There's more to life than this...

I did some exciting work to day. 

There have been some changes around funding for young people moving from school into adult life. Decisions about funding will be influenced by the young person having a plan for their future.With this in mind and with the young people from the leaving classes of 2 or 3 of the local schools and a group of Local Area Co-ordinators from the Northern Suburbs of Perth we embarked on a planning process called 'Moving On'. 

The idea was to build up a picture of the participants; learn something about how they saw themselves; pay attention to their gifts and dreams and gather some clues about the kinds of things we needed to work on to prepare them for leaving school. We would then take time to work on some of the practical details of what it would take for the young person to experience the good things of life.

We did this in 2 sessions with a fortnight in between the sessions to give the young people time to think between sessions. On the 2nd day we invited their parents to join us  and think about how they could help to support their son or daughter's aspirations for the future.

The first session was just a joy to be part of. The young people were making bold and audacious statements about how they saw themselves, free of the limitations that the label of 'disability' imposed on their lives. They thought about their identity, their gifts, their dreams for a good life. They were spectacular; throwing themselves into the tasks with gusto and imagining fabulously ordinary, teenage things for their lives...

Homes. Jobs. Relationships. 

It was great to be part of it. 

I also did some deeply upsetting work today.

Their families came along on for the next session which was today.

I had very intentionally made a place for families. I believe in the natural authority of families...I believe that no-one gets through life on their own and that it makes more sense to work within the system that is the family than to treat families as some kind of irrelevance to a person's situation. I believe that, by and large, no-one loves more than a family...that families are in for the long haul...that families 'know stuff' about people that it would take a well-meaning human services professional years to learn...I. Believe. In. Families.

AND AT THE SAME TIME...

I know that living in a family can be difficult. I know that it is often difficult for family members to give up having their say in people's lives and letting them live the life they choose. I know that being different from everyone else in your family can be tricky ( and I'm also sure that it is tricky to live with other people's differences). I know that it can be hard to escape from your family's experiences and perceptions of you - a clean slate is not often a gift shared by family members.

I believe that there is nowhere quite like a family for being loved...and being misunderstood.

When families came along to the session today I saw all of the above being played out. The young people got shy and reluctant to share what they were thinking. Families got into command and control mode and insisted on appropriate behaviour. They declared that there were no second chances for children who could not behave appropriately (really?). They argued for special and segregated and the merits of being with their own kind. They embarrassed, emasculated and infantilised young men who were in 'showing off to the ladies' form. They burst the bubbles of young women who dreamed of modelling careers or a lifetime at the beck and call of a boy band. 

They seemed to have lost sight of their own teenage hopes and dreams and had forgotten that there was more to life than clean bedrooms, appropriate behaviour and staying at home with Mum and Dad.

I don't believe that they did it out of malice. I don't think that they take their young people seriously enough as people to think that there was a problem.

I think that many of their reactions spring from that complex place of love and fear...

Huge love for this young man or woman...heartbreakingly intense, terrifying in its vulnerability...profound in its joy... 

And at the same time...

Visceral, sweaty, heart pounding, screaming, animal fear...too frightening to face...fed daily by stories and experiences that confirm the dangerous nature of the world we live in and the communities we inhabit. Petrifying fear for the future; turning opportunities to stone and eventually constricting hearts so that they can only beat but cannot feel.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic here, but it felt today as if there was a great battle going on. It felt Narnian...as if the young people were destined to live where it was always Winter but never Christmas, unless someone understood that there was some deeper magic that could be worked and believed that it might be possible to unwrap the gifts that these young people are and make a celebration of them in our lives and communities.

My strong belief is that the deeper magic is Inclusion...'the means by which we set the stage for people to be successful together' (Kendrick)...'People being at ease in the presence of difference' (Ritchie)

I'm not sure about how to go forward with families except maybe slowly and kindly...I don't know what to think about it...

I just can't shake the feeling that we've got to do better...I've got to do better.

We've got to do better...we have wasted too much money...too much time...and we are wasting too many lives...

Just make sure that you have something to say...

To Be of Use...

In my youth, and for my sins, I trained as a Deaconess of the Church of Scotland. Hard to believe now, but I did.

It was an experience given to me when I was too young to really appreciate it. I was an earnest, bible believing, conservative evangelical Christian. I actually fancied myself as a bit of a martyr as I, armed only with the sword of truth, cut a swathe through the heinous wishy washy liberalism that beset the Church. I revelled in the good wishes of the people in my home congregation who prayed earnestly for me as I battled Satan on a daily basis to defend the faith.

I wanted to become a Deaconess because I didn't believe that women should be preachers. To my extreme embarrassment now, I saw the Diaconate as a way of 'freeing up' the minister to get on with the important work of praying and preparation for preaching the Word while the humble Deaconess mopped up the mess of the Parish.

