Add to that the distinction between being self-centered and being centered in yourself. “Put your own mask on first…” says the flight attendant because you can’t help others if you don’t have what you need. Loss of cabin pressure will suck the oxygen out of your lungs and you will get very confused.
When we begin with the dual assertion
healthy organisms are ones that act to create or collect what they need, and
you will be better able to act on behalf of others if you have what you need,
We are then left with a fundamental question.
“What do you know about what you need?’
My students hate that question. I am prompted to ask them this when they are presenting a problem and looking for a solution and I can’t tell what they need. It is rare that they know. If they did, the problem would look very different. I am not asking because they don’t know, but because the beginning of the solution is determining the outcome they are longing to create. Knowing what we need is crucial and often obscure.
But remember that what we need are not objects or events but qualities of being.
Pay attention to your longing. You long for what you need. But be careful that you are not distracted from your quest to find what you need by what you discover that you merely want. The capacity to discern the difference between what you want and what you need is one of the most important distinctions we can make.
If it is finite, if you can lay hold of it, if it has a beginning and an end; then it is something you want. Needs are infinite, they can never be fully grasped, they are not the thing itself but rather a quality of being. I want a relationship; I need intimacy. I want money; I need security. I want a sandwich; I need nourishment.
Healthy organisms are those that move toward what they need. The chance that I will move toward what I need is dramatically improved by knowing what I need… and that I am able to distinguish it from what I want. This essay is meant to guide you in determining what you need.
We cannot clearly know what we need without accessing our own interior. We have to be able to know our feelings… those aspects of our being and our awareness that are available only to ourselves. These are such things as sensations, emotions, thoughts, wishes, intuitions, imaginations… and so on. No one else can know these things about us until and unless we give voice to them in some way.
Most especially we must be able to notice our own interior discomfort. Those things that bother us are indications or clues to discern what we need. If we try not to notice things that bother us, we may miss a chance to discover what we need.
John Dorhauer was the special guest at a gathering of the St. Louis Association Ministerium back in February of 2022. It was great to have a chance to hear from him and to absorb some of his enthusiasm. But I especially caught it when he announced what were then tentative plans for the Summit we are currently engaged in. I have been eager for years for us to have a conversation about the future of the church broadly and the UCC in particular.
But as the event approached I began to have concerns that the topic is framed too narrowly. Yes, the pandemic is ending [even though it is still virulent enough that plans to do the event in person were scrapped.] The transformations that the social distancing that Covid created are worthy of reflection. And the ways that we do church are sufficiently in flux that we do well to support each other in discovering where we are now.
But Covid is not the only pandemic, and social distancing is not the only dynamic that has brought stress to our local congregations. It is the health of our local congregations that concerns me the most.
I remember March 11, 2021 as the day the World Health Organization named the outbreak of the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic. I already had my boarding pass for a flight on the 12th. I cancelled. And I bought new computer equipment.
The virus was not the only, and in most respects for me, not the biggest pandemic. White supremacy, police violence against brown people, global warming, and the erosion of support for liberal democracies are all parts of a crisis of social collapse that has me very concerned about the future of human community and for the wellbeing of the planet itself. We are in deep shit here.
And my sense of what is needed is for the human community to very rapidly mature into ways of being that can care for each other and the planet. We need some radical and rapid initiatives to grow the hell up.
And there is really only one institution that I see as having any chance of making this happen, and that is our faith communities. I mean locally grown, face to face, spiritually oriented communities of care.
I am worried that at this Summit we are not thinking far enough outside the box. We have some huge questions to address. We can certainly assure ourselves that we are right and they are wrong and we can muster the courage to tell them that they are doing horrible and evil things… but that has virtually no chance of creating the transformation that we need.
But do we really want transformation? I have rarely been in a worship service in which there was not some indication that we wanted God to transform us. But in practical terms we are doing next to nothing to make it happen. We ask out loud for God to bring about transformation, and we say in our hearts that we really hope it will happen to someone else.
I found Rev. Dr. Jacqui’s sermon to be stirring. But I had to notice that the lies are all told by someone else. We have to call out the lies, but what of the lies that we are telling ourselves unaware. I am not worried about speaking the truth to “them.” My concern is about speaking the truth to “us.” If “they” don’t like it, so what. It is my tribe that concerns me. And I routinely experience those in my tribe saying things that I know are not true. Even in this context, I see us constructing divisive duality. We heal the world, not by chastising our enemies, but by turning them into allies.
We are able to worship in many time zones. But what is worship for? How do we know if it is effective? Because we get a good feeling? Or because we behave differently?
In late 2018, the Center and some of its associates started a conversation about the future of the local congregation. We are now starting to post on this blog notes about the progression of that conversation.
