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Last week while I was in Toronto, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in St. James Park at Occupy Toronto. I found the experience to be very moving and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.
What struck me first when I entered the park was the lengths to which people have gone to turn the park into an intentional community. One of the deepest values that was apparent immediately is the value of caring for each other and creating a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. The other value that’s clear is the value of volunteering whatever gifts you can bring for the benefit of the whole.
There is a food area where donated food is available free of charge, a free library where books are shared and free classes are taught by volunteers, a medical tent, a logistics tent, a recovery tent (for people in 12 step programs), a safe women’s area, a silent meditation area, a volunteer sign-up area, a town square where general assemblies take place twice a day, a music zone, and an information table for people who are new to the park. While I was there they were looking for volunteers to set up a children’s area. Everything is free and everyone is welcome.
Shortly after I arrived in the park, I discovered why it had been so quiet – participants were returning from a rousing protest march. They brought great energy and enthusiasm to an otherwise quiet space. Here’s a short video capturing some of the energy they brought with them:
The energy wasn’t all positive. Clearly there had been conflict on the march with one group wanting to march through the financial district and the rest of the group prefering to stick with the initial plan. Apparently someone had told the police that the group that wanted to go to the financial district was planning to incite violence. The people in that group insisted that it wasn’t true. As their voices raised in frustration, a few people stepped out of the crowd to offer them deep listening and a way to reframe their stories so that they could once again offer positive energy to the group.
The true test of a community is how they handle conflict, and though there is much to admire about the intentionality around the Occupy movement, they are not immune to the challenge of having various factions in their midst bringing different viewpoints and differing passions. Gather people with passion into the same space and at some point, you’re bound to experience conflict.
As soon as the marchers returned, the general assembly began in the town square. Young facilitators did their best to manage the energy in the large and passionate group. Using the human microphone (the speaker shouts their words, and then the group shouts them back so that more people can hear), they tried to give voice to all of the concerns and ideas as they arose. To increase people’s opportunity of being heard, they asked us all to break into circle groups to offer our personal ideas of what things should be done in the future. After the circle time, spokespersons from each group brought the offerings back into the larger group. Then, at the end of the meeting, a speaker’s list was formed, inviting anyone who still felt they had something important to say to add their name to the list.
The process wasn’t perfect, and it was clear that the facilitators were learning (and making up) the process as they went along. Those of us who have facilitated large and passionate groups know that it’s challenging to give voice to so many people, especially when there is conflict involved.
I would argue that those imperfections and efforts are what makes the movement beautiful and potentially powerful. No, the movement is not one of perfect clarity (as the critics continue to say). Each person brings a different desire and restlessness to the circle. But what is remarkable is that so many different voices are coming together to create circles, live in community, and share their questions, passions, ideas, and alternatives for the systems that have begun to enslave rather than serve us.
Whenever something new is emerging, we have to be willing to walk through chaos to get there. We have to have the patience to sit in the ambiguous spaces. We have to let the questions sit heavily on our hearts.
One of the speakers who stood up during the general assembly spoke the words that have resonated the most loudly for me since that afternoon. “People say that we are a leaderless movement,” she said. “I would suggest that instead we see ourselves as a leaderful movement. We must ALL see ourselves as leaders in this new journey we’re on.”
And THAT is the beauty of the Occupy movement. For the community (and movement) to succeed, each person has to step into personal leadership and offer their gifts into the circle. Those who have medical skills have to show up at the medical tent. Those who can teach meditation, have to show up in the meditation area to coach others. Those who are facilitators need to offer their skills to the general assembly. Those who are good at diffusing conflict need to step in and help where they can.
Each person brings his/her passion and ideas and a willingness to listen to the passion and ideas brought by others.
That’s wisdom that goes far beyond the Occupy movement and right into our lives. Whatever your gifts are, show up and offer them for the good of all people. And then listen and receive what others have brought.
YOU are a leader and you need to step into that role in order to serve the people who are waiting to be served. That’s the only way community can work.
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the camp? You can just skip the rest of the kilometres for the day, rest up, stay off your blisters for awhile, and start fresh tomorrow.”
We heard that often along the 100 km. walk. Well-meaning organizers, volunteers, and medics wanted to help us avoid some of the pain we were experiencing. They wanted to give us short-cuts, assuring us there was no shame in missing a few kilometres.
