Tag: Trailblazing

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Blazing New Trails: Why Blaze Together?

11 Juneau, Alaska May 2015This is my fourth blog about Blazing New Trails, specifically about a 15-year partnership between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money and our most recent step deeper into our work together – the joint board meeting last February. At least, like the other three, it was supposed to be about the joint board meeting. Instead, all four are about the journey to get us ready for the meeting. I’ve been trying to take the direct path in to write about our week together, but, try as I might, this trail isn’t a direct one.

Trails of transformation, trails of effective and sustainable partnership, trails powerful enough to support a shift in consciousness are rarely straight. Or fast. And they aren’t simple to tame into mere words.

Organizations come together all the time, partnering for different reasons. Why is itpath 5 that this particular partnership is cutting a uniquely bold trail, passing through my heart and the heart of our world? What does each organization bring that is multiplied and strengthened when we work together? While still continuing the work of each individual organization, what new is emerging in the this growing partnership?

Both Wisdom & Money and Be Present, Inc. are seeking root level change. Not charity, not even policy change, but a change of consciousness beginning with the individual and continuing through the community, organizations and systems. Both organizations are committed to living the same justice and transformation—personally and within the organizational structure—that we seek in our programs.  Both are committed to slowing down and taking the time to be curious when something emerges that feels out of alignment, and to compassionately and consistently support each other in our movement.

This is a demanding process. It requires gargantuan patience and an ability to see the true Spirit of each other and ourselves no matter what behavior has emerged in the moment. All aspects of our work seek movement toward freedom, justice, equality and spiritual transformation.

That commitment to continual alignment of the interior and the external, the personal and the global, the organizational and the programmatic is the only way I know that we can move together toward manifesting the world we long for. This is no pipe dream about what might happen far off in the future. It is already happening in both organizations and within friends and partners in this work. However, it doesn’t stop there. As both individuals and these two organizations continue to work in widening circles—the families, communities, organizations and systems where we live our lives—the change ripples out farther than I can imagine.

This sort of work that requires both waking up to and seeing where behaviors too Banyon tree and bone with bookoften deemed normal and right in our culture but are actually disrespectful and unjust is very hard to do alone. That is why I stepped into Wisdom & Money and Be Present, Inc. seventeen years ago. And why I stayed.  Since my awakening in my late20s (the topic of my book Big Topics at Midnight) I’ve been searching for partners committed to walking this path. It hasn’t been an easy search, but I knew I’d found strong partners in these two organizations.

Organizations that also recognized each other as partners.

Slowly over the last 15 years, these two organizations have taken one step after another to support each other, learn from each other and, last February, to join together for the Trailblazing Joint Board of Directors meeting.

It has taken me months longer than I expected to find words for the power of the growing partnership of Be Present and Wisdom & Money. My next blog in this series will look at the Trailblazing Board meeting and our current glimpse of the future of our work together.

 

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Blazing New Trails: From Subversion to Spiritual Transformation

Fifteen years ago, my teen-aged daughter Laura introduced me to Sara Evans’ song “I Could Not Ask for More.” Years later, this was the song I’d been singing for weeks in anticipation of the Trailblazing Boards of Directors Meeting. (see my previous blog). I was thrilled that Laura was excited to fly across the country with me to participate fully in this groundbreaking meeting.

Waiting to board our flight to Atlanta, I received an email response to a question posed within the Wisdom & Money board. I gasped.

The response brought the months long collaborative process of a joint leadership team from Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money into question. I knew that this email had the potential to destroy the collaborative partnership we’d worked so hard, and beautifully, to build.

This was just the sort of boulder in the road that used to spook the wild horse in me, sending me riding in circles of fear convinced that all would be lost.

Not this time. I knew the truth of the partnership we had all walked together. I was well practiced in the transformative power of our core practices of the Be Present Empowerment Model and Christian Wisdom practices. In addition, despite the message I was reading, I also knew how powerfully the email’s author had been an active and enthusiastic participant in all our preparations.

Cruising at 35,000 feet, my emotions began to settle. I wasn’t yet sure exactly how we would address this issue, but I was clear that moments like these were ripe with potential for transformation: personally, within our Wisdom & Money and Be Present partnership, and rippling out into our culture.

