between palmtrees; sit on benches painted blue under trees at train stations, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>look bored as they wait for their train – the
great british train system that runs across this hot sub-continent<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is, unquestionably, one of the better
reminants of the Empire. (Though had the brits not come, perhaps they would nowhave
the high speed rail systems that are popular in Hong Kong and Shanghai, cities
that, I am told,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>make San Francisco look
old and falling apart.) </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘It’s quieter there’, the young professor
said. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remembered my first complaints about Chennai: the incredible noise. Even in my
hotel room the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>honking and beeping and
talking and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>engines<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the city never was quiet. In the farm, you
can still hear the highway and the honking and the motorcycles. It does not
have the deep quiet that Lewes did. Even so, most nights the crickets, bats,
small foxes and misquitos can easily be heard in an area that still resembles
‘rural’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I said. It is quieter
there. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">But we humans can get used to almost
anything, for better or for worse, from traffic noise to debris to colorful
saris to composting (what do you mean you don’t compost, I asked someone
recently, then shook my head in self-amusement – she lived on a college campus
in the city) to corruption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our capacity
for habit is both one of our saving graces (I don’t have to think about how to
eat with my hands anymore – at least not most of the time), one of the major
defining aspects of any culture (the habit of putting on the bindi, the habit
of harvesting rain water, the habit of driving a car, the habit of waking early
enough to do meditation), and one of our greatest challenges in being fully
alive in the world. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I have grown used to the noise. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I get down at the Central Train Station
in Chennai – a great red colonial building with white trimmings and the
perpetual tea stands that sell bottled water, cheap coffee laden with sugar and
small packets of tobacco, fried food and sweets, I can’t help but smile as I
enter the hoards of people exiting the station and the immense perpetual
traffic jam outside of the building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dusty crowded buses, bright yellow autos (small 3 wheel cars that we
don’t have the likes of in the States or the UK) that offer me tourist deals
designed to take my money and leave me in some dark tourist shop,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hundereds of two-wheelers driven by bulky men
in button down shirts, black pants and, sometimes, helmets, women dressed in
perfectly pressed, brightly colored saris and churies, hair adorned with white
jasmine; faces with gold earings and nose rings and bindis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In the past two months that I’ve been
living in India, I’ve been in Delhi, Andrah Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Pune –
that’s four states and multiple cities. I’ve stayed in hotels and apartments,
YWCA and village huts, houses in town and, of course, the farm. I’ve taken tea
in roadside huts with massive lorries streaming past and at the home of a rich
politician. My favorite tea, though, isn’t tea at all, but herbal drinks -
mixtures of ginger, lemon grass, garlic and lemonjuice. Mostly I watch, listen
and absorb, filing what I see and hear away for some unknown purpose. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">At the moment I am based on the farm. It
was nearly 7 months ago that I first discovered the joy of living on the farm –
working in the morning, going to the office where I did intellectual work,
coming back in the evening and having philosophical discussion with a new-found
group of friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had never had such a
beautiful experience of living fully since I was 21, living at Quaker Centre,
serving my faith community. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Yup, that
was a comparison! With some judgement!) Some similarities: a life of service to
the earth and the community, working with my body in touch with the earth,
having a strong sense of fellowship with other people, doing work that tested
my mind and deepened my spiritual skills, and constantly feeling that my life
was an unfolding adventurous locus flower.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The farm ‘house’ is, I feel, a farm
platform. A large open room greets me. At night the bats fly through chasing
misquitos (for which I am endlessly grateful – the misquitos seem to prefer me
to everyone else).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are three
rooms: a kitchen that doubles as a library and a bedroom for a small family; a
meditation room; and an office/sleeping space/meeting room which is slightly
more protected from misquitos than the rest of the place. Upstairs is a small
‘hut’ and an open roof where I occaisionally go to make private calls or enjoy
the moon. Sometimes after a day in the office, the roof of the farm, where one
can almost always hear somebody’s stereo playing music that sounds bollywoodish
to me, feels like several lifetimes away, though in reality the commute is less
than 2 hours. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘How long will you stay’, the professor
asks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a question I am asked
often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I give different answers. I
explain I have a 1 year work permit. Sometimes I admit I would like to stay for
3-5 years; 1 year is too short.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sometimes I say that really, once India has taken hold of one’s soul,
there is no going back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To him I say,
‘As long as I’m still learning, and still needed here more than elsewhere.’
Which is another way of saying – I really don’t know.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">‘You are most welcome.’ He said in
response. My uncertainty did not bother him. Life is uncertain.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Yes, I thought, I know.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, in this country where I speak the
language of the colonizer, I am most welcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In writing that I am tempted to compare. Did I feel welcomed in England?
Tolerated, sometimes with amusement. But welcomed? On occasion – but not with
the generosity and honesty that I experience here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This hot, sticky sub-continent, with its
(over?) dependency on rice and far more complicated power divisions than I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>understand and flute music that sings to my
soul, this country is endlessly welcoming. </span></span></div>
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I nod my head and smile. We don't say anything for a while. Sometimes, regardless of what country one is in, there just is no need to say anything at all.</div>
Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-19719415703639018382012-10-06T00:36:00.000-07:002012-10-06T00:36:42.953-07:00Eating, Giving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Sappittiya? </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It’s one of the first phrases I have come
to understand, probably because it is asked to me all the time. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Have you eaten?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The look in their eyes is always the same:
great concern. Let me feed you. Here, let me give you all that I have to offer.
And then I will somehow find more to give to you. They call me by my name:
stranger, friend, sister, auntie, daughter. You are most welcome here. Eat. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This morning it was a woman who works on
the Farm where I currently sleep (and occaisionally work myself). She dresses
in a bright yellow sari with silver flowers, her hair twisted into a tight bun
at the nape of her neck, her eyes bright as if she is always laughing at the
twists and turns of the world. This morning I was running late and had not
eaten, figuring I’d grab something on the way, but her eyes compelled me to
sit, stay, eat. She gave me rice and a bit of (spicy!) onion-gravy that passed
for samba. Tonight, I ended up going to her place, a little house with three
rooms and a kitchen, all painted green. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gave me dosa – fresh, hot, thick dosa -
and bananas.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I am given so much here. A place to sleep:
a mat and blankets on a floor that is, as my host said, always open to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Food<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-
in homes, in villages, in the fields, in offices, constantly people offer me
food. Rice, dosa, idli.Water, chai, coffee, sweet milk, baddam-milk. Bananas.
Not always ‘rich’ food. Not always food I prefer to eat (I would prefer millets
to rice any day – not easy in this part of the world), but hot and fresh and
served with love. Friends – a community of change-makers who seek to love one
another and society so much through their actions that others are inspired. Even,
at times, misquito repellent. To me are given the basics of life: food,
water, shelter, friendship-belonging. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I also have what we need to make a
difference:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>friends with connections,
passion, and sharp intellects who will listen to my ideas and refine them and
tease them and encourage them and test them against their own experience. And
the internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And enough money in the
bank to do some traveling. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In returning to India, I enter a life
filled with gifts.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Every day I walk past people who do not
have even the most basics of these things. Every day I encounter more stories
of injustice, corruption, violence, death, sickness, depression. Every day I
smell polluted waters and severe sanitation issues and cracked pavements that
flood with every rainfall and questionable drinking water and women whose
wisdom is in danger of dying with them.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">For whatever reason, I am given gifts
here.My cup overflows. I ask myself: Do I only receive? Am I only a mere
consumer – which surely must be the bottom of the pecking order of good living?
Or am I also giving?</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">At work I wonder if I am giving anything back
of real value. A friend here asked, so you are doing research. How will your
research benefit society? I said, oh, I doubt it will. That was probably said too
fast and without enough respect to what Im actually doing. In this particular
project, it’s hard to say. Right now the impact feels, at best, minimal – an
article in a semi-scholarly journal, a report, a conference that someone else
will attend, a seminar in Delhi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know
all of it is cumulative. I know it is making a ‘contribution’ to the
overarching literature, spreading knowledge, giving the voices and perspectives
of a group largely under-heard and under-seen health service providers. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">But here, surrounded by thousands of people
every day, people on two-wheelers spilling dust into my eyes and people pushing
coconuts and women selling fish on the side of the road….. ‘contributions to
the literature’ in this particular incident feels highly insufficient.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
restless. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">What am I giving today? </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Story of Stuff; QIF; IDS; and many
progressive think tanks and action groups) speak of an economy that moves
beyond consumption and production and into modes of ‘citizenship’. I am not
always sure the ‘citizenship’ model is the one I must adhere to – too many
people are not citizens, and the ‘rights’ of citizens - in this country at
least - are poorly upheld by courts that barely function. Some people speak of
pro-sumers, as ways of integrating the two. Those who take (consume) vs those
who make (produce) is a sharper distinction, though of course many of us do
both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in a situation where I am
being freely given all that I need, I ask not about ‘producing’ but about
giving. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">How am I giving? </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I give my gratitude as often as possible. I
give my love as freely and generously as I can. I give small gifts – pineapple
and sweets to people’s homes, flowers, greens from the farm. I give
connections. I write. I tell stories. I sing for people whenever I am asked. I
open my address book and give whatever contact I can think of. I listen to
people’s stories and their struggles. I listen to peoples dreams. I reflect
these back to them. I give them the blessing of a stranger, which can, at
times, be more significant than a friend. I do some farm work - weeding, hoeing, harvesting mostly - I give my mind to initiatives I see
as worthwhile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last night I sat and
supported a friend on his business plan for his social enterprise. Tonight I
listened to a semi-colleague think through his business plans for his social
enterprise. Tomorrow I will listen to a friend who quite his job without
knowing what to do next because he could no longer do it with integrity. I buy
fruit for my colleagues. Tomorrow I shall bring organic greens to the
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">People tell me that I have blessed their
home. People tell me that because of me they are changing certain parts of
their lives. They say I don’t need to give them anything. My mere presence is
enough.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In that last one, I struggle to accept. I
feel I am not giving enough. This is not enough, these small things. Surely
there is more, so much more, that I can be giving back to life here. I feel at
times like a cat in a cage, looking for a way out. Let me do something….
