SECOND YEAR
The second year was a little scary for everyone. Two first year classes (1975 and 1976) were combined and we were very defensive about our own personal experiences, afraid they would be discredited some way or that would set our expectations way too high. I was thinking about going into the ministry and a little touchy about that.
In the first year we had had one “custom” text xeroxed for us. In the second year we bought the “1977 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators.” The idea was for us to “facilitate” each other this time, rather than taking instruction as much as we had the first year. We also had a “custom” book that contained “Introduction to Theory and Practice Papers,” “Design considerations in Laboratory Education,” and “Introduction to Instruments,” all from “Reference Guide to Handbooks and Annuals". These two books are from University Associates, Inc., 7596 Eads Avenue, La Jolla, California, 92037. Also, on an optional basis, some of us bought “Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources,” by Hersey and Blanchard. (Published by Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632). This is very technical stuff, not written for ordinary people to enjoy browsing through on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
We broke into groups again by sign-up with only journal-keeping groups, loosely based on Progoff to replace Credo. Peter again assigned journal groups. This time there was no gimmick for separating us, except that we were urged to choose different people instead of sticking with buddies.
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
Ord gave us the following advice for designing our OD group projects:
1. Think of the big picture/Gestalt/whammo experience.
2. Consider the sequencing of material. What is the relationship of individuals to their group? How does the theology relate?
3. Look at adaptability and modifiability. How can you tailor to fit the group? What can you do to compensate for the unexpected?
4. Consider pacing. Take advantage of natural pace.
5. Try for flexible spontaneity.
6. Work on integration awareness: how will you build and tie in concepts.
Ord and Peter acted as invited consultants only. Needless to say, we didn’t hesitate to ask for help. In some instances, it was a real test of the two leaders to keep from intervening when things got shaky, but they had faith and it paid off when the learners coped by themselves.
All the OD exercises we did were taken from “Handbook for Group Facilitators.” They were: “Blue/Green, an Intergroup Negotiation,” “Pyramids: a Consensus Experience,” “Executive Pie: a Power Experience,” “TORI Group Self-diagnosis Scale,” and “Conflict Styles: Organizational Decision Making.” Some of these were originally designed for a business context that didn’t adapt too well while others worked without tinkering. Each group taught a session by setting up some sort of experience and using it to develop learning, and then were critiqued by Ord, who was MERCILESS. He said right up front that he intended to treat us as professionals in the field and so he did. We were soon smarting and trying harder and harder. UU’s are not used to criticism!
We added in an exercise on Androgeny and Jim Zacharias led a few exercises about sex roles. I was particularly pleased that when a paper-and-pencil test assigned us places on a continuum, I ended up next to Peter Raible and Alan Deale, thinking this signified something about fitness for the ministry. I’m not sure what it really meant, but more something like the tradeoff between nurturing and power. (I was an animal control officer at the time.) For everyone this started up a train of thought that effectively headed off some of the steamy problems of the year before. We noticed that this year instead of everyone dancing and yelling for two or three hours after the regular sessions, people tended to sit and talk quietly in small groups. There was much less drinking than the year before. We had access to the gymnasium and a nightly volleyball game drew off some energy.
Evil hit us on the fourth night again, but this time it was in an OD group. The planners of the session had dead-locked on power issues and absolutely could not resolve their differences about how to present the material, or so we were led to believe. They called for help and everyone began to sweat. People got up and stalked out of their meetings. Feelings were hurt. We all felt like failures and no one knew what to do. We got to the session, which was arranged formally with the planners as a group around a table up front and the rest of us on chairs in the audience. The planners began to make their presentation and bickering started up. We in the audience tried to gloss it over, but it just kept getting worse, until we were truly embarrassed. The whole experience kept getting more and more incredible until suddenly there were explosions in the bathroom! It sounded like gunshots! Uproar! (Firecrackers.)
Finally we realized we’d been conned into a satire of the planning group’s experience. They had decided they would simply present a Mexican standoff. What had seemed like chaos had actually been one of the most controlled experiences of the whole workshop. The actual points of the lesson were taped to the undersides of our chair-seats. As an added fillip, each one quoted a Bible verse.
THEOLOGY
The theology groups were based on three recurring complaints about UU churches: the “coldness,” the “lack of spiritual content,” and the lack of program and curriculum. My group started with one page of “doing theology” directions and one page of questions dealing with the issue of spirituality. We had quite a struggle, mainly because we were coming from such different mental contexts and had so much divergence semantically. Finally, we backed off to an almost pre-verbal definition of spirituality and were able to design an experience around that.
Earlier in the day, as part of a compromise exercise, we had all written definitions of “spiritual,” so we collected them to use as a starting point. We designed the class almost as though it were a worship service. First we played music long enough to set a meditative and fantastical mood. Then we each read a definition from the morning. The one I remember was the older man from Victoria, B.C., who said that God to him was a “pale oblong blur.”
Next we formed triads and Joan Goodwin directed us through a shared account of our personal spiritual journeys, a regular UUA exercise. Each of us prepared a personal “roadmap” symbolizing this journey and we put them all up on the wall while we took a coffee break and walked around to look at what other people had done. The contrast and imagination were unbelievable. In fact, this set me off on an interest in maps that has continued to the present. (There is a remarkable blog about strange maps.) Joan has done this exercise many times in many places and assured us that it always happens that way. We reconvened with music to get back into the mood. this time Susan Newell guided us through a fantasy in which we envisioned our essential selves and described that essence. Then we broke into triads (different ones) and told each other about our spiritual needs, how and where they were being met, or whether indeed they WERE being met. Last, each of wrote a letter to our own church telling it how it could meet our spiritual needs.
Again, we critiqued unmercifully. Actually, my group came off pretty well. It was experiential, went someplace and had a concrete product at the end. The most enlightening thing I got out of the exercise was some insight into my own group dynamics. I’d been really excited about the subject matter and wanted to bite down hard on it, do something astounding and intellectual -- maybe do something with religious vocabulary because it seemed to me so few people had the words to say what they meant. I wanted to draw on some of the material we’d been uncovering in a discussion group in my home church. I was being as dynamic and persuasive (and arrogant) as possible, but it seemed to me that my ideas all fell by the wayside and that I was forced to compromise a great deal. When at the end we critiqued our experience of the process, I complained about having to give up so much. Then another person pointed out to me that every one of my ideas had been used in some transformed way! And another person said that I’d supplied some of the basic links in the development process and that person could identify just what I’d said and how it had keyed the next idea. I was dumbfounded! I’d been so lost in my own grandiosity that I hadn’t appreciated my own insights!
WORSHIP
The worships of that summer are fuzzy to me. The first one was the most striking. (When I got to seminary, I used it to propose the basic schema of worship, illustrating Victor Turner’s theory about crossing the threshold into liminal time and space.) It was late at night in the dark gymnasium. At supper the committee had asked us to write down a few lines about a particularly happy moment in our lives. They had written these on an area covered with paper, about twenty feet square. We carried big fat candles in and sat on the paper in a group, thus acting out the “crossing of the threshold into sacred space.” In the course of the service, which included music and poems, each of us took a candle and read the lines on which we sat. This might be called a “thought communion.” Then we took our candles and went back over the threshold into the darkness. (I doubt that anyone present had ever read Victor Turner.)
I have a vague recollection of us playing “crack-the-whip” in and out of the doors of the barracks, scaring all the swallows off the porch. It seems as though we did something at one of the big concrete gun emplacements, taking advantage of the structure. I have a clear memory of a traditional church service at the chapel, complete with procession and greeters at the door, where that particular group attempted to exorcise the ghost of past patriarchs and oppressors by taking their roles. The ghosts were strong and the worship exposed the anger that still lived in the celebrants.
One very misty morning service was down by the bay with a bank of wild sweet peas for stained glass. We sat on blankets in a semi-circle and the content was fairly straightforward and traditional except that Alan Deale, wanting to do something “religious,” took up a collection of favorite words. I missed the very last worship service because I took Joan Goodwin to catch her plane. I was so tired that Joan had to gently remind me at one point (luckily on a side road with no traffic), “Mary, in this country most people drive on the right hand side.” As soon as she was delivered, I parked and took a nap.
Virginia Lane, Mary Watson and I were the committee for the fifth worship, the next to the last for that session. Our only beginning point was that Mary was adamant about wanting to use a wonderful feminist song she had learned about male sex symbols instead of female symbols, which often creep into church imagery. We were all three among the unromanced. At first Virginia and I just couldn’t relate to Mary’s idea very much, but then we found a key, going from Mary’s song to the Song of Solomon. Then we moved to enlarging the physical imagery to agapic love for each other. We decided to be three high priestesses, in caftans and wreaths. At first light I gathered flowering boughs, creating three wreaths for our heads of Victorian hat proportions, before wakening Mary and Virginia for preparation.
To us it seemed mysterious and sacred and seemed to strike the others the same way. We’d choreographed everything from where we stood to the gestures we made to the final face caresses, which were only possible because it was the end of the conference rather than the beginning. Our big problem came at the end. No one would get up and leave! We had made a formal exit and shut off the music, but everyone just sat there. Finally we announced the coffee was perked, which normally brought everyone on the run, but they got up very slowly and some people went on sitting for another ten minutes! The critique mentioned things like using images that were hard to grasp (so tell Solomon!), minor timing and that last problem of what to do when no one will leave. We needed to take people out on an upbeat of some sort. We had a few flubs that only we were aware of, but the three of us worked together so tightly that we could compensate seamlessly.
One of Peter’s recurrent comments about worship was how much care was expressed in every detail. It was universally true. We considered such tiny things as the nasty sound masking tape makes when it is pulled off, which meant we wouldn’t use it a second time to reserve chairs (running the tape from the back to the seat) because it broke the mood. Part of the reason we got so much out of worship was that our consciousnesses became extremely sensitive.
This second session was difficult to summarize. We returned again and again to the previous summer’s work. We referred to the Rokeach materials and went back to conflict resolution techniques. The point of contact between OD and UU is again the “organizational ideology” which functions to specify goals and values, describe the individual/organizational relationship, define the rewards and controls, set the behavioral standards for members, set the intra-group behavior norms and set the inter-group norms.
I didn’t attend the second winter workshop. They designed programs for their own churches. Some of the smaller congregations pooled their resources. The groups used the same techniques and design elements that we learned the summer before and most of the actual productions went off quite well.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
PNWD-UUA LEADERSHIP SCHOOL, Pt.2 of the Narrative
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN THEORY
The emotional pitch that the worship services showed was paralleled by a high intellectual pitch and a growing awareness of group dynamics.
Organizational Development is a way of designing and managing systems so that they are constantly accumulating data, analyzing it, consciously designing changes, and then testing the consequences by accumulating new data, thereby starting the circle over. It’s not unlike the scientific method.
Another link between OD and UU ideology is TORI theory. TORI stand for trust, openness, realization and interdependence. It is based on the conviction that people learn most and best when they are not afraid, when they don’t have to hide what they think, when they can assert themselves and grow, and when they can work easily with others.
For me, this quote from a paper on “TORI Theory and Practise” by Jack R. Gibb, sums up the whole Leadership School experience: “Growth occurs when a person, on his own steam, on his own impetus, does things that reinforce desired physical responses and behavior patterns. Changed behavior results from showing feelings rather than from talking about them, from doing things rather than thinking about or observing them, from letting one’s self happen rather than examining one’s motives and from physically carrying out an impulse or making a choice. After growth people look different. Growth is its own reward. The kind of sustained learning and growth that makes possible living in trust comes from self-sustained and self-directed changes in life style and behavior patterns.”
Ord Elliott, then a professor at the George H. Atkinson Graduate School of Administration at Willamette U. in Salem, Oregon, is a young, dynamic, extremely appealing man who sends sparks flying in all directions. The basic material for the first year was fairly tried and true theory from communications, but it was presented in an energetic manner and often in conjunction with a game that proved the point.
We talked about basic skills like paraphrasing, describing observable actions of others to them, describing our own feelings, doing a perception check, and so on. We reviewed the task functions in a discussion: initiating, opinion seeking, opinion giving, clarifying, summarizing, consensus testing, as well as the maintenance functions: encouraging, expressing group feelings, harmonizing, compromizing, gate-keeping, setting standards.
Exercises were designed to give us chances to explore our own styles, to “catch ourselves in the act” of whatever we tended to do, and to help others see themselves in non-punishing ways. We did bird-cage type exercises and exercises like “lost at sea,” which prove that the group is smarter than the individual. (Unless you have a trained survivalist in the group.) One exercise, a key ever-after for me, was called “Win As Much As You Can” and was designed so that competitive people could win at the expense of the group and cooperative people would win as a group. I talked my partner into doing a trust-breaking maneuver at the end, so that we DID win as much as we could. (I hope I eventually explained to the group that I grew up in a family where my father was so invested in working for cooperatives that the family suffered financially.)
What gave me food for thought was the reaction of the group. Several people were simply stunned that I should be so selfish and actively avoided me for quite a while. In fact, until I expressed distress after a period of defiance. (I think they interpreted this as regret and compliance, to be rewarded with compassion, but they were mistaken. It taught me to be wary.) I’ve thought many long hours about that experience and what it meant in terms of my own motives, the great desire of UU’s to do what is “right,” the way symbolic issues become as serious as real ones and so on. Clearly liberals have “party lines” and enforce them as severely as fundamentalists. Tolerance for difference is mouthed but not practiced. (It’s also based more on socioeconomics, which some say is the true definers of denominations, than on values.)
As our consciousness about group dynamics and individual roles went up, a schism began to grow in the participants. Because it was summer and away from home and there was a good deal of liquor and music for dancing, there was a party element and pairing off. As usual, there were twice as many women as men and all the older, less slim and compliant women were not waltzed around the floor. We formed our own group, full of classic feminist anger, and did a lot of bitching. We resented the absence of more female leadership and chewed every small nuance over for sexism. A lot of anger focused on the noisiness of the party people. Looking back, I suspect there were a few lesbian feelers extended, mostly by older women, framing it as motherly comforting.
Some of the formal material included an essay by Pfeiffer and Jones on “Openness, Collusion and Feedback,” but somehow it didn’t “take,” at least on me, until I read it for the tenth time two years later. The problem was tattling or confessing material that was too intimate (common enough to now be designated as TMI: “too much information”) and also a lot of gossip about church affairs and individuals. There was no way to reality check this stuff or ground it through action of some kind and some of it was inflammatory enough to arouse a lot of emotions. Of course, it made wonderful ammunition for people who oppose TORI theory, openly or not. If this didactic material had been made real in a game it might have worked better, though it was explosive. Maybe we were actually working on some of this in the Credo groups. I discovered then (and rediscover now) that I have a real problem with such issues: I take what I hear much too seriously for one thing. For another, I do not always understand the consequences of disclosure, or how much can or “should” be done to “fix” problems, particularly in terms of confrontation.
OD touched and blended with the UU material again when we came to the influence of the organization’s ideology upon the way it is structured and empowered. We discussed power orientation, role orientation, task orientation and person orientation -- how they can interweave and how an organization can have both an overt and covert ideology which may conflict. We talked about assertive versus aggressive and the inevitable clashes between task-oriented people and maintenance or person-oriented people. These concepts became part of our vocabulary and, because we had words to think about such things, we began to see them around us right away. Instead of thinking, “Oh, oh! George is being a hard-head and putting down Annie again!” we could think, “Gee, George is wanting to get the task done now and Annie needs more reassurance that everyone is going to be included, so what will be a good thing to prevent a deadlock? Oh, it’s okay -- Tim is promising to call everyone and Annie can relax. We finally began to get the point of asking “How are you feeling?”
The FIRO-B pencil and paper test stands for “Fundamental Relation Oriented Behavior.” The idea was that the questions produced two scores in three categories. One score showed expressed desire for inclusion in the group and the other showed wished-for inclusion in the group. A second pair showed expressed desire for power versus wished-for desire for power. I forget the third category. After the “Win As Much As you Can” incident, everyone felt better when my FIRO-B score showed “expressed desire” and “wished-for desire” for inclusion were both zero! Which shows me that UU’s always feel better about “bad” things if they can be scientifically measured. I do feel that was a true score and that having my attention drawn to it so dramatically heped me to move into community more bravely. But it begs the question of why I was there at all and it predicts my much later departure from the ministry and the whole UU movement.
For all our interpersonal relations, Ord stressed five “norms:” to maintain sensitivity to depth and vulnerability; to participate; to experiment, especially on oneself; to take responsibility for one’s own actions; and to maintain openness strategically -- that is, to find what is comfortable and then increase the level no more than ten per cent.
