Tag: practice

When reading is enuff

I feel unsettled yesterday. 48 hours after having the latest numbness abate, I was asking myself the question “is reading enough?” in ways that remind me of when I used to ask “how much is enough?”

I’m in the early chapters of Whiteout and Take My Hand and today reading doesn’t feel like enough. I know that other days reading fiction has been a way to simply get through some unpleasantly awful days. At times, books and the characters within them have reoriented me to what’s happening around me and to what happened years ago in nonfiction or what might have happened hundreds of years ago if it weren’t fiction.

And I was having a hard time yesterday with the adage that hope is a practice. As my colleague said, resilience is repeatable, and can be frequent and more each day than I’d believe or tell myself.

I noted to a few men earlier how I was numbed over night by what I’d seen. On Monday, I lessened my SMS exchanges with my brother who seemed cynical and bitter in ways that I didn’t want to contaige myself.

After that lessening, I saw the dedication of Whiteout, oddly and curiously a YA novel with six authors , that states:

To Black kids everywhere: your joy and love warm the hearts of the world. We still see you.

ISBN: 978-0-06-308814-6

Yesterday evening, I was in the company of nine men slaughtering three pigs as the first in a multi-day process of providing hundreds of pounds of pork to local communities. I realized it was the type of care for others and taking care with others that Mariame Kaba was interviewed about five years ago emphasizing how collective care is what sustains us as people who swim through days and air that is affected by other people and the social dynamics and cultural norms that we create and that we then perpetuate.

Then, this morning, I came across the 15 word phrase that I’m reciting so I memorize it:

the good brown earth got on with doing what the good brown earth does best.

And the Good Brown Earth, Kathy Henderson, Candlewick Press, 2003

I’ll have to figure out a 15 word mnemonic for: T-G-B-E-G-O-W-D-W-T-G-B-E-D-B. Brainstorms strongly encouraged in the chat.

Pages 60 to 70 are some of the best consecutive pages I have read in a long time as they situate the circumstances of what is unknown and what is being grasped to become known and familiar.

The personal transformation that arrives through day after day of dedication and not being dissuaded by a dearth of the right materials nor by the lack of skills or absence of familiarity. But the affirmation and realizations that come with continuing to be, do, and become.

The escalation of the story builds my anticipation and the end of a chapter has me feeling giddy, as I recall the euphoria of childhood and boyhood and being able to rise to some new level that has been unreachable in prior days.

The sentences are beautiful how they carry the feelings, the tastes, the smells and the sounds coming from inside his body, the impacts of his body with the ice and the air and the sun and the routines at dusk and nighttime culminating in abilities that come from continuously being imperfect yet persistent.

How there is joy inside in spite of the most horrendous set up.

These are some of what I experience and ride in pages 60-70 of Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese.

Great Mystery we honour

My grandmother had always referred to the universe as the Great Mystery.

Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse, page 65.

“We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility, grandson, is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.”

Ibid.

The transformation that comes from practice and doing the same tasks over and over for many days. The chores build strength and speed and competency. The isolation fosters individuation and delight at the ability to accomplish and notice the changes that come with being able to simply do and with time master at what was once impossible.

What to choose

I’ve been noticing more of what I’m habitually doing. Then today, I saw how it looked in someone dear to me.

Today’s lesson can be one of:

  • Holding gratitude or holding grudges?
  • Whining or writing?
  • Writhing or witnessing?
  • Scrambling or steady?
  • Floundering or focusing?
  • Tripping up or triumphing?

I had many years of getting distracted and turning away from. From taking some multitasking bait rather than simplifying, moderating and slowing down.

12 definitions of decolonization from Yvette Mutumba

Pablo Larios interviews Yvette Mutumba about decolonization and she rattled off a list of twelve with the most fabulous prelude that I’ve ever read:

What follows only begins to touch on a matter of decades of thinking, working, experiencing, talking and growing.

