It’s the first of December as I write this–things are gearing up for the holidays in a very strange mixture of directives. The president who tried to order America after 9/11 to “get out there and shop,” is going out of office, the economy is in a shambles, people are nervous about money on many fronts, and we know the “yes we can!” energy of the new president is not a quick fix.

Here on Whidbey Island, local merchants are pleading for loyalty with slogans of “Shop the Rock!” and at the same time the island newspaper is stuffed with bargain ads designed to get folks on the ferry and headed into the mainland malls. I do shop the Rock, and I don’t shop it much… In the over-abundance of my family’s lives, there’s not much anyone needs from Auntie Christina. And now that the “children” of my extended family are all in their 20s and early 30s, it’s understood that I’m giving my holiday money to charities and causes that I care about–for myself, and for them.

And, since the shopping season is starting in earnest I want to retell the story of my mother’s creative giving at this time of year because it is so simple and so direct. She, too, decided not to keep sending gifts to the grandchildren. (It gets harder and harder for an 85+ year old woman to imagine what the college and post-college generation might actually like to receive!) She set aside her holiday giving budget divided into $20.00 bills deposited in plain white envelopes with this message typed on the front: “This gift comes to you totally without strings, to be used however it benefits you… and if someday you find yourself with more than enough, take this idea and pass it on.” 

For the month of December, my mother carries these envelopes around in her purse and looks for opportunities to give the money away. She sees a haggard looking mom and several children getting out of an old car at the grocery store and leaves an envelope on the windshield. She hugs a pensioner at church and slips the envelope in her coat pocket. She hands one to a cashier at the thrift store with instructions, “use this to pay for that person’s cart when they come up here…” By the end of December she has deposited $300 into her community in direct giving, in the truest spirit of the season.

This action is quintessential Connie: wanting to make a difference with whatever largesse she has, and wanting to keep it personal to have a bit of story to share with her grandchildren… and the confidence to know that her actions will become stories in the lives of others.

Merry Christmas, Mom, may the manger in your heart always be full.

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

On Thursday afternoon November 27, American Thanksgiving Day, 15 people started showing up at our house for the annual ritual of gratitude and feasting. The group is fairly stable now–all islanders and two friends from Vancouver BC who come down when they can. Actually, the two Canadian friends are the longest participants since they started coming in 1994 when we still had children in the house and they were the surrogate aunties. Then as we met newcomers to the island we added them in ones and twos and the gathering grew. We had to use both the elongated dining table and a card table this year–who knows, next year we could be having two full tables. We cook the turkey, stuffing, gravy, and everything else shows up from appetizers to apple pie!

For Ann and me it’s a way to come fully home, to enter our island time at the completion of another year’s work–which is mostly travel away to offer seminars and attend conferences. One of the things we are grateful for are the friends who hold this community life in place for us–some of them gathered around the table, and many more who make Whidbey their home, and our home. 

So, of course there is a sense of story that comes into the day: we bring magazines, scissors and glue into the living room and cut card stock into the size and shape of placemats. Everyone is invited to make a collage of what they are thankful for this year. Not everyone gets into this activity, it’s voluntary… and provides an activity of gathering and snacking.

Then, about an hour before the turkey is done, we pull chairs into a circle in front of the fireplace and with a talking piece do a round of check-in. There is a candle lit on the coffee table in the center between us, we are listening without interrupting as one-by-one each person has the opportunity to hold a small stone in his/her hand and then speak– either using the collage or their memories as prompt. I think the deepest significance for me, and perhaps for those gathered, is that we are at a full resting point: nothing intrudes. No football games, no cooking details–just us, having made it another cycle of seasons. We take some long slow breaths into this slowness and then the stories rise. A community service project, a bike ride across America for charity, surviving cancer, a car wreck, the challenge and blessing of meaningful work, the hopes we have for the next year, how the now grown children are doing and where they are this day. 

