58: Conscious Christian Leadership

Group Epignosis (City of Peace) in concert with Greene Memorial United Methodist Church and Roanoke's interfaith community is hosting a Release Screening of 58: The Film at 6 pm on Sunday, October 16th.  This special showing has been said to depict "an empowering vision of the Church rising up to its remarkable potential to end extreme poverty".  Reflecting on a broad range of related issues, this article subsequently invites community support, participation, and attendance in response to Isaiah's plea to 'God's people'.

Jesus Rejected in Nazare

To Judaic and Christian heritages in particular, the prophet Isaiah's writings as transcribed in the Book of Isaiah, bear a deep cultural, historical, and spiritual, relevance.  Though contextualized in a setting of Assyrian and Babylonian domination, including the imposed exile of a divided Israel, its content prophetically directs the course by which 'God's chosen' (Jeremiah 32:38) are to realize a future 'kingdom' in which justice (again) reigns supreme.  It's similarly significant in this respect that Jesus himself, in addressing Nazareth's citizenry (Luke 4:16-21) reads from Isaiah 61 in pronouncing the underlying purpose (and authority) of his own ministry.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord."  Luke 4:18-19

In Luke's account, and as alluded to previously in "Leading in an 'Unthinkable' World - Towards Holistic Community", Jesus' proclamation to reinstate Jubilee; or the healing conferred by 'forgiving indebtedness' and 'releasing from bondage', met only with raucous opposition from local religious, civic, and business leaders (Luke 4:23-30).  Nevertheless, yet in this same spirit perhaps, a creative team of film makers including Directors Tony Neeves, and his son Tim, along with Associate Producer Scott Todd, have adopted Isaiah 58 as their project's guiding theme.

In so doing, they've boldly adopted Isaiah's precept to "loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke" and "let the oppressed go free" (58:6), as a call "to create, shape and join communities of passionate, like-minded Christians who will work together to end extreme poverty in our lifetime" (1).  Consequently, and joining with Accord, the 58: team has forged a partner network comprised of established ministries including Compassion International, Living Water, Hope International, and Plant with Purpose.

"Toward a Sustainable Future: Leadership in the New World Economy"

"The world's economic, technological, agricultural, and political systems are breaking down.  While the causes are debated, it's certain that the human assault on the natural world has wiped out vast numbers of species and polluted the land, the air, and the oceans.  After the past 100 years of history, with two world wars and low-grade but vicious warfare going on almost continuously somewhere in the world since World War II ended, it seems impossible for human beings to live together in a state of harmony either among ourselves or with the planet we call home." Richard C. Cook from "Global Crisis: The Time of Testing is Here" (2).

At the same time however, both the scope and complexity of the systemic breakdown to which Richard Cook alludes in the preceding quote, suggests that mankind has entered an unparalleled stage of evolutionary challenge (see - "A New Era Has Begun").  As the video, "Ecologize Growth" below attests however, where modernity's empirical approach over the last four hundred years has fashioned socioeconomic systems that appear sorely inadequate of "better supporting value(s) of human relatedness", an increasing number of socially conscious individuals including clerics, artists, academics and everyday citizens are stepping into roles of global advocacy (3).


Among these are Barrett C. Brown whose recently published findings in "Conscious Leadership for Sustainability", evince the orienting mindsets of highly developed 'leaders' and 'change agents' with established backgrounds in designing sustainability initiatives.  Although there are a number of factors which distinguish these figures from their cohorts, one of the things Brown notes is an underlying difference in referential worldviews between values associated with a dominant social paradigm (DSP) and those aligned with a new ecological paradigm (NEP).
 

Dominant Social Paradigm contrasted with New Ecological Paradigm - Table 7

Consequently, but where the (DSP) is "characterized by belief in the virtues of economic growth, free enterprise, technological progress, and human domination over nature", the (NEP) by contrast "is an ecocentric worldview based on a belief that economic growth is limited by natural resources, that technology will not necessarily overcome our environmental challenges, and that humans should live in harmony with nature" (4).

