January 31, 2011

Prison, Jen (massage!), sick Helen!, exploring, peace, confrontation, money.

Themes!

Mirages. Art!

Pain.

Teleconferences, change, sleeping tigers

I think I am going to figure out how to record these blogs instead of writing them. There is an entire talk forming in my head, and a reluctance to write. At the same time there is an article and a painting in there too. Gestation indeed.

Perhaps I am neither butterfly nor pelican. A hummingbird? That would be satisfactory!

Time to sleep.

Jen and I determined today that the pain is a message that I have collected so many credits for contributions made that my credit account is full, and that when my credit account is full I can know that I am ALLOWED to rest.

I am in a new dance. Something is emerging. So be it!

January 30, 2011

It’s probably going to be a short one tonight. Just about three quarters of an hour ago Helen texted that she’s sick and doesn’t want to work tomorrow. Nick and I spend the next 40 minutes sorting it out. Not bad really! But it means that it’s bedtime and this blog loses its fascination!!!

Just the same, it is important to CELEBRATE! We found the money. I am going to Savannah, although perhaps not for the full two weeks. We’ll see.

It was simple enough really. Today I sold the trailer to Rob and Michelle Comtois. Instead of coming to me it is going to Mike so that he can set up the travel arrangements and pay himself. With the amount of money that we have raised we can pay another personal assistant. The lodging is free until February 26, so we should be OK. If I am able to earn some more money somewhere, all the better. It will mean that we can stay for a few days into March and pay for an ocean view hotel on Tybee Island for a few days.

My intention is to finish the “Dirty Window” painting. Doing it in Toronto, one hour a week at a time, which is usually all the time I get at Laser Eagles these days, will not have it finished in time to make it a centre piece of the ROM exhibit. (It looks like it’s going to be scheduled for August.) In Savannah, I am hoping to finish it within the two week period and then begin to build other materials around it, like a story, some posters, and perhaps other paintings related in theme.

My though is that by making the prison assembly a central theme in my exhibit, I can create a dance between Inclusion from the “disability” perspective and Inclusion from other diversities and their gifts.

Mike and I had some intense conversations this last weekend. It is good! I am stretching to explain – with compassion I hope – not only what it takes to create Inclusion but also what it takes to be a creator of a concept which can shift the world. Of course, what do I know about shifting the world? However, I have some very solid experience about what doesn’t shift the world. In fact, this is something of a dilemma for me. I have a natural gift of what is not working, and this is very useful sorting out and leaving behind strategies that are less effective. However, it is not very engaging for partners in the work and also it doesn’t actually create a new direction.

On the other hand, I think I have been very creative around building new directions. I am just saying that I have to struggle with myself not to communicate too much negativity.

I am in a very different space than I was a month ago. Even then I was in a very different space from where I was at a month before that. It feels like acceleration – exponential growth. For heaven’s sake, Mike and I were using Fractal theory to describe a model of inclusion should look like. I haven’t even thought about fractals for 10 years and I have utterly forgotten the names of the terms that are relevant. Yet somehow it is as if all the powerful things that I have ever learned are congealing into one large attempt to put Inclusion on the map. So be it.

January 29, 2011

Gloria had a fabulous idea today. She suggests that I take all the entries I have made about the cranes, cubes and the prison which is rising before me and make them into one article and publish it – somewhere like The Globe and Mail.

I will do this, but not tonight.

The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.

From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.

I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.

If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.

On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.

Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!

What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.

But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!

January 28, 2011

Well, I plugged away today, mostly while lying in bed, at finding the $5000 I still need to go to Savannah in two weeks. Some in my circle would say that this is my very problem – it is in my mind to look, not to have it come to me, and subtly I am pushing it away.

I listened to Trey Anthony’s Ted Toronto talk tonight. Her name has come up in my world a lot lately – we are both in the Second Story agenda. In the Degree of Freedom world we are separated by only two relationships – Helen to Jen to Trey. She has done a Ted talk. Do they pay people to do those talks I wondered?!?

I battle sometimes with my own reluctance to “push” myself. However, I have no reluctance to push Inclusion and apparently I am my own best example. So be it!

So I looked it up, found the Speaker’s Nomination form and applied. I got the e-mail back that says they received it. We’ll see.

The prison cube crane has been active – slowly – night and day for a few days now. The article in the Toronto Star seems to have sped things up. I wonder out loud with Helen how to stop the prison. I wonder to myself if I can return to just peacefully watching out my window, with no concern for the “value” of what I see – nonattachment. This “perfect” apartment has lost some of it’s sublimeness since I discovered the real nature of the gigantic blocks. I don’t want to have that rising feeling that I will have to move on to search again for my perfect home.

Of course the perfection or lack thereof are all inside of my own evaluation. The prison was always there – there have always been guns and drugs and crazed tenants in this building. The world is what it is! And so this is once again a great opportunity to create a gift out of this potential obstacle that has suddenly appeared before me.

I am so far behind on my e-mail it isn’t funny. Boredom and fundraising are the reasons. I want an adventure – a fun one – to legitimately be able to set up an automatic e-mail message that says: “I am out of town and will not be responding to my e-mail until… “

There has been nothing from the ROM or from ACF. Perhaps they will disappear – perhaps not. It wouldn’t be the first time that something or somebody occupied the depth of focus and energy that they have for roughly ten weeks only to vanish from centre stage. I feel like I am steeling myself for disappointment in several areas of my life.

Enthusiasm gone! Not the first time for that either. Fatigue. The doldrums. Apparently, according to a short video I saw today, it is a relatively new phenomenon to call such a state “depression” and to treat it medically. Others might call a shaman and do a ceremony for the whole “family” – me, Mike, Kimberley, Helen, Peter, Bill and Bill, Adlon, etc. Sounds like a mid-winter party to me!

I am making a promise to myself and my readers that I:
- will have something worth writing about by Monday – today is Friday;
- will catch up on e-mail by Monday.

January 27, 2011

Now and then life throws something that can make one (me!) laugh.

If you are a regular reader you know I have been in a tizzy about how to respond to ACF when the ED offers me something. I don’t know what she might offer but, since I have had 2 meetings with her, one with Mike, she has asked for a proposal (and received it!), and then Mike and I were at both consultations on Tuesday whereat she said she would get back to me, I think it safe to think there WILL be an offer of some sort.

The “problem” has been that I have not been thrilled with what she wants me to do. It certainly looks light straightforward advocacy – she calls it campaigning. I see advocacy as part of the trap that keeps people in the M world, with no other identity except as a disabled service users. I have been at work to put Peace through Inclusion into real time and space in the world, as opposed to a nice idea. It will be no small feat if I/we pull it off because not many are willing to believe that World Peace is possible. I now feel that it is to go way off track to be doing advocacy.

Conversations with Shirl Edwards, Martha Leary and this morning on the “money call” led by Gary Menezes and with 4 others have expanded my point of view.

With Shirl it was mostly about realizing that M is everywhere, all the time anyway so working from ANY position still has power. With Martha I realized that there are many leaders among people who do not speak, and that to give them a chance to advocate is something some of them highly desire.

This morning I asked Gary to say something about negotiation and this sparked a rich discussion indeed. Hence the space to laugh.