When we are done, we bless the food and recite our prayerful concerns for the wider world. Then the last minute scurrying begins. People put their collages around the table, candle lit, songs sung, we sit down together, and eat and talk for the next 2 hours… there’s only so much one can eat, but there’s a lot to share in stories and discussion. Some of us are family, good friends who see each other often, neighbors… and some are folks who only see each other this one time each November.

It always amazes me how willing people are to speak their authentic stories into a space where it will be honored, into the presence of this little tribe of listeners. For this I am most deeply grateful!

What are you most thankful for right now?

Tell me that story!

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

In the concluding chapter of my book, Storycatcher, I focused on the power of story to inform, inspire, and activate–especially on how story creates a sense of community, and that all communities create story. At the time I wrote this book (2004-2005), questions of hope and despair were huge in my mind. We were in the middle of the downward spiral of the Bush years that have led us to even greater downward spirals in the economic lives of ordinary people as well as nations, even greater environmental urgency, and 30+ other major local, national, and global crises. So why do I feel so much better?

I have hope. And it was not until that moment in Grant Park, in downtown Chicago two weeks ago, that I realized how bravely I had been carrying on with much of my heart encased in despair. That despair is falling away like an encasement of dried mud through which–all out of season as it is–a strong green shoot is pushing through. Something green is coming in November, in January, and in my American heart. As a public person, I don’t think it’s very useful to get up in front of people or lead seminars and focus in on despair. I have spoken and written with as much hope as I could muster for the human condition and our abilities to take the great leaps forward that are surely necessary for our survival, and the survival of the ecosphere in which we live and breathe and have our being. However, privately, I have endured much despair. And the election has lifted this despair: not just in me, but in so many people I am talking with, listening to, reading on the web and elsewhere.

We are discovering in ourselves a personal reattachment to hope, and the maturity to know that hope is not an emotion, hope is an action. Hope is doing something, and keeping on doing it. And it requires a vision to organize hope: that is what President-elect Obama provides me, a sense that an organizing principle is in place that can help bring the good deeds, hopeful stories, and desire to contribute to the common good to some kind of focal point. 

In this same chapter of Storycatcher, I paraphrase a Ray Bradbury fable about a time when people are full of dread for the state of the world and what the future might bring. Into the city one day, a young scientist comes to Central Park pulling a huge contraption. He announces to the gathering crowd that this is a Time Machine and if they like he will travel to the future and see what happens. Despite their fear, the people send him off to time travel. In a great rattling thrust the machine lifts off and disappears. Time passes.

One day the scientist comes rattling and chugging down out of the sky, lands in the park, and jumps out to deliver his news. The people assemble, cringing in trepidation, but the scientist looks remarkably cheerful. “Great news!” he tells them, “The future is much brighter than you think. There is peace and justice, enough food and water, people are living in cooperation and walk gently on the earth.” The people are stunned: this is not what they had expected. Something begins to stir in them–a sense of participation, a desire to do something to help make this happen. They set off to create the future that has been promised them.

This is exactly what I feel is happening in the US, and perhaps elsewhere, right now: something is stirring in millions of people. We are experiencing a sense of participation, a desire to do something to help make the world the kind of place inspired in us through the victory of Obama–which is really a victory of vision and values. A victory of restoration of hope. I know it’s going to be work. I know my income may plummet, that I may be caught in the larger story in ways that bring on hardship–but the story now has an organizing principle that aims toward common good. So, I find myself willing to face risks, to make sacrifices, to accept challenges–it’s a good way to spend the rest of my life.

In Bradbury’s story, years pass, change happens, and while life is not perfect, the world is indeed in better and better shape. One day a curious young journalist goes off to find the scientist, now a very old man, and his Time Machine. He is retired, gardening, the machine a rusting hulk in the middle of his lawn. “Tell me about your journey into the future,” she asks.

The old man smiles, “My dear, I didn’t actually go anywhere,” he admits. “I just gave the people hope.”

President Obama has a much harder task: he has given us hope, and now he must lead a lot of actual work. What we make of this moment is not only his, but ours. I saw a button the other day, I may be ordering them for Inauguration Day gifts, that reads: “The most important position in any government is CITIZEN.”

