Choose Community
Dr. Martin Luther King often said we have two choices before us, chaos or community. For me, I choose community. In particular, I want to expand my definition of community by connecting with more diverse groups of people, and in a more meaningful and deeper manner.
The pathway to doing this begins by creating new “relational spaces,” a term I learned from reading John Paul Lederach’s book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005). When I first encountered this concept, it was a mind expanding insight. I paused and thought back to over 36+ years of work and realized that it was the development of “relational spaces” that has been the catalyst for success. While I did spend quite a bit of time teaching about leadership and organizational change, it was the relational spaces created during the learning journey that made the learning transformational. Furthermore, by creating relational spaces and by maintaining relational health, people moved together through change in an empowered manner.
The problem right now, notes Lederach, is that we are starting with “What to do?” questions rather than “Who do I know who knows the person (or the problem) with whom I have a problem who can help create a way out?” questions. As he continues, the Who question precedes the What question because “... solutions emerged from relational resources, connections, and obligations.” This “relationship-centric approach” is at the heart of community building and community care. The goal is “to look at relationships through the lenses of social crossroads, connections, and interdependence.”
Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze in their book, Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey Into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now (Berrett-Koehler, 2011), write, “In the context of community change, our work is to foster networks of relationships through which ideas and beliefs can travel, adapt, evolve, and grow…. Scaling across invites communities to learn from one another and solve their own problems in their own particular way.” Building on this choice of creating networks of relationships, Wheatley and Frieze note, “Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than community discovering what it cares about. Only when we turn to one another do we discover the wisdom and wealth that is so abundantly present in us, our traditions and our environment.”
Recognizing the work of Lederach, plus Wheatley and Frieze, we must understand that choosing community over chaos is hard work that requires effort and focus. We will have to step outside our comfort zones and engage with people and issues that will challenge our thinking and understanding. We will have to learn about problems and perspectives that will cause us to unlearn certain ways of thinking about a diversity of subjects. But when we choice to join a community or to create a community, we will come to the same conclusion as Dick Walker, a research astronomer: “The greatest truth of my life was an awareness that we are all one and one of the same.” And this is a powerful awareness during chaotic times.
Seek Inner Stillness
When I was growing up, I inherited from my grandfather’s large, 1957 transistor-based, Zenith Trans-Oceanic Short Wave Radio. I placed it prominently on the top of my dresser in my bedroom. Given its size, it dominated the dresser with all of its dials, knobs and different settings. It was a beast of a radio, and I loved it.
Most days, I listened to the local radio stations that played my favorite music. But some evenings, I would begin to turn the dials and attempt to hear more diverse stations from different places. Given it was a short wave radio, I dialed into various midwest stations from my home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Other days, I would listen to the BBC being broadcast from London, or listen to mariachi music from southern Texas along the Mexican border. I often heard languages I did not know and I had no idea where they were being broadcast. I just knew that they were not from where I lived, or what I was normally exposed to on a regular basis.
With my Zenith Trans-Oceanic Short Wave Radio, the act of tuning into the signal was a slow and careful process. A very slight turn of the dial and I would loose the station. In essence, I had to discern the signal from the noise.
What I learned over time and through many hours of exploration and experimentation was that the signal was always present. I just had to find it, tune into it, and then listen to it. In simple terms, I had to tune out the noise or static, and tune in to the signal. Sometimes, it was faint at first, but with practice, I learned how to find it and connect with it. Then, it was clear and distinct.
I think when we are living in chaotic times, we do not spend enough time tuning into healthy and life giving signals. We instead choose to except that everything is just noise, or that the world has lost all clarity and thus there are no signals to be heard. Still, we must not give up on our search for the signals that transcend the chaos, the signals that puts it all back into perspective.
And the only way to do this is to give ourselves permission, and to create the time and the space to find the inner signal of clarity irregardless of the volume of noise around us. One part of this tuning process involves listening to what we are feeling and respecting the feelings that surface during chaos. Yet, the depth of entering into the tuning process, to hear the true signal beyond the noise, is to grasp that it is an act of faith, not just an act of logic. It comes with a willingness to be fully present to the moment before us. The world may be very chaotic, but we have a choice to make, namely to ask ourselves an important question: Am I going to let the chaos define me, or am I going to be defined by something greater than the chaos?
Theologian Paul Tillich writes about “the courage to be.” He is not focused on all the doing that is generating the chaos, or the doing that is responding to the chaos. Instead, he is tuned into our sense of being. From my perspective, this takes great courage. The choice to be still, and to listen is an act of courage. It makes me want to focus less on reacting to the chaos and more on creating a way of living and moving through the chaos. This choice to tune into the here and the now, and to be fully present to myself and others generates in me the capacity to continue seeking, finding, and holding on to timeless truths about wisdom, purpose, and meaning. These three are the source of the signal that we are trying to listen to in the midst of living in chaotic times.
To be continued on Wednesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment