There are a million ways to divide us, but what are the ways to connect us?

SEVEN WAYS TO CONNECT

FOOD: Food is a beautiful way to bring people together. We must have food to live and sustain our lives, and the love that people put into preparing meals is an incredible gift that can ease the path of connection.

INVITATIONS: Invitations are ways that we invite people into shared adventures and community. Without invitation, we often feel uncertain about our sense of belonging. Not every invitation is for us, but the right invitations resonate deeply within our souls.

ACTS OF SERVICE: To really offer care and support for another without hidden conditions or strings attached is the ultimate act of service. Yet even service in the hopes of mutual benefit can be a powerful way to connect with others.

EDUCATION: The service of helping others become their best through learning is called education. Shared learning is when we are on a mission to pool our collective wisdom.

CO-CREATING ART: Making something beautiful together is a great way to bring people together. Bringing together people to create art can be both healing and genuinely fun. Finding and nurturing the right spaces for this to happen is critical. Music, dancing, painting, writing, gardening, and so much more can be done together with others.

HEALING COMMUNITIES: Whether you are dealing with physical or mental health challenges, creating the space for people to learn and to honor their healing journeys can be so life-giving for those who have been deeply vulnerable through injury or trauma.

SHARED ADVENTURE: Bringing people together to experience a shared adventure is huge when it comes to connecting. I define adventure as where the starting point is known, but the outcome is far from certain. It doesn’t have to be outdoors, but all adventure involves an element of uncertainty and discovery.

There are other ways, of course, that include faith communities, shared passions, and competitions. Are there other ways that you have found to bring people together in life-giving ways?

What are you looking for? The other day I was looking for my car keys, but in the larger scheme of things, Many people are like fish in water, looking for water. What many of us want it readily available to us, yet we have constructed our lives in such a way that it is hard to find.

In Los Angeles Airport the other day, I was surrounded by thousands of people looking at their phones, when I noticed a small bird on the carpet of the waiting area eating food crumbs. It was a beautiful little bird and yet no one even noticed, except for a small boy staring at that bird. Our eyes met in recognition and he pointed and I nodded.

It is possible we are all just looking for a little bird.

LOOKING

You may not always find

What you are looking for

But just your habit of looking

Will almost always open up a door.

Sometimes you don’t even know

That you are actually really looking

Until you find it all along

In what you have been cooking.

Looking can lead you down a path

To something else altogether.

Releasing your heavy burdens

And becoming lighter than a feather.

It is entirely possible

That your looking may make you sad.

Perhaps you are craving

The latest thing or the current fad.

Sometimes it is more the journey

And not the result you really need.

That is the nature of looking

When it is your soul to feed.

I do not seek to escape reality, but to rediscover what a life-giving reality feels like in real and tangible ways.

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Climbing mountains takes me into the present moment and turns off the alternate realities that are happening in the world around me. I found myself solely (and perhaps souly) immersed in rock and stone, earth and sky, heartbeat and breath.

This is not an escape from reality, but an invitation for my body, mind, heart, and spirit to renew its life-energy within the reality of desert canyons. Sleeping does not guarantee I will be rested. Eating healthy food does not guarantee I will be nourished. Walking in my neighborhood does not guarantee I will feed my soul fires.

Real adventures that immerse me in the natural world and exhaust my body almost always are life-giving sources of sustenance. Going into alternate landscapes where I live is a wonderful pattern interrupt. Becoming part of a world that is consistent and predictable helps me to realize I am connected in energetic ways to everything around me, not separate.

So if you knock at my door. Just know that I have not disappeared for good, but simply have found a way to become alive while I am alive for a little while.

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DISAPPEAR

I do not want to disappear from the world, as there is work I must do, but sometimes I need to disappear for just a little while and hear the desert wren sing and to remember what I am working for.

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I AM NOT LOST

I am not lost

But I do not know where I am going.

I know exactly where I am in the moment

I am on a rock

Alone, in the desert

Surrounded by giant ancient walls of rock

Listening to the canyon wren sing.

