February 12, 2011

It’s the day before I leave for Savannah, with Mike Skubic and Christopher Lee. Things are a bit chaotic around here!

Once again I missed blogging yesterday. I was at the “Work of Hearts” Gala, a fundraiser for Laser Eagles. I think for now it is just better to say that I will blog every four days at least, or twice a week. Until I get my road life back under my belt I don’t want to give the impression that I’m simply choosing not to blog. Rather I am re-establishing the “rhythm” that gets it all done. – (preferably making it all look easy at the same time!)

The Gala was fabulous and a real testament both to what people can accomplish even when they don’t necessarily see “eye-to-eye”, and to Kimberly Fu’s capacity as an event organizer. It was elegance at its best and done on shoe string. Regardless of how much money was made (I have no idea!) the essential value of Laser Eagles was communicated far and wide.

I had a real sense of people working together, as well. Mike Skubic and Helen Tweddle jumped in – with my Dad’s car – to make Greg’s transportation work out. Other tasks were getting handled with little fanfare. It made community seem real.

For me this was all on top of a week of last minute rushes, dramas, inadequate schedulings and opportunities – lost and found. It seemed that I still had only two double bookings to resolve, and they both worked out rather miraculously.

A sense of a fundamental shift is there. The new ODSP caseworker called me to get help in working out my complex financial situation with the clear intention of making it work for me. Olivia passed MY proposal around to all members of the Inclusion Circle. The media CAME to the Laser Eagles event. It feels like I’m actually being taken seriously!

I have wanted to and thought about blogging all the way through, but not had the energy and focus when the time came. I really SHOULD get one of those voice recorders that can be downloaded and converted to a text file.

Anyway the adventure has truly begun. The car is washed, gassed and loaded. Nearly everything is done, except the sleep.

Soon I will be painting, and revealing – mostly to myself – what message the rising Mimico Correctional Centre is trying to evoke.

I guess what really shifted is that I am willing, or nearly so, to be a leader with a distinct point of view, a defined vision of what the next world needs to be like, the beginnings of a strategy, and the willingness to have others improve it.

It is late and my eyes are drooping, my legs aching and my head fuzzy. Let the adventure begin.

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 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 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 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.