CHHSM Senior Consultant Daniel Pryfogle delivered the following address on Oct. 5 for Chicago-based UCAN's inaugural "Work + Life + Spirit" lecture series.
“Strength of Spirit”
A Lecture by Daniel Pryfogle
UCAN, Chicago
I would like to begin today with your words – the vision statement of UCAN:
“Youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders.”
In my 20-plus years of working with nonprofit organizations, I have not come across a vision statement that excites me more than yours. “Youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders.” It is a wild statement, an audacious claim, a gracious glimpse of another reality, and I am grateful for it. I’ve been quoting you as often as I can.
Within this one sentence is incredible insight about youth development. These 10 words capture how profoundly social services have changed over the past decade. In this one line, this one provocative and evocative statement, there is a world of spirit.
Your confidence that youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders means that you emphasize possibility more than pathology. In your clinical work you take a positive approach. You believe in the resiliency of your clients. You seek to build upon their strengths.
In doing so, UCAN is at the vanguard of a movement, a movement that is about assets rather than deficits, a movement that locates the flourishing of human beings and the potential of human communities in the gifts we already possess.
This movement of which you are a part is provocative because it challenges old assumptions about health and service and leadership. This movement is evocative because it draws upon what is here – in you, in me, in the people we serve. [1]
Having visited UCAN on several occasions, I know this strength-based approach is no mere theory for you but is something you are practicing all the time, and learning from all the time.
That you seek to learn, that you are curious about how far you can go with a strength-based approach, is evidenced in your ambition to not stop at a clinical philosophy but to apply this same approach to employees, to use a strength-based approach for the development of individuals and the organization as a whole. That step alone places you at the forefront of organizations that seek to be strength-based through and through.
But you’ve gone even further. You recognize that at the heart of human identity and the center of human organization is spirit. And I sense that you recognize that the health and well-being of everyone in UCAN is somehow linked to accessing spirit, cultivating a sensibility to spirit, being shaped or formed by spirit.
That much is clear in your hiring of a director of spiritual formation in the past year. You have welcomed Tyrone Fowlkes to not only be part of your client-focused efforts but to work on the flourishing of employees and the agency overall. That indicates how deep and abiding your commitment is to that spiritual formation which is vital to anyone – client, employee or community member – who would courageously claim your vision that “Youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders.”
I commend you for this commitment. Today I want to celebrate your strength. I want you to feel some love and admiration for your good work. I want you to be reminded of how significant your work is, how essential it is, and therefore how inspiring it is – for many people, in many places.
I also want to encourage you. I want to follow your lead and suggest some ways that you might build on your strength – this strength of spirit.
Signs of Positive Change
You who labor for the health and healing of youth and families do so in a time of great change. Everywhere there are signs of change – signs of “positive change.” Here are a few:
* Ten years ago I took a small group of leaders to Seattle for the National Gathering of Social Entrepreneurs. The concept of “social enterprise” was fairly new in 2001. You could feel the excitement in the conference sessions and hear the enthusiasm in hallway conversations as nonprofit leaders came alive to the possibility that business could be a vehicle for social justice.
While in Seattle our group toured a manufacturing plant where the workers cut sheet metal for cargo bays for Boeing airplanes. A few of the workers paused on the factory floor to tell us their stories. Previously incarcerated, now employed. Once hopeless, now working on a promising future. Once captive, now free. The plant is part of Pioneer Human Services, a nonprofit that earns 99 percent of its revenue from product sales and fees for services.
Ten years later, social enterprise has caught on around the world. It is taught in the leading business schools. It is considered an essential tool in economic development. Social enterprise – and the related areas of microinvesting and microenterprise – reveals options for nonprofits and the people they serve, not the least of which is the dignity of work and the security of a living wage.
The next annual summit of what is now called the Social Enterprise Alliance will be held here in Chicago Oct. 30 – Nov. 2.
* In the months following that 2001 gathering, I was thinking a lot about my consulting with organizations and feeling frustrated with a lack of progress.
In strategic planning and organizational development work, we seemed to spend a lot of time diagnosing problems and prescribing solutions – in other words, what’s broken? And how do we fix it?
