Bridges and Communities

Earlier this week I took a solo day away.  I intended to walk from our house to Forest Park, a very large park in N/NW Portland with many hiking trails.  It's about 2.5 miles' walk just to get to the park, including crossing the St Johns Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Johns_Bridge), a tall suspension bridge over the Willamette River.

As I walked through the neighborhoods on my way to the bridge, it occurred to me that I didn't know the people who lived in most of the housing units.  Over the past year plus I've been heavily involved in doing community organizing work, yet I still don't know most of the people in my community.  This sparked several reflections:

• I noted the size of most of the homes I was passing. Recently it has been bothering me that we all live in such large houses, and I've been attributing quite a bit of it to our attachment to stuff.  We can't think of moving to someplace smaller because we can't bear the thought of parting with our big-screen TVs, couches, and other furniture and gadgets and toys.  (Been recognizing my own attachments in slowly moving toward 100 personal possessions.)  This time, though, something deeper occurred to me.  We hold on to our big houses and possessions because by them we believe we can be independent. We have everything we need unto ourselves.  I get to choose with whom I interact ... which means I choose what they see and know about me ... which means I can hide from real relationship and even from being forced to confront my own self and its issues
• How can we pretend to help a community if we don't really know that community, and know it honestly?  I think most programs and individuals fail in their endeavors because they don't truly know the community -- the people, the culture, the customs, needs, and wants -- in which they are operating.  This could be because they keep too much distance (bullet #1) or because they are too close and unable to see what the truth is.  In my local context, there are a lot of people who have been in the community so long that when they want to "make the community better" they usually mean take it back to the way it used to be.  We need to recognize the warts and challenge the community to be all it really can be.  And if the makeup of the community changes, then our definition of who we are needs to change rather than just trying to make the new pieces fit into "our" community
• This becomes exponentially more important -- and difficult -- when you're talking about bridging (yep, the bridge got in there) between cultures.  That's what I typically end up doing: serving as a bridge between generations, races, nationalities, income levels, genders.  But to speak with credibility and sense the connection that can be made between those distinct groups, do I spend enough time listening to each that I understand?  Or do I simply "do the work" that I or others want to accomplish?  Do I skimp on the listening and relationship to get 'er done, or do I recognize that the real "work" is the relationship? Does the world really need another policy, process, structure, or similar?  When will we realize that those things don't heal the world; they simply provide us with the illusion that we are "solving" things, which mainly just serves to insulate us from what is really happening.

Next blog post will cover what happened when I reached the bridge.  (teaser alert)

Weakness and Community

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about weakness and leadership.  We all have weaknesses as individuals, even the best leaders -- though some of the less self-aware of us won't admit it and may not know what those weaknesses are.

It seems to me that the remedy for lack of self-awareness is community.  I suppose I can sit and reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses and figure some of it out, but to really see myself truly I need the reflection I can only get from the mirror of community.

As a simple example, think about a performance review for a job.  I've received and given many, and I am always struck by the interaction of reviewer and reviewee.  In good reviews, there is trust on both sides and willingness to listen and to speak by both parties. This is community: the ability on the one side to speak into someone else's life a truth that may be unrecognized or unwelcome, and the willingness on the other side to hear what is being said and to ingest it, to see whether it rings as true, why or why not, and what if anything I need to do about it.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when King David has been beaten in a battle and, as his army is walking past a hill, a man named Shimei calls out curses on him.  (Not the best method or timing for a performance review, you might say.)  David's men want to go kill Shimei, but David says, "No, let him speak.  It may be that he is speaking God's will to me."  Wow.  In the depth of despair, David has the willingness not just to listen to someone he respects, who he knows loves him, but even to listen to one who hates him and calls out curses upon him.

It is only when we have this attitude, when we are willing to listen to others in community, that we really come to know our weaknesses and how we should compensate for them.  And then we must take those steps, the first of which is generally to have someone near us who is strong where we are weak, and we must let them operate in that strength.