3 Voices & Voices from the Community: Shifting the System
/[The Hearth] 3 Voices & Voices from the Community - Part Il
This week we gathered for the Hearth which is another expression of Essential Conversations. We welcomed back our allies Kelly Chatman, Yvette Trotman and Harry Waters Jr., who continued to deepen our conversation from last week about justice and dreams of justice, and living a legacy of fulfilling the dream spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963.
Minx Boren was inspired to create a poem that was scoured from the conversation and the sharing of how the three conversation starters are living their legacy. She wrote and finished the poem in less than an hour.
Listen to the poem featuring author Minx Boren and our conversation starters: Kelly Chatman, Yvette Trotman and Harry Waters Jr..
“The word for today is ZEST
for how else to awaken our best?
How else to show up and grow up
and step into Truth
freed from excuse and no matter
the abuse that might otherwise
contain us although
who would blame us?
It’s scary out there
in the rarified air
that the brave among us
breathe and share through
their story-songs…their glory-songs
that lift us and gift us
with the courage and conviction
to live into our own mission.
These are the life-songs that challenge us
and imbalance us by asking us
to stretch far and wide
beyond both complacency and pride
reaching across false divides
behind which it would be easier to hide.
For how else to LIVE our legacy
rather than just worry about leaving one?
How else to sing out loud and clear
in defense of all that we each hold dear?
How else to speak Truth to power
at every opportunity and hour
rather than fight or take flight
or just freeze or appease or
seek to please?
How to stay the course?
With LOVE not force!
With RIGHT not might!
With GRACE and the God-given
gifts we came to claim
and to dare to share.”
from the heart, mind, and pen of Minx
©2022 Minx Boren. All rights reserved. PLEASE SHARE with attribution.
MLK’s dream points to a beloved community with a vision of meaning and equity that works for everyone - not just for some. During this weeks Essential conversations we asked our our conversation starters and community members:
How do we find meaning in systems that are not designed for everyone’s fulfillment? (stay resilient, grounded, hopeful, engaged, even joyful while avoiding denial…)?
Kelly Chapman: “Systems have no consciousness and it’s what we bring those systems in terms of how we humanize those systems. Navigating the systems is the consciousness that I bring as I navigate those systems. Most often systems where I was not in the design to benefit from those systems. I bring the value of consciousness, bring love, bring relationships that ground me and a kind of centered sense of consciousness. That helps me navigate and not be a victim to systems that are not designed to benefit me or people that look like me….I’m not trying to change the system, I am trying to keep the system from changing me.”
Yvette Trotman: I’m dying from the entrance into Americas where Statue of Liberty basically invites us to think they’re open to the field, the poor and to everyone really yearning to grieve - welcoming doesn’t extend to immigrants of color. You have to find your own welcoming and that starts for me with self love, caring for yourself before you can care for others. What I had to earn to do which means being mindful. Start with yourself. Recognizing that you are a whistle blower and you have to call things out and recognize that you can be rooted in fear…MLK talks the valley of darkness, so if we are going to grow; we have to go towards the light, we have the light.”
Harry Waters Jr.: How did you not even know that there were systems that were working against you and then were in a place and a consciousness of there are these systems in place. What do we do personally for our families, our neighborhoods, our culture to change and respond to these systems? They are not something that we expect. They give us an opportunity to have a different kind of learned experience. They talk about the triple consciousness that almost all of us bring to every moment that we are in the societal construct because we know that these are all constructs that made to support a hierarchy. Hierarchy of class, hierarchy of power, hierarchy of race, hierarchy of gender. We want to break them down because we’re reached this space where we're seeing that they’re not affected and they’re damaging to us physically, spiritually and emotionally as well as our communities.”
Some systems are benefiting a lot of people and those people need to recognize their privilege and power in that system. A system that is benefiting one could be debilitating to some but revelatory to others. Many people in these systems are not able to recognize that, so remember to recognize something on a daily basis. There were 40 people who voluntary joined in on the conversation. Those 40 people could reach 400 people. As Kelly mentioned “How am I making that choice to take that action to shift the system? Each of us has responsibility for ourselves for the systems and those places of privilege. We all have have my own work to do, We do not need to responsibility for others. We have to maximize our own RESPONSE - ABILITY to impact a change.” It takes one person. We can shift the system.
If you want to be a apart of own next impactful conversations, feel free to register and join us starting next week for a three part series:
1/31: A New Model for Leadership: Purposeful Leader as Convener Kimberly Kristenson-Lee and Craig Neal
2/7: [The Hearth] Purposeful Leader as Elder: Coming of Age at the End of an Age Terry Chapman, Carolyn Baker, Craig Neal
2/14: Making My Life Count: The Path to Purposeful Living Richard Leider