The first step he explained is to be clear what the alternative is to the outcome you (me) are negotiating. In my case my alternative is clearly something I value a lot. For example, I have:
- freedom to not work
- freedom to engage a large network in resourcing me and my vision
- freedom to work on developing new concepts and strategies for Inclusion
- freedom to relate to whomever I please who wants to relate to me
- time and energy to support the development of promising others, like Mike and Kimberley
- evidence that I can be trusted that will be accepted by marginalized people
- large repair, replacement and medication costs covered
I also have an ongoing struggle to sustain enough income without disrupting the ODSP benefit.

Then Gary explained that if the offer is not as attractive as your real alternative you are negotiating to enhance a partnership, and you can ask for enhancements of the deal. It is important to get clear what your (my) value is to your potential partner so you can be clear what it is you have to offer. Look for what they see or could see as your (my) assets, which may actually be hidden to you (me!)

This last part is also particularly true when the potential offer is clearly better than your (my) current situation. This situation is like getting a job, and assets can be like you are relieving your potential employer of the trouble of doing it him/herself, you are improving the ambiance of the workspace, you can work at home and don’t need an office, etc. In my case the ED really enjoys that I am creative, straight and will argue with her!

This morning’s tutorial lifted my anxiety big time, and gave me considerable power when I was meeting this afternoon with a man who is arguing with his support staff. To cut a long story short I increased my income today with a small contract, doing work I love to do, and had NO trouble saying I expect to get paid!

A new day has dawned indeed!

On another note, Helen and I located the prison under construction, drove by and took a picture. Here it isǃ

January 26, 2011

Today was mainly exhaustion, pain, little accomplishment, with the exception of a marvellous clearing call with Shirl this morning and a great walk and a coffee with cake at Yalla’s – with Michel, Helen his wife and Helen (my handler according to Dad). At Helen’s suggestion I Skyped Martha. I am glad I did. Tim hasn’t been well and although he will be fine Martha is clearly tired, and lonely. We laughed, and, if Savannah falls through, I will go to Wisconsin and do a course with her in April.

I figured out that one of the struggles I have with M (BMX Model of Inclusion) is that it has no memory. One of the things I was frustrated with ACF about yesterday was that one of the reasons put forth for not yet implementing the recommendations of its Inclusive Task Force was that certain – we used to call them intersectionalities – crossovers between marginalized people, like racialization and disability, had not yet been addressed. A critical story had been forgotten and we reminded the Board of it. However, this event put into perspective for me that empowering stories cannot be remembered in the M world.

This makes alliance, forgiveness, learning and stable empowerment impossible. It’s like giving a community mass Alzheimer’s.

I notice what big words I use – not my own language.

I also realize that I am approaching this potential choice point as if it were black and white, go or no go. Likely this attitude will screw it all up, and there is no real need for me to fear this so much. What I must do is determine what it is that I really need to make this work.

Martha – God love her – reminded me of many leaders I know. She also nudged me to ask for more money. I remember now that for my very first grant, in 1977, from the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, I asked for a salary that was about $500/month smaller than the next person who took the job.

On another topic, on Monday I found out that the prison that is being assembled from the cubes piled just outside of my bedroom window is being put up not at the Don Jail site, but here in South Etobicoke, in what used to be called Mimico. This morning the penny dropped. Those buildings that are under construction that I can also see from my bed and that will be featured in the painting that Mike and I are working on now – that incipient complex of two towers and a lower connecting building – that is the prison!

I have been watching it rise since practically its Day 1 and my Day 1 in Cycle 3.

So many people in the world are being separated from one another - housed, cloistered or imprisoned in individual compartments – condos, apartments, cells – and served – rehabilitated, recreationalized, managed, supervised. The life of a prisoner soon to be living five blocks from my bedroom is little different from that of the nearly mad old Caribbean woman who lives in poverty and fear, by herself, two apartments from me.

Since we are in fact surrounded by and infiltrated with M it must be the perfect place to fulfill my “mission”. There is no leaving to somewhere else. The definition of freedom is not getting out of here to be somewhere else.

These thoughts and realizations are both calming and terrifying. Now is the time to be still and listen.

January 25, 2011

I apologize to readers. Last night I forgot to blog! Just plain forgot until I was already in bed.

In some ways, since I blogged about the prison cells collected outside my window, I have lived a rather drunk, rather surreal life. Not literally drunk – I have had no alcohol and very little Morphine. Rather I have thrown my hat thoroughly into Cycle 3 and now it is simply unfolding. With this come demands – on my time, listening, focus, energy, stamina, words. There are demands from my assistants, ACF, ODSP, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Wisdom City Team, from my circle, my body, Father, WPIT, e-mail, Laser Eagles, the ROM?, the Book of Judith. I am not complaining – just spinning!

It all stems from taking myself seriously – perhaps way too seriously. I continue to imagine that I can transform the world by transforming how diversity is valued and included. Mike and I saw “The King’s Speech” again tonight, and though I waiver between whether I am more like George or Lionel I know (as in KNOW) I have an essential part in a drama much bigger than myself. Everything speaks to me as a potential means of finding a pathway to peace through Inclusion so I can turn down very little these days. That, and the ongoing search for $$’s, keeps prodding me on.

This morning Mike and I met with ACF and their poverty reduction champions and this afternoon with old and new members of the ACF Board and the Inclusion Circle. In all we met for over six hours. Mike was still raring to go after it all, but I was exhausted. For me the morning was mainly about listening, and listening to mainly whining, grieving and nostalgia for days when organizing seemed clearer. Listening took place on top of my own weary concern with feeling like once again I am being drawn into strategies that don’t work,

In the afternoon I felt the need to speak up about how it seems that ACF has not implemented the Inclusion Task Force recommendations. That and other people’s stuff led to a much livelier energy. However, at the end of the day (literally), it still remains in the hands of others to decide when, who and for what end this process will continue.

Going into the movie I lined up behind a young woman who is familiar to me from the Wisdom Course. Coming out we ran into a woman and her friend/supporter, both of whom were active twenty-five years ago in some committee or other that I was part of, probably the Ontario Advocacy Coalition. I felt that a certain element of safety and familiarity was added back into my day. In particular the woman who has a long term cognitive difference after a brain haemorrhage that she had in 1970 brought back the joyful sense that life is to be celebrated. She is just the sort of person I want to bring to lunch with ACF – Mary Lou, Miriam, Chloe, Greg and Felicia – the people who show me over and over again that it is way more effective in the end to stop trying to fix everything, and to enjoy the food, the company and the movie.

Speaking of lunch, I had the best roast beef sandwich I think I have ever had in my life. I could chew and swallow every bite, and I ate the WHOLE thing.

January 23, 2011

A picture of the crane and the cubes that I have been describing to you appeared in The Toronto Star today. Here it is:



They are indeed modular parts of a building. A prision. The night-time, secretive play of giants turns out to be the reconstruction of the infamous Don Jail in downtown Toronto. The cubes are manufactured in Texas, trained to Toronto, and trucked downtown. The cubes are sturdy enough to be stacked several stories high, yet each is self sufficient, down to the plumbing. The ultimate assembly will hold over 1600 prisoners.

When I was about eight my younger brother and I reveled in stuffing our kitten into a cardboard box and trapping it there for hours. It died of the stress.

Ivan Illich said the only authentic response to pure evil is silence, because any other response sets up a dynamic that lends the evil a defined presence in our culture. I am not sure I believe that, because, as Marsha used to quote: "They came for the Jews, and I wasn't a Jew, so I kept silent, ... , and when they came for me there was no one left to save me."

