Yesterday I passed through the start line again. Forty nine times I have rode this incredible planet around the sun, corkscrewing together through space. Last night I sat by a small fire with a small glass of whiskey in my hand, friends and family around me and we just hung out, enjoying each other’s company, listening to a little Stephen Fearing and John Wort Hannam and eating fresh strawberries.
The last half dozen years of more have been really illuminating in terms of my own professional life. I have moved from the place of a pure practitioner to a professional who is trying hard to ground practice in theory, and theory that is based in cognitive science, pedagogy and complexity. When you dive into those worlds I think there comes an extended moment of despair or worry that nothing really matters, or nothing makes a difference. I have been there and I am probably still there, but I’m feeling my way into something new, something more existentially rich
Yesterday on a call with friends to discuss an upcoming Art of Hosting in Amsterdam in the fall, I used an image to talk about why I feel like “social innovation” is bit of an inaccurate term to explain what we are doing. I argued that we were learning to live with “social evolution” and that as individuals we have choices about how to deal with the fact that our evolving world demands that we all learn new things. Not learning is not an option. Even those among us that are bed-bound use cell phones and iPads. This was not something they ever imagined in the 1930s when they were teenagers.
So the image is this: when I visit Amsterdam perhaps I will take a vial of water from the Pacific ocean to connect us. I may stand beside a canal or on the shore of the English Channel and drop that small amount of water into the sea. And to the oceans, this act means nothing and is even beyond any practical scope of measurement. But to me, there is a deeper meaning attached to it. It is important. It is interesting. It connect me to my friends, acknowledges a bond. It helps me under the existential questions that come with the beginning of the 50th trip around the sun.
Recently I’ve been accompanying clients who are trying hard to measure the impact they are making in the world. I can’t let them suffer any longer. I have to step in and say “you can’t measure it. Rather, just keep doing it. Do it because it feels right, and it is good, and watch what you are doing and do more of the things that align with your sense of goodness and rightness. We have no idea what the effect is, so be present to your work, be diligent and disciplined. Make it worthy and worthwhile, and worth doing. Succeed or fail, your time on the earth is yours to use as you can. Be present to need, offer what you can, and allow the world to evolve.”
Of course I can go down a strategic and theoretical rabbit hole with this, but none of that should dissuade people from adopting a simple approach to their work, not too precious, not too cavalier. Just enough to give their work and life meaning, and to pursue goodness as you can.
A friend tells me that 49 is a good number. It is seven by seven and in many sacred traditions including my own, that number stands for the countless generations. Each of us is a product is of the 128 pairs of humans that gathered in a virtual circle 150 or 200 years ago, and had a hand in creating six more generations of humans that ultimately culminated in you. No one knew what they were doing. They weren’t trying to give you the gift of life and a scant few decades on this earth. Some of them barely survived long enough to contribute to the project. They didn’t know each other, didn’t even know that the other’s existed. Probably may of them would be disgusted at the thought that they would be participating in project with others of a certain race, culture or religion to create a living human being.
Now is a good time to be humble about what we are doing. Work and live. Help out and get out of the way.
While we are known as a country of tolerance and peace, and we largely are, there is a longstanding thread that runs through our history and right into our present that claims a kind of Eurocentric supremacy, and it has its impact against immigrants, indigenous people and people of colour who were born here.
In the Red Deer story a group of high school kids are punished for fighting, in an incident that involved Syrian refugee kids and others. The response was a protest against the Syrian kids, because some people believed that the Syrian kids were getting different punishment for their role in the fight. That wasn’t true.
However that did not stop some of the more seedy xenophobes and dogwhistle racists from getting their voices heard on the matter, and the Euro-centric white supremacy thread again surfaced. Consider this quote from Steven Garvey who organizes against Muslims:
“Who we are as a people, as a country, as a heritage, it’s all getting pushed aside and if we don’t stand up for us as a people, as our country, we’re going to lose it,” Garvey said. “We welcome people coming to our country, but they have to integrate into our society. It’s not about accommodating their values.
“It’s about standing up for Canadians, our freedoms, our civil rights and our liberties. And some of these cultures that are coming are incompatible with our own.”
Garvey’s voice is not at all unusual, and the sentiment is not at all uncommon. Many non-indigenous Canadians, if you ask them, will tell you that immigrants should integrate into their idea of society, and that we should not accommodate their values, and that our own laws and cultural practices should be respected, as if this has been going on from time immemorial on this continent.
And of course this begs two questions. First is, where were you from 1500 until now? Because without having done exactly this to the tens of millions of indigenous people here, there would be no basis for a man of immigrant European heritage to claim that his particular set of values is “Canadian” and therefore supreme in this place.
The second question is “which values?” which is a question that Kellie Leitch has spun into a dog whistle political campaign to attract racists and xenophobes to her leadership bid for the Conservative Party. Those that voted for her are now members of that party, and despite the results of the leadership race, they will remain members of that party unless they quit.
The question of “which values?” is totally confounding in a country as big and diverse as Canada. We have a Constitution, and that’s as close as it gets to a collective expression of values. The Constitution dictates the legality of our laws. Break the law, you’ll be punished by the courts. So we already have a mechanism for doing what Garvey says we should be doing.