Just for fun, we used the “Garbage Can Theory of Organizations:” “An organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision-makers looking for work.” This turned out to be quite true and relevant. To a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Anyway, to sum up, OD is NOT experts, sensitivity training, subversion, management by objectives, transactional analysis, Gestalt, job enrichment, crisis intervention, remedial programs, retreads, cooking-out conflict, a quick cure, or a superimposed structure. OD IS goal-oriented, system-wide, value-loaded (which is where it fits with UU), problem-focused, preventative and developmental, continuous and inevitable, long term, and change managing. It consists of a regular cycle of assessment (sensitively collecting data), diagnosis by the people within the system, team-building (flexibly and voluntarily), intergroup relations (Trusting, Open, Realizing and Interdependent), redesign (structurally), and assessment (back around to the beginning again and ready to start another cycle.)
Peter accompanied all of Ord’s theories with formal lectures on the history and doctrine of the UU’s, the theological basis and alternatives of UUism, and the specifics of the system of polity. He started with Jonathan Edwards (“Human beings are sinners in the hands of an angry God!”) and laid over against that William Ellery Channing (our likeness to God). We talked about the doctrines of election, original sin and atonement, and how the UU position reacts againt those Calvinist ideas. Peter emphasized how much our process, built on individual authority, is the core of our denomination and rests on our faith in people, and yet his key concepts were the Covenant and the Beloved Community.
As an active exercise we spent some time with the Rokeach series of values used a few years back in a denominational survey: one of qualities and one of hierarchy of goals. The items were given, then one sorts them in order of personal importance. This is my own hierarchy of qualities, highest first: honest, loving, forgiving, courageous, responsible, imaginative, logical, broad-minded, independent, helpful, capable, intellectual, self-controlled, cheerful, ambitious, obedient, polite and clean. “Obedient, polite and clean” came out last on EVERYONE’s list, which was a source of hilarity!
The other list was (my order): a sense of accomplishment, happiness, an exciting life, a world of beauty, inner harmony, a world at peace, national security, family security, a comfortable life, pleasure, salvation and social recognition. (As I type this list, I notice that I would put them in a different order now.) After arranging our individual lists, we compiled them in our Credo groups, then as a total group, and then compared with the typical Protestant list. That gave us a good deal of food for thought and some concrete ideology to deal with.
CREDO
The Credo groups were really the most intense focus for our own personality philosophy and beliefs. Each night we read aloud to each other what we had written during the day, then discussed a bit. Is the person a tabula rasa? (This is now in the pop culture as “The Blank Slate” with Stephen Pinker and others arguing against it.) Is he/she that which seeks to become? Is it a matter of genetics versus environment? Is a person naturally good, bad or neutral? What is the relationship between the biological being, the ethical and moral being, and the immortally transcendent being -- or do you accept that last? It was interesting that in my group the engineer offered his bullet list, the architect gave us sweeping principles in a metaphor about a sail boat, the young mother went to child-rearing theory, and we two older women -- at the time back in school -- had the most red-hot vivid papers.
The third Credo group took evil as a subject. The night itself was evil. People had spent the day reflecting on bad things from their pasts. The groups turned into almost cathartic, grieving sessions. Suicides, attempted murder, cancer, divorce, loss and corruption were thick in the air. Our group really suffered, including Peter, but we drew close together and some of the ice in our hearts was thawed.
The fourth night was “transcendence” and again everyone came through. We reached for every big and beautiful thing we could imagine and aspire towards. The architect told a story about being caught in a terrible storm on a fishing ship with a balky old captain who refused to take sensible precautions. They survived and when the architect got his feet back on the shore, he threw his arms around the first thing he saw: a big yellow dog! Because we had shared so much old terror the night before we were also able to share old joy. It would not be too much to say we were Unified (Unitarian) and Universally saved.
That was the first year. It was a week before I got MY feet back on the ground. I had a major problem with what to do with all this information and experience. It turned out to be very hard for me to explain to others, partly because it was so emotionally laden, but there was no “big yellow dog” I could safely throw my arms around. In the end I worked out more of the concepts at work than in the church. I also conceived of the idea of becoming a minister. (Hoping to follow the Leadership theories, I signed up with a therapist to do a self-investigation. She was Jewish, secular, and a feminist. I think she was too invested in success, healing and feeling good to be effective.)
So many people felt this problem of what to do “after” Leadership School, that some formed decompression groups or support groups. There was a short winter workshop that did follow up.
The emotional pitch that the worship services showed was paralleled by a high intellectual pitch and a growing awareness of group dynamics.
Organizational Development is a way of designing and managing systems so that they are constantly accumulating data, analyzing it, consciously designing changes, and then testing the consequences by accumulating new data, thereby starting the circle over. It’s not unlike the scientific method.
Another link between OD and UU ideology is TORI theory. TORI stand for trust, openness, realization and interdependence. It is based on the conviction that people learn most and best when they are not afraid, when they don’t have to hide what they think, when they can assert themselves and grow, and when they can work easily with others.
For me, this quote from a paper on “TORI Theory and Practise” by Jack R. Gibb, sums up the whole Leadership School experience: “Growth occurs when a person, on his own steam, on his own impetus, does things that reinforce desired physical responses and behavior patterns. Changed behavior results from showing feelings rather than from talking about them, from doing things rather than thinking about or observing them, from letting one’s self happen rather than examining one’s motives and from physically carrying out an impulse or making a choice. After growth people look different. Growth is its own reward. The kind of sustained learning and growth that makes possible living in trust comes from self-sustained and self-directed changes in life style and behavior patterns.”
Ord Elliott, then a professor at the George H. Atkinson Graduate School of Administration at Willamette U. in Salem, Oregon, is a young, dynamic, extremely appealing man who sends sparks flying in all directions. The basic material for the first year was fairly tried and true theory from communications, but it was presented in an energetic manner and often in conjunction with a game that proved the point.
We talked about basic skills like paraphrasing, describing observable actions of others to them, describing our own feelings, doing a perception check, and so on. We reviewed the task functions in a discussion: initiating, opinion seeking, opinion giving, clarifying, summarizing, consensus testing, as well as the maintenance functions: encouraging, expressing group feelings, harmonizing, compromizing, gate-keeping, setting standards.
Exercises were designed to give us chances to explore our own styles, to “catch ourselves in the act” of whatever we tended to do, and to help others see themselves in non-punishing ways. We did bird-cage type exercises and exercises like “lost at sea,” which prove that the group is smarter than the individual. (Unless you have a trained survivalist in the group.) One exercise, a key ever-after for me, was called “Win As Much As You Can” and was designed so that competitive people could win at the expense of the group and cooperative people would win as a group. I talked my partner into doing a trust-breaking maneuver at the end, so that we DID win as much as we could. (I hope I eventually explained to the group that I grew up in a family where my father was so invested in working for cooperatives that the family suffered financially.)
What gave me food for thought was the reaction of the group. Several people were simply stunned that I should be so selfish and actively avoided me for quite a while. In fact, until I expressed distress after a period of defiance. (I think they interpreted this as regret and compliance, to be rewarded with compassion, but they were mistaken. It taught me to be wary.) I’ve thought many long hours about that experience and what it meant in terms of my own motives, the great desire of UU’s to do what is “right,” the way symbolic issues become as serious as real ones and so on. Clearly liberals have “party lines” and enforce them as severely as fundamentalists. Tolerance for difference is mouthed but not practiced. (It’s also based more on socioeconomics, which some say is the true definers of denominations, than on values.)
As our consciousness about group dynamics and individual roles went up, a schism began to grow in the participants. Because it was summer and away from home and there was a good deal of liquor and music for dancing, there was a party element and pairing off. As usual, there were twice as many women as men and all the older, less slim and compliant women were not waltzed around the floor. We formed our own group, full of classic feminist anger, and did a lot of bitching. We resented the absence of more female leadership and chewed every small nuance over for sexism. A lot of anger focused on the noisiness of the party people. Looking back, I suspect there were a few lesbian feelers extended, mostly by older women, framing it as motherly comforting.
Some of the formal material included an essay by Pfeiffer and Jones on “Openness, Collusion and Feedback,” but somehow it didn’t “take,” at least on me, until I read it for the tenth time two years later. The problem was tattling or confessing material that was too intimate (common enough to now be designated as TMI: “too much information”) and also a lot of gossip about church affairs and individuals. There was no way to reality check this stuff or ground it through action of some kind and some of it was inflammatory enough to arouse a lot of emotions. Of course, it made wonderful ammunition for people who oppose TORI theory, openly or not. If this didactic material had been made real in a game it might have worked better, though it was explosive. Maybe we were actually working on some of this in the Credo groups. I discovered then (and rediscover now) that I have a real problem with such issues: I take what I hear much too seriously for one thing. For another, I do not always understand the consequences of disclosure, or how much can or “should” be done to “fix” problems, particularly in terms of confrontation.
OD touched and blended with the UU material again when we came to the influence of the organization’s ideology upon the way it is structured and empowered. We discussed power orientation, role orientation, task orientation and person orientation -- how they can interweave and how an organization can have both an overt and covert ideology which may conflict. We talked about assertive versus aggressive and the inevitable clashes between task-oriented people and maintenance or person-oriented people. These concepts became part of our vocabulary and, because we had words to think about such things, we began to see them around us right away. Instead of thinking, “Oh, oh! George is being a hard-head and putting down Annie again!” we could think, “Gee, George is wanting to get the task done now and Annie needs more reassurance that everyone is going to be included, so what will be a good thing to prevent a deadlock? Oh, it’s okay -- Tim is promising to call everyone and Annie can relax. We finally began to get the point of asking “How are you feeling?”
The FIRO-B pencil and paper test stands for “Fundamental Relation Oriented Behavior.” The idea was that the questions produced two scores in three categories. One score showed expressed desire for inclusion in the group and the other showed wished-for inclusion in the group. A second pair showed expressed desire for power versus wished-for desire for power. I forget the third category. After the “Win As Much As you Can” incident, everyone felt better when my FIRO-B score showed “expressed desire” and “wished-for desire” for inclusion were both zero! Which shows me that UU’s always feel better about “bad” things if they can be scientifically measured. I do feel that was a true score and that having my attention drawn to it so dramatically heped me to move into community more bravely. But it begs the question of why I was there at all and it predicts my much later departure from the ministry and the whole UU movement.
For all our interpersonal relations, Ord stressed five “norms:” to maintain sensitivity to depth and vulnerability; to participate; to experiment, especially on oneself; to take responsibility for one’s own actions; and to maintain openness strategically -- that is, to find what is comfortable and then increase the level no more than ten per cent.
Just for fun, we used the “Garbage Can Theory of Organizations:” “An organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision-makers looking for work.” This turned out to be quite true and relevant. To a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Anyway, to sum up, OD is NOT experts, sensitivity training, subversion, management by objectives, transactional analysis, Gestalt, job enrichment, crisis intervention, remedial programs, retreads, cooking-out conflict, a quick cure, or a superimposed structure. OD IS goal-oriented, system-wide, value-loaded (which is where it fits with UU), problem-focused, preventative and developmental, continuous and inevitable, long term, and change managing. It consists of a regular cycle of assessment (sensitively collecting data), diagnosis by the people within the system, team-building (flexibly and voluntarily), intergroup relations (Trusting, Open, Realizing and Interdependent), redesign (structurally), and assessment (back around to the beginning again and ready to start another cycle.)
Peter accompanied all of Ord’s theories with formal lectures on the history and doctrine of the UU’s, the theological basis and alternatives of UUism, and the specifics of the system of polity. He started with Jonathan Edwards (“Human beings are sinners in the hands of an angry God!”) and laid over against that William Ellery Channing (our likeness to God). We talked about the doctrines of election, original sin and atonement, and how the UU position reacts againt those Calvinist ideas. Peter emphasized how much our process, built on individual authority, is the core of our denomination and rests on our faith in people, and yet his key concepts were the Covenant and the Beloved Community.
As an active exercise we spent some time with the Rokeach series of values used a few years back in a denominational survey: one of qualities and one of hierarchy of goals. The items were given, then one sorts them in order of personal importance. This is my own hierarchy of qualities, highest first: honest, loving, forgiving, courageous, responsible, imaginative, logical, broad-minded, independent, helpful, capable, intellectual, self-controlled, cheerful, ambitious, obedient, polite and clean. “Obedient, polite and clean” came out last on EVERYONE’s list, which was a source of hilarity!
The other list was (my order): a sense of accomplishment, happiness, an exciting life, a world of beauty, inner harmony, a world at peace, national security, family security, a comfortable life, pleasure, salvation and social recognition. (As I type this list, I notice that I would put them in a different order now.) After arranging our individual lists, we compiled them in our Credo groups, then as a total group, and then compared with the typical Protestant list. That gave us a good deal of food for thought and some concrete ideology to deal with.
CREDO
The Credo groups were really the most intense focus for our own personality philosophy and beliefs. Each night we read aloud to each other what we had written during the day, then discussed a bit. Is the person a tabula rasa? (This is now in the pop culture as “The Blank Slate” with Stephen Pinker and others arguing against it.) Is he/she that which seeks to become? Is it a matter of genetics versus environment? Is a person naturally good, bad or neutral? What is the relationship between the biological being, the ethical and moral being, and the immortally transcendent being -- or do you accept that last? It was interesting that in my group the engineer offered his bullet list, the architect gave us sweeping principles in a metaphor about a sail boat, the young mother went to child-rearing theory, and we two older women -- at the time back in school -- had the most red-hot vivid papers.
The third Credo group took evil as a subject. The night itself was evil. People had spent the day reflecting on bad things from their pasts. The groups turned into almost cathartic, grieving sessions. Suicides, attempted murder, cancer, divorce, loss and corruption were thick in the air. Our group really suffered, including Peter, but we drew close together and some of the ice in our hearts was thawed.
The fourth night was “transcendence” and again everyone came through. We reached for every big and beautiful thing we could imagine and aspire towards. The architect told a story about being caught in a terrible storm on a fishing ship with a balky old captain who refused to take sensible precautions. They survived and when the architect got his feet back on the shore, he threw his arms around the first thing he saw: a big yellow dog! Because we had shared so much old terror the night before we were also able to share old joy. It would not be too much to say we were Unified (Unitarian) and Universally saved.
That was the first year. It was a week before I got MY feet back on the ground. I had a major problem with what to do with all this information and experience. It turned out to be very hard for me to explain to others, partly because it was so emotionally laden, but there was no “big yellow dog” I could safely throw my arms around. In the end I worked out more of the concepts at work than in the church. I also conceived of the idea of becoming a minister. (Hoping to follow the Leadership theories, I signed up with a therapist to do a self-investigation. She was Jewish, secular, and a feminist. I think she was too invested in success, healing and feeling good to be effective.)
So many people felt this problem of what to do “after” Leadership School, that some formed decompression groups or support groups. There was a short winter workshop that did follow up.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
PNWD-UUA LEADERSHIP SCHOOL Pt. 1, Narrative
LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
PART 1: NARRATIVE
by Mary Scriver (1978)
Edited and annotated in 2009
“A minister without a knowledge of group dynamics is like a doctor without a knowledge of antibiotics.”
---Charles William Steward, "Person and Profession"
What follows is an attempt to put in order the raw materials produced by participation in the Pacific Northwest District Unitarian Universalist Leadership School. I attended this workshop three times, one week each in the summers of 1976, ‘77 and ‘78, and found myself personally and profoundly influenced by the experience. Though my own response was individual, its intensity and value was paralleled by that of other people. Some people did NOT enjoy nor profit from the experience and I am not prepared to account for that, although in some cases I rather suspect that the work frightened or threatened them, perhaps subconsciously. They tended to be people who put a high premium on control and orderliness, even to the point of suppressing things that didn’t fit the pre-existing system. They tended to be doing quite well in the status quo context. This experience was intended to empower lay people. It was not for ministers.
PNWD Leadership School was held at Fort Worden, a former military fort which has been converted to a convention center and arts campus near Port Townsend, Washington, a resort town with a ferry slip connecting to British Columbia. Fort Worden is at the tip of the southern peninsula that curves around the mouth of Puget Sound. One gazes across the water to Canada and sees sea-going ships constantly passing. The buildings are old-fashioned, with wide porches, and arranged in a square compound with a vast grassy field in the middle. On one side are officers’ quarters with conventional internal arrangements of living room and so on. On the other are barracks, remodeled into tiny cells, each with a bunk, desk and closet, and a large gathering room. A dining hall is in a separate building and there is also a classroom sort of building. A chapel and a theatre are on the premises as well as a foundry, a custom printing press, and a ceramic studio. An arts festival has its headquarters here all summer and the Leadership School has operated in the midst of a stringed instrument workshop, a science-fiction writers’ convention, and a poetry festival. Port Townsend is an artsy little town with lots of antique shops, book stores, and pleasant pubs and cafes.
