Healing America’s Narratives: Moving Toward Collective Healing

Posted on August 15, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our turn toward the collective in our ongoing exploration of Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

In the previous essay, we introduced M. Scott Peck’s stages of community-making: pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and community.

Here, as we continue our turn toward the collective, we’ll look briefly at Theory U, a book and methodology by MIT professor and founder of the Presencing Institute, Otto Scharmer, who invites leaders — that’s all of us at some level — to explore their “blind spot” — the “inner place” and “quality of intention and attention” from which they operate.

Scharmer engages a developmental approach that navigates individual, group, institutional, and global dynamics and structures, with a focus on the collective. “Presencing, the blending of sensing and presence, means to connect with the Source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now.”¹

The process invites leaders to connect “to the deepest source, from which the field of the future begins to arise — viewing from source,” by first recognizing habits and patterns (compare with Peck’s pseudocommunity and chaos) and then seeing with fresh eyes, letting go of preconceptions, connecting with the stillness of source, and “letting come” what is yet to emerge (compare with Peck’s emptiness).²

Theory U engages open minds, hearts, and wills, deeply explores self and work, and embraces the collective energies of co-initiating, co-sensing, co-presencing, co-creating, and co-evolving. Scharmer is playing an infinite game³ at organizational, institutional, and global levels: “The real battle in the world today is…among the different evolutionary futures that are possible for us…right now. What is at stake is…the choice of who we are, who we want to be, and where we want to take the world… The real question, then, is “What are we here for?”⁴

In Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, Thomas Hübl, after several decades of engaging large groups in collective trauma integration and healing, works through what is now known as the Collective Trauma Integration Process (CTIP).

The process includes three stages: Cohering the Group, Inducing the Collective Wave, and Meta-Reflection. The second stage unfolds through four waves: processing group denial, group eruption, discerning the collective voice, and group clearing and integration.⁵ Hübl’s work also includes Trauma Integration Processes for individual trauma (ITIP) and Ancestral/inter-generational trauma (ATIP).

These two synopses, along with Peck’s in the previous essay, just scratch the surface of Peck’s, Scharmer’s, and Hübl’s respective offerings, which differ in content, context, scope, scale, and intent. Amid these differences, however, they share a trajectory that moves generally from old or current ways of being, making believe, and denial, through chaos, resistance, and disruption, then through emptiness, presence, stillness, and openness, and into true community, co-evolution, integration, and healing — these last four being ongoing processes, not static end points.

Peck, Scharmer, and Hübl all emphasize the importance of the collective; the need for each member therein to do individual work as well; and the need for those who lead or facilitate community, presencing, or healing to embody the energetic, spiritual, psychological, and mental competence and clarity to guide others.

Our American polarizations have us stuck in denial, disruption, chaos, and resistance to growth. Until enough of us engage the will and the available means to move collectively into emptiness, stillness, and deep listening, we’ll neither own and integrate our national Shadow nor heal our individual, ancestral, and collective traumas. Such owning, integrating, and healing won’t be legislated, trickled down, or magically cast upon us. Peck, Scharmer, and Hübl present opportunities for intentional engagement, practice, love, and discipline.

_____

Otto Scharmer, Theory U: The Social Technology of Presencing, (Berrett-Koehler, 2009), 163.
Ibid., 38–39.
James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (Free Press-MacMillan, 1986), 3. According to Carse, a finite game is played with a limited number of players whose intentions are to win and bring the game to an end (i.e. conventional American history); an infinite game is played by an unlimited number of players whose intentions are to invite more players to play and to keep the game going (i.e. what we need to do if we are to survive).
Scharmer, Theory U, 20.
Thomas Hübl, Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, (Sounds True, 2020), 119-42.

Healing America’s Narratives: Moving Toward Community

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay turns toward the collective as we continue our exploration of Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

As we continue to explore America’s narratives and collective Shadow, it’s essential to remember and pay attention to the interrelationships among individuals, groups, and systems — with systems, as used here, including all of our natural and human-made environments — from the planet itself to big cities, to belief systems, to the technology you’re using right now to read or listen to this essay.

From among those abundant possibilities, we’ll focus here on individual human beings as they come together in search of, or because of, community. One deceptively simple and wonderfully useful approach to community emerged through M. Scott Peck’s work after the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Road Less Traveled, in 1978. He and some colleagues set out to explore what they called community-making, and after some years of experience-based practice — convening groups of individuals to make community — he published The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace in 1987.

The result, as shared in the book, was the observation, facilitation, and refinement of four stages of community-making—pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and community — during six years of intentional experiments.¹

Briefly, in pseudocommunity, individuals are nice, friendly, and polite — as they try to fake community.

When the facade falls apart, chaos emerges, characterized by attempts to control and fix each other; chaos feels frustrating, exhausting, and further from community.

Eventually, a facilitator suggests the possibility of emptiness, which Peck describes as the hardest, “most crucial stage” — “the bridge between chaos and com-munity” — that requires participants to “empty themselves of barriers to communication,” many of which they have just experienced in chaos. The barriers include expectations, preconceptions, ideology, and attempts to fix, solve, or control.² It is common for individuals to ignore the initial invitation to emptiness, unwilling to let go of what they know and to surrender to the process.

Emptiness requires both the “little deaths” and rebirths of each individual and the larger death of the initial group. “When its death has been completed, open and empty, the group enters community. In this final stage a soft quietness descends. It is a kind of peace. The room is bathed in peace.”³ Peck is clear that true community is not magically permanent; it must be maintained.

Consider your own current relationships and “communities” — in the more common meaning of the word. What stage — pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, or true community — characterizes your experience of each? To what extent do the stages emerge and disappear and reemerge during the days, weeks, months, and years of your life?

In light of your, my, and our discrete experiences, how, then, in the name of all that is good (and possible), might we scale such an approach to affect a nation — or even effect a new version of a nation? No easy task, that amid our current chaos.

As we’ll explore in coming essays, large groups of people around the world are already convening and building community, albeit using different language and with very specific focuses. Readers familiar with the work of Otto Scharmer and Thomas Hübl might already see the parallels with Peck’s four stages.

We’ll explore all of this further in coming essays. For now, your homework is to notice the comings and goings of pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and true community in your own life.

Be kind to yourself and others.

M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, (Touchstone-Simon & Schuster, 1987), 86–135.
Ibid., 95–98. For more on barriers to communication, see also, Marra, Enough with the Talking Points, (2020).
Ibid., 102–03.

Healing America’s Narratives: Self-Compassion

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our exploration of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

Take some time. Enjoy an apple. Breathe.

Most of us who are more or less healthy have no problem extending compassion to — recognizing and engaging with the suffering of — others. Many of us, however, when it comes to our own suffering, struggle to offer compassion to ourselves.

Kristin Neff, in her book, Self-Compassion, writes that compassion “involves the recognition and clear seeing of suffering….feelings of kindness for people who are suffering….[and] recognizing our shared human condition.”¹ Self-compassion, then, asks us to be mindful — so we can recognize and clearly see our own suffering. It asks us to extend kindness towards ourselves so we might help ourselves alleviate our suffering. And it asks us to recognize and remember our shared human condition — our common humanity — which includes, but need not be defined by, pain and suffering.²

Consider for a moment the importance of Scott Peck’s idea of balancing — of disciplining our discipline — so that we might avoid an overly rigid, narrow, and impossible-to-maintain set of standards, and learn to relax into the prospect of not having to be perfect, accepting our full humanity, and accepting ourselves in all our beauty and blemish. This balancing is a manifestation of self-compassion, which means self-compassion can be an essential part of our self-discipline.

So, the next time you find yourself facing pain, suffering, or both, practice self-compassion.³ Any one of these three, in any order, can help. Each of them invites the others:

Slow down and express care and kindness for yourself.
Remember that pain and suffering are part of our common humanity. You’re not in it alone, even if it feels that way sometimes.
Hold whatever comes up — sensations, thoughts, and emotions — in mindful awareness.⁴

_____

Kristin Neff, Self Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, (William Morrow, 2011), 10. For some guided self-compassion practices, see her site: https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/#exercises
Ibid. 41.
The language of pain and suffering can get a bit slippery. For the sake of this post, pain arises from difficult events and circumstances — we break a bone; we lose a loved one; we have a difficult argument, etc. Suffering arises from how we respond to the pain we experience. If we respond to the pain with anger, denial, or blame, we tend to suffer more (similar to the idea of dirty pain. If we respond to our pain with acceptance and understanding, we tend to suffer less (similar to clean pain).
Neff, Self-Compassion, 102–103.