Innovation Resets Singularity - Fig. 4

As one might imagine however, the respective 'truth claims' associated with each of these two perspectives differ dramatically in their theoretical approach to 'sustainability'. There are those like Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute for example, who in a recent TED talk entitled, "The surprising math of cities and corporations" presented findings concerning an "inexorable trend toward urbanization worldwide" where not only does 'the city' serve as a "predominant engine" for societal innovation and wealth, but also purveys "its main source of crime, pollution, and disease."

The "Window of Viability" - Figure 2

As a result, the group subsequently concluded that were it not for the generation of "major innovation cycles" at "a continually accelerating rate to sustain growth", those same 'systems' become subject to the vulnerability of "stagnation or collapse" (Bettencourt et al. 5).  In its own way then, their research mirrors the work of Bernard Lietaer's team with natural ecosystems, where efficiency isn't obtained by imposing economies of scale as an arbitrary function of design.  Instead, their study suggests that systems not utilizing man-made, ultra-efficient (e.g. monopolistic, constrained) streams to control and distribute money, energy, water, or whatever, aren't dependent on innovation for survival but rather, resilience.  Consequently, their conclusions render "a single metric as an emergent property of (the ecosystem's) structural diversity and interconnectivity" which, in turn, represents a sustainable balance between efficiency and resilience (6). 


"The effects of current economic and monetary policies are starting to approach the level of genocide against large segments of society, if not in their intention, at least in their effects.  Crime, health, and income statistics identify vast areas of both urban and rural environments as what have aptly been called 'death zones'" (Cook 7).

Tragically though, but as the "Planting Hope" video above illustrates and is further conferred by Robert Neuwirth's TED Talk on 'shadow cities', factors accompanying global debt and globalization are increasing urban slum populations at a rate of 25 million per year.  Similarly then, and as recent events like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street seem to make plainly obvious, the world is poised at an epochal point of turmoil in witnessing a rare convergence of good and evil . . . one comparable to that envisaged by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.

Nevertheless, yet for these same reasons, the Live 58: project affords a unique opportunity to connect with others as a holistic community of compassionate practitioners, heeding Isaiah's injunction to "divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house" (Isaiah 58:7).  We'd encourage you to join us.
 

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Works Cited

1. "The 58: Initiative." Live 58:. live58.org/thefilm. n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2011.

2. Cook, Richard. "Global Crisis: The Time of Testing is Here." (2010): Centre for Research on Globalization.  22 May 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2011.

3. McConnell, Brian. "Toward a Sustainable Future: Integral Leadership in the 'New World Economy'." (2011): Integral Leadership Review. June 2011, Vol. 11, no. 3. Web. 29 Sept. 2011.

4. Brown, Barrett. "Conscious Leadership for Sustainability: How Leaders with a Late-Stage Action Logic Design and Engage in Sustainability Initiatives." (2011): Fielding Graduate University. 2011. Web. 27 Sept. 2011.

5. Bettencourt, Luis, Jose Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kuhnert, and Geoffrey West. "Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities." (2007): Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). 24 April 2007, Vol. 104, no. 17. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. 

6. Lietaer, Bernard, Robert Ulanowicz, Sally Goerner, and Nadia McLaren. "Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability?: Evidence and Remedies from Nature." (2010): Journal of Futures Studies. April 2010, Vol. 14, no.3. Web 27 Sept. 2011.

7. Cook, Richard. "Poverty in America: Progressive Schemes to Reduce Poverty will Fail Without Monetary Reform." Chapter 7 of We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. (2009): Tendril Press., 2009. Centre for Research on Globalization. Web 29 Sept. 2011.

Leaders Bridge Pathways to Peace

Participants of Roanoke's Creative Communities Leadership Program together with various civic and interfaith members are hosting a BridgeWalk at 3 pm on Sunday, April 17th in efforts to promote 'tolerance, diversity, and understanding in our ever-evolving community'.  This article offers a reflective overview and calls for a collective response in support of the occasion.

"Exploring the Shame" - Salvation in Forgiveness

For whatever reasons, perhaps only because Spring has initiated her graceful embrace, I find myself again pondering the meaning of cast shadows.  Although a fourth year approaches since the Virginia Tech massacre too, a renewed sense of hope nevertheless rests perched in response to the lessons emanating from an extended string of heartbreaking catastrophe. As I blogged in "A Crisis in American Leadership" some nine months after the Tech incident, and for grounds I couldn't possibly fathom in their entirety at the time, its occurrence marks a significant crossroad in my life.

