Our gaffer Will Cromack moments after we won the League 1 BC Championship in August
Today I’m travelling from Vancouver to Columbus Ohio via Chicago to resume an annual trip to that city I did for many years before the pandemic. My friend Phill Cass invites me to discuss complexity with physicians in the Physicians Leadership Academy he has been running for nearly a decade now. I love the trip because I get to catch up with my Columbus friends, to try some new ideas out in person and to stop over in Ontario and visit family on the way back.
On the plane today, the TV is showing me endless panel presentations about American sports. There are three or four people talking in an animated way – sometimes laughing, sometimes faking outrage and anger – discussing American football issues like “Can the Eagles defensive line be breached?” and “What happens now that Brock Purdy is injured?”
I don’t follow the NFL, but what these conversations point out is how the American sports scene is so closed and the news cycle so short that these tiny tiny issues pass for life shattering existential questions. The conversation mostly revolves around players being traded between teams in the same league on a revolving carousel of talent, equalized by a draft that brings the most promising players to the worst teams every year and on and on it goes. Always the same opposition, the victors being the team that best used the available lego pieces that season.
One of the things I love about following soccer is that every team is a part of a global competition. Within most countries there are layers of competition and the boundaries between leagues are porous. You assemble a team of good players and good talent and you embark on an adventure every season. Win your league and you get promoted to the next level to try your hand against the better opposition. Lose and you are relegated to a level that befits your current level of play, and that drives the hunger to “go back up” next season. Promotion and relegation battles are stuff of legend and except for teams securely in the middle of the pack at year’s end, the competition is fierce throughout the league becasue there are rewards for success and consequences for failure.
Even in the closed leagues of North America, there is still the chance of something different if you win. The little club I co-own, TSS Rovers FC won the men’s division of our semi-pro League 1 BC last season and that qualifies us to play in the Canadian Championship in which all the professional teams based in Canada plus the winners of the three semi-pro leagues in Ontario, Quebec and BC play in a knockout tournament for the Voyageurs Cup. Today is the draw for the tournament and we will shortly find out which pro team we will play in the first round. It’s a dream come true for our 350 owners, our supporters and our players.
The winner of this tournament earns a berth in the CONCACAF Champions League, in which the top teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean face off against each other for continental supremacy. The winner of THAT competition plays in the Club World Cup against the winners of all the other continental Champions Leagues. So yes, our little TSS Rovers team is about ten victories away from facing the likes of Real Madrid.
Our chances my be slim, but there is real excitement around the fact that we are actually on this journey. We will play an opponent that we have never met before, from outside our league, in a tournament that is a meaningful part of the global sport landscape. Even in Canada where our leagues lack promotion and relegation, this situation is strange to those who follow the closed circuits of the NBA, NFL, NHL or Major League Baseball.
Much is made in the UK of the “romance of the Cup” referring to the fact that in a single game knockout tournament little teams like ours can effect a giant killing against bigger and better opposition. It happened in Scotland last week when a little team of amateurs called Darvel FC beat top flight Aberdeen, a club six divisions above them in the Scottish football pyramid. Instead of endlessly cycling through the same teams year after year, the integrated nature of the global football world refreshes and renews passion and hope and support.
The draw for our opposition is tonight at 5:00pm Pacific Time. We will find out then who our opponents are in the first step of our journey toward the FIFA Club World Cup. And our little band of pirates will be ready for the journey, mindful of the history we are making, and excited for the chance to try ourselves on the big stage.
Refuge Box on the pilgrim’s path to The Holy Island by Graham Robson
Today I learned about the Refuge Boxes that sit on the tidal flats between the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and the mainland of Great Britain. It is little more than a platform perched above the sand, but for travelers stranded on the flats when the tide comes in, it provides temporary refuge from the sea.
The Northumberland poet, Katrina Porteous wrote a lovely long poem on the Refuge Box which begins thus:
I
At the edge of the Low, the wind blows cold.
A world that is water and not waterStretches away, reticulate;
Shaken within it, redshank, godwit,
Their scraps and patches of safety shrinking,
Spreading. Miles of sand-flats. Glittering
Streams and ribbons of water, weaving
Earth and sky; between them, the golden
Island, afloat on equivocation,
Or safely grounded there, the tide
Either coming or going around it, the road
Snaking towards it, narrow, human.