Healing America’s Narratives: Self-Discipline

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our exploration of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

Knowing we are going to die, how, then, shall we live? The livings, indignities, and dyings depicted throughout Healing America’s Narratives and this series of posts offer examples of how not to live. As an antidote, Chapter Eleven of the book offers the potential benefits of paying attention to who we think we are, the stories we choose to tell and how we choose to tell them, the impact we have and how we are impacted, what we might not see — including, but not limited to, Shadow — who our people are, the inevitability of our death, and how we are in relationship with all of it.

To truly pay attention in this way, some level of healthy self-discipline is required — not the discipline of the angry parent wielding a belt, but the discipline that helps us move forward when things are difficult. In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck defined discipline as “the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems,” and he characterized “these tools [as] techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work through them…learning and growing in the process.”¹ Peck’s toolbox contains four essential tools: delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth/reality, and balancing (learning to discipline discipline).² These tools may seem obvious conceptually, but they must be embraced and embodied if we are to benefit from them in this third decade of twenty-first-century America.

Briefly, delaying gratification requires that we engage what is painful before we, and often in order to, experience what’s pleasurable. Do the hard thing first; get it out of the way. Dr. David Schnarch and Dr. Steven Hayer³ use the term clean pain to refer to our ability to delay gratification and move into the pain of difficult circumstances when we know something must be done, even if we’re not sure what it is. Dirty pain is what we encounter when we try to avoid what is necessary, uncomfortable, and uncertain. The clean pain of delaying gratification often leads to learning, growth and healing narratives; the dirty pain of avoidance or denial tends to lead to increased suffering, a lack of resolution, and illness narratives.

Accepting responsibility requires that we honestly own what’s ours — that we accept and engage those problems that are ours to solve. It is at the heart of healing our narratives and owning and integrating Shadow. It requires that we do the difficult work of wisely and compassionately discerning what belongs to us and what belongs to others. It challenges us to be present to and move beyond the harmful belief that either everything, or nothing, is our responsibility.

Individual dedication to truth or reality (used synonymously here) requires that we know what we mean by these words; collective dedication to truth requires that we agree on these meanings or at least honor each other’s meanings. Our working definition for these essays is Parker Palmer’s view that “truth is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline.”⁴ So, truth is an unfolding part of the infinite game; it is a conversation to which all are invited⁵ — not the domain of one individual or group — and it is important and welcomes and requires both deep feeling and healthy rigor.

Finally, balancing invites the disciplining of discipline and avoids obsession, rigidity, and inflexibility. It allows us to take a day off, to rest and recover, to eat the icing (or even dessert) first, to recognize that sometimes good enough — even if that phrase gets caught in the throat or knots the stomach — is more appropriate than best, great, or good.

Another model of discipline that can be useful comes from retired college basketball coach, Bob Knight. Knight also described discipline as having four components: Do what has to be done. Do it when it has to be done. Do it the best you possibly can. Do it that way all the time. I won’t do a point-by-point comparison with Peck’s model. My experience is that each of these models has value in the practice of self-discipline.

Love is also required if we are to truly pay attention, and we’ll explore it in a future post. In the absence of love, there’s a good chance discipline will either be ignored or manifested in unhealthy, punitive, subjugating ways — whether self- or other-directed.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth, (Touchstone-Simon & Schuster, 1978), 17–18.
Peck develops each of these in detail on pages 16–78.
Dr. David Schnarch and Dr. Steven Hayer, in Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, (Central Recovery Press, 2017), 19–20.
Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, (Jossey-Bass, 1998), 104.
The idea that “all” are invited is important, and it needs to be qualified. A more accurate characterization might be “all who are authentically dedicated to truth.” An example: Trump strategist, Steve Bannon, argued that it was the media and not the Democratic party that was the “real opposition” and that “the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit” — which Trump, Bannon, and others did quite well. Michael Lewis, “Has Anyone Seen the President?” in Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, (Brookings Institution, 2021), 163.

