Envisioning Spirit, Conflict, and Work
Together
Michael Bischoff, 11/29/00
I tell myself and others that my strongest interest is in the intersection of conflict transformation and spiritual formation. What does that mean? Beyond that, how will I define and find work that reflects that interest? What do I have to offer in this area? What additional abilities, experiences, and skills do I need to prepare myself to do meaningful, paying work in this direction? All these questions and many more will be answered in the next several pages.
A few years ago, I was in the midst of an entrenched power struggle with a co-worker, David. In the midst of one of our arguments about a work project, David paused and said, "I'd like to stop and tell you the things I love about working with you." I responded by thinking that I was sick of that new age, touchy feely crap. But David began to list what he appreciated about me, "your creativity with designing things, your gentleness . . . ' By the second or third thing David listed, my heart softened considerably and my will to fight back evaporated. It was as if this wave came over that transformed my motivations.
An early Quaker, George Fox, said, "It is possible to live in the life and the spirit that take away all occasion for war." As David and I were arguing, this spirit snuck up on me and melted me. I believe that there is a force of active nonviolence and love n the universe that we can open ourselves up to and move with. In my experience, following this movement is the most powerful force we have for social and personal change. I see this force as similar to Gandhi's talk of satyagraha or soul force and Martin Luther King's descriptions of the strength of love. I think of this power as equally relevant to my conflicts with my boss as this it is for international conflicts, such as India's struggle to become independent of Britain. Learning to live in this life and power that George Fox, Gandhi, and King talked about is central to my life. I would like my work to arise from this power and I am most excited by work that involves supporting others as they open up to this force. Working with people who are in the midst of conflict open up to this spirit of nonviolence appeals to me greatly.
Although my understandings about religion have changed over my life, I have always been deeply immersed in religious worlds. When I was born, my parents lived and worked at a Methodist mission in Kentucky. Both sides of my family are layered with pastors and missionaries. When I was about seven years old at a prayer service at summer camp, I told my counselor that I felt God's call to be a pastor. As I became an adult, the largest pull I felt in my life was toward peace and justice work. I also became a Quaker in a community where there are no paid pastors. I still believe that my genetics, environment, and spirit are calling me to ministry, but I don't think this is as a traditional pastor, but to ministry in peacemaking. How can I be with people as they move with God in and around conflict, and as they work for justice? How can I help cultivate and draw out the spiritual grounding of individuals and groups working for peace?
I hope to consider all these ideas about my vocation humbly, knowing that God might have plans for me that I haven't dreamt of yet. I would like to offer these ideas as a prayer and as part of a dialogue. They are based on what I have experienced so far and what I long to do. I trust that those around me and God will keep responding, correcting, and affirming these ideas.
For this paper, I will envision three elements of my future work: the desired characteristics for any work I do, possible tangible expressions of this work, and thinking about what I need to help me meet those visions.
Imagined
characteristics/aspirations for my work:
• That group facilitation be a central part of what I do. Six years ago I went to a prison to facilitate a weekend Alternatives to Violence Project workshop. This was the first major facilitation I had been involved in. I felt more alive and energized while facilitating this first time than almost any other time prior to that. Although I didn't know many of the technical parts of the exercises we were leading, the process felt very natural. Since that time, I have found a lot of joy in doing facilitation of many kinds. It draws out my playfulness, my leadership, and sides of me I don't know are there. This aliveness has been true not only in facilitating workshops, but has happened sometimes while I facilitated business meetings, retreats, mediations, group dialogue, or community building. From the information I have so far, I know that I would like facilitation to be integrated into whatever context I work in.
• That my personal transformation be explicitly tied to the external work I am doing. It is so preposterous to imagine I can help others know God in the midst of what they are doing. If I am not deeply learning and changing as I help others, I can't imagine having the integrity to offer anything to others.
• Connected with the large picture of social change. I want any personal change and social service work I do to be linked with a broader movement for structural, society-wide just peace. As many others have said, good works that are not done in the context of political and structural empowerment are merely charity. I am seeking to include analysis of power imbalances and undoing racism and other forms of domination in all activities I am a part of.