Fade up seals, low Hooooo.
You reach the Danger sign, and stop.
You want it, that Island, stretched out like a ship
Ashore on its saltings, adrift in a sea
So blue and endless, you’d think the sky
Had swallowed it up, or else had fallen
Smack down into its own reflection.
Out from the causeway, over the sand,
Guideposts narrow towards the Island,
The mirror-image of their own
Vanishing – an invitation.
The Slakes answer the sky’s question:
Blue?
Blue.
Now, will you
Step out into an unknown element?
All of us, pilgrims in the world, need a refuge box from time to time.
Richard Rohr has been an important and influential presence in my own spiritual journey over these past 10 or 15 years and although I have never met the man, I have visited the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, and every day I reflect on his teachings and practice through daily blog posts from the Center and through the vast library of Rohr’s works.
After several years of transition, Richard Rohr now seems to be fully released from his duties at the Center as he nears the end of his life, and this little video series is a lovely testament to how a leader-founder can let go into community with grace and trust.
Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Kwakw’kwa’kwa’kw Elders and youth teaching together in the Kwagiulth big house at Fort Rupert in 2005.
Once a month, in our little United Church here on Nexwlelexwm (Bowen Island) I fill in for our not-quite-full-time minister by leading the service and offering a sermon. I’ve never published those sermons here, but why not? Here is today’s.
Reading: Matthew 4:12-25
We are well into the season of Epiphany and so this is the time of year that we contemplate Jesus’ ministry in the world and his early life. We get to witness a Jesus who is called from his work as a carpenter and who becomes an important and radical spiritual leader in his time. For the first 28 or 30 years of his life, things are somewhat uneventful, and although he shows some talent for interpreting scripture as a precocious child , he isn’t doing much else of note.
To set the stage, Matthew, whose terse words we will be studying this year, offers this text from chapter 4, which is the first time he writes about Jesus as a spiritual leader. The first few chapters of his book concern Jesus’ birth, the visit of the magi and the story of John the Baptist. With chapter 4 we get two important stories. The first, which we will hear in the first week of Lent, is the story of Jesus retiring to the wilderness of a 40 day retreat in which he meets the devil and wrestles with temptation. It is a story of a spiritual coming of age that echoes that of other great spiritual leaders, including Buddha, who sits under the bodhi tree struggling with his mind in the form of the temptress Mara as he approaches the great insights and liberation of Nirvana. Somewhere in this story of baptism, retreat and now calling, Jesus has gone through a similar transformation. He is not longer a carpenter.
Now these events are often told in a breezy narrative of what Jesus is up to, but as I read and meditated on the readings this week I was struck by how the simple structure of the story that Mark just read mirrors four deeper callings that I think are part of our work as Christians.
A calling is just something that one cannot ignore. It is a movement of Spirit that reaches deep inside and changes a person. It hits you like, well, like an Epiphany, which is to say that a calling is a manifestation of Spirit inside of oneself that changes behaviour. It can draw us towards a life mission, and an identity. It has the power to surprise, to give insight, to change one’s ways, and to ultimately align one’ purpose in life with the needs of the world.
What I also love about the way that this little story is told is that it also provides some simple guidance for ourselves, to act in tune with Spirit.
The first calling is to withdrawal and contemplation and alignment with the light of God that shines through the soul of a person and turns their heart and mind and hands to acts of justice and compassion, the words of the prophet Isaiah. This comes on the heels of news that John the Baptist has been arrested, and will soon be killed. John is very much the pre-cursor of Jesus and this news provides the gravitas for Jesus’s choice. He knows that choosing to reveal himself will result in his death. His choice to act has a consequence from which he cannot escape and so he withdraws to rest and wait before responding to the call. Like the morning sky waiting for the sun to rise, Jesus withdraws to cultivate his light. It does not good to burn too brightly right out of the gate.
Discernment is a critical part of responding to a calling. A calling changes lives. Even on the micro-scale if we realize that we are about to confront a major decision in our lives, even burdened by urgency and overwhelming need, the first act should be to withdraw and consider the consequences. It’s not second thoughts so much as it is deeper thoughts.