I am stunned that this intriquing, enormous, slow dance of the gigantic cubes that has been unfolding under my bedroom window since mid-October - this large nightly activity is the deliberately plotted internation activity with an intended outcome of increasing our local prison population and to do so in as cheaply managed, most inhumane way as possible. Rob Ford, our vigorously right-wing Mayor must be gleeful indeed!

Suddenly, the view from my bedroom window has a sinister cast. My dreams will not be so peaceful.

January 22, 2011

I am about to prepare the proposal that I will put before the ED of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation (ACF). I recognize that I have a highly emotional response to her request of me. Clearly I am reactivated (or stuck) at more than one level! So, I thought that I would use this blog – this expression vehicle – as a way of writing her a personal letter. Then I could write her the straightforward proposal. I can also suggest that, if she is interested, she read the blog, although that seems pretty risky at the moment. Of course it couldn’t seem so risky if I didn’t feel that much depends on how my working relationship with her turns out, and what each of us is able to accomplish by working together.

I am sure that this is just the sort of thing that Gloria wants me to face and transform in the context of. She is always saying I can’t give anything away, as in permitting others to run with the ball after I have set a direction. I don’t think this is true but I do recognize that I am not the best judge! So these are the words I would say to the new ED who is curious about me, maybe even hopeful about me, and who holds the key to what my next project will look like, perhaps.

Dearest O,

(It always seems that such letters start with “Dear” or “Dearest”)

I have been struggling with how to frame a project to put before you by Monday morning. Saturday evening is about to arrive and I only have the barest outline in my head. I am frustrated, angry and hopeful. I am trained enough to know that I’m not really responding to you, but to a series of former relationships and opportunities both lost and fulfilled which have shaped my life, my understanding of Inclusion and my current “mission” in life. It seems to me that you are interested and that you hold a key to potential progress. However, both my sense of what is a key and what progress is leave me with a feeling that you have undue power over me at this moment. I am reacting to my own “helpless identity” in the face of your “power”.
In the eyes of the world, you are black and I am crippled. We spoke euphemistically about these realities last Wednesday. I explained to you that my relationship to this point with Atkinson has been as a “window washer” – in other words, my circumstances have lead me to a certain kind of work in the world and consequently people imagine both that this is the kind of work I want to do and also that it is the only thing I’m good for. Accordingly, when people want to include me, support me and/or honour me, they offer me another window to wash. This is exactly what I FEEL like you are doing now.

I have been so tempted to ask you if you would like to make some pancakes.

Specifically, I stopped wanting to be an advocate in approximately 1991. I took it up again in order to support the Individualized Funding Coalition of Ontario. In 2004 we were offered an opportunity to “consult” with the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. I participated fully! I did so because, even though I figured there was very little chance that the work would lead to real policy change, I felt that there needed to be as good as possible a document that recorded for history the benefits of individually supported community participation for people who are labelled with developmental disability.

It is nearly impossible, as you know I am sure, for people to build full participation with minimal resources, including some that are illegally established. Secondly, this power is further diminished by the intense bureaucratic overlay that comes with these resources. Add to this the intensely inadequate capacity to do good research when all that is available to do the work are volunteers, no control group, no standard definition of anything, and tight deadlines to come up with data and analysis. In spite of this, the IFCO managed to produce two reports that each had “eyeball” significance. In other words, you could see by just looking at the data that there are huge differences in how people who have individualized supports participate in their communities versus people who have agency support.

Shortly after we produced this data, the Finance Ministry of the Province of Ontario shut that Deputy Minister down, had him reassigned, and put in place an ineffective puppet. All evidence that the government might move towards individualized support for people who are labelled with developmental disability disappeared overnight.

The hidden consequence of all this, at least hidden to the Ministry, the bureaucrats and well meaning people such as yourself is that the people themselves who are labelled lose at every step of this process. First of all, they lose relationship with their parents and caregivers as these people exhaust themselves with extra work, and the process of being drawn into defining their loved one as a needy disabled person. Secondly, they lose the opportunities that disappear while their caregivers are busy doing other things rather than going out to the library, the park, a volunteer job somewhere, church, etc. etc. Finally, as the bureaucrats dash the hopes of the advocates and burn them out, they lose the energy and commitment of their parents and caregivers – the main source of support in their lives. How many people end up in a worse situation and in group homes just because their parents became advocates and then burnt out? I have no idea what the number is but I am sure that it is not small.

I was not, I believe, turned into a cynic by this defeat, not just because I was expecting defeat but because I knew that people could not be satisfied unless they had tried, and try we did. My intention was to support the effort as best as I could, not imagine that we were somehow going to buck the bureaucracy and actually make a change. At the same time I very much intended to never pick up the banner of advocacy again!

Lo and behold one should never say never! Here comes a very energetic, intelligent and passionate ED who is more than willing to make pancakes. Who am I to say that she is not correct? History has funny turns and I am not the one to say that this is not the time in history when a new voice and new energy might actually shift the social perception of people who have been labelled developmentally disabled.

You remind me so much of an energetic and passionate woman that I met in 1978 who turned my life, and many people’s lives, around. I hated her for a good six months before I fell in love with her and proceeded to do anything she asked of me because somehow around her things really worked out. For example, although we are far from having genuine Inclusive education in Ontario, the bureaucrats have never been able to kill it either, and that has a lot to do with Marsha Forest, who so inspired and so kicked butt that her influence continues 11 years after her death from breast cancer. I can only hope to have such power as Marsha had.

So, you say, it is time to gather the advocates and to have them start talking to each other and to have them begin to create a common identity and a common approach. Do you know that that is exactly what Marsha inspired in our city in 1980 to support our powerful engagement with the system during 1981, the International Year of the Disabled Person? The impact of that conference reverberates to this day in small but fundamental ways.

I can hear Marsha’s voice saying quit your bitching and get writing. This is an opportunity not to be missed.

Alright then – Let’s get on with it! Where’s that pancake recipe?

January 21, 2011

It’s a good book – and I did not read it today.
I intend to craft a proposal for ACF – and I did not touch it today.
I need to find another $5,100 USD to take the painting holiday in February – I asked no one today, although I DID redo all my timelines, budgets and projections!

Gestation.

Procrastination? Inauthenticity? Getting ready at a deeper level? Waiting? Perhaps all are true at the same time.

I did chase down money – Dan, Elizabeth, Jay. I did reconnect with the ROM. I did connect Nick with Mike with SmartDraw, Helen with new tasks to serve her and WPIT while I am gone, begin an employment reference for Chris. I also went out, visited Leonard, had lunch with Bill, saw the world a little.

I woke up this morning to the crane moving – perhaps carrying a cube?, but just for the briefest of moments. Then it was still again.

Stillness. It is winter. Why not be still?

Some of me longs to be still. Some of me wants to move quickly while the path seems open. Most of me wavers – still to busy to busy but unproductively – a kind of back and forth among “I want to…”, “I MUST…”, “I’m not…”. Why not be still? Why not be satisfied?

The light is beautiful these days. The rising of the sun is underway when I awake most mornings. The subtly intense winter sunset lasts well into rush hour. I cannot remember being as present to the beauty of Toronto any time before this – my sojourn in South Etobicoke.

Today, as Helen and I drove from Mississauga to Riverdale I noticed how familiar has become to me the stretch of the Gardiner from the 427 to Parklawn – essentially the northern boundary of my neighbourhood. Something about nearly not being on this planet for this, my sixty-second year, has made me very present to where I am actually located.

