Solstice is coming and I want to celebrate it with this featured painting of several years ago. Not only are we in a dark time of the year seasonally, it feels like a dark time in our civic world, not just America but in many other places. I recently attended a wonderful one-day workshop entitled, The Courage to Collaborate, by Milenko Matanovic, founder of the Pomegranate Center. He was a featured guest of Art Inspires Ashland.
He suggested that the best role for artists would be to include them in the city planning processes and other critical civic mandates, rather than tacking the art on like a trivial bauble at the end of projects. We ought to be integrating artists into the community development and the changes we want to see happen. Its the truest role of visionaries.
He also spoke about the need to develop the muscle-memory for collaborating with others with opposing views. Clearly, what passes for civic involvement in typical town meetings is each person standing in their fixed point of view, and allowing some to dominate and then the process gets ground down by regulations as projects go forward.
The Pomegranate Center has developed an elegant model that includes basic ground rules for engagement that are amazingly effective for developing what I would call civic fitness, enabling progress to happen that is inclusive, respectful and visionary. Please check out his talks on their web-site: www.pomegranatecenter.org
At this darkest time of the year, and at this point in America’s civic life, I want to offer a glimpse of possibilities that are within our reach to bring about. Our attitudes, habits and engagement needs significant adjustment. We all know what it feels like to be respected, even in disagreement. Remember, the larger consciousness can embrace the smaller, but not the other way around. “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do,” is an example of someone with a greater capacity for integration, inclusion and forgiveness than those who were attacking him, and eventually crucified him. All the great spiritual leaders have their own versions of this capacity. This is the time we need to enlarge our hearts, link arms to form new bonds, and begin to build muscle-tone so we can move together towards a kinder, more inclusive and enlightened civilization that is respectful of all our relations. This idea about respect for our relations is what the indigenous, first nation people offer as an important model. They don’t objectify other creatures, but identify them as relations. That’s a key orientation! We need to develop better relation-ships. This frame of reference is crucial.
