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.

February 8, 2011

Well I can see that I am going to have to shift something very soon. I’m exhausted, my email inbox is full of over 160 messages, many of them unread, there are still many things to do before we leave and the near future promises to open up with even more possibilities and projects. After Paul Aiello has publicly announced that the ROM has committed to putting up my art exhibit there has been a flood of congratulations and expectation.

I have the same expectations myself, really. It is certainly my intention that this exhibit will form the foundation of a new capacity to speak Inclusion into the world but already I can see that I am not up to fulfilling this potential. I need ways to strip away activities and commitments – not as giving them up but as in having them fulfilled without my personal attention. Otherwise I will not have enough privacy and rest.

Gloria’s right – much must be given away. From my perspective this is no small task. There are so many intricacies that I have brought to the table on my own behalf in the last twenty or so years. For example, today I spent a good hour resolving for the third time the discomfort of my new accountant over the fact that I will indeed overspend my personal assistant budget in the near future. I’ve reassured her that what I need her to do is to tell me the state that the budget is in but not to panic. I know that I have avenues – some already activated – to bring new money into the picture. But these potentials are very difficult for brand new people to see and so I spend as much energy supporting them as if I were doing it myself, or at least that’s how it feels.

Nevertheless the time has come. The potential of the ROM exhibit is too great to try to keep it inside of my own scope. I no longer represent myself.

This is a major reason why I have just seen The King’s Speech for the third time, besides that Bill Worrell had not yet seen it before tonight. There comes a time when a genuine leader is no longer representing them self. This time has certainly landed on me at this point. And so I must distinguish between speaking and doing what is required of me as a leader and speaking and doing what is required of me as a person. It would seem that truly great people somehow manage to do both at the same time, and also take it to such a level that their influence becomes cross-cultural. It is not that I particularly want to do this. It is just clear that it is within my grasp and so history compels me.

It will be simpler next week. By this time next Tuesday we will be getting ready for a painting day in Savannah. At least for a short time I will be left in peace.

It feels to me like I am complaining right now. I’m not really. This is exactly what I want and have wanted since I was very young. The gap that I am experiencing comes not from being pushed into a life that I don’t want but simply that this is required of me to shift how I do things so that many many more people can be involved. Currently I do not feel like I have the time and resources to expand in two different directions. This is something to be invented.

I am not able to stay awake now. Goodnight.

February 5, 2011

Pretty soon I have to deal with the fact that I have taken on more to do than I can possibly manage. I can hear Gloria saying (loudly!) “Give it away!” I feel like I have been giving stuff away but clearly there is some kind of exponential factor going on here. The more you give away the more you’ve got to give away. I guess that’s what abundance is all about.

Giving stuff away is also a dynamic process. The gift must be accepted. And then there’s that difficult space – at least for me – giving something away doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want to take it back.

Yesterday gave me a good example of this. I have formed an informal partnership with two of my Wisdom City Team colleagues. One is an excellent networker and through her we got to interview David Tsibouchi, a former Cabinet Minister in the Conservative Provincial Government. Things were going well in my view and then this woman turned the conversation into “disability” and claimed that we don’t have an identity as the three of us together. Although this is true in a formal business way, we had already talked about how we have a common accomplishment as being team leaders in the production of the Wisdom course and have international accomplishments that we can lay claim to. Anyways, I had that moment of feeling that I was being left in an untenable position of, first of all, appearing to not know what I’m doing and secondly, being drawn back into the M Level disability conversation.

So what I’m saying is that I have given away unilateral control and suddenly want to snatch it back because it looks to me like the situation could only go in a wrong direction.

It seems like no matter how good I get at communicating who I am and what I want, not to mention what I have to offer, these things don’t get remembered or don’t get appreciated in a way that supports me to move the Inclusion action forward. Now I know that’s not strictly true, maybe not even sort of true – I’m just letting you know how it seems in a situation like that.

In other words I want to keep control over my own legacy. I don’t want to give it away even though that’s what needs to happen with any legacy. It’s a real pain in the ass to keep on hearing over and over again that I’m a leader in the disability world.

