Harpy Helladays
Mental Health Resources
· SAMHSA – 24/7 helpline
· 988 Suicide and Crisis Helpline – support for people in distress
· Mental Health America – resources for mental wellness
· Bereaved Parents of the USA - Help for the loss of a child
· C.O.P.E Foundation - Help for dealing with the loss of a child
· Suicide Prevention - Loss Survivors - help for those who have lost a loved one to suicide
· Mend Together - Resources for Cancer - This site points people to help for cancer related support
· Samaritans: For those struggling to cope
· Cruse: Bereavement care
· Widowed and Young: Charity that supports widows aged 50 or under
· Macmillan : Cancer support and information service
· Bodie Hodges Foundation: Supporting families bereaved of a Child
· Mind: Mental Health Charity Coping at Christmas
· The LifeLine Canada Foundation - A mental health app aimed at helping those in distress
· MyGrief.ca - resources for processing grieve over the loss of a loved one
· The Compassionate Friends of Canada - Support for those who are grieving the loss of a child
· Crisis Services Canada - help for loss to suicide
· Canadian Cancer Society - Helpline for resources for cancer support
If you know a participant in Culturesmith and need support, please reach out. If not, in a moment during which you are most emotionally composed, please reach out to someone else most likely to offer meaningful support.
Harpy Helladays.
Its Only A Story - Go To Sleep
I was born in Texas in 1969. During my early childhood, in this area in which I am now raising my children, a campfire ghost story became popular suggesting that Bexar County Hospital (now University Hospital of San Antonio) experienced a string of odd deaths, "the patients dying systematically in room order - first 201 would go, then 202, 203, 204. The nurses and doctors were very suspicious, especially when patients began talking about a nurse in an old-style uniform. They watched the security tapes and saw the patients talking to someone when no one else was in the room. They were puzzled, until the next room in order was left empty. Then, the deaths stopped. There have been no more incidents since." This is the story I heard told around the fire at camp, more than once between 1976 and 1983, complete with flickering shadows and exaggerated pantomime sneaking on the part of the teller. Every year, the group of camp veterans knew what was coming and thrilled to intone spooky counting each time the next infanticide was about to occur, knowing that Bexar was not far from where we were about to bed down, leaving the lights on in our bunkhouse, having a hard time falling into sleep, only to be visited by nightmares.
Between 1977 and 1982 a woman named Genene Jones killed children, many children, while working as a licensed vocational nurse at Bexar in the pediatric intensive care unit. "A statistically improbable number of children died under her care. Because the hospital feared being sued, it simply asked all of its LVNs, including Jones, to resign and staffed the pediatric ICU exclusively with registered nurses. No further investigation was pursued by the hospital." She moved on to continue killing at Medical Center Hospital in 1981 and 1982. "Despite long-standing suspicions that Jones was a serial killer—other nurses called her hours on duty 'the Death Shift'—she was not charged in the hospital deaths during the original 1980s investigation. However, she was convicted in 1984 of using a paralyzing muscle relaxant to murder 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan. That crime occurred at a different medical institution, a small-town pediatric clinic where Jones went to work after being sent off from the San Antonio hospital with a good recommendation."
As an adult, I completed a Ph.D. in psychology with an emphasis in mythology, studying and teaching about the myths we live by and in, the ways that belief gestates as narrative and makes its way into both day and night life as mirroring belief and related behavior. "First 201...then 202, 203, 204..." The most frightening ghost stories are ones that are real. Have you ever been told that something with an essential message, even psychological truth, is "only a story?"
https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-scary-stories-from-texas/jenniferlennon
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/nurse-genene-jones-really-kill-babies/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genene_Jones
Homeless
World Homeless Day falls on the tenth of October this year, and Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week in the USA happens from November eleventh through eighteenth. Many of us still have paid volunteer time available to put toward something that will make someone’s life better. I recommend volunteering at the Austin Street Shelter(1), if you live in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, and donating to it, if you live elsewhere, or finding a similar organization near you. Maybe that will make the world a more humane place. I don’t really know, but it would matter to me if I were on the street and you showed up to help me out, no matter your reasons or the statistical probability that doing so will Make A Difference. Does it matter how you feel and what you think about the homeless? Let’s see. It seems to me that Homelessness is a myth.(2)
I mean this not in the stereotypical way–a specious falsehood to be debunked by those accustomed to critical thinking. There is bunkum involved, for sure, in the political deployment of homelessness, but also in the habit of thought in which myths and myth itself are dismissed as fakery rather than imagined and heard as deeply true psychological fiction. Myths are confessions, the surfacing of extensive underlying patterns. These are often full of comedy and rueful discoveries, but are most often tragic as well as we face repetitive dilemmas to which contemporary industrial societies seem addicted.