Healing America’s Narratives: Intentional Practice, Addiction, and Escape

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our exploration of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

For the sake of this essay, we’ll describe practice as any thought, feeling, or behavior that is repeated on a regular¹ basis. Intentional practice is, therefore, any intentionally repeated thought, feeling, or behavior. So, for the folks captured in the above photo, let’s assume (despite the dangers therein) that they have intentionally created or purchased the signs they’re holding, and that they have intentionally shown up at this venue to make their views known.

Beyond their chosen signs and location, let’s explore this question: To what extent had they intentionally practiced the thought processes and behaviors that led them to want to stop “race mixing” and equate it with communism? Asked differently, was this view the result of a regular, intentional process of exploration and reflection or just something they chose to repeat because it first had been culturally given to them and then it subsequently reinforced these given biases? What had they practiced that got them to this point?

We can practice just about anything: meditation; strength training; nail-biting; yoga; writing; shooting; mindfulness; foot-tapping; reading; an athletic skill; a musical skill; cooking; checking social media; critical thinking; tai chi; relaxing; compassion; (im)patience; curiosity; public speaking; poor or good posture. You get the idea. Sorry if I omitted your favorite practice.

When we choose to practice — when our repeated thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors are intentional — it makes sense to say that we practice or we have a practice. When we don’t choose what we practice — when our repeated thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors are unintentional — it makes sense to say that they practice us — we are practiced by them.

All of us, whether we know it or not, are practiced by something. We regularly are at the effect of thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors that have chosen us, and with no exceptions, these unintentional practices can serve us, harm us, or both serve and harm us. When they harm us, we often call them addictions, and when we call them addictions we tend to conjure images of injected, inhaled, or swallowed substances. But we can be addicted to daydreaming, foot-tapping, falsehoods, fallacies, and nail-biting as well.

In her book, Getting Our Bodies Back, Christine Caldwell describes addiction as “a consistent physical response to a consistently unmet need” — something we do in order not to be present to what is.² In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté describes addiction as “a complex psychological, emotional, physiological, neurobiological, social, and spiritual process [that] manifests through any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but that in the long term causes them or others negative consequences, and yet the person refuses or is unable to give it up.”³ Addictive behaviors tend to arise when something in the present moment is too painful to bear. Unfortunately, unless that causative “something” is recognized for what it is, addictive behavior continues even after the painful moment(s) has (or have) passed. We continue to try to escape that past painful something.

Caldwell writes that addiction is characterized by 1) repetition; 2) a lack of development — no progress is made; 3) lack of satisfaction — the need is not met; 4) lack of completion; and 5) being uncomfortable to watch. Maté points to three characteristics: 1) short-term relief or pleasure and therefore craving; 2) long-term suffering for oneself or others; and 3) an inability to stop.

To summarize, our addictions are repetitive, arise from an attempt to keep us safe, don’t provide long-term development or relief, do provide long-term suffering, and are difficult to stop.

These traits are consistent with the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that characterize America’s competing narratives and collective Shadow. We are addicted to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that keep us and our senses of real or imagined identities intact as we try to avoid what’s true. We don’t progress; we are not satisfied; we occasionally get some short-term relief; we suffer in the long-term; and we don’t seem to be able to stop.

It’s definitely uncomfortable to watch.

_____

“Regular” admittedly is a vague term. For the sake of argument, we’ll say something is a regular practice if it’s engaged at least once a week. That’s quite arbitrary and open to debate since most of what we’re exploring in this essay takes place decidedly more frequently.
Christine Caldwell, Getting Our Bodies Back: Recovery, Healing, and Transformation through Body-Centered Psychotherapy. Boston: Shambhala, 1996 (44–45).
Gabor Maté, with Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. New York: Avery, 2022 (224–25).

Healing America’s Narratives: The Power & Paradox of Silence

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our exploration Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow, specifically in the context of what may serve the healing process moving forward. The book is available.]

