Social Action Opening Remarks

It’s good to be back doing this work of the heart.

As we embark upon this new year, it’s important to reflect upon how the Social Action program is cumulative. Those of us who were here last year were invited to consider the peacemakers around us and reflect upon how we could take up the important work of building a more just and peaceful world.

This year we get to apply all of that as we learn about the ways that the world needs us.

Last winter there was an article in Heart magazine, the RSCJ journal, entitled “Recognizing and honoring the divine in a world out of balance.” It was written by the RSCJ Representative to the UN, Sister Cecile Meijer. She wrote that, “A colleague once called our work [at the UN] “putting the Beatitudes in action.”  

In her article she addresses questions that we are primed to explore this year, such as “Where is our focus on the common good in such a world out of balance? How can we concretely live out our preferential option for the poor, recognizing on a daily basis the human dignity of each person? How do we recognize and honor the divine in all of creation?” She reminds us that “If justice is understood in the biblical sense of right relationships, tangible love and respect express themselves as justice, mercy and humility.”

Today’s theme is Partnerships for the Goals, which is way of reminding us to enter this year of Social Action with humility. Partnerships signal that we know we cannot go it alone. One of the criteria of Goal Three is that “The school is linked in a reciprocal manner with ministries among people who are poor, marginalized and suffering from injustice.” We may have time and talents to share in support of those on the margins, but we are failing to be transformed if we do not just as actively recognize the light of God in every person we encounter and reflect on what they have to share with us in turn.

An Australian aboriginal activist group once powerfully stated, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Pope Francis expressed a similar sentiment when he said, “We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family,” to which Sister Meijer added that we cannot allow leaving anyone behind.

And so today we begin our journey of envisioning ourselves as global citizens, reminding ourselves that it is our mission to bring the heart of Christ into the world.

Toasting the Power of Love

Last weekend after a dinner with my brother and his fiancee, I posted a picture with the caption, “I love spending time with couples that bring intensely beautiful love into the world. The world needs it.” I continued to feel both of those sentiments throughout this week. The country has been in a lot of pain, and it’s hard not to internalize it. And yet, I always come back to the Martin Luther King’s quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I believe in the power of love to change the world. Love pulls out the best in us and pushes us to share the light within us. Love transcends our differences. I knew that deeply from the time that I was little and I had a brother who seemed to be my opposite. For his popularity with his peers, I had popularity with my teachers. He excelled in sports and I excelled in service. And while I can’t say that we kept a classy appreciation for our differences growing up, once I went to college, we appreciated what it meant that he was the yin to my yang. My proof of my love for my brother comes in the form of a January 2004 journal entry in which I wrote, “Oh God. my brother did come in [from vacation] today like he was supposed to. Not a good combination with watching the Ring. I am so creeped out. He had better be fine. He is my m...f...ing partner in crime.” My proof that the feeling was mutual came when he included on his senior page of his high school yearbook that I was his best friend. And while I still have moments when I realize how different we are, like when I looked at his Twitter feed and I didn’t even recognize it as the same program that I have because his is all celebrities and sports and mine is all news and social justice organizations, we are also now well practiced in making sure that the other knows that no matter what the world throws our way, we have a built-in buddy ready to have our back and remind us of our light. Along the way we became a full posse with our step-siblings, and our “blended family”’s love was even featured on the Today show. And just when I thought it didn’t get any better than that, I met sister-in-law. I have cried multiple times telling my new sister about my love at first site for her. I had heard my brother talking about how spectacular and transformative she was for months before I met her. But as I’ve shared, my brother and I don’t always see eye to eye, so I wasn’t sold. And then I met her, and she is warm and funny and sharp and authentic, and on top of all of those reasons why I LOVE her, she also reflects my brother’s light back to him as strongly as he had been describing her light to me. They share a love that makes each of them most fully themselves that and catalyzes the spark of passion in their hearts into a flame. Dorothy Day wrote, “The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”  My brother and his new wife are showing us the way. And so I toast to them and to a world that is more filled with the love and passion that they model for us us all.

The Power of Ideas

I'm coming away from Chris Anderson's TED Talks: The official TED Guide to Public Speaking inspired to use my voice to help shape the world. Here are some of its reminders of the power that we each possess:

"Life is fleeting. Ideas, inspiration, and love endure." (v)

"If I'm beaming, I will make you smile inside. Just a bit. But a meaningful bit." (49)

"When you laugh with someone, you both feel you're on the same side. It's a fantastic tool for building a connection." (53)

"Start a fire that will spread new wisdom far and wide." (248)

What it all boils down to

We're talking a lot this year at school about enduring understandings. Today a student stopped by my office to say that she got this for me over the summer because it reminded her of me. Even if this were the only lesson I ever taught, I would consider my career a success.

How to Raise an Adult

How to Raise an Adult  by Julie Lythcott-Haims had some great food for thought for schools, including:

"Yes we dream of our selves, of what we will become . . . but it's the environment that tells us what is possible." (38)

"Has sidling right up alongside our kid and making them the center of our world become a measure of how much we love them? If so, is it our love we're wearing on our sleeve, or our neediness?" (54)

"Schools that do not provide strong, clear boundaries between pedagogy and parents can suffer serious consequences (which means, of course, that student learning suffers)." (63)

"when the teachable moments go untaught, what our kids get in exchange is the moral or ethical shortcomings that come from getting away with stuff." (65)

Overparenting [or overadvising] happens "when our parenting behavior is motivated by our own ego." (94)

Authoritative parenting [or teaching/school leadership] is "demanding and responsive. These parents set high standards, expectations, and limits, which they uphold with consequences. They are also emotionally warm, and responsive to their child's emotional needs. They reason with their kids, engaging in a give-and-take for the sake of learning. They give their child freedom to explore, to fail,and to make their own choices." (148)

"Flow is the the things we feel, or the place we're in, when we're interested in or talented at something and the challenge or situation is just slightly beyond our current capacity . . . When we're 'in flow,' the challenge we're facing slightly exceeds our skill level, and striving to keep at it, we lose track of time, don't notice our hunger or tiredness, and feel like what we're doing could go on and on and on. We're intrinsically motived -- whatever we're doing becomes its own reward . . . Noticing when we're in flow means noticing what we love doing." (158-9)

"Perfectionism is not only the enemy of the good; it is the enemy of adulthood." (174)

"you can help kids get to the heart of understanding a matter by asking them the question 'why?' five times." (182)

"an airline's worst-case-scenario directive about putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others is extremely practical advice for living life generally." (277)

"Happiness equals love -- full stop. (George Vaillant)" (281)

Why I teach Genocide Studies

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.”

― William James (1842-1910)

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

- Martin Niemöller (1946)

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists.  Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism.  The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1954

“ Courage and confidence! I cannot repeat this war-cry too often.”

- Madeleine Sophie Barat

You choose your attitude

Love Cory Booker for his reminders that we may not be able to control what happens to us, but can control how it shapes us.