Only a few days remained before we would all be together. Many were already on their own circuitous trail to Atlanta, so phone calls weren’t possible. We also had a full agenda for our time together.

But I was clear. I was one of the three board chairs tasked with opening this joint board meeting, a historic moment in our long partnership. Powering through as if nothing had happened doesn’t work for me anymore and is definitely out of alignment with our shared values.

Together, we needed to find time to meet together and walk through this moment, trusting that transformation was possible. Even at this eleventh hour.

Agility is key when blazing new trails.

Those of us who were in Atlanta early began to image how we could have the needed conversations both with the Wisdom & Money Board (the recipients of the emails) and the Trailblazing Joint Leadership Team (those whose work together had been brought into question). The agenda was examined carefully. Alternatives considered. Topics consolidated. A plan slowly emerged that allowed time for the needed conversations while still holding to the essential parts of our board meeting. Each member was contacted and, when possible given traveling constraints, included in the conversation. All occurred in less than two days.

The joint leadership team agreed to meet early on the first day of our board meeting. First, we wanted to understand what was said and intended in the email itself.

The author shared the he’d had his own pondering time at 35,000 feet as he flew toward Atlanta, and he began to share the fruit of his reflections. Without deflecting or minimizing, he spoke clearly about his actions and his understanding of what happened that lead to the email and his awareness of the dangerous “subverting” impact of his words.

We all listened, honoring his struggle and his process. Then we each shared honestly about the impact his email had on us.

Witnessing the steadiness and power of the author’s process of coming to new sight –  both what propelled the writing of the author’s email and his articulation of his own movement to clarity and integrity – was beautiful beyond words. Together, we fully used one of our joint core practices, the Be Present Empowerment Model, in a way that supported and expanded his own personal leadership development and strengthened our partnership.

That which could have destroyed instead strengthened our partnership.

The following evening the Wisdom & Money Board of Directors had a separate meeting to address the issues in the email. Many on the board are new in using the Be Present Empowerment Model and had limited experience in the level of collaboration that ran through the Trailblazing leadership.

Most had not noticed anything awry with the email.

It would have been very easy for most of the board to have taken the comment in the email about the limited collaboration at face value. We’ve all experienced partnerships with skewed power dynamics, and too often we accept that as inevitable. I knew that it was important for the full Wisdom & Money Board to both to witness the writer of the email’s own emerging clarity about his behavior and to experience the transformative potential of our shared use of the Be Present Empowerment Model.

Again, he stepped in clearly. His insight into his behavior had deepened.

That which could have destroyed, and often does in organizations and partnerships, strengthened our shared trailblazing skills. It flowed through our Wisdom & Money Board out into the larger Trailblazing Boards of Directors meeting, thereby rippling out into our culture, so starving for just and equitable ways to be in partnership.

Stay tuned for the next episode of Blazing New Trails… Hold onto your hats!

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Blazing New Trails: Juggling Hats

Nine months ago, my Texas roots were in high gear. I struggled to grip the reigns as two organizations dear to my heart began preparations to come together for a Trailblazing Boards of Directors meeting in February. As we galloped toward our time together in Atlanta, I tried to hold onto my different hats—my Wisdom & Money Board Chair hat, my Be Present Vision-Based Social Change Fund Development Co-chair hat and my own personal hat as a participant in both organizations. That’s a lot of hats for a two-handed woman.

Part of my preparation was to let go of my attempts to grip all the reigns, while simultaneously learning the art of hat juggling in the service of stepping deeply into collaboration.

In my last blog, written just before I headed to The Trailblazing Boards of Directors Meeting, I wrote, “Here I am. Living a dream that has grown far beyond anything I could ask or imagine… It is not just possible, it is happening…right now.”

This gathering blazed new trails of partnership between Wisdom & Money and Be Present, Inc. In these times when so many partnerships and alliances are shattering on the national and local stage, we faithfully walked a way of collaboration that supported both organizations to fully embody their unique vision and mission while manifesting new opportunities of joint work together.