Part of the reason I spend so much time on the surroundings is that in the course of our experiences together we began to feel that space very much as sacred ground. It would have been quite different if we’d been shut into an air-conditioned urban building. PNWD, after all, is a “nature-worshiping” district.
The three three stages of the annual Leadership School were roughly based as follows. The first year gave the vocabulary and basic dimensions of organizational development and Unitarian-Universalist ideology. The second year began to draw on the abilities of the group to teach itself more sophisticated concepts, so as to carry them home, and to tolerate extremely detailed criticism. The third years was simply the design and maintenance of a creative community that would satisfy both our ideological commitments, our personal identities, and our new OD standards.
(I was pre-disposed to accept and assimilate this material in part because of classes from Dean Barnlund at Northwestern University in 1957-58. The classes were entitled “Language & Thought” and “Discussion,” based on textbooks written by Barnlund. Working on ideas partly stirred up by Hayakawa, Barnlund was teaching ways of thinking together that evaded conflict, focused on the ideas rather than the participants, and built-in much self-monitoring. I think some of this was closely related to Third Force Psychology. We did “bird-cages” where half the group discussed while the other sat just outside the circle and watched process; played the roles of summing up, or clarifying definitions, or pointing out lapses of logic or dealing with emotional outbursts; and so on.)
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp was that nothing as scripture (i.e. the leaders did not “tell us what to do” and there was no “right and wrong” as such). No plan was cut in stone and because EVERYTHING was open to investigation and change, there was nothing no matter how disastrous or uncomfortable that wouldn’t yield up something valuable. In other words, we were perfectionists who found it hard to believe that perfection is the most deeply imperfect state of all, because it doesn’t allow for growth and change.
1976 is the most distant year of the school so my memories are more ancient and have been transformed more. Also, that first session aroused many strong emotions, which have taken me a long time to recognize and use. I had been a UU for not quite a year and was asked to attend the school rather than soliciting to go. The church paid my tuition and when I put the matter to my boss, because I didn’t have any vacation time left and couldn’t afford a week off at no pay -- he simply turned in my time as though I were at work that week. He reasoned that he would be amply repaid if I learned anything and that he would get the time back in overtime anyway. (He was right!) The more I asked about the school, the more conflicting information I got, so I finally went feeling extremely wary.
We arrived at Fort Warden tired from the four hour drive up from Portland and had a hard time even finding the right building. Next was the hassle of finding the right room, but I was grateful to have a hole in which to hide. The inevitable “happy hour” soon followed and I suffered as usual. I am not gregarious and don’t normally drink.
FIRST EVENING
After supper we gathered in one of the big rooms on cushions and chair and Peter Raible began the program. He asked us all to recline or slide down on our chairs until we were comfortable and asked us to close our eyes and listen to what he said. What followed was what he called a “Bidding Prayer” but it was more of a guided meditation.
(“A Bidding-prayer (O. Eng. biddan, "to pray", cf. Ger. beten) is the formula of prayer or exhortation to prayer said during worship in churches of the Anglican Communion. It occurs during the liturgy of the word, prior to the sermon. Such formulae are found in the ancient Greek liturgies, e.g. that of St. Chrysostom, in the Gallican liturgy, and in the pre-Reformation liturgies of England.
“The form varies, but in all the characteristic feature is that the minister tells the people what to pray for (e.g., the 1662 Book of Common Prayer bidding-prayer form begins, "Let us pray for Christ's holy Catholic Church," provides specifics, and then moves on to the next bidding). It is an informal intercessory prayer.”)
Peter asked us to replay our trip: imagine ourselves at home, packing, getting into the car, traveling, stopping for coffee, and so on until finally we had retraced our steps and were back in the room. The directions then were “be here now” -- which I hadn’t been until then -- and after some silence Peter offered a conventional prayer and the week began in earnest.
The workshop took advantage of many paper and pencil instruments, some quite ingenious. The main gimmick of the evening was a booklet called “Dyadic Encouter, A Structured Experience for Human Relations Training.” People pair off and each one gets a booklet which contains directions leading through a simple conversation. Page one says, “Ask the person his/her name.” Both parties do that. The next question is another typical friendly inquiry and then the conversation goes on through the book, gradually becoming more personal. Occasionally the booklet directs the two people to “put down the book, look into your partner’s eyes, and smile.” This very obvious-seeming strategy can often unfold into a close relationship! The people at Leadership School don’t forget their dyad partners and the amount of closeness they were able to achieve with a stranger in an hour at most. My partner was Kris Kaufman, an engineer who wrote everything in “bullet lists” like a Power Point presentation!
It’s a bit like being trapped in an elevator, because there’s no way to slide off and escape and yet the booklet offers ways of defending ourself. (“You may simply say that you do not want to answer this question.”) Another plot for similar situations is to interview one’s partner and then introduce him/her to the group, but that’s a high-pressure task in which an error can sting. It’s a comment on our society that we have to have directions to make friends. Anyway, I had a buddy from that point on. I’ve used the same strategy for other groups by putting questions on 3X5 cards. One can customize the questions for the kind of group.
GROUPS
Other housekeeping chores of the evening included finding a working group for the OD exercises. This was done by posting four signs on the four walls: “horny, witty, willing and sexy.” People picked their category by standing under the sign of their choice and did a bit of shifting around until the groups were equal. The categories were humorous and some chose their group ironically, but they did tend to sort out people who didn’t know each other into vaguely compatible groups.
The second kind of group was the “Credo Group.” These consisted of five people with one staff leader who would meet last thing each night in order to work on their personal credoes. These groups were assigned by Peter Raible, partly on the basis of mixing people from different churches and partly on the basis of what he knew about people’s personalities. Peter is very good at this. The group I was in was led by Peter himself, which I interpreted as meaning I’d been special in a complimentary sense, but much later realized must have meant there was some thought that I might blow up.
The Credo directions were given to the whole group and then the small groups worked on actual specifics. These Credoes were to be written in copies so they could be read by the group as the individual read them aloud. They were created during afternoon “free time” (which turned out to be a misnomer since we all had many self-imposed assignments after the first day). The directions were as follows: “Stay away from negatives. Don’t say what you DON’T believe in. Use no long quotes. Use concrete expressions instead of abstract, didactic sorts of phrases. Pin down what you say to your own life and experience. Ask yourself what difference does it make? Stick to the NOW, not the past or future.”
Instructions for the individual topics were given the night before each Credo was due. The first was to be about nature and other life. Do we feel a sense of dominance or a merging? (This was in the Seventies remember, before we all went wildly green.) Do we feel a sense of reverence?
The third group for which we signed up was a worship group. Each day was to start with a short service done by ourselves as a group. Peter also gave us the background for this. We were to ask ourselves, what happens -- if anything? What are we ABOUT? What kind of goals do we have? How do we reaffirm our goals as a group? How to build community? Where do we point as a direction? How do we make this happen? What kind of process or setting?
Peter had a real bug about informality being equated with “half-assed.” Too often people slide by on good will and general limpness. He emphasized that people should never be confused about what they are supposed to do next. They should know where to look for directions, whether it is in the order of service, on a posted list of hymns, or coming from a speaker. They should not have to crane their necks to find out who is talking. They should never be embarrassed. he said to remember always that when the minister or leader looks out over the congregation, there will be a person out there who is in the midst of tragedy (a death, a divorce, a burned-down house, a move away from home), one who is in the midst of joy (a birth, a marriage, a promotion), and one who is struggling with great problems. No matter how narrow the theme to be addressed by the service , some kind of allowance must be made for people who came for spiritual contact. (Fellowships are famous for doing programs on what came to be known as “City Sewer System Syndrome.)
He talked a bit about the advantages of the traditional “hymn sandwich” and the first worship was directed to use that format. Hee pointed out why each element was in that particular place, not arbitrarily but out of many years of human custom. I signed up for that first worship service, which was to be presented right after breakfast the next day. I figured I’d be able to handle a traditional service but had no idea what to do with an experimental service, which the next two were supposed to be.
WORSHIP
Worship happened every morning. I’ll discuss them together before dealing with the other content. The first service was traditional and the theme chosen was dawn, because it was the beginning of our time together and also happened in the morning. We chose the “morning” hymns (“Morning Has Broken,” “Morning Hangs a Signal” et al). The room was organized with an altar table and flowers (carefully dug up instead of cut because we were doing our Credoes about nature and feeling hyperconscious). We prepared an order of service, I wrote a prayer and Virginia Lane wrote the sermon: “A New Day.” It all went quite well and we were pleased. The worship groups were led by Betty Muir, who expressed just as much anxiety about the process as we beginners did, but who somehow managed to encourage us without directing us. Not one worship group flopped. The traditional service was critiqued without drastic blunders coming to mind. We were quite exhilarated, though some of us were fellowship leaders who regularly presented worships.
The second worship was based on a phrase from one of Peter’s lectures: “People are Precious.” We were asked to wait outside until the room was set up. When we came in, the chairs were in a circle and the sponsoring group was already seated. Music played on the phonograph and the order of service was merely a copy of the unison closing on a round piece of paper for each of us. In the middle of the circle of chairs was a sort of construct with a fountain of Scotch broom. (It’s a weed, right?) There was instrumental music from a ukelele during the service and we sang at least one song that most people know from pop culture. I think it was “May the Circle Be Unbroken.” Couple danced and there was a period of Quaker silence and testimony. The theme was reinforced and explored throughout. The only real criticism was that the people who didn’t help with planning didn’t know whether or not they were supposed to participate in the Quaker-style sharing. The planning group had hoped they could set an example with their own speaking and that we would follow, but instead, because we knew they were all part of the planning, we were all afraid to say anything for fear they were leading up to something we didn’t know about and that we might interfere.
The third worship was the most elaborate of any. We were asked to come into one large room and to sit with our eyes closed in a circle on chairs while music played. As we sat meditating, the planners came to get us one by one and led us -- with our eyes closed -- to the next large room where we were seated on pillows facing another person. We didn’t know whom until we were told to open our eyes later. It was a very strange sensation to have to trust someone else so much. The theme was openness, being aware, trusting and so on.
When we opened our eyes we were facing a person of the same sex who had been deliberately chosen by the planners. (No tigers facing rabbits.) Between us was a small bowl of grapes. The service went on with readings and music. At some point we were asked to feed each other the grapes, which meant more trust. (The men felt particularly affected by feeding another man.) Directions were given by a reader and the pairs of people had been clustered so that each cluster had its own guide to demonstrate silently what to do. Like, wait until the first grape goes down before offering the next!
Then, by surprise, from up above us in some empty space, came the most exquisite cello solo. (One of the attendees of the string players conference was a UU.) At that point some people hit emotional overload and burst into tears. We talked quite a while about the legitimacy of causing that much emotion and whether it was manipulative.
The fourth worship was to be celebratory. We were all totally exhausted and it was the morning after the Third Credo. The topic had been “evil” and we had plunged into the Dark Side. The worship capitalized on our fatique intoxication. Norma Dahl sang “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” with great poignancy. We had a strawberries and champagne communion and the most chaotic maypole ever to turn into a pig pile. The event had a great deal of shape and preparation under it, but mostly what I remember is color and strawberries and laughing until I ached.
The last worship was done by a special composite committee drawn from persons who had already served, and it was interesting that it was rather quiet and conservative. It was Sunday, the Fourth of July, and Peter had left to preach in Seattle. He is a patriot and wanted to be in his own pulpit. Others had left but those who stayed had made quite an emotional commitment to the larger group. Some of the material of the week was reiterated as we all sat in a circle on cushions and had a dignified “cold duck” wine communion (all the wine remnants poured together). Then Larry Omo, a solid warm fellow, took Peter’s role and did another “bidding prayer” exercise to detach us from our week and send us home.
PART 1: NARRATIVE
by Mary Scriver (1978)
Edited and annotated in 2009
“A minister without a knowledge of group dynamics is like a doctor without a knowledge of antibiotics.”
---Charles William Steward, "Person and Profession"
What follows is an attempt to put in order the raw materials produced by participation in the Pacific Northwest District Unitarian Universalist Leadership School. I attended this workshop three times, one week each in the summers of 1976, ‘77 and ‘78, and found myself personally and profoundly influenced by the experience. Though my own response was individual, its intensity and value was paralleled by that of other people. Some people did NOT enjoy nor profit from the experience and I am not prepared to account for that, although in some cases I rather suspect that the work frightened or threatened them, perhaps subconsciously. They tended to be people who put a high premium on control and orderliness, even to the point of suppressing things that didn’t fit the pre-existing system. They tended to be doing quite well in the status quo context. This experience was intended to empower lay people. It was not for ministers.
PNWD Leadership School was held at Fort Worden, a former military fort which has been converted to a convention center and arts campus near Port Townsend, Washington, a resort town with a ferry slip connecting to British Columbia. Fort Worden is at the tip of the southern peninsula that curves around the mouth of Puget Sound. One gazes across the water to Canada and sees sea-going ships constantly passing. The buildings are old-fashioned, with wide porches, and arranged in a square compound with a vast grassy field in the middle. On one side are officers’ quarters with conventional internal arrangements of living room and so on. On the other are barracks, remodeled into tiny cells, each with a bunk, desk and closet, and a large gathering room. A dining hall is in a separate building and there is also a classroom sort of building. A chapel and a theatre are on the premises as well as a foundry, a custom printing press, and a ceramic studio. An arts festival has its headquarters here all summer and the Leadership School has operated in the midst of a stringed instrument workshop, a science-fiction writers’ convention, and a poetry festival. Port Townsend is an artsy little town with lots of antique shops, book stores, and pleasant pubs and cafes.
Part of the reason I spend so much time on the surroundings is that in the course of our experiences together we began to feel that space very much as sacred ground. It would have been quite different if we’d been shut into an air-conditioned urban building. PNWD, after all, is a “nature-worshiping” district.
The three three stages of the annual Leadership School were roughly based as follows. The first year gave the vocabulary and basic dimensions of organizational development and Unitarian-Universalist ideology. The second year began to draw on the abilities of the group to teach itself more sophisticated concepts, so as to carry them home, and to tolerate extremely detailed criticism. The third years was simply the design and maintenance of a creative community that would satisfy both our ideological commitments, our personal identities, and our new OD standards.
(I was pre-disposed to accept and assimilate this material in part because of classes from Dean Barnlund at Northwestern University in 1957-58. The classes were entitled “Language & Thought” and “Discussion,” based on textbooks written by Barnlund. Working on ideas partly stirred up by Hayakawa, Barnlund was teaching ways of thinking together that evaded conflict, focused on the ideas rather than the participants, and built-in much self-monitoring. I think some of this was closely related to Third Force Psychology. We did “bird-cages” where half the group discussed while the other sat just outside the circle and watched process; played the roles of summing up, or clarifying definitions, or pointing out lapses of logic or dealing with emotional outbursts; and so on.)
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp was that nothing as scripture (i.e. the leaders did not “tell us what to do” and there was no “right and wrong” as such). No plan was cut in stone and because EVERYTHING was open to investigation and change, there was nothing no matter how disastrous or uncomfortable that wouldn’t yield up something valuable. In other words, we were perfectionists who found it hard to believe that perfection is the most deeply imperfect state of all, because it doesn’t allow for growth and change.
1976 is the most distant year of the school so my memories are more ancient and have been transformed more. Also, that first session aroused many strong emotions, which have taken me a long time to recognize and use. I had been a UU for not quite a year and was asked to attend the school rather than soliciting to go. The church paid my tuition and when I put the matter to my boss, because I didn’t have any vacation time left and couldn’t afford a week off at no pay -- he simply turned in my time as though I were at work that week. He reasoned that he would be amply repaid if I learned anything and that he would get the time back in overtime anyway. (He was right!) The more I asked about the school, the more conflicting information I got, so I finally went feeling extremely wary.
We arrived at Fort Warden tired from the four hour drive up from Portland and had a hard time even finding the right building. Next was the hassle of finding the right room, but I was grateful to have a hole in which to hide. The inevitable “happy hour” soon followed and I suffered as usual. I am not gregarious and don’t normally drink.