I am right here where I want to be

The precision of my location

Matters less than the understanding

That my soul knows exactly

What its purpose is

On a warm spring day in the red rocks of a great southwestern landscape.

What is a beloved community? On a small scale, it is a group of interconnected people who share similar values and practice compassion for each other. On a larger scale, it is a nation or greater community that lifts each other up towards its highest aims through systems of care, systems of justice, shared accountability, and systems of mutual respect. This emphasis here is on creating structures and policies that support a higher way of being in community.

As individuals, we may work to cultivate a small group of people in our lives who have each other’s backs through thick and thin. The aim, in this version, is to surround yourself with good people who love and value one another authentically and deeply.

CARING SOULS (BELOVED COMMUNITY)

When life becomes difficult, and I promise you it will, it is important to surround yourself with caring souls who hold the space for your journey.

When life becomes joyful and exciting, and I promise you it will, it is important to surround yourself with caring souls who lift you upon their shoulders and sing your joy forward.

One of the greatest things we can do in our lives is cultivate the right people who understand that your gifts matter and value your contribution to their lives.

In exchange, they understand that you will do the same. This form of life-giving reciprocity within a beloved community makes each day count in our amazing years.

One of the habits in my One Amazing Year is to create my life versus react to it. Inviting people in your community to do the same can have a powerful impact on your mental health.

CREATE YOUR LIFE VERSUS REACT TO IT

Instead of just reacting to events, what if we created a compelling future (not just a wishful pie-in-the-sky thinking, but an honest, imperfect story of the future that was life-giving for most of the people who live in your community and grounded it in current reality?

Reacting to problems only gets us temporary relief. Creating a compelling vision invites us into a passionate vision with sustainable actions. The critics live their lives to tear any attempt at this down, but I have spent my adult life living this way, and I can promise you it feels a lot better than just being depressed or anxious about intractable problems.

The trick is to start small and build momentum. Help a neighbor manage their stress. Offer transportation to someone who needs access to care but cannot drive. Invite a kid in your school cafeteria to talk at lunch and be curious about their lives. Simple acts create simple invitations to step beyond the stories we are currently living

and into the lives we long for, not only for ourselves, but for others around us as well.

Oh, how I love how you love!

This is the greatest compliment I have ever received. I have not arrived at some magical place in this regard. Love is a practice, and I am still learning how to love people. Especially people who have radically different views from mine that seek to cause other people harm.

Part of this practice is holding boundaries for myself so I don’t get sucked into the dark places that some people live in, while also honoring their journey. Loving people does not mean I have to like their behavior; it just means that I hold the space for their highest being in the world. This is called compassion.

This practice also doesn’t mean I live in the land of roses and light. This practice includes my shadow work, where I am choosing to explore ego, my fears, and my wounds.

This practice brings me great joy every single day. Each day begins by asking myself this question. How will I love today? It is a simple enough question, sometimes with challenging answers. Here is to a day where we can practice together.

BEYOND THE SAP

Love loves to love.

Love is the question

And love is the answer.

I know what you are thinking,

Just a bunch of sap

By an old softy,

But I promise you,

The real work of love

Is messy, hard, challenging stuff

That requires us to show up every day

With all the compassion

We can bring to bear

In a world gone mad and crazy.

Love can be highly practical

As love is food.

Love can be absolutely critical

As in who has got your back during cancer.

Love is definitely necessary for fun

As in who is willing to dance with your crazy moves.

Every day the sun rises

Is an invitation to love

Everything is just tactical

Time to get busy loving.

Did you know that time is just a story we made up? Just like we made up breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time. Think about it, why a 24-hour day? Why not do a 48-hour day, witnessing two sunrises and sunsets each day? Why do many of us break for lunch at noon?

Some would argue that there is a natural logic to our current way of thinking about time, and that may be so, but it doesn’t change the fact that we made it up to suit our thinking.

So if time is a made-up story, we can also choose to make up other stories. My hope is that whatever stories we make up are life-giving to ourselves and others. You become a magician in the world when you realize that you can create conditions that allow you and others to thrive and flourish just by changing your stories. Or maybe living without the need for made-up stories at all. I am hungry, I eat. I am tired, I sleep. I am curious, I learn. All, regardless of the time.