Columbine Students Holliday and Perez

More recently though, and as Marilyn Hamilton at Integral City mused in her blog only days after the Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in January, such episodes appear to reflect "strong “weak signals” that may be indications of onset of the human hive’s CCD in America"(1).  Likewise, and as a former public school instructor, my own perspective over the last decade and a half has been profoundly affected by a pervading sequence of similar tragedies originating with the Oklahoma City bombing but including also the Columbine High School massacre, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Northern Illinois University (NIU) killings perpetrated by Steven Kazmierczak (see also - "Revolution, Anarchy, or Madness?: A Crisis in American Leadership").

Jane Vance - Bridging East and West

Subsequently then, I suppose, it's all the more astounding that a role in community involvement has drawn me into the collaborative company of such an illustrious group of soulful others.  I'd already had the pleasure of meeting one of these exceptional individuals named Jane Vance, at a recent opening of her downtown gallery in February.  As "an adjunct professor of the Creative Process through the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech" and aide to "special needs children" with a Floyd County middle school, the art she induces is an eloquent testament of her imbued passion for Tibetan Buddhism.

Amchi

In fact, it's her enchantment with the colors, sights, and sounds of Eastern culture that effectively inspired Jane's travels to South Asia beginning in 1985.  As fate sometimes evinces itself too, she first met Dr. Tsampa Ngawang on just such an excursion in 1995.  Heralding from a long line of 'amchi' practitioners, in addition to using a complex combination of "herbs, mud and prayer" to facilitate healing, Tsampa is also recognized as an "artist, mind-healer, physician and veterinarian, public health expert, settler of village disputes, village chairman and farmer" within the "Mustang district of north-central Nepal".

In the months surrounding the September 11 attacks however, and having instructed a course on Himalayan culture at Virginia Tech that same year, Tsampa nonetheless returned to Nepal's villagers to share the legacy of his experience after only an initial semester on campus. While led to chronicle the amchi's story artistically, yet concerned it would be construed as 'disrespectful', Vance in turn "wrote a personal letter to His Holiness the Dalai Lama explaining her intentions" and entreating the leader's approval.  Upon receipt of his blessing however, Jane began work on her project in 2002, becoming "the first westerner and the first female in history to be granted permission to do a lineage painting of a prominent Tibetan amchi".

Although the portraiture itself would take only ten months to paint initially, the task group congregated to document its delivery to the lama's village of Jomsom wouldn't make its trek to the Himalayas until June of 2007.  On their arrival though, and because he'd learned by phone of Seung-Hui Cho's slaying of fellow Tech students less than three months earlier, Tsampa resolved that "the first order of business" should entail holding a candle-light vigil in honor of the campus' dead and wounded (see video above).

"It was so important to me to honor the people lost, but also to honor this strong bridge that now exists between two very unlikely places" - Jane Vance

Where the village had cooked "for days" in preparation "to feed a thousand people", the unveiling of "Amchi" now became a cause for celebration, giving rise to "horseback races and archery competitions, and the village's first game of Twister".  There was dancing, and laughter, and in the midst of this polyphony of life, as Jane herself recounts, two distinct groups of people, as if awakened to a timeless dream, "became family".  Just as miraculously too, this extraordinary convergence of the human spirit has been captured in the triumphant production of an award winning documentary entitled, "A Gift for the Village" (Deacon 2).

A Student Memorializes Morgan

Regrettably though, yet as we're sometimes brutishly reminded, destiny can prove a capricious lover.  The truth of this is reflected in the fact that among the students scheduled "to travel to Nepal" for the film's World Premiere this past summer was a Tech co-ed named Morgan Harrington (Acclaimed Artist, 3).  For those who aren't otherwise aware, Morgan disappeared in October of 2009 from a Metallica concert she'd attended at UVA, and though her body was recovered more than a year later, the case involving her 'abduction, rape, and murder' remains unsolved.

Kurt Steger - Bridging Worlds through Art 

In addition to Jane, we'll also be joined for BridgeWalk by two remarkable individuals who, each in their unique way, is gifted with a genius for touching or otherwise shaping human hearts.