In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde wrote that “I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”¹ Millions of voices have been silenced over hundreds of years by America’s narratives and collective Shadow. Yet, the mystical branch of every wisdom tradition and the deepening evidence of true science are increasingly clear that silence — becoming aware of, working with, and quieting our incessant mind chatter, and regularly retreating from the noise of our human-made infrastructure — is good for us and allows us to hear, see and feel more deeply. Each is true and necessary. Preventing the external silencing of any voice and encouraging and choosing the intentional silencing of our interior and exterior noise are necessary for individual and societal health.

The United States’ external attempts to silence others is clear whether we look at the histories of women, Native Americans, and African Americans, or the attempts to impose our will and way of life on the people of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others. Despite formal statements regarding the freedoms of speech, the press, and assembly, also known as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, both formal and informal behavior and the nature of many of our systems and institutions at worst limit or deny these freedoms and at best make them inconvenient for selected people at specific times and in specific places. Revisit the links at the beginning of this paragraph for some examples.

On the other hand, the prospect of intentionally choosing silence (and its sibling, stillness) remains and may be becoming increasingly counter-culture, in cities for sure, but even in rural and suburban areas — anywhere people choose to be at the mercy of phones and apps, and yes, that includes the apps that invite us to engage stillness, silence, and meditation. Try the following suggestion the next time you eat a meal or snack alone in a quiet space (if it’s rare for you to eat in a quiet, private place, perhaps give yourself a brief opportunity to try this). It’s especially effective if what you’re eating is crunchy and requires robust chewing.

About halfway through a mouthful, simply stop chewing, and sit with the stillness and silence that remain for 10–15 seconds (or longer). Perhaps close your eyes. Simply notice how this feels, then begin chewing again. Stopping virtually any activity for a brief time period may bring you a similar experience.

Because of the expectations, speed, and noise that are common in American culture, getting still and silent may feel uncomfortable because of the apparent rewards for getting things done, getting them done quickly, and letting others know you got it done. Less apparent, research-based rewards for practicing stillness and silence, however, can positively impact blood pressure, heart rate, muscular tension, and the ability to focus attention (see resources below).

Your homework:

Notice and speak out against the inappropriate silencing of others.
Give yourself the gift of practicing silence and stillness every day — even for just a few minutes.

_____

Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Sister Outsider, (Crossing Press, 1984), 41; and The Cancer Journals, (Penguin, 2020/1980), 13. The essay appears in both volumes.
Some resources (among many) regarding the benefits of intentional silence:

An Ode to Silence: Why You Need It in Your Life

And how to find more of it Silence. Some of us welcome it. For others, the thought of sitting in silence is enough to…

health.clevelandclinic.org

https://hbr.org/2021/07/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-silence

The power of silence: 10 benefits of cultivating peace and quiet

We live in an increasingly noisy world. The constant drone of traffic, household appliances, music, television and…

www.happiness.com

How Listening to Silence Changes Our Brains

Quiet is increasingly scarce in the modern world. But growing evidence shows that we need it for our health and…

time.com

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/family/2021/09/shh-how-a-little-silence-can-go-a-long-way-for-kids-mental-health

Healing America’s Narratives: Background and Foreground, Context and Content

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay continues our exploration of Chapter Eleven (So, Now What?”) of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

In the context of the history¹ of the United States, of the nation’s collective national Shadow and state of affairs in the third decade of the twenty-first century, and our reflections on who we are, the stories we tell and embrace, who and what we impact or impacts us, what we might be missing, who our people are, our inevitable death, and how we’re in relationship with all of this, what might we do individually or collectively in order to engage this healing and Shadow integration? Good question. Thanks for asking.

Our exploration of this question in forthcoming essays will necessarily revisit some concepts and practices that we’ve already acknowledged (cultural givens, skillful means, healthy development, intentional practice, silence, openness, truth, and love) as well as some that we have not explicitly addressed, such as resistance, trauma, self-discipline, self-compassion, empathy, and community.

In preparation for what’s to come, as you read this now, consider the previous paragraph and get a sense of — perhaps write down — one or two (or more) of the concepts and practices listed that you feel you would like to work or play with and develop further, and one or two that you feel you are in a good place with — that don’t need your immediate attention. Feel free to add your own if there’s something in your awareness that’s not listed above. And you can always change your mind and revise your list.