State of the conversation We Should Talk about the future of the church
August 22, 2019
As we near the beginning of our next round of conversations, and as we move to conduct them online with Zoom, I want to share with you all some of what we have been learning, specifically
What we seem to have broad agreement on
What we understand the problem to be
How we are framing solutions to the problem, and
What barriers we are facing in implementing solutions.
We agree that
The local congregation as a central institution in American life is in decline. While some congregations are growing, the larger trend is that fewer and fewer people are choosing active membership in local religious associations. This is across the board, but it is most pronounced in the most politically progressive churches.
There are multiple reasons for this decline but they include the availability of other opportunities for social engagement and meaningful activity, and that those who are not in churches don’t see the church as relevant to their lives.
Despite this decline, we are not afraid for the future of the church broadly. We are confident that there will be church in some form. We are just not confident that it will be the form our congregations currently take, and we are not certain that our particular local congregation will thrive or even survive.
We are alarmed by aspects of American culture that do not bode well for stable community and individual well-being. These include an awareness that
we are at the same time more connected to each other and less able to construct healthy intimacy;
we are deeply polarized politically and are regressing into support for autocracy; and
we are indifferent to and sometimes antagonistic to the truth, especially as disclosed through science and in ways that harm social stability and even the health of the planet itself.
We have a deep conviction that these social ills can be powerfully addressed by locally-grown faith-based communities.
The problem of the church being seen as irrelevant to the issues of the day started four centuries ago when religion and science parted ways. The rift first appeared in regard to the introduction of a cosmology that centers on the Sun and not on Earth. Every new paradigm shift in the world of science has driven us further and further apart. Evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics, all invite new ways of envisioning the divine that the church has simply ignored outside of sermons and some newer hymns. We cling to theologies that are inconsistent with modern science. Further, the ways we structure our common life, from the ways we communicate to how we make decisions, have simply failed to keep pace with our fast-changing social reality. The local congregation as it is currently constructed is facing extinction.
So, if we are confident that the church has a future but the current model of a local congregation is of the past, what will the new church look like? There are a good many people working on this problem. They are modernizing the music with up-beat songs and praise bands. They are communicating by Facebook and Twitter. But what they are not doing, or at least not to any scale that we might say is a movement, is entering into dialogue with modern science.
The camel of science has poked its nose in the tent in some important ways. Edwin Friedman in Generation to Generation brought the systems thinking of Murray Bowen to bear on the dynamics of local congregations with such power and clarity that it is still the bedrock of conflict resolution training by the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center. And James Fowler’s Stages of Faith introduced principles of developmental psychology to the way Christian Educators relate to curriculum development. But the science of complexity and in particular that of complex adaptive systems we find to be simultaneously the most relevant to local congregational life and most absent from it.
Applications of systems thinking and the science of complexity have for decades been at the heart of work in major universities to understand how organizations function and how we might best address dysfunctions. One of the trends through the 90’s was to help organizations (and what they mostly meant here was for-profit corporations) become more resilient. An article in the Harvard Business Review summarized the findings by saying that resilient organizations are ones that are clear about their purpose, fully share information, and seek innovation. These are not qualities that our local congregations are known for.
We have heard some concern from those in the conversation that our perspective doesn’t seem to be Biblical. I will simply say here that our belief is that it is central to the purpose of the local congregation to be a setting which supports us personally and collectively growing into the fullness of Christ. And that, when we put on the mind of Christ, we come to see the reality of the world in just the ways that are revealed by the science of complex adaptive systems. It is in just this place that science and religion rejoin forces.
We on the leadership team are eager to be sharing resources that local congregations can implement immediately to build greater vitality by being more resilient through applications of the science of complex adaptive systems. These include:
Applying the practices of non-violence pioneered by Jesus and Gandhi to the daily interactions we have with each other in couples, at work, and at Council meetings.
Understanding the nature of transformation and the steps we need to take to assure that the process is both minimally painful and results in the greatest positive change.
Seeing the purposes of the church as interconnected stages of development in which we engage in preservation, conformation, transformation, and celebration.
Structuring our common life in a holistic manner using dynamic forms of governance that mimic the ways that God creates.
All of these tools are proven to work in other settings than the local congregation. But many people who know and love the church have strongly asserted that the local congregation is not able to transform sufficiently to use these tools. It is just too invested in “the way we have always done it” to make the shift that is needed. It was our belief when we started this conversation that those who would most eagerly embrace what we are offering are those who are in local congregations facing the greatest difficulties. That has not proven to be the case.
What we have found instead is that the congregations which are in sight of their final days are too anxious to consider trying something new. It is the more flexible and innovative congregations that are making it to the table. However anxious or sanguine you may be, we look forward to your contributions to the conversation.
Handgun lying over a copy of the United States constitution and the American flag.