Okay, I get it. Let’s go!

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Wow. What a phenomenon to participate in the US election and to watch reaction to it at every level, from my own open heart, to the community level where people are clustered in coffee shops and store aisles and on emails talking, talking, listening to each other’s stories of what just happened. And then to watch and listen to the voices of ordinary people juxtaposed with television news pundits, to see clips of people celebrating around the world expanding this conversation and reaction.

And what is it we are watching? Well, at the Storycatcher level, we are watching America choose a new story.

We are watching US citizens say to ourselves that the old guard and the established interests have failed us, have betrayed us, have no further right to claim power. We are saying at the ballot box that we are courageous enough to jump out of our entrenched thinking and try something new—try someone new. We are saying that we will override all hesitance in order to have leadership that can frame the challenges before us and help us move through them. We are acknowledging the absolute necessity of having a leader who is capable of negotiating with all the conflicting interests that want to hold onto power and money, and to turn to the people over and over and help us create a story of who we are now, and what America is now.

A few years ago, when teaching in Europe, I asked my Danish colleague, Toke Moeller, who is a master invoker of questions if he would send me home with a good question to ask Americans. He looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then pronounced, “Ask each other–what else could America be?” 

Watching Barack Obama become President elect Obama, standing on the stage at Grant Park last Tuesday, I thought to myself–here is something else America can be: a country admitting its multi-racial, multi-ethnic roots, seeing our melting pot history in the face of a melting pot man who will bring us/US into the 21st century to join an interconnected, melting pot world. And now that he has made it into this question, we need to keep asking each other this and other questions in an ongoing dialogue of creative invention. What will America be now? How will we respond to the next crisis now? How do we discover our unity and recover from the polarity that has been drilled into us?

I don’t know–but I’m heading with excitement into a dialogue to find out! 

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Late Sunday night, two days before the US election, I wrote the following email–and sent it out bcc to about 150 contacts in my address book.  By noon on Monday I had heard from over 50% of those readers, and they had documented how many times they had passed it on into their lists… so it had reached 10,000 that I know of! So many people, in the US and around the world, are eager for the attack ads of the US political process to be over–and are looking for something positive to do.

Read this: share it; and let me know what you are doing! It’s still relevant in the days and months after the election. Its relevant whatever country you are in–differences try to divide us everywhere, and people can overcome them anywhere!

November 2, 2008 

My dear friends and family, 

A brief reflection and invitation– pass the content on as you see fit–let’s just start taking down the signs and leaning over the fences!

Friday afternoon (Halloween) I was standing on a street corner with about 15 other Obama supporters on each side of the stop light in Freeland watching the reaction of people driving by. Many smiles, some frowns, the occasional down-thumb. And then a big guy on a big motorcycle came by, very slowly passing right in front of us  shouting obscenities about the “f-king liberals” and the ruination of his America. It was quite a verbal assault, finished by a roar of his bike pipes and off he went.

It made me think, again, we have to stop this raging at each other. It seems to me that those on the right feel a sense of entitlement to rage, to lashing out when threatened–and I am sure there are those on the left who do the same. And all it does is widen the divide and increase fear.

Walking back to my truck a bit later, holding my Obama sign to my chest I could feel my heart swell with hope like I have not allowed myself in a long time. I sat in the truck cab and cried and asked myself, “How will I handle it if McCain snatches victory from the jaws of defeat?” And it gave me great empathy for those walking back to their vehicles clutching McCain signs to their chests.

So the next day, on my way to phone banks and canvassing undecided voters, when I saw the McCain people out at another corner down the highway I determined  to walk up to every person I see who is wearing a McCain button, holding a McCain sign, or has a McCain bumper-sticker, and extending my hand to shake theirs. “Hello, I’m your neighbor, Christina, in Freeland. Deep down, I believe we have similar values and dreams and come Wednesday, you can on me to include you in my vision of America… Can I count on you?”