The second calling is revealed in the simple statement ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ With these modest words, Jesus’ entire message of spiritual liberation is embodied and in saying it he has become a spiritual teacher. As we’ve learned before the word “repent” is the English translation for the Greek word “metanoia” and it is a terrible translation. “Repent” means to feel guilt, remorse and shame for something and it’s as far as you can get fro Jesus’ message of compassion and forgiveness. “Metanoia” means to change one’s life, literally to turn around. Jesus offers this as an instruction: if you have done something wrong, go back to that point and take a different tack, apologize, heal yourself, and you will find forgiveness because the “kindom” of heaven wants you to belong, wants you to be in relationship and wants you to be connected and whole. Like the Buddha, Jesus knows that life is hard and that we all walk around with shame and guilt and regret. He is not interested in doubling down on that, pressing on teh bruise and making you feel like shit. He is about liberation, and he is about giving you a simple pathway to addressing the burdens you are carrying. Simple in concept, tricky to execute. But to be left riddled with shame and guilt is literally NOT what Jesus said. So, “Change your life: stopping harming yourself and others and the forgiveness and love you seek – which is always there – will fill you with joy and healing.” That’s a better translation of the phrase.
The third calling is to community and movement-building, gathering the disciples around him in a core team to activate the mission of love and justice. The phrase “become fishers of people” is a reference to the sayings of multiple prophets who point to the rich and unjust people in the world who rule with cruelty. Jesus’ mission is to rally a group of people together to transform the society they are all living in. To practice radical love and forgiveness, to gather people together, to heal and feed, to support and care for one another. Once he is committed to this call, Jesus’s mission becomes gathering many people into a movement to make change.
Justice is not the work of a single person. We have just passed the annual commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and when I think about him, and Indigenous rights leaders here in Canada like Delbert Guerin and Simon Baker and Marge White and Khelsilem and George Manuel and Gisda’wa and Wedlidi Speck, I can see that the project of becoming a prophet, literally a social justice warrior, is not work to do alone, nor is it work that one can do part time. Jesus asks his disciples to leave their professions and engage in the work of world transformation alongside him.
A life’s calling has that effect on a person. Suddenly you know what you are made for and whatever you were doing before falls by the wayside as you fully commit yourself to the work of Spirit.
And finally we come to the fourth calling: the work of healing people and the world. It is not just enough to advocate for a more just world. The world cries out for healing and reparations and repair and reconciliation. We have damaged social relations, our connection to the planet and to our selves. In order to make change in the world, we need to heal and restore. You can see that no matter how you have healed – cooled your anger, broken your addictions, restored an ecosystem formerly devoid of whales, life floods back in. Joy and Spirit and wellness fills you. The “Kindom of God” surrounds you. Being healed is the name we give the way from guilt and disconnection to wholeness and life.
And so the readings give us a map of our calling, a checklist of things to do if we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus as his followers. May we have ears to hear how our callings can contribute to a just and kind world.
A box of donuts that Joanna Vervoza-Dolezal, the starting centre back for TSS Rovers, brought for the Swanguardians on the last game of the season. Reciprocity in support.
Yesterday I had an informal call with a person who is leading up customer relationships for a large local company. The company is both a profit-making venture but also is a community institution and has a profile and responsibility beyond just the bottom line. We were talking about how the organization was stuck and the different approaches that the organization was taking towards customer relations when we stumbled onto an untapped area that may help to get the organization unstuck.
For organizations with double or triple bottom lines, the moment your focus moves beyond a financial return on investment, your customers and clients stop becoming ATMs and start becoming friends. Yes. Friends. The lines between your organizational life and the community become blurred. Social license becomes a reality, and that means that customers suddenly make decisions out of love and loyalty to the bigger vision which they can help co-create. They become non-material investors and shareholders in what you are doing. Your sustainability does not solely rely on making a profit. It relies on how those people that buy your services AND how they help shape and co-create your mission.