FIRST EVENING
After supper we gathered in one of the big rooms on cushions and chair and Peter Raible began the program. He asked us all to recline or slide down on our chairs until we were comfortable and asked us to close our eyes and listen to what he said. What followed was what he called a “Bidding Prayer” but it was more of a guided meditation.
(“A Bidding-prayer (O. Eng. biddan, "to pray", cf. Ger. beten) is the formula of prayer or exhortation to prayer said during worship in churches of the Anglican Communion. It occurs during the liturgy of the word, prior to the sermon. Such formulae are found in the ancient Greek liturgies, e.g. that of St. Chrysostom, in the Gallican liturgy, and in the pre-Reformation liturgies of England.
“The form varies, but in all the characteristic feature is that the minister tells the people what to pray for (e.g., the 1662 Book of Common Prayer bidding-prayer form begins, "Let us pray for Christ's holy Catholic Church," provides specifics, and then moves on to the next bidding). It is an informal intercessory prayer.”)
Peter asked us to replay our trip: imagine ourselves at home, packing, getting into the car, traveling, stopping for coffee, and so on until finally we had retraced our steps and were back in the room. The directions then were “be here now” -- which I hadn’t been until then -- and after some silence Peter offered a conventional prayer and the week began in earnest.
The workshop took advantage of many paper and pencil instruments, some quite ingenious. The main gimmick of the evening was a booklet called “Dyadic Encouter, A Structured Experience for Human Relations Training.” People pair off and each one gets a booklet which contains directions leading through a simple conversation. Page one says, “Ask the person his/her name.” Both parties do that. The next question is another typical friendly inquiry and then the conversation goes on through the book, gradually becoming more personal. Occasionally the booklet directs the two people to “put down the book, look into your partner’s eyes, and smile.” This very obvious-seeming strategy can often unfold into a close relationship! The people at Leadership School don’t forget their dyad partners and the amount of closeness they were able to achieve with a stranger in an hour at most. My partner was Kris Kaufman, an engineer who wrote everything in “bullet lists” like a Power Point presentation!
It’s a bit like being trapped in an elevator, because there’s no way to slide off and escape and yet the booklet offers ways of defending ourself. (“You may simply say that you do not want to answer this question.”) Another plot for similar situations is to interview one’s partner and then introduce him/her to the group, but that’s a high-pressure task in which an error can sting. It’s a comment on our society that we have to have directions to make friends. Anyway, I had a buddy from that point on. I’ve used the same strategy for other groups by putting questions on 3X5 cards. One can customize the questions for the kind of group.
GROUPS
Other housekeeping chores of the evening included finding a working group for the OD exercises. This was done by posting four signs on the four walls: “horny, witty, willing and sexy.” People picked their category by standing under the sign of their choice and did a bit of shifting around until the groups were equal. The categories were humorous and some chose their group ironically, but they did tend to sort out people who didn’t know each other into vaguely compatible groups.
The second kind of group was the “Credo Group.” These consisted of five people with one staff leader who would meet last thing each night in order to work on their personal credoes. These groups were assigned by Peter Raible, partly on the basis of mixing people from different churches and partly on the basis of what he knew about people’s personalities. Peter is very good at this. The group I was in was led by Peter himself, which I interpreted as meaning I’d been special in a complimentary sense, but much later realized must have meant there was some thought that I might blow up.
The Credo directions were given to the whole group and then the small groups worked on actual specifics. These Credoes were to be written in copies so they could be read by the group as the individual read them aloud. They were created during afternoon “free time” (which turned out to be a misnomer since we all had many self-imposed assignments after the first day). The directions were as follows: “Stay away from negatives. Don’t say what you DON’T believe in. Use no long quotes. Use concrete expressions instead of abstract, didactic sorts of phrases. Pin down what you say to your own life and experience. Ask yourself what difference does it make? Stick to the NOW, not the past or future.”
Instructions for the individual topics were given the night before each Credo was due. The first was to be about nature and other life. Do we feel a sense of dominance or a merging? (This was in the Seventies remember, before we all went wildly green.) Do we feel a sense of reverence?
The third group for which we signed up was a worship group. Each day was to start with a short service done by ourselves as a group. Peter also gave us the background for this. We were to ask ourselves, what happens -- if anything? What are we ABOUT? What kind of goals do we have? How do we reaffirm our goals as a group? How to build community? Where do we point as a direction? How do we make this happen? What kind of process or setting?
Peter had a real bug about informality being equated with “half-assed.” Too often people slide by on good will and general limpness. He emphasized that people should never be confused about what they are supposed to do next. They should know where to look for directions, whether it is in the order of service, on a posted list of hymns, or coming from a speaker. They should not have to crane their necks to find out who is talking. They should never be embarrassed. he said to remember always that when the minister or leader looks out over the congregation, there will be a person out there who is in the midst of tragedy (a death, a divorce, a burned-down house, a move away from home), one who is in the midst of joy (a birth, a marriage, a promotion), and one who is struggling with great problems. No matter how narrow the theme to be addressed by the service , some kind of allowance must be made for people who came for spiritual contact. (Fellowships are famous for doing programs on what came to be known as “City Sewer System Syndrome.)
He talked a bit about the advantages of the traditional “hymn sandwich” and the first worship was directed to use that format. Hee pointed out why each element was in that particular place, not arbitrarily but out of many years of human custom. I signed up for that first worship service, which was to be presented right after breakfast the next day. I figured I’d be able to handle a traditional service but had no idea what to do with an experimental service, which the next two were supposed to be.
WORSHIP
Worship happened every morning. I’ll discuss them together before dealing with the other content. The first service was traditional and the theme chosen was dawn, because it was the beginning of our time together and also happened in the morning. We chose the “morning” hymns (“Morning Has Broken,” “Morning Hangs a Signal” et al). The room was organized with an altar table and flowers (carefully dug up instead of cut because we were doing our Credoes about nature and feeling hyperconscious). We prepared an order of service, I wrote a prayer and Virginia Lane wrote the sermon: “A New Day.” It all went quite well and we were pleased. The worship groups were led by Betty Muir, who expressed just as much anxiety about the process as we beginners did, but who somehow managed to encourage us without directing us. Not one worship group flopped. The traditional service was critiqued without drastic blunders coming to mind. We were quite exhilarated, though some of us were fellowship leaders who regularly presented worships.
The second worship was based on a phrase from one of Peter’s lectures: “People are Precious.” We were asked to wait outside until the room was set up. When we came in, the chairs were in a circle and the sponsoring group was already seated. Music played on the phonograph and the order of service was merely a copy of the unison closing on a round piece of paper for each of us. In the middle of the circle of chairs was a sort of construct with a fountain of Scotch broom. (It’s a weed, right?) There was instrumental music from a ukelele during the service and we sang at least one song that most people know from pop culture. I think it was “May the Circle Be Unbroken.” Couple danced and there was a period of Quaker silence and testimony. The theme was reinforced and explored throughout. The only real criticism was that the people who didn’t help with planning didn’t know whether or not they were supposed to participate in the Quaker-style sharing. The planning group had hoped they could set an example with their own speaking and that we would follow, but instead, because we knew they were all part of the planning, we were all afraid to say anything for fear they were leading up to something we didn’t know about and that we might interfere.
The third worship was the most elaborate of any. We were asked to come into one large room and to sit with our eyes closed in a circle on chairs while music played. As we sat meditating, the planners came to get us one by one and led us -- with our eyes closed -- to the next large room where we were seated on pillows facing another person. We didn’t know whom until we were told to open our eyes later. It was a very strange sensation to have to trust someone else so much. The theme was openness, being aware, trusting and so on.
When we opened our eyes we were facing a person of the same sex who had been deliberately chosen by the planners. (No tigers facing rabbits.) Between us was a small bowl of grapes. The service went on with readings and music. At some point we were asked to feed each other the grapes, which meant more trust. (The men felt particularly affected by feeding another man.) Directions were given by a reader and the pairs of people had been clustered so that each cluster had its own guide to demonstrate silently what to do. Like, wait until the first grape goes down before offering the next!
Then, by surprise, from up above us in some empty space, came the most exquisite cello solo. (One of the attendees of the string players conference was a UU.) At that point some people hit emotional overload and burst into tears. We talked quite a while about the legitimacy of causing that much emotion and whether it was manipulative.
The fourth worship was to be celebratory. We were all totally exhausted and it was the morning after the Third Credo. The topic had been “evil” and we had plunged into the Dark Side. The worship capitalized on our fatique intoxication. Norma Dahl sang “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” with great poignancy. We had a strawberries and champagne communion and the most chaotic maypole ever to turn into a pig pile. The event had a great deal of shape and preparation under it, but mostly what I remember is color and strawberries and laughing until I ached.
The last worship was done by a special composite committee drawn from persons who had already served, and it was interesting that it was rather quiet and conservative. It was Sunday, the Fourth of July, and Peter had left to preach in Seattle. He is a patriot and wanted to be in his own pulpit. Others had left but those who stayed had made quite an emotional commitment to the larger group. Some of the material of the week was reiterated as we all sat in a circle on cushions and had a dignified “cold duck” wine communion (all the wine remnants poured together). Then Larry Omo, a solid warm fellow, took Peter’s role and did another “bidding prayer” exercise to detach us from our week and send us home.
Friday, March 13, 2009
PNWD-UUA LEADERSHIP SCHOOL Pt. 2
"Leadership School" is a formal group event that began in the 70's in the Pacific Northwest District of the UUA. This is the second part of a three part paper. The first part is a narrative and the third is a discussion of relevance to clergy. The paper was written for a class at Meadville/Lombard Theological School.
LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
by Mary Scriver (1978)
“A liberal religious group comes to function as both a learning and redemptive community when its members become sufficiently disciplined to pose fundamental questions about human life.
“Following the poet Rilke’s concept, when a community not only poses basic questions but also tries to live its own answers on the basis of the knowledge it gain, it enters upon education. The classically adequate way to present a religion implicit or explicit, is therefore to create communities in which the central prophesy is lived as well as taught.”
-- Khoren Arisian, “Spirituality and Reason,” Kairos, Autumn, 1978
Unitarian-Universalism is a pluralistically religious organization existing in the context of a pluralistically secular culture. As such it presents some very difficult problems. Some of our Ethical Culture and Humanistic people seem secular to other religious bodies and some of our Natural Religion or Christian people seem superstitious dreams to other secular bodies. I think it is no accident that Unitarianism was an enthusiasm for so many framers of the Constitution of the United States, written when democratic pluralism seemed an exciting new freedom that protected the interests and growth of all people. Since that time technology, accelerating change, population pressure, and a raised consciousness about the meaning of freedom have made pluralism into something potentially explosive.
How do we talk to each other about our differences without arousing so much anxiety that the community is torn? It seems easier to smile and change the subject when heartfelt religious subjects come up. But if we never negotiate or communicate among ourselves, how do we present a united front to the world? And if we don’t present that united front, our power to protect our people against a hostile world is drastically reduced. How does a person really know whether they belong or not, if the organization is slippery about what it stands for? And yet, if we nail down the parameters of our thought, someone’s toes are bound to be hurt.
Democracy takes a lot more skill on the part of a lot more people than any other form of government. Self-consciousness about democratic skills such as organizational development, discussion skills, and group dynamics has greatly expanded in the last few years. We “must learn organization as our fathers learned farming,” says Peter Drucker. Any group of leaders who ignores such valuable tools is bound to be handicapped. But bringing to consciousness such group interactions is as threatening as psychoanalysis. Indeed, there’s a close parallel in the potential for revolution.
Leadership School operated in a number of ways.
1. It gave us a vocabulary. There has to be some way to talk about phenomena that re-occur enough to be noted. “Person-oriented” versus “task-oriented” is an amazingly useful concept, but you need the terms before you can ask yourself whether the idea applies.
2. It gave us a mirror. The instruments and experiences fed back to us a great deal of information about our own styles and priorities. It forced us to verbalize a lot of inchoate stuff and suggested all sorts of new avenues of investigation. Unless a person gets honest feedback about the kind of impression he/she is making on others, he/she is seriously handicapped in trying to make positive changes.
3. It taught us how to use ritual. Victor Turner tells us that one of the main functions of religion is to act as a doorkeeper between the major stages of life. It helps separate us from the old, mark the threshold, and reconcile us to the new. The classic “rebirth” experience is a key paradigm. Turner says that a ritual is not really valid unless it is participated in or recognized by at least three “significant others.” In modern society the stages of life come hard upon each other: no longer are they limited to birth, coming of age, marriage, retirement and death. Levinson’s research suggests a new stage every seven to ten years. The transitions are difficult and dangerous, both for society and for the individual.
By teaching us to design and use worship and rituals, even very simple ones spontaneously done, our religious community is able to respond more effectively. In my own church a woman whose child was in danger came to our sharing group and asked for some sort of reassurance but said she didn’t believe in prayer. Instead we held hands in a circle and “sent strength” over to her. She said she had an almost physical sensation of energy coming into her and was able to calm down and cope.
4. It taught us to be authentic. Sheer fatigue caused us to drop our social faces and once they were gone we found we were good enough without them. There was a constant challenge to “put your money where your mouth is” -- that is, act as your stated ideology requires, or else stop saying that’s what you believe -- your words are not congruent with your actions.
5. It taught us that reason and emotion or reason and experience are not mutually exclusive. As Progoff does with his journal techniques, we first experienced and then analyzed. We had practise in using both modes and therefore were better able to consider the appropriateness and effectiveness of both modes in various situations. This gave us insight into our own styles, more to think about when decided what to do, and more options in our ways of reacting.
6. It taught us not to be afraid to be authoritative. So many UU’s join us because they are anti-authoritarian that we tend to become phobic and break out in a rash every time someone acts in a powerful way. We found by experience that authority is fluid, maybe voluntarily passed back and forth, may be shared, and is not evil in any Manichean sense. The evil is in the misuse of authority -- and lack of authority is as much of an abuse as inappropriate or excessive authority.
7. It taught us how much power there is in “ownership” of a well thought-out purpose. Again, our resistance to creeds tempts us to resist any kind of group statement. Yet, no one can tell whether a particular action or strategy is helpful or not unless it is measured against some criterion. Not to agree on a purpose is to be lost in confusion and conflict, unable to take action. To agree on a clear purpose, reached by voluntary consensus, is to be empowered, to “own” the plan.
8. It taught us not to be afraid to tinker with the structure of an organization. But also to be careful with the tinkering because even small changes can be enabling or limiting. Still, experimentation is better than fossilization. And the efficiency of a group can be greatly enhanced by a better adjustment between the people and the task.
9. It taught us never to underestimate each other. people found capacities and talents in themselves that they had never suspected. And one never knew where the good ideas and the real devotion might come from: perhaps from the most nondescript or flakey member of the group.
10. Leadership School taught us the same things that an alert and thoughtful person might learn from real life. The difference was that for an enclosed and ritualized time and space and in a community of people dedicated to a common purpose, one was able to learn a great deal in a short time. In this rushed, pluralistic, secular society a person doesn’t get many chances like that.
Pop psych or “personal growth” techniques just seemed irrelevant in the midst of this week. The focus was on individual in the midst of community. Pure narcissistic navel-gazing meant the gazer dropped out and was left behind the others. People who came expecting lots of enfolding and reassurance didn’t get it unless they pitched in and worked. This is not to say that people didn’t need to be alone off and on, in varying time lengths, just to let the dust settle and pull themselves together.
Group psych type exercises, like making “living sociograms” by walking over to stand by people one trusted most or least, were productive and information-yielding, but they aroused emotions that not everyone could handle. Jim Zacharias is a trained person and was able to direct those emotions, but not everyone was happy.
One of the most troublesome aspects of pluralism is trying to find a normative ethic for oneself. This seems a very relevant issue for Leadership School to tackle. I’m convinced that the ground most UU’s hold in common is “high ethics,” that space just below heaven and just above earth, between non-moral good and holy commandment but not either.
The problem in terms of Leadership School is that most of the ethical action in our culture right now tends to center on money or sex. Money is the more taboo subject. Sex arises powerfully from the “convention syndrome” of being away from home for a week.
What IS a normative sexual standard anyway? We had people openly soliciting for partners and people who were away from their spouses for the first time since marriage and terribly lonely for them. Does every person develop his/her own standard? Are there any givens? How do you use situation ethics effectively when you’re in the middle of the situation and emotion is blinding you?