This is the question. And I invite you to start asking it–for Wednesday morning is just the beginning of an era of citizen involvement that must go on for the rest of our lives. This citizen involvement will have many facets as we learn how to communicate more and more effectively with our elected officials, and our new president. And it will be sustained at the local level. You can count on me… And I count on you.

And for the inspiration part: this song is a must see–just as this vote is a must believe!

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=oVi4rUzf-0Q

Love to you!

Christina

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

I’m just back from Canada, had one day to do the laundry and say hello to the dogs, and then I drove down island to the retreat center that is our home ground, The AlderMarsh on Whidbey Island.  There I spent the day meeting with a core group from last year’s December session of “The Self as the Source of the Story” who had regathered for a week of writing and remembering. 

These writing seminars are so magic. I know it is a great synergy between how I hold the circle, the applicable writing skill development and content, and the longing in each participant for the ability to birth their own story. I have been teaching this seminar since some time in the late 1980s–I actually cannot remember when I started it–and it is a profound responsibility and honor to serve as a midwife to so many tales. 

So, eight made it back. And this time they trusted each other to peer facilitate, to set just enough structure in place so they could write, and enough ease in place so they could revel in the experience of being together. They’d been with each other 5 days when I rolled in this morning and the energy was incredible. They were riding in a spaciousness of love and acceptance and honor for each other’s journeys. As we sat down and checked-in, passing a stone around the rim and each one speaking to the week, I knew were in the heart of the world… the kind of space many people don’t know in their whole lives, where they can be fully themselves and fully accepted. The level of empowerment released in such an experience is amazing… and what a teaching for me, the usual teacher, to come into the end of their time together as an honored guest.

So they read to each other and to me the output of their writing. We critiqued and encouraged and sent them off to the work of living as writers. And the space is already booked for next year. And in a few weeks, I’ll be gathering with another new group heading into the journey of claiming themselves as the source of the story.

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

I’m up in London, Ontario as I write this. Ann Linnea and I just gave a speech on the ages of women’s wisdom. It was a lovely event, no podium, no power points, just an evening of conversation. As an extroverted storyteller who does this fairly often, I am comfortable in front of hundreds of people, but Ann, as an introverted storycatcher, finds the invitation to offer a speech daunting. She does it well, but it costs her a lot of energy. So when Brescia University College asked us both to speak, since both our books are well known to their intended audience (check out Ann’s classic, Deep Water Passage, A Spiritual Journey at Mid-life, on our company’s site: www.peerspirit.com) we wanted to design a way for both of us to be comfortable. We came up with a kitchen table–where so many rich conversations occur–and asked Brescia to arrange the stage that way with two lavaliere microphones, a pot of tea and two cups, a candle… Ann and I sat in chairs and talked through the topic of the evening, and then jumped down into the audience to open up the dialogue.  It went over so well, I think they will establish this arrangement as the new format for their annual Sophia Lecture series.

And as a gift at the end of the evening I got a new and intriguing story. One of the women told me that when her son was in First Grade, his teacher invited all the children to bring a treasure from their lives that they would be willing to part with and together they’d put all these things in a time capsule, marked and storied, and buried in the school yard–with the agreement they would dig them up at their tenth year high school reunion. The woman’s son, now in his mid-20’s, can hardly wait to return to their hometown for this reunion and the chance to dig up the box. 

The more I thought about this story the more I loved that teacher for her insight and farsight, and for trusting these children to keep a covenant with a future that they could not imagine at age six.

One of the chapters in my book, Storycatcher, starts off with my burying a box for the future to find when I hid my journal during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the end of the book I write about hiding some treasures and a letter in a gap under the counter when the kitchen was remodeled in 2004. I think there is a theme here: that most of what we know about the past, particularly the far, far, past, comes from people intentionally or inadvertently leaving treasures for the future to find. So, I invite you to think about what you might want the future to find from your life–not just the landfills full of plastic and styrofoam, but messages… maybe to yourself twenty years hence, maybe to your grandchildren, maybe to the seventh generation. 

I dug up my journal, buried only for a week in the midst of that crisis, but I’m leaving my letter under the counter, and sometimes I look for other ways and places to hide things that I will never see again but that I hope pass into the stream of time and the mystery of the never-ending story.