At the same time I am not thinking about dying nearly as much as I used to. Formerly I thought about death, and whether or not I was about to expire, at least a dozen times a day. Lately – once or twice, or even not at all for more than 24 hours. Is it the blog, WPIT, Farmville? I don’t know, but it is wonderfully strange to me.

The ultimate motivation is about to kick in. There are four things to complete this weekend or I will be disappointing someone I care about! The first edit of the autobiography – Mike, the ACF proposal – Mike again!, The employment reference – Chris, the strategy plan for the Grad Liaison team – Shirl. I have my work cut out for me!

January 20, 2011

Today:
- total lethargy, and even though I rested (as I should! – it’s in my schedule) I have felt exhausted most of the evening;
- stalled in Freecell and Farmville land;

I did read more of the first draft of my autobiography. I could have finished it tonight but – as I wrote before – no focus and energy.

I am more than half way though and it’s a helluva good book!

I am totally reconnecting with little Judith (alas – Judy in those days). It’s amazing how some of the stuff I did and liked then I do and like now. Clearly, if there had been such a thing as Farmville then, I would have mastered all the levels at a very early age!

I like my passion then and I feel like I am reclaiming it now in Cycle 3.

Did I need to be so solitary? In many ways I still am. Was this due to the force of impression and circumstance, or am I just someone who mainly prefers my own company or a little time with just one person at a time?

I have little to say tonight. It is time for the caterpillar to fade to nothing so the butterfly can come in. My inward self is longing to wait and listen for what may be created newly. Forgive the shortness of this please! I am in gestation.

January 19, 2011

The awaited meeting with the ED of Atkinson Charitable Foundation happened this morning. I was able to organize that Mike Skubic was with me and, much to the ED’s amazement, he and his work on the inclusive video games was very exciting to her. It turns out that she has encountered the Zombie Walk movement, and the whole idea that zombies could be a vehicle for experiencing and teaching Inclusion was a welcome eye-popper. I was a little bit jealous. My whole stuff around the BMX Model of Inclusion is way more serious, significant and unfun!

Afterward, Mike and I had lunch and considered deeply her request. Fundamentally, she is offering both of us a partnership, and some space to invent what that partnership will look like. I am sure I don’t fully understand what she is offering or what her request is. By the end of the meeting I was struggling a bit to shift gears and so lost track of some of what she was saying. Basically, I have been working hard in a certain direction for the last few months and had not seriously considered Atkinson as a "playground". I am more than willing, even thrilled, to work with Atkinson. It's just unexpected!

I am hoping that because of this I can use the BMX Model to work with members of the Inclusion Circle, the Community Advocates that Atkinson funds, the ED herself, and any Atkinson Board members who wish to participate. I want them to describe their personal and organizational situations and issues and to describe strategies they might like to use to move forward.

After, say, six months we could collect the stories and thoughts and together look at where the model is and isn't useful. This will help to tighten up the model or debunk it if it is genuinely useless. Lastly, it might (FINALLY) create a way to connect with the work being done around the Canadian Index of Wellbeing - a result I have been trying to achieve for about three years!!!!

I am thankful to Mike for pushing me beyond my own cynicism. Atkinson has done very little with the Inclusion Circle, and neither did the Laidlaw Foundation before that. It seemed to me that advising these philanthropic organizations created the same kind of exclusion that advocacy does, i.e. it’s just another by-product of M. So my first reaction to her enthusiasm was to get confused and wonder what the heck I could do that would make any difference to what I am entrusted in. By the end of lunch a pathway was much clearer.

By the way, the work of the last week has required me (and us) to articulate the BMX Model more succinctly so here it is:

The BMX Model of Inclusion was created by Judith Snow, WPIT, www.judithsnow.org. It is designed to succinctly capture the multitude of circumstances that people call Inclusion. Its elements are “B” (for Basic), “M” (for Mechanical), and “X” (for Crossover).

At a most Basic level, a country or community allows a group to coexist, but no other changes are offered or made for the group. In the “M” or Mechanical state, the community is willing to make accommodations for the included group—examples might be ESL classes, job training, etc. In the third, Crossover state, both the community and the included recognize that their world benefits from the gifts and contributions of everyone. The perception fades that there are two sides and a distinct boundary. Any human difference can be looked at this way.

The model is useful for more than description. Communities and individuals can use it as a way of analyzing their situations and determining powerful strategies for finding better placement as participants and contributors in their society.
So, yet again, I have a new departure. Like Gloria, I worry that this is an utter waste of time. However, I think I must try this, because after all, supporting and rescuing people one person at a time is just another way of ensuring that basic change never happens.

I am not saying that I know how to make the basic transformation of society happen. I am saying that I am willing and able to keep looking for that way.

January 18, 2011

Today:
- The GTA, and apparently lots of the eastern seaboard, stopped in anticipation of an ice storm, or because it really hit. Here in the city of Toronto proper it was all hype. Mike and I walked to and from Laser Eagles.
- Mike and a little bit I started to draft the WPIT organization chart, with the Smart Draw software Peter Christianson bought for us.
- We made real progress with the painting “Dirty Window”, and painted another left over paint piece.
- Elizabeth and I made a little progress with grant writing.
- I landed a small monthly job.

The stuff I DIDN’T get done fills another half page. My desk is a mess. Stuff “to do” is spilling onto the printer, the dining table, the bureau, sometimes my bed.

I haven’t yet started reading the draft of my book!

When life gets like this I get jittery. Yes, I have moments when I experience the “going forward” but I also feel the anxiety of fearing that the “not done” will sneak up and bite me in the ass. Why have I not yet written contracts with Mike, Kimberly, Dan, Elizabeth and Peter? What about scheduling, performance reviews, hiring, training, What about fund raising for the assistant’s salaries? Etc., etc.

Tomorrow I must get “real” and figure out who is going to take some of this on. Gloria keeps on saying I don’t give things away. I don’t think this is what she means, exactly, but somehow I literally can’t keep up with myself, or so it seems today.

At the same time I believe that the jitters really come from the small me fighting the international me, somehow worried that I am not “safe” playing out my life and vision in this way. Be small “it” says. Take on less. Don’t expose yourself.

Well it’s too late for that now, isn’t it!

I have heard it said that a powerful road to success is to plan to fail often and progressively – learning something with each failure. If this works, what failure could I take on next which would make a real difference?

Some candidates are:
- finding two executive assistants
- selling my art for big bucks
- preselling my book
- How about – getting the Nobel Peace Prize? I like that one!

Tomorrow I will start to find out what it takes to win the Nobel Peace Prize! Even if I never get it, putting the steps into place must make a genuine difference in how the world views and does Inclusion.

January 17, 2011

At about 4:50pm EST I was sitting with Helen and Dad in a branch of the TD bank watching the black computer screen of the burly, sometimes surly, financial officer as she set up a joint line of credit on the GIC that Dad has willed to me on his passing. The intention was to pay off the loan on the trailer that Gabor, Jason and I lived in on the WPI Tour up until Sept. 22, 2009.

Suddenly a clear white sentence appeared in bold letters near the bottom of her screen. TRANSFER APPROVED LOAN PAID OFF.

I nearly cried, fainted and stopped breathing for two seconds. The enormous unshiftable burden – the physical sign of my failure to manage my life during those seven months, the unending anxiety of a responsibility I can’t meet yet must meet every month – in a split second dispassionately disappeared.