Another way to do this, which I find more challenging, is to prioritize the list: #1 would be what you feel you’d most like to work or play with and the final item you list would be what you feel is in pretty good shape right now. Again, none of this is etched in stone; just playing with the list might bring an insight. Stay open and curious.

Be kind to yourself.

_____

¹The brief histories explored in the book include women, Native Americans, African Americans, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — all in the context of the book’s title and subtitle.

Healing America’s Narratives: I Am Going To Die

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Reggie Marra

[Part of a series, this essay explores a subheading from Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.]

Photo ©by Philippa Rose-Tite on Unsplash

We’re returning to Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives after our departures in the previous two posts — the inevitability of the current state of the country and the apparent belief, shared by both Democratic and Republican leadership, that they need never-ending millions of advertising dollars in order to win elections and defeat each other (for the good of the country).

“I am going to die” is the fifth of six statements and questions that frame Chapter Eleven, which explores some approaches to manifesting the book’s title — Healing America’s Narratives. The statement is ‘simply’ an acknowledgment of what is — what’s true — that given enough time, we all die. No one knows how, when, or where, but with each breath we take, we get closer to our final breath.

Our responses to the some of the earlier questions and statements from Chapter Eleven inform how we might respond to this acknowledgment of our mortality. If who we think we are is simply an assembly of flesh, bone, instinct, thought, and mood — nothing but separate animated objects with a few shared traits and some noticeable differences — then the horrors of the histories of women, Native Americans, African Americans, the Vietnam War, the post-9/11 war on terror, and other significant histories, while still horrific, make sense in an ignorant, arrogant, fearful, bigoted, violent kind of way.

If, however, we all share an origin, a common ancestry — whether through a religious or a scientific story — and if we each have a unique ecological niche — our ultimate place in the world, our Soul, expressed through mythopoetic identity as a one-time-only manifestation of Spirit, All That Is, God, Source, Ground of Being — then it becomes a tad more difficult — it makes no sense at all — to proclaim the supremacy of any race, to declare you’re either with us or you’re with the enemy, or to in any way dehumanize others. The stories we choose about who we are, really, make a difference.

Each of us has our own dying and death stories. If we’re lucky we get to bury our parents and older siblings, our grandparents, aunts and uncles, and others from the generations that precede us. Some of these deaths, while sad, are expected and feel natural; sometimes they are unexpected and feel tragic. What is the story each of us tells, what is the story that you choose to tell, about the inevitability of death? As Mary Catherine Bateson told us, “The choice you make affects what you can do next.”¹

The late surgeon and author, Sherwin Nuland, wrote that death results “all too frequently [from] a series of destructive events that involve…the disintegration of the dying person’s humanity,” and that he had not “seen much dignity in the process by which we die.” Nuland, however, complemented his surgeon’s intimacy with the sterility, knowledge, precision, life, and death of the operating room with his philosopher’s view and his poet’s heart. “The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it,” he told us.²

If you want a dignified death, your best bet is to live a dignified life. If you want a dignified country, your best bet is live, and help others live, a dignified life by coming to terms with things as they are, being the change you want to see in the world, and at the very least, doing more good than harm through your words and actions.

_____

Mary Catherine Bateson, “Composing a Life,” Sacred Stories: A Celebration of the Power of Stories to Transform and Heal. Eds. Charles & Anne Simpkinson, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 42–43.
Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die, (Knopf, 1993), “all too frequently…,” xvii; “The greatest dignity…,” 242.

Healing

America

Narrative

Healing America’s Narratives: Who Are My People?

Posted on March 23, 2023 by Reggie Marra

Part of a series, this essay explores a subheading from Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.

Who Are My People?

In the perfectly integrated, comprehensive, inclusive, and balanced universe in which most of us do not (think we) live, we can hear the mystical cheerleaders’ rhythmic, enthusiastic, and obvious response echoing around the arena: EV-ree-one! Where most of us do think we live, it can be helpful to have a sense of who our people are — not in the unhealthy us-against-the-others sense that governs most finite games, but in the sense of realistically assessing how and with whom I might do the most good in the world as it is, with what I have to offer, without harming others, to the benefit of the whole shebang. Taking care of my, or our, little niche is often the best way to serve the greater good.