As for the 12 definitions of decolonization:

> that I will not do the job of those sitting inside institutions and organizations that are predominantly white

> conversations which create serious exchange, but also discomfort, maybe even pain, on the other side of the table.

> having to sit with that discomfort.

> understanding that decolonization is not a matter of ‘us’ and ‘them’, but concerns all of us.

> acknowledging that this is not a current moment or trend.

> not necessarily being political, but no choice to not be political.

> admitting that having grown up in a racist structure is no excuse.

> transparency from the institutional side.

> re-centering

> stepping back and making space.

> creating safe spaces.

> changing structures as much as building new structures

When facing racism, undercut and expose

I wrote an email on Wednesday with a subject of: “About Black hair & portrayals of Blackness” to the mother of another child in the 3 and 4 year old class. What propelled, if not compelled, me to do so was having read a helpful article on microagressions by Ruth Terry in the October 2019 YES magazine a few weeks prior. In it, Terry describes how Derald Wong Sue responds to microaggressions with:

 By “naming” a microaggression, a concept Sue borrows from Paulo Freire’s seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we are able to undercut its power and expose metacommunication behind it.

I’ve had mixed feelings about microaggressions for years, yet the article provided me with some new perspectives of how to name what happens with ignorant interactions and how to deal with them, leading me to conclude that this was an opportunity to practice confronting the petty bullshit that white people spew and do in the faces and over the days and lives of people of color.

Simultaneously, I have been doing work this year where a big piece in the group dynamics work is to “name the thing.” Having to practice what I am preaching, I sent the “portrayals of Blackness” email in order for me to name to one white mother how whites — in her family and in the world — need to figure out how to talk about and tell stories about whiteness, family histories, and experiences with race. And when I say race that is shorthand for racism and racial differences and race-based consequences be they in school, in workplaces, or in society.

I had to name the thing for myself because to not do so would be to placate and accommodate ignorant, hurtful conduct. I was deliberate about writing how this other parent’s behavior was racist as well as name some of the larger implications of racism and the heft of what it is to be Black in the United States; though, I could have said Black in the world, but that would have been a bit too meta and likely abstract for a white person that I had never had a conversation about race before Wednesday’s email.

I made a clear request for corrective action and also asked that they let me know of their choice. I made that request not assuming that they would definitely respond or even acknowledge my missive. On Thursday, I did get a response from the husband saying two things: that the corrective action had been done and that I should not (maybe it said never) contact them again.

I was not looking to make friends with the other parent. If anything, I was undercutting power by exposing what was already in the internet. And I was practicing for my own liberation. And for the liberation of my descendants, both blood and chosen.

The Outline’s Role

Three days into NaNoWriMo yesterday, and I took a moment to see what the world wide web would provide when I asked about outlines for writing a novel. I encountered these three sites, which I have borrowed some elements of:

Today, I have learned of NaBloPoMo, shared with me by WordPress.

This is practice, by design.

A 5280 Family Reunion

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35 members of five generations of family who range in age from 7 weeks to a few weeks shy of 93 assemble in Denver and Aurora this weekend. Select moments of storytelling have been:
• two consecutive days of pool with my niece and nephew, including a 10-minute clinic on grips, how to place their left hands on the pool table, and steadying the cue on the padding between a thumb and forefinger. Last night, Diego said “thanks for showing me, Uncle Chad. I wasn’t this good at pool before.”
• telling Ms. Gayles, Aunt Barbara and Grandmother about ten years of vegetables and the proliferation of CSAs, community gardens and urban farms. It’s amazing when a diabetic says, “I had no idea that young people, your age, were so into their food like that,” as we talked about jobs, health, diets, fish chromosomes in tomatoes, the proliferation of and popular resistance to GMOs, and the future.
• stories of Count, Candy and GoGo, who were George’s three Dobermans in Dallas. Count, who was a guard dog, walked Sherry down the street one day causing a neighbor, who could recognize any Doberman, called George to tell him where his daughter and dog were.
•

Slowing Down

So, what is this, this slowing down?