That type of analysis generated a bit of buzz – and it paid the bills – but the energy was not sustainable. That was obvious as I observed my clients, who seemed to struggle mightily with following through on new ideas because old problems kept sucking them in, and sucking them dry.
I was open to another way. A friend put me on to an approach developed years earlier at Case Western Reserve University, a method that begins with the question, what’s working? Not “what’s broken?” but “what’s working?” The tool, called Appreciative Inquiry, is essentially a strength-based approach to organizational development.
I use this approach all the time now, with many different groups – as do many consultants and practitioners worldwide. I invite people to tell stories of when they have been at their best. By reflecting on peak moments, we get in touch with what’s working in our teams and organizations and we figure out how to leverage that success.
The approach does not mean we ignore problems; rather, we start with the recognition that we have resources – assets, experiences, real energy – to address these challenges.
* Of course, the impetus for this strength-based approach to organizational development was that we knew it worked with individuals. For the past two decades, the old, deficit-based, find-the-problem-and-fix-it therapeutic model has been giving way to a positive approach.
Today, human development and mental health professionals place greater emphasis on character, experiences and other assets that contribute to well-being. Instead of asking what’s wrong with this child, therapists ask what’s right – what combination of traits and values and other factors helped this child survive, even thrive?
My mom is an early childhood development professional. For years she has been interested in the theme of resiliency. I remember my mom’s curiosity with certain children, who, despite great hardship, seemed to have reservoirs of strength and somehow endured. She called these children “enigmas,” something of a mystery, a mystery worth exploring.
The world is catching up with my mom’s curiosity.
Today we have “happiness studies” – the inquiry into what makes people joyful, satisfied, fulfilled. This subject is in the larger area of positive psychology. The University of Pennsylvania, one of the leading institutions in positive psychology and a hotbed for happiness studies, defines positive psychology as “the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” [2]
The university is applying its research in several projects, including the Penn Resilience Program, which is helping elementary and middle school students develop coping strategies while alleviating anxiety and depression.
Researchers are pursuing similar paths here at Northwestern, Loyola and the University of Illinois.
The signs of positive change are plentiful. I’m sure you could point to other trends and projects. Here’s one more. Through the University of Chicago’s Defining Wisdom project, scholars in the sciences and humanities are asking all kinds of questions about the subject of wisdom – an exploration, they say, that holds great promise in “shedding light and opening up creative possibilities for human flourishing.” [3]
One project, for instance, called the “MORE” wisdom model, “predicts wise participants will possess a heightened sense of Mastery, Openness to experience, a Reflective attitude, and Emotion regulation skills.” [4]
What is striking in all of these fields of inquiry is the common search for spirit.
When the Social Enterprise Alliance meets here in Chicago later this month, there will be an affinity group on Spirituality of Social Enterprise.
When researchers study what contributes to resiliency, faith or spirituality is considered a “protective factor.”
When researchers parse happiness, they find that religious beliefs and practices play a part. [5]
When exploring how wisdom works, researchers are appealing, in part, to ancient spiritual traditions.
When we use appreciative inquiry to get in touch with peak moments, we’re talking about tapping the energy of individuals, the flow of a group, the movement of an organization – maybe even, to use more religious language, the movement of the spirit.
Spirituality is woven throughout positive change, although it is not fully articulated, and sometimes not even mentioned. Why is that?
Well, first of all, spirituality is so hard to define; and second, we get nervous about bringing any precision to the concept for fear of offending.
It’s very hard for those of us who work with diverse people with diverse beliefs to be particular about spirituality. Yet spirituality’s greatest power is in particularity – in your unique story, in my unique story. The paradox is that you and I discover what connects us most deeply by being most particular. Carl Jung put it this way: “What is most personal is most common.”
More about particularity in a moment. Right now we need some kind of definition of spirituality to keep this lecture moving along.