Thought of as myth, the bones inside narratives of homelessness begin to protrude beneath the skin of projected strangeness that can hide what goes on the underside of what is visible. Imagined whole, myth is a unique genre of soul-revealing fiction which involves creative selection, omission, and stylization of experience which can be oversimplified and communicated to gain control of others’ thinking, as propaganda, or can increase the freedom of thought necessary for meaningful nuance, a more comprehensive understanding of complex subjects. Frequently, we weave our ideas about homelessness from notions inadequately examined and ill-considered when we could be telling a story for ourselves and others that accounts for the stereotypical while pointing towards truth and a turning toward an Everybody Wins scenario.
Just using the word “homeless” brings to mind traditional stories, often unexamined, passed down through generations, often informally but also as public policy, and which embody belief. “Embody” suggests in this case that belief is the root of behavior, so attention must be paid to how we believe and then act based on the stories felt in our “gut,” the felt sense of how life works that runs around in minds and out of mouths and into ears as discourse that works again to make up other minds.
For example, contrary to widespread misperceptions, "decades of epidemiological research reveals that [only] one-third [of folks without daily shelter], at most, have a serious mental illness." This is to say that they are much like the rest of the population. Abuse of drugs and alcohol “is rarely the sole cause of homelessness and more often is a response to it because [of] living on the street.” "Homeless persons are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators…[and, while] more likely to [experience] criminal justice intervention,...this is primarily because many of their daily survival activities are criminalized…minor offenses such as trespassing, littering, or loitering." In general, “the descent into homelessness is not necessarily the direct result of [having made bad] choices. Far more often a sudden illness or an accident, losing one’s job, or falling into debt leads to eviction—or doubling up with family or friends becomes untenable.”(3)
The visibly unhoused don’t prefer life living rough, spend all their money on drugs or alcohol, live in unsanitary conditions because they don’t care, or “just need to get a job.” They work, still can’t afford shelter, and are not strangers–most often being from the community where they continue to be unhoused.(2) Perhaps most importantly, homelessness is an ongoing issue which lends itself to solutions which are readily available and essentially affordable at scale, lacking only the political will to achieve resolution.
Writing about diversity and inclusion in the Learning Pool North American Staff Newsletter of May 2022, I suggested that:
Just as learning to deal authentically with any kind of conflict requires admitting that conflict is normal and happens all the time, any time differences surface, so it is helpful to ask questions and look for diversity, equity, and inclusion needs anywhere there are humans and human-made systems today and wherever you are. The question is not "is that still a problem here" but, rather, "which persons are least visible and which voices are least audible in this space?"
Partly as a result of being unheard and pushed to the margin of visibility, for instance, from January to June 2022 in Northern Ireland,
8120 households presented as homeless. This was an increase of 9.6% on the previous six months when 7407 households presented. This figure, however, was lower than the equivalent period in 2021 when the number of presenters stood at 8624 (a fall of 5.84%)...The three council areas with the highest number of presenters per 1000 population were: Derry and Strabane (7.1 presenters per 1000); Belfast (6.6); and Mid and East Antrim (4.5)...3913 children were in temporary accommodation in July 2022 – a rise from 3763 in February 2022 (up 4%). In January 2019 2433 children were in temporary accommodation (up 60.8% since then.) (5)
I am very fortunate to enjoy a family system of support sufficiently robust such that my kin are in little danger of being on the street tomorrow. This was not always the case and could change at any time. Most of what is left of the working and “middle” classes are one major emergency away from the street. At least twice, a person who touched my life deeply has died in poverty, invisibly homeless nearby without my knowing until it was too late.
