Accept or Resist?

Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.
- Eckhart Tolle


Dear friends,

This is the week my Cards for Remembering are supposed to arrive! I think...

Yesterday was supposed to be the day my decks were shipped out. In the morning I received a message from someone from Shuffled Ink, the manufacturing company, saying there would be a delay in shipping, but that they'd upgrade to a heavier cardstock to make up for the delay.

This sent my brain swirling: I don't have a sample for that cardstock I don't know how it feels what if I don't like it what about the celebration my neighbors have planned for saturday what if they're not here should we still have it when will they actually arrive do I need to rearrange my schedule wait I can't until I know when the cards are arriving what do I do??

If you read the above and had trouble sorting where one thought ended and another began, well, that's about how things were in my brain.

After taking a few deep breaths, I called the project manager I've been working with. I told him that the feel of the cards is really important to me and I didn't have a sample of the upgrade weight cardstock. I asked him to shuffle decks made with the cardstock I ordered and with the heavier cardstock (it being his business, he had both on hand). I listened while he shuffled. He then gave me his feedback, saying that shuffling a large deck in the thicker cardstock might feel unwieldy. Thinking of a dear friend with small hands, I chose to stick with the original cardstock. Doing so would for sure mean a delay. The project manager asked if that would be ok.

I had a choice: I could accept that the cards would be later I originally expected or get angry that the cards would arrive later than expected. Anger wouldn't change when the cards arrived, but it would likely change my day, maybe even the next few, and lead to a headache or other physical manifestations of stress.

Accepting what I couldn't change, I went on with my day, disappointed that I wouldn't have the decks as soon as I'd hoped, but relieved that I still knew what my cards would feel like and happy that they'll still be arriving soon.

As we were getting off the phone, the project manager said, "Talk to you soon!" I couldn't think of a reason why.

In the evening I received a call from the president of the company. He called to ask about a particular detail of the deck, wanting to make sure that they had it correct before printing the cards. I assured him it was. "We'll be in touch when it's time to ship," he concluded. I look forward to receiving that call!

Yesterday I practiced acceptance. Only a few days ago I was in resistance and resentment because I had said "yes" to a task I really didn't want to do. My resistance took the form of procrastination. Even when I finally started the task, I found myself working on it briefly, then taking long breaks, and reluctantly returning to it. As you can imagine, it took, or felt like it took, much longer than it had to.

The above may be "easy" examples of accepting and resisting. Life presents us with situations that are harder to accept. What does it mean to accept when we're confronted with racism, sexism, hate, or other forms of violence?

Eckhart Tolle, also quoted at this beginning of this email, has this to say, "“To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

I appreciate the distinction he offers between complaining and speaking out. When I am complaining, my shoulders are hunched and I feel helpless. When I speak out, my shoulders are wide, chest open; I am empowered because I am practicing self-acceptance, trusting my value and my voice, which is different from accepting the conditions I may be in or witnessing. From that empowered place, I can make choices with greater consciousness- accept, change, or leave the situation. Accepting, changing, or leaving circumstances may take many steps and lots of time. They may take energy, but so does resisting. Resisting what can't be changed wastes a lot of energy.

When Life invites you, what will you choose? Acceptance or resistance?

When you are working with what is, does working with it mean ongoing acceptance, changing, or leaving?

Transactional or Relational? Grappling with Scripture and Thoughts on Money

Yesterday I had the honor of sharing my reflections with my church community. It is ever humbling to have the task of offering my limited understanding, my thoughts-in-process. Still I offer what I can and hope that it will invite you into reflection, whether your understanding is similar or different from mine.

Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

(Cue bass guitar…drums…vocals) Money, money, money, money. Money!

When I teach nonviolent communication, I ask the question, “If you were to ask any person, at any time in history, in any place in the world, what makes for a good life, what would be common answers?” People often say things like love, safety, food, a sense of purpose, acceptance. Another response I often hear is “money.” When that answer comes up, I ask if a baby or an indigenous person living deep in the Amazon needs money.

