Transform. First as a monthly e-journal, and now as a full-blown blog, evolved from a simple newsletter that reported on just our little universe into the premier periodical for reflecting upon and lifting up the emerging field and movement that has become known as Transformative Social Change.
The Transformation Code
In a word, more effective. More than being able to do stuff, skill means stuff happens when it matters. Skill is the right stuff at the right time. Three Keys to More Effective Movement When I think about such a code in movement terms, I see three familiar things: Motivation—what Coyle calls “ignition”—requires energy passion, and commitment, which is most often put in play by having locked into a powerful vision of our ideal selves and future around which we organize and energize.
Meeting Change
Transitions are the doorways to change. Choosing to engage in transition and enter each doorway as consciously as possible but with a willingness to not know what’s on the other end is makes that change intentional. To have continued on with folks that I had a felt sense belonged somewhere else would have been to opt for convenience over integrity, thus dishonoring this work—as Khalil Gibran named: my love made visible in the world—at its core.
The Practice of Inconvenience
This is, more often than not, the nature of deep practice: It isn’t convenient. It doesn’t fit your schedule. It doesn’t conform to your whim. It isn’t selectable for good days instead of bad. In short, it isn’t a hobby…it’s a practice…Now is not the time to hold out. Not on your commitments, not on your practice, and not on change. Change IS on the horizon and the best thing about it is that, at this moment, we can’t actually make out what it’s going to look like. Like much of the unknown, that’s either a mark of real danger or real hope. I’m opting for the latter, but practicing comes what may.
A More Perfect Union
It will arise from the embodiment of that more perfect union by folks that know and act on what’s right:…It will arise from the embodiment of principles in and by the people that show up every day to “narrow the gap” between the hope for our society and “the reality of (our) time.” It will arise through the embodiment of actions that manifest the longing held in our hearts, the vision that we cannot yet see, but can feel the truth of it in our very core. Thus with great faith, we reach inward, act outward, and move toward it. Our more perfect union will arise from within the people.
Seven Deadly Sins of Change
Together we are the Jedis of Justice. We are The Ones that We have Been Waiting for to illuminate the Matrix and reveal the passage out of Babylon. We are the Agents of Transformative Social Change. X-Agents for short. (Yea, I know, but X-Men was already taken and it’s chauvinist anyway…)
Can You See Me Now?
Just three days after the New York Post’s brazenly racist cartoon managed to slip past all editorial checkpoints to subtly (or grossly) depict the nation’s first Black president as a rabid chimp gunned down by NY’s finest, the online Opinion section of NYTimes ran an article on race.
Finally American
“…we are embarking upon a new year, a new era, and a strange, new hopefulness that real people, tired of being polarized by fear, hate, and separation, can organize for hope, progress, and change. And together, our collective will can make a difference.”