Contents of Early Fall 2008 Collaborative Solutions Newsletter:
In This Issue:
Spirituality and Social Change - Part
II:
Finding
renewal, inspiration, hope and
direction
Our nation continues to be dominated by racism
New
directions based on the spiritual principle of acceptance.
Our helping systems suffer from professional
dominance
New
directions based on the spiritual principle of compassion
The dominance of professionals has led
to harmful competition
New
directions based on the spiritual principles of interdependence,
appreciation, acceptance
and compassion
We have lost our spiritual purpose
It’s profound, and it’s not easy . . . but it’s
also within our reach
What
is new at Tom Wolff & Associates: New trainings
- Spirituality and Social Change
- Moving from Social Service to Social Justice
- Two Day Workshop on Building Healthy Communities through
Collaborative Solutions
References
Spirituality and Social Change Part
II: Finding renewal, inspiration, hope and
direction
In
our last Collaborative Solutions Newsletter, we proposed that our helping
systems are in deep trouble and that the nonprofit sector and the helping
industry are becoming a significant part of the problems they were
established to solve. We identified six issues that need to be addressed,
and we discussed the first two. In this newsletter we will tackle the
remaining four. Here’s a review of the whole
set:
- We have overemphasized the deficits in our communities. (Spring
2008)
- We have lost social change and social justice as our goal.
(Spring
2008)
- Our nation continues to be dominated by racism and our helping
systems are characterized by a lack of cultural competence.
- Our helping systems suffer from professional dominance. The dominance
of professionals has led to a lack of connection to those most affected
and their communities—the communities are not driving the process
of strengthening their communities.
- The dominance of professionals has led to another harmful
aspect of our helping system: competition.
- We have lost our spiritual purpose.
We
established a conceptual thread in the last newsletter that continues
in this one: we propose that applying spiritual principles to these
issues will give us new insights and the possibility of new solutions.
This
emphasis on a spiritual approach led to the strongest reader response
to a newsletter that I have ever received. With the permission of those
who submitted thoughts and comments, I have attached a few of the dozens
of communications that came in after the last newsletter. I invite
my readers to join the discussion and keep the exchange going. To encourage
this, we have established a new “Guestbook.”
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Issue 3. Our nation continues to be dominated by racism and
our helping systems are characterized by a lack of cultural competence.
Let’s look
at one of the most difficult social issues in America—racism.
The helping sector’s
approach to racism has generally focused on racial disparities in health.
For several years, this has been a headline issue in health care and
public health. Disparities in health outcomes for ethnic and racial
minorities are well documented. A national campaign to provide 100%
access to health care with 0% disparity brought the issue to the country’s
attention. The recent television series called Unnatural Causes:
Is Inequality Making Us Sick? continues to
bring this issue to our attention (www.unnaturalcauses.org).
Inequalities
in the access to and delivery of health care affect the health and
life expectancies of people across the country, particularly those
who are low-income, uninsured, underinsured, and people of color. As
Alan Nelson, former president of the American Medical Association (AMA),
has said, “Disparities in the health care delivered to
racial and ethnic minorities are real and are associated with worse
outcomes in many cases, which is unacceptable. The real challenge lies
not in debating whether disparities exist, because the evidence is
overwhelming, but in developing and implementing strategies to reduce
and eliminate them” (2003).
Racism has several dimensions that affect our lives, as the work of
Camara Phyllis
Jones illustrates (2000). Jones has developed a theoretical framework
for understanding racism on three levels: institutionalized, personally
mediated, and internalized. Institutional racism is defined
as differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of
society. Personally mediated racism is defined as prejudice
and discrimination. Internalized racism is defined as acceptance
by members of a stigmatized race of negative messages about their own
abilities and intrinsic worth.
Jones’ framework
provides a thinking tool that leads to hypotheses about why we find
race-associated differences in health outcomes. The framework also
offers insight into how we can design interventions to eliminate those
differences
Over
time, the large issue of racism—which is so clearly
about social change—has acquired a narrow focus. I have heard
of major campaigns to reduce health disparities that only focus on
the attitudes of staff and on providing staff training in cultural
competence. Staff attitudes are a significant variable that does affect
outcomes, and this work is valuable. However, to say that health disparities
in America are solely the result of providers’ racist attitudes
misses the broad, systemic impact of racism on all aspects of our lives.