As any learning designer can attest, one of the essential qualities of mythic (belief-based behavioral) systems, or mythologies, is that story-making is behavior producing. A new story of compassion, recovery, and caring for the most vulnerable is not only a possibility but can result in a worldwide, significant reduction in poverty, lost futures, avoidable illness, and deaths within our lifetime. Our commitment must be to tell and act out that story, even if only in preparation for the next family of our acquaintance ending up in the street. In the meantime, if you or someone you know has a need for emergency accommodation in Northern Ireland, please call NI Housing Executive on 03448 920 908. The options in the United States are spread out and often difficult to navigate. Reach out to me at learn@conflictdonewell.com if you need support to find assistance.
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https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/september/HomelessQandA.html
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Learning Pool North America Newsletter May 2022
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Homelessness statistics from the Department for Communities published in the latest edition of their homelessness bulletin for January to June 2022 (and also by Niall Bakewell of Homeless Connect on Sep 15, 2022). https://homelessconnect.org/latest-homelessness-statistics-published-for-ni/
About the author:
Brandon Williamscraig Ph.D. is proud to be a Learning Pool Customer Support Manager in Dallas, Texas. He is twenty four years a spouse, father of two children ten and twelve years of age, taught psychology to graduate students once upon a time, now teaches aikido and Conflict Done Well online and in-person during his off hours, and loves anything having to do with teamwork (working through conflict and building creative communities). Please reach out, if you’d like to talk further. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdwilliamscraig/
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Kaori Suzuki+Recommendations
"...Thank you for teaching and guiding me and [my daughter]. It was at times challenging to learn the techniques remotely (and I’m sure it was challenging for you to teach too), but we learned that Aikido is a way of life. And the wisdom that you shared with us along the training [has] been tremendously helpful for me, especially when I encounter challenging situations with my family and at my workplace. The key phrases and movements will stay with me, and I’m quite sure that they’ll guide me at difficult times."
Kaori Suzuki
Montessori Guide (teacher), Japanese born, language and traditional dance Sensei, Martial Nonviolence Assitant Instructor
MLK Tribute
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
A favorite related story referred to in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus
During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted the Edith Hamilton translation of Aeschylus on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an impromptu speech that delivered news of King's death.[53][54] Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at the murder of Martin Luther King and, quoting a passage from the play Agamemnon (in translation), said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black ... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." The quotation from Aeschylus was later inscribed on a memorial at the gravesite of Robert Kennedy following his own assassination.
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Longest Day 2022 The Spirit of the Woods
As part of Learning Pool's #TheLongestDay team in 2022, Brandon Williamscraig read "The Spirit of the Woods" by Anushri Nair (Netherlands, age 12) from "Tall Tales Short Stories," the volume created by Learning Pool to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dr. Williamscraig then lead a brief discussion about the nature of mythology and psychology, and offered brain health tips.
To donate to the Alzheimer's Association, please visit https://act.alz.org/site/TR/?px=20807047&pg=personal&fr_id=15144
Gun Rites
International Day of Love aka Peace
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John ODonohue - Birthday Blessing
Appreciating the people who have always helped me to be. This John O'Donohue was a gift from my mom this morning.
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school at your mind
In the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.
Wikirate has the info we need to change the world
I believe deeply in the need to make information accessible that can allow human beings to learn about the forces that shape our world in order to govern them appropriately. Becoming global citizens in this way is part of the process of life-long education and likely the most meaningful way to help humanity both survive and become more humane. I believe Wikirate projects are a source of information enriched by understanding which in and of itself makes governmental and corporate propaganda less likely to continue dominating both local and global decision-making. The Wikirate community has made corporate information more open, accessible, and comparable. Each citizen is entitled to learn how they vote for a particular future through their purchasing and investment choices, as these are directly related to the bottom line of each company which plays a role in the world’s social and environmental challenges. It is time that every networked human being simply gets in the habit of rating company performance based on ESG data and explicit human rights-based metrics, and learns to make informed choices which push real corporate transparency. This can only occur at the intersection of research, open data, innovation, and collective action.
