[Dialogue] Trying Hard To Get Real -- about the ICA

[David Dunn]

This is the second in a series of talking papers that attempt to broaden and
deepen the conversation about the future of the ICA USA.

***
TRYING HARD TO GET REAL--The Challenge of Intentional Community
David Dunn, January 14, 2007

As you might imagine, being ŒRIFFED¹ leads to a mini-tsunami of deep
emotions and further reflections, along with a trickle of insights. This may
also be true for our Board colleagues who thought about and chose Œforce
reduction¹ from among the available strategies for saving the ICA from
bankruptcy. The upcoming three-month anniversary of what I now refer to as
³the ICA¹s October 16th frontal lobotomy² has prodded me to work up just
enough spiritual prowess to set sail toward the abyss of meaning making. It
is the new year and it¹s time to move forward

It seems important to admit that while I eagerly process my life experience
by writing, I don¹t presume that everyone is eager to share in my
³processing out loud.² I will not think less of anyone who chucks the whole
thing in the trash. For those who extend the benefit of the doubt, I hope to
offer some provocative entertainment, if not priceless insight. Nothing is
guaranteed. I welcome feedback, but ask you to be gentle. I¹m still a little
tender in spots.

I¹ve tried for some weeks now to write insightfully but have become mired in
the too-muchness of everything. I get all wound up but never seem to get to
the bottom of anything. I also freely admit that I am usually inclined to
choose a delimited topic and do my level best to make it broader and deeper
than its natural boundaries permit. Sometimes this habit leads to something
new and other times it leads to entanglement without enlightenment. So I¹ve
chosen a more cautious course this time. I¹ve chucked much of the writing to
date and instead I¹m going to try to skim off the obvious stuff that rose to
the surface of the bucket before I attempt any Œdunking-for-apples¹ type
maneuvers. I¹m working out how to separate the disconcerting from the
essential.

The first thing that I need to get off my chest is a simple admission:
I am always falling down, but I know what I can do: I can pick myself up and
say to myself, I¹m the greatest two.

There I¹ve said it. I knew that I had to come clean on that first, key
point. It seems important to acknowledge that I know and believe that this
is an appropriate understanding of the way life is. What is striking to me
is to be discovering the difficulty of living out of this understanding for
the first time at age 64. I¹ve lived a sheltered life.

>From this side of the RIF, the sanitary acronyms related to Œreduction in
force¹ are at best quaint euphemisms. Yes, they reference fair labor
practice laws intended to keep bosses and Boards fair-minded and
even-handed. But reduction in force is a labored contrivance that avoids the
human truths. Its use is an insult to our souls.

The truth about a reduction in force is something far broader and much
deeper than a sterile acronym can ever convey. In human terms and in no
particular order, a reduction in force is a reduction in vision, a reduction
in wisdom, a reduction in energy, a reduction in trust, a reduction in good
will, a reduction in context, a reduction in possibility, a reduction in
imagination and a reduction in momentum. I¹m headed toward praise and
dedication here, but I can¹t not pass go. Avoiding confession on this walk
around the board (no pun intended: game board, not board of directors) lands
us somewhere in life where we don¹t want to be.

So I¹m going to offer a little perspective on what a reduction in force
creates--in human terms--not in the language of platitudes, euphemisms or
wish dreams. I¹m going to try to get us grounded in reality so that we know
what we¹re up against when we come to the spiritual prowess part that moves
us from ³life is never the way we want it² to ³nevertheless we are free to
live.² Yes, the man at the pool picked up his bed and walked, but I¹ve not
had any real luck with quick miracles and believe that gradual and
considered miracles are a better bet.

THE WAY LIFE IS AFTER A "RIF"
There are a number of interesting and disconcerting physical, emotional and
mental realities after a RIF. As stress levels go up, anxiety attacks and
tightness in the chest are not uncommon. Eating levels may go up; Pecan
Sandies offer relatively low risk, if temporary solace. It may be hard to
get to sleep some nights and it may be hard to stay asleep other nights.
Some nights, especially when I¹m sans my usual bed mate and have to throw on
three extra blankets just to stay warm, I don¹t want to go to sleep at all.
I stayed up until 5 a.m. once last November. It¹s not hard to wake up,
shave, dress and put on my shoes in the morning, but it¹s devilishly hard to
face the day two hours later.

