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April 20, 2004 - Dharma Talk
Soon after we started Still Point in 2000, I realized that I needed to let go of my business clients. There just wasn't time to do anything but build sangha in Detroit. It was hard because I loved them and, ok, the money was good. Two I just couldn't give up. One was a friend at an international foundation who spends every working day helping to keep the place upright. In support of her tenacity I've done an annual retreat with her and her team for the last couple of years.
The other client is the Saline Leadership Institute. It was started about seven years ago by two friends, Bill Lavery and Dan Stotz, who had a vision of building an authentic, diverse, spunky community out of what was then a sleepy bedroom/farm village just south of Ann Arbor, Michigan. As part of the learning institute the two developed, each spring twenty to twenty-five leaders from the Saline area - police officers, school superintendents, city council members, farmers and community activists -- come together for a day and a half retreat. Its purpose is to provide a forum for them to get to know each other in an open, deep way. I get to facilitate. We wrestle hard with tough issues: how to promote more diversity; what to do to allow skateboarders some space; how to save fast disappearing farmland; how to make it possible for moderate income families to live in saline without hurting existing housing values.
At the beginning of the retreat people mostly don't know each other. A couple might work together but that is about it. Within twenty four hours, though, a community has been created. They know each other. They have a shared vision of what they all want for where they live and/or work…a vision that is fearless about the challenges and has room for screw-ups. They love each other.
I can't bear to give the Institute up because every single time the shift into community happens I remember the importance of human kindness. Community happens because the people in the room are kind enough to be quiet with each other without the need to label or judge. They say what needs to be said. And they listen, really listen to each other. Someone is always hilarious beyond words. This year there were a handful of comics who had the rest of us guffawing like grade school kids time and time again. All this without sex, drugs, or too much rock and roll.
The best part of all is that everyone leaves happy, with not only a community vision but a strong sense of simple changes they can make in their own lives that will lead to greater, deeper happiness - finishing a deck; spending an hour each day alone with each child; only listening to the news once a day; listening to more music.
Each year I am amazed at the depth of the transformation and struck by how important we are to each other. The power of simple kindness is awesome. And I remember that peace is possible without our needing to be clones of each other or to even agree on how to best live our lives. There is room for gay, straight, family, no family, all skin colors, farmer, minister, teacher, business owner, Baptist and Buddhist. Peace is possible. We just have to decide we want it. Saline is proof.