I think we were on the way to exploring the ethics of sexuality in a positive way when we broadened the subject out from just physical contact to roles in society. How does gender affect human relationships? The fact that we were together in a small space with emotions aroused and deep intimacy forming meant that some people wanted to express those relationships physically. The issues of whether that was a good thing to do was not discussed openly, although it got a good deal of discussion privately. The potential for trouble is high, whether or not the issue is discussed openly.
At Leadership School a great deal depends on the personal qualities and professional skills of the leaders, which don’t necessarily relate to credentials. Sometimes their restraint in NOT intervening is more helpful than any formal “leading.” The “up-front” leaders are not the only important people. Rod Stewart was the real father of Leadership School who thought the idea up, followed it through, and did all the paperwork and structuring outside of the content. The various “para-professionals” who led groups and so on were also a strong contribution to the quality of the event.
The final lesson of Leadership School is to spend 90% of your time planning and 10% acting -- thoughtfully.
LEADERSHIP SCHOOL
by Mary Scriver (1978)
“A liberal religious group comes to function as both a learning and redemptive community when its members become sufficiently disciplined to pose fundamental questions about human life.
“Following the poet Rilke’s concept, when a community not only poses basic questions but also tries to live its own answers on the basis of the knowledge it gain, it enters upon education. The classically adequate way to present a religion implicit or explicit, is therefore to create communities in which the central prophesy is lived as well as taught.”
-- Khoren Arisian, “Spirituality and Reason,” Kairos, Autumn, 1978
Unitarian-Universalism is a pluralistically religious organization existing in the context of a pluralistically secular culture. As such it presents some very difficult problems. Some of our Ethical Culture and Humanistic people seem secular to other religious bodies and some of our Natural Religion or Christian people seem superstitious dreams to other secular bodies. I think it is no accident that Unitarianism was an enthusiasm for so many framers of the Constitution of the United States, written when democratic pluralism seemed an exciting new freedom that protected the interests and growth of all people. Since that time technology, accelerating change, population pressure, and a raised consciousness about the meaning of freedom have made pluralism into something potentially explosive.
How do we talk to each other about our differences without arousing so much anxiety that the community is torn? It seems easier to smile and change the subject when heartfelt religious subjects come up. But if we never negotiate or communicate among ourselves, how do we present a united front to the world? And if we don’t present that united front, our power to protect our people against a hostile world is drastically reduced. How does a person really know whether they belong or not, if the organization is slippery about what it stands for? And yet, if we nail down the parameters of our thought, someone’s toes are bound to be hurt.
Democracy takes a lot more skill on the part of a lot more people than any other form of government. Self-consciousness about democratic skills such as organizational development, discussion skills, and group dynamics has greatly expanded in the last few years. We “must learn organization as our fathers learned farming,” says Peter Drucker. Any group of leaders who ignores such valuable tools is bound to be handicapped. But bringing to consciousness such group interactions is as threatening as psychoanalysis. Indeed, there’s a close parallel in the potential for revolution.
Leadership School operated in a number of ways.
1. It gave us a vocabulary. There has to be some way to talk about phenomena that re-occur enough to be noted. “Person-oriented” versus “task-oriented” is an amazingly useful concept, but you need the terms before you can ask yourself whether the idea applies.
2. It gave us a mirror. The instruments and experiences fed back to us a great deal of information about our own styles and priorities. It forced us to verbalize a lot of inchoate stuff and suggested all sorts of new avenues of investigation. Unless a person gets honest feedback about the kind of impression he/she is making on others, he/she is seriously handicapped in trying to make positive changes.
3. It taught us how to use ritual. Victor Turner tells us that one of the main functions of religion is to act as a doorkeeper between the major stages of life. It helps separate us from the old, mark the threshold, and reconcile us to the new. The classic “rebirth” experience is a key paradigm. Turner says that a ritual is not really valid unless it is participated in or recognized by at least three “significant others.” In modern society the stages of life come hard upon each other: no longer are they limited to birth, coming of age, marriage, retirement and death. Levinson’s research suggests a new stage every seven to ten years. The transitions are difficult and dangerous, both for society and for the individual.
By teaching us to design and use worship and rituals, even very simple ones spontaneously done, our religious community is able to respond more effectively. In my own church a woman whose child was in danger came to our sharing group and asked for some sort of reassurance but said she didn’t believe in prayer. Instead we held hands in a circle and “sent strength” over to her. She said she had an almost physical sensation of energy coming into her and was able to calm down and cope.
4. It taught us to be authentic. Sheer fatigue caused us to drop our social faces and once they were gone we found we were good enough without them. There was a constant challenge to “put your money where your mouth is” -- that is, act as your stated ideology requires, or else stop saying that’s what you believe -- your words are not congruent with your actions.
5. It taught us that reason and emotion or reason and experience are not mutually exclusive. As Progoff does with his journal techniques, we first experienced and then analyzed. We had practise in using both modes and therefore were better able to consider the appropriateness and effectiveness of both modes in various situations. This gave us insight into our own styles, more to think about when decided what to do, and more options in our ways of reacting.
6. It taught us not to be afraid to be authoritative. So many UU’s join us because they are anti-authoritarian that we tend to become phobic and break out in a rash every time someone acts in a powerful way. We found by experience that authority is fluid, maybe voluntarily passed back and forth, may be shared, and is not evil in any Manichean sense. The evil is in the misuse of authority -- and lack of authority is as much of an abuse as inappropriate or excessive authority.
7. It taught us how much power there is in “ownership” of a well thought-out purpose. Again, our resistance to creeds tempts us to resist any kind of group statement. Yet, no one can tell whether a particular action or strategy is helpful or not unless it is measured against some criterion. Not to agree on a purpose is to be lost in confusion and conflict, unable to take action. To agree on a clear purpose, reached by voluntary consensus, is to be empowered, to “own” the plan.
8. It taught us not to be afraid to tinker with the structure of an organization. But also to be careful with the tinkering because even small changes can be enabling or limiting. Still, experimentation is better than fossilization. And the efficiency of a group can be greatly enhanced by a better adjustment between the people and the task.
9. It taught us never to underestimate each other. people found capacities and talents in themselves that they had never suspected. And one never knew where the good ideas and the real devotion might come from: perhaps from the most nondescript or flakey member of the group.
10. Leadership School taught us the same things that an alert and thoughtful person might learn from real life. The difference was that for an enclosed and ritualized time and space and in a community of people dedicated to a common purpose, one was able to learn a great deal in a short time. In this rushed, pluralistic, secular society a person doesn’t get many chances like that.
Pop psych or “personal growth” techniques just seemed irrelevant in the midst of this week. The focus was on individual in the midst of community. Pure narcissistic navel-gazing meant the gazer dropped out and was left behind the others. People who came expecting lots of enfolding and reassurance didn’t get it unless they pitched in and worked. This is not to say that people didn’t need to be alone off and on, in varying time lengths, just to let the dust settle and pull themselves together.
Group psych type exercises, like making “living sociograms” by walking over to stand by people one trusted most or least, were productive and information-yielding, but they aroused emotions that not everyone could handle. Jim Zacharias is a trained person and was able to direct those emotions, but not everyone was happy.
One of the most troublesome aspects of pluralism is trying to find a normative ethic for oneself. This seems a very relevant issue for Leadership School to tackle. I’m convinced that the ground most UU’s hold in common is “high ethics,” that space just below heaven and just above earth, between non-moral good and holy commandment but not either.
The problem in terms of Leadership School is that most of the ethical action in our culture right now tends to center on money or sex. Money is the more taboo subject. Sex arises powerfully from the “convention syndrome” of being away from home for a week.
What IS a normative sexual standard anyway? We had people openly soliciting for partners and people who were away from their spouses for the first time since marriage and terribly lonely for them. Does every person develop his/her own standard? Are there any givens? How do you use situation ethics effectively when you’re in the middle of the situation and emotion is blinding you?
I think we were on the way to exploring the ethics of sexuality in a positive way when we broadened the subject out from just physical contact to roles in society. How does gender affect human relationships? The fact that we were together in a small space with emotions aroused and deep intimacy forming meant that some people wanted to express those relationships physically. The issues of whether that was a good thing to do was not discussed openly, although it got a good deal of discussion privately. The potential for trouble is high, whether or not the issue is discussed openly.
At Leadership School a great deal depends on the personal qualities and professional skills of the leaders, which don’t necessarily relate to credentials. Sometimes their restraint in NOT intervening is more helpful than any formal “leading.” The “up-front” leaders are not the only important people. Rod Stewart was the real father of Leadership School who thought the idea up, followed it through, and did all the paperwork and structuring outside of the content. The various “para-professionals” who led groups and so on were also a strong contribution to the quality of the event.
The final lesson of Leadership School is to spend 90% of your time planning and 10% acting -- thoughtfully.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
JOE HALKO: 1940 to 2009
Choteau sculptor Halko dies at 68
By ERIC NEWHOUSE • Great Falls Tribune Projects Editor • March 12, 2009
CHOTEAU —Joe Halko, who was born on a ranch near Stockett and grew to be a successful and much beloved wildlife sculptor, died early Wednesday morning at his home in Choteau.
Halko, 68, had suffered a series of severe strokes starting in late December.
"Joe was the kindest, gentlest man I've ever known in the art world," said Norma Ashby, one of the founders of the C.M. Russell Art Auction, where Halko and his work were popular year after year. "His wife, Margaret, was always beside him, which speaks to the kind of man he was.
"I never heard Joe speak a bad word about anyone, and he was always very humble about the art he created," Ashby said.
"He was just a nice man," added friend and artist Doris Anderson on Wednesday. "He had a good heart. Everyone will miss him."
Throughout his four decades as a sculptor, Halko created a legacy of artwork that will last a long time. . .
Halko was born in 1940 on a ranch near Stockett and grew up sketching and playing with clay. He graduated from Centerville High School, then studied art at the University of Great Falls, where he worked with Sister Mary Trinitas Morin, a campus art professor for 33 years . . .
Then he moved on to the Fisk Studios in New York and the Scottsdale (Ariz.) School of Art.
But he always returned to Montana for his inspiration. For 17 years, he worked as a taxidermist with sculptor Tuffy Berg, the namesake for the Tuffy Berg Award that now recognizes the most promising new artist in the Russell Auction. Berg died in 1991.
"Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it — we live here every day, and we take it for granted," Halko told Southwest Art magazine in 1988. "Montanans should stop and look around them. Everything changes."
Four years ago, Halko shared the secret of how he researched one of his sculptures, a stylized but natural family portrait titled "Mama Duck & 4 Ducklings."
"I went down to Gibson Park because the ducks are real up close and personal," he said. "And because I live in Choteau, I went to Freezout (Lake Wildlife Management Area) a lot."
Halko has been part of the Russell Art Auction nearly every year since the fifth auction in 1973. In 1974, a sculpture of his, "Jumping Whitetail," brought a bid of $375. Last year, his bronze "Against the Wind" sold for $5,250. This year's offering is a sculpture of two chickens and three chicks titled "Busy Banties."
Halko was recognized with the peoples' choice award for best sculpture in 1979 and 1983, and was popular in the Quick Draw event that precedes the main auction. His sculptures brought the top prices for three years, 1977-79.
Much of Halko's art is familiar to area residents because it's squarely in the public domain.
Most recently, Halko created nine different station of the cross sculptures that represent the journey Jesus made on the road to his crucifixion. Last year, the bronzes were installed in the sanctuary of Holy Spirit Catholic Church at 201 44th St. S. in Great Falls.
"Some of the pieces I did over and over again," he said last year. "That's the trouble with art — it's never done."
Another of Halko's sculptures, "Heritage Honkers" stands outside the Fish, Wildlife & Parks headquarters on Giant Springs Road.
Joe Halko’s life and character were remarkable and those who try to say artists have a wicked side as a natural result of passion should take a long look at Halko’s work. I talked to him a little over the years and would have liked to have spent much more time with he and his wife. Sometimes Choteau is as far from Valier as New York City, though I can see Ear Mountain from here.
It’s not that Halko wasn’t passionate, it’s just that his gift was the kind of close attention and observant intimacy that is constant and protective. In the earliest days he tried to produce a few of the cowboys and Indians that the market liked because they were easy to sell as part of the Charlie Russell “brand.” But then the times changed to focus on the environment. His east front of the Rockies location plus his taxidermy work plus his natural love and ease with animals combined to produce the Halko “brand.”
Once when we talked he told about his delight in the way ducks’ butts curl and waggle along, the way domestic geese have a knurly knobby beak, the way deer’s ears stick out like parabolic satellite dishes when their attention is attracted, how animals naturally group themselves in interesting patterns. You can see those qualities in his sculptures, which are now distributed across the country, many of them life-sized and outdoors where they can be polished by the loving hands of children. Bob Scriver loved and admired Halko’s work and Charlie would have, too.
In Montana many of us like our art to be realistic. And yet a little gaggle of geese by Halko is absolutely recognizable as his work. Something about affectionate amusement comes into the castings through the sculptor’s hands and heart. So many people see art in terms of investment and possible profit if the artist becomes “famous.” Halko was not stupid about making a living, but he always kept his priorities straight and ironically, that’s what makes his sculpture worth investment -- not just money but attention and understanding.
If you are reading this in “real time” on March 12, 2009, you should know you can post words of condolence on www.mcm.com. The funeral mass is scheduled at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Great Falls at 10 AM on Monday. He was a devout Catholic and among his nine Stations of the Cross in the sanctuary of that church will witness the Celebration.
On every Friday the website
By ERIC NEWHOUSE • Great Falls Tribune Projects Editor • March 12, 2009
CHOTEAU —Joe Halko, who was born on a ranch near Stockett and grew to be a successful and much beloved wildlife sculptor, died early Wednesday morning at his home in Choteau.
Halko, 68, had suffered a series of severe strokes starting in late December.
"Joe was the kindest, gentlest man I've ever known in the art world," said Norma Ashby, one of the founders of the C.M. Russell Art Auction, where Halko and his work were popular year after year. "His wife, Margaret, was always beside him, which speaks to the kind of man he was.
"I never heard Joe speak a bad word about anyone, and he was always very humble about the art he created," Ashby said.
"He was just a nice man," added friend and artist Doris Anderson on Wednesday. "He had a good heart. Everyone will miss him."
Throughout his four decades as a sculptor, Halko created a legacy of artwork that will last a long time. . .
Halko was born in 1940 on a ranch near Stockett and grew up sketching and playing with clay. He graduated from Centerville High School, then studied art at the University of Great Falls, where he worked with Sister Mary Trinitas Morin, a campus art professor for 33 years . . .
Then he moved on to the Fisk Studios in New York and the Scottsdale (Ariz.) School of Art.
But he always returned to Montana for his inspiration. For 17 years, he worked as a taxidermist with sculptor Tuffy Berg, the namesake for the Tuffy Berg Award that now recognizes the most promising new artist in the Russell Auction. Berg died in 1991.
"Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it — we live here every day, and we take it for granted," Halko told Southwest Art magazine in 1988. "Montanans should stop and look around them. Everything changes."
Four years ago, Halko shared the secret of how he researched one of his sculptures, a stylized but natural family portrait titled "Mama Duck & 4 Ducklings."
"I went down to Gibson Park because the ducks are real up close and personal," he said. "And because I live in Choteau, I went to Freezout (Lake Wildlife Management Area) a lot."
Halko has been part of the Russell Art Auction nearly every year since the fifth auction in 1973. In 1974, a sculpture of his, "Jumping Whitetail," brought a bid of $375. Last year, his bronze "Against the Wind" sold for $5,250. This year's offering is a sculpture of two chickens and three chicks titled "Busy Banties."
Halko was recognized with the peoples' choice award for best sculpture in 1979 and 1983, and was popular in the Quick Draw event that precedes the main auction. His sculptures brought the top prices for three years, 1977-79.
Much of Halko's art is familiar to area residents because it's squarely in the public domain.
Most recently, Halko created nine different station of the cross sculptures that represent the journey Jesus made on the road to his crucifixion. Last year, the bronzes were installed in the sanctuary of Holy Spirit Catholic Church at 201 44th St. S. in Great Falls.
"Some of the pieces I did over and over again," he said last year. "That's the trouble with art — it's never done."
Another of Halko's sculptures, "Heritage Honkers" stands outside the Fish, Wildlife & Parks headquarters on Giant Springs Road.
Joe Halko’s life and character were remarkable and those who try to say artists have a wicked side as a natural result of passion should take a long look at Halko’s work. I talked to him a little over the years and would have liked to have spent much more time with he and his wife. Sometimes Choteau is as far from Valier as New York City, though I can see Ear Mountain from here.