The point of the question is to lift up the universal human needs that guide our words and actions. Money is not a universal human need. It’s a tool. It’s a shortcut to represent value. Money is an invention. Humans made it up so long ago that we forget that it’s made up. Money is now so tied to how we meet needs for food, shelter, safety, security, and other things, that many of us, myself included, spend a lot of time and effort thinking about, trying to get, and trying to use money wisely. We often talk about how much money we want to or do “make” in exchange for work we do. As a single, self-employed person working in a gig economy, trying to reconcile my deepest values with “making money” while also honoring the value of my work doesn’t always feel easy. What does that even mean, “making money,” especially in a time when the most common way to exchange money is electronically? Many of us trust money to provide safety and security. We have savings accounts and retirement accounts. That we are taught to rely on money as a primary means of safety and security feels like a tragedy.

Even as I say this, I want to return to this idea: money is neutral. It is a tool that can be used to magnify love, joy, connection, and creation or to magnify hate, apathy, fear, and destruction. When the first reading from Amos condemns people for “trampl[ing] on the needy,”  he’s not condemning money in and of itself, but rather he is calling out prioritizing money over people, and thus exacerbating harm.

Similarly, it is not having money that Jesus critiques in his parable, but putting money before relationship. Jesus cautions putting too much trust in money and goods, because someday we may lose them. In Jesus’ parable the steward tries to protect himself by getting in the good graces of the landowner’s debtors. He tries to build a foundation for reciprocity, albeit hastily and precariously, so that when he’s fired, he can call on those people to care for him. In the end he doesn’t get fired or have to rely on the debtors to support him. Though things worked out for the steward, Jesus is not inviting us to be like him, but rather drawing a contrast between the actions of the devious steward and a trustworthy one.

The contrast these readings highlight is between transactional and relational ways. When we relate in a transactional way, as our dominant cultural paradigm promotes, we see people, other beings, and our Earth Mother as a means to an end. This paradigm values speed, unfettered growth, people and resources as utilitarian and disposable, and acquisition of money. The dominant culture values profits, stock prices, and speedy work or production. It celebrates the accumulation of vast sums of monetary wealth, even if those doing the labor for the ones acquiring the vast sums rely on public assistance to meet their basic needs. This cultural framework encourages mistrust, destructive competition, disconnection, and both the idea that the natural resources we extract from Mother Earth are inexhaustible and a scarcity mindset. We are disconnectedly connected as we both rely on the labor of people from all over the world for our food, clothing, and other goods, and don’t know or think about who those people are. Thankfully, this way of disconnection and transaction is not the only way to be.

Worshipping God, our God who is a model of relational being, offers us another way. In our worship of God we acknowledge and live into our inherent interconnection, seeing people, other beings, our Earth Mother as our family, our beloved community.  Honoring God means valuing slowness, depth, relationships, and a trust in abundance that invites gratitude for what we have rather than a never-ending quest to acquire more. We act from a place of care rather than utility, from a place of attentive reciprocity, in an ebb and flow of giving and receiving. Worshipping God means slowing down to pray for the well-being of all, with “petitions, intercessions, and thanskgivings.” Author and activist adrienne maree brown writes about “mov[ing] at the speed of trust” and “build[ing] resilience by build[ing} relationships.” Worshipping God, we are invited to move at the slow speed of humanity, building relationships with our siblings, human and beyond.  

Though we are all affected by weight of the dominant culture, and likely contribute to it, we simultaneously see, practice, and strengthen our worship of God. In our St. William community, we do this through prayers, visits, calls, emails, letters, and meal trains for one another. We do this when we gather on Sundays with a hybrid model so that all who want to participate can do so. We do this as we pray for and stay in long-distance relationship with our siblings in Esquipulas. We do this by public signage, statements, and actions that affirm the full humanity of all people, particularly those whose value may be denied or diminished in the dominant cultural paradigm. We do this by sharing books in our Little Library. We do this in our ongoing questioning of how to be in deeper connection with our neighbors and when we consider how solar panels, air conditioning, and other aspects of the building’s physical structure impact Mother Earth. We do this when we join local, national, and international actions that support truth, justice, and healing. We do this in so many ways.

I celebrate a few other ways in which people lean into the idea that plenty that is about more than money. A dramatic example is how the owners of Patagonia recently gave away the company to support efforts directed at climate change. More ordinary examples (though I wish the Patagonia owners’ actions were ordinary!) include Really Really Free Markets and Louisville Freegans, clothing and food swaps, sharing plants and garden abundance, community organizing, and creating networks of mutual aid.