Every offer only set our resolve deeper, though. It even made us reluctant to visit the medics when the blisters got particularly ugly. We weren’t there to do 87 km – we were there to do 100.
Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were toes on our feet that were hardly recognizable as toes anymore. Yes, there were moments when there didn’t seem to be a single muscle in our body that was exempt from the overwhelming ache.
But we were there to complete the journey. We were there to test the limits of our endurance. We were there to be present in every painful step.
We live in a culture that likes shortcuts, especially when it comes to pain. We try to rush through grief, thinking that we’ll be better off if we can just put a bandaid on it and get back to real life. We over-medicate, thinking a dulling of the pain will help us feel “normal”. We short-circuit the birthing process (both literal and figurative), with unnecessary c-sections and inductions. We over-consume, thinking that shopping therapy will dull the ache of loneliness or heartbreak. We clamour over quick fixes and fill our lives with cheap throw-away solutions to our problems.
We prefer ten easy steps to one thousand painful ones.
But it’s the thousand painful steps that will change us. It takes those thousand painful steps for us to grow into what we’re meant to be at the end of the journey.
In ten easy steps, we can build little more than a house of cards, not the rich, beautiful temple we are meant to become. A strong wind blows away the house of cards, but the temple withstands the storm.
A fascinating thing happened at the end of our three day journey. We three women, walking together every step of the way, always within about 100 steps of each other, all began to menstruate before the end of the day. In just three days, our cycles aligned (though I wasn’t expecting mine for another week and a half and I’m not sure about the others). Interestingly enough, the next day was the full moon.
I’ve lived with enough roommates, daughters, and sisters to know that it is not unusual for women living in community to end up with cycles that are in sync. I’ve never seen it happen in such a short time, though. Three days of sharing an intense, painful experience, and our bodies were in tune with each other.
Extrapolate that story forward, and you have three women, living in community, whose bodies are preparing to go through the pain and glory of childbirth together. It’s a beautiful, poignant story. Expose three women’s bodies to shared pain and they find a way to support each other that goes much deeper than words.
Women, we are amazing vessels. We birth children and carry each other’s pain. Every month, we shed blood – our little painful sacrifice for the beauty we bear within us.
As an added element to this story, it was pain and childbirth that brought these three women together in the first place. Cath’s loss of Juggernaut led her to a place where walking helped her live through the pain. Christina’s deep compassion for her story and sharing of her pain made her want to support Cath on the journey. My own story of the loss of Matthew bonded me to Cath and made me want to be with her for the journey as well. It was pain that bonded us, pain that we journeyed through together, and pain that caused our bodies to align themselves with each other so that we could most fully support each other.
Our bodies carry wisdom that our minds know nothing about.
Our bodies understand the value of pain.
Without the pain, we don’t have the beauty. Without the blood, we don’t have the birth. Without the sacrifice, we don’t have the growth. Without the sharing of agony, we don’t have community.
We can’t shortcut through the pain. It’s not serving any of us. Shortcutting through our own pain makes us careless of other people’s pain. It makes us careless of the pain we cause Mother Earth.
Mark Nepo talks about pain as the tool that carves the holes in our bodies to make us the instruments through which breath blows and beautiful music is made. When we are present in the pain – when we don’t try to take shortcuts through it – our holes are seasoned and polished and the music comes out sweet and rich.
Imagine an orchestra playing on half-finished instruments, with holes that had never been polished and strings that had never been pulled tight. The music would be dull, lifeless, and out of tune.
Pain begets beauty.
Pain shines the edges of the holes through which God breathes.
The next step may be painful, but it must be taken nonetheless.
I only hope that your next painful step will be taken in community and that you will be supported in your pain.
And when the pain subsides and you can stand up straight again, let God breath through you and make your music beautiful.
“In stories and in life, pain is our friend. It’s an unwelcome friend, but a friend nonetheless. The good news is if we make friends with our pain, it won’t stay long and it will leave us with a gift. But if we avoid pain, it will chase us down until we finally accept the gift it has to offer.” – Donald Miller
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Note: Full disclosure – I did take a few painkillers along the way, so I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of martyr. AND I do not want to stand in judgement of anyone who accepted a ride – we each must choose our own thresholds for pain and our own values and reasons for completing a particular journey. There is no shame in being supported through the roughest parts of your journey.
Another note: Cath has created a beautiful offering to help you walk through your pain, called Remembering for Good. She is letting her pain be turned into music.
