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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Conversation and Community

George 0 Comments

This is a repost and update of a previous post entitled Changing the Nature of Conversation. Recent conversations prompted this repost.

Recently Wade Hodges’s blog linked to a booklet entitled Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community: Changing the Nature of Conversation. It is authored by Peter Block and others. The purpose of the material is to present a set of ideas and tools designed to restore and reconcile community by shifting the nature of public conversation.  Although the subject put me off a bit, as I read through the material I found the information and ideas compelling. I believe the nature of our conversations can be a reliable barometer of the depth and meaning of our relationships as well as a powerful force in building and sustaining community. What follows is my interpretation/re-statement/paraphrase of some of the concepts and principles in the booklet.

Language has power. How we speak to each other is the medium through which a more positive future is created or denied. As we engage in conversation the questions we ask and the speaking that they evoke constitute powerful action. The questions we ask will either maintain the status quo or bring an alternative future into the room. There are traditional questions which have little power to create a future different from the present. These questions are, in the asking, the very obstacle to what has given rise to the question in the first place. For example, these questions seem to be universal to conversations about organizational issues:

  • How do we hold people accountable?
  • How do we get people to show up and be committed?
  • How do we get others to be more responsible?
  • How do we get people on-board and to do the right thing?
  • How do we get others to buy into our vision?
  • How do we get these people to change?i
  • How much does it cost and where do we get the money?
  • How do we negotiate for something better?
  • What new policy or legislation will more our interests forward?
  • Where is it working? 
  • Who has solved this elsewhere and how do we import the knowledge?

In answering these questions we support the dominant belief that a different future can be negotiated, mandated, and controlled into existence. They call us to try harder at what we have been doing. They urge us to raise standards, measure more closely, and return to the basics, purportedly to create accountability, but in reality maintain dominance. These questions are wrong, not because they don’t matter, but because they have no power to make a difference in the world. These questions are the cause of the very thing that we are trying to change: fragmented and unproductive communities.

In a related post I wrote about questions and how, in our conversations, they impact community. It was stated that the traditional questions that permeate conversation regarding organizational issues, have no power to change the future, to make a difference.

I recognize that truth in my own experience. In my corporate days, I sat in many meetings where the traditional questions dominated. They would create a frenzy of helplessness and hopelessness. On more than one occasion, I was compelled to comment to the participants that it was apparent that there was nothing that could be done and the company would be best served by us committing an honorable suicide. We didn’t and nothing changed. Sadly the process was repeated over and over. There was no enlightened leadership that understood the nature of great questions to lead us out of our squirrel cage existence.

 

 

Intersections – Career Path

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At twenty years of age, newly married, with a baby on the way and working part-time for $1.25 per hour, I was thinking more of short term survival than the future or a career path. I was not thinking of my life as a journey, certainly not a spiritual journey. In those circumstances I was living life like a teenaged driver, driving too fast on unfamiliar roads at night, only able see as far as the headlights allow. The only direction I had was, “keep her between the ditches”. Careening down the road, I took the first turn that came my way.

It was 56 years ago that I walked into the Ford Motor Company Nashville Glass Plant as a new employee. It was both exciting and scary. Getting to work at Ford was a blessing. The opportunity did not come not because I had been recruited for my skills and talents. Joe Clark, a good friend of Ann’s family worked there and had the influence to get me hired. He literally sneaked into the employment office past others waiting for an opportunity to go to work. Ann and I did not have two pennies to rub together. We were living with the Clark’s until we could get on our feet. I guess I couldn’t reach my bootstraps.

For the next 40+ years my life was pretty much defined by “I work at Ford’s”. My work experience was rewarding both materially and personally. I am thankful for the opportunity that came my way and it is good to be reminded that it was only because of the graciousness of others that it was possible.

Not all intersections are opportunities to decide which direction you will take. Sometimes they are a cattle chute. So much for career planning.

 

 

Intersections – It is not good for man to travel alone

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What has proven to be the most significant intersection of my journey came on the first day of classes at Abilene Christian College (now Abilene Christian University) in  September 1960. ( Full disclosure: there has been some disagreement over the details of the story to follow. However, my account is completely true to my memory.)

The first class I attended was something like University 101, an orientation class for freshman. It was held in a large classroom with 150+ in attendance. I arrived late and there were no visible empty seats, so I made my way to the back of the room. About 3/4 of the way back, I was surprised to hear a sultry voice call out, “You can sit here, big boy.” I looked over and there was this attractive brunette with a weird small gray streak in her hair with an empty seat beside her. Although, I managed to appear unfazed, as though I was used to such come ons, I was stunned. I did not know her name but she knew mine. 

That’s how George ezell from Florence, Alabama first met Ann Watson, aka Dee Ann Watson, from Memphis, Tennessee. That first encounter was interesting but I did not perceive it to be “the moment”. At that point, I don’t think either of us thought anything would come out of our meeting. It was only later that I came to understand that there may have been forces at work beyond our understanding. 

I had no idea that In 1937 L. Arnold Watson traveled from Idaho to attend Abilene Christian College. On the first day of classes he met Ruby Mae White from Abilene, Texas who was also starting her college career. Their meeting began a courtship that would result in their marriage two years later. Leaving Abilene to move to California, they eventually had five children, three boys and two girls. Four of those children, including Dee Ann Watson, attended ACC. 

Our first meeting pushed the pebble off the ledge. After a slow start our relationship began to gain momentum and by the end of the second year we were engaged and left Abilene and married in June 1962. Subsequently, we had five children, three boys and two girls. Four of our children attended ACU. 

For 56+ years Ann has been my traveling companion. I hope that the legacy of her parents will continue and we also will enjoy 74 years of marriage. 

Intersections

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This post introduces a series of posts entitled intersections. As I continue to reflect on my life’s journey, I have begun to think about various intersections encountered along the way. Often we want to think that our journeys are, or we hope they are, straight paths. That’s not how life goes.

Intersections can come in numerous forms with various outcomes. We may take a wrong turn and find ourselves lost. We may encounter a  Y intersection and have to make a decision without knowing where the path will lead us. Sometimes an intersection brings unexpected opportunities for adventure. Intersections can be dangerous. To ignore an intersection can bring disaster. Intersections may be encounters with other persons, for  good or ill. 

Although there were intersections my early years, I will confine my posts to those intersections that have occurred after my spiritual journey began. 

At the time I would not have described it as the the beginning of a spiritual journey, but in retrospect my decision to leave home and attend Abilene Christian College is where I believe my spiritual journey began. I must admit spirituality was not at the forefront. Religion perhaps. I wanted to do right and escape to a refuge a thousand miles from my adolescent missteps and temptations and, of course guilt. That decision was prescient of a pattern that would emerge throughout my journey, namely, a misplaced belief that “the grass is always greener on the other side”. 

It was not long after my arrival at ACC that I encountered an intersection that would prove to be most formative in the journey ahead.