Embodying our Values
New Ways for a New World #6
Some day I want to start a post with ‘Wow, that was a really awesome week in the USA…” Instead, I, along with millions upon millions of others, are angry and appalled at the absolute chaos and cruelty that’s being sown not just here but around the world, too. It’s well beyond a travesty, which is the language I often used in 2016-2020. Now, it’s become far more dangerous, insidious, and with significant implications not only for our country, our future, but for the entire world.
When it comes to studying power, this situation is a sociological case study if I’ve ever seen one. Every single unhealthy, awful, and predictable thing about unchecked power, narcissism, scapegoating, and people benefiting from their proximity to power, is illuminated in the absolute worst of ways.
And here’s the thing I keep drawing back on–while we’re appalled, there are also millions upon millions who are cheering this on. They still think that this leadership is the greatest, that this wave of domination by force, terrorizing immigrants, and rolling back civil rights is a good thing.
Our values couldn’t be more divergent, and the realities we are operating from couldn’t be further apart.
So how do we navigate life this way?
How do we find our way in a climate filled with perpetual gaslighting, cognitive dissonance, and polar opposite beliefs?
I believe our best way forward is boldly and authentically embodying our values despite the forces against it.
To embody—which means “to be an expression of or give a tangible or visible form to”—what we’re for and not just just talk about what we’re against.
It makes me think of a conversation in the early days of The Refuge I had with an old friend and colleague. The way he shared it got under my skin, but I am thankful for his challenge now. He told me that while he appreciated what I was saying about what I and we didn’t want when it came to church, he wish I’d focus more on what we actually did want to create. It inspired a series of posts called “What Could Be” that turned into my first solo book—Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus. While so much has changed since then, what still remains are core principles and practices from the Beatitudes and 12 Steps of recovery and my belief that when they are lived out in community, it’s so freaking beautiful.
While I honor that what we’re against often helps us clarify what we’re for, I am more firmly committed to the truth that embodying what we’re for is what will get us to new places.
Embodying our values with courage and clarity is a core practice of learning how to live in this new world.
The image that comes to mind on this is a tree.
Trees just do what they need to do without questioning it all of the time.
Years ago, during therapy I was in the forest engaging in a simple contemplative exercise gaining wisdom from something in nature. I chose a tree and asked it what it wanted me to know. What emerged in the simplest and most profound way—“Be like me.” Yes, I know if you come from the Christian tradition, you might be going, what? Aren’t we supposed to be like Jesus, not trees?”
Well, sometimes Wisdom speaks in wild ways, and I think we all have to find the images, metaphors, support, and resourcing we need to be who we want to be in this season.
For me, I got “Be like a tree. Grounded. Clear on who and how I’ll be, not trying to be what I just am not.” Sometimes, when I’m really feeling ungrounded and swirly, I come back to this reminder and anchor in its simplicity: Trees do what they need to do without questioning their contribution all the time.
Right now, we need to be anchored in our core values and live them out in simple, brave, creative, and authentic ways.
If you need support in naming yours, you can google different values lists, but it’s likely that just sitting down and remembering what we care the most about, what we need the most in connection with others, what guides the deepest part of us. I also love Non-Violent Communications needs lists as a tool for discernment.
Some of my most guiding values right now are: Community and Connection, Dignity, Presence, Authenticity, Mutuality/Shared Power, and Healing. It’s not lost on me that they are exactly the opposite of everything that this administration is perpetuating, but my work is to live them out regardless of what anyone else is or isn’t doing.
What are core values we are trying to embody right now?
How can we own these guiding values fully and freely?
What does it look like to move them into action for this specific time and place in our story?
Right now, I’m most focused on tangibly embodying my values in The Refuge, #communityheals, and local collaborations aligned with what I believe and care about the most. It means sometimes I might seem disconnected from other more public forms of advocacy because I’m not posting all the time or saying certain things certain ways.
However, letting go of comparing ourselves to others is a crucial practice to survive in this nutty digital world that constantly judges. We also won’t make it in this new world if we’re only spinning around on all the things we’re against (which the list is extra long right now). Our advocacy and embodiment is to demonstrate what we’re for.
As we keep gathering resourcing to help live us out who we want to be and how we want to be, may we find courage to embody or “give tangible or visible form to” what we value the most in our unique ways as authentically as we can without questioning it all the time.
It matters.
With you,
ps: Thank you, Minnesota, and know we are also weeping with you, standing with you. Right now, you’re showing us what it looks like to embody your values, together. While some might twist it by thinking it’s only what you’re against, we see you giving tangible and visible form to compassion, advocacy, dignity, respect, community, integrity, and justice. We know our future is all tangled up together.
Next up: #7 in New ways for a New World—Nurturing Equity
Simple Practices for Embodying our Values:
If we don’t have them yet, get clear on our core values for this season (they shift to meet changing needs) and speak them, share them, keep them in front of us so they don’t get lost in the noise.
How are we “giving tangible and visible form to” these things right now? Honor what already is instead of focusing on all that isn’t yet.
Through prayer, meditation, and/or community and other resourcing, discern some simple but clear ways to practice bringing these values to life more fully—at home, school, work, community, public spheres—in our own unique way, trying not to compare ourselves to others. Ask for courage and support from safe friends and community.
Values. How can I talk about values at this moment - managing outrage and grief over another murder by federal agents in Minneapolis? (Now it appears that the man was "brandishing" a camera, not a gun.)
I'm old enough to remember the "values clarification" movement in the mid-20th century. And the value that I "clarified" - though I lived in a way that consistently violated it - was KINDNESS. It's a one-word translation of the "love your neighbor as yourself" commandment.
Kindness is not the same as niceness. Being nice, being polite in these moments, is not kind. It is not kind to my neighbors, and it is not kind to myself. It is not kind to the most vulnerable among us. I confess that I want to be nice, when the imperative is to be kind.
God, help me to be fierce, determined, and kind.