We did it. We walked 100 kilometres in three days.
This picture was taken at the end of the second day – the 38 kilometre day that we thought we couldn’t survive. The last 8 kilometres or so of that day were some of the most painful moments of my life.
I survived them (and every other painful kilometre) mostly because these other two amazing women were at my side. We held each other up, we laughed together (rather hysterically sometimes) when laughter was the only thing keeping us from tears, we hooted at shirtless cowboys together, we applied moleskin to blisters together, we tried to write a marching song to help us take those next few steps that felt like the hardest thing we’d ever done in our lives, and we crossed the finish line arm in arm.
These women are the REAL THING. They are pure gold. They are the kind of people you want by your side when it feels like the next step is too painful to take alone.
Two days later, I am still processing the big-ness of this accomplishment. It’s the kind of experience that I know will grow in meaning as time passes. In the middle of the experience, your primary thought is “I just have to live through the pain of this next step. And then the one after that. And the one after that.” You don’t have a lot of head space for big thoughts or meaning-finding.
But then the next day, the immensity of it begins to sink in. And the biggest thought that sticks with me right now is this…
If you’re going on a journey that will involve many painful steps, find good people who will walk the journey with you.
Community. That is the biggest lesson I will take away from this journey.
I found community in the hearts of these two women.
Even though I’d never met them in person before, I was confident enough that I could trust them with my painful journey, and that trust was not misplaced.
Find good people. And be that good person to other people who need you. And when you find each other, and you hold each other up along the sometimes painful and sometimes glorious journey, do not take each other for granted.
Cath and Christina, thank you for being my two good people on this journey. Your account at the Bank of Heather is full to the brim.
* It’s a place where you dive deeply into conversations within minutes of meeting new friends because you know that the longings in your heart are shared and your common passions build bridges with these people long before you arrived in the same space. * When you are there, you walk around feeling always a bit raw, with your heart bravely exposed. You dare to live this way there (though you might not anywhere else) because you have an intuitive sense that the people in this community can be trusted to hold you gently, both body and heart.
* It’s a place where you are reminded daily to be mindful, to make meditation a priority, to be a witness to all that is present in the world, and to recognize that the molecules that make you who you are are also the molecules that make the world the beautiful place it is.
* The very first speaker you hear is almost certain to remind you to bring your vulnerability, your curiosity, and your broken heart to this space, because these will be valuable assets in the work we will do together.
* It is a place of incubation, where the tender shoots of your good ideas are fed by other people’s good ideas, and what emerges is exciting and beautiful and is owned not by anyone but by the collective whole.
* In this space, “leaders” come in the form of dancers, artists, students, writers, teachers, dentists, architects, small business owners, and anyone else willing to step forward to catalyze change.
* When you gather in a large sacred circle and hear the stories of your new Japanese friends, who survived the pain of a triple tragedy, you know that nobody’s job is to fix it, but everybody’s job is to listen deeply and hold them tenderly in a gentle space. And then after you depart, everyone’s job is to carry these stories in their hearts and let it change the way we interact with the world.
* Unlike a conference, you don’t spend the week sampling ideas like candy. Instead you dive deeply into a full, nourishing meal of ideas in an intensive workshop with a small community within the larger community.
* Holistic learning is part of your daily experience, whether that means dancing, singing, playing, painting, or doing aikido or big brush strokes. You won’t be at all surprised if one day you’re cavorting around the auditorium with other people, holding wooden sticks tenderly between your index fingers. It will all make sense when you’re there.
* You will have meaningful conversations with amazing people of different generations, different races, and different nationalities. Your world will be stretched, your belief system modified, and your perspective changed.
* The heirarchy you experience in other learning events will be flattened, and nobody will be too conscious of who the “experts” or “teachers” are. You have all come to learn and co-create, and your good ideas and passions are as valuable as anyone else’s.
* Though heirarchy is of no importance, the elders in the room have arrived knowing that they have responsibility to share their wisdom, and the youth have arrived with an intuitive sense that they have responsibility to share their vitality. And the sharing of these and other gifts makes this a vibrant and energetic place to be.
* You’ll hear things like “open space” and “world cafe” and you will learn that those are simply words that mean that you will be invited to dive into meaningful and intimate conversations in a large room with hundreds of other people doing the same. * In some of those conversations, you will have the opportunity to play host and other people will offer gentle support and ideas to help you grow the seeds of your ideas.