Check them out at https://wikirate.org!
- Brandon
Process Arts Radical Inclusivity and the Guardians of Peace
An Introduction to the Process Arts, Radical Inclusivity, & the Guardians of Peace
Once upon a time, there was a City of folks who suffered strangely and often, to the point that living in pain, often with little sleep and difficult secrets, seemed commonplace. When conflict would arise between people, sides were chosen and losing would commence. Once one party had done significantly more losing and the contest drew to a close, the side that appeared to have lost the least became The Winner and claimed a portion of power apparently greater than seemed available without the conflict. The Loser would then react in various ways, most often by both abandoning certain directions in which will and power had previously been engaged, and cultivating a greater determination to be The Winner next time, guaranteeing the continuation of the cycle.
This process caused considerable consternation in the folks who felt unsatisfied with this way of living. Some objected but assumed battles would have to be fought to change things – thereby creating winners and losers again, an apparently contradictory position and manifestly depressing. Others felt that there were different ways to go about struggling, but chose to spend their time in life responsible primarily to themselves, trying to meet their individual needs. This way of going about things pervaded even the sacred places and led to feelings of isolation and deep despair.
According to the model, this way of being grew to dominate the known world, as the City and its people grew in power through numbers and influence. Children were drawn into the cycle before they could create sufficient protection for their spirits, and gave up parts of themselves to violence and the control of adults who did not know their names. Where might tender and mysterious hope live in a place where value is assessed according to the ability of anyone and anything to make one more able to seize power? The people of the City lamented, saying that nothing seemed to change when someone spoke of the pain all around. Neighbors with sullen faces noted cautiously that they didn’t know the names of the people living beside them. Children armed themselves before going to school.
In a place set aside for the purpose, a circle formed. In the circle sat both the old and the young, both warriors, and those struggling endlessly with their choices. Artists welcomed and were welcomed by those who listen to the language of numbers. Men and women from the City and beyond its walls drew within the circle. They brought the pain of the cycle and its very substance, often finding, woven into the tapestry of their time together, the threads of fear and despair. As they had hoped, the listening circle also found a place for both their true selves and their dreams to live. No matter who or what visited the circle, those within searched for the voice that welcomes the stranger, listened for the still, small sacred Movement within, and gave good gifts as they were able. They began by setting reegular time aside to be together to listen and speak. They came to know each other, began to work together, and discovered in each other partners in vocation and vision. They are together to this day at work and play.
Let us agree from the outset that this is a pitch. What follows is a thoughtful collection of published ideas and is written in an academic style, but these perspectives are before you in search of something specific beyond interaction with the author and various sources. More than an appreciation of the sentiments and fine, high vision, these words beg a portion of your time and creative energy in service of Life. Even that is often a hard sell in this world of over-commitment. Please grant an initial permission to continue since we begin by laying open what otherwise might have been cause for reservation. Since most readers sympathetic to appeals “in service of Life” already use a portion of their time and creativity to this end, it may be useful to note in what follows both what feels familiar and what seems innovative.
In his preface to Thoughts In Solitude, Thomas Merton offers:
In an age when totalitarianism has striven, in every way, to devaluate and degrade the human person, we hope it is right to demand a hearing for any and every sane reaction in favor of man’s inalienable solitude and his interior freedom. The murderous din of our materialism cannot be allowed to silence the independent voices which will never cease to speak: whether they be the voices of Christian Saints, or the voices of Oriental sages like Lao-Tse or the Zen Masters, or the voices of men like Thoreau or Martin Buber, or Max Picard. It is all very well to insist that man is a “social animal” – the fact is obvious enough. But that is no justification for making him a mere cog in a totalitarian machine – or in a religious one either, for that matter.i
For decades the pace and scope of the systems which we have created and on which we depend have increased exponentially. Businesses, governments, religious institutions, and other consolidations of human power seem always to aim for as firm and complete a grasp as they can possibly manage over anything within a potential sphere of control. In all likelihood, they may continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
As our societies grow in population and interdependent complexity, there is greater, widespread opportunity for both the encouragement and discouragement of life. Each person—each world citizen—participates, with a greater or lesser degree of consciousness, in organizations structured to deal as little as possible with the needs, identity, presence, and mystery of becoming more humane. Success, in our culture, is measured most in terms of deliverable quantity and realized income. Our most pervasive cultural value has been cast in the shape of selling more of a service or product to increasing numbers of consumers, because the result is an increase in available funds. Apparent wealth is equated with the ability to realize desire and, since that is at least one of our foremost values, ready money becomes a power fetish.