When we look so intently at the cultural competence of providers, to
the exclusion of other factors, we risk moving away from critical social-justice
approaches that are more likely to help us resolve deeper sources of
racism.
For the last year I have been working with an exciting grassroots program
called Boston REACH 2010. REACH stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches
to Community Health. This program, which focuses on racial disparities
in breast and cervical cancer survival rates for Black women, is an
excellent example of bringing the issue of racism in health to the
forefront and then creating a comprehensive social-change format for
addressing it.
I have had the privilege of working with the women on the steering
committee of REACH 2010. I have been deeply moved by their stories,
energy, and commitment. All of the committee members are women of color,
and many are cancer survivors. When we completed a visioning process,
they declared of their newly created vision, “Of course, we are
going to work make this happen. For as long as it takes.”
At the end of a visioning process, groups usually express more moderate
energy and commitment, because members are still “growing into” the
ideas they have formulated. The REACH 2010 participants were already
on board, with total dedication and enthusiasm. This is not the usual
energy and commitment one encounters at the end of a visioning process.
They are engaged in saving their own lives and the lives of others.
For this is not an issue of interest to them, this is their life!
The REACH 2010 brochure states the issues clearly: “Fact. If you’re
a black woman living in Boston, you have a greater chance of dying
from breast or cervical cancer than a white woman. Why? Racism may play a key
role in determining your health status. It may affect your access to health services,
the kind of treatment you receive, and how much stress your body endures. The
REACH 2010 Coalition can help.” The REACH group does not mince words
in labeling the role of racism in the health disparities they experience.
The REACH 2010 understanding of health disparities was laid out in
the citywide Boston Public Health Commission’s (BPHC) Disparities
Project Blueprint to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
backed by the Mayor (http://www.bphc.org/director/disp_blueprint.asp).
This not only includes the need to address racism in health care but
also covers environmental and social-justice issues. This broad social-change
framework was the basis of the work that REACH 2010 has done. The women
developing the program understood that in order to address the social
determinants of health, you need to talk about racism and you need
to garner support for a systemic social-justice approach.
For many people, this represents a considerable paradigm shift, requiring
both personal and institutional commitment to eradicating racism. The
Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) has made the elimination of
racial and ethnic disparities in health a top priority. Through their
work in this area, the people in BPHC acknowledge that racism and discrimination
are root causes of disparities in health.
By focusing on environmental and social factors, the BPHC expands the
view to include issues like residential segregation and the part it
plays in health disparities. Geographic segregation is often associated
with “substandard housing, under-funded public schools, employment
disadvantages, exposure to crime, environmental hazards, and loss of
hope, thus powerfully concentrating disadvantage” (Williams,
2001).
Our experience with REACH 2010 suggests that coalition projects concerned
with health equity need to take a broad and holistic approach to systems
change. Such an approach must address all sections of the
Boston Blueprint, both in Health Care and Public Health and in Environmental
and Societal Factors. Here is the comprehensive list:
Health Care and Public Health
Health Insurance – Ensure that all residents
have access to universal, affordable, high-quality, and comprehensive
health insurance.
Data Collection – Require that all health-care
organizations and insurers gather uniform data on the race,
ethnicity, preferred language, and socioeconomic status of
patient/member populations.
Patient Education – Develop programs that build
the skills of community members to become better informed and
equipped patients, able to effectively navigate the health-care
system.
Health Systems – Develop programs that identify
and address specific obstacles to overcoming disparities.
Cultural Competence – Provide cultural competence
education and training, including educational components on
racism and other social determinants of health, as part of
the training of all health professionals (undergraduate, graduate,
and continuing).
Workforce Diversity – Increase resources to
recruit, train, retain, and graduate persons from underrepresented
groups of color in the health-care field.
Public Health Programs – Establish and/or strengthen
state and local government health agency offices to help guide the
effort to eliminate health disparities.
Research Needs – Conduct research to determine the causes
of and solutions to health disparities.
