Witnessing to the Beloved Community

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Elliot

I’ve long been aware that the core of my vocation, my calling, is something about communications, and I thought I had come across a vital aspect of that in a research report, “Communication As Engagement,” that I stumbled upon while working at Casey Family Programs.

For a period of time, I was very caught up in the mechanics of communications as engagement, that is, the components of communication embedded in doing the work itself, the vital and intrinsically interactive processes of learning, sharing, and dialogue that inform and sustain engagement. These vital interactions often occur informally, at the margins or at the “spaces in-between,” and can in retrospect appear serendipitous.

A major part of this exploration was participating in a pattern language project (Website, book, and set of cards), “Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution,” which provided some initial form and direction to how patterns of activity can work in concert to resolve persistent challenges and open fresh opportunities.

These perspectives informed the internal communications projects I developed at Casey and even more directly in the SE Seattle FreedomNet citizen journalism project I set up with the Rainier Beach Action Coalition, initially under the banner of “Lift Every Voice” to reclaim a community-based narrative of local creativity and resolve.

Yet I kept feeling an irresistible tug that something more was at play, one of those “still, small voices” calling awareness to another current beneath the surface.

This deeper subtext occasionally peeked through, as it did when I first became involved with the Rainier Beach Action Coalition (then called the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition). The expressed concern was about shifting the public narrative of the community, rebalancing the prevailing negative stories of the mass media with the lived experiences of those caring for the neighborhood. In that context, I came to realize I had two “jobs,” (1) the contracted tasks of incorporating new media and technologies to share the stories of community members, and (2) learning to serve as a witness myself on behalf of the community. Over time I perceived multiple aspects to that “secondary” role: being present to what was happening, what was unfolding out of the power of the community itself; reflecting what I was seeing back to the community as a confirmation. “See, this is what you’ve done; this is what’s happened because of what you have done”; and sharing outside the community what I had seen in terms of genuine, locally driven development.

I held pretty firm to that subtext to guide and to some extent constrain a lot of what I did in Rainier Beach, frequently frustrating people by not being bolder or more directive in leading or developing content and programs. I viewed my role as opening channels and opportunities and platforms particularly for youth to exercise the power of their own voices. That, of course, was we referred to as citizen journalism. We found a way of making that work. But now, I have to come to realize that underneath it all, even citizen journalism was a form of witnessing, personal witnessing in the public sphere by youth of local hope and possibility.

So now this all makes sense to my mind finally. I think I’ve got a unique perspective to bring to bear on this because now I don’t have to shy away, but can now openly acknowledge and integrate a spiritual basis to this calling. Because that’s what I’ve seen. People who have some foundational sense of faith or spirituality are able to steadfastly function as healers whatever the situation, to see and demonstrate hope and compassion regardless of even the most tragic circumstances. And that gives visible expression to what many refer to as the blessed community, the beloved community, or in the words and publications of my dear friend and colleague, Robertson Work , the compassionate civilization, as something that is now, and I have come to believe, always present and coming in power. Not a return to a sentimentalized ideal past, nor a claim to a utopian future. A journey, always “in the midst,” at the “tip of a wedgeblade,” borrowed “By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world.” [D.H. Lawrence, Song of a Man Who Has Come Thru]

This is Martin Luther King’s declaration of the ethical arc of the universe bending towards justice, that you don’t have to be at the end point to believe that that’s the direction of the future, or at least the direction in which you commit your thinking, being, and action. This helps to pull things together into a sense of coherence.

Even my interest in photography is a form of witnessing to—okay, this may seem overly dramatic—“signs and wonders” in the midst of the ordinary, of the unexpected recognition of the source of life looking back at you through the most common encounters. A self-realization as a being among other beings, intimately immersed as a co-participant in the flow of life with “all my relations” in a setting of reciprocal stewardship.

Now just to prime the pump a little, in anticipation of future articles and posts, witnessing is about being present, seeing what no one else may be seeing in the same way you do, through one’s own eyes and accumulated experience, and sharing with other people who are in the same place or event and subsequently with an ever-widening circle of those who were not present. All these dimensions of witnessing, which have their counterpart in the framework of communication as engagement in terms of learning, dialogue and engagement. For me, it’s one and the same, through myriad channels, media, and interactions.

Now, just to “open the umbrella” a little more. The overall context is the blessed community, the beloved community, the compassionate civilization, as embedded or seeded through individual, personal decisions and declarations in the present reality, and yet coming in power. No matter what the external situation, there is always the seeding of something new, of some expression of healing. Here I am reminded of another influential source from my youth, The Plague, by Camus and that even under the most dire of circumstances, there are those who step up as healers, who collectively through small acts of faith prepare the ground, like fireweed after a conflagration. This begins to tie together the otherwise disparate aspects of my personal and career journeys: the presencing, as an act of giving presence, to the Beloved Community, planting the seeds of healing, the promise of reconciliation, a recovery of reciprocal good will and expansive well-being.

Just as vital is the aspect of inclusiveness, acknowledging the diversity of spiritual backgrounds, that I personally judge to be authentic or inauthentic based on their ”fruits,” the actions and deeds that demonstrate how people are living their lives out of their spiritual grounding; always a journey of learning, sharing, and engagement in the gaps and at the margins, to do what is right insofar as we can see what is right, with due thanks to Lincoln.

This is where I started, the direction I’ve been heading, and at the end, the return to the “place I have come to know for the first time,” a space for broader conversations and deeper realizations. And this will provide the starting—and ending—point of these Beloved Community Dispatches from the diverse stations of my personal pilgrimage: from Milwaukee to Amarillo, Indiahoma, Minto, Selawik, Medan, Seoul, Cheong Ju, Tokyo, and ultimately Seattle, with ever-broadening connections worldwide.