I have considered myself an old soul for a few decades. Part of that old-ness has been a proclivity to chillax, and take things slowly. When I was a teenager, my older brother used to assert that i wasn’t running my fastest and hardest up and down the basketball court. When I look back upon it now, it is not surprising that my norm seemed slower-than-most to others.

The single simplest way that I embrace slowing down is by refraining from multi-tasking. After being conditioned to praise multi-tasking, I try to avoid it these days. When I brush my teeth, I no longer do calf lifts in order to build muscles in my legs as I tried to do at 17. I don’t brush my teeth while putting on socks and shoes as my 24 year-old self did. Instead, I brush my teeth, and allow my attention to feel the sensations of toothpaste, enamel and the stretch of my cheeks.

There is a geography to slowing down. The Southwest and Mountain West flows at its own rate. I sense the attraction and the fit now that I have returned after being gone for more than a decade. The hustle and bustle on the coasts is a different wavelength than what I flow on, with my flyover country ways. Thirteen years after leaving Barbados, a Bajan proverb of tekkin tyme ent lazyness resonates now more than it did when I lived there in 1998.

But it isn’t only due to the pace of the world outside. For the first time in my life, I am living without a television in my home. It has all sorts of consequences, only a few that I anticipated. Then, there are countless benefits of living free of cable, channel surfing and the echo chamber of the 24 hour news cycle. A few glimpses of what it means to not have a tv are: (1) I do not plop down on the sofa when I am exhausted — whether it is a weeknight, a Sunday morning or the middle of the night. (2) television has a powerful, addictive quality with my psyche, which used to keep me seated in front of it, long after I was actually choosing to watch. (3) As a result of the minutes and hours that I used to spend in front of a television, my days fill with hours and minutes that i sit, stand or lie elsewhere.

Other ways of slowing down range from reading, laying down and closing my eyes to baking or going for a walk. As a result, a slower lifestyle subjects me to fewer external stimuli, which keeps my internal systems (my circadian rhythym, I believe) lower. My mind, nor my days, are not as frantic nor as herky jerky as they once were.

I commit to fewer appointments, phone calls and obligations each day. This results in a slower morning, a relaxed afternoon and a soothing evening most days. A year ago, I was amazed to find that I had the time one evening to listen to how tired my body was when it was 8:06 p.m. As a result, 8:06 became a joke about my preferred bedtime.

Instead of having to scramble to honor commitments that had been made, I choose to be spontaneous instead. I can have a hunch of what I may get in to this afternoon or over the weekend, yet I refrain from fillinig it up like an itinerary. Fewer commitments allows for more spontaneity when living moment-by-moment.

More openness results in being able to cook and prepare meals more readily, and more easily. Whether it is the 5 minutes to toast bread for a peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich or 30-60 minutes for baking or a stew, food takes a precedence in my slower schedule. It is no surprise that I make more pancakes and french toast, bake more (cookies, brownies and breads), and eat more vegetables made in all sorts of ways. I choose to make time for meals, cooking and eating well.

I realize how much of lifestyle is about choice. The choice of whether to grab food out, or choose to eat a meal at home. The choice to get the groceries to be able to prepare a meal in as little as 2, 5 or 25 minutes makes home cooked meals much tastier.

I can choose to stop working at a designated hour, rather than allow my day job to encroach on my evenings. It is not the same hour every day, but I am content to leave my work alone when the time is right.

—–
A few years ago, a friend told me how he and all of his coworkers were revising their job descriptions. What was memorable, was that they were cutting away one-third or half of what was on their old job descriptions in order to focus on what was essential, and what was desirable to them in their work. This, is the kind of cutting back that we need.

This is the kind of cutting back that slowing down invites.

Why open space?

Open space is a way to break up the mundane, old ways of conferences. Just as we are realizing that rote memorization does not work in the classroom, and education needs to be shaken up. Our meetings and multi-day conferences need strong winds of new ideas and currents of new ways.