Environmental and Societal Factors
Neighborhood Investment – Undertake efforts to eliminate
disproportionate health risks in neighborhoods of color in order to
make them healthier places to live.
Jobs and Economic Security – Eliminate the disproportionate
barriers to employment faced by residents of color.
Public Awareness – Increase the awareness of all residents
about the impact of health disparities and related social justice issues.
Promotion of Key Community Institutions – Enhance
the ability of local community organizations and neighborhood residents
to effectively address issues that have an impact on health disparities.
Following
the BPHC Blueprint gives people such a broad view of health disparities
that there is no choice but to address issues of social justice. (REACH
2010 will have a publication describing their work available in 2009,
- working title Creating
a Health Equity Coalition: Lessons from Boston REACH 2010)
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New directions based on the spiritual principle of acceptance.
The
answer to the problem of racism in society is to acknowledge and address
racism in our systems and ourselves and then to develop a comprehensive
social-change approach to the issue. The spiritual principle of acceptance is
central here. The new directions we need to take involves deep acceptance
of the value of all people and acceptance of their differences. Acceptance involves
seeing the fundamental humanity that all humans share and clearly
recognizing the spiritual essence inherent in all of us. Acceptance is
the unconditional acknowledgement of what is. We are most
empowered when we are coming from a place of acceptance. When we
fully accept everyone, we find ourselves in deep peace.
Acceptance is not a passive stance; it involves action.
When we accept what is, then we ask, “Given what is, what we are going to do about it?” (Tadd,
1995ff). An approach to racism that is based on the spiritual principle of
acceptance allows for a deeper and broader set of systems changes than may
be available from simple exposure to anti-racism training (although training
may be a valuable component of a broader approach). In its principles for a
new social contract, The Boston Foundation (http://www.tbf.org )
states the goals as “valuing racial and cultural diversity as the foundation
for wholeness”—a wonderful description of acceptance.
We need to create and support
broad approaches to eliminating racism, as described in the Boston Blueprint,
and we need to do this from a place of deep acceptance.
To have deep acceptance for all humans is a tall order. Applying the
spiritual principle of deep acceptance allows us to step back and examine
our own roles, the roles of our agencies, and the roles of the overall
helping systems in our community with regard not only to racism but
to all the issues at hand.
When we approach our communities with the idea of acceptance in
mind, do we see things differently? Do new approaches suggest themselves? Do
new ways of looking at the community’s residents emerge?
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Issue 4. Our helping systems suffer from
professional dominance. The dominance of professionals has led to
a lack of connection to those most affected and their communities—the
communities are not driving the process of strengthening their communities.
Our traditional problem-solving processes are seriously handicapped
because they are not connected to the communities where they
seek solutions and to the people most affected by the issues.
When a problem arises, we tend to turn to the “usual suspects,” in
most cases to professionals designated as experts on the topic of our
concern.
Communities have two layers of helping systems, one that we easily
recognize and one that we tend to overlook. The first is the formal
system, composed of professional helpers: agencies and organizations
staffed by specialists. The second is the informal, community-based
system and includes neighbors, family, friends, and others who have
close ties to specific people and places. The formal system often lacks
connections to the communities and it tends to ignore the informal
system. When we ask residents where they first turn when they have
a problem, they generally answer, “Family, friends, and neighbors.” These
are not groups that most formal providers attend to very much.
While working with groups of service providers, I have found over the
years that these professionals have diminishing numbers of contacts
with the people who are living with the problems that they are trying
to solve. When the professionals want to know what is happening, they
ask other providers.
I often encourage groups to do assessments that rely on the words of
community members, as opposed to demographics or the perceptions of
providers. Yet even after we ask a community for its views, we struggle
with honoring what the people tell us. The helping system has become
accustomed to a bunker mentality; we put our heads down to avoid facing
difficult issues and we pick easy and familiar responses that may not
be solutions.
In one example, a survey of young people was done, asking about drugs
in the schools. We learned that these students identified the highest
risk factor for drug use as “Community Disorganization,” a
risk factor that was composed of questions devised in order to elicit
perceptions about neighborhood crime, fights, graffiti, feelings of
safety, empty lots, and so on. These were the issues that the young
community members were saying were the top risk factor for preventing
drug use.
