Things I Want To Do When I Grow Up:
Priorities for Seeking Work, Fall 2002 in Minnesota
I plan to finish school in June 2002. In early August, my wife is due to have a baby (yippee!!!). A couple months after the baby is born we are planning to move back to Minnesota. This paper is an evolving description of the kind of work I’d like to do when I return to Minnesota. It is touchy-feely and idealistic. So am I—but I hope that I can also translate these ideas into other contexts and terms.
Priorities
for the Type of Work I Do:
• Be a Dad!: Since my wife is due to have a baby in August, that is far and away my highest priority. I will work hard to not have my work overshadow whole-hearted attention to my Dad-ness. For instance, I do not want to do work which requires extensive travel anytime in the near future. I want to be home a lot.
• Teach “hands on” college classes related to conflict resolution, restorative justice, and nonviolence. This past year, I taught two college classes at Eastern Mennonite University that focused on connecting practice of conflict transformation outside of the classroom with academic learning. In one class, we worked with the campus mediation center to do a listening project, conflict analysis, and facilitation with conflicts on the university campus. In the other class, the students participated in a 3 day Alternatives to Violence Project workshop inside a prison, and the rest of the class built on that experience. I would very much like to teach classes similar to this in Minnesota—classes that provide students with practical experience in conflict, peace, and justice work and offer intentional coaching, reflection, and support for that work. In the past two years, I have also taught more traditional academic courses in conflict resolution at James Madison University. I wrote a paper reflecting on my efforts to integrate the principles of experiential education into that context (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/jmu.htm).
• Integrating spiritual nurture with social change and social service work: Upon returning to Minnesota, I would like to do a long-term listening project with people who work in the nonprofit worlds there to listen for where their spiritual grounding comes from and what would help them deepen that grounding. I hope to explore the resources in the area to meet some of these needs and serve as a bridge between some of those needs and resources. I see this as a slowly developing, long-term project, but one that I don’t want to lose track of. I wrote a longer paper describing some of my visions for this type of work (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/vision.htm) and I also did some interviews about this topic (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/intro.htm).
• Help prisons become restorative places: A class that I taught this past semester, “Voices from the Inside” took college students into a prison for a 3 day workshop and also focused on writings of prisoners. This class was a solid reminder to me of how much passion I have for working alongside prisoners to help make prisons a more healing, transformative place. I hope to help further connect to the Restorative Justice movement in Minnesota and the prisons there more closely together—and serve as a consultant and trainer in that process. I also am open to other Restorative Justice opportunities in Minnesota, and imagine that a part-time RJ job might also serve as a good base for additional free-lance work that I did. I wrote a paper about how Alternatives to Violence Project workshops in prisons might incorporate the principles of Restorative Justice into what they do: (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/rj.htm ). Another paper I wrote proposes a project for engaging former inmates in peace work in their communities (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/grant.htm ).
• Consulting and facilitation with organization and community-level conflict and change: While in graduate school, I worked with a faculty person to do some consulting and facilitating with a local church conflict. That experience really affirmed my desire to do more of that kind of work. I would like to seek out mentors and partners to do conflict transformation and organizational development work with organizations in Minnesota. I wrote a case study of one organization’s efforts at becoming more multi-culturally competent (http://www.clarityfacilitation.com/papers/fnvw.htm ).
• End this war and the next one before it starts: In the midst of my other work aspirations, I also want to also follow my drive to activism. I want to be open to all of my priorities changing, as the U.S. engages in war in new ways. My broader purpose is to cultivate nonviolence—and the most overt opportunity and need for this might be on the level of helping shift our approach to terrorism and national security.
Imagined Characteristics/Aspirations
for Any Job I Do:
Beyond the content
of what I do, these are some of my wishes for what I’d like to bring to my work
and receive from it.
• 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. Hey I’m still afraid of conflict and people in general at many times.
If I am not deeply learning and changing as I help others, I can't imagine having the integrity to offer much of substance.
• 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. While seeking diversity, I want to also take responsibility for working with the “peoples” that I come from—and with the privileges I carry. As a white, middle-class man from the U.S., I see as many sources of violence coming from patterns within my own culture as much as anywhere else in the world. I want to focus on addressing those roots of violence within my own cultures. To reduce violence and increase justice, I don’t feel a need to travel to another war-torn country. I feel like my work is primarily here.
• 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 want my work to be grounded in my own faith community (Quakers), in the community of my workplace, and in the broader neighborhoods where I live. I would like to look to my Friends Meeting for example, accountability, spiritual support, as a laboratory for trying out ideas, and as a community to serve. I would like the organizations I work with to be closely serving and connected with the neighborhoods around them. And in the organizations I work with, I wish for co-workers that compassionately push each other to grow professionally and personally.
So those are some of my fantasies. If you have any thoughts for how to do some of these things in a way that also provides enough income for health insurance diapers, please let me know!
Thank you,
Michael Bischoff
mailto:michael@clarityfacilitation.com
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