• Takes me across racial and class lines. Working with diverse organizations, constituents, and clients appeals to me for many reasons. On one level, I find a diverse work environment personally energizing and important for my sustainability. And in order for far reaching social change to happen, I see networking across cultural lines to be essential. In addition, I see building space in organizations for diversity to be a key for their sustainability and vitality.
• Focused on proactively creating the society we want, not just resisting or preventing what is harmful. My broad vision is of what MLK talked about as the beloved community, and what Jesus described as the kingdom of God. I imagine us working towards a society where the spirit of God is the grounding for everything that happens, and just peace arises from that grounding. Along the way to that vision, I imagine being with joyful nonprofit organizations and community groups that cultivate the spiritual lives of those involved, and organizations that listen deeply for right action. As Gandhi said, I want to be part of "creating the change we want to see in the world."
• Rooted in community. I especially want to be grounded in my faith community, Quakers. I would like to look to my Friends Meetings for example, accountability, financial and spiritual support, as a laboratory for trying out ideas, and as a community to serve.
Possible Expressions: This list is at a brainstorming stage. I would like to think as broadly and creatively as possible now, and not try to choose the best one at this point.
1) Start or join a retreat center that serves those who work in conflict and peacebuilding. My wife and I have talked about this option many times, with the idea that we might work on it together. Our latest vision for this project is of a center in or near downtown Minneapolis. This retreat center might be housed in existing church or large house, with a physical space that is a base for some of the other programs listed in this brainstorm.
One appealing possibility about this project is that it might be a child-friendly place and activity, so Jenny and I can take care of our (potential and future) kids there as we work. We also have a desire to raise children in a strong community, and such a center might be a good basis for that community.
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The space could be a sanctuary for people during week days, for prayer over a lunch hour, after work, and other times that are integrated into people's daily schedules. These daily prayer and meditation times would be open to the public, with special invitations to those who live and work in the neighborhood. I imagine having space for group and individual prayer in the house, and being next to a forested park for walks.
I imagine this would be an ecumenical or even interfaith project, under the care of a handful of churches and religious groups. I would like it be based in the neighborhood, with conscious means of building those relationships. Maybe we would have a weekly free meal, as the Little Grille in Harrisonburg does now, as a way to further connect with the neighborhood. If this project were to start, I would want to do extensive listening projects in the neighborhood, to find out ways we might support the spiritual life of that community.
I can see having a couple of rooms for over night guests, but housing would not be the focus of what we do. Activities and gathering space during the days would be our focus. From a base in the neighborhood and churches, I would imagine reaching out to activists, social service employees and clients, and others working with conflict, in ways that are listed in the other ideas in this paper.
I might discuss this vision with some current organizations in Minneapolis, as a way they might build on what they already do. I don't want to become attached to the idea that this center would need to be "mine", or that Jenny and I would need to start it ourselves to have be meaningful to us. I would hope that the real vision for it would grow out of dialogue. I imagine talking with people from City House, a retreat center in Minneapolis with similar aspirations, but mostly in the fetus stage. I might also talk with Hudson House, a large inner city conference/retreat center that already exists, but mostly offers space, but no proactive programs. I also plan to continue talking with people at the Visitation Monastery, who live in the inner-city as a "ministry of presence."
2) Create a partnership with retreat centers and service organizations, to provide internships and other programs that balance reflection, rejuvenation, and service work. I imagine interns singing up to spend half their time doing some kind of service work and half their time doing contemplative reflection. There is a similar program at the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico. They offer 12 or 40 day internships which combine prayer, retreat, and volunteering at a local social service agency. Also, in Berkeley, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship offers similar internships, which combine meditation instruction, community living, and social change work. For a while I have imagined people doing contemplative/action internships with my formed employer, Friends for a Non-Violent World. The "action" side of these internships happens at this organization and tons of others, but I am interested in adding the "contemplative" side to it.