However, when the group of service providers who had undertaken the
survey decided on a project to tackle, they chose to address the risk
factor of “Parental Attitudes.” They then created a social
marketing campaign for parents. The providers put their energy and
funds into fixing a concern 16 items below “Community
Disorganization” in their survey results. This item was much
more comfortable for the providers; it fell within their familiar skill
set and conceptual framework.
You can see in this decision a shift from a social-change agenda (community-oriented)
to a program more focused on the skills of parents (focusing on individuals).
Abraham Maslow reminded us that if the only tool you have is a hammer,
then all problems look like nails. In a helping system that is not
trained or supported for doing work on social change, all problems
look like problems of individuals that require remedial care rather
than problems that require systems change.
I am beginning to feel that neighborhood organizing and even neighborhood
outreach are becoming lost arts in the established helping system.
Fewer and fewer providers even know how to do organizing and outreach.
And fewer also believe that it is an important part of their community
work. This professional ignorance is dangerous, and the entire nonprofit
helping system seems to be losing its compass.
I
was recently at a local conference for nonprofit human service providers
entitled “Generating Change: From Thought to Action.” I
found the keynote speakers’ presentations frightening. The speakers
represented a range of statewide organizations that considered themselves
to be advocates for the best interests of the nonprofit sector. They
were far removed from the mission of these nonprofits—to help
communities and individuals. Their attention was locked onto their
organizations’ self-interests.
Here’s what I mean. The presenters talked about:
- The best
public relations messages that would emphasize
the importance of the nonprofit sector.
- How to lobby for more money in the state budget.
- How to get better staff wages for agencies.
- And, in general, how to organize to advance their agendas.
There was no talk of client needs or social justice.
Getting
the needs of those most affected to drive the system is not easy. It
requires new ways of thinking about power. The ways in which nonprofit
service agencies are governed reinforce this disconnection. The members
of nonprofit boards are increasingly out of touch with the people most
affected by the services provided by the agencies that they serve.
This is ironic in light of the origins of nonprofit boards, which were
designed as a way of keeping an organization in touch with its community.
Nonprofits now draw board members from outside the affected community,
or they include board members for reasons more related to fund-raising
than community insight.
This is bad policy and bad practice. This lack of connection needs
to be replaced by resident-driven approaches.
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New directions based on the spiritual principle of compassion.
We
need to re-think and re-design our helping system so that it is based
on loving compassion for those in the community we
work with, as well as for our other community partners. We must also
have loving compassion for ourselves. A helping system based on compassion
would be so open to the entire life situations of those in our communities
that it would naturally be driven by those most affected, with professionals
serving as resources.
Compassion has two essential components: the willingness and ability
to open fully to the other’s whole life situation and wishing
the other well (Gill, 2008). If we are to be fully open to other people’s
whole life situations, then we will want to be immersed in our communities—hanging
out, talking, and learning from residents. We will base our approaches to solving
problems on what we have heard in the community. If we truly wish these residents
well, then we will look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with them to
improve matters.
Compassion is quite different from sympathy and pity,
which are more closely allied with the paternalistic stance of our present
helping system. Compassion includes a commitment to action, to do something
to alleviate suffering. Sympathy implies no such commitment.
The compassionate perspective is deeply rooted in a nonjudgmental view
of healing. It is the most powerful medicine because it never turns
away from reality. Compassion is grounded in deep insight into the
goodness and equanimity at the very center of each person’s being.
Some believe that compassion is the way to heal the world (Gill, 2008).
From
a perspective of loving compassion, professionals would find appropriate
roles for themselves in communities—roles that
honor the community and its members as partners in addressing community
issues.
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Issue 5: The dominance of professionals has led to another harmful
aspect of our helping system: competition
Competition is the American way. It is deeply embedded in our economic
and political systems and it has many advantages, but it is a significant
barrier to promoting communal, collaborative approaches. Competitive
energy is surprisingly pervasive in the helping systems. We see this
clearly in cities and towns where two hospitals or hospital systems
compete in what is as much a life-and-death battle for the institutions
as are the individuals’ fights for survival in their ERs.