It’s not that Halko wasn’t passionate, it’s just that his gift was the kind of close attention and observant intimacy that is constant and protective. In the earliest days he tried to produce a few of the cowboys and Indians that the market liked because they were easy to sell as part of the Charlie Russell “brand.” But then the times changed to focus on the environment. His east front of the Rockies location plus his taxidermy work plus his natural love and ease with animals combined to produce the Halko “brand.”
Once when we talked he told about his delight in the way ducks’ butts curl and waggle along, the way domestic geese have a knurly knobby beak, the way deer’s ears stick out like parabolic satellite dishes when their attention is attracted, how animals naturally group themselves in interesting patterns. You can see those qualities in his sculptures, which are now distributed across the country, many of them life-sized and outdoors where they can be polished by the loving hands of children. Bob Scriver loved and admired Halko’s work and Charlie would have, too.
In Montana many of us like our art to be realistic. And yet a little gaggle of geese by Halko is absolutely recognizable as his work. Something about affectionate amusement comes into the castings through the sculptor’s hands and heart. So many people see art in terms of investment and possible profit if the artist becomes “famous.” Halko was not stupid about making a living, but he always kept his priorities straight and ironically, that’s what makes his sculpture worth investment -- not just money but attention and understanding.
If you are reading this in “real time” on March 12, 2009, you should know you can post words of condolence on www.mcm.com. The funeral mass is scheduled at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Great Falls at 10 AM on Monday. He was a devout Catholic and among his nine Stations of the Cross in the sanctuary of that church will witness the Celebration.
On every Friday the website
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
COLD BLOOD
Jake Alsop http://oldscroteshome.blogspot.com/ is one of my favorite bloggers, a man full of drolleries, word play, love of tractors driven by well-endowed females, and sometimes surprising thoughts. Once in a while he gets indignant, as in the following post, which is the more surprising since he is in a quiet part of England, the better to bird watch.
Jake asks, “What is the matter with this photo?” The photo in question is a conventional group portrait of fourth or fifth graders with a distinguished-looking man standing behind them, hands innocently on the shoulders of two children.
Here’s the critique.
“1. It shows the children's faces, thus making them identifiable. Such photos should only be taken showing the children from the back, or at least with their faces not visible.
2. The adult is touching two of the children. No adult should touch children under any circumstances.
3. The adult is alone with the children. There must always be at least two adults when children are being accompanied.
“These are not my rules; these are published rules for the guidance of Local Education Authorities and similar.
“My friend Ruth is the head of a primary school. She cannot take a child in her car unless a second adult is present.
“My friend Amy Bell is a primary school teacher, who loves to organise outdoor wildlife events for her classes. But transport is now a problem because parents are not allowed to give lifts to other than their own children.
“Have we gone crazy, or what? We have created a society where mistrust and suspicion are the key virtues, where we all now have an unhealthy mindset, where normal relationships have been poisoned by those in authority who see sin in everything. A recent TV programme tested this by putting a child on its own in a shopping mall and then filmed the reactions of adult passers-by. The child was clearly distressed, but NOBODY offered to help it. Until finally some old scrote - and it would have been me if I had been there - went up to the child, took its hand and led it into a nearby store, from where they could make a phonecall for help.
“I love children. If I think a child is hurt or in distress, I will go to its aid. I am telling you this so you can start planning your prison visits to me when I end up in the chokey for being a Dirty Old Man. Damn them all.
“Envoi: I am very strict with myself these days: I only allow myself to be a Grumpy Old Man once a week."
I was telling a teacher and a school nurse about this post and they relayed an incident just days ago when a child needed a ride home. This is serious business on the rez at night with the temps below zero and icy roads. NO ADULT PRESENT WAS WILLING TO DRIVE THE CHILD HOME. The student luckily remembered she had a grannie in Browning who was willing to come get her.
How did we get so afraid of each other, so resistant to happenstance, so afraid of accidental injury -- possibly uninsured? Is it the steady media stream of ghastly incidents in which children meet terrible fates? I don’t have television and my radio station is NPR, so I’m spared quite a bit, but every time I go to visit Petunia the television is following in minute detail some unthinkable atrocity committed by some person no one suspected. (Mind you, there’s rarely or never anything about American bombs falling on children in some foreign country, though we occasionally see their bodies in the arms of despairing parents.)
Today the paper had a local story about two small children found on the street in our below-zero weather with no shoes or coats. A neighbor intervened. The police found the home through a name-sticker on one little girl. The parents were asleep with an infant howling on the floor by the bed -- both bed and floor covered with child and dog feces -- and another toddler screaming in a crib. The father works in a day care center. A normal response is to, well, over-respond. Forcible sterilization comes to mind: first the parents and then the premises. The same newspaper has a story about European proposed laws imposing castration on sex criminals. Of course, such irreversible penalties assume infallible detection of guilt.
When I reflect on the sources of Taliban/Puritan/draconian impulses in our society, I come upon two main causes: the first is money. We emphasize over and over how much money it is costing society for an irresponsible young couple to produce all these neglected children. We institute lawsuits that then make insurance rules more powerful than felony law. In history the times when Puritans have been in control have been the times when virtue was linked to parsimony, control, severity and hoarding. We have never given up the belief that wealth and status are markers of deservingness or that people get pushed to the edges of existence because they are no good. The current argument against the death penalty is that it’s too expensive because of all the appeals. It may only a matter of time before we give up the idea of sparing the occasional innocent by insisting on costly justice. Do like China: shoot ‘em, part ‘em out, and bill the family for the bullet.
The other force is community. Our emphasis on individualism and the right to do as we please has given us the idea that wanting something and working for it enough will get us ANYTHING. A comic strip is currently mocking this by showing a little boy, over-impressed by urgings to “be whatever he wants to be,” saying he wants to grow up to be a komodo dragon.
In the meantime, while our fear of taxes means that one out of fifty children in Montana is currently homeless for lack of government safety nets, we’ve all become komodo dragons by default. We don’t touch each other, we eat each other’s assets, we fear the warmth and human softness of fur and milk, those mammalian nurturing characteristics. We’ve forgotten that even dinosaurs -- at least maiasaurus whose bones are around here -- fed their babies in nests they kept clean.
Jake asks, “What is the matter with this photo?” The photo in question is a conventional group portrait of fourth or fifth graders with a distinguished-looking man standing behind them, hands innocently on the shoulders of two children.
Here’s the critique.
“1. It shows the children's faces, thus making them identifiable. Such photos should only be taken showing the children from the back, or at least with their faces not visible.
2. The adult is touching two of the children. No adult should touch children under any circumstances.
3. The adult is alone with the children. There must always be at least two adults when children are being accompanied.
“These are not my rules; these are published rules for the guidance of Local Education Authorities and similar.
“My friend Ruth is the head of a primary school. She cannot take a child in her car unless a second adult is present.
“My friend Amy Bell is a primary school teacher, who loves to organise outdoor wildlife events for her classes. But transport is now a problem because parents are not allowed to give lifts to other than their own children.
“Have we gone crazy, or what? We have created a society where mistrust and suspicion are the key virtues, where we all now have an unhealthy mindset, where normal relationships have been poisoned by those in authority who see sin in everything. A recent TV programme tested this by putting a child on its own in a shopping mall and then filmed the reactions of adult passers-by. The child was clearly distressed, but NOBODY offered to help it. Until finally some old scrote - and it would have been me if I had been there - went up to the child, took its hand and led it into a nearby store, from where they could make a phonecall for help.
“I love children. If I think a child is hurt or in distress, I will go to its aid. I am telling you this so you can start planning your prison visits to me when I end up in the chokey for being a Dirty Old Man. Damn them all.
“Envoi: I am very strict with myself these days: I only allow myself to be a Grumpy Old Man once a week."
I was telling a teacher and a school nurse about this post and they relayed an incident just days ago when a child needed a ride home. This is serious business on the rez at night with the temps below zero and icy roads. NO ADULT PRESENT WAS WILLING TO DRIVE THE CHILD HOME. The student luckily remembered she had a grannie in Browning who was willing to come get her.
How did we get so afraid of each other, so resistant to happenstance, so afraid of accidental injury -- possibly uninsured? Is it the steady media stream of ghastly incidents in which children meet terrible fates? I don’t have television and my radio station is NPR, so I’m spared quite a bit, but every time I go to visit Petunia the television is following in minute detail some unthinkable atrocity committed by some person no one suspected. (Mind you, there’s rarely or never anything about American bombs falling on children in some foreign country, though we occasionally see their bodies in the arms of despairing parents.)
Today the paper had a local story about two small children found on the street in our below-zero weather with no shoes or coats. A neighbor intervened. The police found the home through a name-sticker on one little girl. The parents were asleep with an infant howling on the floor by the bed -- both bed and floor covered with child and dog feces -- and another toddler screaming in a crib. The father works in a day care center. A normal response is to, well, over-respond. Forcible sterilization comes to mind: first the parents and then the premises. The same newspaper has a story about European proposed laws imposing castration on sex criminals. Of course, such irreversible penalties assume infallible detection of guilt.
When I reflect on the sources of Taliban/Puritan/draconian impulses in our society, I come upon two main causes: the first is money. We emphasize over and over how much money it is costing society for an irresponsible young couple to produce all these neglected children. We institute lawsuits that then make insurance rules more powerful than felony law. In history the times when Puritans have been in control have been the times when virtue was linked to parsimony, control, severity and hoarding. We have never given up the belief that wealth and status are markers of deservingness or that people get pushed to the edges of existence because they are no good. The current argument against the death penalty is that it’s too expensive because of all the appeals. It may only a matter of time before we give up the idea of sparing the occasional innocent by insisting on costly justice. Do like China: shoot ‘em, part ‘em out, and bill the family for the bullet.
The other force is community. Our emphasis on individualism and the right to do as we please has given us the idea that wanting something and working for it enough will get us ANYTHING. A comic strip is currently mocking this by showing a little boy, over-impressed by urgings to “be whatever he wants to be,” saying he wants to grow up to be a komodo dragon.
In the meantime, while our fear of taxes means that one out of fifty children in Montana is currently homeless for lack of government safety nets, we’ve all become komodo dragons by default. We don’t touch each other, we eat each other’s assets, we fear the warmth and human softness of fur and milk, those mammalian nurturing characteristics. We’ve forgotten that even dinosaurs -- at least maiasaurus whose bones are around here -- fed their babies in nests they kept clean.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY
A UUA district exec contacted me unexpectedly and asked me about Leadership School. Little did he know what he was tapping into. I will spare you the most of it, partly because of discretion and partly because of not wanting to scare any horses. I didn’t even mention “Bronze Inside and Out,” which is the solid decade of extreme experience here on the Blackfeet Reservation that made me into a person who can understand Tim Barrus a lot easier than I can understand a District Exec even after seminary. It also made such phenomena as leadership school, seminary, and clinical pastoral education entirely different for me than they were for the twenty-something middle-class young men for whom they were designed. If that sounds patronizing -- well, okay. That District Exec sounded patronizing to me. He always has since he was an upperclass student at my seminary, part of the group who invited my class over in pairs (there were only six of us) and let us know we were entirely deficient. I vividly remember the cockroaches roaming the walls of the seminary housing.
Anyway, this is about UU leadership school and has nothing at all to do with seminary except that it’s what got me so excited about the ministry in the first place. It was 1975, I was two years away from Montana, newly promoted to Education Coordinator of Multnomah County Animal Control, working on a degree in clinical psychology at Portland State University (having serious doubts, since I wanted to prepare for psychotherapy and they thought they were creating social workers), and thinking I should find a church. I found First Unitarian in Portland. Pretty soon I was becoming active and was asked if I’d like to go to Leadership School. I had no idea what it was.
Unknown to me at the time, the ministry had sort of drifted into being landed gentry, patriarchs who were expected to control and provide everything. The rest of us just organized tea parties and fed the animals. Peter Raible, minister in Seattle; Rod Stewart, Pacific Northwest District Exec; and Ord Elliott, Organizational Development guy working with corporations; plus a bit of help from the Alban Institute, which tries to keep churches keep their heads on straight, came up with the idea of this Leadership School. The principle was to empower laypeople to take some control and do some renewing. Too many thought, as I did, that belonging to a church meant showing up on Sunday morning to occupy a pew. It was sort of church Headstart.
You didn’t sign up on your own. Your church had to send you. First of all, you had to be a serious congregation member -- not some fad cruiser -- and second, you had to be sturdy enough to withstand the emotional pressures, though they didn’t tell us that. Myself, I was terrified. But then, so was the veteran and sturdy woman who drove us up to Fort Worden, an ascetic but glorious conference center in old barracks from WWII, overlooking the mouth of Puget Sound.
When I was a kid, I never went to camp. Our family did everything as a group, including tent-camping across the country. My primary school experience was bad: I wasn’t just ostracized, I was persecuted by my classmates. No idea why. My teachers wrote on my grade cards, “Mary cries too much.” By high school I’d learned to be a little crazy and never to get straight A’s. In college I’d attached myself to a little group. Etc. I didn’t know what kind of strategy to use at Leadership School. I decided to just go with “what you see is what you get.”
I’ve written about the Ingathering service on 10/4/08. That helped quite a lot. Also a kind older couple took me under their wing, though I was 36 and working the streets of Portland. Later on, when we were playing the game called “Win As Much as You Can” and I was partnered with these gentle people who so believed in cooperatives (they were Canadian), which meant that things were safe but a little boring, I turned provocateur and double-crossed them for the sake of the “profit.” Not only were they as reproachful and sad as though I’d just stolen their car, everyone else shunned me for the rest of the day! That day I ate in solitary but defiant splendor.
In another game, where everyone was standing in a big room and asked to choose partners, a woman crashed in tears because no one chose her. Evidently this was the story of her life. The facilitator of the exercise, a therapist as well as a minister, had everyone stand where they were while he gently worked us all through this emotional event. How was EACH of us feeling? What ARE the dynamics that cause some to be chosen and not others? And then the bottom line was empowering this woman. “You don’t have to wait to be chosen. YOU choose. Go choose someone right now! I’ll take the person who’s left over.” Then she wanted to choose HIM, because he was safe and sympathetic, which he pointed out.
It was like that. There was a game. Sometimes it was just a game and sometimes it blew up -- then we learned more.
At the heart of the structure of the experience were "strands." Also, a principle: learn by doing. For the most part, experts didn't lecture. Small groups of participants mastered one point and then DEMONSTRATED it to the others.
1. One strand was worship. Each day began with worship and each group was assigned a different "style": traditional, experimental, etc. An outside circle of women had been asked to organized an "ingathering" service on the first evening after supper, and an internal group (which turned out to be women) also organized a "home going" service at the end.
2. One strand was the history of the denomination. This was NOT small groups: just a short lecture every afternoon.
3. One strand (really the central one) was organizational design principles. How to keep process going, how to resolve conflict, how to define a goal and a strategy. We used formidable amounts of felt-tip and newsprint.
4. One strand was journal-keeping last thing before bedtime in which participants processed what they had felt during the day, what they had learned, what scared them, what empowered them, etc. Also a bit of credo writing.
It’s noon as I write and the temp is below zero f. My notes for Leadership School (I kept ‘em all!) are out in the garage so I won’t go searching for them today. But expect more comment in the future as things warm up.
Anyway, this is about UU leadership school and has nothing at all to do with seminary except that it’s what got me so excited about the ministry in the first place. It was 1975, I was two years away from Montana, newly promoted to Education Coordinator of Multnomah County Animal Control, working on a degree in clinical psychology at Portland State University (having serious doubts, since I wanted to prepare for psychotherapy and they thought they were creating social workers), and thinking I should find a church. I found First Unitarian in Portland. Pretty soon I was becoming active and was asked if I’d like to go to Leadership School. I had no idea what it was.
Unknown to me at the time, the ministry had sort of drifted into being landed gentry, patriarchs who were expected to control and provide everything. The rest of us just organized tea parties and fed the animals. Peter Raible, minister in Seattle; Rod Stewart, Pacific Northwest District Exec; and Ord Elliott, Organizational Development guy working with corporations; plus a bit of help from the Alban Institute, which tries to keep churches keep their heads on straight, came up with the idea of this Leadership School. The principle was to empower laypeople to take some control and do some renewing. Too many thought, as I did, that belonging to a church meant showing up on Sunday morning to occupy a pew. It was sort of church Headstart.
You didn’t sign up on your own. Your church had to send you. First of all, you had to be a serious congregation member -- not some fad cruiser -- and second, you had to be sturdy enough to withstand the emotional pressures, though they didn’t tell us that. Myself, I was terrified. But then, so was the veteran and sturdy woman who drove us up to Fort Worden, an ascetic but glorious conference center in old barracks from WWII, overlooking the mouth of Puget Sound.