Four years ago I wrote a proposal addressing gun violence in America and began to shop it around. I was able to get a meeting with a senior staffer in the St. Louis office of Senator Claire McCaskill. He was attentive and generous with his time, but in the end, said that, while he believed that my proposal would make us safer if implemented, it was a political non-starter. I am hoping the political will has shifted enough to allow consideration of this perspective on and strategy for addressing gun violence.
I am Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson. I am the Executive Director of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution in St. Louis, MO. I have 40 years of experience addressing violent conflict in human systems. The collected wisdom of this work is something we now teach under the banner JustConflict. One of the basic principles is that a strategy for addressing conflict will arise as an expression of a definition of the problem. How we define the problem determines what will occur to us to do about it.
When the problem is simple, there will only be one best way to define the problem. When the problem is complex [what social planners call a “wicked” problem] there are many valid ways to define the problem and no best way. But practically speaking, we want to select a definition of the problem that allows us to solve it. We have been defining the problem of “gun violence” in ways that do not allow us to solve it.
Indeed, the dominant voices are highly polarized and end up reinforcing resistance to each other. If I say there are too many guns, anyone who owns one will imagine that “they are going to come and take away my guns.” When Obama became President, guns sales went up. “I better get mine now while I can.”
Resolution works better when we focus on what we all need, rather than the understandable attending to where we disagree We work better when we work together.
So I suggest a shift in our focus on the problem. I am not saying we shouldn’t do things like background checks and waiting periods, but I don’t really see them as being all that effective in the long run.
We don’t agree on whether more guns will make us safer, but we do agree that we want everyone to be safe. Let’s build on that.
There are some folks who think no one should possess a lethal weapon and there are some folks who believe that everyone should. Those are the two extremes. Most folks believe that there are some who should never have a gun, and some who must carry them to keep the rest of us safe. No one is saying that all of the patients in the psych hospital should have a gun and very few say law enforcement should disarm.
Most will agree that there is such a thing as a responsible gun owner. It is possible for someone to possess firearms and to use and store them in a manner that is safe. As long as only responsible gun owners can possess a weapon, we will be safe.
Is it possible to determine who is and who is not such a person? Are there ways to discern who is a “good guy with a gun?”
We probably don’t yet know how to figure that out, but I think we have large agreement that we need to figure that out, and to then be sure that no one who is not so identified has the right to possess a lethal weapon.
I am shifting the focus here from who owns the gun to who possesses the gun. If you are to legally possess a firearm in the public arena, on your person, in your car, at the shooting range, or hunting in the wilds, you must be certified as a “responsible gun owner.” We are shifting the focus from ownership to possession and from gun rights to gun responsibilities. You may be able to go to Walmart and purchase a gun but you can’t carry it out of the store without having demonstrated that you can possess it safely.
Most Americans agree, I believe, that someone who cannot demonstrate that they can possess a gun safely has no right to do so. Instead of it being society’s responsibility to remove the right from someone who is dangerous, it is the person’s responsibility to prove that they are safe.
The question that remains then is, how do we know who is safe with a firearm?
Ultimately, of course, we cannot know. But we want to have social policy that will reliably move us in the direction of reducing the chance that someone who is not safe will have access to a firearm. This is the goal I think we can all agree on.
But there is a catch [isn’t there always]. Who gets to decide who is a responsible gun owner and how do they decide?
This is where my proposal starts to make folks uncomfortable. Some think this has to rest with the government, whether State or Federal. No other entity has to authority to make this stick. And some don’t trust the government and so if it is involved they will oppose it. “I don’t want any government entity knowing anything about my guns.”
What we can then do is to have a law that gives the government the power to enforce a determination that is made by a public organization. The public entity has the task of discerning who is safe and the government enforces that determination.
One last piece. How is the system to be accountable for public safety? How do we apportion criminal and civil liability when a bad guy with a gun uses it?
If someone who possesses a firearm uses it with criminal intent, and they were able to get possession without having first been certified, then this is a criminal matter for which law enforcement is responsible. If however they were certified by a public organization, then that organization is civilly liable. [This is in addition to the criminal and civil liability of the bad actor.]
If I want to buy a shotgun to go hunting and I go into a local store to buy one, the sales person will ask if I am certified to carry a shotgun. If I say no, he is going to tell me that he will gladly sell it to me but he can’t let me carry it out of the store. I have to first prove that I have proper certification. If he allows me to, then he is in violation of the law and he faces penalties.
So I go online and find a company that offers certification. Think insurance company here. They want to sell to me but they are going to make sure that I know what I am doing because otherwise they are going to face lawsuits if I screw up. They send me to a company that does firearm safety training. This is like the companies that train people to drive a motorcycle. In most states you need special training to get a driver’s license to use a motorcycle.
I get the training and take the diploma to the certification/insurance company and they write me a policy and I take it to the gun store and they sell me a shotgun. But, oh, I say, while I am here, I think I’ll get an AR-15. And the store owner says, let me see your certification. Oops, no, you aren’t certified for an automatic rifle.