A REFLECTION ON TIME

Most of us
Do not know what to do with time.
It either moves too slowly or moves too fast
And we spend much of our time
Wishing we could control time.
But of course,
We can no longer control time
As we can control the wind or the sky.

At some point in time,
Once we relinquish control,
We begin to see that so much of our lives
Is simply just made up of stories
That are true only because we give them power.
Time being one of these stories,
That we created
To make sense of our world.

We could make up a story
That time is a spiral, and we are either rising or descending
Into heaven or hell.
Or we could say time is like a breeze
Sometimes blowing steady
Sometimes still.
I still entertain stories,
But I do not have to let these stories define my life.

Once in a while,
When I have the time,
Which is also an illusion,
I find myself remembering a past time
And longing for a return to that time.
But eventually in time,
I return to the present moment
And recognize it is time to love the gifts that are currently offered.
There is nothing more or less than now and the stories we are currently living.

I have never experienced death before,
Although I have come close a few times,
But eventually, in time, I will.
I wonder if this notion of time will cease to exist
Or will the loving creature that I have become
Keep on loving until the end of time.
I will find out
All in good time.
May our love endure long enough to tickle the soul bones of all the people we love.

What does it really mean when we say each day is a gift? There are seven key things that make it so.

(1) The first element is that of our breath. To be able to breathe in and out is a beautiful, life-giving undertaking.

(2) The next element is movement. Our ability to move our bodies where we direct them to go is nothing short of miraculous.

(3) The third element is our ability to think and make principled decisions as human beings about what is life-giving and what is not life-giving to ourselves and others. We are confronted with these choices every single day.

(4) The fourth element is our emotions and feelings. Life would not be particularly fun or engaging without our ability to feel the beauty and love of the world around us in full technicolor. To think is a wonderful gift, to feel is truly divine.

(5) The fifth element is our ability to take the first four elements and turn them towards serving others. To do something for another human being that makes their life better just makes our souls laugh with love.

(6) The sixth element is our ability to take the first five elements and create community, a collective lifting of individuals into a greater a whole. Humans are not meant to live solo lives; we are social creatures that long to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

(7) The seventh and final element is about creating our lives versus just reacting to events. We have the power to bring our magic into focus and transform an ordinary world into something truly beautiful if we are willing to let our heart compasses guide our vision and actions.

These seven elements are available to us every single day and when we understand the true miracle of these seven elements, then every day truly becomes a gift. We must learn to dive deeper than our memes on social media in order to create the world we most want to live into.

A friend of mine recently asked me if I was aware of any other forms of resistance besides public protest. This list of eight emerged for me. Can you think of others? The beauty of the United States is that the Constitution protects our right to protest peacefully as long as we abide by the laws of the state and country.

It is so easy to feel hopeless these days when the world around you isn’t living up to its promise. It is easy to get frustrated and angry in these situations and revert to violence, but violence rarely leads to the world we most want to create. It tends to beget more violence.

Peaceful change is hard work and requires a citizenry to do that hard work. The invitation here is to shift from being a warrior to becoming a magician. A warrior reacts to events, while a magician creates the underlying structures that make their desired world possible.

To become a magician, we must be willing to step back and honor the space between the stimulus we experience and our reactions. In that space, we go beyond “event thinking” and start to see the underlying causes and structures that guide our human behavior. These places are where the leverage exists to foster long-term change.

This work is rarely ever easy and often involves getting out of our comfort zones to test assumptions, engage others who think differently from us, and find resources to do this work. This work can often have real consequences in our lives, but then so do the actions, policies, and people who are seeking to cause us and our country real harm.

Regardless of your political affiliation, we must ask ourselves this question: Will the actions I am about to take be life-giving for more than myself, but for all people who live in my community and my country, not just a few? This powerful question grounds our actions with our vision for the world we most want to live into.

COMMON PRACTICES

PUBLIC PROTESTS-one of the most obvious forms of protesting. In public protesting, numbers matter as does media coverage. In these cases, it is important to prepare people not to react with anger, as small groups of counter-protestors will often show up to taunt peaceful protestors towards criminal behavior.

