It's easier to assert that there IS a relationship between activism and spirituality than it is to explore that relationship . .. together . . . with people ranging from priests to non-religious .. . with people of various colors, generations, and social classes .. . and with aspirations ranging from reform to revolution.

George Lakey

February04

Forty people came to the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge February 7-8,04, for the event entitled "Building Power: Inside and Out." The workshop was organized by No Ordinary Time, a small nonprofit based at EDS. We began with a welcome that acknowledged the wide range of backgrounds in the room, and also the range of feelings from enthusiasm to hesitation. (One of the participants was so hesitant that he left the room from time to time and was retrieved by his best friend.) Following the ritual welcome came a mingle, with the forty buzzing around meeting each other and sharing why they came. We created a buddy system immediately because I could see clearly that most participants would need support to do their best learning.

Buddy pairs joined to create fours to share "a time when I stood up for myself," and "How did I manifest power at that time?" When we re-gathered we collected a sample of responses to the second question, a list that stood vividly on the newsprint in the front of the room. Strikingly, the ways that power showed up on the list were all positive, even though "power" often has a negative connotation among activists. I asked participants to consider how they might treat the workshop as a lab and experiment with acting powerfully, perhaps trying different ways from their usual and customary expression. Since the weekend was organized around stories, I told one of my own, when I was beaten by police during my first arrest in a civil rights demonstration.

THREE KINDS OF POWER

An exercise called Chair Power stimulated animated discussion about three kinds of power: power-over (domination), power-with (teamwork, solidarity), and power-from-within (includes spirit). I told some of the background of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, then showed a film clip from the documentary "Amandla" which shows how song and dance harnessed for that movement the culturalm connection between power-with and power-from-within. In pairs the participants considered: what new behavior can I try that manifests power this afternoon?

Groups of six then formed to create skits which incorporated Scene I and Scene II. Scene I: power-with standing against power-over. Scene II: the same scenario but this time adding to power-with, power-from-within. The skits were creative and often moving, and further clarified how power-from-within can show up in social action.

We then took another angle into power-from-within, by using an exercise variously called "Leadership Compass," "Celtic Wheel of Being," "TeamTypes." It was a chance for participants to learn more about their own gifts in relation to teamwork. We built on that new orientation to self by watching the documentary "Bringing Down a Dictator," about the Serbian youth movement which nonviolently catalyzed the overthrow of Milosevic in00, asking ourselves, "If I'd participated in that movement -- given my gifts revealed in the Wheel of Being -- how might I have manifested my power-from-within?"

The second day brought more safety and willingness to risk. Groups of six each listened to their members' stories of a time when they were in a tangle with a group. The story could be either about a breakthrough when the story-teller succeeded in loosening the tangle, or about a situation that remained stuck in a knot. Before telling the stories with words, however, each member of the group took a turn "telling the story" by creating a tableau with the bodies of the group members. Finally, each group of six then chose one of its members' stories to present to the large group

As each group re-created the tableau and other participants circled around the group of "statues" trying to guess the meanings of the body language, the drama of the story was heightened. sometimes tears appeared, when the story-teller finally told her or his story with words. Together we'd created sacred ground, and reverence for the Story emerged from the stories. The unique confrontation with spirit reflected in our range of participants turned into the universal experience of empathy, of love.

FROM UNITY TO DISUNITY

How appropriate that the group would be ready then to look at its places of disunity, the hard feelings of division and resentment. Over lunch I listened to the young activists who were caucusing and feeling upset about the amount of adultism they experienced from the older activists in the course of the workshop.

I agreed whole-heartedly to open space for the young people to speak, and we agreed on the format of a meeting of the whole based on silence in which all voices could be heard. The youths spoke in a variety of ways, some with a conciliatory tone and others in a plain-speaking and hard-hitting style. The room resounded with their pain and disappointment, as each one spoke their truth. The room also throbbed with barely-hidden defensiveness from adults.

It was time for smaller group work, to enable processing of the challenge. I set up three groups -- elders, middle-aged people, and youths/young adults (all self-identified) -- and the groups worked for forty minutes. In the safety of smaller groups some strong feelings were vented, and one of the frequent themes among the older people was consternation that they were so clueless that this discontent existed in the room. "How could we not have noticed?" they kept asking. All groups surfaced the common anxiety: "Has the whole group fallen apart? Are we now broken beyond repair?"

FROM DIVISION TO UNITY

I called them back together and even as they made their way back to the whole circle, participants noticed that the disunity had evaporated. The airing of difference was itself the healing that was needed. Perhaps it IS time to give up Fear of Difference, a tyrannical fear which in my view stultifies spirit everywhere we look. Facing difference, and expressing it complete with feelings, can bring unity to a deeper level.

The profound experience the participants had just gone through needed, however, some conceptual anchoring, lest it evaporate into a feel-good haze. I therefore spent time with the group exploring the concepts of mainstream/margin and rank, to dispel the cobwebs and bring some clarity to what they'd just gone through. In the discussion participants kept touching base with previous learning of the weekend and how it is that "power-from-within" -- which we could now trust each other enough also to call "spirit" -- makes its presence felt.

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