Anyway...all of that is ancient history and probably best discussed over several bottles of wine. For a long time I was tempted to just write it off as a major disaster in my life but as time has passed I can see that I learned some major lesson there. 

On a practical level, the course was quite prophetic...it asked the questions posed by Eric Schumacher in 'Small is Beautiful'; wondering what would be the future of our planet. We pondered what technological and medical advances would mean for the population in the 21st century. We thought about liberation theology and we welcomed Robert Mugabe. 

Lots of the issues I rudely dismissed have come home to roost in the past 10-15 years. But at that time I was utterly convinced that it was all rubbish...what a clown I was. If ever I needed someone to tell me to wind my neck in it was then...

One of the great things was the teaching method...I thought it was rubbish at the time...

Every Monday morning we would have a briefing session where the topic for the week was introduced. We would then be divvied up into groups and each group would have an area of the topic to explore for the remainder of the week and to present back on the Friday morning, as creatively as we liked. Each group would meet, decide on a course of action, divvy up the tasks and then meet again on Thursday to put our presentation together. Invariably, I would have thought that the question was rubbish or would have found some narrow theological area to object to...'can't do that because it will require you to eat oranges on a Wednesday and it is expressly forbidden to eat citrus fruit on a day that has a 'w' in it...and so essentially I would do nothing and then wing it on the Friday morning with the little bit I did know. I really thought that I was getting away with it until one of the tutors, after a particularly vacuous presentation said, ' You're a good communicator, just make sure you have something to say...'

OOps...rumbled...found out as a fraud and a charlatan...all smoke and mirrors.

A yawning chasm of an integrity gap...

When what she's said really dawned on me I was gutted. All that stuff from my childhood...being called a hypocrite...'empty vessels make most noise'...clanging cymbals...all of that... It has had a profound effect on me and I sort of laugh at it but I do feel deeply embarrassed.
I am terrified of just entertaining people and having nothing to say. Telling me that you thought I was great or funny means absolutely nothing to me. It just means that I've entertained you for an hour. What I really want to ask you is to tell me what you've learned...what made you think...what do you disagree with and why...and can we work it out?

I've spent the day today talking. I've spent the past 20 years talking and I wonder what anyone has learned. They probably know lots about me and how I like my washing to be hung out but what has anyone learned that has made a single bit of difference to how they work? How has anything that I've said improved the experience or the conditions of anyone who uses services?

Tomorrow I'm going to spend the day talking to people about how they should talk to other people and I can't quite believe I'm doing it. I cannot help but worry that some little kid somewhere is going to announce that we are all naked and that the work we've done up until now has really only served to blind up to our true predicament. Because, really...what has changed?

I'm asking the question not because I want people to rush to reassure me. I'd like to talk to other people who share the question.

I want to find work that is useful. Work that makes a day to day difference to the people in our communities who are excluded and marginalised. Whose difference means that they are less than the rest of us.
It's hard to come by because most of our efforts seem to be directed at organisations in  the hope that it will 'trickle down'...and we've all seen the cartoons about what really trickles down.

To be of use...What a joy!

 To be of use 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge 

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest 

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

30 days hath...April!

April...come she will

Only who would have believed 

that she would come around so quickly. 

It feels like she just turned up on my doorstep; 

an unexpected guest, taking me by surprise. 

Truth to tell, 

I was only just dusting February out of the door, 

planning on turning the mattress and airing the bed

and here's April

with her best bonnet on, beautiful in the sunlight, 

trailing a gentle breeze 

to quieten the roaring exit of March. 

I am glad to see March go. 

Too hot. Too soon. Too busy. Too long. 

No Good Friday to make a pause for sadness and contemplation. 

No Easter to raise the spirit and encourage hopefulness in the midst of...March. 

I had plans for March but they evaporated with the steaming hot days. 

Here in the Southern Hemisphere it isn't August that has the monopoly on wickedness but March.

To be endured, sweated through...

To make way for April.

Now that I am over my surprise I am glad to greet her. The cooler air has brought some clarity and energy in its wake and so I welcome April...all 30 days of her.

It seems that April is NaPoWriMo...National Poetry Writing Month. The challenge is 30 poems in 30 days...
I am no poet but I'm going to pick up the challenge and write 30 entries in the blog in 30 days...
I need to write because I'm not sure what I'm thinking these days. Maybe seeing the words on the page will help me know. 

Miss April, you are welcome here. 

Take off your bonnet, stay awhile.

Some of us could use your beauty.

photograph by the amazing Diane Lowrie

http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/11/22/vic-napowrimo-poetry-prompts-the-moat/

http://youtu.be/V_fK1riKv8g