ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 45
• What needs to die, be metabolized/composted? For our continued, collective emergent growth?
• What and who have we been treating as “trash?”
• What collective healing is needed to stop throwing away people, places, and pain?
• What does healing and transformation look like at the community level? What does it look like in my
community specifically?
• What collective rituals resonate with my communities to invite a communal approach to grieving, to
honoring those who have died and ensuring that not only their bodies, but their stories and human
qualities are composted back into who we are becoming?
The premises underlying Measuring Love are particularly important for people playing
intermediary roles between communities and potential sources of power and money
for communities, whether foundations or public agencies. These are tough roles.
Usually, the intermediary’s deepest commitment is to the community, but they must
approach sources of power and money respectfully. This bridge of broker role can
in fact be transformative. When these intermediaries’ value systems includes the
principles underlying Measuring Love, they can help communities and outside sources
of resources function as more committed, honest, respectful, and
ultimately more effective partners.
This type of intermediary role often exists within institutions as well, for example,
as the critical mid-level staff person within a foundation making decisions about
foundation support for communities. These are complicated roles. How do you remain
true to a community’s interest? Whose interest do you ultimately represent? This is
an underappreciated leadership role which often determines whether community/
foundation partnerships succeed or not and reinforce a community’s power, or
whether patterns of extraction, even exploitation repeat themselves.
—Frank Farrow
Pedestals, like those monuments paying homage
to white supremacists, need to die…
Pedestals that we put people and “leaders” on are so harmful for us. Let’s examine the link between
pedestalizing leaders and consumerism.
We need to deconstruct and not conflate or equate pyramids - kings, executive directors, board chairs,
those with “special” leadership qualities - with pedestals. And for those at the top of pyramid structures
to not be seduced by the pedestaling. You, and we, are there to make the pyramids useful, with humility,
love, sharing, regeneration, building others’ capacity and leadership. Those who are being “pedestaled”
must learn to invert the pyramid from within, and practice from that place.
Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper
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