I see many people, including myself, longing to integrate their service work with their spiritual lives. I am interested in what resources might speak to these needs. I would imagine that further discussion with people doing this work, and organizations focused on spiritual nurture, will yield some creative possibilities. Having spent the past six years working in a small nonprofit, I have a large amount of empathy for the struggles and burn out often involved in these jobs.
3) Participate in general support of spirituality at work.
A college in the Twin Cities, St. Catherines, offers a Spirit at Work Program. This program is open to anyone who wishes to further integrate their spiritual lives and their working lives. They host one weekend retreat and four Saturday morning sessions. Another model of this possibility is the Shalem Institute's Soul of the Executive Program. This program is designed for top-level business and government executives, and offers weekend retreats, small groups, and a pilgrimage to the Middle East.
The program I am interested in might be "Soul of Service" or something more focused on social service and social change. I also imagine a program that is more financially accessible than the Shalem program, which costs several thousand dollars. It could be programs such as the ones at Shalem or St. Catherine's would be interested in expanding what they offer to include more of the "Soul of Service" focus.
4) Provide spiritual direction for activists and others that work with conflict.
When talking with Wendy Miller at the seminary about my interests, she suggested the idea of offering one-on-one spiritual direction for peacebuilders. In this way I might support the spiritual foundations for peacebuilding in a direct, individual way. Upon my first thinking about this possibility, I am not strongly drawn to it -- but it seems like a possibility I should hold longer. In the field of spiritual formation, offering one-on-one spiritual direction seems to be the most popular activity. Spiritual direction also offers the possibility of straight forward income, through fees that are charged per session.
5) Do organizational development consulting focused on the spiritual health and depth of organizations.
I see such a need for joyful and Spirit-filled administration. While I was in my previous position as Executive Director at Friends for a Non-Violent World, I tried many things to nurture the organization's spiritual grounding. We held weekly staff "rejuvenation times", used silence regularly in meetings, and mandated staff to go on retreats some times. I was not a master in these attempts, but I think I learned a lot. I also whet my appetite for more experiments in this direction.
I envision connecting with larger nonprofit consulting groups, such as Management Assistance Project in Minnesota, to talk about how this might be a part of what they do. I don't imagine just offering "spiritual" consulting, but holistic intervention, seeing at all components needed for a healthy organization--financially, structurally, strategic planning, etc. But the primary lense I brought could be of organizational spiritual formation. And my way of seeing spiritual formation, is very tied to the way conflicts are dealt with in an organization. The processes and facilitation I brought or added to a consulting team, would focus on staff and constituent rejuvenation, creating space for reflection and deep listening, and looking for ways to utilize the spiritual practices people already had in the work setting. In the simple form of this consulting might be facilitating workshops for staff of organizations about this topic. I might develop a workshop that acknowledged the soul of the organization and the individuals in it, and elicited ways to honor those gifts more. However, I would hope to not just to "one shot" workshops, but move with organizations over a period of time.
Prior to coming to CTP, I was a part of a two year long class called "Contemplative Congregational Leadership" at a local retreat center, which addressed many of these challenges. This class was made up of mostly pastors, but I many of the ideas and practices applied pretty directly to the nonprofit organization I was working with. I know there would be many challenges and barriers to offering "spiritual" consulting for most organizations and businesses. While most groups might be very wary of anything approaching religion at work, others might be hungry for the same discussion. Language and cultural sensitivity would be quite central in developing this project. One option would be to focus mostly on consulting with churches and religious organizations, since many of them at least have the language for talking about God and spirituality.
There is also a project at Earlham College, which is looking at what Quaker practices have to offer business processes. They are "exporting" and adapting things such as the Quaker model of group decision making and ways of dealing with conflict to corporate settings, with some enthusiastic results. This is another resource I hope to connect with.