We do not need to leave the cool, non-traditional, people-powered ways to the techies in San Francisco, either. In fact, for the sake of our selves, our souls and our future, we need to harness our collective strengths. Open space (or Open Space Technology, as it can also be called. OST for short.) is one compelling way to do so.

Open space is not only about the topics that get discussed. The experience of open space is equally important. The experience of making choices and self-authorizing. The experiences of realizing that other people are co-creating ideas, having exchanges and addressing their own needs at the same time. In fact, others are doing so At. This. Very. Moment.

Open space is like communication. Just as 70% of communication is non-verbal, leaving 30% to be verbal. 70% of open space’s potency is how it feels, and 30% is what is said in the array of small groups.

Open space honors that we do not all learn in the same way. Open space embraces that we are all on different pages. Our being in different places is embraced, rather than viewed as being detrimental. It is actually, seeing a group of people as each one of us in a group is. Oftentimes, some people are ready to discuss some specific tangent, while others are seeking basic definitions and understanding of what is happening. Open space allows for the introductory and in-depth or tangential to happen at the same time. The people get to choose which one suits them.

During the recent BIN conference, I introduced open space technology as a version of “montessori for adults.” Go do what you want, as you want, with whomever else wants to do it. Or as they say in the Montessori camp, “go learn on your own, while being guided by a teacher.” Guiding happens, just with us guiding ourselves rather than relying on some typical teacher/facilitator.

****

I have attended too many gatherings and conferences where the energy of a group can swiftly change. The warmth, curiosity of the first-day-and-a-half pivots. Suddenly, people can begin to see that the multi-day funfest is has an endpoint. Questions arise: how do i carry this on next week when I am back at school/work/my home/my desk? How will the importance of this moment be sustained? Who is going to follow through on all that been talked about, identified, proposed and what i have heard?

Open space can be a pressure valve to let off some of the steam that expands in a contained space. Instead of trying to control it, open space provides a blank canvass for people to doodle, paint and illustrate. Old controlling tendencies get mired in question of what: what are we gonna paint? what are we using, watercolors, oils, pastels, charcoal? what is going on this canvass?

Instead, open space can be a canvass to the nth power. There can be as many canvasses as there are people who are ready to paint. Canvasses for whatever people identify a need for, and then commit to take it upon themselves to utilize. (if no one goes to discuss the place that open space identifies, then it quickly ceases)

Instead of saying, “oh no, we only have x number of slots,” open space enables, equips and empowers. People can say:
– You want a canvass to do what?
– Great. Go find some space and put a call out to everyone else so they know what you are up to.

The primary constraint in open space is our minds. By that, I mean the limits of what our human minds can fathom when we categorize, define and differentiate. Open space is a wiki for meetings and conferences. Some people can discuss topics and issues while others can figure out the building blocks of logistics, principles, leadership, communications. This is some of what happened when we devolved in Atlanta.

***

A year ago, I first introduced open space to another group. When defining it, I had to explain that it is not Free Time. Instead, it was a time for people:

  1. to go do what they need to do,
  2. to go where they needed to go,
  3. in order to take care of themselves.

That meant napping for some, and snacking for others. For me, i sat on a rocking chair on a large porch at the Benezet House of the Penn Center in St Helena, South Carolina. FOr most of the people present, it was a chance to jump in the car, ride 10 minutes to the beach where they took their shoes off, rolled their pant legs up, and strolled in the waves along the beach. They were doing what they needed to take care of themselves. They were right where tehy needed to be. And they got to do the things that we were all there to do: tell our stories, exchange ideas and experiences, compare notes.

As a little kid in me would say, it was so important that we got to do it outside, too. Afterwards, when i asked some people what their favorite part of our previous 2.5 days had been, they said it was their time on the beach.

***

That is some of what open space can allow for. What began as one person’s idea spread. It went from one car-full of people. To another. To a third. Just like that an idea found a group of people ready to spring into action. These ideas and such moments are all around us. The question is whether we can see them.

Rather than attempt to control them — control the ideas, control the moments, control the people — open space is one way to embrace ideas, moments and people.