Self-confidence and esteem are a sometime thing--not that they weren¹t
always a little shaky. These days they seem to ebb and flow like the tides
at the Bay of Fundy. Just when it might be really nice to enjoy a little
playful, adult intimacy, my adult self can¹t quite imagine how to pull it
off. Furthermore, while the first floor part of my adult self can be light,
steady and unruffled, the basement part of my adult self is quite another
matter. When I need to rummage around in the cellar for something I¹ve lost
or need or want or whatever, light, steady and unruffled promptly give way
to anger, frustration, grief, feelings of betrayal and shrill demands for
acknowledgment, justice and redress. It ain¹t no emotional picnic down
there; all is not sweetness and light.

Concentration is either non-existent or hyper-focused, depending on the time
of day, or the relative humidity, or the barometric pressure, or the phase
of the moon, or how long it¹s been since I had a job interview or a
breakthrough in my business plan, which ever I¹m into that day. I¹ve become
a great story teller, working over the same material from a different angle,
finding a nuance in the familiar drama that I had not noticed before. Though
I¹m boring myself to tears and want to ³get on with it,² whatever ³it² is, I
seem to be harnessed to this persistent, iterative load from the last year,
recalling the events and players with whom I was more or less hauling in
synch until the ground opened up and swallowed us whole, team, harness,
wagon, and cargo.

This is where it becomes immensely fascinating and frustrating to observe
how skillful I¹ve been--or not--in grounding myself transparently in The
Power that posited me, while still working on taking an honest, creative and
constructive relationship to my situation, my interior and my undoubted
freedom to decide.

If I have forgotten any important experiences of the recently-RIFFED I¹ll
receive any and all additions, amplifications and corrections.
I have not forgotten the other side to this coin, the other partner in the
tango. I have no doubt that the members of ICA Board of Directors have their
own litany of bodily woes, emotional frailties and mental mayhem that has
accompanied their journey this last year. I pray that they may find a way to
speak their truth.

ANOTHER LEVEL OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Why am I carrying on like this? Hasn¹t this just been a rehearsal of the
obvious? Doesn¹t this just rumple the sheets of the bed about which we all
know I must someday make a decision? Why not just walk away from the pool
right now, the bed be damned? I can think of at least two good reasons to
attempt to be both sharper and clearer than broken crystal.

One, though the ICA¹s Board of Directors seems to me to have ignored the
fact, we are, at bottom, an intentional community, and our community‹we
might say our corporateness--has taken a beating in recent years, economic
realities and necessities notwithstanding. Remember the three dynamics of
the social/organizational dynamics triangles? We¹ve witnessed the inevitable
result of not just an imbalance in an organizational process, but the
collapse of any organizational process. We¹ve not just witnessed an
imbalance among the democratic, bureaucratic and symbolic aspects of the
ICA¹s corporate life, our corporate creation has fallen victim to the
simultaneous inattention of all three. Staff, board of directors and the
ICA¹s supporters and friends have been asleep at the switch for at last ten
years and more likely the last twenty years. Hear me well. ³I, David Dunn,
former staff member of the ICA, was asleep at the switch.² We all were.

The result of our inattention is having profound human consequences, some
having to do with our relationships with one another and others having to do
with the very being of our creation--the Institute of Cultural Affairs.
Two, the corollary to ³symbol is key² is ³story is all.² Our movement and in
particular our intentional community, has been adept at telling stories.
Sometimes we told stories with the strategic intent of energizing our
partners and colleagues. Think ³5,000 Town Meetings.² At other times we told
stories to avoid the truth. Think ³Children need alert and honest adults to
protect them from abuse.² Secondary integrity is a slippery slope from
strategy to illusion and even worse, to subterfuge.