UCAN says “spirituality is the search for meaning and the journey of becoming.” [6]
Emmy Werner, a pioneer in the study of resilience, uses the phrase “a sense of coherence.” In her research into resilient children, she notes that while their religious traditions vary, these children share “a conviction that their lives have meaning, and a belief that things will work out in the end, despite unfavorable odds.” [7]
The Search Institute’s Peter Benson, who created the Developmental Assets framework – the “building blocks of healthy development” – and who passed away just days ago (Oct. 2, 2011), defined spiritual development as “the process by which persons embed the self in ideas, myths, and/or narratives that are greater than the self.” [8]
So we have some help here: Spirituality is meaning and coherence; the journey of becoming; placing our selves in a story greater than our selves.
The explanations of scholars are helpful, but today I want to draw upon the understanding of poets.
‘Wait Upon the Lord’
I have a particular piece of poetry in mind. It comes from the 6th century BCE. The poet speaks amid devastation and despair. His people are in exile, taken from their land by the Babylonian empire. Into this situation, the poet delivers an unusual word. The poet provokes, and the poet evokes.
Against the oppression of a system that counts his people solely as producers for the empire or casualties of the empire, the poet speaks as prophet, making this audacious claim:
They that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings as eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint. [9]
“Waiting upon the Lord”: the phrase suggests a kind of dependence, a leaning on a power not our own. Waiting upon the Lord requires recognition of the limits of our strength. Waiting may call for the ceasing of all our doing. It certainly calls for patience.
You understand how strange this word would be to people in exile – people struggling to survive. It would be a familiar word – the psalmist says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” [10] – but not necessarily a favorite word, because it highlights the people’s dependence, because it calls for a continual letting go.
From where we sit, waiting doesn’t sound like an energizing option. So much of our work in health and human services demands action. Waiting upon the Lord sounds irresponsible.
We know we’ve got to act. From our daily to-do lists to our major organizational goals, from our personal ambition to our collective desire to change the world, our work cries out for action – now.
Here’s a curious thing about our drive to action: It often proceeds from fear. We fear missing out on opportunities. We fear failure. We fear that others will think less of us. We fear that if we don’t act, no one else will – and the work won’t get done, and change won’t come.
So waiting is painted negatively; it gets the brush of uncertainty, hesitation, vacillation. In no way does waiting fit our conventional understanding of the imperatives of service and the role of leadership.
Yet that’s what makes it such a good model for spirituality and spiritual formation.
Spiritual formation, and the formation of a culture that is attuned to spirit, requires a slowing down. The slowing down, the waiting, is to relinquish control. It is to let go of our supposed power, our plans, our designs, and to receive what is given.
Seeing great hardship, our first impulse may be to rush in with solutions. Confronted by a child who clearly has problems, our first impulse may to be fix him or fix her.
However, if we are to be part of the evocation of gifts already present – in our selves and in the people we serve – we have to wait.
Spiritual formation calls for great trust – to trust that all will be well even as we wait. Another poet, the Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, says, “That we may reap, great work is done while we’re asleep.” [11]
Another Power
It would be fair to ask now, what about our strength? All this letting go doesn’t sound so appreciative or affirming of our powers.
I have two thoughts in response – and I offer these for your consideration as you continue to discern what spiritual formation might mean for this agency:
First, this is a different way of accessing power. The poet says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Spirituality as waiting attunes us to another reality. In the Hebrew prophetic tradition, this is the reality of the reversal: a counterintuitive, countercultural, subversive reality. The poet says God “gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.” [12]
We are invited to trust what is provided. We are invited to gamble on what is given – given in our letting go. That’s genuine power: the unexpected strength, the surprising resource, the enigma.
Or, as was said in the Civil Rights movement, “a way out of no way.”
Here’s the second thought: The declaration of this other reality is an expression of power.
In the face of “facts,” in the face of crushing experience, in the face of conventional – and also real – manifestations of power, the poet lays claim to another power, another way, and comes upon something that is full of energy: His own spirit.
The creative expression that starts with dependence – waiting on the Lord – now soars: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles.” The creative expression itself creates, as theologian Walter Brueggemann says, evoking a new reality, evoking possibility. [13] The creative act lifts the spirit, for the spirit wants to see what is being created by spirit.
There’s paradox through and through in this way of understanding spirituality and spiritual formation. In letting go we find all we need. In waiting we rise.