Often, the answer to this question lies not in some definitive choice we make but in our authentic attention to the intersections of who we think we are, the stories we choose, the impacts we both have and receive, and what we are able to uncover and own that we previously had not seen. While “my people” may be superficially identified, or at least narrowed down, through blood, geography, and chronology, they are inevitably found and known through experience, belief, and worldview. They include those I learn from and learn with and those who learn from me — whether the learning emerges in the classroom, on the street, at the checkout counter, in the healthcare office, at work, or at the kitchen table. Consider the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates, as his writing led him into “contact with more human beings”:

“I had editors — more teachers — and these were the first white people I’d ever really known on any personal level. They defied my presumptions — they were afraid neither for me nor of me. Instead they saw in my unruly curiosity and softness something that was to be treasured and harnessed.”¹

The friends we choose and who choose us in childhood and adolescence, the groups we align with when we choose a craft, profession, or area of study (or one chooses us), and the individuals in our chosen craft, profession, or discipline towards whom we gravitate may provide insight and evidence about, but don’t necessarily define, “our people.” Many folks will come, stay for a while and go; others will come and stay. We begin to recognize some who stay, and even some who go, as our people.

As tempting as it can be to espouse an all-of-us perspective and claim everyone as our people (as those mystical cheerleaders did above), if we’re operating primarily from a Body-Mind identity, it is difficult to embody and live up to that claim — despite its value and attractiveness. Better to live in a healthy embodiment of who our people truly are right now, than to delude ourselves with an espoused, but not yet embodied and lived, self-aggrandizing claim.

Still, part of our intentional practice might be to “act as if” all humans are our people and to see how such practice impacts our sense of self, our beliefs about others, and our behavior.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, (One World-
Random House, 2015), 62.

Healing America’s Narratives: Everything Is a Story

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Reggie Marra

Part of a series, this essay explores a subheading from Chapter Eleven of Healing America’s Narratives: The Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow. Now available.

Some of the story sources that inform Healing America’s Narratives

Everything Is a Story

Note your immediate response to this premise. Is it, ‘What do you mean — please explain?’ or, ‘Bullshit…?’ or ‘Du-uh, tell me something I don’t already know?’ Perhaps it’s ‘Thank you for confirming what I was beginning to see?’ Is it something else entirely? Whatever it is fine — it’s your story about the suggestion that everything is a story. Consider that if your response was in the general area of Bullshit.

The cultural givens handed down by our parents and earliest communities and experiences are stories. As (or if) we grow up, wake up, clean up, and show up, some stories hold up and some don’t. Sometimes the givens that don’t hold up were false when we received them and sometimes they were true — as far as anyone knew at the time — but the larger, always evolving community of truth learned more and disproved them when new evidence was found.¹ Doctors no longer recommend smoking cigarettes as a way to relax. Planet Earth is no longer considered the center of the universe.

The stories we choose to believe and tell, as well as the stories that choose us, are powerful. Being in the position to choose our stories and not be chosen by them carries power. Mary Catherine Bateson encourages us to exercise this power:

“…think about the creative responsibility involved in the fact that there are different ways to tell your stories. It’s not that one is true and another is not true. It’s a matter of emphasis and context…. The choice you make affects what you can do next.”²

So, let’s be thoughtful about the stories we choose to tell about who we (think we — and they) are. The choices we make and the stories we tell matter.

Consider the specific stories that inform(ed) your cultural givens. What holds up? What’s the most recent revision you’ve made, or that was made for you, where revision actually means re-vision — to see again? Look at the sweeping revisions, many ongoing, in the earlier essays in this series, and the specific, personal revisions shared therein, such as Robert McNamara’s ‘re-visioned’ view that owned the extent to which he and the other architects of the Vietnam war misjudged, underestimated, failed, and did not recognize a long list of people and ideas.