Actually I can name you at least half a dozen people who are leaders in the “disability” world who would flatly say that I’m not a leader in the “disability” world. I am actively excluded from many organizations and opportunities in that network. I don’t toe the party line, I’m not doing things that members do, and I’m not reliable to keep within the framework of that type of organization. I would exclude me if I were a leader among people who call themselves disabled.

Perhaps this is a mark that I am actually having an impact – one of those conversations I was having with myself when I was very sick in the hospital. On the one hand I am a hot potato among the people who are promoting a “disability” view of the world – on the other I am being recruited by people who think that Inclusion can be used as a leg up in the “disability” world. Such folks are going to be upset with me indeed!

It’s fascinating and puzzling to me that the ROM has gone to such great lengths to include me in their ponderous planning cycle. It is apparent that three or four key individuals went to bat energetically so that my exhibit would get established inside of 2011. Although I doubt that these people understand Inclusion the way I do – at least not yet – it is clear that they can see that I am offering something different and that I have a way of expressing that is concrete enough and clear enough for the general public to be able to get a flavour of it in a highly visual context.

For me this is a genuine achievement. Less than ten years ago I couldn’t get the words out of my own mouth – now I have an audience as well as enemies and followers, albeit some of those followers have little clue what it is they are following.

I feel I must explore what can be given away and what must be hung on to. It’s no good for me to try and do as much as I’m doing. Too much falls off the plate and I will eventually get too tired, although I’m remarkably feisty right now!

February 3, 2011

It looks like Kimberly is back playing Farmville. Yay!

The crane was dancing this morning again. During the night sometime several more cubes arrived and all of them were rearranged. In the further distance one can now see that a whole new layer of cubes has been added to the prison, a little southwest of the rest of the building. Perhaps there is an entire new section going up. How big are sixteen hundred cubes when they are stacked up!?!

The bits and pieces for the Savannah trip are beginning to take shape. Mike and I are getting down to the wire, which means organizing things like travel insurance, lodging down and back, scheduling the nights that I will do workshops for Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy. On Tuesday I “acquired” two small painting kits with brushes and mini tubes of all the basic colours. These kits came inside of canvases that Laser Eagles had bought at a dollar store. They were going to be discarded because we use 2-litre size bottles of paint. I get a chuckle when I think about how often I have found significant resources by just such acquisition – from picking up garbaged furniture, to taking other people’s leftovers after a restaurant meal, to sorting through clothes that others are about to recycle. I wonder if I will post notices in the ROM exhibit of all the paintings that were created out of scrap materials. It might very well fit the theme!

Part of the kit that I was assembling today for Savannah is my medications for diabetes, pain support and nutrition (chewable vitamins and calcium). It’s kind of like gathering my armour for a battle. These create my sense of security and safety as much as knowing that there will be enough money. The last important $500 came in this morning with a commitment from Peter Block to hire me for one morning on the way down. It is like putting the last brick in the wall and I bless his generousity.

I believe this will be the sixth time that I have journeyed to Savannah. It forms a kind of rhythm in my life. Savannah is the place I go to to warm up, to eat well, to feel great with good friends, to see the Spanish moss and the pelicans and, perhaps most importantly, to become clear on what slavery does to human relationships and creativity. It was in Savannah that I learned that I am a slave. I learned this listening to a man present his book about how slavery has been recreated in the United States. The fundamental element of slavery is the buying and selling of a person’s body¸ especially without the permission of that person. Of course, people who are labelled with disability are bought and sold constantly and most often have very limited or no choice about their location. I myself cannot leave Ontario for more than five weeks in a year. This would not be considered a huge problem to most people who are labelled disabled, but since the majority of work I have been doing in my life has been outside of Canada, I have frequently been an outlaw. It used to be that people turned a blind eye on my behalf but that ended just before Gabor, Erin and I left for the Tour in 2008. Now I must be careful!

It is paradoxically refreshing to be in a place where people are polite but very explicit about the intention to keep racism and slavery alive and well. The clarity of the experience allows for genuine dialogue. It also allows for grounding reflection on the personal experience. This, of course, gives me a solid base to become more creative. The wishy washy soft talk of Canadians about economic imprisonment can leave me and others quite befuddled.

Anyway, it is almost time and I can feel so strongly the urge to leave!

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 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 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 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 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 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?

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!