Human to Human: Blog and Podcast

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. What to do when harmful behavior in an individual shows up in a participative event. When it feels like an individual is hijacking attention. When it feels like an attack.

Intervene? Let it rides it’s course? Make sure that chairs don’t get thrown? Sustain the tension and uncertainty so that something new can come from how the rest of the group responds? Challenge others to speak their truth? Sustain the tension so that the group can respond and deal with it’s business. All of these can help in some way.

In times like these, I find myself aware of recent teachings that I got from Christina Baldwin. First, that there is a difference between shadow (an unspoken tension or projection of judgement that is present) and sabotage (willful disruption of the group and process for personal means). Second, that if it’s shadow, part of the facilitator’s job is to pull the shadow off of the person willing to speak it into the group. OK, that all requires some discernment, on the spot, and some good skill. That’s some of the nuance.

But, back to harmful behavior, and one option that I want to try next time.

The first thing to do is name that the behavior appears to be harmful. Be transparent with it and dare to name it out loud. “What you are saying appears to be a very harmful thing. It feels like an attack on a particular person. I imagine that there is some good that you are intending. Is there? Can you say what is the good that you are trying to point towards with this behavior?”

This takes the behavior head on. Is an act of kindness to the person speaking. Is an act of kindness to the person being attacked. It is an act of kindness to the group, to use what is present for some changes.

The second step is to invite a broader inquiry. “Can you imagine that there may be other ways to accomplish that good? Would you be willing to enter a dialogue about that?”

This creates alternative to burying the shadow, and unintentionally creating further resentment. It creates an opportunity for wisdom from the group. It counts on the group to bring forth wisdom around the caring. To bring forth wisdom around alternative choices, which I would argue, are always present.

I suppose there is something further in this will be for attention another day. As facilitator, I’ve got some plans for the group. Hijacking interferes with that. It is useful to name that that disturbance, even that harmful behavior, is entry point to needed work. It can really clear the room.

Yes, there are choices.

Many people have meditation practices these days. Some are very involved. Some are quite simple. Some require a particular posture. Some are less formal. Some with eyes closed. Some with eyes open. Some practice many times during the day. Some just once.

Whatever one’s practice is, the emptying and presence really matters.

My practice is quite simple. Just breath. Slow breathing. Usually for 10-20 minutes. I love the moment, when I feel like I’m no longer counting length of breath (yes, I do this sometimes), and instead, begin to feel like I am being breathed. Empty (er) and being breathed. Quite simply. Like it might I feel if hooked up to a grand and invisible oxygen tank (wait, maybe we already are). Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s the larger living system that is the world. Maybe it is the composite field of meditators.

Regardless, presence matters. The physical and emotional memory of presence matters, given rather demanding circumstances that many of us find ourselves in.

My 12 minute meditation today was based on the awareness that most of my breath cycles are 30 seconds. Slowly in, pausing when full. Slowly out, pausing when empty. In my brain, I wanted to experiment. I kind of liked thinking that in 12 minutes, that’s 24 breaths. One breath for each hour of the day.

I won’t necessarily measure these breaths, that’s not the point. But infusing each hour of the day with some presence and pause and emptiness — there’s some attractive meaning making and practice.

In just 12 minutes.

Sister Julia Walsh is one of my favorite writers from a Christian tradition. She is FSPA, Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and based in Wisconsin. I got to meet her several times over the last few years when my partner and I were in ongoing work with FSPA — a participative leadership approach to General Assembly and an Elections Assembly. I’m super happy to call her a friend.

One of the things I love about Julia, and her voice, is that she is honest. She tells it like it is. She shows her vulnerability. Her doubt. What I love even more about that is that this isn’t a departure from her Christian living. It isn’t a whisper only to be heard in carefully protected places. It isn’t a departure from vows. Rather, her honesty and transparency are central to her Christian living.

Once upon a time it seems that many of us felt we had to deny imperfections, as if that would somehow be a better representation of the good, the divine, the community. But Sister Julia, accepts those imperfections (or tries to like most of us), and shares them out loud. It’s so much easier to connect with someone this way. And then, I would suggest, to connect to the divine within each of us.

One of Julia’s latest blogs is entitled Enough or Not. She shares in an open way her “in progress” relationship with simplicity and yet wanting things. I love these words:

Honestly, my yearning for more-than-is/more-than-I-have-right-now isn’t always about the ideals I hold close to me. Some of my dreams are embarrassingly superficial, completely basic and ordinary. Like Oh, how I wish I had a panini maker to cook this sandwich or This hairdryer is too loud and clunky, I should get a new one. I am regularly creating mental lists of objects that I think will create more convenience and efficiency in my busy life, just because I too fall for the lies of American commercialism and capitalism. I have to catch myself. When I find myself thinking that more stuff will be a solution, I must gain new consciousness.

Beautiful, right. Her full post is here.

 

Later this week I am working with a UCC Congregation in Grinnell, Iowa. They are lead by a tremendous pastor, who is vibrant in heart and wise well beyond his years. The event is stewarded by a group of 11, a core team, that has been helping to invite the surprise and possibility that can arise from a group of caring people that come together with some deliberateness. This group too, is vibrant in heart and overflowing with life wisdom. There will be 30 of us or so from the congregation that will gather from Thursday night through Saturday. Sunday will be a celebratory worship and sharing of what we did.

Why gather? It is to give live to 4-6 strategic experiments that will shape the next few years (or seasons) of life in this congregation. Some of those experiments may already be functioning. Some of them may be new. Some of them will be applied to what most would call projects and initiatives. Some of them will be ways to add to a deliberate culture of kindness and love among each other and in their community. The random acts of goodness that can be uniquely refreshed by being together.

When first approached several months ago, the invitation to me was to do strategic planning with them. It is not a semantic battle that I’m interested in, but I must say that I’m proud that we shifted that language to strategic “experiments.” No doubt, we will do some planning together. Committees will be formed, or groups to work together. Chairs, or something parallel to that will be named. But strategic plans connote a certainty that many of us may feel comforted by, but rarely, if ever, exists. Plans often don’t work out as we intend them to, particularly the complex ones. This, despite some really good thinking and preparing.

Strategic “experiments” interrupt, or begin to interrupt the mindset of certainty. Why? Well, life itself is far less predictable than we might claim. Many of us can name with widely shared acknowledgement, things that we thought we could control but then learned quickly that we couldn’t. Raising a child comes to mind. Raising a congregation comes to mind. Marriages and other forms of partnership come to mind. Experiments will give us something to do, definitely. But they welcome a mindset of uncertainty that underlays that doing. Of trying something out. Of letting go. Of sharing observations. Of patience for the unknown.

This ability to become comfortable with the unknown inherent in an experiment, is itself, a core competency. In an individual, it’s awesome. When widely shared in a group, it’s doubly awesome! It creates the very container for not just a plan, but for an adaptiveness to many plans in ever changing circumstances. To not just receive a fish per day, but to learn to fish, to move in the waters, to work with different bait, to come to know the river itself.

I’m grateful to be with these impressive people. In the work we have to do. And in the community building that we will surely add too. And in the capacity building that will come from us experimenting the way forward.