Sterling Terrain V02 - Flipbook - Page 26
24 | Sterling College
– for what will be the work of generations
– we need to be inspired by those who
have persevered and made changes that
seemed, in their times and at the start of
their movements, impossible. We also need
a varied set of skills and tools to stay with
the work as it evolves. As one of our good
troublemakers said, we must “become students of change.”
Relational, Committed,
& Caring: Changing the World
One Community at a Time
Written By
Michelle Auerbach PhD,
EcoGather Consulting Scholar
“And there are things to be considered . . .
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside
yourself for the leader.”
This quote, from a Hopi Elder, states clearly
both the goals and the experience of the
Change Shaping: Connection-based Training for Good Trouble Makers certificate
program now part of Sterling’s EcoGather offerings. It sums up the kind of good
troublemaking and relational connection
that will blossom from the courses as they
work their way through the Sterling community and the wider world. Being in right
relationship, speaking your truth, creating
community, being good to each other, and
lifting up the leader within – these are big
tasks, but very possible, very rewarding
ones. The community of people who came
together with me to share their experience
for the certificate program are living examples of how close this world of change
really is when we reach out.
Sterling has a deep practice of creating intentional community. As we began
building relationships with our EcoGather
partners, we sought to share with them
the deep wisdom and strategies that our
Dean of Community, Favor Ellis, uses to
co-create community and cultivate the
capacity for authentic, responsive leadership. Her original notes for an imagined
course on Communities of Care included
practices she uses on campus, ways of
being that she exemplifies in her work, and
ideas about how our own nervous systems
and bodies are our entryways to community. As an educator, activist history scholar,
storytelling scholar, and change facilitator,
I stepped in to construct a similar offering
for a broader audience and scope through
Sterling’s EcoGather platform. My lifetime
of activist practice and my work with communities and organizations gave me access to good troublemakers. As we started
compiling resources together – tapping
into the wisdom of both elders and youth –
and figuring out how to coach online learners into the experiential praxis of building
community and shaping change, our team
was able to recognize its place within a
lineage of change shapers that both span
the globe and have meaningfully positive
impacts in their homeplaces.
Right now, we are experiencing times in
which we are stunned by a deadly pandemic that has long lasting impacts, we are
looking at the ravages of the climate crisis
we created and how it is going to hurt those
with less of a voice more, we are grieving in
response to war and mass violence, we are
dealing with a hijack of our attention and
reality by technology and facism, and experiencing estrangement from each other,
the narrowing of rights, and the deterioration of our democratic systems into minority rule. Quick fixes are illusory – and often
borne of the same extractive ideologies
that got us into these messes in the first
place. We need to navigate the entwined
challenges of the present and future as a
long process of change. It is essential that
we understand this moment and its origins.
But to sustain ourselves for the long haul
We do not need to make just one change
together, we need a multiplicity of changes in concert to address the intersecting
crises borne by the extractive logics of
dualism, dominion, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, repression, and all of the vulnerabilities and fears
these systems create and exploit. When
you string it all together like that, it is a
whole lot. But the real possibilities for alternate ways of being together come into
focus when we tune into the deep connections between people and movements in
the past and present.
The list of people who gave the wisdom,
time, and heart to the course spans political and civil rights movements, movements for food justice, queer movements
for social change, deep spiritual uprisings
for care, psychedelic futures activists,
BIPOC justice movements, early environmental movement activists, university
professors, religious leaders, legal and legislative change movements, anti-cancel
culture podcasters, collectors of movement art, radical anarchists, artists, writers, farmers, teachers, preachers, yogis,
and storytellers.
While each of the five courses in the certificate program can stand alone and be taken individually, when strung together, they
create a flow that carries a learner – or a
whole community studying together – on
a transformative journey.
The certificate starts with Showing Up for
Change, which is focused on the individual and their ability to be present mentally, emotionally, physically, in our nervous
systems, in our spirit, and in our hearts as
we enter movement space. So often we
find that the individuals who most want to
shape change – and whose voices and perspectives are essential – are unprepared
and under-resourced when movements