“A strong community helps people develop a sense of self, for only in community can the self exercise and fulfill its nature: giving and taking, listening and speaking, being and doing. But when community unravels and we lose touch with one another, the self atrophies and we lose touch with ourselves as well. Lacking opportunities to be ourselves in a web of relationships, our sense of self disappears, leading to behaviors that further fragment our relationships and spread the epidemic of inner emptiness” (Palmer, 39)Parker Palmer penned these words in A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life in 2004. I happened upon the book as soon as it was published while studying developmental psychology in my Masters program. It was hugely influential in my life then and has continued to be a source of support and encouragement for two decades now.
For 20 years, I have been slowly and imperfectly moving toward the undivided life that Palmer refers to, sometimes more intentionally and consciously aware than others.
Much of my work in my “former life” with The College Board involved working with diverse groups of people, often groups who were not excited to see us and were reluctant to listen to outsiders who were supposed to have answers they didn’t.
I was lucky enough to be studying group theory in my Masters of Counseling program at the same time I was facilitating these groups around the United States, and it was the perfect opportunity to practice.
Soon, it seemed that if I was going to a school district, something was on fire and resistance was high.
I loved it. I loved the challenge of being with a group of people I had never met, finding out who they were, listening to their problems and complaints, and working alongside of them so that the best versions of their Selves emerged.
Each training, by the end of the first day (sometimes by lunch on the first day), there was a growing sense of alignment - shared values, shared goals, and shared determination to do the work that needed to be done together.
There were really tough cases, though, including an older teacher named Dr. A who called me over to her table the first morning of a training and said, “Boy, are you planning on becoming an administrator?” I said, “No.” She said, “Thank God, because you’d be terrible at that, too.”
I smiled and told her that I hoped she would give me the chance to change her mind and asked for any specific feedback that she might have that I could use to be better at my job. She didn’t have any feedback.
And she didn’t like my response. She turned her back to me and started talking about me to her table group.
To be fair, Dr. A had a reason to be upset and what she was upset about had nothing to do with me.
The Second Agreement in the book The Four Agreements is “Don’t Take Anything Personally.” What people do is because of themselves.
This is a hard lesson to learn and I certainly hadn’t learned it way back then, but I was learning it.
During a break in our training, we learned that many of the participants had been given pink slips - they had lost their jobs that very morning with no warning - but were required to finish the training for the rest of that week. And it was only Monday.
This training was at the end of the school year, which meant many of our participants were sitting through a training they wouldn’t be able to use the next year after just finding out that they had been fired.
In my Masters program, I had just learned that there are three sub-groups of people in any group: buyers, sellers, and visitors. The positive folks are the buyers, the naysayers and complainers are the sellers, and the folks on the fence are the visitors. Naysayers tend to sit with each other and work (consciously or unconsciously) to bring the visitors to their side. If this goes unchecked, the negative energy spreads quickly through the group, eventually taking it over.
By noon, I had a sense of who was who in the subgroups and so I re-grouped the tables so that the strongest naysayers were alone at tables of mostly buyers and a few strong visitors, thus redistributing the energy. Negativity takes a lot of energy and without a constant dose of affirmation from her fellow naysayers, Dr. A found her voice becoming more and more the subject of the room’s ire.
Visitors began to become buyers, those who were light-sellers drifted to visitor status, and the whole vibe of the room changed and became positive enough to move us into the working stage.
By the afternoon of the first day, Dr. A was still at it, disagreeing with everything that we did, spending her time in her group trying to recruit people to her position, sowing dissent, and attempting to bring a spirit of negativity to every moment.
But she was wearing out.
And finally, after she intentionally misrepresented her group’s position while reporting out to the whole group, several of her group members stood up by their table and called her out in front of the room. They asked her to leave if she couldn’t find a way to find the better part of herself as they had done. They acknowledged how ridiculously hard the situation was and they empathized with her. But they called her out of her negativity and they called her up to her better self.
It was a very humbling moment for us all.
There was no sense of satisfaction that she had been put in her place, but there was a sense that we would move forward together. Dr. A didn’t say much after that, but her group didn’t ignore her and kept engaging her as appropriate.
At the end of the day, as she was leaving, I checked in with her to see if there was anything more we could do to help make the best of the situation. She didn’t have anything to say to me, but she also knew that she was welcome, that her voice was welcome. Her scowl at me wasn’t quite as intense as she walked away that day.
By the end of the five days of training, Dr. A hadn’t had anything like a complete turnaround, but she wasn’t derailing her group anymore. She had several tender moments with her group members during the week in which they were able to comfort her in her real and felt sense of discouragement and despair.
I found myself in awe of the people in that room. 1/3 of my group had lost their jobs. And yet they showed up and participated and gave of themselves and approached the training as a chance to be the best version of themselves in the midst of incredible challenge. “Inspiring” doesn’t do justice to describe the scene.
As we finished the final day, one of the older male teachers in the group came up to me and handed me a card. He then told me that before this week, he had lost all sense of purpose and hope in his profession. The past few years had been an unbearable grind.
“But, that hope and purpose are back. I can’t remember feeling this alive and vibrant and excited to do what I love doing. I found my light again.”
He then shook my hand and walked out the door.
Palmer says, “We cannot embrace the challenge [of being whole] all alone, at least, not for long: we need trustworthy relationships, tenacious communities of support, if we are to sustain the journey toward an undivided life” (Palmer, 10).
My week with those teachers wasn’t an official “Circle of Trust” that Palmer advocates for, but it was a week in which a group of human beings accessed the deeper parts of their souls in community and experienced - albeit incompletely and with exceptions - a sense of deep meaning, purpose, and hope in the process.
As I walked out of that building, I had the sense that I was doing something that made my soul come alive, that I was finding my light. Little did I know what would be in store for me in the coming years and how my sense of calling and identity would seem to come to a sudden and shocking end before it would be re-birthed in more fertile soil with deeper roots.
Today, riding home along the Boise River from Boise State University after teaching and working with groups of students, I felt radiating joy and gratitude for this new season of life, a season where I am increasingly joining with others in what are becoming caring, safe, supportive, and vibrant communities where our souls are venturing out of isolation and into the meadow of life.
We are finding our light together.
So good.
Peace.