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

In the fall of 1938, my father went off to college of Salem Oregon, leaving his family in Montana–his first major venture into life beyond the farm, the small town, the honey business, and the small city of Great Falls where his parents sometimes wintered over as they worked to get all 8 of their children–spanning an 18 year spread in age–college-educated and into the world. My father, #7 of those 8 children, left for Willamette University and grew lonely for his far-flung family. Many of his older siblings were already married and raising families, and he wanted a way to help keep everyone in touch. 

He came up with the idea of a “Round Robin” letter that would circulate among his parents and the homes of all eight young and adult children. The idea was simple: there was an order of who you received the letter from, whom you sent it to, and you had the chance then, every few months, to read news of the whole family, take out your old letter, put in a new one, and send it on.

Of course each one was supposed to receive, read, write, and send within a week… but I remember as a child there were times the robin got buried on my parents big desk and with a shriek they’d find it a month later… and sometimes it seemed to disappear for such a long time that everyone in their Christmas cards would inquire as to its whereabouts. Then in the mail it came again: full of handwritten or typed pages, recent photos, news clippings, recipes and other bits of communication.

My father is 88 years old now and has only one older sister left alive, but the Robin continues around– and as one uncle after another has left for heaven, the responsibility for writing has passed to the next generation. So a few days ago, my cousin Don, age 70, my cousin Bill, age 67, myself age 62, and my father were all at dinner and listening to this history. We marveled, in the age of email and cell phones, that this packet of family material is still circulating–and our delight in this old fashioned idea of getting real mail. There was talk that many of our aunts/uncles/parents saved all the letters they wrote in the Robin–and what an interesting archive this is in itself. Now we want to find and collate what we can.

We are committed to the Robin’s continuance, to educating our children to its significance, and saving what we can of its history.

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Blog #3: September 22, 2008

Okay, enough politics– time for the long view! So how do I pull back far enough to get perspective? Well, for me, it’s a pretty far back into what I call “The story of the Story.” About six months ago I got deeply fascinated with the journey of humanity—the hike out of Africa those of us not currently living on the Mother Continent—have been on for about 100,000 years. 

I came across this information first in 2004 while researching chapter 3, “Tending our Fire,” in my book Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story. Then, I was interested in how the brain is neurologically wired for language—and how Homo sapiens have always had a language center in the neocortex, and therefore have—it seems—always spoken.

Now, I’m interested in our capacity for survival, and how often survival is associated with someone making a wise (or lucky) decision at the right moment. When looking at the map of this hike, immense patience is required—for until the last eye-blink it’s all happened on foot—and some willingness to accept scientific speculation on how humanity jumped from one dead-end to a new beginning. However, the more we hear about global warming, environmental collapse, the possibilities for unceasing wars appear in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the more moronic the political debate rages in what is supposed to be the leading nation among nations—the more willing I am to look for signs that we have been at such choice points before and somehow made it through.

So imagine for a moment, that it is 60,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 and your ancestors are among a group walking up the green fields of the Sahara basin, following the Nile to the Levant—the crescent area bordering the Mediterranean sea. There they faced the chilling impact of the European ice-shelf and turn east, beach combing along the Saudi peninsula and onto the edge of India. Everything goes along well enough and about 40,000 years ago Mt. Toba explodes, creates such a global dust storm that in 6 years another Ice Age begins… and the human population crashes to about 10,000 survivors.

But during this hiatus, some folks get in grass boats and sail off to become the Australian and Polynesian peoples, some eventually head inland and become the Asian people, some learn how to head over the eastern steppes and become the European people. The messageis: we made it. And we continue to make it.

I’ve been talking about this story with incredibly diverse groups in the past few months—and universally  we arrive at a point of hope! It begins to dawn on audience after audience that the conditions we face right now—locally to globally—while seriously needing our attention, are not worse than conditions our ancestors have faced in the past. This IS the story of humanity! Our presence here is cyclical, like everything else.

