Occupy Life

The news is all abuzz with the sit in protests that started a month ago in New York City known as "Occupy Wall Street."  They sparked movements all over the world, and they have even come to our small town for the past 10 days.  The occupiers  speak of being part of the 99% whose lives are being negatively impacted by 1% of the population who control resources. 

Some of the complaints I have heard about this movement is that they are not clear in what they want, or how to get there.  In Nonviolent Communication speak, they have not made clear and doable requests, or at least that the media has reported. 

Requests though are only one component of nonviolent communication.  Other components are observations, feelings, and needs.  What is happening in the streets is a widespread emotional response to global and local economies that that are heavily directed at serving those with power and control, and not at human flourishing as a whole.  I believe it is important for people, as individuals or as a community, to give full reign to the emotions in their bodies, for in this way they might discern what their needs might be. Out of this connection can arise results.  But we need to allow spaciousness for feelings and needs to arise, such as what is happening all over the world.  I imagine that the gathered feel anger and frustration for they so long for equality and fairness, as well as health for earth and her beings.

Looking at the reports of the crowds, and in some cases, the small gatherings around the world, what feelings come up for you when you think of our economic and environmental situation?  What needs come up that correspond with these feelings?  Allowing yourself spaciousness and time, are there any requests you would make of yourself or others?

Part of allowing yourself spaciousness is to watch the "should" talk. Are you telling yourself that you should be protesting yourself instead of attending to your daily concerns?  Perhaps you are thinking of what the protesters should be doing, or the people against whom they are protesting?

Should language is telling a story that leads us away from our feelings and connecting with our needs, and the needs of others. It places a demand on how others should act, instead of inviting them into a place of connecting to your needs and theirs, which is life serving.

If you have a sense of "shoulding" I invite you to consider this exercise.

Think for a  moment where you are "shoulding" on others or yourself. 

Breathe.

What are you feeling?

Breathe.

What are you current needs?

Breathe.

What request, if any, would you make of yourself and others?

For myself this little exercise of breathing in between NVC components adds spaciousness and more lightness to my body. Heck, even describing this exercise now to you added to my sense of connecting to life by thinking of needs, and experiencing the living energy of needs. It helped me occupy life more fully. 

What helps you occupy life?

Loving the Complaint and the Demand

Percy Wakes Me

Mary Oliver

Percy wakes me and I am not ready...

Now he's eager for action:  a walk, then breakfast....

He is sitting on the kitchen counter where he is not supposed to be.

How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you needed me, to wake me.

He thought he would hear a lecture and deeply  his eyes begin to shine.

He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.

He squirms and squeals; he has done something that he needed and now he hears that it's okay.

I scratch his ears, I turn him over and touch him everywhere.  He is

wild with the okayness of it.  Then we walk, then he gas has breakfast, and he is happy.

This is a poem about Percy.

This is a poem about more than Percy.

Think about it.

In my spiritual practice of nonviolent communication I often struggle with accepting with ease the complaints of others.  When I first hear what they want, often expressed as a demand, or worse, as whining, I don't have much empathy for others or for myself.  It's also hard for me to get in touch with my gratitude that they let me know what was going on for them, for I know that when someone asks something of me, often in a an unskillful way, they are just letting me know what would make their life wonderful.  This is such a great gift, but so frequently I am reluctant to open the gift to appreciate how life flows through them.  Instead I have "shoulds" going on in my story telling brain, "Why can't they think of anyone else but themselves?" 

Reading this poem today, I sense a break through, a vision.  People around me are like bounding Percies, inviting me to make their life wonderful.  How lovely for them, and for me, if I could reply in word, thought, and action so that they could know how wonderful they are and the okayness of their needs.

Oh how our lives might shine.  Though we may not be ready, may we awake to this possibility today.

To whom would you like to communicate "okayness?"

Compassionate Communication for All Beings

Dr. Ursula Aragunde Kohl, me and participants at the CC Workshop in Puerto Rico

Last weekend I was in Puerto Rico offering two separate workshops on Compassionate Communication. One was to the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Project and the other to a conglomeration of animal welfare, social services, and faith organizations in San Juan.  This was the first time I had chosen to concentrate on organizations that deal with nonhuman animals.  My goal in so doing was to support and nourish the humans so that they in turn could help all beings flourish.

In my home faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism I am also gearing up to offer workshops in Compassionate Communication to those interested in the interweaving justice issues that include nonhuman animals.  I will do this as part of the Reverence for Life Program that the Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry is offering our congregations.  Now is the time to struggle with how we covenant with earth and her beings as our association of congregations deals with the Study Action Item: Ethical Eating and Environmental Justice.  In the last few weeks congregations and list serves have been abuzz with commenting on the Draft Statement of Conscience that deals with this compelling and complex topic.  Comments on the draft are due February 1^st and we as an association will vote on the final draft at General Assembly in June, 2011.

How shall we come up with a statement that includes the wide diversity of who we are and yet challenges us to hold the needs of all species ever more tenderly?

My response to this question, at both the workshops and to my fellow Unitarian Universalists is this:

It’s important to think of how animals feel and suffer, how their evolution has brought them to where they are , and what they are thinking as we research how their brains work.  Yet, we can never know what is “best” in the morass of ethical vagueness that cloaks humanity.  Let this complexity be not a death shroud for any.  Instead, let us lift up the few things we can know: 

All beings have needs that connect us in an interdependent web of inherent worth and dignity

We can bring kindness to every moment.

