SHARING APPROACHES THAT WORK -- FORGING COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

[forrest craver]

Dear Friends and Members.

A long time friend of mine, David Karr, in Minneapolis, joined BuIlding the Movement recently and then posted the key question: AND THE POINT TO THIS IS WHAT?

Shortly thereafter he called me and said "You know there are so many websites, constantly contacting me and asking me to sign up -- and I just get fed up and tired with it all." What is happening according to one stages of grief scientist is that we are becoming numb, creating a fire wall of social isolation and slipping into mechanistic thinking -- her definition of the first stage of grief in the death and dying process.

The darkness of the collective unconscious is sweeping in like a fog in one of those horror flicks, just before the hooded criminal sneaks through the woods, steps up to the house and massacres the family. Well, if you have been noticing -- even your own family members and close friends are getting ill tempered, kind of nasty, not returning phone calls or important emails. So we are psychologically and spiritually circling our wagons on the high plains for the dreaded Indian attack to come. These behaviors are at their core rooted in DENIAL AND GRIEF.

We deeply sense in our unconscious being that something dreadful, something we have no tools or social paradigms to deal with is coming our way like a freight train in the night but with no whistle of warning. What is coming our way has a name. The African American author James Baldwin named it. "HISTORICAL VENGEANCE" This compelling and unsettling image is presented in his prophetic book, THE FIRE NEXT TIME.

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water but the Fire next time:

Baldwin wrote his book shortly before the riots and burning of our cities in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Our dread of this inchoate historical vengeance, suppressed by our waking consciousness, bubbles up from our unconscious.

And it is all about a huge "make-up" every person owes to our natural world -- which we
have used as an ashtray.

Popping out, we try to push Jack back down into his box. . But as the computer running the space flight in 2001 A Space Odyssey said as the systems were shutting down -- "I'm sorry Hal, but we can't do that."

Mission Control has been taken out by history. We are adrift in the vastness of space. We see new paradigm ideas wither and die because they are embedded in the toxic soil of old paradigm institutions and social forms which history has already repudiated. It is like History herself is whispering in our ear, up close and personal:

"WHAT ABOUT MY "NO" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?"

So we lock up in fear, project our anger on the innocents around us, shut down our feelings and deepen our social isolation. We shift to mechanistic feelings rather than weep in deep grief over a ravaged and dying Mother.

And then, when someone articulates our plight, we often "kill the messenger." rather than waking up, stepping into action and shifting our outmoded world view and our behavior.

My guess is that you don't really like reading this essay and find it disturbing or you want to make the messenger
wrong. I get it. And I hasten to add my own cheerful disclaimer. "I could be wrong" As the gamblers and residents say in Vegas "the house always wins" So neither you nor I get to decide. History decides from now on.

For 40 years I have been required by my occupation to read the public mind and detect the "spirit mood" -- to connect deeply with the mindset of various constituencies in America -- because I was a fund raising copywriter for large non profits on vexing issues like nuclear wastes, agent orange and the poisoning of our food, water and soil.

Today, the vast majority of our citizens --of all races, classes and belief systems and political affiliations --are dissatisfied ,disappointed and disillusioned with life in this country. This is truly stunning if you stop to think about it. I am sixty five and such polling results have never happened in my lifetime.

So what is going on with us anyway? I was at a meeting the other night and three people in the group were scientists and I asked the innocent question to all group members --WHAT ARE YOU MOST CONCERNED ABOUT?

All three of them gave the same essential answer --the likely extinction of the human race -- that each said in their own way "we are starting to respond but it may likely be a case of "too little, too late."

Well, I can tell you, everybody was squirming in their chairs after that. So to answer Brother Kaar's question AND THE POINT TO THIS IS WHAT? is to wake up -- to wake up and create the energy of AWAKENMENT in our own communities by seeing the need and doing the deed.

The purpose of this site is to share with other members what works and what doesn't work in movement building -- in neighborhood gardening, hydroponics, Transition Towns, cross cultural education, responses to homelessness, child abuse, violence against women, a free press, alternative media, neighborhood supported agriculture, community greenhouses, solar energy, local barter, community currencies, straw houses,grey water, getting off the Grid,and green education

If we truly understand that we are all in the same small boat on a vast and storm tossed ocean of change, then our imperative is clear.

This is the time for FORGING COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS between nonprofit organizations. If you are working for a nonprofit, keep in mind that hundreds of nonprofits are closing down every year. And this trend will continue until we go deep, double up, consolidate, blow away the senseless duplication and ugly competition for donor dollars and volunteer energy.

Right here on Building the Movement is the place to post your own blog essays on your local demonstration project and share with the rest of us why it worked and to tell us what did not work and why. The old adage of "YOU CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH OF WHAT YOU NEVER WANTED IN THE FIRST PLACE" is profoundly true today for many of us.


As the fog rolls in and the darkness of our times casts long shadows over our families and community institutions, now is the time to ask WHAT DO I TRULY WANT?

Two recent books illuminate our deep dilemma -- and they may want to go on line and read the reviews -- ELSEWHERE and THE TYRANNY OF DEAD IDEAS . This site is here for deep exploration, creating open space not bound by institutional protocols and limited value systems.

So please, step up, ramp it up, speak truth to power .Let's all get busy building what Coretta Scott King calls "the beloved community."

And to my friend David Kaar I say -- after reading this, move us forward by diving deep and surfacing with a deeper, more transparent and profound context. ---- Forrest Craver, J.D. .Founder, Building The Movement