PUBLIC SPEAKING EVENTS-whether an awards pulpit, a church pulpit, or a homemade pulpit in the street, sharing your voice matters. The rules of public speaking are in play here. Connect the dots between personal experience and the policies and the behaviors you are targeting. Remember, don’t just tell folks what is wrong; always invite your audience into concrete, life-giving, peaceful actions.

LETTER WRITING or PHONE CALLING CAMPAIGNS-lots of individual letters to our representatives still matter. Organizing individual letter-writing or phone-calling campaigns is helpful if you make it easy for people to write and send letters. Give them examples of wording, and always include the addresses or telephone numbers. Remember to always be respectful in your prose and tone.

LESS COMMON PRACTICES

FACILITATING GROUP MEETINGS-this can be done to influence voting or to set up conversations with diverse groups of actors in the system. This kind of process often pools together the collective wisdom of the people in the room. Remember, facilitating is not about experts necessarily speaking, but more about creating what Parker Palmer refers to as “a community of truth” from which the participants can then choose to act. Finding common ground is the key purpose of these meetings.

CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT-I once wrote a politically provocative poem and put it into people’s mailboxes anonymously (note: it included a beautiful framable photograph). Public art galleries and music festivals invite creative ways to engage others (e.g., think house concerts). Flash mobs that dance or sing their messages can also be fun.

LOCAL DEBATES-you don’t have to wait for large national debates to frame and engage people in the issues. Stage weekly debates or monthly debates in public places. Create the right structures so that all sides of the issues can be heard. A nice touch is if you can, then give groups of folks at tables the opportunity to find common ground.

BOYCOTTS-let your economic actions impact the big decision-makers’ and influencers’ bottom line. Organizing boycotts takes effort and resources, but can have a huge impact when done correctly.

RADICAL PRACTICES

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE-Disturbing the flow of business as usual will often get you arrested. Remember to never incite violence or harm others in these approaches. Sit-ins, art productions (e.g. graffiti), or disrupting traffic are examples. Civil disobedience grabs media attention, but has a cost for the participants. I had a student run into a board meeting for a school and jump on the table and yell, “what are you doing for black man?” He was expelled from the school, but it led to dialogue at the school.

FIVE GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR RESISTANCE

1.) Model the behavior you want others to live into and invite others into life-giving action.
2.) Be respectful of people who disagree with you.
3.) Seek the common ground that we all can all connect to with our hearts as well as our minds.
4.) Do your research and be accurate with the information you share.
5.) Remember, we are emotional decision-makers. Connect to people’s emotions, but do not use your emotional intelligence to trigger harmful behaviors.

Once we shift from thinking we are the center of the universe to realizing we are an essential part of the universe (along with every other living thing), then it begins to shift how we think about our work and how we live on a daily basis. These three critical aspects of being human emerge:

(1) Our relationships to our basic needs must exist in harmony with the natural world.

(2) Our work as stewards is to maintain the natural balance of our ecosystems.

(3) We must operate with the understanding of feedback. Everything we do comes back to impact in some form or fashion. The key is understanding virtuous feedback loops that are life-giving not only for ourselves, but also for our planet.

The likelihood of human beings making this shift is low, which potentially means that nature will no longer have a need for human beings, but all of us can make steps in this direction. This includes:

(A) Growing and eating healthy food

(B) Living simply and within our means

© Monitoring and conserving our energy usage

(D) Using life-giving chemicals

(E) Building homes and other human forms of construction utilizing the wisdom of the natural world.

(F) Learning about how the natural world can help to keep us healthy and heal our illnesses.

(G) Understand how nature adapts to changing conditions and how we can emulate those strategies.

ONE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

If you seek to better understand life, then this one fundamental principle must be grasped: everything, and I mean everything (including the mosquito) has an essential role to play in sustaining life. Then comes another essential question: what is the role of human beings in maintaining the balance of life? Life is not here solely for our convenience; we are here for the stewardship of life. This role will include both discomfort and joy.