We know how to worship God. I suspect that, even with this knowing and even with the best of intentions, many of us waver between worshipping God and worshipping money. We may swing between trusting in financial security and trusting in relationships.  Dorothy Day wrote, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” May we hold each other in care and accountability, gently orienting and re-orienting each other toward God when we turn away. May we be trustworthy stewards, holding the tool of money loosely, using it or whatever we may have to cultivate care, joy, community, the Kindom.

Tsunamis and Canyons and Grief! Oh My!

Dear friends, 

Here we are nearly in September. September! How does time go so quickly?

Since I last wrote, I have been processing some BIG EMOTIONS. I've noticed on social media and in coversations with friends that I'm not the only one whose emotions have been intense. Maybe you've been feeling them, too.

I'm not ready to go into details about what has brought this on for me, except to say that as I become clearer about what I want my life/my relationships/this city/state/country/world to look like, the gap between what is and what I long for sometimes feels so very wide. 

The primary emotion that's been calling for my attention has been grief. It's been lingering around the edges of my emotional landscape for a long time, coming into my body sometimes in tsunami-like waves, other times like a slow-rising flood, and other times like a gentle, even sweet, rain. Recently, it's been building up like tsunamis and floods.  With the pressure increasing, I've been waiting for my body to release it. 

And then Friday happened. Friday actually started in a most lovely way: with a gathering of integrative health practitioners out at Foxhollow Farm. We learned about EMDR and tried some havening techniques. The discussion was rich. It also activated the movement of my grief. I came home and could feel the waves preparing to wash over/through/around me. Thankfully, I didn't have other meetings that day and could give the grief the space it was demanding. I cried A LOT. More than once I thought I was done and then minutes or hours later, I was crying again. So tired, I went to bed early, still heavy. 

I woke up on Saturday morning around 5:00. While not fully rested, my body felt different. Lighter. Whereas on Friday I felt helpless and hopeless, only seeing a seemingly impassable chasm between reality and vision, on Saturday I felt hopeful. I was able to imagine steps I could take through the canyon and could identify people I might ask to accompany me, even if only for a short time. 

A few days later I have begun to take the steps, inviting potential co-journeyers to join me on my path. Some have already said "yes." As I await answers from others and continue to consider who else I might approach, I remind myself, just as I remind people who take my classes, that if the folks I reach out to can't meet me the way I hope, I can still work/walk toward my vision. I don't have to walk alone. With nearly 8 billion people in the world, it's likely there are other people/possibilities available, if I streeeeeeeetch my imagination a little wider.  

I don't think I am finished with the grief. I am OK with that because I know things and have ways to care for myself that I didn't used to have:

I am not alone. Sometimes I feel lonely, but I am not alone. 

The feelings will pass. They pass more easily if I don't grip them tightly or try to stuff them down. 

Letting them pass means allowing them to flow through me - in tears, in words spoken to a friend or myself (I can be my own friend!), in writing, in movement, in song, in sound. Letting them pass isn't always easy or fun, but the only way through is through.   

If no other option seems available, I always have the option to take a conscious, deep breath. Or a few. A few deep breaths can do wonders. A few deep breaths may give space for another option to appear. Even if no new options appear, I've still taken a few deep breaths. 


It's thanks to Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication, it's thanks to practicing the skills with some of you that I'm learning to more fully care for myself and to invite others to care for me when I need some help. Thank you for being in it with me. 

What are you learning about caring for yourself and inviting in care?  



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
With this fresh experience (I love these tools!), I am so excited to have a number of upcoming Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication events, classes, and workshops. Starting a week from today I'm offering a 4-week introduction to Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication. I also have a 2-session workshop coming up- Can We Talk? Tools for Difficult (and Everyday!) Conversations. 

For those who have already experience with Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication, I'll be hosting Compassionate Communication Practice Sessions. The first is this Thursday, September 1 from 12:00-1:30 ET. If you're planning to come, be sure to register! 

For those interested in racial justice, on the afternoons of September 15th and 22nd, Althea Dryden and I are going to be co-facilitating Seeking the Shalom of the City at Roots 101 African American Museum. I am so excited to co-facilitate with Althea and to do so in that setting. 

FInally, if you like creative practices and/or like to mark the change in season, I'll be hosting another Create Your Own Mantra Card workshop at Foxhollow Farm on September 21, the day before the Autumn Equinox. 

If these interest you, please know that several of them have early bird discounts. I'd love to see you at one or a few events!

And if you are experiencing tsunamis or canyons or grief, please know that you are not alone. 

With care and gratitude, 
Cory