First, the cast of characters in this Trailblazing adventure: Clearing the trail are leaders within the networks of Be Present and Wisdom & Money. It is an “unlikely” organizational partnership: Be Present raises the visibility of Black Women’s leadership–from its founding to now–of a diverse, collaborative network of leaders. Wisdom & Money is a network rooted in Christianity that convenes wealthy people, almost all of whom are white, to engage with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation at the personal, communal and systemic levels. Wisdom & Money understands that the journey of spiritual transformation leads to diverse partnerships and sees working with wealth as one part of the larger societal movement of spiritual and economic transformation and justice. A part of Be Present’s mission is to collaborate with other nonprofits to advance a more resilient and equitable society.

Second, the road we’ve already traveled together: We didn’t just meet. This partnership began fifteen years ago in the midst of a crisis within Wisdom & Money, then called Harvest Time. Shortly before stepping into Harvest Time, I’d glimpsed Be Present’s ability to walk boldly into the middle of what looked like a hot mess (in this case, an honest and hard conversation about race taking place in a large, racially diverse gathering). The process I witnessed supported everyone involved to speak what was true for them, as together we collectively found a way through the discussion in a manner that honored everyone’s spirit and was faithful to the vision we were seeking. I was convinced that Be Present could help Harvest Time navigate its crisis in a way that could help us live more boldly into our mission.  Again, I rode in full speed ahead (though it took time) to support a consultancy with Be Present because I’d tasted the power of the work of Harvest Time (and now Wisdom & Money) in transforming the individual heart/Spirit and the economic system. I wanted the organization to thrive.

Much slower than I’d hoped for (but I can now see the rightness of the timing) began with hiring Be Present as a consultant. After a general consultancy, Harvest Time stepped into a Human Resources consultancy which supported Harvest Time to develop a prophetic and practical organizational policy and structure to make sure the Vision and Mission aligned with our organizational practices. In addition, we traveled the wild and demanding road together in a nine-year partnership in Mississippi.

The key that Be Present brought to Harvest Time/Wisdom & Money was the Be Present’s Empowerment Model, a model powerful enough to provide a process for the transformative work both organizations are doing: Stepping OUTSIDE the distress of oppression, our own historical distress and the culture’s glaring oppression. Each time we take that step, we find ourselves standing more INSIDE the clarity of our true and unique selves and thus more able to listen to others in a conscious and present state. From there, we can build effective relationships and sustaining true alliances.

In other words, we’ve been building this partnership for a long time. We were ready for this next step of collaboratively preparing for our Trailblazing Boards of Director’s meeting. A joint team of leaders from both organizations spent months collaboratively crafting an agenda where both organizations fully shared practices and leadership, as together we envisioned the shared trail ahead of us.

Drawing by Khara Scott-Bey

By early February, the time of preparations had passed. I was saddled up and ready to ride toward our meeting in Atlanta, spurred on by Sara Evan’s singing “I Could Not Ask for More” to all my gathering partners.

*I returned from this Trailblazing Boards of Directors meeting in mid-February. Once home, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote…but the experience and all that had opened up, both for me and organizationally, needed a bit of time to settle into me before I was ready to share my writings publicly. More “reports from the trail” to follow.

For more info about how these two trailblazing organizations support my work, check out my refocused and expanded website—specifically The Practices tab.

 

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Blazing New Trails: Holding a Dream until it Manifests

Three decades ago, I was gifted with a dream that would change the course of my life.

Let me be clear. What I dreamed had few details or specific images. Instead, it was an elusive, yet compelling foreshadowing of a particular possibility, a possibility poised and ready to be gifted to the world.

In 1983, Howard and I and our 9-month-old son Paul moved to California. My plan was to get my master’s degree and become a professor of physical therapy. Unbeknownst to me, this was not the plan. Our first Sunday in Palo Alto the three of us went to a small Methodist church near campus and, over the next 9 months, I was exposed to what would become my life’s work. The seed of my dream was planted deep within me.