It will be tempting to create a fiction about the reduction in force that
laid off nearly all of ICA USA¹s senior program staff--notably the staff
with values, practices and images grounded in the Order Ecumenical. A smiley
face is not adequate. We need to be honest about the operating images,
patterns, systems and structures that led both staff and board down the
primrose path toward the insolvency of the institution with which we were
entrusted. If we try to invent something new and durable out of fiction or
ignorance, we¹re likely to create something new without integrity or flawed
or both.

Our intentional community needs to stand up, ask questions, take stock,
engage energetically and think acutely. We need to attend to the human
fallout of this bomb that has just exploded in our midst. I have reason to
believe that the ICA¹s board of directors is exhausted, wounded, numb and
fundamentally clueless about how to approach the future and how to relate
concretely and helpfully to former staff members and to members of our
intentional community and other stakeholders in the ICA. The consequence
must surely be an uncomfortable mixture of consternation and remorse. We
need to wrap our collective arms around them and hold them tightly until
they find the grace and confidence once again to govern with enough
peripheral vision and depth perception to include more than economics and
profitability in their calculations. Care for these people. Ask for a role
on the Board. Take charge again.

Some, if not all, former (or soon to be former) ICA staff members--of whom I
am one--are exhausted, wounded, numb and fundamentally clueless about how to
approach the future of the ICA and how to relate concretely and usefully to
the shell of the organization that remains and to the members of its board
of directors. The greater share of the employed brains, vision and memory of
the ICA has just been let go without so much as an exit interview. Pilots
and mechanics get more say about the future when their companies face
bankruptcy. The consequence is a kind of bewildering sense of being cast
off, discounted and left without standing to figure out how to relate to an
institution and vocation that we helped shape and embody but from which we
have just been practically abstracted. Help us talk through this
discombobulation and find our way into a role that is useful to the future.
Help mediate the severed friendships and damaged collegial trust.

CONFESSIONAL AFFIRMATIONS
The least I can say about this 33-year experiment in evolving a conscious
strategy to be the People of God in a global, secular world is that we were
all naive to think that we could remain viable, let alone thrive, with part
time amateur managers managing by committee. We fell all over ourselves:
interpersonal feuds and tyrannies, team revelries and guarded turf, tacit
agreements to hold our noses and ignore the sacred cows and collusion,
Byzantine (or is ³Rube Goldbergian² more apt?) accounting systems, and
failing to acknowledge the harm done when one person¹s genius was felt or
understood to threaten or diminish another¹s. We were never able to maintain
our corporateness--after Joseph¹s death? after Oaxtepec? after the shift to
regional offices? 

No one I know doubts the genius of the Learning Basket Approach, Imaginal
Education, and the Rite of Passage Journeys; the Neighborhood Academy,
community drama, and community resource centers large and small; ToP methods
of facilitative leadership for participatory design, economic
revitalization, organizational transformation, and international
development; and HIV/AIDS education and prevention based on community
capacity building and engagement. Lord have mercy on my challenged mind if I
have inadvertently left out any of my colleagues¹ inventions; mia culpa in
advance. But we were a collection of irresponsible geniuses, some would say
uncharitably, working on immortality projects. Most would affirm with
profound gratitude, that paid staff members and volunteer colleagues alike
shared work on many fronts that, in sum, established lasting social
inventions with the power to transform society.

SUBSTANTIAL CHALLENGES
Now we¹re faced with at least four tough, interrelated questions:

-- Do we intend to be an intentional community that shares responsibility
for the future of the ICA?

-- Is the ICA a strategy whose mission has been fulfilled that we may
celebrate and let go of or is it an institution with a futuric purpose and
mission that we need to resurrect and reinvent?

-- Do we have energy for this agenda or have we run out of steam?
 
-- What on earth do we intend with the Ecumenical Institute? Death by
neglect?

I intend to write more in the coming weeks and I hope that you will talk and
write too. I¹m posting these talking papers on the www.wedgeblade.org
"Repository" site under Reflective Writings.

---
David Dunn
740 S Alton Way 9B
Denver, CO 80247
720-221-4661
cell: 720-314-5991
icadunn at igc.org