This is my journey, what I have learned holistically, through therapy, C4R committee, and my work with SeekHealing. This is my part of the elephant, an elephant part which is as much a part of me as it is the outer world… 

Our crisis has touched me on many levels, even though I myself was not present for the “events”. 

Conflict is a bellwether for my personal and spiritual growth. Way opens through ease, but wisdom is only found through the difficult. 

Two feelings have been my gurus in this process. Fear and sadness. 

What is the spiritual aspects of DEI work? I know I am not the first to ask this question. I’m well aware, and could spend time researching what others have said. But I want to catch my first thoughts rough and untried, as a practice of public learning however public this blog may be.

Over a decade ago Dr. Leticia Nieto taught a workshop on understanding oppression patterns to an organization I was a part. She provided us a language and model to talk about oppression. She used the terms target and agent to denote those without and those with power respectively in a given social dynamic. That’s an oversimplification. But the part I want to focus on was she talked about a developmental path for each. Each path showed the coping strategies, or skill sets and their pattern of development. Both paths culminate in the ability to tap into “source”, which she referred to as spiritual in nature.

                If you are in a community and you look around and there isn’t much diversity and yet you have done so much to be inclusive, it may be that you aren’t welcoming of trauma. Those who have suffered from social trauma have a heightened awareness of social situations. For those with social trauma (race, gender, economic, cast, etc.) it will quickly become apparent whether or not our suffering is welcome. Inclusion is therapeutic; it is part of the healing process. We cannot have a “drama free” community without simultaneously declaring it is a trauma unwelcome area. Sadly, unless our communities know how to be present with the anger and grief of social trauma, then our communities will remain mysteriously heterogeneous.

The prophet moves without words

They sit in the filth,

                for filth is also a teacher

They walk with madness,

                for madness is also a teacher.

They lay with the dying,

                for the dying are also teachers.

Preparation

                Consent was a unifying theme throughout the project. I will point it out in the preparation phase, even though it was present throughout. For me “consent” is shorthand for a process. An inclusive process designed to maximize buy-in and participation. “People tend to support that which they help create”, was a saying common around Antioch during my time there. A different perspective could be seen as, “People tend to support that which they don’t have to worry about.” My consent process starts with inquiry, out of which a proposal is designed. The proposal is then presented to those most affected, and objections used to modify the proposal until non critical concerns are all that remain. Those remaining concerns are then integrated into the proposal, in the form of either a measurement or report cues; such as, “Y will be regularly updated on x”, or “a measurement of X will be reported to Y on a weekly basis”.

Assessing ten years of anti-racism from an Organizational Development framework

Part I: Introduction and Background

Introduction

                Why were race relations worse for blue collar employees after ten years of anti-racism training? This is the right question to be asking, but it wasn’t the question I started my assessment with. “Why had an anti-racism program seen so much more traction with white collar than the blue collar employees?” was my leading thought. I wasn’t alone either as the Vice President shared my concern. Only after months of strategic trust building, I was privileged with employee’s painful stories. It was then that I could see the damage anti-racism trainings had done blue-collar teams within the Org. Those same employees were then able collaboratively develop a set of strategic recommendations for healing and inclusion.

                As a young adult seeking truth and beauty in this world, a finance sub-committee is not where I expected to have one of my earliest spiritual experiences. This particular meeting started with each member expressing doubt that we would find a solution to our current challenge (the details are foggy involving budgets and numbers of all things). Despite this, we were able to find a workable solution, and at the end of the meeting I reflected that I was pleased and mystified at our process. I could not say how we had come to a solution and moreover I felt as if a greater entity had been present. To my surprise, I was not alone and the other committee members expressed a similar feeling. As a secular, non-theistic Quaker this is not something I had expected, nor do I really understand it to this day. Whatever it was it was intriguing enough that I caught the “consensus” bug. I learned that amazing thigs can happen when people gather as equals with open minds, open hearts, and above all humility.

                A story is more than just an account of events; it is an expression of the narrator’s values. To understand this project it will help to understand a bit about myself as the agent of change: the values I brought into conversations and discernment. set the stage for this story it will help to understand the values I enacted in designing and conducting  meetings and conversations.