{"id":3432,"date":"2015-12-23T09:20:10","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T09:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=3432"},"modified":"2015-12-23T09:20:10","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T09:20:10","slug":"being-bestself-and-politics-of-powerlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/?p=3432","title":{"rendered":"Being bestself and politics of powerlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS<\/a> Article is probably the best thing I have read in a long time. When I came to my new role I determined to be myself and have already found myself apologising for speaking too much, pulling back from leading in certain circumstances and hesitant as I try to get the balance of leading and serving right.<\/p>\n

I know my own tendencies to wonder (that isn’t a misspelling) off point, weaknesses in thinking there is a right way, a desire for something other, that ends up with some people isolating themselves from what we were trying to build, and I am aware of my responsibilities in that process. So I identify strongly with the author of this and why I was drawn to occupy in the first place.<\/p>\n

The challenge of my #adventweight series was to remind myself of our shared humanity, by distance from others plight, and soften myself to do more in the year ahead. Yet to move from these reflections to actions means I need to be my bestself to not capitulate to the internal or external fears, to be aware of the gifts and strengths I bring, to challenge myself to lead again at times, and to know when pull back, and it is only in doing that will I begin to discover my true self and fuller humanity and what it means to be made in the image of g-d.<\/p>\n

Apologies this wasn’t intended to be a self reflective piece but a heads up to the best thing I have read all year. It’s a long article so here is an extract to encourage you to read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m at a retreat center in Florida, at the first ever Wildfire National Convening, with 80 members of organizations from all over the country: folks from Ohio Student Association, Dream Defenders, GetEQUAL, Rockaway Wildfire, and the Occupy Homes groups in Atlanta and Minneapolis. It\u2019s the first night, and the organizations are performing skits that explain their origin stories. It\u2019s Rockaway Wildfire\u2019s turn?\u2014?a group that formed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, merging the relief effort with organizing in Far Rockaway, Queens. Out there, floods fell on top of broken schools, impoverished projects, and a population that was drastically underemployed and over-policed. The folks in the Rockaways were losing their homes to foreclosure before the floods wrecked them, losing their sons to prisons long before the storm came to displace them.
\nThe skit begins, the lights go down. We hear the pounding of feet against the floor, which sounds unmistakably like heavy rain. And then a chorus of howling that sounds like the violent wind that battered the New York area that October in 2012. Then heart-wrenching wailing, like a child crying. Pounding and howling and wailing that get more and more intense like an orchestra building up to its crescendo. Suddenly, I\u2019m crying. The sounds catapult me back to the hurricane, but also to the fear I carry with me of the many more hurricanes surely on the way, and the children and parents and friends we will have to protect when they come. Suddenly the sounds come to a crashing halt, the lights go up, dimly, and I realize most of the other people in the room are weeping too. There is silence, the kind of hanging stillness you stumble on rarely, when a room full of people dedicated to the struggle are all quietly reckoning with the fear we carry in us every day and the doubts we have about whether we can do what must be done. Then one of the actors breaks the silence with the last line of the play, delivered soothingly to her child, as if she has read the minds of the 80 fighters gathered here: \u201cDon\u2019t worry, baby, don\u2019t worry. We\u2019ll be alright. Momma\u2019s gonna start a revolution.\u201d
\nThe fear is real?\u2014?palpable and also grounded. In addition to good organizing, it will take some small miracles to win the world we all deserve. It\u2019s better to acknowledge that than to try to bury it. At least it\u2019s honest. And who knows, maybe there is something about fear that?\u2014?when we turn and face it?\u2014?can be grounding instead of handicapping, can help us sit in the stakes rather than live in denial, can compel us to take the risks we need to take rather than to hide, can drive us to be the biggest we can be instead of shrinking. Or at least, that\u2019s my hope.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS Article is probably the best thing I have read in a long time. When I came to my new role I determined to be myself and have already found myself apologising for speaking too much, pulling back from leading … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3434,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions\/3434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundaypapers.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}