The first of these is a regional sculptor by the name of Kurt Steger.  Along with a few friends in January, I had the good fortune of attending a showing of his ethereal creations at Roanoke College entitled, Silent Nature.

Steger's 'Burden Boat'

"To get into the exhibit at Roanoke College's Olin Gallery you start by walking through a piece called "The Pearl Gate" . . . As the piece came together we started realizing it had a bridge like quality, and then we saw the metaphor of the bridge from this world into the other world -- the sculptural world." - from a public radio interview

Kurt's work subsequently has the affect of eliciting almost a somatic connection between the viewer and his art which in turn, serves as a portal for transporting those venturing the journey, into a realm of mystically altered forms of space and time.  But, at least in this instance, "healing (was) the point of the show; where the center piece is the 'Burden Boat', a fifteen foot long sculpture with a ceramic section inside it, filled with tiny wads of paper.  These are the 'burdens' visitors to Silent Nature have scrawled out and placed in the boat" (Silent Nature, 4).
 

Originated initially in 'response to the regional trauma' of the the Virginia Tech tragedy, the Burden Boat Project was envisaged as an interactive experience to 'symbolically' release the weight of a participant's spiritual or psychological affliction.  First showcased in 2009 on the Tech campus with his display of Primal States and Portals, the burdens of community members are ceremoniously cremated and then, returned to the earth in burial.

Carl Tinsley - Bridging Community Relations

Rev. Carl Tinsley - 'Facing the Future'

As the article ('Bridging Community Gaps') written in support of last year's BridgeWalk attests, the underlying theme of the event emanates from a shared observance that the city's bridges have traditionally served alternately to either divide, or unite, the people of Roanoke as neighbors.  The third individual who'll be amongst the key guest figures this Sunday, and highlighting the values of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' in particular, is the Reverend Carl Tinsley.

"Four times a year, branch leaders meet with the school superintendent to review discipline issues, and Tinsley said he often meets with law enforcement officials to bridge the gap between police and the black community." quote from, "Facing the Future" (Rucker 5)

Although long recognized as one of the community's foremost advocates of 'social justice' and 'human rights', especially in relation to Cabell Brand and TAP, the Reverend Tinsley is most recently identified with a crusade on behalf of area youth.  Consequently, it's with considerable zeal I look forward to joining not only with those whom I've already mentioned, but local denizens at large, in a gathering that will undoubtedly afford us the opportunity to meet, interrelate, and in the process, grow in our learning and understanding of each other.

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 1. Hamilton, Marilyn. "Colony Collapse for Human Hive or Cracks Where Light Gets In?." (2011): Integral City: The Blog. Jan. 2011. Web. 06 Apr. 2011. http://marilyn.integralcity.com/2011/01/14/colony-collapse-for-human-hive-or-cracks-where-light-gets-in/

 2. Deacon, Darlene. "A Gift For More Than One Village." (2010): Planet Blacksburg. Jun. 2010. Web. 06 Apr. 2011. http://www.planetblacksburg.com/2010/06/a-gift-for-more-than-one-villa.php

 3. "Acclaimed Artist Jane Lillian Vance To Premier New Works at Gallery Opening in Downtown Roanoke." (2011): The Roanoke Star Sentinel. NewsRoanoke.com. Jan. 2011. Web. 08 Apr. 2011. http://newsroanoke.com/?p=9696

 4. "Silent Nature - 2.15.11." (2011): WVTF Public Radio. www.wvtf.org/. Feb. 2011. Radio. Web. 10 Apr. 2011. http://www.wvtf.org/news_and_notes/news.php?audio_id=2222.

 5. Rucker, Janelle. "Facing the future." (2010): The Roanoke Times. roanoke.com. Oct. 2010. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/264965.

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Brian McConnell, BA is a divorced father of two college/career aged youth residing in Virginia.  As a member of Roanoke's homeless community over the last two and a half years, a former educator and community advocate, learning and leadership development are currently his central focus of study. Similarly, Brian is also a Researcher/Practitioner with the Integral Research Center in Integral Sustainable Development (SDv) and serves as Director for Group Epignosis.