Devoting attention to individual needs can slow production and impairs the potential to compete more rapidly and with an expanding reach, unless, of course, the individual in question is a direct and significant contributor to the production cycle. Consequently, you and I co-create, work with, and live in huge organizations that do not value us as specific persons. There is no expectation to know you or me. We may experience the gathering of previously private information about our predilections or habits of consumption, but there is no ubiquitous, integrated mechanism today for the preservation and development of intimacy in addition to information. Masses of consumers have accepted that one cannot expect to be individually known and experience the daily process of life at the same time.
How can one person needing something specific compete for time and attention with groups willing to buy as much as possible as quickly as possible? Messages come down from the heights of power that workers must “get to know” their co-workers and customers, but those messages are preceded and followed by explicit and implicit directives to fill every waking moment with the increasingly complex expansion of production. These layers of contradiction create a global web of consequences. Merton decries our “right to demand a hearing for any and every sane reaction” to the “murderous din.”
Various reactions abound, both sane and apparently insane. Even the Unabomber Manifesto seems to echo sentiments also found in Merton:
The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy…We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence…we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.ii
As a nation we have seen that it is possible to send bombs to begin dismantling a system “permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.” It is also possible, and much more honest, to pray, dream, write, travel, teach, or take several other paths with the hope that life will be encouraged rather than stripped bare.
The form of government we create by either bombing or our passive acceptance or resignation, by binary thinking and either action or inaction, in so far as there is no soul-filled consideration, operates along lines of political authority. Large organizations, even beneficent ones, move ever closer to exercising centralized control over all aspects of our life – by habit, even when that is not the obvious intention. Persons are progressively subordinated to the structures of power, and opposing cultural expression is suppressed, even if inadvertently. We seem to be further away than ever before from qualities that even the structure of our language attributes to “soul”:
An expectation of depth, familiarity with mystery and the necessity of paradox, the common use of layered imagery, and a sense of ourselves as both individual and inextricably joined beyond our ken. Thomas Moore suggests that our society is becoming progressively estranged from soul: “when a society loses its soul, it develops many neurotic behaviors, among them paranoia and xenophobia.”iii Using the Odyssey to introduce us as homo viator, he observes that we are not only vulnerable in our traversal of life, but in profound need of the hospitality and understanding of others. This is increasingly unavailable when we have hearts benumbed and unable to empathize due to our cultural loss of imagination and soul. “It is not enough to let down our defenses and overcome our xenophobia. An awakened soul requires more of us: not just and end to xenophobia, but the development of positive xenophilia – love of strangers and the unusual, an appreciation for cultures that are unlike our own, and a desire to know groups and individuals that have different ways of understanding and living…we need arts of xenophilia, constructive and habitual ways of welcoming the unfamiliar.”iv
The Process Arts are a way, a path, toward xenophilia. The cornerstone of loving the unusual must be a kind of radical (root) inclusivity to get beneath our fear of that which to us is mysterious. In a world that includes bombers and monks weighing in on the same dilemma, we must somehow become able to hear any voice “demanding a hearing for any and every sane reaction in favor of man’s inalienable solitude and his interior freedom.” Somehow we must also listen more deeply than our diagnoses of sanity currently encourage. Somewhere there are balanced, constructive, habitual disciplines that can open the process of our xenophobia without violating the individual segments of the Life on whose behalf we struggle.