So, right now I’m at the Western Women’s Conference of the United Church of Canada in eastern BC, and 350 women who on the outside don’t look so radical, and are on the inside great explorers of spirit, are experiencing a sense of how their faith journeys fit into this long, long story, and how they can actively preserve stories of values, belief, and strength in the generations surrounding them. We are having great fun with the idea–and my lovely 88 year old mother is among those in attendance.

Next week I’ll be taking another version of this message to a group of elected city officials… the story is changing–but it isn’t over!

(For some wonderful maps, information, and downloadable lectures and videos on all of this check out the following sites: www.nationalgeographic.com and www.bradshawfoundation.com.)

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago, in the middle of September 2008, I was in Oregon at the annual retreat of the National League of Cities. I was part of a faculty of four on a 3-day session presenting to 120 elected officials. Using the Columbia River as background, the association had opted on a theme of “Lewis and Clark–Exploring the Frontiers of Leadership in Local Government. I was there to close the conference with a morning of Storycatching, looking at how story impacts leadership style, and the necessity of understanding the story of place in serving as a civic leader.

The opening keynoter was a man named Don Coyhis, a Mohican tribal leader involved in the Wellbriety Movement, a combination of the Twelve Step program and Medicine Wheel, restoring cultural health and freedom from addiction to the Native Nations. His presentation focused on the destruction of Indian culture through the kidnapping, forced housing, and re-education of generations of Native children in residential schools. It was a profound presentation, deeply moving and complex in its understanding of the devastation of cultural shattering and the work required to reinstate those patterns and restore health to the community. (See the website: http://www.whitebison.org for a look at their recovery focus.)

Listening to Don, I realized that what he’s focusing on in tribal communities, is also a need in white dominant culture. How often I find myself lamenting the loss of human values that seemed timeless a mere 50 years ago: regard for children, the elderly, the sense that social systems should care for the less fortunate, that people have a right to tolerance, etc. etc. “A healthy community,” said Coyhis, “is rooted in cultural and spiritual heritage. And when that rootedness is destroyed, the community roots itself in shame, anger, violence, hedonism.” How ironic that destroying Indian culture has in many ways contributed to destroying white culture: one group of people cannot harm another group without being harmed themselves: soul loss is mutual.

And then, the connection between Don’s story and my story went even deeper and more personal. listening to him, part of my family story in the first chapter of Storycatcher came flooding back into me: my grandfather’s first job in the tiny community of Fort Shaw, Montana, when he arrived there in 1911 was as a teacher in the Fort Shaw Indian School. A residential school, converted usage for a cavalry garrison, kidnapped children of the Blackfeet Nation. 

My father, now 88 and living near me, remembers his father talking about those times and how the students would runaway and start walking 100 miles home. “Dad said he used to have to saddle up his horse and buggy and chase after Indian children. He felt that having to physically recapture those kids and bring them back to the Fort was one of the worst actions of his entire life. He began to advocate for public education, and by 1913 helped close the school and open a local school district for the white children moving into the valley. The Indian children were then released to their tribes.”

In 1904, ten Native girls from Fort Shaw traveled to the World’s Fair in St. Louis and won the basketball tournament becoming world champions. In 2004, their descendants and the descendants of the white settler families, erected a monument at the ruins of the fort honoring them and acknowledging the existence of this archipelago of suffering. (See pages 13-14 in the book, for a fuller version of this story.) In September 2008, Don Coyhis and I stood in a soul connection beyond words at the end of his speech. I handed him the book. “My grandfather was part of that system,” I said. Tears filled my eyes. “I am deeply sorry.” In May 2009, Coyhis is leading a forgiveness movement at 100 school sites, reclaiming the souls of the children who died there and reunifying the lineage of the tribes. He has written Obama and McCain announcing the tribes’ intentions and inviting the US government to make a formal apology for this policy as has been done in Canada and Australia. 

There are so many stories right now about social justice and injustice and the need for generational healing. This is one I am going to watch, for the healing of Don’s tribe–and my own. 

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.