In one community, I have been working with a neighborhood center serving
a largely Latino neighborhood. Through our work together, the organization
shifted from being a service-delivery organization and returned to
its original mission of community development, community organizing,
and community engagement. This change has taken almost four years,
but now under a new young, vibrant, and creative Latina leader the
organization is achieving enormous success.
So what is the response of the other organizations in the community
to this group’s wonderful accomplishments in addressing the needs
of its very poor neighborhood? Are they celebrating and supporting
the neighborhood center? No. The other institutions have set out to
do everything imaginable to destroy this small nonprofit. The major
state funder defunded the center, resulting in the loss of half of
its budget, in spite of the state program’s mandate to do organizing
work in this neighborhood. The community’s largest anti-poverty
agency hired a community organizer to work in direct competition with
the center. And some other minority-serving agencies became overtly
competitive. The more success the neighborhood organization achieves,
the more the other groups try to kill it off. Why?
Competition.
I know it may sound like heresy to say this, but we need to get competition
out of the helping system. Competition and helping do not necessarily
go well together. In fact, competition seems to cause a great deal
of harm. We need to replace competition with cooperation and collaboration.
Leland Kaiser, a visionary health futurist, offers a lot of wise observations
about competition in the health-care system (2005). Here are a few of
his thoughts:
- “Contemporary health care is a collective mental model based
on competition, scarcity, and profit. It is a limited model and will
not significantly improve the health and well-being of our population,
regardless of how long or hard we try. We need a new mental model
based on abundance, the pursuit of wellness, potentiation of people,
community collaboration and assumption of personal responsibility.
Until we adopt such a model, things will get worse even though we're
spending more and more time and money trying to make things better.”
- “To transform anything, it must be viewed in its completeness.
Its relatedness and connectedness to the universe. We should be designing
a healthy planet, healthy community, healthy organization, and a
healthy life.”
- “I tell hospitals, they should never have enemies in a competitive
marketplace; they should only have allies. I want each hospital to
convey to its competitors that they're not out there to destroy them,
steal their patients, or put them out of business. All providers
in the community should work collaboratively. There is more than
enough work to do, and it should be done cooperatively. I want to
move all health care providers toward a unity perspective. I often
ask hospital CEOs, How many times last year when a competitor got
in trouble, did you send them money? If the hospital across town
is going broke, you should say, ‛I’m sorry about what
is happening to you. We value your contribution to our community.
For whatever reason, we've had a very good year, so we are cutting
you a check for $5 million. Take it. I hope it helps.’”
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New directions based on the spiritual principles of interdependence,
appreciation, acceptance, and compassion.
The answer to our problems with competition
is to develop a collaborative system, where all entities aim to enhance
each other’s capacities (Himmelman, 2001). This collaboration
needs to be based on the spiritual principles of interdependence,
compassion, appreciation, and acceptance. This is not
coalition-building to reduce duplication of services or to help us
do more with less. It involves redefining the system so that all
the pieces interact with each other from a foundation of spiritual
principles.
Kaiser eloquently expands on this idea: “A spiritual orientation
requires all the providers to come together and form a sacred covenant
to jointly meet the health needs of everyone in the community. In a
spiritual context, providers view one another as ‛organs of the
same body.’ Although they maintain their individuality, they
also achieve a unity of purpose and function. The eye does not despise
the ear. If one part of the body gets in trouble, the others do what
they can to come to its aid and restore healthy functioning. Isn't
it strange that the human body has more wisdom than our health-care
system? Spirituality unites diverse people in a common effort to improve
the human condition” (2000).
This common effort to improve the human condition can be part
of the rallying cry to have spiritual principles, rather than competition,
drive the helping sector.
In an article on “engaged Buddhism,” Kenneth Kraft
notes, “Awareness
of interconnectedness fosters a sense of universal responsibility.
The Dalai Lama states that because the individual and society are interdependent,
one’s behavior as an individual is inseparable from one’s
behavior as a participant in society” (1990).
A competitive stance fails to acknowledge our unavoidable interdependence
and interconnection. When services compete with each other, everyone
suffers. When we recognize the strengths of our connections and we
can put them to work on each other’s behalf.