James Hillman, in his book The Soul’s Code, requires of us a departure from moralism in general. As an example for his focus on the individual genius, he brings to consciousness the dynamics of individual criminality and speaks to the tendency in our culture to diagnose and cure, divide and conquer, and combat whatever threatens us. Like the Unabomber, we indulge in violently compelling abstractions of good and evil to feel clearer and more potent. For Hillman, there is a seminal principle in the world, including each of us, an autonomous Soul that calls us to a simple listening to its mystery, rather than to the fantasy of a completely moral way, or other mechanism for seeming in control in the face of the ineffable. “Love ... may be less an exercise of the will in an act of combat and more an exercise of intellectual comprehension of that daimonic necessity that calls above and beyond the world to the sinner as to the saint.”v This mysterious necessity demands a kind of behavior more like a naturalist in the wilderness than the righteous and clever surgeon excising what seems to threaten.
There is no end to the opportunities before us. At every turn, we are faced with fantasies of separation, for my protection or for yours, and we may choose to include whatever is present in a given coincidence. There is even a martial art, called aikido, which requires blending and an insistence that no one need become a casualty, especially an instigator of physical violence. Mediators, facilitators, and makers of peace are being called to enter into conflicts seeking a transition to open forums for reconciliation, previously unheard of levels of disclosure, and lasting forgiveness. There are foundations for the encouragement of community, schools for process learning and work, companions of the world dream flourishing and reaching into global arenas.
There are practices springing up all over that require the inclusion of a previously excluded but essential songs, stories, and voices. The goal of the Process Arts is the development of disciplines that involve the experience of radically collaborative inclusivity and guide human beings toward the celebration of life, providing a context for the survival and blossoming of culture. Familiar trades and services, for instance, may appear unexpectedly potent and necessary with the added dimension of being practiced as a Process Art, whereas before they simply provided an avenue for the accumulation of funds.
Our institutions need not and cannot be bombed back to Nature. Our basic, global expectations are in need of being made anew in such a way that local centers for the hearing of local stories and the development of community are as ubiquitous as City Halls. Let us hear from people where they live and provide for what is needful for the living of lives full of celebration. The Process Arts include both conscious and unconscious forms of engagement that nourish the systemic shift from “either/or” judgment to “both/and” curiosity.
One result is in the reframing of conflict in ways that are creative--Conflict Done Well. Another is in the determination that every individual has specific, often immediate, needs and that all voices must have an opportunity to be heard with care lest we fall so far apart that we cannot come together when our children are in need. This holding of needs and careful hearing requires preparation and the creation of specific expectations.
Organizations like Beamish Process Arts (now Association Building Community) exist to develop and advance the work of individuals and institutions that place a clear and evident value on radical inclusivity and the practice of Process Arts. We develop our Process as our “product”, and ask those already practicing radical inclusivity under various banners to include themselves in a common, enduring expression of this work. We include our selves both locally and globally to create a common, conscious expectation that the life expression of every creature is precious and necessary to our collective survival. Some dedicate themselves to this work as their primary vocation. They study ways of encountering all kinds of needs, conflict, and co-creation with a burning desire for the celebration of life, and go into the world to ask others to join this dance. These are the Guardians of Peace.
A benediction from Thomas Moore:
“In the best of monasteries the pursuit of beauty and spiritual practice go hand in hand. Music, architecture, decoration, language, gardens, and libraries flourish. Community life is the object of central concern. Learning, study, reading, and the preservation of books are all integral to spiritual practice. We get into trouble in the spirit when we give up any of these: when beauty turns into sentimentality or propaganda, when architecture and the other arts are unconscious or considered secondary, when we forget the importance of ongoing, lifelong learning in all areas as support for the spiritual life, and especially when we make spiritual practice the project of creating a certain kind of self.” vi
REFERENCES AND NOTES
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Vol. I, Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation, by Thomas Merton, ed. Patrick Hart O.C.S.O., © 1995 The Merton Legacy Trust, ISBN 0-06-065475-9
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The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, © 1949 Bollingen Foundation Inc. NY, ISBN 0-691-01784-0
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The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, by James Hillman, © 1996, ISBN 0-679-44522-6