There was Christian wisdom practice: Starting in January 1984, I was part of a weekly group that met before dawn every Wednesday for 20 minutes of silence, lectio divina (an ancient prayer form of reading a short passage of scripture and deeply pondering the message), and shared reflections. Through those mornings, and occasional retreats together at nearby Mercy Center, the wisdom stream of Christianity took root in the heart of my faith.

There were money and faith practices: A month later, I attended a weekend workshop with church friends put on by Ministry of Money, part of Washington, DC’s Church of the Savior. In those four days, I discovered a Christian path neither conservative nor liberal; one that held the radical wisdom of Jesus’ clarity about the connection between faith, money, and the world as our neighborhood. That weekend, the prophetic stream of Christianity also took root in me as I realized that all of my life, including my money, was part of my walk of faith. A walk alongside my diverse and global human family.

There was the movement that would become Be Present, Inc.: I wouldn’t be officially introduced to Be Present, Inc. for 26 years, but in the world of mystery my path crossed with Be Present’s at Mercy Center. While Be Present incorporated almost decade later, this work had been birthed the previous year before when a thousand Black women and girls gathered for a Black & Female: What is the Reality? conference led by Lillie Allen. One of the first official gatherings of Black women and girls after that conference happened in California, at Mercy Center, around the time I first began retreating there.

I would learn later that this organization-to-be, and the Be Present Empowerment Model at its core, was the practice and the community I needed to live into my dream.

Fast forward to 2002. My few grey hairs of the 29-year-old me became a solidly salt-and-pepper grey at 50. Paul was in college, Laura in High School. I was a mess in the middle of a mess.

I struggled mightily with an organization I’d loved and was intimately part of for almost a decade.  I could physically feel the widening chasm between the powerful programs and people I loved and a growing disconnect between their vision and organizational behavior. Not knowing how to hold a paradox that wide, I thrashed around trying to do something, anything, to turn the tide.

At the same time, my father died and I inherited money. The walk of wealth and faith thus became mine. I needed help to navigate the process, and within a few months I’d found the perfect two places of support.

I stepped into Be Present, Inc.: I knew I needed more skills and mentoring to walk this transformation of spirit in a world filled with injustice (some of which was also caught, seen and unseen, within me). The Black women and girls I’d mystically met so long ago had expanded to include a wide diversity of people working collaboratively together. Within Be Present, I experienced an organization consistently operating within their vision and mission and skillfully using and offering training in the Be Present Empowerment Model to open up hot topics in a way that could nurture the blooming of personal and societal transformation.

I stepped into Wisdom & Money (then called Harvest Time, granddaughter of Ministry of Money): The Spirit had ignited this fledgling ministry just as Howard and I stepped into it, together.  We danced our way into a community of folks engaging with money as a doorway of spiritual transformation at the personal, communal and systemic levels. Again, it was, indeed, a hot door!

The dream buried deep within me in 1984 was manifesting in 2002. The intersection I’d seen in my dream – faith, rooted deeply in the wisdom and prophetic strands of Christianity, the movement of money, and equitable partnerships across diversity – had taken root and formed a bud. The collaboration between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money deepened in ­­­2007 when it became clear that Wisdom & Money needed the model to navigate the hot door of money and faith in the midst of our diverse and unjust world.

Next week, the ongoing partnership between Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money – with me in the middle of both organizations – will bloom even brighter.

Now completely grey and 64, I will be flying with my daughter Laura to Atlanta for an event called Trailblazing Boards of Director’s Meeting and a training on Sustaining a Practice of Community-Engaged, Transformative Philanthropy. There, both Be Present, Inc. and Wisdom & Money will take the next creative steps of deepening our partnership by coming together for a board meeting and training, working collaboratively together every step of the way.

Here I am. Living a dream that has grown far beyond anything I could ask or imagine. Partnership across difference, a Black-led diverse organization of leaders and a primarily white, wealthy, Christian organization, working together to support transformation from the personal to the global.

It is not just possible, it is happening. It is happening right now.

Drawings by Khara Scott-Bey

This is the first in a blog series Blazing New Trails. Since this trail is one that has unfolded so slowly, it has taken time to process and find words to describe that this has been and what I see. I’m slowly learning, such is the pace required for transformation trails.