Significant…. I have spent too long behind desks and books and computers. Let
me use my skills and my talents; my ignorance and my broken heart to give more,
more. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">But too often - at least recently -</span> the yearning leads to nothing but
spinning.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I begin to consider that part of what keeps
me spinning is not accepting that actually it<em> is</em> enough just as it is. To slow
down the mind long enough to take in what is without trying to change anything,
to come into full acceptance of reality and the deeper Presence that is there
even though – especially! – when it does not meet my expectations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gifts I am being given are being given
without expectation. For me to give freely - also without expectation - I must
fully accept what is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only then can life
move freely between us, and the webs of serendipity and love bring us closer
together, so that our gifts given by a Spirit to this earth through our finite
bodies may come into being. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In a world with so much to do and learn, it seems that I need to slow down just enough so that life itself can work
through us and we can be like empty vessels receiving and overflowing. And may
that which overflows be even sweeter than that which came in for having swirled
around in our imperfect but still beautifully shaped Selves!</span></span></div>
</div>
Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-87072694988902393032012-07-25T17:52:00.005-07:002012-07-25T17:52:59.820-07:00Turning to nature to build peace in Israel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Nature has no borders.<br />
<br />
Israel is a land of borders.<br />
<br />
Dr. Gonen Sagy works on putting nature back into humanity via education. He works with the Arava Institute in Israel, a programme/initiative that brings together arabs and jewish schools around environmental studies. Jewish and Arab teachers go into the high-schools and teach teenagers about sustainability. For the students to just walk into the room and see Jewish and Arabic teachers working together is, itself, a shock.<br />
<br />
The first element of the programme is compassion.<br />
<br />
Research shows that the first encounter bringing people who have a predisposition not to like one another often does not go very well. Their peace education work attempts to build positive encounters. They do it slowly. People walk in not wanting to work with one another. People play games. Gradually they come to recognise that they are working with and dealing with people.<br />
<br />
There is a level of thoroughness to what they are developing that is remarkable. They made profiles of each student and planned to the smallest detail to make it work for those people. They plan to follow the people they are working with, including the teachers. They paid attention to, is this the right thing for this group at this time, more than anything else. Having ongoing mentors to work with the students were essential. After a while, the headmasters became friendly to the programme, and they did inter-visitations between the schools. Their multiple schools are spreading, and they hope in the next few years to reach 5% of the population. Looking at the map of Israel, the task seems tremendously large. But then again, why not?<br />
<br />
He says that after spending a year at the institute, we understand the news differently. We need to work towards following the vision more paying attention to what is going on around you. As we build trust, we build it within ourselves and between ourselves. And in this way the porous boundaries within nature come to enter our social selves and we come to gain greater security. </div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-79535896711448572262012-07-25T14:18:00.002-07:002012-07-25T14:18:27.624-07:00Some on the Ground Solutions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The collection of young people at the conference on Sustainability want real change, and they want it now - which for many, has led to engagement or creation of on-the-ground, community-based solutions. I highlight a few of them below.<br />
<br />
In Baja California, Mexico, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/COSTASALVAjE/82055281839">Costasalva</a>, WildCoast has been doing community-based work to protect the coasts. This includes engaging with waste, environmental education, and conserving sea turtles. The beautiful area has been able to make a significant difference.<br />
<br />
We heard a presentation about eco-villages, long an alternative form of living in the USA.<br />
<br />
Ecovillages such as Village Homes in Davis, California, to minimise environmental impacts and energy consumption and to encourage social interaction and participation. Sustainable urban forms are enabled through narrow streets, small lots and village homes which create a sense of community with a strong sense of ownership. Most people know about 40 neighbours and the residents are involved in the design process. The ecovillage in Ithaca uses a co-housing model and integrate energy efficiency. In Cincinnatti, attempt at creating the ecovillage did not succeed because the people living there were not fully engaged and did not share the principles. More recently, in 2004, a collection of residents declared their street an ecovillage and fostered a sustainable urban neighborhood. Urban ecovillages face the challenges of working within existing urban constraints - but as this is where most people live and thus where it becomes essential to do more of them. All of them try to engage in some kind of outreach.<br />
<br />
It didn't sound like eco-villages are really taking off. Parks, however, have to be changed - there are legislative incentives and historical pathways that continue to make parks an integral part of California design. We heard a presentation about parks in Orange County, CA, which are facing economic constrictions and finding that creating sustainable parks that use a lot less water and even help treat water are good solutions. They are not yet incorporating food systems into these parks - but the designers I talked to thought it was only a matter of time before public park spaces might become spaces for growing food.<br />
<br />
Because food really matters. Debjeet from<a href="http://www.living-farms.org/site/action"> Living Farms</a> shared about what is happening with food sovereignty issues with indigenous populations in India. Observing that food is a critical part of life and should not exist as a mere commodity, Debjeet Currently, FAO says that population is not actually outstripping food supply, which is the common assumption. Industrial agriculture, which feeds less than 40% of the population, is damaging environment. Despite a climate action plan, the Indian government continues to promote unsustainable agricultural initiatives. Agriculture has been replaced with agribusiness. Some parts of the Indian government say that small farmers should not exist and that small-farmers are no longer of use to the economy. He said, if you want development, first give us back our seeds and our land. He shares the story of a wise fool:<br />
A man was walking home when he saw the mullah searching on hands and knees for something on the ground. He says, what have you lost. The key to my house. Where did you drop it? Over there near my house. So why are you looking for it here? Because there is more light here.<br />
<br />
And so it goes.<br />
<br />
We look in the familiar framework for what we know here and what we know there. We know how to change the world outside but do we really know how to work on the inside? There seems to be much less light in there. A major impediment to sustainability isn't just the external world, but the internal constraints. We need to take the inner psychological landscape into account. We can be so eager to find a solution that we rush into the first solution that comes to mind. So what is needed?<br />
<br />
Securing local food systems become essential. Decentralised food systems that bring together producers and consumers can contribute towards a sustainable planet. He discussed having a very high level of crop diversity to make this happen. He argued for an enabling policy environment to support diverse crops. Food production needs to be re-orientated to local markets as a way of dealing with the climate crisis.<br />
<br />
Food is essential - but so too is energy. In the small, densely populated country of Barbados, sustainable energy is critical. Felicia Cox, who describes herself as an engineer who 'likes to make things happen', wondered why the UNCHE in Stockholm in 1972 was never taken seriously. In Barbados, solar water heating companies have been growing since the 1970s. The sugar cane industry has been using windmills to generate energy for them for quite some time. Barbados has very few buffers and is dramatically impacted by other parts of the world. After reviewing some of the challenges of sewage (need for more plants) and energy and the need to connect the two, she said that the single biggest thing she wanted was for donor countries to ask what the people wanted, to listen to what they said, and to keep their promises. They have an abundance of energy, but the grid is not designed in such a way that it is solved. She sees solutions in community outreach to shift the energy costs. She sees a host of small solutions, from time of use tariffs to renewable energy riders. strong electric utility and ways to bring together waste and energy. (www.blpc.com.bb)<br />
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<br /></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-36962400560959959882012-07-23T16:23:00.003-07:002012-07-23T16:23:51.616-07:00From waste to energy to poverty reduction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Technology makes a difference. And we are in a paradigm shift with renewable technology that are happening so fast that it is hard to keep up. Is it fast enough?<br />
<br />
400 pounds of oxygen are consumed with every tank of gasoline.<br />
<br />
Paradigm shifts are needed in transportation, electirc power, building design, conservation and community design. There is a chance to re-engineer the entire society How can we do it better in the next 100 years than we did in the past? I knew this question was important, but I had not appreciated how far the technology and the early market conditions were moving in this direction.<br />
<br />
Fuel cell power is making tremendous gains in transportation and electrical power. California is one of the leading areas for this change; it has agreed to reduce its emissions by 30% by 2020, and an additional 80% by 2050. Stationary fuel cells - with 20 years of commercisalisination behind it and a wide portfolio of applications makes it a proven technology. The market demand is growing. There is growth of interest in Korea, Bloom Energy, and nearly all of the major electrical companies. Google, EBay and some of the major tech industries have been paying attention and the overarching cost of the technology is decreasing as the market becomes more competitive. There are increasing numbers of automobile companies - Nissan, Toyota, General Motors - who are investing in automobiles with fuel cell technologies. They say they are committed to this as the technology of the future. The World Bank is paying close attention. It might not be long before developing countries can take up these technologies with greater velocity. Korea is also showing the way in terms of visionary policy.<br />
<br />
He discussed having renewable energy stations - providing 0 carbon as human waste would be used to produce the fuel. Going from waste (sludge) to 'digesters'. The new technology would lead to 'bio-hydrogen. Human waste to produce electricity? Sounds too good to be true. But it is already in operation in the Orange County Sanitation district.<br />
<br />
How are the oil companies taking this shift? They aren't too happy. But the past few years, even the past few months, a lot has shifted. He feels that we are going through a tipping point to accelerate the markets of the future in terms of overcoming past resistance - including legal constraints.<br />
<br />
UCI can do a fair amount of experimentation. A large University with a fair amount of on-site housing, they are able to have a 'smart grid demonstration' where they can experiment with demonstration sites that enable better utility and consumer use. The smart grid allows a far, far greater level of interaction with the grid than one might normally have.<br />
<br />
Questions from Fellows from developing countries tended to focus on cost, price and key places in the system to enable change. Water is necessary for fuel-cells; in CA, that comes to about 1% of water in the California aquaducts - not a tremendous amount. In water-scarce regions, this might be more problematic.<br />
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I found myself thinking of communities around the world who do not currently have any reliable energy, much less fuel cells. How much can fuel cell technology reduce poverty and enable greater community empowerment? In a lot of ways this feels like a technology shift more than the deep level of sustainability. Especially when I look at the big players quickly moving into this space: I'm not sure how much I trust the interests of major automobile companies. When I think 'sustainable future' I like to think that we won't have so many highways - and I won't call something 'sustainable' if it can't reduce poverty and enhance well-being.<br />
<br />
Or so I thought until I had some follow-up discussions with Dr Scott Samudien. Was it true that this technology requires a high level of expertise? No, not for maintenance. The bigger issue is getting the fuel behind the fuel. In situations with natural gas, that's easy. However, not all countries - much less communities - have that. Which is where the waste-to-energy plant described above can make such a difference.<br />
<br />
Which leads us to a natural solution: put stationary fuel-cells into slum communities that are fueled by human waste from those communities. Sanitation is generally recognised as one of the biggest challenges for slum communities. So is the lack of energy. This could solve two of challenges facing slum communities: energy and waste - through a solution that enables greater sustainability.<br />
<br /></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-84731803645494967032012-07-23T10:52:00.001-07:002012-07-23T17:23:02.575-07:00Creating a legal system for climate change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(This blog is part of a live-blogging series on Empowering Sustainability on Earth at UC Irvine)<br />
<br />
The legal system: the structures that provide the frameworks for us to live our lives.<br />
<br />
But what if part of the challenge of adapting to climate change is that the very aspects of the system designed to protect and support us - the legal system - is actually making adaptation harder than ever?<br />
Across all sectors impacted by climate change, one theme is clear: climate change requires collective learning. But the current legal system is not suited to enable learning. Alejandro Camacho argues that US law is not suited to foster adaptation because it promotes a static view of nature. There is no connecting framework in a situation that demands greater coordination than ever previously attempted. Agencies are slow to adapt to new information and changed circumstances. I'd say, it does not take the reality of complexity sciences into account.<br />
<br />
Camacho argued that procedural and substantive issues are related to one another, with neither one being adept at dealing with the inherent challenge of uncertainty at both local and national levels. He argues that the most important aspect are those that seek to reduce uncertainty and promote learning. Current decentralised regimes are unhelpful; they lack the capacity to get more information into inherently uncertain spaces. There is not enough connection between successful solutions.<br />
<br />
The most common response to fragmentation is centralisation. But this has two problems. One, it decreases the ability to respond effectively to local conditions. Two, centralisation does not help us manage uncertainty.<br />
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Camacho explained that natural resource law tends to be grounded in and focused in 'wildness preservation' which relies on a human-nature dualism. Keep humans and nature separate. The second law is about minimising non-native and keeping the native. The way we figure out the goal is by looking at what was before and keep it the way it was. We can understand this as historical preservation.<br />
<br />
However, climate change shows us the limits of both of these types of approaches. Any attempt to protect nature as untouched is both belated and artificial. Humans have touched and interacted with every eco system in the world. Climate change itself inherently impacts these ecosystems. The importance of keeping the humans and nature separate becomes impossible. In regard to the second goal, we know that there is little ecological foundation for saying that we can focus on what occured before the european history. it might be actually impossible to keep it the way it was. And really, why would we do that? It might even make it worse. Reserves might become inhospitable to the very areas they are designed to protect. As conditions shift as a result ofclimate change, it becomes impossible to both keep things the way they are and to leave them alone. To keep them the way they are, active intervention becomes necessary. What links these two things together? Existing law is based on stasis. Static and fixed models of decision making and nature are problematic.<br />
<br />
Law comes form an attempt to provide certainty and stability - a place of fixed rules. But climate change makes the rigidity we see in the law particularly obvious and difficult to defend. We can recognise that procedural and substantive issues are related. Most agencies put their resources in the front-end process. The premise and the assumption behind this is that that things will stay the same. But they do not. Historical preservationsiam requires stasis. If the natural system is asssumed to be static, then emphasis on front-end processes makes sense. Historical preservation is only possible if the land is segmented from others. But natural systems move, crossing jurisdicial boundaries. Creatures, people, pollution cross boundaries. Ecological systems will need to shift in order to adapt to climate change. So we need to either depart from this notion of stasis or we need to accept it won't work<br />
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The dualism between nature and humans has really influenced and contributed to regulatory segmentation. Human systems impact non-human systems. Of course we know that cities effect natural areas. But our legal regime is designed to keep them separate. We don't let them interact.<br />
<br />
So what do we do about this?<br />
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Substantitve side: the goals should not be to leave nature alone or to restore it to some ideal past state. It should, instead, be about how to maange in ways that promote desired future conditions: ensure health of ecosystems.<br />
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But then what do we mean by health? Does it mean to maximise productivity? These are disputed arguements. What about distributive impact? Future ecological conditions and analyasis. The law is still focused on keeping things the way they were or keeping humans out of it. <br />
<br />
What we do know about these sorts of questions is that they should not be left solely to experts. These kinds of goals should not solely be left to these. What a regulatory process - adaptive governance framework to incentivise regulation and a shared public information network to link different jurisidictions together to learn from the mistakes and successes to one another; they would be required to do so.It would help them adjust and respond to one another.<br />
<br />
The citizenry comes to have an increasingly important role. My friends at Story of Stuff talk about this as flexing our 'citizen muscle' in engaging with the rules that shape our lives. The arguments for adaptive governance fit in well with Elinor Ostrom's analysis about governing the Commons and the insights coming out of complexity sciences.<br />
<br />
In the US, the goal is to keep nature and humans separate. Maybe the goal of the law can change: to ensure the wellbeing of both the earth and her people by enabling them to live together. Which is, really, what the law is supposed to be about: flourishing well being. </div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-48203318650269476382012-07-14T23:49:00.004-07:002012-07-14T23:49:40.278-07:00Growing corn and justice in West Oakland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I knew I arrived in the right place when I saw a crowd
of what looked to be local West Oaklanders playing music, eating locally grown
fresh corn on the cob, barbqued sandwiches and beans spilling into the
side walk of one of the busier corners in West Oakland. At the edge of the freeway, The
People’s Grocery was having a celebration of the completion of a very impressive
mural (alas, I forgot my camera - but some <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://oaklandlocal.com/sites/default/files/i/mural%2520EKA%2520photo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://oaklandlocal.com/posts/2012/07/711-12-crp-teams-people%25E2%2580%2599s-grocery-paint-new-mural-west-oakland-community-voices&h=406&w=605&sz=101&tbnid=jfDxr02stzCHwM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=135&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpeople's%2Bgrocery%2Bmural,%2Bpictures,%2B2012%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=people's+grocery+mural,+pictures,+2012&usg=__Z46sF_6mAGjuJzl3_hSgWNzMCqA=&sa=X&ei=dGcCUOuJH_Py2gWP9tXACw&ved=0CBkQ9QEwAw">local journalists did not</a>) that celebrated food justice, grassroots efforts,
art, and healthy communities. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
People’s Grocery has been on the forefront of
sustainability solutions since its founding – and it now looks they are once
again pushing boundaries into what it means to create real change.</div>
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Over a decade ago, back when ‘food justice’ was far
more of an idea than anything that resembled reality, a few young social
entrepeneurs/change makers decided to tackle one of the chief challenges of
sustainability (people-led, planet-centered, profit-making) challenges head
on. The people of west
Oakland – a neighborhood in California known for its drug dealing, violence,
low education levels and general poverty – had no local stores to buy fresh
vegetables and fruits. Agricutlural markets did not exist. In most of West
Oakland, the only ‘food’ stores are liquor stores. Local knowledge about making yummy, nutritious meals for
young families on small budgets was minimal. KFC, French fries, potato chips, coca-cola and liquor
dominated people’s food-choices in areas with few trees, flowers, gardens or
other signs of life outside of pavement, cars and run down ware houses. </div>
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The original model entailed producing organic food
for community-led enterprises. Marketing of enterprises was done through
nutrition and food education, including cooking classes. These urban agricultural programs
developed three pieces of land in the City, including a three-acre peri-urban
farm. Their ‘Grub box’ is a modified Community Development Agriculture
programme, and their Mobile Market was a unique program that has since been
copied elsewhere. Their nutrition
education programmes collaborate with public hospitals and health clinics,
meaning that they can reach vulnerable communities with what one might call
‘specific cultural needs’. Much of
their work is non-profit, but they also have always run a for-profit grocery
store. Both have expanded: the People’s Community Market should open a 15,000
square ft store in the midst of West Oakland in 2012. They kept good records on
what they were doing, meaning that their data has been able to inform the
broader discussions on the need for diverse food systems for low-income
communities. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that they’ve done the work of creating a successful model that has been
nationally recognized, they are working on larger issues of community
development and systemic change while keeping the focus on food. It’s always a
tricky question: how does one create systemic change, and get to the real needs
of the community, which are many and diverse? How get to the root of the
problem while addressing ongoing crises and ‘superficial’ but very real
challenges? Their recent move closer to the more centralized parts of West
Oakland (right off the highways), not so far from downtown, may be seen as a
symbol of this effort of growing and deepening their already substantial
network. They are calling their academy a ‘Growing Justice Institute’: for
leaders who are seeking community-led issues to food insecurity. Over two years, local leaders get mixed
forms of support to develop projects that enable income-generating, local food
security. Doing so collectively builds overall social
network capacity and what we in international development describe as ‘social
capital’ that is critical for learning for social change. </div>
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To be selected for the programme, they had to answer not
only why their proposed project was worthwhile, but how it dealt with some of
the ‘deeper issues’ of food injustice. Browsing the <a href="http://www.peoplesgrocery.org/article.php/gji">website </a>gives some insights
into how local leaders are conceptualizing the deeper challenges. These include,
eating habits, breakdown of person-to-person exchange and racial oppression and
injustice. Projects range from
setting up sliding-scale restaurants to increasing nutrition classes. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From my research, there is little doubt that setting up
learning communities is a key element of enabling systemic change. Some of these are political; some are
not. They raise questions about how much the projects get to the ‘root causes’
of injustice that are far larger than a small community in California. I
wonder, as they go forward, how much the participants in these programs will
themselves change their analysis and praxis. Like others in the wider global
community of food justice and sustainability in the midst of a changing
climate, they face the same challenges of siloization even as they are aware of
and trying to become more connected to the inter-related dynamics behind poverty
in order to enhance health and wellbeing.