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Issue 6: We have lost our spiritual purpose.
I believe
that when we first started finding ways to help people in our communities,
our efforts had a more spiritual tone and were far less mechanistic,
competitive, and business-like than they are today.
Jane Addams lived from 1865 to 1930 and is recognized as one of the
earliest and most effective workers for social change in the United
States. She was also the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. In 1889, she and a friend founded Hull House, one of the
first American settlement houses. At peak visitation, Hull House helped
about two thousand people a week—and this was in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, a century ago. We’d be happy for
our programs today to have that much community reach and positive results.
What drove Jane Addams’ work? A belief that, as she said, “The
good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is
secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life” (1990).
This statement demonstrates a wonderful melding of spiritual principles
and social change in the context of one of America’s earliest,
most visionary, and most effective helping systems.
But we seem to have lost track of these spiritual roots.
In this newsletter and the previous one, I have described the deep
trouble facing our nonprofit helping systems, and have shown how our
problems derive from (1) an emphasis on deficits; (2) a failure to
address issues of social justice; (3) the ongoing role of racism and
lack of cultural competence; (4) professional dominance, rather than
the community, driving the process; and finally (5) competition.
We can’t fix these major issues with efforts that come from a
mechanistic, efficiency-oriented approach. We are not making matters
better by applying business principles to the nonprofit sector. Because
of the attention we are paying to efficiency and business management,
arguments in favor of a greater focus on social justice and social
change seem to fall on deaf ears.
Albert Einstein pinpointed the problem we’re facing: “We
can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when
we created them.”
Although business tools can be helpful adjuncts to our work, when applied
without wisdom they can kill the heart of our efforts. The focus on
the bottom line, billable hours, and other “deliverables” has
helped create the problems that we face. So my proposal to bring a
spiritual perspective to these problems reflects an attempt to step
outside the boxes we’ve nailed ourselves into and to find a perspective
that can give us renewed inspiration, hope, and direction.
Spiritual principles can guide us in all the work we do. They can help
us understand the shortcomings of our present community systems and
they can support us as we work with the community to design better
ways to proceed. Spiritual principles can help us and our communities
move toward sharing abundance, honoring the natural environment, promoting
social justice and compassion, and operating from a stance of collaboration
rather than competition. A spiritual grounding lets us use loving compassion
as a guide for our decision-making. It helps us honor every member
of our community as a valuable asset and appreciated resource.
I have always thought about our work in building healthy communities
through collaboration as a spiritual endeavor. The answers to the biggest
problems in our helping systems can be found most easily when each
of us remembers, and works from, our highest spiritual essence.
Many of us who work in the helping nonprofit sector do so for spiritual
purposes, although we can define these for ourselves in very different
ways. Here’s Kaiser again: “Spirituality refers to a broad
set of principles that transcend all religions. Spirituality is about
the relationship between ourselves and something larger. That something
can be the good of the community or the people who are served by your
agency or school or with energies greater than ourselves” (2005).
As one worker once said to me, “I do this work to connect to
a larger purpose in my life and in the world.”
Interestingly, and ironically, we see many books currently being written
about spirituality and business. They talk about how to draw on the
spiritual aspects of people working in the world of business. The goal
of these spiritual programs is to help workers feel more fulfilled,
to help companies achieve their objectives, and even to change the
companies’ objectives so that they are more “spiritual.”
Where are the equivalent books in the helping sector? Today’s
helping industry does not generally draw out, or even acknowledge,
the spiritual qualities of the good people who work in it. Although
the business community is turning in this direction to find positive
change, the nonprofit helping sector is ignoring it.
I suggest that spiritual principles
such as compassion, interdependence, appreciation, and deep acceptance—by
themselves and combined—may offer us a fresh perspective in looking at,
and solving, the issues we face. The advantage of basing our responses to problems
on spiritual principles is not that this approach yields easy solutions. What
it does do is set a clear direction and intentionality for the solutions we
will devise.