People who are committed to authentic service and positive change must let go. The letting go is essential to seeing. In letting go of making things happen, we see that things are already moving. In letting go of our fixation on fixing problems, we see that there are possibilities, possibilities that spring from what’s already working.
Coming Upon Our Gifts
Letting go is a continual process. That’s why we call it “spiritual formation” and not “a spiritual achievement.” We have to practice this way; we have to cultivate different habits that deliver us from the compulsion to act now. We’re most aided by a community of practice – by companions and colleagues who keep calling us again and again to wait, to trust, to locate our strength in another reality. So I encourage you to practice together. I encourage you to hold each other accountable to practice. Teach each other how to let go.
What happens next, or what happens again and again as we let go and as our fears fall, is we meet our true selves. We come upon our gifts – our passions, our experiences, our resources – that are so vital, so necessary to the healing of the world.
Indeed, in waiting we encounter an expectation of us, a call to act. As the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel said, God needs us, and so God calls us. [14]
However, this expectation is not about you becoming something you are not or me becoming something that I am not; rather, the calling is about us flourishing as our full, truest selves – being formed faithfully as we have been created to be. Here we can echo another poet, Walt Whitman: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” [15]
What is your song? How do you sing yourself? What is the path of formation that you would celebrate and share with the world?
Now it is clear why our diversity is so important: We – uniquely you and uniquely me, gifted in our particularity – are needed. I cannot imagine a more affirming, a more appreciative, a more inspiring word than the truth that I am needed. The world waits for the exercising of your gifts and mine.
A True Vision
“Youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders.” I can’t get enough of your vision. I want to keep saying it over and over. “Youth who have suffered trauma can become our future leaders.” It is so provocative and so evocative – a true vision.
I define vision as “the capacity to see wholeness.” Generally, vision is understood as “exceptional sight.” The conventional notion is that the leader is the one who sees what no one else can see.
But your vision declares something that is in some sense – some strange and unusual and powerful sense – already present and available to all of you. The wholeness toward which you strive is in some way already here. You can see it. You can see it in the people you serve. And you can see it in each other.
Your vision, then, springs from what you know. I encourage you to trust what you know.
Another prophet, another poet, said, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” [16]
Keep dreaming and seeing boldly. Keep being provocative and evocative. Keep drawing upon what is most powerfully present – your heart, the center of this agency, your strength of spirit.
Thank you, and blessings on your good work.
NOTES
[1] “Provocative” is one of my favorite words. My friend and colleague Sister Kathleen Atkinson, OSB, uses “evocative” alongside “provocative” to describe the work of leaders.
[2] From the website of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu.
[3] From the website of Defining Wisdom, a project of the University of Chicago, http://wisdomresearch.org.
[4] “Wisdom and the Life Story: How Life Experiences Foster Wisdom,” Professor Judith Glück, Alpen-Adria University, Austria, description from the Defining Wisdom project website, http://wisdomresearch.org/Arete/projects.aspx.
[5] See, for example, Ben Dean, “Spirituality,” http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletter.aspx?id=74.
[6] From a quote by the Rev. Tyrone Fowlkes, director of spiritual formation, UCAN, http://www.ucanchicago.org/spiritual-formation.
[7] Emmy E. Werner, “Protective Factors and Individual Resilience,” from Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention, Second Edition, edited by Jack P. Shonkoff and Samuel J. Meisels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 125.
[8] “Building a Field of Child and Adolescent Spiritual Development: An Interview with Dr. Peter Benson,” from the Search Institute website, http://www.search-institute.org/csd/articles/interviews-essays/benson.
[9] Isaiah 40:31.
[10] Psalm 27:14.
[11] From Sabbaths (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987).
[12] Isaiah 40:29.
[13] Walter Brueggemann explores this theme in The Psalms and the Life of Faith, edited by Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).
[14] Abraham Joshua Heschel explores this theme in God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: The Noonday Press, 1955).
[15] From “Song of Myself.”
[16] Habakkuk 2:2-3.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Pryfogle is the senior consultant for the Council for Health and Human Service Ministries of the United Church of Christ. He is also principal and creative director of Signal Hill, a Cary, N.C.-based leadership and communications consultancy that outfits organizations for adventures in story.