I had no idea of the extent of the weight on my spirit until it was gone. And when it was gone, it was just gone. A pile of papers to sign, two managers to say “Yes”, an electronic ritual to complete precisely – and the white letters simply appeared at the bottom of the computer screen.

Forgiveness has been dispensed.

This does not mean I have no financial concerns. It means I have a path to getting from “red” to “black” to being once again free to powerfully impact my and other’s circumstances with my own money, not just other’s on my behalf.

I owe so much to my parents I cannot fathom the depth. My Mother’s relentless saving reaches from beyond her grave through my Father through his love of me and of manipulating his GIC’s to release me from the shackles and the shame I incurred for throwing my hat over the wall in 2008. I am blessed.

My sense of mission is once again reinforced. Why am I so blessed, so lucky if not for being yet again showered with opportunities to keep on bringing Inclusion. Forward – go forward!

Today I met a young research student, and in a nutshell, a feasible research project is emerging around measuring the impact of the WPIT inclusive video games on the peacefulness of the children and youth who play it. A new “Yes”, a different “Yes”, a powerful “Yes”! Forward – go forward!

Jen was here this morning. Together we explored the nature of standing. For me it was more like having a conversation with my body about the experience of standing – the being of upstanding – of leadership and courage. I am stretching and parts of my body are turning and curving differently. The body of Judith is discovering how to support her stand.

I, Judith, am leading the world, through a planet wide team of young people, into an international culture of abundance, inclusion and peace. It is my destiny and I choose to fulfill this dream.

January 16, 2011

Within myself and within my circle there is an argument about how to unfold WPIT. By the way I think we are close to changing the name – to something like Include.Me.org.

My certainties are based in some simple stories. They are stories from my own experience. Of course there is nothing unusual about this. All humans build their lives from their experience, their stories within the contexts provided by culture.

The story of my Father and the binding of ancient female children’s feet provides me with certainty that Inclusion can only be built on a foundation of Giftedness. His story of the killing of children with Down Syndrome (when I was 6) gives me the understanding that I have a “mission” and – more recently – that there must be an economic foundation to our approach to Inclusion. My encounter with the reality of God’s love when I was twelve gives me a greater understanding that I have a unique path, and that there will always be a way for me to enjoy my life, be fulfilled and bring about Inclusion. Then there was the day Dad told me to pay attention to where my clean laundry went, and I began to see that I could direct my support, and so the relationships and tasks of the daily life that would be my journey.

I am uncertain where the idea that peace is available through Inclusion comes from. There is no stellar tale. This frustrates me and is perhaps the cause of the slow development of this “project”. In the 80’s and 90’s an aggregate of stories coalesced in my experience and I began to see the potential socio-political transformation that would lead to greater peacefulness as communities became more inclusive.

To me it is not about personal peace although that is tied in and important. It is about cultural peacefulness. After all, the Scotties, Felicias and Eddies are everywhere and if their Giftedness is included powerfully, peace will break out everywhere!

Without a strong story I am not communicating powerfully. So it grows slowly and has weak roots.

I have been looking for a strong enough story. I have been hoping that I could find or build it through research. Apparently this approach is too weak. I must find it more clearly in my own stories and experience.

Perhaps it resides with my Mother. This seems unlikely.

So tonight I commit myself to give birth to a story that links Peace and Inclusion so powerfully that people’s hearts will be opened. Gloria’s message to me tonight is that I will not find that story in research, economics or my head. The story must reach those understandings, but it must be anchored in my heart.

Right now the story is simply missing. There clearly a space and a need for it, but where the story should be – in my mouth and heart – there is simply silence. Of course, silence – my silence – is the perfect place to begin the exploration! The path has always been linked to silence.

Perhaps tomorrow I will meet the person who will show me where the story lies within me.

January 15, 2011

I had wine with dinner – a fabulous duck dinner at the King Eddy – supplied by Peter Christianson. A few hours later I took Morphine because the left foot pain just wasn’t abating – the first dose in six days. In any case the inebriation may come through.

I am learning to play with and get used to the person I am becoming, which is an internationally oriented player with power. I must rapidly – am rapidly giving up that I am a small actor in a big show.

It has come up four times this week.

The first was with the agenda published by Second Story Press. I started to read the vignettes for the other eleven women only to discover that the women written up for January is a Burmese activist for democracy and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. How did I get into this group?

Next I met Kimberly Fu’s father, David. He is an international broker for companies in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Canada, etc., providing communication structures so they can work cooperatively. At his invitation we talked for about 1 ½ hours – a rich gift in his framework. He gave me several insights into how to organize WPIT so that it is more sustainable, productive and understandable in the corporate world.

Next was the time spent on Skype with Liz Denny, an artist in Massachusetts who is also a PhD in Sociology and a grant writer. We are creating grant writing streams to bring $$’s to WPIT. She is our incipient financial office!

And although Peter C is mainly working in Canada his outlook is international. Tonight he was presenting several observations and resources to strengthen WPIT’s organizational power.

Of course I have been international since the mid-80’s – this is not really new. I just never have felt like I belonged in that sphere of influence. Yet clearly I do – I have evidence of my ideas and writing showing up in thirteen or fourteen countries, and physically I have been in seven. It’s now about me owning the reality.

Indeed, there is other evidence as well:
- advocating for individualized support with people from the UK, Germany, the US and Canada;
- participating on teleconferences that are Wisdom related with people in Canada, the US and more than one European country;
- helping to lead Summer Inclusion Institutes with a similar spread of participation, but also including the UK, the Netherlands, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand; and,
- playing Farmville with over 27 million other Facebook members.

And, in addition, there are seventeen Wisdom Unlimited City Teams around the planet and I have been a City Team member since March 2003.

So I guess it’s about time I stepped into my own shoes!

January 14, 2011

I have a sense that no one is reading this anymore.

When I first started people were hanging onto every entry. I suppose the drama of whether or not I would recover was compelling. Then, of course, I signed off, not imagining that I might want to get going again so soon – three days later. How does one tell the departed to return?

Also when I started these writings it was not my intention to write for readers. I was writing to explore pure expression. It didn’t stay – clearly can’t stay – purely expression without some attention to the response of others. The response occurs in my own voice even when no other person is writing or speaking to me about these posts. Then again, if I truly intended no response why use a blog as a vehicle?

Gradually I have come to want to write about some things and not others. A desire for privacy? Feeling complete? Fatigue? Less urgency as my health returns and the pain diminishes? All are factors in my growing self edits.

We have passed the Epiphany and are now in Ordinary Time, according to the church calendar. Mundane concerns dominate my calendar, my day. Groceries, money, laundry, debts, housekeeping, scheduling, business plans, amusements, the neighbours. A shorter horizon indeed.

At the same time miracles are still happening. I caught myself NOT thinking that I might be dying today. This, for me, is a genuine break with the past – a breakthrough in Landmark language.

The past several days have been jammed packed with real and imagined commitments and appointments. This has led to insufficient eating and fluid intake, and yesterday the inevitable constipation set in even though I took care to drink more. Consequently, I awoke in pain three times last night, and I was also cold, requiring an extra blanket.

I have been learning from and through Jen how to shift the pain experience and so I was able to go back to sleep all three times and even slept to 7:45am – an hour and a half longer than usual. But more than that, today I realized that I wasn’t thinking all last night and this morning that I was getting sick AGAIN, that possibly I was dying. I was just thinking that my management strategies had broken down – too much bread and not enough water – and that I had better get on track or use stronger measures.