Except he’s not saying that our current rule of law is good enough. He and others like him want to pick and choose what Constitutional rights apply. For example, he wants to exercise unfettered freedom of speech but he would like a limit of the freedom of religion – his organization is called the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam, after all. I suspect that he values the ability to freely associate or have access to equality before the law, but I’ll bet he quibbles with the protection of Aboriginal rights as defined by the Royal Proclamation of 1763. All of those rights are equally protected in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Justice demands that Canadians uphold and live by this Charter, something we’re not always very good at.
So what does he really want? Garvey’s ideas – that are readily shared by many with the merest of prompting across this country – are not fundamentally Canadian. They are not compatible with our Constitution or the laws we have set in place to help everyone who lives here get along.
Worse they are a perfect example of the ongoing imposition of a colonial mindset on the Canadian psyche. Canada is not a “nation-state.” this is not a country that is composed of a single nation of people with a shared history, language and set of values and standards. There are many many expressions of what it means to be Canadian and they are allowed within the framework of the laws we have made to try to balance rights and responsibilities. The shadow of the colonial violence that sought to erase indigenous cultures and laws is that the colonizers somehow became the victims. It isn’t true. Colonization still proceeds apace, and Euro-centric racism and xenophobia drives the seedier parts of the civic conversation on immigration policy.
Bigots like Garvey should not be left unchallenged as long as news outlets like the CBC see fit to give his ideas daylight.
It is both our right to do so, and our responsibility.
Last week we were out in Tofino hosting a three-day leadership workshop on dialogue with sixty people, most of whom were from the Port Alberni and west coast area. In the room were leaders from Hupacaseth, Toquaht, Ahousaht, Hesquiaht, Tsehshaht and Tloquiaht First Nations and Councillors from Ucluelet, Tofino and the Alberni-Clayoquat Regional District. Additionally there were citizens, non-profit workers, community foundation staff, scientists and small business people in the room. It was the kind of gathering that everyone is always saying “has to happen.”
From a great set of advice on writing:
Creativity is inexhaustible. Experiment, play, throw away. Above all be confident enough about creativity to throw stuff out. If it isn’t working, don’t cut and paste – scrap it and begin again. – Jeanette Winterston
Remind yourself, every day, that you’re doing this to try to find something out about yourself, about the world, about words and how they fit together. Writing is investigation. Just keep seeking. – Naomi Alderman.
Over the past few days several friends of mine have blogged pieces that capture their vulnerable moments. I don’t know what it is about the timing of things, but here are a few posts that talk openly about daily struggles that people face. It is a litany of honesty and thoughtfulness from people who otherwise need to project a more solid image to the world.
Laurie Kingston, an old friend from university days has been blogging for years about her life with cancer. A couple of weeks ago, she published a letter about where she is in her journey which is powerful in its confronting of fear and uncertainty.
Charles LaFond is the Canon Steward of the cathedral of St. John’s in the Wilderness in Denver Colorado. Our friendship and colleagueship has blossomed over the years as we have served congregations together and explored the applications of the spiritual resources of hosting. He keeps a daily blog on the cathedral’s website. He writes today on despair.
Back in 2002, I kept a blog about the Toronto Maple Leafs, and through that writing I met Jordon Cooper who was the editor of a blog called The Hockey Pundits. I wrote there for a couple of years until the NHL lockout destroyed my interested in hockey in 2004. Jordon’s writing ranges from spirituality to sports, culture and to his family and personal struggles with health and the medical system. Today he shares a peek under the hood of struggling with a chronic health condition and being in relationship.
Lesley Donna Williams is a colleague based in South Africa. We met once, but I feel like we know each other better from our social media connections over the years then from the one time we met! She works as an entrepreneur and documents her experience as a mixed race woman living in a country that struggles everyday with integration. It’s a fertile, bewildering, energizing and anxiety provoking context, and so it’s not surprising that once in a while she will experience burnout. This post today captures what the journey with burnout is all about.
Tenneson Woolf is one of my closest friends and professional colleagues. We tumble through the world together in mutual admiration of each other’s gifts, and we bring so much that’s different, that we complement each other beautifully. It’s easy working and hanging out with him (we’re doing both this weekend in Salt Lake City and next week in New Mexico!). Tenn writes his heart at his blog called Human to Human, and today he writes about those days when you just have to put one foot in front of the other.
Rebecca Contant and I know each other because we are both Vancouver Southsiders, devoted supporters of the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club. The Southsiders are a group of a couple of thousand of us that sing, chant, cheer and create art together in support of our team. It is a participatory and inclusive activity, and we actively embrace social inclusivity in our activity. Rebecca uses this awareness opening as a jumping off point for how to create inclusive spaces for gender identity issues to be considered in the craft of teaching physical education. The post is a vulnerable exploration of what it feels like to confront these issues with compassion and thoughtfulness.
And finally, here is a Storified twitter exchange I got into last week with two gun-loving, anti-gay Americans as we discussed a recent bill in North Carolina that would force transgender people to use the gendered washroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate, despite the situation that would put people into. This discussion is at turns alarming and terrifying and funny and it ends with a major surprise and a crack of vulnerability.
These kinds of posts illustrate the parts of social media that I love. For many of us, writing is the way we explore our hearts to the world, and the nature of social media – whether through blogging, twitter, facebook or instagram – means that we can engage with each other’s writing and vulnerabilities. Revealing these insecurities makes for a more empathetic and honest world.