* When you show up willing to play a role in the community, you may be asked to do your doodling on a large piece of paper at the front of the auditorium, or to host an intimate story-telling session.
* At the end of the week you will dance with wild abandon because you have new faith in your own body and new trust that your community will honour your fierce and feral movements across the floor.
* When it’s all done, an artist will make a mark on a large piece of paper, and without words, you will know that your experience has been honoured by the ink on that page.
In the weeks to come, I will most certainly be writing more about what ALIA was for me personally. Some of those thoughts are still emerging and so I will give them time to grow. Suffice it to say that my heart has been deeply shifted.
Because my word for the year is joy, I’m keeping a joy journal, and I’ll be sharing some of that joy on this blog. Here’s hoping joy is contagious and you catch a little piece of it.
The painting above brought me joy today. It’s not about the finished product (I’m not even sure I like it that much, though it’s growing on me), but rather about the process. I started it last night at my painting class, and then spent this afternoon happily lost in a world of colours and patterns. Joy, joy, JOY!
But to be honest, when I think about joy this week, it’s all about the people. My “joy people”.
A few months ago, when I was moaning about how I didn’t like networking and I wasn’t sure how I’d build a clientele for my business, my straight-shooting friend Desiree, who’s way smarter about some things than I am, said “Girl, you’ve gotta stop thinking about it as NETWORKING. Instead you’ve gotta think about how you’re going to attract your JOY PEOPLE – the people you want to be connected with. The people whose business you want because you love what they stand for.”
She was right, of course. It’s about my joy people. And let me tell you, this past week I seem to have attracted a lot of them! Not that I have a bunch more clients, but I DO have lots of good people who want to help me or work with me in some way or another, or just hang out and be my friend. Plus a few who want to hire me! It’s been pretty darn amazing.
Here’s a little taste of my joy:
– My friend Jo-Anne who sat with me over chai lattes and listened to me talk about my book, and loved it like she would if it were a real live baby, and then helped me see some wisdom that I’d been missing.
– My friend Michele who came to speak to my class last week about the amazing work she’s doing and reminded me of why I’m so fond of her.
– My friend Desiree who gives me the straight goods in such a loving and humorous way and helps me see my path. Last week she said “You don’t really want to be a consultant, you want to write a book. So write the damn book already!” Okay, I’ve been told.
– My friend Susan who has been such a great support in the last few years as we both went a little deeper in our leadership journeys, and who believes in my crazy dreams.
– A few Twitter and Facebook friends whojusthappenedtobein the right place at the right time to encourage me and share wisdom with me.
– My talented designer friend Segun who offered to do some work for me AND accepted a last minute invitation to be a guest speaker in my class. (Which he ROCKED, by the way!)
– A client who hired me to be her story coach and then was so excited about my feedback that it made me want to help more cool people with their writing projects.
– A few online friends who’ve become in-person friends who sent me lovely affirming/connecting emails.
– The powerful women in my circle of practice who made last week’s conference call such a warm, amazing experience.
– The people in my journal club who challenge me to ask deep questions and think deep thoughts.
– A favourite author who is just so kind and gracious and responsive to emails.
– My students who challenge me and affirm me and let me know that they appreciate my teaching efforts. AND the administration who trusts me enough to hire me for a few more teaching opportunities!
– My art teacher at Forum Art Studio who has such a genuine spirit and wonderful humanity about him, I can’t help but feel a lovely sense of trust in his guidance.
– All of the people who have commented, emailed, tweeted, etc. to say “You really MUST write that book! We WANT it and it needs to be out in the world!” You’re all amazing. Yes YOU.
– A bunch of people (too many to name) who are contributing to an exciting little project that I will be revealing in a few weeks.
That’s a lot of people! I can hardly tell you how blessed I’m feeling.
How about you? Who are your joy people?
And if you’re wondering “HOW do I attract my joy people?”, it’s pretty simple – just be yourself. Be authentic and the people who value what you stand for will be drawn to you.
Oh… and there’s one other thing… start saying your dreams out loud. Let people know what you want to do and how you want to serve the world. It’s been amazing how people have been responding when I’m honest enough to admit what’s in my heart of hearts.
To paraphrase a certain movie, “if you speak it, they will come.”
who is just so kind and gracious and responsive to emails.