When I was a kid, I never went to camp. Our family did everything as a group, including tent-camping across the country. My primary school experience was bad: I wasn’t just ostracized, I was persecuted by my classmates. No idea why. My teachers wrote on my grade cards, “Mary cries too much.” By high school I’d learned to be a little crazy and never to get straight A’s. In college I’d attached myself to a little group. Etc. I didn’t know what kind of strategy to use at Leadership School. I decided to just go with “what you see is what you get.”
I’ve written about the Ingathering service on 10/4/08. That helped quite a lot. Also a kind older couple took me under their wing, though I was 36 and working the streets of Portland. Later on, when we were playing the game called “Win As Much as You Can” and I was partnered with these gentle people who so believed in cooperatives (they were Canadian), which meant that things were safe but a little boring, I turned provocateur and double-crossed them for the sake of the “profit.” Not only were they as reproachful and sad as though I’d just stolen their car, everyone else shunned me for the rest of the day! That day I ate in solitary but defiant splendor.
In another game, where everyone was standing in a big room and asked to choose partners, a woman crashed in tears because no one chose her. Evidently this was the story of her life. The facilitator of the exercise, a therapist as well as a minister, had everyone stand where they were while he gently worked us all through this emotional event. How was EACH of us feeling? What ARE the dynamics that cause some to be chosen and not others? And then the bottom line was empowering this woman. “You don’t have to wait to be chosen. YOU choose. Go choose someone right now! I’ll take the person who’s left over.” Then she wanted to choose HIM, because he was safe and sympathetic, which he pointed out.
It was like that. There was a game. Sometimes it was just a game and sometimes it blew up -- then we learned more.
At the heart of the structure of the experience were "strands." Also, a principle: learn by doing. For the most part, experts didn't lecture. Small groups of participants mastered one point and then DEMONSTRATED it to the others.
1. One strand was worship. Each day began with worship and each group was assigned a different "style": traditional, experimental, etc. An outside circle of women had been asked to organized an "ingathering" service on the first evening after supper, and an internal group (which turned out to be women) also organized a "home going" service at the end.
2. One strand was the history of the denomination. This was NOT small groups: just a short lecture every afternoon.
3. One strand (really the central one) was organizational design principles. How to keep process going, how to resolve conflict, how to define a goal and a strategy. We used formidable amounts of felt-tip and newsprint.
4. One strand was journal-keeping last thing before bedtime in which participants processed what they had felt during the day, what they had learned, what scared them, what empowered them, etc. Also a bit of credo writing.
It’s noon as I write and the temp is below zero f. My notes for Leadership School (I kept ‘em all!) are out in the garage so I won’t go searching for them today. But expect more comment in the future as things warm up.
Monday, March 09, 2009
PROUST & THE SQUID: A Review
“Proust and the Squid” has gotta be a high-end book -- you can tell from the title. If there was ever a high-end author, it’s gotta be Proust. And what do ordinary people know from “squid” unless they eat calamari? This is one of those trendy Something-and-Something titles that are supposed to make you curious. But it is a justified title. Ironically, the copy I bought is cheap paper, rough cover, physically about fit to wrap a squid.
The content is revolutionary, just as promised in the several reviews and radio interviews that attracted me to the book in the first place. It’s in three parts: a history of how humans learned to read; what happens in the brain when an individual reads; and what these ideas mean for people who can’t or don’t read. This is not about literacy and Harold Bloom’s list of must-read prestige books. This is not about cultural collapse and how we’re all doomed if schools don’t do a better job. This is about the phenomenon of reading itself.
The first “book” was a little clay pocket like pita bread that contained some dime-sized tokens like game markers. Each shape meant a unit of a commodity (sheep, wheat, oil, wine) and the pocket was supposed to hold the equivalent of a shipment: it was an invoice. The idea was very simple: this token means this real thing ought to be there. Then someone figured out it was easier to just “write” the tokens onto wet clay. Gradually that elaborated out into systems and conventions of business.
One day SHAZAM !! someone realized that it would be possible to symbolize spoken words. This happened in several places and in two main ways. One was to draw a little token for each word: this is the system Chinese follows. They call the tokens ideograms.
The other system was to symbolize the sounds of the words with “letters” that each stood for a sound. All the rest is alphabet. The “trick” of doing it depended on three things: the ability to hear the individual sounds of the consonants and vowels that made up words; the ability to associate each sound with a letter of the alphabet; then to juggle the recognition of the ensuing words into their meanings and what the sequence of words actually means in terms of ideas and reality.
Socrates was adamantly opposed to this. He felt that written language would be such a “prop,” such a “cheater,” such a Google, that real understanding would be totally undermined. The hard-won skills of discussion and thinking on one’s feet would be lost. He was probably right. But on the other hand, there was a gain that Maryanne Wolf, the author of this book, feels was world-shaking, because it enabled much slower, more thorough, broader and more in-depth ideas. (I felt this was the shakiest part of the book, asserted more than demonstrated.)
This jugglers’ trick with words, “writing,” was not easy to learn and only the elite or even the “set-aside” members of the elite (like the religious) ever got really good at it in those days. When the fMRI crowd got to investigating the brain functions necessary, they discovered why. Reading and writing are not done in a certain “part” of the brain but rather requires the participation of several parts and is dependent on the connections among them. Not only that, but culture and individual experience “build” brains (and constantly rebuild them) according to what they need to do in their unique worlds. A yak herder in Mongolia has a brain that is thick and thin in different places than a Jewish kid in Brooklyn. People who read ideogramic writing have different brains from people who read alphabet writing. All people have different brains, though most have the same parts. They just learn to use them differently and store different information in them, acquiring slightly different skills.
Some people are are “a-lexic.” They cannot learn to read and write. Something is missing. A higher proportion are “dys-lexic,” either learning with difficulty or learning in their own way. Some will be very gifted in other ways than reading, because they just happen to be thickly connected in other ways. Not all dyslexics are gifted. Some of this seems to be related to the left-brain/right-brain allocation of functions.
But reading is not just dependent on brain structures. You can’t learn to read if there’s nothing to read. If the culture is limited in the subject matter they talk about, it will be hard to read about things that are never seen or discussed. In a family that never sits with the children, reading out loud to them, maybe following the words with a pointing finger, gives the child few clues about what’s going on.
So to successfully read, a human being needs the proper brain parts, needs to learn to make them interact properly to decode spoken sounds, needs examples of people translating the marks on the page or screen into spoken language, needs a family that values reading and keeps written material at hand, and needs motivation to read: to be hooked.
I’ve tried to read Proust. I wasn’t hooked. I’m aware that it’s a marker of education and so on. I’m still not sure I understand the concept of “modernity” of which Proust is a part. I think it’s about investigating the nature of memory and reconstituting it in a kind of dream or spell of story in written language. So that means it’s about being able to share one’s internal life with other people. Once that was a matter of writing letters to friends. Now it seems to be about texting and twittering.
Just mastering reading and writing in terms of vocabulary and culture is not enough. That’s just about at the level of choosing brushes and mixing paint -- the Big Picture is an art form and always will be. Not everyone will appreciate every “school of art” and it might take as much skill to write Mickey Spillane as Proust. That’s not what this book is about. This book is a prescription for the future.
We must do a better job of understanding children as they come to school, esp. since we are now mixing ideograph-reading people with alphabet-reading people; we must have a better collection of strategies and materials to teach those children appropriately; we need ways to diagnose what’s not functioning properly in the dyslexic child (which structure, which connection, which developmental thickness or thinness); and we need courage as we enter the next stage of communication based on electronics and the Internet. Already the children read video better than the teachers can.
The content is revolutionary, just as promised in the several reviews and radio interviews that attracted me to the book in the first place. It’s in three parts: a history of how humans learned to read; what happens in the brain when an individual reads; and what these ideas mean for people who can’t or don’t read. This is not about literacy and Harold Bloom’s list of must-read prestige books. This is not about cultural collapse and how we’re all doomed if schools don’t do a better job. This is about the phenomenon of reading itself.
The first “book” was a little clay pocket like pita bread that contained some dime-sized tokens like game markers. Each shape meant a unit of a commodity (sheep, wheat, oil, wine) and the pocket was supposed to hold the equivalent of a shipment: it was an invoice. The idea was very simple: this token means this real thing ought to be there. Then someone figured out it was easier to just “write” the tokens onto wet clay. Gradually that elaborated out into systems and conventions of business.
One day SHAZAM !! someone realized that it would be possible to symbolize spoken words. This happened in several places and in two main ways. One was to draw a little token for each word: this is the system Chinese follows. They call the tokens ideograms.
The other system was to symbolize the sounds of the words with “letters” that each stood for a sound. All the rest is alphabet. The “trick” of doing it depended on three things: the ability to hear the individual sounds of the consonants and vowels that made up words; the ability to associate each sound with a letter of the alphabet; then to juggle the recognition of the ensuing words into their meanings and what the sequence of words actually means in terms of ideas and reality.
Socrates was adamantly opposed to this. He felt that written language would be such a “prop,” such a “cheater,” such a Google, that real understanding would be totally undermined. The hard-won skills of discussion and thinking on one’s feet would be lost. He was probably right. But on the other hand, there was a gain that Maryanne Wolf, the author of this book, feels was world-shaking, because it enabled much slower, more thorough, broader and more in-depth ideas. (I felt this was the shakiest part of the book, asserted more than demonstrated.)
This jugglers’ trick with words, “writing,” was not easy to learn and only the elite or even the “set-aside” members of the elite (like the religious) ever got really good at it in those days. When the fMRI crowd got to investigating the brain functions necessary, they discovered why. Reading and writing are not done in a certain “part” of the brain but rather requires the participation of several parts and is dependent on the connections among them. Not only that, but culture and individual experience “build” brains (and constantly rebuild them) according to what they need to do in their unique worlds. A yak herder in Mongolia has a brain that is thick and thin in different places than a Jewish kid in Brooklyn. People who read ideogramic writing have different brains from people who read alphabet writing. All people have different brains, though most have the same parts. They just learn to use them differently and store different information in them, acquiring slightly different skills.
Some people are are “a-lexic.” They cannot learn to read and write. Something is missing. A higher proportion are “dys-lexic,” either learning with difficulty or learning in their own way. Some will be very gifted in other ways than reading, because they just happen to be thickly connected in other ways. Not all dyslexics are gifted. Some of this seems to be related to the left-brain/right-brain allocation of functions.
But reading is not just dependent on brain structures. You can’t learn to read if there’s nothing to read. If the culture is limited in the subject matter they talk about, it will be hard to read about things that are never seen or discussed. In a family that never sits with the children, reading out loud to them, maybe following the words with a pointing finger, gives the child few clues about what’s going on.
So to successfully read, a human being needs the proper brain parts, needs to learn to make them interact properly to decode spoken sounds, needs examples of people translating the marks on the page or screen into spoken language, needs a family that values reading and keeps written material at hand, and needs motivation to read: to be hooked.
I’ve tried to read Proust. I wasn’t hooked. I’m aware that it’s a marker of education and so on. I’m still not sure I understand the concept of “modernity” of which Proust is a part. I think it’s about investigating the nature of memory and reconstituting it in a kind of dream or spell of story in written language. So that means it’s about being able to share one’s internal life with other people. Once that was a matter of writing letters to friends. Now it seems to be about texting and twittering.
Just mastering reading and writing in terms of vocabulary and culture is not enough. That’s just about at the level of choosing brushes and mixing paint -- the Big Picture is an art form and always will be. Not everyone will appreciate every “school of art” and it might take as much skill to write Mickey Spillane as Proust. That’s not what this book is about. This book is a prescription for the future.
We must do a better job of understanding children as they come to school, esp. since we are now mixing ideograph-reading people with alphabet-reading people; we must have a better collection of strategies and materials to teach those children appropriately; we need ways to diagnose what’s not functioning properly in the dyslexic child (which structure, which connection, which developmental thickness or thinness); and we need courage as we enter the next stage of communication based on electronics and the Internet. Already the children read video better than the teachers can.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
"YES": A Review of the Movie
My Netflix queue is so long that by the time a film gets to the top of the list and arrives in the mail I’ve often forgotten why I put it on the list in the first place. Sometimes it’s an ad on a previous DVD, sometimes from an article I read in some obscure place -- almost NEVER a result of an automated suggestion. One kind of film I search for is the foreign film explosion of the late Fifties when I was an undergrad in Chicago. In those days one went to a show house or to a film society with a 16mm projector, and endlessly analyzed what one saw. There was no relationship at all to the contemporary habit of piling up on one’s sofa to mindlessly kill some time while snacking.
One of the films from those days that hit me square between the eyes was “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” by Marguerite Duras. It was erotic, of course, because it was about a French woman attending a peace conference in Hiroshima and having an affair with a Japanese man there. The scene of the two of them in the shower together was a revelation to me -- I didn’t know you could DO that, much less film it. The real subject, again of course, was how to cross the divides between the sexes, the cultures, the peaceful and the warmongers.
I didn’t know that Sally Potter’s “YES” would be an even more modern and expressionist version of the same classic story. Maybe I only ordered it because the “yes” of Molly Bloom at the end of “Ulysses” is one of my favorite sermon devices when I’m in the company of other UU ministers. It always gets a laugh because they know it’s about sex and they think no one else knows that -- though it’s really about saying yes to life. (Is there a difference? Answer in less than 2,000 words.) Ministers don’t get to say “yes” as much as they would like to. They tend to feel the edge of the Apollonian/Dionysian split because it is sometimes the choice between their vocation and being thrown out. Or used to be.
Until minutes into the film, I didn’t realize that everyone was speaking in iambic pentameter -- easily, I might say, like very excellent Shakespearean actors. The cinematography was striking, arty, but not distracting. The framing device of cleaning women “who know more about you than you know about yourself” was entertaining as well as objectifying and a good feminist balance to the almost too mandarin woman doctor.
The Lebanese former doctor-- now putting his surgery to use in a luxury hotel kitchen -- and the female embryologist research doctor are at opposite ends of the experience of life. The Lebanese was right up against the boundary between life and death in terms of violence; the embryologist talks theory about conception while working in a lab where at night the binocular microscopes are sheathed in condom-like plastic. She is the Apollonian, living in a white, sharp-edged, stripped-out house. He is the Dionysian, taking her to a bed of purple, red and orange silk. The actress is cat-faced, pale, blonde, nearly without makeup and certainly without body fat. The actor is dark, tousled, with a noble nose and gallant mustache. We never see her dance; HE dances. It is only after the physical relationship is established that the politics of gender and national culture begin to drive them apart. The final meeting ground is Marxist: Cuba.
For me, absorbing as this film is, the “special features” on the DVD are more important: crucially important. Sally Potter is a theatrical polymath: writer, director, dancer, composer, and so on. Her method is that emotional-but-disciplined plunge into the unknowns of theatre as inner-life-made-explicit that was so much at the heart of what we thought was a world revolution in the Sixties and Seventies. Arising out of the peace movement and determination to get to the heart of war -- esp. ambiguous and tortured wars like Vietnam -- as well as tolerance of altered consciousness and ambivalence about asceticism/eroticism, we wanted to get to the truth. The question was whether we could “handle the truth.” Sally hasn’t given up this inquiry. I would suggest that too many others have.
When Orpheus descended into hell to try to bring his lover out through the use of art, in his case music, he didn’t take any notes. But Sally Potter does. She blogs, she forums, she websites, she never hesitates to use electronic communications. I’ve signed up for her newsletter, just as I’ve cast off from Val McDermid’s. (Val writes ghastly murder mysteries used on “Wire in the Blood.” I consider her to be perverting something once earnest and pure.)
I know this is the right thing to do, because of this entry by Sally Potter on her own website. It is a list of reminders to herself as she started work on a movie called “Rage.” It is wise enough to guide Barack Obama -- maybe he has a similar list.
The best time to start is now (don’t wait)
Take responsibility for everything (it saves time)
Don’t blame anyone or anything (including yourself)
Give up being a moviemaker victim (of circumstance, weather, lack of money, mean financiers, vicious critics, greedy distributors, indifferent public, etc.)