6) Lead educational workshops about spiritually based peacemaking. I could offer conflict transformation & spiritual formation workshops for churches, treatment centers, prisons, half-way houses, colleges, etc. These workshops might be somewhat similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, in that they focus on personal growth--but the focus would be on personal development for peacemaking in their lives and communities. I imagine these workshops as similar to the Alternatives to Violence Project, but customized for certain groups, and sometimes more explicitly tied to spiritual development.
I know some people in Minnesota who lead one and two hour Mindfulness classes in many prisons and treatment centers now. I hope to sit in on some of their classes, and learn from them about how they built relationships with the institutions they work in.
And if I can find colleges to do it at, I want to follow the example of Ron Kraybill here at EMU, and teach college classes about "Disciplines for Sustaining the Peacebuilder." I don't if other colleges or graduate programs would go for this, but, hey it is worth a try.
7) Do anything, just do it with God. I don't assume that any of the potential projects I have described will fully make me a living or be all I do. More important to me than any external definition to my work, I hope that, whatever my job is, I do it centered in that holy spirit. I might work in a nonprofit management job that is not obviously connected to any of the above projects, but I trust that each of these aspirations could still be included in some way in any job. I also hope to teach some adjunct college classes in conflict transformation, and believe that much of the spirit of these intentions could fit in there as well. And I could end up working at a mediation center and practicing many of the organizational and one-on-one practices in that setting. And outside of my paid work, I imagine always being involved in a variety of peace and justice seeking projects. I don't fear a lack of places to practice any of these ideas.
What will get me there (and beyond)? Again, this is a long list, and I don't imagine that I will have the time and energy to complete all of these plans. I hope to imagine many possibilities now and also being sifting through the priorities.
My own connection with God: More than any professional development, I believe that the most important thing I can do to prepare for this work is develop my own openness to the movement of God. I don't imagine I will ever "get there" and be open and enlightened and ready to share that with others--but I do see a continual turning toward God as essential in attempting to support others with that effort. I largely see the task of the minister, as Henri Nouwen describes it "to make his own wounded condition available for others as a source of healing." (Wonded Healer, 1972, Doubleday, NY, p. 99)
I see my primary spiritual journey as moving from numbness to aliveness, from shyness and fear to openness to love. My connection with God ever so gently melts away what is frozen in me. I still curl up so much into myself and refuse to breathe in healing. I see so many other individuals and organizations also looking to let go of that rigidness and move with vitality. I love to move with them in that process, but I believe I can only do so with the grace of God.
So do I do to cultivate my own openness to God? That's the big question, right? Some things that seem to have worked so far are: to love my wife really hard, to ask God for help, to give and receive from my faith community, to tell my own stories, to notice my breath, to ride my bike, to hike in the mountains, to sit still, and to receive prayers from others. I also believe that all the more project oriented things listed below can further open me up to God.
Spiritual direction training and practice.
In preparation for possibility #4 that I listed above, I would need further training and certification in spiritual direction. I could this at the seminary here next year. As I said before, I am not clear that I want to pursue this possibility, but I want to consider the possibility longer.
Organizational
Development consulting training and practice
For possibility #5, I will need further immersion in the organizational development field. I think my management experience at my previous job will be my best preparation for this work, but I would like to build upon that. I plan to take the "Organizational Development for Peacebuilding Organizations" class offered next fall here at EMU, but I think that is only a small part of the picture. I hope to work with other consultants, both here and back in Minnesota to get my feet wet in this practice. I would also like to serve on the Boards of some organizations, to more fully see that perspective on organizational development.
Apply training design and group facilitation skill to this context: I feel pretty confident in my training and facilitation abilities, and I also have a large desire to build these skills. I also want to more consciously apply these skills more to this context. I will have one chance to practice this in February, as I facilitate a retreat for my local Friends Meeting. The purpose of this retreat is building trust, to more fully and safely engage in certain conflict.
Starting in January, I plan to start facilitating AVP-like workshops at Gemeinschaft, the near by half-way house. I hope this will be another chance to try out a version of possibility #6, and also to further my training design skills.
I would like to apply my efforts in the Intermediary Roles II and Design of Training classes to practice times like the ones I just listed, and more broadly on applying those skills to this topic.