If I already have a gun collection and I don’t want to get certified I don’t have to… as long as I don’t take them out of the house. If I want to loan my son my shotgun, and he isn’t certified, then I am criminally liable for transferring possession to someone without certification.
The safety trainer is accountable to the certifying agent to be sure that students learn what they need to know. The certification company makes sure that they have covered all the bases. Maybe they require recertification periodically. Maybe they revoke certification in the event of an Adult Order of Protection. Maybe they want to do a more thorough background check. They certainly don’t want to be civilly liable for Parkland or El Paso.
The pitch is that we are balancing gun rights with gun responsibilities. We are affirming that there are responsible gun owners and that they can help create public safety by working to identify each other and to weed out those who cannot be trusted to safely carry a lethal weapon. We do this by allowing public corporations and associations to certify who is safe with which firearms. We are not getting the government involved in the control of who carries what gun, but we are trusting law enforcement to enforce the laws.
Oh, and then there is the Second Amendment. There will be a court case [probably many of them] that says that the requirement that one must be certified to possess a firearm is unconstitutional.
The wording of the Second Amendment is a bit odd. It reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
If I may be permitted to paraphrase the wording without, I believe, altering its meaning but in fact making it clearer we might read it as, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed because the security of a free State depends upon a well regulated Militia.”
About this reference to a Militia, the Supreme Court held in DC vs. Heller that, ““The “militia” comprised all males [sic] physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense…” and that the reason for this provision is “…so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.”
A militia is thus an organization that identifies and organizes persons so that they may act in concert for the common defense for the security of a free State. It is not a gang or posse or band of vigilantes. Certain paramilitary organizations have used the term “militia” to refer to themselves. As a result, many folks don’t think of a militia as making them safer.
I am hoping we now have the political will to say that the right to keep and bear Arms is one that rests upon the need for the security of the people, and that being a member of an organization that certifies one’s ability to act safely is the modern equivalent of a well regulated Militia.
I have long argued that there is a very important distinction to be made between being self-centered and being centered in one’s self. The former is evidence of personal dysfunction and the latter is evidence of healthy functioning.
This is true for us personally but it is also true for the church. We are so afraid of being self-centered that we lose sight of the importance of paying attention to our own interiors; by which I mean the relationships we form with each other, and the ways we make decisions together.
As we begin to pay more and more attention to how we are with each other, how we treat each other in general, but especially how we treat each other when there is a decision to be made, we discover that we are in the habit of deferring to dominance hierarchies. We tend to assume that the decision should be made by whomever is in charge. And even when we all get a say in what we are going to do, it is “the majority” who will prevail. Those in the minority, those at the margins, even if they are the ones who will ultimately implement the decision, their input may not even be sought, but it will certainly not prevail.
This is not the way God makes decisions. This is not how God participates in and is expressed by creation. This is not the way to justice.
In the conversation We Should Talk about the future of the church we consider, among other things, the question of how we make decisions together. We look at how God creates and imagine what it might be like if we were to model our process on how God arises. We choose holism over dualism; holarchy over hierarchy; inclusion and diversity and complexity, over exclusion and uniformity and simplicity.
Create constructive conversations about hard issues in personal relationships
Workshop on Interpersonal Nonviolence
Saturday, March 16, 2019 from 9:00 – 4:00
at 6454 Alamo Ave, St. Louis MO, 63105,
In memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life and ministry
In the tradition of Satyagraha or Soul Force as taught by Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma
Two years after the inauguration of our 45th President
In an increasingly polarized political climate
We gather to explore the nature of nonviolence, not as an alternative political strategy, but as a spiritual discipline for creating what the world needs while creating what we need.
Each participant is encouraged to come with a conflicted relationship in mind. We will use lecture and large group conversation together with journaling and small group support to apply the principles of nonviolence to what seems to be an intractable conflict.
The leader is Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson, the Director of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution and the author of Just Conflict: Transformation through Resolution.
The fee for the workshop is $100. Snacks will be provided. The workshop is limited to eight persons.
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi
You want to know if you are on the right track? Here is a set of guidelines for knowing if we are on the right track.
The right track is the one that leads toward greater and greater health. [It is not the one that leads toward normal. “Normal” is a pretty low standard of health.]
Health is optimized by creating what we need, recognizing that what I need is not the same as what I want. [“Wants” are objects and outcomes. “Needs” are qualities of a relationship.]
If I am making choices that cost me what I need in order to give others what they want, I am on the wrong track.
If I am making choices that create what I want at the expense of what others’ need, I am on the wrong track.
When I make choices that move me toward what I need such that others also get more of what they need, I am on the right track.
I created a handout using the content of the PowerPoint presentation on Creative Conversations. This handout in pdf form is Conversation Guidelines handout.