You can’t always choose what happens while you are making a film, but you can choose your point of view about what happens
(creative perspective)
Mistakes are your best teacher (so welcome them)
Turn disaster to advantage (there will be many)
Only work on something you believe in (life is too short to practice insincerity)
Choose your team carefully and honour them (never speak negatively about your colleagues)
Ban the word “compromise” (or the phrase “it will do”)
(the disappointment in yourself will haunt you later)
Be prepared to work harder than anyone you are employing
Be ruthless – be ready to throw away your favourite bits (you may well be attached to what is familiar rather than what is good).
Aim beyond your limits (and help others to go beyond theirs)
(the thrill of the learning curve)
When in doubt, project yourself ten years into the future and look back – what will you be proud of having done?
(indecision is a lack of the longer view or wider perspective)
Practice no waste – psychic ecology – prevent brain pollution
(don’t add to the proliferation of junk)
Be an anorak – keep your sense of wonder and enthusiasm
(cynicism will kill your joy and motivation)
Get some sleep when you can (you wont get much later)
For me the moment of deep recognition came on the DVD extra when days of rehearsal, honing the message, coincided with a political move described in the newspapers that appeared to doom peace yet again, this time in Iraq. Sally and her two main actors, laid bare by fatique, sat weeping at a table, stunned and yet more determined. This is where the truth is found.
One of the films from those days that hit me square between the eyes was “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” by Marguerite Duras. It was erotic, of course, because it was about a French woman attending a peace conference in Hiroshima and having an affair with a Japanese man there. The scene of the two of them in the shower together was a revelation to me -- I didn’t know you could DO that, much less film it. The real subject, again of course, was how to cross the divides between the sexes, the cultures, the peaceful and the warmongers.
I didn’t know that Sally Potter’s “YES” would be an even more modern and expressionist version of the same classic story. Maybe I only ordered it because the “yes” of Molly Bloom at the end of “Ulysses” is one of my favorite sermon devices when I’m in the company of other UU ministers. It always gets a laugh because they know it’s about sex and they think no one else knows that -- though it’s really about saying yes to life. (Is there a difference? Answer in less than 2,000 words.) Ministers don’t get to say “yes” as much as they would like to. They tend to feel the edge of the Apollonian/Dionysian split because it is sometimes the choice between their vocation and being thrown out. Or used to be.
Until minutes into the film, I didn’t realize that everyone was speaking in iambic pentameter -- easily, I might say, like very excellent Shakespearean actors. The cinematography was striking, arty, but not distracting. The framing device of cleaning women “who know more about you than you know about yourself” was entertaining as well as objectifying and a good feminist balance to the almost too mandarin woman doctor.
The Lebanese former doctor-- now putting his surgery to use in a luxury hotel kitchen -- and the female embryologist research doctor are at opposite ends of the experience of life. The Lebanese was right up against the boundary between life and death in terms of violence; the embryologist talks theory about conception while working in a lab where at night the binocular microscopes are sheathed in condom-like plastic. She is the Apollonian, living in a white, sharp-edged, stripped-out house. He is the Dionysian, taking her to a bed of purple, red and orange silk. The actress is cat-faced, pale, blonde, nearly without makeup and certainly without body fat. The actor is dark, tousled, with a noble nose and gallant mustache. We never see her dance; HE dances. It is only after the physical relationship is established that the politics of gender and national culture begin to drive them apart. The final meeting ground is Marxist: Cuba.
For me, absorbing as this film is, the “special features” on the DVD are more important: crucially important. Sally Potter is a theatrical polymath: writer, director, dancer, composer, and so on. Her method is that emotional-but-disciplined plunge into the unknowns of theatre as inner-life-made-explicit that was so much at the heart of what we thought was a world revolution in the Sixties and Seventies. Arising out of the peace movement and determination to get to the heart of war -- esp. ambiguous and tortured wars like Vietnam -- as well as tolerance of altered consciousness and ambivalence about asceticism/eroticism, we wanted to get to the truth. The question was whether we could “handle the truth.” Sally hasn’t given up this inquiry. I would suggest that too many others have.
When Orpheus descended into hell to try to bring his lover out through the use of art, in his case music, he didn’t take any notes. But Sally Potter does. She blogs, she forums, she websites, she never hesitates to use electronic communications. I’ve signed up for her newsletter, just as I’ve cast off from Val McDermid’s. (Val writes ghastly murder mysteries used on “Wire in the Blood.” I consider her to be perverting something once earnest and pure.)
I know this is the right thing to do, because of this entry by Sally Potter on her own website. It is a list of reminders to herself as she started work on a movie called “Rage.” It is wise enough to guide Barack Obama -- maybe he has a similar list.
The best time to start is now (don’t wait)
Take responsibility for everything (it saves time)
Don’t blame anyone or anything (including yourself)
Give up being a moviemaker victim (of circumstance, weather, lack of money, mean financiers, vicious critics, greedy distributors, indifferent public, etc.)
You can’t always choose what happens while you are making a film, but you can choose your point of view about what happens
(creative perspective)
Mistakes are your best teacher (so welcome them)
Turn disaster to advantage (there will be many)
Only work on something you believe in (life is too short to practice insincerity)
Choose your team carefully and honour them (never speak negatively about your colleagues)
Ban the word “compromise” (or the phrase “it will do”)
(the disappointment in yourself will haunt you later)
Be prepared to work harder than anyone you are employing
Be ruthless – be ready to throw away your favourite bits (you may well be attached to what is familiar rather than what is good).
Aim beyond your limits (and help others to go beyond theirs)
(the thrill of the learning curve)
When in doubt, project yourself ten years into the future and look back – what will you be proud of having done?
(indecision is a lack of the longer view or wider perspective)
Practice no waste – psychic ecology – prevent brain pollution
(don’t add to the proliferation of junk)
Be an anorak – keep your sense of wonder and enthusiasm
(cynicism will kill your joy and motivation)
Get some sleep when you can (you wont get much later)
For me the moment of deep recognition came on the DVD extra when days of rehearsal, honing the message, coincided with a political move described in the newspapers that appeared to doom peace yet again, this time in Iraq. Sally and her two main actors, laid bare by fatique, sat weeping at a table, stunned and yet more determined. This is where the truth is found.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
"McKinley, Montana, Greenway County"
Alongside me is a little pile of clippings I was going to use as reference for maybe five different blog ideas, but while I was waiting to choose which subject, I took off my email and got blown away. That’s what happens sometimes, which is why I love it.
Lance Michael Foster, who is in Helena, sent me comments on a couple of my blogs. Turns out he’s an artist/writer Native American I’ve never heard of, but who is way more skillful than many better known people. He’s not Blackfeet, but here’s a story of his that IS about Blackfeet. http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/mckinley-montana-edgar-hbbntakes-pipe-0 Here’s his studio website: http://lancemfosterstudio.blogspot.com
More than that, he unfolds out into a network. For instance, “McKinley, Montana” is a virtual community in “Greenway County” created by Allan Tooley. a graphic artist who is on Facebook. I tried Googling Tooley but was overwhelmed by references. He has a website but the print is so faint that I can’t read it. So I picked up the phone. Tooley was at a Cub Scout meeting but he’ll call me back. His wife says he writes a blog but “McKinley, Montana” is a ghost town now. I have to find out the name of his blog.
It appears that there is a real community of writers and artists that the media and other gatekeepers in the Montana context just don’t see, or rather can’t make money out of and are afraid of because of their sometimes subject matter, which tends to be like a sub-group that once existed in Missoula, tagged “Montana Gothic.” Romantic, punky, sci-fi, NeoCeltic, extreme, edgy -- whatever. For instance, Lance’s “first chapter” of a nonexistent book is an attempt to inhabit the brain of the Unibomber. The chapter is entitled simply “Ted.”
These guys are boomers or younger, educated but not bourgeois, and -- well -- “guys.” Men. I’m not sure quite how I ended up so much in sympathy with them. Maybe it was being an animal control officer, maybe it was rez life, maybe something else. It’s what has pre-disposed me to appreciate Tim Barrus’ work -- or before that, Gary J. Cook. The problem, for me, is that I don’t have broadband and I dislike all these Facebook, YouTube, etc. networks. They take too long and I never understand what I’m supposed to do.
See for yourself. Lance’s writing is on another of those aggregating (not aggravating -- a kind of online collective) websites that are trying to fill the vacuum left by crashing publishers and bookstores, the need for some kind of way to discover what’s out there: www.redroom.com.
Here’s their pitch:
“Red Room was named after both a place and a literary tradition. The famous Red Room of the White House is an extraordinary place where revolutionary behavior occurred in a small parlor. For example, when Franklin Roosevelt wouldn't allow female reporters at his press conferences, Eleanor Roosevelt held her own press conferences at the same time for the women. The conferences were so popular that the male reporters started attending, and the President had no choice but to integrate his press conferences in order to get any attention. A tradition of civilized revolution on behalf of disenfranchised writers is carried on in the modern-day Red Room.
"The Red Room" is also the name of four different literary works of different genres, by very different authors, spanning a century. One of these works, written by H.G. Wells, is about confronting fear itself, alone in a small room—a relevant allegory for writers. Red evokes passion, action, and drama, providing the perfect backdrop for literary creation.”
Lance has a Native American graphic novel in development, one with a dark center. He likes that dark stuff and handles it very well -- just enough mysticism to hint at two of his favorite writers: Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is on my own list. He also has an anthropology degree and a landscape architecture degree, which means that his awareness and accuracy when it comes to history and terrain are exemplary. He might enjoy the supernatural, but it is underlain by a strong infrastructure of reality.
I have a dark subversive purpose in contacting these men and their friends, and in spreading the word about them. The Montana arts scene has been co-opted by bourgeois, prosperous, status-seeking “ladies” of both sexes, who quickly pass over potential troublemakers like these. The establishment has become pot-bound and elderly, unwilling to be unsettled.
These younger guys are perfect candidates for the beginning of a new circle of artists and writers who are passionately driven, historically informed, but NOT hypnotized by Charlie Russell. It’s not that I want them to break up the Russell circle. I would still defend the order of which Bob Scriver was a part. Anyway, maybe they are already organized enough or don’t want to be organized. What do I mean by "organized" anyway -- aside from being better known. "Cowboy Artists of America" got TOO organized and are now at each other's throats.
These are quite different times from the Sixties and Seventies (though they are probably structurally very much like the first days of Montana as a territory on the way to statehood) with a need for messages that don’t separate Indian from white, that address what is outside the norm (even impolite and possibly criminal), cosmic, bizarre, and as dark as unemployment and business disaster. We need writers who can face up to plague and tragedy both personal and systemic.
I was slow to realize how much I was being “shushed” in Montana, not just by the long-standing literati, but also by the humanities establishment, the environmental/political entities, and even the UU context I once served or the official Blackfeet circles. They don’t know they’re doing it, for the most part. I’ve just evolved into a quite different place -- or maybe it’s truer to say that I’ve kept evolving and they haven’t. Strange that I find more affinity with a collective of At-Risk boys and their equally risky leader (Barrus) in Amsterdam than I do with the Montana Association of Teachers of Literature and English.
Not so strange that I find more affinity with a dying old lady across the alley from me. She is sharing her memories, like delivering colts or providing a horseback riding experience for disabled kids. They gave each child some plaster to mix up and showed them how to cast the hoofprints of the horse they rode. She is not part of the Valier social scene. For one thing , she lives in a trailer. She IS Montana. The arts community is snobbish, commodifying culture. They even took a survey to see how much money artists make.
How we love our markers for success. How fragile they are. But maybe something new is forming here in “McKinley, Montana, Greenway County.”
Lance Michael Foster, who is in Helena, sent me comments on a couple of my blogs. Turns out he’s an artist/writer Native American I’ve never heard of, but who is way more skillful than many better known people. He’s not Blackfeet, but here’s a story of his that IS about Blackfeet. http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/mckinley-montana-edgar-hbbntakes-pipe-0 Here’s his studio website: http://lancemfosterstudio.blogspot.com
More than that, he unfolds out into a network. For instance, “McKinley, Montana” is a virtual community in “Greenway County” created by Allan Tooley. a graphic artist who is on Facebook. I tried Googling Tooley but was overwhelmed by references. He has a website but the print is so faint that I can’t read it. So I picked up the phone. Tooley was at a Cub Scout meeting but he’ll call me back. His wife says he writes a blog but “McKinley, Montana” is a ghost town now. I have to find out the name of his blog.
It appears that there is a real community of writers and artists that the media and other gatekeepers in the Montana context just don’t see, or rather can’t make money out of and are afraid of because of their sometimes subject matter, which tends to be like a sub-group that once existed in Missoula, tagged “Montana Gothic.” Romantic, punky, sci-fi, NeoCeltic, extreme, edgy -- whatever. For instance, Lance’s “first chapter” of a nonexistent book is an attempt to inhabit the brain of the Unibomber. The chapter is entitled simply “Ted.”
These guys are boomers or younger, educated but not bourgeois, and -- well -- “guys.” Men. I’m not sure quite how I ended up so much in sympathy with them. Maybe it was being an animal control officer, maybe it was rez life, maybe something else. It’s what has pre-disposed me to appreciate Tim Barrus’ work -- or before that, Gary J. Cook. The problem, for me, is that I don’t have broadband and I dislike all these Facebook, YouTube, etc. networks. They take too long and I never understand what I’m supposed to do.
See for yourself. Lance’s writing is on another of those aggregating (not aggravating -- a kind of online collective) websites that are trying to fill the vacuum left by crashing publishers and bookstores, the need for some kind of way to discover what’s out there: www.redroom.com.
Here’s their pitch:
“Red Room was named after both a place and a literary tradition. The famous Red Room of the White House is an extraordinary place where revolutionary behavior occurred in a small parlor. For example, when Franklin Roosevelt wouldn't allow female reporters at his press conferences, Eleanor Roosevelt held her own press conferences at the same time for the women. The conferences were so popular that the male reporters started attending, and the President had no choice but to integrate his press conferences in order to get any attention. A tradition of civilized revolution on behalf of disenfranchised writers is carried on in the modern-day Red Room.
"The Red Room" is also the name of four different literary works of different genres, by very different authors, spanning a century. One of these works, written by H.G. Wells, is about confronting fear itself, alone in a small room—a relevant allegory for writers. Red evokes passion, action, and drama, providing the perfect backdrop for literary creation.”
Lance has a Native American graphic novel in development, one with a dark center. He likes that dark stuff and handles it very well -- just enough mysticism to hint at two of his favorite writers: Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is on my own list. He also has an anthropology degree and a landscape architecture degree, which means that his awareness and accuracy when it comes to history and terrain are exemplary. He might enjoy the supernatural, but it is underlain by a strong infrastructure of reality.
I have a dark subversive purpose in contacting these men and their friends, and in spreading the word about them. The Montana arts scene has been co-opted by bourgeois, prosperous, status-seeking “ladies” of both sexes, who quickly pass over potential troublemakers like these. The establishment has become pot-bound and elderly, unwilling to be unsettled.
These younger guys are perfect candidates for the beginning of a new circle of artists and writers who are passionately driven, historically informed, but NOT hypnotized by Charlie Russell. It’s not that I want them to break up the Russell circle. I would still defend the order of which Bob Scriver was a part. Anyway, maybe they are already organized enough or don’t want to be organized. What do I mean by "organized" anyway -- aside from being better known. "Cowboy Artists of America" got TOO organized and are now at each other's throats.
These are quite different times from the Sixties and Seventies (though they are probably structurally very much like the first days of Montana as a territory on the way to statehood) with a need for messages that don’t separate Indian from white, that address what is outside the norm (even impolite and possibly criminal), cosmic, bizarre, and as dark as unemployment and business disaster. We need writers who can face up to plague and tragedy both personal and systemic.
I was slow to realize how much I was being “shushed” in Montana, not just by the long-standing literati, but also by the humanities establishment, the environmental/political entities, and even the UU context I once served or the official Blackfeet circles. They don’t know they’re doing it, for the most part. I’ve just evolved into a quite different place -- or maybe it’s truer to say that I’ve kept evolving and they haven’t. Strange that I find more affinity with a collective of At-Risk boys and their equally risky leader (Barrus) in Amsterdam than I do with the Montana Association of Teachers of Literature and English.
Not so strange that I find more affinity with a dying old lady across the alley from me. She is sharing her memories, like delivering colts or providing a horseback riding experience for disabled kids. They gave each child some plaster to mix up and showed them how to cast the hoofprints of the horse they rode. She is not part of the Valier social scene. For one thing , she lives in a trailer. She IS Montana. The arts community is snobbish, commodifying culture. They even took a survey to see how much money artists make.
How we love our markers for success. How fragile they are. But maybe something new is forming here in “McKinley, Montana, Greenway County.”
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