To help our caring give its greatest gifts
December 2024-January 2025 Fundraiser
Perhaps you are one of my readers who appreciate my work and will, for that reason, send the Co-Intelligence Institute a small contribution to help us raise the $12,000 we need over the next six weeks. There are hundreds of you reading this, so your bit of help could actually make the difference!
So far we’ve received $1218 from 20 people. That’s 10% of what we need from less than 1% of my subscribers. Please join them with a tax-deductible donation – but only if it would feel good to you, perhaps like standing on a very high peak on a warm day looking very far in every direction at once….
Thanks for considering this request – and blessings on your support of Life in all the ways you do that – and on the Immense Journey we’re all on together!
Coheartedly,
Tom
Dear friends,
Our caring about or for something or someone means they are important to us. We are concerned how things turn out and how they are doing. They matter.
Caring is important. It plays an under-appreciated role in how life sustains life.
Yet lately, I’ve seen more examples of how narrow kinds of caring often carry harm along with them. This happens in dozens of ways. I’ve only pointed to a few of them in the poem below. But I’m thinking that gaining greater understanding about the gifts and limitations of our caring is becoming increasingly vital for our navigating the challenges we’ve brought about through the narrow ways we care, no matter how deep our caring may be.
I’ve lately stumbled into the fact that this is an extremely complex topic. And I don’t want to tarnish anyone’s sense of caring. Actually, the systems and contexts within which we care, and the levels of understanding that guide our caring, need to be the focus of any efforts to improve the outcomes of our caring. But first we need to realize that there’s more to caring than just caring.
So I offer you my poem below less as critique and more as a gentle and limited reflection to nudge us all – me included – into greater inquiry and insight toward bigger, more effective caring. I hope you find it stimulating.
Coheartedly,
Tom
To help our caring give its greatest gifts
i.
A short story
based on a true one
that happened a few days ago…*
A Zoom gathering facilitator felt
that a new guest’s chat comments
were distracting the group.
so she closed the chat…
and the new guest left.
A long-term participant
who had invited the guest
was profoundly upset
that his guest had been silenced
and strongly protested the facilitator’s action.
I noticed that
the facilitator cared for the group
and was rebuked for that…
and that the long-term participant
cared for his friend
and disrupted the group,
its work, and its facilitator.
The group cared for its learning
and for all involved,
so it examined what had happened
and learned a lot from that reflection
(willingly setting aside its original agenda).
Some healing happened
but some of the rawness remained
because rawness so often does.
None of us realized how much
the facilitator had been stressed
because of an imminent household move
and having volunteered to facilitate
almost at the last minute.
None of us took in how much
the new guest had been stressed
by having lived through four hours of calls
immediately before this call
and was expecting a restful welcoming experience.
None of us knew how much
the long-time participant was stressed
by being very ill and tired
only to be further stressed
because he’d promoted the group
to his friend as a safe and interesting space.
All had acted from a place of deep caring.
All had collided in their stress.
All had been sparked into being triggered
by the combustion
of their intense caring
with their intense stress.
It happens.
ii.
Millions of Israelis
care for their families
and for what safety, support, order and peace
they can get.
Millions of Palestinians
care for their families
and for what autonomy, justice, dignity and peace
they can get.
Thousands of
Israelis and Palestinians
are acting from their focused, deep caring
in ways that generate
such immense collective suffering
that it ripples out across the entire world.**
“We mourn the othering, stereotyping,
and justifying violence directed at anyone.
We mourn the equating of liberation with violence,
of protection with punishment,
and of security with control.”
(says a group of broadly caring nonviolent activists.) ***
And then Gandhi enlightens us with
“An eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind.”
But it happens –
sadly often manipulated
by others
for purposes other than caring…
iii.
We fly to environmental conferences
in machines that heat up the world.
We give our sweethearts chocolate
farmed by impoverished trapped children.
We seek securely productive investments
for our retirement
that threaten millions
of grandchildren around the world.
We fight for the rights
of marginalized people
to participate fairly in an extractive economy
that tears apart the homes of fellow beings
and drives entire species like ours
to extinction.
It happens every day.
iv.
So much of our caring –
for ourselves,
for our loved ones,
for each other,
for the world –
is narrow enough to be twisted
by circumstance, by history,
by systems and stories and power
and by our individual and collective
obliviousness
into harm…
often without us even intending,
without us even knowing.
But still…
It happens.
It is painful to watch
and disheartening to helplessly participate in.
v.
My good friend and green economist,
the late Robert Theobald,
used to say something like,
“The thing most wrong
with our system
– with the way things are set up –
is that it makes it so hard
to effectively care.”
I think about that a lot.
vi.
And I wonder:
What might we do together
to help liberate our abundantly precious
but too narrow caring
from its pernicious burdens
of unwanted, unintended, unacceptable
and unnecessary
harmfulness?
I don’t have answers to this
but I do have thoughts and feelings,
and intuitions and responses…
and questions…
So I hope many of us
can live together
into questions like this
so we can shift this great burden
from the hearts, souls and lives
of all future generations
of Life on Earth.
vii.
Oh! And there’s one more thing I think I see
as the light around me dims:
The more deeply we care
with our narrow care,
the more trouble we’ll find ourselves in
and the more trouble we’ll cause
in the world around us, as well.
If that is actually true,
it is deeply, profoundly sad
and it is here unfolding all around us.
But there’s always more to know
in this and all the rest.
So let us learn, and let us Go
and Make a Bigger Nest.****
________________
A human being is a part of the whole called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
—————
* This first story above is close to factual, but some subjective details have not been verified with the participants. I’ve left it anonymous and offered it as a version of dynamics that I’ve seen over and over. So it represents a deep Truth whose examples are legion and thus worth highlighting even with this not quite perfect illustration.
** You may find interesting three other posts of mine on this subject:
1. The ground of wisdom is understanding: Israel and Palestine being heard
2. Exploring creative possibilities for peace in the Holy Land
3. Enhancing the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis?
*** Responding to War with Love
**** Big Caring
________________________________
Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
“Appreciating, evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole”
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