And then the flax oil, juice and vegetables of late yesterday and this morning kicked in, and all systems are go again.

Apparently I am off and running for a full Cycle 3. 120 birthdays.

Yesterday David Fu gave me amazingly different ideas on how to design an organization and on how to get across the ideas that World Peace is actually available through Inclusion. I am hoping that Mike and I can write it up in the next few days. Of course we are about to get into another crunch writing phase to get my autobiography out by May. I am truly hoping that on Monday I can get a Line of Credit on Dad’s GIC. In this way I can work at preparing a real fundraising effort.

January 13, 2011

It’s pretty early in the day for this 10:10 AM EST. Remember when 10:10 was Timex time?

I won’t have time tonight to blog. From leaving at 11:10 AM until getting home at approx. 11:30 PM I am tightly scheduled and I am “hoping” my bladder and bowels cooperate with the scheduled pit stops!

I was on the “Money” call this morning. I hogged lots of the air time. I am feeling panicked – on the one hand because I am VERY close to not making payroll, second time in seven months, and, on the other hand, I am meeting Kimberly Fu’s father, David, this afternoon. He has access to a network that CAN invest and I want to make a good impression.

It comes down to:
- empowering context – if I am coming from I have in my hands an answer to fostering peace, social and economic development the results of the conversation are very different than if I am in panic mode or if it’s all about me and what I have done;
- listening and getting three things:
1) Mr. Fu sees me as credible.
2) Mr. Fu sees me as trustworthy
3) Mr. Fu sees the potential for a good return to his investment, and that DEPENDS on what he is looking for;
- which I have to ask!

Then again, “The Secret” would tell me that I need to get that the universe wants to give me what I want and that what there is to do is have a clear, aligned intention. This amounts for me to letting myself believe I am credible, trustworthy and that powerful inclusive social and economic progress fosters peace.

I want to prove it. It isn’t easy to stay clear in simply trusting it. But by wanting to prove it I give the impression that it may not be true.

I tell others that they have to throw their hat(s) over the wall. I don’t want to act like I neither have a hat nor a wall. Yet I call my life “Plan C”. There is always a back-up strategy. Today, as far as WPIT is concerned, there can only be Plan A. it’s now or … well, there is no “or” is there.

As I wrue this the crane is doing something with one of the cubes. The box is above the ground by the height of the knees of the man who is walking around inspecting it. Helen has just returned from her run and soon we will depart to take Dad to Service Ontario for the fourth time. These efforts are in aid of having Dad own and insure my car so that those expenses do not have to come out of my ODSP income.

The crane has lowered the cube, the harness has been withdrawn and the crane is moving on east at 5 kilometers an hour – top speed! Perhaps this is a day when my efforts will come to ground!

January 12, 2011

It’s got to be short and sweet tonight.

The successes? (who says what’s a success?!?):
- no Morphine
- no car accident (bad driving day!)
- got to Robert Cooke member’s meeting AND to the Team Leader’s teleconference
- levelled up to 24 in Farmville
- got my Dad to sing, tell stories I never heard before, and Helen to laugh!
- got to Active Green and Ross twice and back home in time for shift change
- ate 4 times
- got out six requests to make $’s while travelling to/from Georgia
- resolved 4 out of 5 scheduling difficulties

The “failures”:
- the Atkinson mtg. is next week – I went there for nothing!
- the Service Ontario people needed something they swear they didn’t have (3rd visit!) so had to go to the garage twice, spend an extra $50 and STILL have to take Dad back one more time – TOMORROW – Yikes!
- only have 6/13 Grads coming to Completion Evening
- made no $’s today
- have over 45 unread e-mails
- Helen didn’t get all her breaks
- ate too many carbs
- there is going to be a hike in my housing charge
- there is a nearly $9,000 deficit in my personal assistance funding envelop

I need a shift in abundance – time and money – SOON!

I’m learning to work hard. Now I need to learn how to get those results!

January 11, 2011

Well there are days when the ball just won’t go between the posts! I was running late pretty well all day. Mike and I went to a consignment store this morning and there were some really great things but nothing in quite the right size. I got an email back from someone who had been asking good questions about WPIT but he declined to donate. I called some more people to be guests at the Wisdom Completion Evening this Thursday but just got message machines. Blah blah blah.

Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.

It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.

In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!

Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!

I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.

Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.

At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!

It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!

January 10, 2011

Last week I required no Morphine for 4 of 7 days. Jen today and last week did strong work on my right upper thigh – the scene of 5 surgeries. It is tough sledding for both of us but clearly a big difference is showing up. At the same time I feel more stoned than if I were on the full dose of Morphine I was using when I first came out of the hospital in mid-October. The treatments, the Vivex elixir, the better quality food I have been eating and, I think, just getting closer to life essentials are together spinning the energies I call “me”.

I have had “Epiphany” a lot on my mind lately, and I suppose this is only natural as this phenomenon is culturally located in early January. I understand the Epiphany to name the experiential intersection of history and eternity, of the ever disappearing Now and the timeless spirit from which all being springs forth. Today Jen was getting at Epiphany from a very different set of metaphors – a mix of Chinese or Eastern understanding of the body, her father’s Mastery of Reiki and her own empathy.

I was bathed in the experience of being sourced from and through a deep, blue well, and, at the same time, understanding as a direction to follow that a person in her physical self has a Yin energy fire that must stay lit for body life to continue. Ordinarily we nourish this fire through breath, food and water, but there are other, more essential, paths to stoking the flame. I have long been fascinated by those who have given up eating or breathing for months or years. Today I got a sense of what that takes, though Jen says it requires enormous focus.

The rest of the day, before and after, has mainly been about the ordinary here and now. I got lots done and there is much I did not do. Mostly I am OK with that since in some sense it is not about doing, but about manifesting, in any case.

Still, as skilled a manifestor as I am, it is not yet clear enough how to tell the difference between magical thinking and having life occur – in Now – through being rather than doing. Today I saw, and I spoke it to others, that when we make a promise we must also create an integrity that will support the fulfillment of that promise. Out of this structure failure can be useful and powerful. However, without a created integrity, our promises have no more power than hope has.

Now I wrote all that in Landmark jargon. You can get how my metaphors and energies are jumbled right now. I am sure they will reorganize in some strong way in short order!

Today I completed my preparations to talk policy change with the Executive Director of Atkinson Charitable Foundation, Olivia Nuamah this Wednesday. It seems to be an important meeting. I feel that my perspective is very different from hers, yet this is likely something she respects and finds creative. Somehow the Inclusion Circle has dissipated and many of Atkinson’s key players have moved on. Atkinson now has a new Chair and ED, and the long term community developer and most recent Economic Fellow both have taken jobs more in the City of Toronto realm.

Perhaps there is space for my efforts and thinking.

January 9, 2011

As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!

I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.

At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.

Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!

A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?

So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.

Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.

Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.

Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.

I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!

January 8, 2011

There was no crane action today.

Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.

In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.

So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience

What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.

I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!

The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.

The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.

Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.

The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?

The November page from the Agenda published by Second Story Press

Inclusion Activist and Social Inventor

Judith Snow


When Judith Snow was six years old, her father gave her a rather harsh introduction to the world. He told her that when he was growing up in rural England, children who, like Judith, had severe physical disabilities were put to death; because they could not farm the land or produce food, they were considered too great a burden to bear. Judith asked why she was kept alive. Her father replied that perhaps she would be "the one to find the answer."