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It’s profound, and it’s not easy . . . but it’s
also within our reach
Below is a summary of the six critical
issues facing our helping systems and the new directions suggested
by the application of specific spiritual principles that I’ve
selected to help my own thought processes:
- We have overemphasized the deficits in our communities: – appreciation.
- We have lost social change and social justice as our goal: interdependence
and interconnection.
- Our nation continues to be dominated by racism and our helping
systems are characterized by a lack of cultural competence: acceptance.
- Our helping systems suffer from professional dominance. Our communities
are not driving the process of fixing their own problems: compassion.
- The dominance of professionals has also led to another harmful aspect
of our helping system: competition: interdependence, appreciation,
acceptance, and compassion.
There is nothing rigid about the matching of particular principles
to the issues. I welcome readers’ ideas on how we can apply
spiritual principles to fixing the broken system. The big goal is
to see how we can work together to enhance our capacity to create
systems change.
My work and that of many communities and colleagues around the globe,
on numerous issues, convinces me that collaboration based on spiritual
principles is a powerful force. It’s not easy, but it’s
much easier and so much more rewarding than staying stuck. What we
need now is additional clear guidance about how to go about the collaborative
process in a way that leads to successful community change. The challenge
is to translate these ideas into real action in communities. The
challenge is to make a difference.
The
responses from my readers to the last newsletter (selections are
included below and full responses can be found in the guestbook)
provide some direction to what comes next.
- We need to find examples of best practices of
the translation of spiritual principles into community action.
A very moving communication from Louise Brady, an Alaska Native from
Sitka, describes a perfect illustration. Her community responded
to the tragedies of drug overdoses with a community totem-pole carving.
The group also recorded its process, so the rest of us can honor
and learn from this community’s work together. Louise Brady says, “I
co-produced a film called Carved from the Heart: A Portrait of
Grief Healing and Community. The reason I was so drawn to
the project is exactly what you talk about in your article. . .
. [T]he carving of a traditional totem pole by a man who had lost
his son to a drug overdose became the catalyst for the entire community
and others from around Southeast Alaska to come together and understand
the importance of reaching out.” “http://www.ssd.k12.ak.us/PHS/pages/mainpage.html
Sophia Wesolowski from California offers a link to conversations on “Celebrating
Human Greatness” (http://humangreatness.org/),
where participants “imagine approaching their community from
a place of deep appreciation of its strengths, assets, and even its
shortcomings.” This
shows the use of the Appreciative Inquiry methodology as another
best practice.
- We need to find models and trainings that
will inspire us, and show us how, to bring spirituality to our work.
Terri Foster from Connecticut describes the transformative experience
of attending a training at the University of Rhode Island (www.uri.edu/nonviolence/about.html).
The training is based on Dr. Martin Luther King’s Six Principles
of Nonviolence (http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/non/6principles.html ).
Mary Jacksteit writes of working from a model that expresses her
spiritual values through her work with the Public Conversations Project
( http://www.publicconversations.org ).
- We need to ask the tough questions that arise.
Dick Sclove says this so well when he writes, “I have a sense
that actually integrating spirituality into worldly affairs somehow
requires something deeper of us. I can't articulate this well, because
I don't yet really know what I mean. I guess it's something to do with
the fact that merely advocating for incorporation of principles like
appreciation and interconnectedness isn't going far enough. As articulated,
these are ideas, and to function in tune with spirit is
not primarily a matter of ideas. It's somehow a matter of learning
to integrate a less egoic mode of being into our daily activities.
“I'm
guessing that at some point effective social action that incorporates
spirituality must somehow call upon or encourage all participants
to stretch themselves spiritually, to strive to act from our
higher selves, impulses and intuitions, and to engage in social action
in a way that cultivates deeper spiritual growth for ourselves and
for those with whom we interact. Spiritual growth often demands that
we each reach beyond our comfort zones (of course, effective social
action demands the same thing); it also doesn't always come easy.
Discipline and effort—as
opposed to easy New Age-y self-indulgence—are often part of
the mix.