Experience with similar programs. Of the similar programs that I listed, I would like to experience as many as possible first hand. I am especially interested in doing a 12 day or 40 day internship at Center for Action and Contemplation, a program I mentioned in #2.
Listening project with people doing related work. For those organizations I can't experience directly, I would like to do a lot of listening to people involved with them. One project I didn't mention yet, that I am in contact with is called Spirit in Action, and looks at the intersection of political organizing and spirituality. Their director, Linda Stout coordinated a listening project for about hundred grassroots activists around the country, looking at where the strongest gaps are in their capacity building. Out of that listening project, she formed Spirit in Action. I want her to be my friend!
Cultivate mentors. In addition to contacting people I don't know, one of my priorities is further building relationships with people who are mentors or potential mentors to me in this area. These include some Quakers who have worked with conflict and spirituality, such as Lloyd Lee Wilson and Christopher Sammond, and a teacher of mine from the Contemplative Leadership program in MN, Tom. My most important mentoring relationship in this area, and one that I hope continues to develop, is with George Lakey. This category would also include, YOU, Ron, since you have many overlapping passion, and extensive facilitation/intervention experience. With all of these people, I would like to not only take the feedback, encouragement, and connections they have to offer -- but give back to them the affirmation, logistical support, etc. that will make healthy, two-way relationships.
Develop relationships and visions with co-conspirators: First on my list of potential collaborators in these projects is my wife, Jenny. She is currently completing a two year program at the Shalem Institute in facilitating group spiritual direction. As I mentioned earlier, she has had a passion for starting a retreat center for many years.
If I am going to work with my wife, Jenny, in doing any of these projects, we will need to get better at working together. Working together has been often a stretch for us, and brings out competitiveness, defensiveness and power struggle in both of us. This was reflected even yesterday as Jenny helped me brainstorm ideas for this paper. Jenny and I spend so much time together already and have a large shared identity, that I think have joint work makes me afraid that I will lose that part of my independence and self-identity. So our working together will need to take this into account. I think we both agree that working together full-time would probably not be wise, and that in part-time work together, clear divisions of labor would be helpful. In addition to adjusting for this dynamic, I aspire to learn more about how to keep my own center and identity, even when my life is highly integrated with Jenny's.
In addition to Jenny, I have many friends in Minnesota that I have talked about these possibilities with. In addition to continuing these conversations, I hope to build more direct organizational relationships around this idea--with my Friends Meeting, retreat centers, community organizations, and others. I would like to share these visions with them, to develop the visions, and to start thinking of how they can happen.
Emotional maturity . Connected with my relationship with Jenny, (and every thing else!) is the need for more emotional maturity. Of course, this is hard thing to plan the development of, but I want to recognize it on my list of needs. I need greater awareness, expression, and comfort with my own emotions to do this work well. I imagine my relationships will be my greatest teachers, but I also hope to seek out conscious resources in this area -- such as being more involved with re-evaluation counseling. I also find that the more I work with conflicts in mediations and elsewhere, the more faith I develop that I can survive the next one, which is closely related to my own awareness of and acceptance of my own emotions.
Healing touch & healing prayer: Since I see the core of this work as about spiritual healing, I have found practices that focus on that to be really helpful. I would like to do additional workshops in Healing Touch, and practice other forms of healing prayer with many people. The Friends Meeting here has begun semi-regular healing services, and this is place I hope to practice this.
Whew! Looking back on this paper, I realize how much I want to do and feel a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. At the same time, all these wishes seem very natural and most of them will not take much effort to do. I hope to balance stretching myself to grow with following what comes easy and joyfully. As I said earlier in the paper, I also expect my plans to be transformed in ways I can't yet imagine, and I look forward to those surprises. I pray that I can remain true to my visions and passions, but also open to how God changes those over time.
I hope to continue to refine this paper and use parts of it to start discussions about these possibilities. In that light, I enthusiastically welcome your feedback, your reactions, and visions of your own that correspond to these ideas.