</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
After chatting, mural-admiring and eating an excellent
mixture of beans, salsa and tortilla chips, I helped build a raised bed.
Shoveling some ‘local’ manure (cow, horse and something else I didn’t
recognize) with wood chips and layering it with various forms of dirt, I was
struck by how high the beds were: nearly up to my thigh. Was the soil on which we stood really
poor enough that it needed such high quality dirt? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were building on soil that has been long-impacted by
heavy metal. Being right next to
the freeway, they’ve gotten deposits of lead in the soil. There’s some concern
about air pollution getting onto the leaves – or the heads of different
vegetables. The constant movement of cars and trucks creates additional levels
of wind. But it’s got good sun exposure.
Raised beds are accessible to everyone. There’s talk of growing flowers. Personally, I hope they
grow beets, corn, squash and beans. – a colorful, nutritious and ancient
mixture of some hardy vegetables in an area and a community that needs the
health and beauty of such food as much as it needs leadership that can take the
promise of growing food and bring it to the people who hunger for real change. </div>
</div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-59885895127085620682012-07-06T02:54:00.000-07:002012-07-06T02:54:07.013-07:00Scanning the horizon from the ground<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div>
In an inherently unpredictable world, trying to sense the future is both impossible and of continual interest. Complexity sciences in use frequently encourage horizon scanning. The Institute of Development Studies, especially 'post' financial crisis, agrees. Everyone's got a horizon, but they may be different; one person's horizon is another person's past. And what better place to look for up and coming trends rather than dPhil students? Unquestionably, capturing 'complexity' is key.<div>
<div>
Some themes arose in a recent discussion of dPhil student's spaces: peer to peer democracy, subsidies' impact on poverty; multiple shocks; ethno-politics of wellbeing; politics of life; and capturing complexity. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One young man is working with indigenous people in a mountainous portion of Mexico where there is strong group membership and close identities. He is focusing on the power relationships between indigenous and non-indiegnous population around discourses of well-being. How are different mechanisms of resistance appearing in the region? They influence at the micro level but not the macro environment. The status quo is re-produced at the macro level. IDS hasn't paid much attention to Latin America - in Great Britain in general, Latin American studies institutes have been closing recently. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another is focusing on peer to peer democracy in Egypt. How are ICTs impacting the post-Arab Spring setting? Obviously they were key for the revolution. But how are they now enabling the emergence of citizenship and the shaping of new forms of identity? Social and technological phenomenan are becoming increasingly interlinked. The emerging social-technical environments do not fit our current paradigms of power and participation. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
How do social systems behave like complex systems? Can one bring greater rigour to what is often an experiment with metaphors? Eric Kasper is going to be working with PRIYA in India to carry out action research with the urban power to look at how they are acting as agents of their own development. He will be using a diversity of methods including an agent based model and a participatory methodology to understand rapid urbanisation and urban poverty. How do the structure of social networks impact what is possible in terms of social change? Mixing methodologies becomes increasingly important. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Maybe new horizons are less about finding new things so much as finding new ways of seeing. One lady used participatory film, digital mapping, relationships and bodies to find new ways of seeing the politics of life. AIDS, women, clinics, messiness and being personally and socially challenged: what's actually going on and how are we opening up the Latour's 'black boxes'.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Multiple shocks - from famines to financial crises - share many dynamics. It's all political, of course - and context specific. The differences of crises, multiple sectors, mixed methods and all the other ways we have of dividing the world often only come together within the lived experience of the human person, the household, and the networked enterprise over time. In the end, it comes back to people: what is the real experience of the people 'on the ground' wherever that ground might be? From horizons to ground - work: some opportunity for development.</div>
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</div>
</div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-2777909251376188982012-05-31T10:02:00.003-07:002012-05-31T10:02:53.902-07:00when there is no right answer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Some of the most important lessons arising out of complexity sciences are the simplest. And for those of us with a habit of making the simple complicated, simple lessons can be the hardest thing to learn.<br />
<br />
Take the notion that in a given context, agents have a range of different pathways before them. These are informed by the past, which shapes the internal and the external set of constraints an agent operates from. For any given objective, there is rarely any one way of getting there. Plus, causality is not linear. A does not lead to B. Lots of things happen between A and B, but its rarely linear. Especially in human systems, where a myriad of meaning-making occurs.<br />
<br />
In short, there is no right answer.<br />
<br />
There is no one sure-fire outcome.<br />
<br />
Of course, if we understand systems, some outcomes are more likely to occur than others. We are highly path-dependent. We create structures around ourselves and one another in such a way that life becomes predictable.<br />
<br />
But there is no one right answer.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure why this is so difficult for me to grasp, why I cling, desparately, to there being one right way over another way. Why it matters to me so much that there might be one right way and that I learn to follow it.<br />
<br />
We keep trying to find a 'rightness' that does not exist.<br />
<br />
This does not mean there is no such thing as 'rightness'. I like the frame 'right relationship' with ourselves and one another. But it is not the same as there being 'one right answer'.<br />
<br />
What's the difference?<br />
<br />
Here, I speak from what I think, not from what is grounded in my experience. Or rather, it is something I have only tasted briefly, in moments, spread out over time, without consistancy.<br />
<br />
There is a light.<br />
Or something like a light.<br />
Something inside and outside<br />
Inside of time and outside of time<br />
Inside of the physical world - intimately coiled around it, closer than you might imagine - and yet at the same time, far away from it.<br />
<br />
Or perhaps it is like music.<br />
We can be resonant with it - with ourselves, the earth, and with one another. When we are, we are closer to the flow, closer to the Dao.<br />
<br />
For this music, there is no 'good enough' or not 'good enough'.<br />
<br />
There is, however, joy. Less joy and more joy.<br />
<br />
<br />
And here I begin to fade into a conversation that I don't know well enough, or rather, it is what other people say and not, yet, something I fully know.<br />
<br />
Faced with confusion?<br />
Where is the joy?<br />
<br />
<br /></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-86689781967185854932012-04-25T05:09:00.002-07:002012-04-25T06:35:55.482-07:00Unruly Politics in Unruly TimesThe time is upon us - when the world is being turned upside down. <div>It can be seen in a million small interactions across the world.</div><div>Arab Spring. Donor organisations hastening to call themselves 'Southern'. And in a rather non-descript brick building at the University of Sussex, a room crowded with MA students and PhD students and staff at the Institute of Development Studies discuss 'unruly politics'. I've been to quite a fair number of IDS seminars, but this is my first one where an academic discourse was opened with a poem (is it time) set to the background of a song. A good beginning. </div><div><br /></div><div>So what is this lens - this way of seeing the world that enables a juxtaposition of objects and motion and people that we have not been able to fully understand, appreciate or work with - for 'unruly politics' that my colleagues are trying to develop? They seek a framework of intersectionality. Something that can bring together race and class and sexuality. There seems to be something about these unruly times where what happens in one place - not just an idea or an idiom but the practices and processes of change over time - impact across scale and space in ways that have not occurred before. There is a growing recognition of the failures of capitalism within the West - even as BRICS continue to fly full-fledged ahead in their own variations of capitalism. They seek a politics where conflicts have a high level of legitimacy for the democratic process. It is shadows and discomfort and the hacker who is always one step ahead of Microsoft. A certain celebration of that which 'misbehaves' - and not only to celebrate, but to recognise the discomfort and a space for argumentation. </div><div><br /></div><div>Looking around them, the researchers see a different kind of engagement of citizens with the sate; questions of representation, accountability and governance.... collective action of citizens in the form of movements. common to both : imagine politics to be about interests when it refer to the interests of individuals. </div><div>The state challenges these approaches: what are your demands? what is your leader? direct democracy a new voice of the people? </div><div>the voice of the collective was not being articulated through the logic of representation. the occupy movement, indiganodo, trafalgar square - they provide fundamental challenges to the way we understand politics in development. is it possible to hear that voice of the people, but they are not speaking in the same voice of the authorities. The body, the sexuality, becomes a place for substance and protest. A woman kisses the police man's helmet. </div><div>In their search to explain and find a framework for unruly politics, they went to Badiou, one of those impossible-to-read theoreticians who speaks to both mathematicians and philosophers. for this man, there is a return to seek truth and substance. But where do we find truth? In the abstract such as mathematics? There may be a moment of rupture, of revolution. There is, in general, an absorption of the unruly into the everyday. We can take for example Ghandi's mode of political action: the hunger strike, in which his own body becomes a way of speaking directly to the (im)moral economy. The British can not control this. But then that same experience of the hunger strike has since become so common in south-east asian political protest that it is taken up by those who are closer to the everyday protests and can take on a nearly staged effect. So older ideas come to be incorporated into new ones. We might be able to see this as a series of successes; or a series of failures. The unruly suggests modalities of political action. What are the conditions of those modalities? Social media is of course one of the current modalities of political action. Twitter starts as a way for the US military to communicate within itself and is taken up by the outside world and turned against the US military and the London Riots are co-ordinated by social media. There is a centrality of the body in these unruly politics. </div><div><br /></div><div>The body, technology, moral economies (a claim to justice that is beyond the law and beyond politics as it is defined) and 'conceptualising a true politics in cynical times'. The last is worth teasing out - there is a cynicism about the potential of any political act. And yet people are seeking 'true politics'. </div><div><br /></div><div> I appreciate the focus on the arts: the recognition that if we are, indeed, at the beginning of yet-another-new-world, we must dig into that part of ourselves that can infinitely create from the creative destruction around us. The need for continual creation and re-creation resonates across sectors, from science and innovation at this time. </div><div><br /></div><div>But more than anything else, what struck me from the seminar is that this framework is giving students and staff here at IDS a space to seriously engage in these alternative ideas that move away from the technocratic bureaucracies reflected in programmes or projects. They were able to relate the theory to their personal lives, from Pakistan to Northern Indian tea plantations, and in so doing their experiences were greatly enriched. Regardless of the framework they are developing, just the chance to discuss the links between Occupy and Southern Movements is a real contribution to the individuals and the communities gathered here.</div><div><br /></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-88991307218288390572012-03-06T01:19:00.000-08:002012-03-06T01:20:06.329-08:00Unconference: Discovering the CEC process<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:donotshowcomments/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> 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name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><br /></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is an unfortunate assumption in much of the discourse that it is the system that perpetuates good or poor governance. In this perspective, the system exists without people in it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The CEC<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>proposes an alternative solution: focus on the people in the system to create transformational change. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Integrate personal and organizational development for overarching societal development. The last day and a half of the unConference was an opportunity to explore this notion as a means of creating transformational change to ensure better service delivery.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Morning plenary speakers emphasized the importance and the urgency of changing the public sector and the importance of empowering employees to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The question became: would the conference participants internalize these messages and make the connections necessary to themselves further become agents of change? The World-Café-style round tables around the topic of ‘challenges’ facing the public sector gave participants a chance to brainstorm, play with and engage in interactive exercises.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was a clever design that enabled people to consider these challenges for themselves and with one another. ‘Trust’ – within departments, between departments, and with the larger community was a clear challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was easy for participants to come up with images of the ‘stereotypical bureaucrat’ who was only there for the stable salary. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">During the session on challenges, I wondered if the participants really ‘got it’. It was hard to tell. Participants laughed at the farmers when they got upset at the officials (in what was actually a slightly elaborated role play) for not paying attention to their needs and for blaming them for their problems instead of helping them. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Their laughter did not sit easily with me. The ‘old values’ of the bureaucracy sat heavily in the room. I wondered if they believed that change was actually possible – even though they said it was. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Talking is easier than taking responsibility.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes participants talked as if they were talking about someone else, with a slight smile and a cynical nod of their head, as if they themselves had neither responsibility nor agency. It took a student in the audience to point out the Elephant of Corruption that was lurking somewhere in the middle of the room – and a few of the stronger leaders to acknowledge it and her. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, there was a play acted out by individuals who had participated in the CEC’s notable Change Management workshops.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The play demonstrated how one civil servant took the CM workshop and subsequently grew closer to the farmers and his family. It was powerful and demonstrated a strong shift in the values of the main character.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Those playing in it had, indeed, had this particular experience. They were exposing themselves to the larger audience of their peers and supervisors.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This was followed by discussing the outcomes of the Change Management program. This included the evaluation from the Values Survey that we had done. We found that values that we associated with technocratic bureaucracy decreased. The various value-themes associated with humanizing the bureaucracy increased. Firming foundational values and the re-alignment of individual and organizational values towards the social good followed. We had the fortune of two people who had taken the surveys at our table, to share about how their values had shifted as a result of the workshop. Our evaluation was nicely complimented by a community-evaluation that affirmed that the relationships with the community had actually increased. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, there was a chance for the participants to actively explore the process by which this occurred. Here, the space of truth that lies at the heart of the CEC process, the Muttram space, was revealed. The Muttram is an alternative space where people could be themselves. In it, they break down the hierarchy and with it the rules and regulations that shape so much of the habitual and well-engrained behavior that prevents the needed innovation. This was a level of deep ‘employee’ engagement hinted at by the members of the private sector during the plenary discussions. Here, however, this is not done for the sake of improving the profit of the business: it is about improving delivery of water for the poorest. That teleos brought to the Muttram space an urgency and the capacity for change. In the Muttram space a new trust was created. Trust in themselves, in one another and in their surroundings.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here, then, was a solution at work: changing the people at work through creating a new<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Muttram Space’ based on the traditional courtyard spaces of joint-family living arrangements where trust and truth can gain dominance over dishonesty, disease and following-the-rules. This led to a shift in their identities – their values, worldviews and how they related to one another. Shifting their worldviews shifted the questions they asked. Shifting the questions shifted the solutions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was a strong focus on changing themselves – a focus on creating agency. Done within the mandate of better service delivery, and within the context of their fellow officers it was not ‘another self-help workshop’ but instead a process to enable better service delivery.