Great
moral-spiritual leaders—the M. L. Kings, Gandhis, and Mandelas—often
are great precisely because they speak and act with a passion, moral and spiritual
force, and clarity that summons others to rise to a higher level of spiritual
efficacy.” (Richard@Sclove.org)
Cat Janson poses another provocative question: “You may want
to ask for responses from those who work in non-faith-based agencies,
about how they balance faith and not being able to share or ask about
faith. I work with teens through the Department of Corrections as well
as a faith-based neighborhood center. In my role with the DOC, I am
not allowed to share or talk about faith unless the family or teen
bring it up. Even then I must stay neutral.”
- Finally, we will all want to continue to read and find
new direction from a wide range of sources.
One reader pointed me to an interview with Andrew Harvey. The topic
is “sacred activism.” Called “The Ordinary Decency
of the Heart, an abbreviated version can be found online ( www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/389/the_ordinary_decency_of_the_heart ).
Here are some quotes: “What’s required now is inspired,
radical action on every level. . . . The great revolution that has
to happen for the world to be saved will be organized through networks
of grace. Look at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, a court in which victims of apartheid could give testimony
and perpetrators of violence could request immunity. . . . .Sacred
activism is the fusion of the mystic’s passion for God with the
activist’s passion for justice, creating a third fire, which
is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture
every living thing.”
I welcome
your responses to all of these thoughts on spirituality and social
change.
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What is new at Tom Wolff & Associates?
Tom Wolff & Associates will be offering new programs
in the area of Social Change and Spirituality. Contact us for information
on trainings, retreats, workshops, salon/discussions for your local,
state or national organization.
Specific topics include:
- Social Change and Spirituality,
- Moving from Social Service to Social Justice
- Two-Day Workshop
In addition to the long-standing half-day and day-long workshops,
Tom Wolff & Associates now offers a new two-day workshop on coalition-building
and collaborative solutions. A perfect offering for your statewide
or national organization. Contact us today: tom@tomwolff.com.
The goals of the workshop are to increase the skills and understanding
by the participants of the collaborative process with an emphasis on
concrete skills and tools. There is a lively mix of didactic material,
exercises, and full-scale coalition simulation. The workshop can be
adapted for experienced coalition leaders to help expand and strengthen
their skills, or for newcomers, or for both. Topics covered include:
Engaging the Community, Principles of Collaborative Solutions, Strategic
Planning, Creating a Common Coalition Vision, Collaborative Leadership,
Sustainability, and Evaluation. Participants leave with new energy
for the work and new skills and tools.
For
full sample agenda as developed for an audience in Lisbon, Portugal
go to link http://tomwolff.com/two-day-workshop.html:
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References:
Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990
Boston Public Health Commission "Creating a Health Equity Coalition:
Lessons from Boston REACH 2010." Manuscript in progress 2008
Boston Public Health Commission Mayor’s Task Force
Blueprint: A Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health (http://www.bphc.org/director/disp_blueprint.asp)
2005
Gill, Penny. Manuscript channeled from a teacher who names himself
Manjushri. 2008
Himmelman, Arthur “On Coalitions and the Transformation of Power
Relations: Collaborative Betterment and Collaborative Empowerment” American
Journal of Community Psychology 29, no.2, 277-284, 2001
Jones, Camara Phyllis, “Levels of Racism a Theoretic Framework
and a Gardener’s Tale”, American Journal of Public
Health , 90 no8, 1212-1215 2000
Kaiser, Leland “Spirituality and the Physician Executive: Reconciling
the Inner Self and the Business of Health Care.” The Physician
Executive 26, no. 2 (March/April 2000). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0843/is_2_26/ai_102342512 .
Kaiser, Leland 2005 Interview .EXPLORE: The Journal of Science
and Healing, Volume 1, Issue 4, 241 – 241
Kraft, K. Engaged Buddhist Reader Ed. Arnold Kotler, Berkeley, Parallax
Press; 1996 p64-69
Nelson, Alan in Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial
and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care Ed.Brian D.Smedley, Adrienne
Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson, National Academies Press 2003
Tadd, Ellen Notes from meditation classes with Ellen Tadd and her
guides (www.ellentadd.com)
1995-2008.
Williams, David and Collins, Chiquita “Racial Residential Segregation:
A Fundamental Cause of Racial Disparities in Health” Public Health
Reports Sept-October 2001 Vol. 116 p 404-416
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