Such seeing again is never easy and always valuable when it moves the seer toward a more comprehensive, inclusive view. Malcolm X’s life stands as an exemplar of re-visioning. Two of his major re-visions — becoming a Muslim and joining the Nation of Islam while in prison and then leaving the Nation of Islam while remaining a Muslim after his 1964 Hajj — follow the developmental trajectory from a focus on me to a focus on us to a focus on all of us. In each case he changed his name and publicly recognized and owned his seeing again.³

How we tell our stories is as important as which stories we tell. Focus only on what’s wrong and get an “illness” story. Open up to the possibilities of moving through and beyond what’s wrong and tell or write a “healing” story. Adults model both of these for children: if the child who falls down the stairs and breaks an arm is confronted with parental overwhelm, blame, anger, and fear, an illness story emerges in which stairs are dangerous and the child is careless or clumsy; if the child is met with parental support, concern, acceptance, understanding, and love, a healing story emerges in which accidents can happen, stairs are useful and fine and best engaged with care, and the child is curious and open to experience.

Illness stories limit us, narrowly focus on a sense of wrongness, keep us stuck, and can reinforce trauma; healing stories open up the context in which we understand what happened (wrongness may be relevant, but not primary), they can expand and free us, and they can contribute to trauma recovery. Because they focus on what’s wrong, illness stories are often tidy, brief, stagnant, partial, and consistent. Because they emerge through and invite increasingly larger contexts, healing stories are often messy, ongoing, progressive, comprehensive, and paradoxical. Explore your stories. Be kind to yourself.

Writing can be engaged as a powerful process⁴ that helps open us up to increasingly larger contexts that allow us to see and feel as others see and feel — to go beneath all the individual differences, see another soul just like ourselves, and at the same time deeply understand and embody those differences. Going one step further, learning to embody and tell or write someone else’s story, both helps us understand the other and often provides clarity into our own narrative.⁵

Finally, if I’m truly playing an infinite game,⁶ some questions may arise at the intersection of “who am I, really?” and “everything is a story.” Try these questions on for size: Without the stories I hold and that hold me, who am I, and what’s true in this moment? Who am I and what does this moment offer without my story/ies? Ram Dass’s channels four and five point toward a prospective answer. John Tarrant, in Bring Me the Rhinoceros, put it this way:

“Everyone knows that some events are just bad and make you sad or angry, and some are good and make you glad. Yet what everyone knows might not be true. For example there might be a certain coercion to the attitude that weddings must be happy, funerals have to be sad. It could prevent you from meeting the moment you are in. What if events don’t have to be anything other than what they are?”⁷

We owe it to ourselves and each other to create and tell our stories with care.

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1. See Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Institution, 2021) for an expansive and passionate exploration of his book’s title and the “community of truth.”

2. Mary Catherine Bateson, “Composing a Life,” Sacred Stories: A Celebration of the Power of Stories to Transform and Heal. Eds. Charles & Anne Simpkinson, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 42–43.

3. M.S. Handler, “Malcolm Rejects Racist Doctrine,” New York Times, October 4, 1964, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/10/04/archives/malcolm-rejects-racist-doctrine-also-denounces-elijah-as-a.html; Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley, (New York: Ballantine, 1992).

4. James Pennebaker has led the way in decades of research that back this up. See his Expressive Writing: Words that Heal, co-authored with John Evans, (2014); and Opening Up: The Healing Power of Emotions (1990), among others. See also John Fox’s Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making, (1997). There are many more resources available.

5. See Marra, Enough with the Talking Points, (2020), 79–82 for more on truly embodying another’s story. For a deeper dive into telling another’s story as if it were our own, see the work of Narrative 4, which uses “story exchange” to help young (and old) people develop empathy. (Some meeting “icebreaker” exercises skim the surface of this experience: two strangers briefly share who they are and then introduce each other to a group — speaking in first-person, as if they are the person they’re introducing. Narrative 4 goes deeper): https://narrative4.com/.

6. Inspired by James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (Free Press-MacMillan, 1986). An infinite game is one in which the goals are to invite everyone to play and to keep the game going. A finite game is one in which the goal is to limit the players, win, and end the game.

7. John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros, (Shambhala, 2008/2004), 113.