These grim words didn't scare Judith (she knew her parents loved her), but they did resonate. She realized that she would face many social challenges - in addition to the physical ones she already endured. She also learned that "the way to gain acceptance among strangers was to contribute to the well-being of the community."

Born in Oshawa, Ontario, in 1949, Judith was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy, when she was seven months old. The disease left her a quadriplegic and vulnerable to respiratory infections; doctors initially predicted that she would not live past the age of four. Though she would go on to prove this prognosis wildly inaccurate, growing up was not easy for Judith. Being physically dependent on others meant she was often at the mercy of their perceptions as well. Labeled as "disabled," she found herself defined by what she lacked rather than by what she had to offer.

Her parents, however, thought she deserved the same opportunities as her siblings, so, after her mother spent two years searching for a sufficiently accessible school, Judith enrolled at York University in 1968, where she went on to earn her Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Psychology and\her Master's in Clinical and Counseling Psychology. It was here that she first began to recognize - and use - her ability to effect positive change. Over the course of her studies, she'd met a number of students who also contended with physical challenges. She saw that having resources available on campus to accommodate their various needs would not only make their lives easier, hut also would allow them to devote more time and energy to the work that really mattered to them. So, in 1976, Judith applied for a grant from the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, which she used to establish Canada's first learning support center for students with disabilities. Such centers have since become a standard fixture on every college and university campus in the country.

But even while she was busy running the support center, and helping others, Judith battled major setbacks in her own life. Unable to afford an apartment or the attendants she required, she had been forced to live in a chronic care hospital amongst the critically ill and dying. Her own health and morale were flagging. It took four long years, but, with the support of friends who believed in her, Judith eventually regained her freedom and, in 1980, set another precedent as the first person in Canada to receive individualized funding from the government. It was a significant victory, giving her the means to hire assistants to help her while she carried on with the business of working and living as a contributing member of society.

And, as it turns out, Judith has had quite a lot to give. Following the landmark decision that granted her the right to manage the assistance she receives, she chaired the Attendant Care Action Coalition and designed a direct-funding model, helping hundreds of others in Canada achieve the same goal. Since then, she has undertaken a wide range of initiatives aimed at building inclusive communities and empowering those who have been marginalized by physical and intellectual disabilities: she has lent her expertise to the development of an integrated housing cooperative in Toronto; started the Laser Eagles Art Guild, an innovative program that enables those with limited mobility to express their creativity; written and co-written books, including What's Really Worth Doing and How to Do It; founded the International Association for Inclusive Citizenship; and led workshops and education programs across Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and the Caribbean. She also consults with and advises many organizations, including the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, the same foundation that funded her first inclusion project back in 1976.

Because she has done so much work on behalf of those labeled disabled, Judith is often referred to as an "advocate" for the community. But that's a term she prefers not to use. "It is not so much that we need advocates, as that we need listeners, since even those who have no voice are very good at communicating and even better at contributing.' In her ideal - and inclusive - world (which she still can envision, though there is a long way to go), everyone would be encouraged to do their part within it and would be respected "just as they are." Someone in need of assistance or support would not be considered a lesser person for that fact - because, in reality, everyone lives in relation to others. Independence does not equal power or fulfillment: "It is not more separateness that leads to vibrant lives of contribution, it is a better quality of relationship and cooperation."

January 7, 2011

Today I awoke to realize, in the barely beginning dawn, that the crane at the railway near the modular concrete boxes had disappeared out of view. I fell asleep again. Perhaps twenty minutes later I opened my eyes again and there was the crane. It had moved back into view. The sun was far from up and peering at the giant thing hurt my eyes. The many street lights, highway lamp posts and security systems on the local warehouses were mostly still on and intensely bright.

Perhaps three hours later the crane was rotating back and forth with such velocity that the hanging chain and clasps were bouncing around. Was it dancing?

Another hour and it was gliding almost imperceptively along and some twenty minutes later hovering above the larger grey boxes. Then I noticed a train of flatbeds, each with two grey cubes neatly placed. I thought for sure that the crane was unloading the flatbeds, but, no, another hour or so later when I visited my window again – this time the crane was harnessed to a cube, but looking like it was loading the train!

Which is it – loading or unloading? Who is playing this glacially slow game?

It was a beautifully sunny day and the new accountant had taken all the blank payroll cheques as well as miswriting one for this payroll. I urgently needed an alternative way to pay Mike. In my mailbox was a notice of a parcel to pick up. I was out of decaf coffee. In all this the invitation to take a walk and take frequent stops in my exceptionally accessible neighbourhood was strong. Helen and I went out.

Well –5 C (or -7 perhaps) is pretty cold, though I was doubly covered up. About a block before we reached the bank Helen was having to intermittently hold down my upper lip so I could make the speed changes necessary to get over bad curb cuts and avoid pedestrians.

I warmed up in the bank and the teller was efficiently helpful. I came away with a money order to fix the payroll problem after having ordered a new batch of cheques. The post office and decaf are only a block from the bank and we reached them without incident.

The package was not my new passport as I expected, but was from Second Story Press.

I longed for a coffee and snack at Yalla Café and to hear Michel’s stories of his New Year’s encounter with his son’s fiancée’s family at their year end party. So, thinking that I was now sufficiently warmed up, we set out to traverse the ten blocks.

Wrong! Not only did my lip get too cold but even the sip and puff pipe started to freeze up. We limped in to the café. Michel wasn’t there but his wife – Helene, warmly greeted us.

I opened my package. It contained three copies of an agenda published by Second Story Press. It features contemporary Canadian women who have made exceptional contributions. I am November!

I showed it to Helene. When she realized it was about me, she started to read it. Her English is weak and she called in another woman from the back – seemingly a cousin or friend.

The women shared one pair of reading glasses, and soon recruited the assistance of a man (the cousin’s husband it turned out) who used an I-Pod or Blackberry with a Lebanese/English translation application.

Both Helen and I, sitting quietly with our coffees, observed my story and words emerged in Lebanese. Inclusion took a leap into yet another culture. I was awe struck!

The cousins departed and Helene struggled to express her thoughts. She apologized and said she was fluent in French but not English. I still have a smattering of school French and I asked her to say it in that language. She said “fier” and I said “proud”. She clapped.

For me the connection was electric.

As we left Helene ducked into the basement and brought up a blanket to wrap me up. I rolled home a happy pink bundle.

January 6, 2011

I need to draft some stuff for the Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation so I thought I’d start here.

The task is to equip her with enough compelling analysis and evidence in two hours so that she can activate her Board to take action on their Inclusion agenda.

What can the Board actually do to empower Inclusion? Their focus is on policy change. Where would policy change actually make Inclusion more likely to occur?

What would Inclusion look like? According to the BMX model:
- B – easier, more expected, even facilitated access for “targeted” individuals and groups to claim a space with little or no interaction required
- M – person centred and individualized services, citizen and economic development focus replaces welfare, charitable and health approaches
- X – broad recognition that everyone has differences that can foster interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity AND that the very characteristics that get turned into symptoms and excuses for labelling are potential for interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity

What happened to developing a common literacy about Inclusion.

To make the leap one must understand “Giftedness” – that is that gifts are anything you have, are or do that creates an opportunity for interaction and that interaction is fundamental to relationship and so social and economic opportunity. All differences are gifts.

Anyone who believes that either they themselves or anyone else is not what they should be already is in a trap.

Tell some stories.

Explain my organization bases and my history. Explain that recreating the same sort of organizations as already exist will automatically exclude most people who are labelled.