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Care of The Soul: A Guide For Cultivating Depth and Sacredness In Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore, © 1992, ISBN 0-06-016597-9
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Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon, © 1991 The Joseph Campbell Foundation, ISBN 0-06-016718-1
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Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship, by Thomas Moore, © 1994, ISBN 0-06-016928-1
i p. ix Thoughts In Solitude, by Thomas Merton, © 1956,58 by the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, ISBN 0-87773-920-X
ii http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~rahul/Misc/unibomber.html, excerpts, accessed 6May01 from Kumar, Rahul (http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~rahul/Pers/default.html)
iii p. 24, 25 Original Self, by Thomas Moore, © 2000, ISBN 0-06-019542-8
iv ibid
v p.245 The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, by James Hillman, ©1996,
ISBN 0-679-44522-6
vi p.29 Meditations, by Thomas Moore, © 1994, ISBN 0-06-017223-1
Good Enough To Teach
I recall a conversation with a Conflict Done Well student of mine who is also a professor of the liberal arts. I let her know that I had reached a point in my conflict practice where I felt that I was not executing well enough on the somatic principles I advocate and Martial Nonviolence system that I designed, and that I should probably end my teaching until I could take my next developmental step in mastery. She reprimanded me and explained that people who are good at being students do not expect their instructors to be able to apply what they are teaching comprehensively and with no discernable error, especially in the most difficult contexts, for instance, their own lives. She offered several examples of my helping other people to parse the concepts and practice the exercises involved, which she described as my job description and appropriate developmental stage, and suggested that it would be disservice to close the door of opportunity for my students, including her, just because I am "still embarrased by failure."
She went on to suggest that people who master something technically to the point that their error rate evaporates often become less interested in exploration and innovation because explicit leaps in skill are harder to come by and the project as a whole is less of a challenge. These people often become less adept at sharing their expertise with students and, as a result, less interesting themselves. This is to say nothing of the developmental benefits of assuming that there are almost always hidden levels of understanding on the other side of appearing to have achieved mastery. She allowed that, even if epistemological humility were not among my goals, persisting through ego-distress allows actual mastery that crosses domains to become possible.
It has been a while since this conversation, so I paraphrase. Another mighty woman who could have spoken similar words, my mother, just listened to the story-telling version of this and insisted that I write it down where others can see it, so here it is.
Conflict Done Well FAQ - Arrogance and Teaching Stages
Thanks so much for your request that I respond publicly to this anonymous message! Whoever you are, you have inspired me to make a series of video responses to frequently asked questions and notions requiring clarification.
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Pay For My Support
When a culture normalizes advertising in all forms of contact, and then makes money and speech equivalent, we learn to want to be paid somehow before expressing approbation.
"I am pushed to wear and drive brands around, making money for some mega-corp by getting eyeballs on their brand 24x7. I'm not going to Like that dude's stuff in public. What's in it for me?"
Support becomes transactional, something we are less likely to provide each other without some squid pro quo (no offense to cephalopods everywhere).
I am a person. Help me do more because my work is good and can make our world a better place.
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Makes me think of Citizen's United. In the context where advertising is crammed into every cranny of your psyche, money is speech. Worse, the Little Gal's (Guy's) efforts to do good work and make a living, especially doing something new, can't get "heard" or seen because it doesn't already glisten with wealth.
No class today Feb 20
Today's (Feb 20th) class has been canceled while we continue to weather and recover from the literal and proverbial storms. Please join us again in the coming week.
Do You Know I Love You?
Every first breath you draw upon waking
is God whispering "Do you know I love you?"
If you don't reply in some way, still you are loved,
but the breath was just some air going in or out.
No big deal?
Just being alive?
If you say with your life's breath--with your choices through the day
"I do."
Or even better,
"Do you know that I love you?"
then you are ready to hear in your life the Voice that says
YES!
Happy Valentine's Day
Aikido 2 - Delivering On The Promise To Practice Conflict Done Well
Proposals Help Things To Make Sense
Sometimes it is hard to figure out what to do. My own motivations and agreements are hard enough to reconcile into a clear purpose, let alone accounting for those of the people around me who have a right to bid for my time and attention (life energy). In retrospect, it sometimes becomes clear what would have been best. How may I add clarity in advance, rather than waiting for it to be too late?