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraph"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">CEC is primarily a voluntary organisation. In a system ubiquitous for its corruption, voluntary work by civil servants for the community is rare. At the moment, the CEC has over a thousand active members throughout the state. They support one another in building strong relationships with the farmers, leading to better innovation and appropriate action. This resonated with the plenary speakers in the private sector who emphasized the importance of ground-level innovation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Celebration and awards are critical aspects of any social change endeavor. The CEC offers no financial compensation to its members. It does, however,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>recognize strong leadership through pins of excellence. At the end of the conference, several change-agents were awarded these pins before those gathered. Each of them held the self-confidence and dignity that comes not from external recognition but from having undergone an internal process of change and accomplished real results that mattered to those whom they served. To my mind, knowing that these pins are only given out to those who had shown real leadership at the community level, these were the real heros of the conference. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Their work is only possible because they trust one another. They have engaged in a form of values shift. Through building this social capital they are able to better respond to complex change. To be successful, this needs the support of senior officials, further experimentation and further consolidation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">One model of transformation offered during the conference was ‘de-freeze, un-freeze, freeze and re-freeze’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It sounded like a rather cold and frigid model to me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What came out of the conversations and experiential processes of the UnConference was not a rigid model but a warm – even hot and uncomfortable - dynamic, living one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was nothing easy about what they were doing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But it was easy to tell those who had gone through the CM process from those who had not. It was the look in their eyes. A look of life. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-44426245510858140592012-03-06T00:58:00.001-08:002012-03-06T01:03:42.585-08:00Knowledge and the power of play: reflections on change management workshop<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:donotshowcomments/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> 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{mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">Before me: two geckos on a white wall, coconut trees in various shades of yellow and green and the sounds of ‘Hotel California’ mingle with cawing crows. At the end of the Irrigation Workshop hosted by the Centre of Excellence for Change Management, the campus where it was hosted is now largely still. I sit in the midst of an old library with so much dust on the floor that my footprints are easy to spot.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The once buzzing centre is in a mild state of disrepair. Familiar<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>books of development – ‘the global possible’, the ‘debt crisis’, ‘rural development’,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘participatory action research’, ‘the study of an Indian village’ are strewn about me in various degrees of organization. An old black board has sketches of faces – all with big mouths and noses. Ceiling fans spread the smell of woodsmoke from local fires between the book cases. I think of the British Library of Development Studies at IDS where I have spent many hours. I wonder if, someday, it will ever resemble this largely forgotten storehouse of decades of knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What I most clearly recall from BLDS are the people who run it, generously giving me their time and attention and passing along skills of such things as finding ‘critical’ knowledge resources.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Here there is no librarian. The books, without human hands to care for them, sit, waiting, growing slightly yellow around the edges.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">These books may be rarely read, the campus overgrown and the paint chipping around the corners, but the knowledge being cultivated in the past few days might well delight the long-gone founders from another era.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Centre of Excellence for Change (CEC) is using this campus for the workshops that help cultivate and spread the knowledge of how to create a transformation of human lives that can enable true socio-economic development. Books are not the most important knowledge resource here. Instead, it is the people who come and go in cars, buses and their own two feet, with purses and marking-pens and flip-charts, who are creating a kind of living knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A knowledge that can live in community.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">The CEC conducts a series of educational programmes around what they currently call ‘change management’, which is much of what has been occupying my intellectual and emotional energy since arriving in India.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Change management’ might not be the best word to describe their process. It is more of a kind of ‘change technology’, using ‘technology’ broadly, that reliably delivers significantly improved results in water service delivery for the poor. Their technology entails a process that dives into the essence of the human being as an agent of change in her work and in her community.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Some of their workshops integrate the entirety of the 8 departments within the Integrated Water Resource Programme. Other workshops work with only some departments or single departments. This workshop was composed of recently recruited irrigation engineers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Many had only been a part of their department for a few months. They came together for 3 days of education that was, for them, an entirely new and unique experience outside of any of their previous ‘education’. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">This education was about them. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">It is perhaps the great irony of the institutionalization of social systems that we so frequently leave out people.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or that when we focus on people, we leave out institutions and the technologies that shape both the organization and the person.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Much less the Spirit – the Spirit Corpus, Politus and Nobus that shapes and is in turn shaped by each of us.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Before coming, people told me that these workshops had changed their life. I asked what they did. We played games, they said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was not sure what they meant. At the workshop, I discovered the accuracy of their statement: They played games. Simple games, puzzle games, full-body games, role-playing games, circle-games, energizer-games. Many of these games might be familiar to a Westerner who has participated in ‘participatory’ workshops within Western contexts. I’ve played many variations of these games before.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But this time the games were different. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">After each game, there was a substantial discussion about what the games meant. Lessons were drawn about leadership, team-work, hierarchy, trust, communication, different perspectives, high-level performance and equality. The games got under the participants’ defenses, poked holes in their armor (not too difficult for this group which was pretty young) and gave them some wiggle room to discover new things for themselves through experience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Security needs were met again and again even as new rules were introduced and reinforced, such as being on time. They were thrown off balance and brought to a new balance with a subtle deftness that most of them were largely unaware of. It didn’t take long before the group was laughing more often than not. Laughter became the access to humanization. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">And then all of it was tied to their mandate as civil servants: to serve the poor and the citizenry of India. Their focus was returned, again and again, to their interactions with villagers and with their co-workers and one another.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A villager was brought in to talk to them about how often engineers do not listen to the perspectives and needs of the villagers. These young engineers were given a chance to have an open dialogue with him. He was accompanied by an older engineer who had already been through the Change Technology program and had grasped much of the essence. I had met him before: he sat besides the villager with a humility and respect for the other’s humanity that spoke more about their relationship than any of the words I did not fully understand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The villager, meanwhile, said that what he wanted was to be treated with dignity, and respect to be given to the traditional ways of irrigation. I sighed: the value, ‘dignity’ flowed out of him, infusing every part of his being.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How anyone could not treat him with dignity that was so clearly part of his essence escaped me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">At the end of the workshop, they took concrete actions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Each chose to experiment with two villages who had some of these new ‘values’. This enabled them to discover what was going on and engage with the farmers in creating real, co-created solutions. They would gather together in 45 days and in 90 days to report on their progress and learn from one another.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some of them already had the support of their bosses, though they might not realize this.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The participants left in a serious tone. There was no ra-ra so often found at the end of workshops. There was an awareness of how much work there was to be done. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">I had, as one does, become friends with a few of them – mostly women with good English. They found their jobs, which they had been so thrilled to obtain to often be difficult, lonely occupations. Gone was the commodery and mutual understanding of their peers. Instead, they were distant from their co-workers and supervisors and having to learn to submit their sense of self to their professional commitments. Some of this is normal for any person entering any organization, especially one as established as the civil service.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">None of them particularly wanted to go back to their offices.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They craved<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>the sense of mutual support and belonging that they found in this newly created space.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While taking on the new assignment of engaging in a different way with villagers was rather daunting (despite having clear and measurable results in a specific time scale) it gave them a way to engage with valuable work in a community with which they wanted to be associated and in which they wanted to be held in high esteem.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Here, words, action and knowledge can integrate into a new way of living. Done in the context of the Indian Bureaucracy, a new social order becomes possible, orientated towards serving the poor.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">Maybe someday books will be written about this. Maybe they won’t. But for these young people, a dream is being cultivated. That dream may well gain a life of its own.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is certainly not a new dream. But the dreams of a Beloved Community have brought men and women out of their bondages and closer towards the present moment before. There is no reason why it can not happen again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-64934144393380561442012-02-20T03:26:00.000-08:002012-02-20T03:28:24.564-08:00Between gutters and oxen: that sleeping human<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">I’ve published about poverty before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve slept on the outskirts of slums, worked with some amazing NGOs in Kibera, watched family members negotiate the welfare system, food stamps and the prison-industrial complex. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve slept next to homeless people in London. When people said, prepare yourself for the poverty of India, I raised my eyebrows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I thought I knew something about poverty.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> Three weeks in, and we’re in a new location – on the outskirts of a massive cricket stadium, the local muslim neighborhood and some large overgrown areas that are fenced off<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>- and we are fending for ourselves more than before. Last night after one of the best meals I’ve had recently (though I say that almost every day) we took a stroll around 10pm. The city was alive and hopping, shopping, eating, biking and talking. People<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>- everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In between shish kebabs and tea-stands where men practiced the art of pouring tea (and now that I finally realized what a significant influence Islamic culture had on India pre-colonialism, I’m seeing traces of Morocco in many of the customs here) and Muslim women in the full hajib – here, they tend towards styles with elaborate sparkles, gold and glittery designs chit-chatting with their girlfriends. There’s laughter and dust and piles of concrete and, of course, cows. (3 weeks in and I’m still amazed at the ubiquitous cows).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And somewhere between the broken sidewalks are people sleeping, some without so much as a blanket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Hands, sometimes without all the fingers, are curled around heads of thick, unbrushed hair. I soon lost count – how many sleeping figures on the side of the road, under archways, next to doorways, in the open, on the seat of a rickshaw, the back of a vegetable cart, in the gutter? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sometimes families – children standing awkwardly behind mothers. I looked at one particularly strong-willed and beautiful woman who was probably my age with three small children around her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Chennai is known for its grittiness and congestion –and the friendliness of its people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I meet that friendliness everywhere in this city. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I smiled at this woman. She did not smile back.</o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">I found myself trying to search my vast amounts of reading for explanations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I remembered colleagues talking about slums and participatory action research and urban poverty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Something about corrupt politicians, entrenched interests, unequal resource distribution, the fallacy of trickle down economics, profit before people, people leaving the rural areas for the urban areas and then finding nothing. Something about the lack of social welfare policy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I recalled the graphs we created about the transmission mechanisms of poverty. Looking at the dark hands, fingernails bitten and fingertips worn and dusty, I did not recall how we came up with those numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m sure we did a good job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But face to face with this human being, all I can think is, ‘there but for the grace of god go I.’ <br /> <br /> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Day after day, I go from hotels to rickshaws to office buildings to beaches to my computer to dinners to meetings…. And in every movement, I am surrounded by what we loosely call ‘poverty’. Not the poverty of a healthy village but of homeless men, women and children whose sleep looks like the sleep of the exhausted, the drugged, those in denial, the depressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The cows look far, far healthier.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">I know that I actually, have very little sense of what their lives are ‘really’ like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">This morning we ate outside of the hotel – masala dosa, fresh fruit and lassi. A delicious, healthy breakfast for 2 people for under $2.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">This morning, the homeless were still there.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">I’m here to try a new form of evaluation to measure a new type of program that is designed to enable the government to better serve the poor. By and large, I’ve been motivated by the chance to engage with a new and potentially significant way of measuring results (value: innovation) and the incredible people I’m working with (value: belonging, team/collaboration).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This morning, I’m reminded of another motivation: anything that I can do to address anything that resembles the root causes of poverty. Value: Service. </p> <!--EndFragment-->Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-77018107647691880782012-02-20T03:25:00.000-08:002012-02-20T03:26:26.636-08:00cultural sighs<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst">Walking to my room after eating in the local small-small town, pulling out my key, and then the power generator goes off and I can’t see the lock. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Going to the bathroom at 4am, mild stomach upset, and remembering that they don’t have toilet paper.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">People saying I should prepare a presentation. Powerpoint. With another group. Then, no, it won’t be with another group, it will be alone. Then, no, it won’t be a presentation. Then, no, it won’t be powerpoint. Then, no, it will be a preseantion and you should make posters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then, you will present with these people whom you have not yet met. Then, well, everyone else was preparing the posters a week ago, why aren’t yours ready?