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When Dan Benavidez and I walked neighborhoods in our community, we discovered that everyone we met had gifts to offer others, and that many were quite willing to make an offering of their gifts. We also learned that people were reluctant to make contributions because they didn’t know how, or if they had permission, or if their gifts would be beneficial to others. We spoke with over 4,000 residents of our community during our walks.
Our walks were called “The Belonging Revolution Walks.” We came up with that title early on, when a person said they felt and believed a greater sense of belonging to our community after our conversation with them. It was from this deeper sense of belonging that people discovered their desire to offer their gifts. We began to see the pattern and theme of what needed to occur for people to believe they belonged to our community. Little to do with Dan and me and everything to do with people’s longing to feel connected to a larger purpose and their deep aspiration for meaning in their lives.
As our communities become more complex and the art of living becomes more abstract and difficult to navigate, the more we will need the gifts, the resources, the expertise, the skills and the talents of as many people as possible who reside in our communities. Gone are the days in which people can sit back and blame leaders, institutions and government and in the same breath proclaim their own innocence.
What needs to happen to overcome the reluctance people possess that prevents the offering of the gifts of tens of thousands in our community or in any community? What can officially sanctioned leaders do to create a community-wide culture that encourages residents to make their offerings? What can our institutions do differently? What can government, at all levels, do? What can our neighborhoods do? And most importantly, what can citizens do? How do we begin to see our community as a possibility and not just a problem to be solved? How can we galvanize the commitment and action of citizens in our community? How do we discover what’s working well, what we want to see more of, and bring it to the forefront? How do we identify, expand and preserve the pervasive state of goodness that already exists in our community?
These are questions we will address in our next series of classes, called “The Future of Citizen Engagement,” offered by the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship, and Service. This guest opinion is written as an invitation to attend this series of classes starting Monday, Jan. 13, held at the Chamber of Commerce and running for five Monday evenings from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
The present culture and conversations are driven by the natural polarization that occurs in societies and communities that are in transition between an older, worn-out, tribalized and more retributive way of existence contrasted with a more contemporary, faster paced, globalized and more restorative way of living. I am not certain many social scientists have mapped out the evolutionary stream we need to navigate either. We will need to explore and experience our way from the old to the new of which there will be many cycles. Come join us for that adventure of exploring!
As our communities become more complex and the art of living becomes more difficult, the more we will need the gifts, the resources, the expertise, the skills and the talents of as many people as possible who reside in our communities. Government will become more useful when it learns its essential roles in any community are those of inviter, convener and coordinator. Institutions will discover more purpose and value when they divest themselves of their egocentric perspective and morph into entities whose purpose is to activate the common good. We will need stateswomen/statesmen who are adept at integrating all the various skills, talents and gifts of people. And, most importantly, we will need communities and citizens who can liberate themselves from the self-interest, entitlement, tribalism and the mindset of victimization into ones that realizes that each person has infinite capacity, whose voice counts, whose thoughts matter and who are willing to be responsible for the good of the whole.
Sign up at SOSSAS.org.
Mike Butler is a co-founder of the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship, and Service and former public safety chief for the city of Longmont.
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