I often find myself wishing that I had framed almost everything as a more detailed proposal in advance of a decision. It may be that this only works for me and for my Conflict Done Well students but, for some reason, the shape of a proposal lends itself to description--inclusion of important details that usually get left out. "Do I want that ice cream?" (Yes!) is a different animal from "I propose that you follow up your second portion of lasagna with a three scoop bowl of Rocky Road." Just punching someone in the face is a bit different from "I'd like to make a fist and throw it into the same space occupied by your head. Let's agree to the usual accomodation--that you are entitled to do the same in return. How does that sound?" Proposals of this kind almost guarantee the presence of irony, which depends on bringing unacknowledged dynamics into the light.
I propose that you use proposals to lever into consciousness the parts of an upcoming choice which you would know were important if you allowed yourself enough time to reflect. When I reframe as a proposal what I expect of my seven and nine year old every morning, I begin to see how my expectations are what managers refer to as A Heavy Lift.
I propose that you sleep until the last possible second and still get up earlier than you would prefer. Snap immediately into action upon waking, because time is already short, and prepare everything necessary to function the entire day, doing first what is essential and leaving for a questionable later anything that seems to beg for your attention in the moment. Be ready when an adult needs to leave--timing may vary--so you will have transportation to school, at which many of the other people would also rather not be. Do this at least five of every seven days despite not wanting to for any of a hundred emotional/physiological/somatic reasons appropriate to your age. Oh yes, and when anticipating your school day also push through being afraid of dying or bringing home a virus which will at least hospitalize your family and kill your grandparents outright.
And parents, I propose you deploy your absolute legal power over your children's bodies to motivate compliance by responding with emotional violence they cannot escape, thereby habituating them to expect and tolerate this throughout their life. Sudden or continuous anger and retribution will remedy their foot-dragging, mumbling, eye-rolling, or acting out, which is excusable because every Pandemic Day brings with it an invisible, lethal enemy, out to get you and your family. I propose that you treat every difficulty, no matter how small, every inconvenience as a life-or-death situation, because disobedience is betrayal on the battlefield of life. Delay or, God Forbid, dissent could add just that extra bit of chaos to your fragile balance and be the tipping point which spins you out of control and kills everyone you love, because obedience to authority is the last defense between world order and oblivion. Right?
Follow-up
Students and consulting clients, please consider the opportunities which accompany the exercises below. If you have been participating only through correspondence and occasional calls, please consider signing up for our Conflict Done Well+Online Classes.
Describe in your own words proposals advanced in each paragraph above and track your (un)sympathetic responses.
Please notice that the examples below move back and forth between simple paraphrasing (as unadorned by interpretation as possible) and deeper consideration nuanced with questions.
Examples (from only the first little bit)
The author proposes that (by paragraph and sentence):
1.1) You must figure out what to do. This is hard.
1.2a) Clear purpose is the result of reconciling your own motivations and agreements with those of the people in your sphere of influence. Also hard, so...requiring practice?
1.2b) Some people have a right to your time and attention. Others do not. What to do with each? Is it a matter of degrees, hard and soft "boundaries"?
1.2c) "Your time and attention" is another way of saying "the energy/power by virtue of which I am alive". Does this impliy that deploying time/attention/power is a life-and-death matter? If not/so, how do I handle these matters now? Is there a way to handle life/choices/energy that would be closer to what I might feel comfortable recommending to others by my example?
Advanced Application
Apply the same approach to:
Hey, I've got a proposal! Let's assemble a mob coordinated by a shared ideology and charismatic leader, OK, a gang. Then let's commit crimes against our peers and the state, the established order.* Let's be mocked and endlessly portrayed by the majority as betraying the values and nation we say we hold dearer than life, and then go to prison or lose our lives in other ways for a Lost Cause. Scream about but accept that those who drove us on should immediately disavow and distance themselves from us in order to stay in power, so that they may claim to have been faithful when the dust settles, and so that the next wave of believers may come again with as much momentum as possible. In all this show signs that you are your own person by using symbols everyone else in your group uses, like eschewing a face cover, because any purpose with momentum is better than just being pointless everyday you, even if it should kill thousands!
Does it change anything to note the parallels between this and other culture-change movements?
* Does it change anything to add here "and felonies including the murder of law enforcement officers"?