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">Choose what food you want. Eggplant. Eggplant is a side dish. OK, chicken. Chicken is a side dish. Choose a main. What’s a main? Rice, rotti, chippatti, igli.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I actually just want eggplant and chicken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why don’t you do a mini meal? Because it is too large; I’ll take <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>a North Indian meal. (silence.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe this was not a good restaurant, you don’t understand how to order. Actually, I don’t care. I’m starving. Maybe you should just order for me. How about a mini-meal? Fine. I stare at the rice. If I eat that much rice, I won’t be able to move. Someone else passes by with what looks like a steaming dish of eggplant curry.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">On the beach with a new (male) friend, it is dark, we are leaving. A strange man approaches us. He wants my friend to introduce him to me. They speak in a language I don’t understand. The stranger’s eyes are big, eager, he is looking at my pale skin in the moonlight and I do not want to know where his mind is going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I act on pure, unbridled instinct, positioning my body behind my friend. He reacts, also instinctual, shielding me from the stranger. The stranger leaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I suspect the stranger was harmless. I am slightly shaken – not by the stranger so much as my response – I am tall, strong and big-boned, but in that moment, I was a woman, and my primary experience was vulnerability. I felt my gender shaping every glance and every interaction. We keep walking, talk turning to other things. I am grateful for that process by which strangers become friends, and friends can, at times, become protectors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I need to take some more Judo.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The scarves are so beautiful. The women here wear them draped around their chest and then thrown over their shouldres. To my eyes it looks like a graceful necklace turning into flowing coat-tails. I try. It falls off. Again. And again. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe they have better posture than I do. Eventually, standing in a line, I look closely at the woman in front of me. Safety pins. Ah! Now I know! I watch the school girls – the scarves are perfectly pressed and stay in place, very factual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I ask my companion – do the scarves have meaning? Yes, they are to cover the chest. I pause. A woman tells me a story of how work-etiquette requires that women pin the scarves carefully as to cover the entire breasts. (Over an already conservative dress-like outfit). Suddenly the beautiful ‘necklaces’ become symbols of a conservative society. I have seen no women wear jeans or pants. Looking around the women suddenly seem trapped. The scarves loose their beauty. I ask my companion about his thoughts about men wearing jeans and women not. He points out that the traditional saris women used to wear are rarely worn any more (apparently a different style than what I’m surrounded by); that the modern outfits for women are much more free and comfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe the scarves are not so bad. I will try wearing one over my chest on Monday to the office. With pins. And a pair of jeans. </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><o:p> Meaning, meaning, meaning. It’s all about meaning.</o:p></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-5331376633173621142012-02-09T23:31:00.000-08:002012-02-10T00:27:04.259-08:00Transforming the Indian Bureacracy? Inverting the PyramidTransformation needs to happen at all levels. For transformation to happen, there needs to be an environment at the grassroots level of the bureaucracy. The whole system needs to change. But who is part of that system? People are. Who builds the good institutions? People do. <div><br /></div><div>Sanjay Pahuja from the World Bank suggested that 'development' is about bridging the gap between those who have and those who have not. We do a lot of work to design a wagon - but who is going to do the work of pulling the wagon? The real work that needs to be done will increase the hard work of those who are engaged. There are vested interests in each system. People who seek to change the system are facing tremendous odds. They may risk their careers, their livelihoods and sometimes their family members. Dr Pahuja suggests that 'the people who will do so are insane people.' </div><div><br /></div><div>These people are internally motivated. Using the Hall-Tonna values development map, Dr Puhuja showed how there always are those internally- and service-motivated people who do not need to get approval from the external world of authority.</div><div><br /></div><div>We need 'insane people' who are internally motivated to create change. And we need to support them. This is not about one charismatic leader. It is about many people working together. We are motivated by different things. We need to support the resources for change agents so that they know they are not alone. Because creating 'transformational change' isn't exactly easy. He suggests that if we can support those 'insane people' who are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty we can create a tipping point in which other people will follow suit. How can we find and support such insanity? </div><div><br /></div><div>I wonder, sometimes, how many of us are really insane people. The more I get to know people, the more I see how many ways all of us have courage - and capacities we are generally unaware of. In my evaluation of this project thus far, I have met many ordinary bureaucrats who have become heros for themselves and their communities. This was possible because they have learned to trust themselves and one another. They can authentically move up the values map. </div><div><br /></div><div>Later, we heard from IBM - '<a href="http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/gbs-making-change-work.html">Making Change Work'. </a> We need to change mindsets and attitudes. Technology is not the issue. Of course, this is much of the work that lies behind Values Technology. Hearing it from the mouth of IBM was still powerful: the problem is about management, people and attitudes. They have change as a track under their strategy and management process. They have a 'change manager', recognising that because change happens, there needs to be someone who can continually work with change. While I question this notion of 'managing change', it is certainly critical to acknowledge that change is going to keep on happening. Change is here to stay.</div><div><br /></div><div>In this session, I sense increasing levels of honesty from the floor. One man asked Dr Puhuja, who works at the World Bank - we've done what you've told us for the past 20 years, and it isn't working. Dr Puhuja, who has worked in some hard conditions in the villages, spoke about the importance of focusing on the front-line people. He admitted the Bank faces some of the same challenges as any other. </div><div><br /></div><div>As the questions become more honest, people are becoming more grounded and less abstract. As this occurs, some of my earlier skepticism is lifting. There is, indeed, real potential in this room: to really consider what needs to be done. I am curious, now, right before lunch, how this discussion of changing mindsets to enable passionate professionalism can occur.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-31060559260827023942012-02-09T21:03:00.000-08:002012-02-09T23:31:52.314-08:00Transformation in the Indian Bureacracy? Lessons from the Private Sector"The need for transformation in the public service is urgent... and it is entirely possible."<div><br /></div><div> So said Prof Leonard Joy in the opening panel at the "International unConference on Leading Organisational Transformation for Effective Service Delivery" hosted by UNICEF and that Centre of Excellence for Change Management in Chennai, India.<div><br /></div><div>The unconference started with a prayer. Then the noted dignitaries in the civil service lighted the Kuthuvilakhu, a tall, sacred lamp that in the Hindu tradition covered with yellow flowers. For Hindus, this oil lamp symbolises coming out of darkness. It burns to provide peace and understanding. This conference - by public officials for public officials - is seeking a transformation in the public sector. It needs the light of the Kuthuvilakhu and of those gathered here to pull it forward. Villagers are moving out of the village because the water is not doing well. Urban and rural water quality is getting worse. Government is throwing more money on the problem - but this is not solving the challenge.</div><div><br /></div><div>How does transformation occur? Interestingly, the panel only touched upon this. There was an awareness of some of the critical challenges facing people on the ground including increasing degradation of fresh water sources, the importance of rewarding the power responsive to the public and being the way you do the work and how you deliver. Civil servants can be heros. </div><div><br /></div><div>The second panel discussed 'meta transformations'. They brought in examples from across various attempts to transform. This included the State Bank of India and HCL tech. Both private sector organisations had undergone an internal transformational process after they had undergone the recognition that there was a pressing need for transformation. HCL has been winning awards around the world in their philosophy. This is a process of putting the <a href="http://employeesfirstbook.com/">'Employees first, customers second.</a>' Through empowering people in the field to create change in a structured way, one can create cultural change. In HCL, any employee can write to the CEO and get a response in 24 hours. Employees do the appraisal for the managers; this is shown to everyone. This creates a high culture of accountability and managers approach their team as a team. The CEO shares his plan with his employees and the employees are able to give feedback to that. All departments are scored based on service level. They are suggesting to go beyond engagement and instead to focus and measure 'passion'. They have thus created 'passion scores', around delivery, sales, enabling and other areas. This is about democratising the workplace. Their message was loud and clear: transformation can only occur through people. </div><div><br /></div><div>Questions from the floor spoke to the resignation that the audience had about their own sector. There was a question about if the people in government were somehow different than the people in the private sector. Of course this is not true. People are people. The induction process is different, the incentives are different, but people are the same. </div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps, then, the lessons the public sector can learn from the private sector is not so much around the privatisation of critical resources so much as the process through which they successfully enable the humanisation of their organisations.</div><div><br /></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-20000111432591092962012-01-28T14:03:00.000-08:002012-01-28T16:27:58.213-08:00Quaker Epistemology: A partial solution for complexity?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The day of the Meeting dawned bright and blue, the sun stretching herself across my bedroom window and inviting me to play. In the morning stillness, I could feel the attention of those who were going to be gathering together. And there are precious things more important than attention.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I had called upon some of the best individuals that I know. The founder of a major consulting company using complexity theory, the head of an academic department that worked with complexity and transformational learning, a close friend of some of the founders of complexity and himself a globe-trotting governance consultant, and an up-and-coming academic with a passion for the complex.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This rather extra-ordinary group of people had negotiated meetings, emergencies and various time zone challenges to be on a Skype call with me to hold my recent paper on Developing frameworks for Complexity up to the light, to see where the Light was shining through on it. In this, we were experimenting with 'Quaker Epistemology' developed at QIF.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.quakerinstitute.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Quaker Institute for the Future</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (QIF) sponsors a summer research seminar which employs what we call “Meeting for Worship on the Conduct of Research.” We have developed a format where we listen to a presentation of someone’s current work, have a standard question and answer period and then center into a time of reflection, allowing comments to surface from the silence. In the process, powerful insights emerge from the participants and the presenter is ready to hear them.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My research into complexity sciences highlighted that in complex systems, different epistemologies are needed to deal with complex issues that go beyond pure intellectual thought. This includes bringing in our practical and experiential knowledge systems. I believe that part of the challenge with complex problems is that we can not - inherently - ever have complete knowledge. It is inherently difficult to spot the patterns of a system we are a part of. Our rational minds inherently get in the way. But so can our practical and experiential knowledge. So too can our emotional intelligence. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">To solve the most pressing complex issues, we need to tap into our collective intelligence.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One flavour of collective intelligence is the spiritual intelligence that Quakers have come focus on and hone over the years. We at QIF are breaking ground in experimenting with integrating Quaker Process with substantial intellectual challenges. As a part of this community, I have heard research that ranges from bio-technology to film studies in Africa and China work with this particular process. Every time, something new is revealed, something that was not been seen before. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This was the first time it was tried online. If we are to be successful with this process, we need to be able to approach complex challenges across space and time. But since so much of Meeting for Worship for research is a physical experience, where the small motions of our neighbours make a substantial difference, I was unsure about what would occur online. We know when to speak and when to hold the silence in part through non-verbal cues that are difficult to pick up in an online space. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">HoweverI have had profound online-collective conversations in the past. It requires a high level of imaginal skills and real focus. We have to enter into an imaginal, virtual space with people who may not know us particularly well. As inherently physical beings - and in my reading of it, Quakerism is a primarily physically- and action-orientated faith - the stillness that lies at the heart of our action is found in the stillness of our bodies and enhanced through other bodies. And yet it has been possible to bring that physicality into our online experiences. It just requires an extra - something. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In a situation where the participants did not know each-other - only I knew everyone else - was it possible to reach an intellectually and spiritually revealing space?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The conversation started with the technological difficulties that Skype is known for. One person was quite late to the conversation due, in part, to technical challenges. I shared who everyone was to me. We had some silence. I 'presented' what I felt was the main themes of the paper (they had all actually read it, I'm pleased to say). </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And then some silence, and then questions, and then more silence, and then responses and questions and discussions, and hopefully we were all listening to some </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">How was it?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Somewhere between amazing and challenging. I discovered I was answering a question I didn't know I was asking - how is that that people who are engaging in what I call 'systemic self reflection' are actually engaging in that practice in a way that bridges scale and crosses systems. I had one of those moments when I understood the connection between who I am and why I do what I do, one of those moments when various pieces of my life journey suddenly overlapped with the various pieces of my intellectual arguments in such a way that not only was my perspective valuable but value created my perspective. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Cool.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And yet we needed more silence, more light-holding, and more time. 60 minutes was not enough. We needed more clarity about how to hold up 'research' to the "Light" (that nebulous metaphor) that those steeped in Quaker practice were familiar with and those who were not struggled with. It was easy to loose the sense of space between speakers. Silence on Skype is hard.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And I'm at the point where I am ready to let go of Skype for these kinds of calls and instead to pay for a technological solution that is reliable and doesn't have annoying noises in it. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Nevertheless, perhaps the most profound part was recognising that a) the value and the challenge of the work that I am doing and b) that approaching this intellectual topic with an attitude of honour and gratitude opened the door for everyone to engage in it in a way they had not done so before. Every participant got something out of the process. One said to me that she felt the conversation ignited a rich collection of sparks that kept firing for the next few days and resonated in her own (somewhat related) work. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Online spaces require different protocols, rules of engagement and patterns of interaction to make them successful across time and space. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And that introductory presentation is particularly important. It is important to do as much work for it as possible - to get to the heart of what is it that we are struggling with, really? The pre-work I did was immensely helpful. Knowing it would be held to the Light, and not just to intellectual thinking, enabled me to stretch my imagination: what was really going on here? And so I ended up saying things I had not heard myself say in more 'traditional' 'intellectual' spaces, even those with a strong appreciation of emotional intelligence and experiential knowledge. Appealing to a different goal - setting my sights 'in' and 'out' at the same time - re-focused my intellectual energy on the 'flow' between the parts. Which is one of the main contributions of a holistic appreciation of complexity sciences. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A success? Yes, if we can learn from it and build from it - and if others can take experiment with it. Experiments with Light .... taken to a whole new level. The level of the meatiest, most challenging public policy and economic planning of our era: that of shifting socio-technical-economic systems to enable sustainability.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I'm not suggesting every policy needs Quaker epistemology. Variations of deliberation are insufficient to achieve the sustainability that is needed. Overarching power structures and institutional changes will impact the 'fitness landscape' as much as a thousand narratives. But there is nonetheless something invaluable in our process that can help us know what to pay attention to.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In a world with increased information, demands for attention and general anxiety, clarity about what to pay attention to is one of the primary challenges. Navigating multiple narratives with grace requires a reliance upon a practice that can bring us closer to something that resembles active wisdom.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, the non-Quakers where working to take the 'religious' language out of this process to make it 'secular'. I've mixed feelings about this. On the one hand: please, help me make this something that we can translate, because the problems I want to tackle are in spaces who fear the 'god language'. On the other: sigh. Somewhere inside of me remains a touch of a purist who isn't sure at what point we slide away from the essence of the thing that we are working with and embark onto just another collection of people sharing different perspectives without that hunger for more-than-ourselves that lies at the heart of our personal and societal lurching, hovering and occasionally developmental quests. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Regardless of the language, and despite the need for tweaks, I believe there is something in this process that might be scale free, and enable us to bring that beloved community of sustainability a bit closer to actualisation.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-18940127372895338832012-01-28T10:42:00.000-08:002012-02-07T06:33:07.061-08:00Freeing the Mystery: Valuing IWRM<span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language: EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:Arial;font-size:11.0pt;"> <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language: EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:Arial;font-size:11.0pt;"><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This being human - </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anam-Cara-Spiritual-Wisdom-Celtic/dp/0553505920"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the mystery never leaves us</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We know that we are at once precious and whole - and incomplete. We thirst for wholeness.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Penguin-Education-Freire/dp/014025403X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327777724&sr=1-1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pablo Freire</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> noted that in our yearning to complete ourselves we can turn to either humanisation or dehumanisation. History is rife with both. But it is only humanisation which is the 'people's vocation'. Humanisation is only possible with freedom. Freedom terrifies: It requires authenticity which requires breaking away from the images of the adult when that adult is our oppressor. And who among us is neither oppressor nor oppressed? It requires maturation. As we deeply social creatures need one another during the strife of acquiring our freedom, this means we need to reach beyond our individuality towards the other without loosing ourselves in the process.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And so this becomes our task: to free one another from the bonds of our own and our society's oppression. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To do so, we use what we have always used - hands, hearts, minds - and language. We use words. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We must call one another forth.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And not just any words. We use those words that are so powerful that they call us into action. Freire called those action-words, praxis - where reflection and action intertwine, allowing a pathway towards freedom. 30 years ago, </span><a href="http://www.valuestech.com/gui/aboutus.aspx"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dr Brian Hal</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">l called these words 'values'. My colleague </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tone-s-ringstad/a/605/42"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tone Ringstad</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> sometimes calls them 'sparks'. They spark the engine of any organisation. The engine that enables human development. Certainly those who actively work with these values' eyes have a certain light sparkle to them. It is as if these intangible pockets of energy have their own life, and when we work with them, we touch something that is deeper than much of the superficiality of human existence and yet forms and re-forms it.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Inspired by Freire, developmental psychologists and his own work Latin America, Dr. Hall systematically found 125 Universal Human Values, named them and created a way to measure them. Their development echoes a </span><a href="http://www.spiraldynamics.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">spiral dynamics</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> that may be familiar to some of you, but with a level of granuality and - critically - of measurement that provides proxies, insights and focus for some of the most critical aspects of human work: enabling the alignment of individuals, teams, and cultures within and between institutional structures. Have I mentioned the measurement part? We can measure them. And as any of us who have followed the debates on the importance - and pain - of GDP as an indicator of so-called 'development', what we measure is what we count and what we count, well, counts. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I've been steeped in values-data the past few days/weeks as I prepare to go to India for the first-ever evaluation of an Integrated Water Resource Management project.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It turns out that some of the early work of Values Development was done in India. Dr Hall worked closely with <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); ">Fr. Anthony De Sousa of the Xavier Institute of Management, Mumbai. That collaboration led to the Manohar publication of a book on leadership and values in 1979: Developing Leadership by Stages.The book's publication was sponsored by the Department of Research and Publication of the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: -webkit-xxx-large; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 11px;">So I stand on the shoulders of giants, embarking into one of the modern 'Tiger' economies. Yet I feel quite small, embarking into a strange culture and a strange land to talk - and to learn - about human values. It is an opportunity to live out some of my own 'higher' values: of interconnection, minessence, synergy and 'word'. There's a lot we don't know. </span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Here, in the world of water engineers and floods (we lost some good data due to recent flooding; less fortunate people lost their lives) and fisheries and farmers and the desire to improve service delivery and agricultural outputs and the complications of the Indian beauracracies that these questions of freedom and the values that will get us there become real. By real I mean, really messy. By really messy, I mean, complex. By complex I mean, the stuff of life. Where it is possible to detect patterns and to find the </span><a href="http://amauta-international.com/iaf99/Thread1/conway.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">difference that will make a difference</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Water-Bodies Restoration and Management (IAMWARM) </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> was instigated in response to the report of an Expert Committee on “Development and Management of Water Resources”. It emphasized the critical need to increase agricultural productivity, especially in the absence of possibility for bringing additional land area into cultivation.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It saw the challenge as one of </span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">increasing the efficiency and productive use of water and strengthening and integrating institutional structures to give small and marginal farmers access to irrigation management and improved agriculture practices.This entails bringing together 8 departments, from fisheries to agriculture. This is no small task.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, serif;"><!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Integrated Water Resource Management requires a certain collection of values. Researchers continuously find water decisions and processes for service delivery require balance of diverse perspectives and the promotion of shared vision values, such as sustainability. It requires that administrations move out of the 'me centred' perspective and towards a 'we centered' perspective. This is a significant Inherently complex, water basin systems require multi-stakeholder negotiation and what some folks at MIT and Tufts are calling</span><a href="http://waterdiplomacy.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 'water diplomacy'.</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> This trip, at least, is less about water diplomacy per se as it is about how much a particular change management programme that has sought to bring together the different departments been successful. We are using this cutting-edge values technology to measure this - and doing what I hope will be a large and rich array of field work, talking to a string of water engineers, departmental heads and others to discover just how much this particular programme has had the desired impact. Are they able to work together in a way that increases their shared humanity? Or are they being pulled towards continued disintegration?</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, serif;"><span style="font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> It's not easy, bringing about integration for better service delivery, though it is essential for sustainability. That search for wholeness. In a state with a long history of water conflicts, this is one evaluation that might put a small drop towards making a difference. But at the moment, most of what I have is a lot of unanswered questions, and a sneaking suspicion that the real mystery is that amidst all of our differences, we connect ever, at all.</span></span></span></div><div><span style=" font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-bidi- mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><!--EndFragment--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-76546549903140730162012-01-17T12:31:00.000-08:002012-01-17T14:21:11.573-08:00Poetry, Order and Prophecy amidst Chaos<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">To create 'Order' from Chaos. There are few endeavours we humans strive for more deeply and continuously. Of course we continually, regularly - even orderly? - fail. Still, our mythologies, sciences, rituals and institutional structures strive - and do - order and re-order ourselves and our worlds.<br /><br />When we stand amidst particularly strong chaos, she who can create a new order - an order that others can and do align their behaviour with - exercises great power and influence. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And one of our most powerful ways of doing so - especially if one is not the emperor and can thus order the world around one with relative ease - is through poetry. Metaphors become the keys to open endless doorways between the world as it is and the world as it might be</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Which, </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prophetic-Imagination-Walter-Brueggemann/dp/0800632877"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Walter Brueggemann </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">suggested, is how the prophets were as powerful as they are. The prophet, said the theologian, has the task of reframing "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us. We exercise great freedom in whom God is now permitted to be among us." </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In </span><a href="http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/prophetic-imagination/transcript.shtml"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">his interview with Krista Tippett, </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">he quotes Isaiah 43: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Do not remember the former things nor consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And apparently, what he's telling his people is just forget about the Exodus. Try to imagine that. That whole, babes and mamas leaving Egypt thing - just put it to one side and pay attention to the present moment. </span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sitting with this passage a bit, I think of the discussions we have at work about a) the need to get beyond 'business (er, research) as usual' and the immediate, subsequent, b) continuation of business as usual. Of course, changing narratives - and thus action - isn't exactly easy. Those deep stories - 'there is no other way to get funding than the way we've been doing it and without funding we won't survive' can be harder to change than <a href="http://iss.sagepub.com/content/6/4/427.abstract">slaying a dragon</a>. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We are so very focused on the past, no doubt obsessing about our own tendency towards path dependency. Turning ourselves towards the present - and thus the responsibility of choice and the potential of both failure and success - has never been modern society's strongest asset. Present moment awareness is one of the simplest and most challenging insights of most faith traditions, and, so far as I can tell, of the lessons coming out of the loose family of complexity sciences.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The passage above does not tell us to look at the future. The future and the present are quickly brought together. We are asked, 'do you not perceive it' - the emerging newness is here, before us, right now.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And yet right here, right now, there is so much to see. What do we pay attention to?</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> No, I'm not sure I do perceive it, Isaiah. There are a lot of signals around.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Weak signals, strong signals, the mass media, the inner quiet, the telephone call - we are awash with information signals. Coming into the present moment can be overwhelming and fragmenting. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Maybe that's just fine. Brueggemann beautifully describes us as collections of fragments that do not always fit together. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Poetry can pull together and re-arrange those fragments better than almost anything else. </span></div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps this is because poetry has something that we so often lack these days - play, and silence. There's a lot of noise out there. Maybe you're luckier than I am, but sometimes my head feels like the television used to sound when I pushed too many buttons on it as a child (back when TVs had one button per channel). In poetry, and in good ministry, it is the space between the words as well as the words themselves that shape the listening. Shape the listening and you shape the understanding. </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I started regularly writing poetry a year ago, when I split with my partner of 6 years. I've written over 110 poems since then. Some have been published. Some have brought meaning to other people's lives. Some have helped me re-order my relationship with myself and learn to tell myself a different story of who I am. They have brought me to other poets - from the old testament to more recent poets, such as Pablo Neruda, and have formed and informed my ministry within Quakerism. I need no convincing of the power of poetry. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I do, however, need more practice in linking my poetry with real-world change.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In my most recent feedback from a social-sciency paper I'm producing for </span><a href="http://www.futurehealthsystems.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Future Health Systems </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">at IDS, my supervisor suggested that sometimes I had a little 'too much poetry'. Aiming for versatility in my writing, I'm heeding his advice. (Though I'm still slightly miffed. I liked my 'cute' phrases.) </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The real trick, I think, is in translation.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> As </span><a href="http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Snowden</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> recently reminded me, it is narratives and heuristics more than rules that will guide our behaviour. Knowing when to use what metaphor to help which fragment re-arrange itself within the overarching framework of an institution requires knowing the language and meaning within each area. Keeping our language at the 'edge' means knowing what the shapes of any given audience is. Assuming (for a moment at least) that my supervisor is right - my audience might not be able to hear my so-called 'poetry'. To be heard, we must speak as close to the language of fishermen and policy makers as we can - but remember to which we speak.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> This may be yet another aspect lying behind why so many 'blue print solutions' don't work - they lack the translators who can go from the blue print and translate it into the particularities of that situation. And when they do 'work' - it is because some<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1782478"> un-sung meza-level manager</a> has found a way to translate the macro to the micro. Translation takes skill - and time. We lack the time and the space to sit with the original piece of work and think, how can this really be used? What meaning do we want to take from this, today? </span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>This is not easy. Those who sit with these uncomfortable passages, where we are asked to disregard the comforts of past patterns (especially those not working), and look to the next surprising edge of a continuously changing and morphing living Spirit are tasked with finding a 'radical' (root-centered) way of living.