Excluded people LOOK like they are not contributing. This is a structural limitation.

Hospitality is a powerful stimulation for Basic Inclusion. What happened to revolutionary lunches?

Economics and Inclusion? We already said uneven labour market practices were founded in social exclusion. There is an inseparable link. This is a POLICY issue.

How ACF spends its money, and currently, if ACF spends its money, is a mark of its true values. In terms of X Inclusion, withholding its resources totally indicates no willingness to enter into genuine dialogue with those whose citizenship remains unexpressed.

January 5, 2011

Yes, almost unbelievably, the repair man arrived at my Etobicoke apartment, from Pickering, before 9:00am and the chair was working by 9:15am. A loose wire somewhere! Thank God.

The new Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation is a mother of two young children, and our meeting started a few minutes late due to her handling children’s needs. It made me feel a whole lot more comfortable!

Olivia is both a respectful listener and a great listener. She comes from a UK culture where disability advocacy is the rage – considered to be the ultimate activity for a person who has been labelled disabled. At first she gave me the impression of being dumbfounded to hear that I think advocacy can be a trap. By the time that our meeting was over she invited me back for a focused conversation about how she might guide the Atkinson board in the direction of Inclusion. We scheduled a time!

Right now seems to be a gestation period – a plateau. The difference is that this plateau is at a distinctly different – higher? – level than I have ever been before.

On the one hand people are listening and doing like never before. Mike is ACTUALLY preparing the book’s first draft with me; people ARE reading this blog; Kimberly is REALLY preparing to do tracker training; Paul is INCLUDING my support needs in his plans for developing Laser Eagles and CAVE.

On the other hand just as I am myself starting to give WPIT more of my attention Atkinson and CAVE are taking notice and offers to pay me to work out of town are starting to materialize. Could it be that I suddenly will have to choose – travel to make money and be heard versus sustainability at home while I/we give these new beginnings a chance to grow to new maturity.

Is it true that both – out of town expert and local, reliable leader – are possible? How can this truly be possible?

It’s late. Another short piece – I apologize. I think you get the gist. In order to not drop back and hide, to stand for “All of it” as Landmartians say, I need to be open to strategies opening up that right now I cannot imagine.

Good night!

January 4, 2011

It was a double whammy sort of day. The back/leg pain is strong, then my chair broke down. Now I am lying in bed, and so is Mike, who also has felt crappy (and crabby) all day.

What is authentic expression right now? Whining, bitching, sleeping?

What is keeping my word right now? Blogging, figuring out how to get to the Atkinson meeting anyway, stating openly what isn’t going to get done?

It’s not going to be a two pager right now. The body/mind is too tired.

I can imagine a support circle that honoured my vision and my perspective, that fully got why I can’t stay home and play safe, AND worked with others who say they can imagine me reaching the world through video conference to make this years’ old dream come true. Then I wouldn’t have to be figuring out how I can be travelling ten weeks of this spring coming. Where are these pushy people who will make it happen?

I think, at the root of it, I haven’t stood enough for myself. Now I will. It is urgent!

January 3, 2011

There is a little tug-o’-war going on in me these days. The “I don’t wanna’s” are pretty strong – I don’t wanna:
- fundraise
- have a support circle
- cut down on gluten and drink more fluids – not caffeinated ones at that
- invite people to the Completion Evening of Wisdom
- catch up on e-mail
- set up paying gigs for February and March
- get my eyes checked
- etc.

I DO wanna too, and generally I am doing a little better than 50% which is the level I was at for years.

Why the ambivalence? Well, besides not wanting to “stick out” I realized as I was waking up this morning that I have been reluctant to be honest and open about my life-long sense, strong and clear since I was twelve, that I have a personal relationship with God and that God has given me a mission – to create Inclusion, especially so that people who don’t speak can be seen and supported as contributors to society.

But this is a fact for me – one that has shaped all my life. Still I cannot imagine saying in public, or in front of my circle, certainly not frequently and bravely: “Got wants this and I want to do it!”

This reluctance to sound like a religious weirdo constantly gives strength to the “I don’t wanna’s”. It’s better to not stick out, but rather to look like I’m motivated by good thinking and research, to seem like I just want the same things as most people.

But probably I am not fooling anybody anyway. Clearly I DON’T want the same things as most people!

Being at the Terracotta Warriors exhibit last Friday reinforced deeply for me the realization that most people do not know that there is an alternative path to peace besides war. The visible evidence was impactful - that fighting for a stable society and community with abundance and opportunity for all is a way of every culture that goes back multiple millennia. It was also powerfully clear that this way is wasteful, bloody and ineffective.

The other clear message was that history takes no account of the needs, desires or contributions of ordinary people. They live and die hearing that their sole contribution to peace on earth is to support war, up to losing the lives of loved ones and themselves.

I have another way. It takes many ordinary people to build and sustain Inclusion. The good news is that when they do so they also build abundant economy and community, and eliminate the fear and inadequacy that lead to war.

Can I gather enough courage, faith, people and resources to get the message across so that all ordinary people know they have a choice and they know how to implement that choice?

January 2, 2011

Sorry!
Not tonight dear. I've got a headache!
(Not really - just been doing other stuff.)

January 1, 2011

It has been a day of rest, play and building tools of accomplishment for 2011.

The rest is needed. I have had wheezing and an odd swelling in my left arm and hand. Considering how many people have been down with the flu recently, and how big the conversation has been lately about my death, it seemed important to consciously do stuff to tell myself that I am taking good and successful care of myself. So I have been in bed all day, peeing whenever I had the slightest inkling. The wheezing is gone and the swelling down.

The play consists of three Farmville harvests and all that entails, about five games of electronic Price is Right with Kevin my 11 year old neighbour, teasing Mike (not too much – he’s really tired from last night), some FreeCell and contemplation of greater sexual expression!

Building tools is a large piece that won’t be done all in one day. It involves opening 2011 folders, setting up a year-long calendar with everything in it – in five colours! – that I already know I am committed to and organizing my promises and related resources. I set up two tables – one for this week and one for next.

Yesterday I completed the year with the typical review of what I intend my year to look like. This work, of course, is required to be able to set up the tools. For all that 2010 was a year of dramatic events, little has changed in how I intend to live my life. This is my “To Do” banner: "I am the possibility of interesting. I am committed to World Peace through Inclusion. My word creates the world my community lives. I create with beauty, truth and goodness."

These words are essentially the same as those for 2010. I am certainly committed to World Peace through Inclusion, to my coop, my personal stability and to having a superlative staff of personal assistants. These are as clear, or even more clear than ever.

What is new is my commitment to my own expression. Hence this blog and a nearly completed first draft of my autobiography. It is also in focus that WPIT needs a real organization – I am willing to believe that the concept that peace is available through Inclusion will not disappear entirely as I let go of the reins.

And so, as I wrote two days ago, now is the time to push for money. So many of the 2011 tools now in use or in creation are intended to keep me asking for financial resources – for WPIT and for my personal assistants.

My financial coach had me realize that I did not fully realize the cost to me and to the world that I don’t have the $6 million to stabilize WPIT. I am used to imagining and working toward finding enough money month by month to keep my home, health, car and staff. My immediate work is to get crystal clear on the earth changing difference that world peace would make and how uniquely available that peace is through Inclusion.

The more clear that state is the more powerful I will be at finding the people and resources that WPIT needs.

Happy New Year!