Everything is a practice ground for the skills of compassion.

May this be our prayer in intention, word, and action in the months to come.

A Fragile World Order

In the last few weeks we have heard plenty about the WikiLeaks and the appropriateness of exposing 250,000 diplomatic cables.  I was struck by the response by David Brooks, commentator for the New York Times.  After reading the cables he said, "Israeli and Arab diplomats can be seen reacting sympathetically and realistically towards one another. The Americans in the cables are generally savvy and honest. . .We depend on these conversations for the limited order we enjoy every day."

I couldn't agree more. 

Now just imagine if these conversations  were full of no difference between wrongdoing and rightdoing. What if the needs of "enemies" were as equally valued as those of "friends?"  What if we ran our world order on an economy of equally valued needs, and not brokerage of power and resources?

If we humans can produce such understanding  as Mr. Brooks sees in these people who are in the midst of such power and politics, imagine what we might do with a nonviolent consciousness running through the diplomatic corps? 

Yes, it's fragile now, but in my alternate scenario, it would be flourishing.

Winter Holiday Telephone Seminar - Giving Your Relationships the Gift of Presence

I will be introducing the basics of NVC through exploration of our relationships and how we might be totally present. As many of us come into the winter holidays, we may find ourselves triggered by those for whom we care. By tapping into the consciousness of being present to needs, we may cultivate the art of "choice" and hence liberate and ourselves from past behavior patterns that disconnect and distance us from others in our lives.

Friday 17, December, 7 - 8:30 p.m.

Let me know if you plan to attend so I can send you the call in information and the handout.

Bounding Out on New Paths

In the Pasture

Mary Oliver

In the first day of snow, when the white curtain of winter began to stream down,

The house where I lived grew distant and at first it seemed imperative to hurry home.

But later, not much later, I began to see that soft snowbound house as I would always remember it,

And I would linger a long time in the pasture turning  circles, staring

At all the crisp, exciting, snow-filled roads that led away.

Memories are inconclusive. With each recall, our brains change the version of the previous until we cannot know for sure what happened.  We can only know how we interpret events of the past in the present moment.

Given this, it does seem as if we can change the past. For we have today to place a shroud of memory over our regrets, our misgivings, or our loss.  We can let go of the stories of disconnection or hyperindividualism and infuse our stories with the meaning of interdependence.

For instance, perhaps you recall a time when a friend said or did something that resulted in harm to you.  Each time you bring up that pain or discomfort from the past, you augment your judgment about the friend, yourself, or the human species as a whole.  You withdraw from that relationships or close your heart to them and to yourself.  It is like burrowing into a cold house where you wish for life to be different .  Looking out of the frosted windows of our heart, you spin fantasizes of how it should be. 

Today though let go of blame and instead see how you are the other person.  There is no wrongdoing or right doing from the perspective of the pasture, only a field where we see the beauty that is the world, is also each of us.  We each choose strategies to meet the same beautiful needs of love, connection, and community. Some of these strategies are more skillful and produce more benefits than harm. Other strategies are disasters.  Regardless, beauty dwells in each of us and motivates our actions.

With this in mind, we open up new possibilities of choices in our relationships. Perhaps you will choose to call your friend, or to be at peace with what happened.  We are neither victim nor evil perpetrator. We are each other and this beautiful world, and we can choose how to act from this day forward. We may take roads that  lead away from memories that bind us.

When have you seen a memory change over time?  Has this served you well?

Restorative Circles

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop on Restorative Circles.  This practice, if I could sum it up in one sentence seems to be about this; we’re going to fight anyway, so let’s make a place for conflict to happen with an intention to value the needs of all people.  The inciting incident that calls together a circle is not cause for dehumanizing another. It is a just a strategy that one person choose to meet a universal need that all humans share.  The circle gathers so that we might see what harm came from the incident, and through telling our stories, find a way to rehumanize each other – that is, to get at the value and meaning underlying the harmful strategies.  The hope is that if we can see that there is a positive motivation behind all actions, we might find the space to formulate restorative actions plans to heal wounds, and change behavior patterns. 

Though only my first exposure to Restorative Circles, I see how it is a natural “next step” for the practice of Nonviolent Communication. These circles, founded on the consciousness of peace, compassion, and justice as we see in NVC, offer a structure for changing organizations and societies.  The scope is beyond the individual level, for integrated in the restorative theory is that all humans within a society are impacted by conflict, and hence, “responsible” in that as receivers of conflict, we each have a choice on how to act.  To not act is also a choice.

I choose to act for restoration, healing, and change.  A restorative circle, however, takes place within a restorative system.  So my individual choice is not enough.  I need a community that elects to journey with me as we commit together for restorative justice.

Now the question before me and perhaps before you as well is this.  Which community?  My family?  My congregation or association of congregations (Unitarian Universalist Association)?  The town in which I live? The readers of this blog?

As Dominic Barter, the founder of this system said while in Atlanta,  "Why ruin a good question with an answer.?"  I ponder on.

Which community might you choose for restorative work?