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps the work of prophetic poetry is a conversation, not a monologue. </div><div><br /></div><div>A conversation with at least three actors: the prophet, the listener/reader, and that Being which both listener and prophet are seeking, who is springing forth amidst us, if we can let go of the past sufficiently to see this moment's Genesis.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we face increasing 'chaos' (or at least something that resembles it), our collective capacity to be poetic prophets and deep - even intercessorary -listeners to and for one another will grow. </div><div><br /></div><div>Get thee to thine poetry, oh change-maker. And to thine listening. And to thine acting. </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, Georgia, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"> </span></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-28209163778430940412012-01-15T07:41:00.001-08:002012-01-15T11:50:17.208-08:00Navigating chaos through ritual: London FeastingIn complexity-sciences lexicon, Occupy London could be said to be 'at the edge of chaos'. There are some things we know about systems at the edge of chaos that we can apply to the internal and external 'chaos' that both enables and constrains this particular manifestation of a global disquiet with the inequality and non-sustainability that stains our current socio-economy. <div><br /></div><div>One might bear in mind that the use of metaphors from chaos theory for human systems, which are always, on some level, complex (that is to say, humans working together are inherently connected and learn from one another) can be quite problematic and should be done with care. Metaphors are some of our most powerful tools for creating change. Still, last night I was able to make it practical and useful for a small group of change-makers within Occupy London. Hopefully by sharing it here, it can support others.</div><div><br /></div><div>It started when I showed up at the <a href="http://www.bankofideas.org.uk/welcome/">'Bank of Ideas</a>' for a conversation about health systems as a form of Commons. Since I'm thinking of the potential use of a commons-framework for some work I'm doing, this seemed a good use of a Saturday afternoon. What I had not appreciated (because I can be amazingly daft) is that I was going to the 'other Occupy London' site - a former Bank, now completely cleaned of computers and tables and chairs and filled, instead, with workshop space, a loose community of people sleeping, guitar-playing, ping-ponging, samosa-making and scheming on some worn-down leather couches And cold: they don't exactly have the budget for the heating bill. Nevertheless, this international, somewhat ragged group of occupiers is sitting between Barclays and HSBC, painting flowers on walls and holding workshops on taxation in a building worth 55 million - and paying nothing for it. Such is one of the shapes of today's manifestation of globalisation. </div><div><br /></div><div>The discussion of the Health Commons never happened. </div><div><br /></div><div>Instead I attended a discussion on Integral Activism (that's Integral using Ken Wilbur's frameworks) which was trying to figure out how to bring some degree of 'development' (Wilbur style) to the internal chaos, lack of communication and uneasy diversity that the (rather white, rather male, rather young) and distinctly unstructured inner workings of Occupy. I suggested that they not talk too explicitly about Integral theory and instead focus on some relatively easy, concrete actions that could enable greater communication/community/'we space' and even some bridge-making, collective reflection. I subsequently bailed early and bummed my way into a discussion on the <a href="http://thefutureofoccupy.org/">Future of Occupy</a>, held in one of the warmer rooms of the building - what was probably once a coveted corner office and now held a (very nice) blow up mattress, something that resembled a bookshelf , some chairs and a group of 'Commoners' and others I didn't know. Including a few Full Timers. Who were having almost exactly the same conversation as the Integral folks - how to enable greater connectivity and something that resembled order amidst a very, very open system (people coming and going a great deal with minimal consistancy). This group, though, was less concerned about 'inner work' and more concerned about strategic direction. They were talking about using scenario planning as a way of working with the different options before them. </div><div><br /></div><div>I wondered what <a href="http://www.forumforthefuture.org/siteusers/jonathon-porritt">Jonathan Porr</a>itt would do with such a disparate group of people. Like so many others, <a href="http://www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/occupying-our-minds">he's walked around the camps</a>. And like so many others, the good folks at Occupy and he haven't figured out what, if anything, they can do to support one another besides sharing some metaphors, sentiments and considerations.</div><div><br /></div><div>Towards the end of the discussion I finally saw the pattern: there was a fair amount of internal 'chaos' in a very 'open system' (ok, yes, I know, strictly speaking, chaotic systems are closed, not open) with a high level of inherent uncertainty. There was no structure to help the chaos move towards complexity - to form patterns of interaction that could stabilise into something that resembled order.</div><div><br /></div><div>And us humans - we love order. Oh, I know, we hate it also. But collectively creating order and making patterns to which we ascribe meaning is one of our most ancient and even sacred collective tasks. It was then that the insights that <a href="http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/">Dave Snowde</a>n shared with me in our most recent conversation came resounding back to me: one of the ways that we humans - unlike 'agents' in the complex adaptive systems studied at places like the Santa Fe Institute - create order is through ritual. </div><div><br /></div><div>So this is the story I told. It's not, strictly speaking, true. But it's a good story. </div><div><br /></div><div>Occupy London formed out of chaos. It was never sure if this self-organised new social movement would survive more than a few hours, a few days. But, against the odds, it has survived. It continues to grow, and to form new patterns of interaction. At first, it was mostly concerned with logistics and the basic survival needs of food, warmth, shelter and safety. While these are still a concern, it is slightly less than it used to be. It is now struggling to become more complex - that is, it is struggling to learn together even as it broadens to include the rest of the '99%'. This is a natural occurance. There is nothing wrong with the experience of frustration that is so common here. In fact, we might even see it as a good sign - provided some degree of consistant people can stick with it. It is an opportunity to evolve to the next phase.</div><div><br /></div><div>But there is nothing - nothing - inevitable about this evolutionary journey. True: the overarchin<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker">g arc of history bends towards justice.</a> But this particular manifestation of an attempt towards justice depends (partially) on the active and collective actions (forming interactive patterns) of we who can be involved. So.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is now the time when we need to come to know one another in what we Quakers call 'that which is eternal'. The natural way that happens is around the significant passages of our lives: births, deaths, marriages. The daily General Assemblies are such rituals that give structure and collective meaning to chaos, enabling the slow formation of order. </div><div><br /></div><div>But we don't have to wait for more marriages or deaths. There is another ritual that we can use: Feast Days. </div><div><br /></div><div>Feasting brings the community together in celebration of itself and the world around it. </div><div><br /></div><div>So what about a Feast Day in February, in Celebration of a True Wealth. It would be a chance for all three Occupy spaces in London to come together. It would enhance communication, community and happiness. If we did it at St Pauls, it could bring in the very rich local food movements in London. The diverse local communities could come and share their food - and with it, their culture. </div><div><br /></div><div>We would have two rules: Come in friendship, and, Bring the food yourself. In other words - No vendors allowed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nothing, absolutely nothing, would be bought and sold using the currency issued by the Bank of England (or the Federal Reserve, or the EU). </div><div><br /></div><div>We are celebrating True Wealth here. The Wealth of the Commons. </div><div><br /></div><div>Financiers, of course, are welcome at our table. We will exchange food and friendship and fellowship. But for one meal, we will exchange no british sterling.</div><div><br /></div><div>And we could do it every month, and make it a real ritual! Someone popped in. </div><div><br /></div><div> A monthly feast day? I thought to myself.... is that too often? Some strands of Catholicism and Orthodox traditions do that, and in this highly chaotic situation where no one knows how long they can stay here, and in a city like London - which loves, loves eating - that might not be a bad idea. </div><div><br /></div><div>Exactly, I responded. (Sometimes the pretense of certainty is helpful.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So there's now a small group of people keen on organising this. Stay tuned for future developments - and get in touch if you've got ideas. </div><div><br /></div><div>I actually won't be here in February - I'll be India. Though this blog is staying put, in that dynamic, ever-changing, never-disappearing way that the internet is so good at. If it happens in March I'll be there. March - what a long time from now, in the world of Occupy, which struggles to plan anything more than a week away. Time is different on the edge of chaos. If 'we' are still around in March, if the Eurozone hasn't driven us all into some other space, if the plans for Rio haven't torn everyone away from Finance, if if if if if ..... </div><div>well. We will all still be eating in March.</div><div><br /></div><div> Of course feasts are not enough - rituals are needed for decision making processes more, perhaps, than anything else. It is the rise of structures of working decision-making that enabled 17 century Quakers, unlike many of their contemporaries with much the same message, to survive another period when the world seemed to be <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Turned-Upside-Down-Revolution/dp/0140137327">turned upside down.</a> But feasting is important. And fun.</div><div><br /></div><div> And there's nothing like breaking bread together to find the love that brought all of us into this precious little world in the first place.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-25687008789465415852012-01-11T02:42:00.000-08:002012-01-11T10:01:40.054-08:00Creating the fitness landscape for Lao-Tzu's City on a HillI'm lucky to have some brilliant and visionary friends and colleagues dedicated to creating radical global societal change towards sustainability. This leads to the following, ongoing conversation 'how the heck do I/we do that?'<br /><br />Take my <a href="http://www.synthesisips.net/about-us/meet-the-team/">Synthesis colleagu</a>e and friend Rhett Gayle. He's doing some cutting edge philosophy: looking at how to weave together complexity sciences and Taoism. He suggests one might view Taoism as part of the family of complexity sciences, which is concerned with discerning order and 'flow' (how change happens) in the natural world and in human systems through observing natural and human phenomenon. Of course, Chinese philosophers were not using computers or higher mathematics. But they paid a lot of attention to things that Western Scientists are not exactly well-known for. Like taking a whole-systems perspective on the human body, and building entire life-patterns around the observation that engaging in bodily practices like Tai Chi and meditation can improve one's capacity for what we might call 'rational' thought. <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Geography-Thought-Asians-Westerners-Differently/dp/1857883535">Research shows</a> that Eastern traditions are better at 'circular' thinking - which naturally lends itself to the systems-thinking that <a href="http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/">some organisation</a>s have been trying for years to knock into the thick-skulls of entrenched western institutions. Complexity sciences might help illuminate aspects of Taoism. Studying Taoism might change some of the questions asked by those of us interested in complex systems. And maybe, just maybe, complexity sciences and Taoism are both pointing not to one another, but to some common, higher way of thinking-living-acting in the world, a lexicon that can only be discovered through their interaction.<div><br /></div><div>We're talking about the potential for serious cross-cultural engagement leading to a synthesis that has never been done because we've never been in a space to do it.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of which I consider pretty-freakin-incrediable. </div><div><br /></div><div>And Rhett's the guy to be doing it. Not because he's published volumes of philosophy, but because he's got an incredible gift for making the complicated and the complex simple. We've done some values work together - and he's all about constructing a new order through synergy and wisdom. He's fundamentally a teacher. It is that skill, more than the brilliant 'here is how everything is connected' - that is so critically important for these kind of cross-cultural insights that can lead us towards that promised <a href="http://endtimepilgrim.org/puritans02.htm">'city on a hil</a>l' that has for so long tugged at Western (esp American) consciousness. </div><div><br /></div><div>And he's sitting in this really tiny little town in middle-England that has never heard of organic fruits and vegetables where - maybe - 3 other people kinda-sorta understand what he's talking about. I've been there. It's got a nice church. And some beautiful marsh-type places where he walks his sweet jack russell terrior. And a decent choir that Rhett sings in. And his wife. She is also a brilliant philosopher - and the reason he moved from his comfortable teaching position at the University of Colorado in Boulder (where to not eat organic and practice yoga is to be assigned to the Cult of the Very UnCool). </div><div><br />So yesterday we had a conversation that went something like this. </div><div>Rhett: So I've done all this reading and some writing and thinking and there are a lot of different places I could take this and a lot of different audiences. </div><div>Me: Yup. What do you want? </div><div>Rhett: An active team just on this work. Some funds. A publisher - or a few. But I don't know what is the right audience to go for or who are the best people to work with.</div><div>Me: Hmmmm. Sounds like you are in the dark.</div><div>Rhett: Totally. </div><div><br /></div><div>So I suggested we use some of the metaphors from complexity sciences and apply it to his situation.</div><div><br /></div><div>He's on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape">fitness landsca</a>pe. There's where he's come from - his past, which is pretty important to where he is right now. Historical context matters in complex systems. But much more important is where he is right now. He kinda-sorta knows where he wants to go: actively creating a new synthesis of planetary civilisation with a cool group of people. That's part of his city on the hill. But right now, he doesn't know how to get there. Even the shape of the city is fuzzy - like the Emerald City when it is just this green hazzy light. </div><div><br /></div><div>Managers, policy makers and others working in complex systems face these kinds of problems all the time. We want sustainable fisheries, but we're not sure what policies will get us there - and what to do about those darn tourists. We want our business product to succeed, but we don't really know what the market wants, or what exactly who or where our target audience is, or what the optimal price is.</div><div><br /></div><div>So we need information. Feedback. To make a shape of the chaotic darkness, we've got to send out 'probes' to discover information about our environment. Who's out there? What do they want and need? What can they pay? Social scientists? Scholars? Practitioners (of .... Tai-Chi? Management consultancies with Toyota)? Other attempts to bridge Eastern-Western collaboration? </div><div><br /></div><div>The strategy found useful in businesses and in natural resource management is an<a href="http://www.iisd.org/climate/vulnerability/policy.asp"> 'adaptive',</a> experimentive one where we are learning about our landscape. Sending out a series of experimentive probes. Make a bunch of calls to some potential funders, send out a few different abstracts, send out a few blogs, and see what happens - and then reassess. What worked, what didn't work? Do we know why? What felt great? Are we closer to the city, or further, or did we just turn a corner? </div><div><br /></div><div>Rhett digged the idea of probes. And why not - its fun. Which is what this whole life, change-the-world-even-as-we-live-in-it thing is supposed to be, anyways. </div><div><br /></div><div>And, of course, the thing about the fitness landscape is that it is <i>constantly changing</i> even as we are changing, and that together we are shaping one another.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later, after our call, I thought about one of the paradoxes of time in the Christian tradition - the notion that the beloved kingdom that we are seeking to create is already here even as it has not yet come. </div><div><br /></div><div>Complexity pictures of a fitness landscape show an agent in one place going across various dips and valleys and mountains over time, and those mountains change a bit as she goes across them. Such <a href="http://www.stevepickering.net/si/applying_the_tools_of_complexity_to_the_international_realm.pdf">maps show that developmental pathways </a>for countries are different (in case you were stuck in the now-outdated belief that developmental pathways for anything- country or person or tree - could possibly ever look identical).</div><div><br /></div><div>What if this process of moving across a fitness landscape is really about changing into, and revealing, the pattern and shapes that are already here? They say it's the journey that matters more than the destination. What if that's true because it actually <i>is </i> the journey that creates and shapes the destination - as we go towards that as-yet unrealised intellectual and practical world, we are creating it even as it is creating us - indeed, part of the process is letting ourselves be re-created by it. It's a subtle framing difference - journeying to the future versus creating the future from the present. In the latter, one doesn't 'go' anywhere so much as reveal what is already there and interact with it differently. I'm not sure how much this difference matters - either way, adaptive, iterative learning processes that reveal the shape of the landscape, one's position in it and enable one to change one's position (within certain limits) seem good processes. Both ways, the importance of amplification, which I'll write about in the near future, is clear. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I like the idea that we are in the process of discovering a world that is already here. We just have to get out of the way. </div><div><div><br /></div></div>Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-63378753296192788492011-11-26T11:04:00.000-08:002011-11-26T11:31:48.327-08:00Adaptation: aging populations, youth culture and extreme eventsMy house mate, an older woman who has, in her day, bossed around quite a number of organisations, is loosing her sight.<br /><br />It's come suddenly: in the past six months, she has gone from 'not so great' to barely able to read. <br /><br />She's been quite chipper about the whole thing - a stolid approach that says much about her strength of character: in life, things happen, we get older, things change, best to make the best of it. She's been quite proactive: bright white lines on the steps, orange tabs on the stove and microwave so you can see when it is turned off, carefully going through her cookbooks and putting to memory her favourite recipes, visiting the local constellation of folks who are responding to blindness.<br /><br />Slowly, though, the anger, resentment and grief is coming to the fore. Today she told me she wanted to break china pieces, she was so angry - but then she'd have to buy new ones. <br /><br />I recommended throwing potatoes against (external) walls. She liked that idea.<br /><br />I also asked if she was reaching out to her children. She says they are not really aware of the extent of the problem. When she said this, her voice sighed - she did not want to bother them, and, I suspect, wondered at how well they could really cope with this. She's one of those strong single mothers who carved a career for herself and her family of four at a time when that was not the social norm: her dignity - and perhaps her pride - demand that she stay 'independent' as long as possible. <br /><br />Today, though, she asked me to read the gas and electricity meters and enter them into the online payment system. There are a hundred small things like that that need to be done, and when everything takes three times as much concentration, it's exhausting. <br /><br />Meanwhile, the up and coming generation (those currently in their late teens) are going to be inheriting a climate-changed world where adaptation is critical: last week included a lengthy conversation on the state of London and adaptation with one of the experts in urban adaptation. Short story: London isn't doing much. Why not? It's not exactly on the agenda. Getting people to take action on mitigation is hard enough. Are the young people prepared? Will current cuts in the University system enable them to be prepared - not scientifically, but socially, to deal with the physical and social changes that come with an increase in extreme weather events? <br /><br />My spider senses are wondering about these perking conditions: an older woman too stubborn to fully reach out to her family; a young generation that may not be getting the mentoring it needs to learn how to share the expensive burden of changing and caring for one another left by those who have come before. Both are and will continue to adapt - but will their adaptations be successful? Will they turn closer to one another or further away? Will the younger generations (including my own) be able - and willing - to pay for the needs of those who are retiring and those who are loosing their abilities in such a way that can maintain all of our dignity? <br /><br />Adaptation has (at least) three components. One is having a diversity of options. Even as her sight decreases, can she get help in some other way? As Universities close their doors, will others pick up the training and mentoring needs of young people, especially for the politcally sensitive tasks before us? Another is flexibility - being able to move between the options. If she has the option to get support, does she have the flexibility to do so, or is she locked into her current pattern? And the third is agency - the perceived belief and the actual ability that you can, indeed, move. That change is, indeed, possible. Is she constrained by her mindset that her children can not or are not interested in helping her, that this would be a burden instead of a gift? <br /><br />All of these are important. But it is the agency - both perceived and real - that makes the difference. Perhaps that is why all this talk about entrepeneurs is so popular at the moment: a general recognition that we need people who believe they can make a difference and then do the hard work of doing it - preferably in a way that is fun, interesting, and innovative. I've known a lot of entrepeneurs, both inside and outside of institutions - the good ones are patient and careful as well as fast and, at times, furious. They have something else that often isn't talked about in the discussions of agency: teleos. That is, purpose. And maybe it is that which is missing - not just a vision, but a sense of collective and shared purpose - not in some vague strategic statement, but in that, we are here to live fully, and to support one another to do so - now what? kind of way that gets to the depth of our soul. The kind of purpose that is both 'good enough' to keep going and stirring enough to move towards transformation.Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-49840706364905750032011-11-12T14:18:00.000-08:002011-11-12T14:27:14.766-08:00Sustainability, Faith and OverwhelmIn 2011, Britain Yearly Meeting agreed to become a low carbon society. In doing so, Quakers in Britain are joining a host of other faiths who are taking leadership throughout Great Britain for their dioceses and communities. For example, Muslims are working on greening the hajj (sacred pilgrimedge to Mecca) and the Church of England has agreed to a 42% cut in emissions and has a created an ambitious 7 year plan to do so. Pope Benedictus recently said that the ‘emergence of the ecological movement was and continues to be a cry for fresh air which must not be ignored; the earth has a dignity of its own…we must follow its directives…the importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and answer accordingly.” <br /><br /> The recent upswelling of protests manifest in Occupy London at St Paul’s Church in London has focused attention on the inter-twining of climate change and the relative failure of the financial and monetary system to deliver the promises of security and well being. The inherent interconnection of these major crises, both in their origin of injustice and their impact on people’s lives, especially poor people’s lives, can no longer be ignored as a fundamental violation of the values of all the major faith traditions. Quakers are experiencing the call of creating the Beloved Community, which we recognize requires collective action. We recognize that this means that we need to change our own lives and become living examples of what we want to see in the world. This is a process of mutual learning, love and support.<br /><br />As we learn to respond, we need to respond not simply from our ‘heads’ but from our hearts and our spirits. These crises will require us to lean upon a Light older, longer and stronger than any of us, a Light best experienced together. <br /><br /> But what does that really mean? How can the Area Meeting support the local meetings in engaging with these issues? What is standing in our way of becoming clearer about what needs to be done and then actually doing it to become a spiritually joyful, low carbon society? <br /><br />Prior to the Brighton Area Meeting gather, I spoke with several local Friends, asking not only about sustainability but about the general spiritual state of the Meeting. Believing that this is, at its heart, a spiritual question means that we can actively use all of our spiritual selves, traditions, resources, literature, poetry, practices and processes - as well as creating new ones. <br /><br /> What became evident is that as we try to understand what we need to be doing, what's 'right there' is, simply, Overwhelm.<br /><br />People are overwhelmed with the enormity of climate change and the apocalyptic visions that frequently come with it. The challenge between the need for global, national, regional, local and individual responses to both mitigate and adapt to climate change is experienced as overwhelming for many meetings. Plus, there are the ‘normal’ issues facing British Quakers: a dwindling membership, challenges with finances, the running of meeting houses, aligning ourselves with the regulations for charitable organisations. Thus, this session was organized not around the ‘technical’ aspects (creating baselines for carbon footprinting) or the ‘theological’ aspects (why the Creation is an integral part of our Testimonies) but the ‘softer’ and at the same time harder side of ‘how we deal with Overwhelm’. In preparation, I was aware of how much I am very much a 'student' in this regard, and knew I needed an elder.<br /> <br />Indeed, an elder did appear. We sat in worship before the workshop. It became clear to me that I needed to trust that it was OK that I did not know what the second half of the workshop should look like before we started it; that it would be revealed and that I could trust that we had enough time to do what needed to be done. The real point was to get closer to the Spirit, and trust that all else could come from there. With that, I felt permission to take a decidedly explorative approach (and remembering that one of my mentors, Joanna Macy, frequently did that).<br /><br /> Pam Lunn’s Swarthmore Lecture encourages us to conceptualise our current breakdowns as a training ground for a time of increasing crises and dynamic situations. Thus, when I discovered that ‘overwhelm’ was likely to be experienced at Area Meeting, as we had a remarkably large amount of business to go through in a very short period of time, I invited the members to just watch their feelings and experiences during the morning. Due to some highly efficient Clerking, an immensely long agenda was sped through and the Quaker Life representative decided to bring her work down to the local-meeting level. This was met with strong approval by the Meeting.<br /><br />In the first half of the workshop we discussed what we were learning from the ‘practice’ of dealing with overwhelm during the morning meeting. We acknowledged that the challenge that we faced during our business meeting – a lot to do (people were dying, getting married, moving, transferring membership, and there is an economic crisis to attend to) and not much time to do it in – is a perfect symbol of what we are facing in the world: we need to reduce our carbon footprint - fast. Some of the fears experienced by our Clerk were common amongst us: a fear of disappointing people, cutting people off, and not ‘doing things right’ under the seemingly oppressing clock. We had a frank discussion about how we often do not prioritise the important things but instead focus on the less-important issues. We talked about how we feel trapped by time, and often loose track of the sense of ‘right order’ and doing things in ‘Gods time’. We recognized that there is a lot we don’t know – and a lot we do know. We know we must take small actions, but that we must also act collectively at the policy and ‘macro’ level. And yet we do not know – we can not know – exactly which actions will lead to which results. And so we must go through a process of discernment; we must lean upon God to help direct our actions. Yet too often, we did not give ourselves the time to do that. <br /><br />Thus, the second half of the workshop became an experimentive space to explore where God was leading us – how can we deal with overwhelm in our meetings? Where is God nudging us? It quickly became apparent to me, as people explored these questions, that I needed to support each group in finding the question that was right for them: I went around to each group and helped them discern what question was arising.<br /><br />It was very clear that the challenge of becoming a low carbon society forces Friends to think beyond their monthly and Area Meetings into the wider community. They discovered through experience the importance of letting themselves be with confusion, overwhelm, fear and grief – and then working through it. They found that on the other side they could, indeed, find meaningful and powerful actions to take. <br /><br />I reminded people that there is a well-practiced cycle (based on the work of Joanna Macy) that they can work through:<br /><br />Start with Gratitude<br />What’s really There: the reality of the situation.<br />Face the Despair: together.<br />Seeing with New eyes – what else is there?<br />Take action.<br />Gratitude – and repeating the cycle. <br /><br /><br />In the end, people were greatly appreciative of the chance to have some time and space to explore these issues. They found the exercises challenging but fruitful. Importantly, people realized they were wandering together and felt less alone in their search. They wanted to continue the process. Later conversations emphasised this point: we need to keep these conversations and experiences alive - which means evolving.Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-20501058149784749822011-11-11T16:23:00.000-08:002011-11-11T16:27:59.821-08:00Isaac Pennington written in 1661 it's QF&P 26.70: <br /><br /><br /> "Give over<br /> thine own willing, <br />give over<br /> thy own running <br />give over <br />thine own desiring<br /> to know or be anything and <br />sink<br /> down to the seed which <br />God <br />sows in the heart,<br /> and let that grow in thee<br /> and be in thee<br /> and breathe in thee <br />and act in thee;<br />and thou shalt find by<br /> sweet experience <br />that the<br /> Lord<br /> knows that and loves and owns that, <br />and will lead it <br />to the inheritance of <br />Life, <br />which is its portion"Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1252351953482013384.post-79363009701180044362011-11-06T15:56:00.000-08:002011-11-06T16:08:19.286-08:00Resting with the Occupiers<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Walking out of my evening meeting at 10.15pm last night, the London air was fresh and a bit on the chilly side – and I was more than ready for a warm comfortable bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead I headed across town to St Paul’s, trying to trust that my desire to substantiate my ‘clickivism’ by spending the night on the streets of London before an early morning start to Wales was actually a good one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Last week I had given a Sermon. This week I did not go to preach but to listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As the Occupation entered it’s 3<sup>rd</sup> week with the careful support of Bishop Williams, what was it actually like?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The tents that had seemed so hopeful and bright in the day seemed flimsy and cold at 11pm on a Thursday night in November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My predictament: no tent, no connections, no sleeping bag (I was going to a conference the next day!) was solved quite quickly: a few sofa-cushions lined up next to one another in the communal ‘lecture’ tent behind the library and a spare mostly-dry blanket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Much better than the thin soaked tent city nearby. A hot cup of tea and plenty of smiling faces (most of whom were not drunk) and I was ‘settled’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The kitchen was closed but there were still chunks of bread, fruit, peanut butter and jam.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was the music that surprised me. Almost every corner had a guitar or a flute or a violin or a drum with various degrees of expertise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And in the supply tent, sitting on top of a pile of blankets, was a collection of twenty-something male musicians/producers/rappers/song-writers, free-stylin’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had arrived at the first night of live streaming of their ‘occupy our future’ jam session – so I joined in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was struck by the pure quality of the rhymes they were spitting in a tent that was burdgeoning on dripping and a violinist who turned his heart-breaking music to accompany a professional producer-musician. It was, in short, beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We had a regular audience of about 100 people, and at one point we were put on the global feed to an audience of 1000. This online audience asked for suggestions and, we were told, quite a number of them were free-styling along with us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The songs were recorded, and the producer amongst us is keen to do some remixing, a bit of fine-tuning and put them out ‘there’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And, really, that ‘there’ might end up being anywhere. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For those participating, creating and listening, it was this creative global play, where a bunch of guys sitting in a tent in front of St Paul’s on a wet and cold night can sing about the need to change the face of capitalism and get resonance from Egypt and Greece and Oakland, California, that was so important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They talked about continuing the trend of occupation, and what I heard they really wanted was to continue the sense of creative togetherness. Here the play was the protest.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Eventually the reality of that early morning train got to me and I headed back to ‘my’ set of cushions (ownership is so temporary in life, anyways) only to find them, well, occupied. I recognized one of the men – he had been wandering around earlier, following a very drunk lady out of a pub and trying to help her find her way home. His noble good deed to a (I learned) total stranger cost him<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> his</i> train home, and he looked on the verge of a break down. The tent was warm, and after a few jokes, he told me his story – a young nurse-in-training, he was working 80 hour-weeks on wards where he wasn’t sure if anyone was getting better. He was listening to some horrible stories of illness and individual collapse, and confronting on a daily basis his own limitations in making a difference. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I listened. He kept saying what a ‘dick’ he was for sharing all these stories with me. I wasn’t so sure that was the most helpful narration and tried reframing it for him – which he resisted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Eventually, he thanked me, brought me tea, and went on his way, still embarrassed for having spilled his guts to a stranger. I cuddled into my blanket. Before long the stones around me were filled with a few homeless men – men so used to sleeping rough they didn’t seem perturbed for not having a blanket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I realized that I had never slept next to a homeless man before. When the rain began to pour down, I was grateful that we were both dry. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>So there, in a protest site, under a church, in the middle of london, I found music, play, warm tea, lost souls, friendship, and the knowledge that for that night - which is really as much as we can hope for - we could all rest - dry, safe, and together. </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Sara J Wolcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17677193834471517927noreply@blogger.com0