Where we got to in this conversation was that the organization needed to find ways to allow customers and clients to offer something back. Rather than going out and catering to their needs constantly and trying traditional marketing methods of giving the illusion of being a part of something, customers and clients of the organization need to have a chance to be meaningfully involved. In fact there are probably at present lots of people who are trying to give back and be involved but haven’t been seen because the organization has no way to receive their gifts. This is a real shift for how this organization has grown to see its customers. As the connection to social license fades away, customers increasingly get seen as people to be catered to, responded to and served. On the surface that seems a noble customer relations strategy, but when challenges are met, there are very few people with a meaningful investment in the organization to help repair it and set it back on track. Customers can just walk away at any time. And if you have customers who have bought into the social bottom line but you are only chasing the dollar, those ones will feel the lack of reciprocity first. When they leave its hard to get them back.
Why? Because people want to give. They want to be a part of something. They want to do something meaningful with their lives, their time and their money. We love a good product, but we also crave being a part of making it. Witness the way Apple for example has created a Distinguished Educator network. This is a way that educators in schools who love Apple products can help create new applications for these products in their schools. These folks are often cutting edge front-line teachers who are exploring pedagogy and using technology in a way that supports good learning theory. They are no longer customers. They are helping the company grow its brand, for sure, by working with schools but they also helping Apple find new ways to use their technology in service of education and learning.
As the Chair of the Board of Rivendell, a non-profit spiritual retreat centre, we’ve been exploring this angle through fundraising. We are an organization that has been generously supported by a Foundation throughout our whole existence and we have decided that we want to start doing fundraising not because we need financial resources, but because we want to create a different relationship with the community of people who love and support us and for whom our organization has made a deep impact in their lives. None of us on the Board are skilled at fundraising, and for all of us the prospect of doing it is terrifying. So we decided to learn together. We worked with a friend of mine who specializes in fundraising in these kinds of situations and he said his job is not parting people from their money but rather “helping people with money them heal by giving them a way to make meaning.”
Heal from what? Partly from a world that has completely commodified us either as a customer or as a unit of productivity. I think humans have a deep need to give and to be a part of something, but those of us who live in capitalist market-based societies are primarily valued as transactions. Everything we do is tracked for the benefit of dominating our attention and ultimately our wallets. But when I am offered an opportunity to provide a gift of time or money because it enters me into reciprocity and relationship, suddenly my life has the meaning I have been seeking. It is truly healing to give a gift and have that gift received.
To refuse an authentic gift is dehumanizing to both the giver and the receiver. Over time, losing the opportunities to provide gifts causes us to lose touch with what fundamentally makes community.
You cannot build communities around transactions. If your organization has a social bottom line at all and your entire customer relations strategy is transactional, I reckon you will always fail on this score. I think many companies who start out with a social bottom line leave it behind if they can’t figure out how to do it and revert to the single financial bottom line. That is enabled with customer management systems and managers who are trained in this type of work. Through our Art of Participatory Leadership training, we seek to teach leadership practices that enable social sustainability through enabling contribution. I’d love to know if folks are seeing this meaningfully taught in MBA programs or inside other institutional management and business programs.
The sustainability of an enterprise with an implicit or explicit community mandate rests in the ability of the enterprise to create spaces for people to give and co-create. That leads to co-ownership which can be material – like with our TSS Rovers FC community-ownership model – or more intangible, like the feeling of connection people have to helping create a space for spiritual renewal at our Rivendell retreat centre. Our sustainability depends on financial security and community. TSS Rovers FC needs to make a profit to survive, but we cannot do that without a community of people investing their time and talent over the long term to create an organization that is about developing humans, whether on or off the pitch. We encourage folks to offer what they can to the enterprise with two principles:
- Assume your talents are needed and;
- Proceed until apprehended.
The result at Rovers is that we have a happy patchwork of folks who offer expertise, enthusiasm, money and sometimes just an extra body to move things around. We even have a tradition of our players helping to set up the stadium and prepare the supporters section before they begin their warm up routines. We try to provide opportunities for everyone to experience gifting, because that is fundamental to the game of football anyway. Giving, receiving, offering space and time, and enabling your team mates to succeed is what secure victory on a football pitch and so we try to bring that ethos into our lives off the field too. That is how we go from being a successful football club to being a place that makes better humans and builds community whether you come to a match, in cleats, boots, shoes, sandals or bare feet.
Think about that. In the place where you are involved as a formal or informal leader, how are you enabling people to give? How are you receiving and holding the gifts and intentions of those in your orbit who are already giving to you? How are you enabling reciprocity to build community and sustainability?
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