Transforming Relationships

On October 6, 2010 I Invited my colleagues to join me in an exploration of what the future of the Church might be like if we more fully sought to build just and stable relationships in our local congregations.  Then, on November 10, 2010, I made much the same presentation to the St. Louis Association Ministerium.  This is a summary of those presentations. While the target audience is UCC clergy, all are welcome.

Societies are constructed out of a matrix of relationships.  The strength of the relationships is a measure of the resiliency of the social fabric.  When there is a crisis, as with a hurricane or flood or earthquake, and people come together to act on each other's behalf, we view the strength of the community.

Despite our ability to come together in a time of crisis, there are some strong indications that our social fabric is weak.  Partisanship rules in electoral politics, marriages are fragile, and virtual relationships have begun to attract more of our time and attention than do in-person ones, even among children.

We know how to build stronger and more satisfying relationships.  There are literally hundreds of schools, approaches, and methods which tout the ability to teach participants to have more personal power and more vital lives.  They all have success and each is criticized by some of their former students.  None is perfect but all are effective in the right context.

These approaches include AA and other twelve-step programs, Landmark Education, the Sedona Method, Arbinger, Psychosynthesis, Internal Family Systems, the Diamond Approach, programs of the National Training Labs, and the list goes on and on.  We have a huge body of information about how to train for building stronger relationships.  The most robust of these technologies for transformation have been developed in the last fifty years.

There are some things all of these approaches have in common. 

• They teach in the context of a defined community.  This may be the community of the training event, it may be a virtual community, it may be a workplace or family, but the training happens in the context of relationships of care and concern.

• The content of the training includes theory and language to support making distinctions in one's experience.  Key to the training is coming to recognize that "this" is not the same as "that."  Generally this means using language that is idiosyncratic to the method.

• There are specific behaviors one is expected to manifest in order to learn and realize benefit from the method.  It is not enough to get the concepts.  These must be played out in one's behavior for the results to be experienced.  With practice these disciplines become more second nature and the results become more apparent.

While many intentional and visible schools and methods have appeared in the last fifty years, there are some technologies for transformation which go back thousands of years.  These are the great wisdom traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam, among others.  All of the world religions have methods for building more just and stable relationships through teaching specific distinctions and practices.

Each of the more modern methods for personal growth and transformation acknowledges that, in the more advanced and subtle stages of transformation, one is inevitably drawn into the spiritual realm.  We discover more nearly who we are and that allows us to create greater and deeper intimacy with those around us.  This intimacy invites us back into a deeper self-awareness and, as we move further and further into our deepest apprehension of our Self, we find the divine presence resting at the core of each of us.

Throughout our society there is a great longing for more safe and satisfying relationships, a deeper connection to others in ways that promote the welfare of all, and a profound spiritual awareness.  Nevertheless, there are many who not only don't regard the local congregation as a source for support in building just and stable relationships, they see it as a model for judgment, rejection, and abuse.  The intolerance shown by those who picket the funerals of fallen soldiers, who propose to burn the Quran, and who demonize others and themselves because of sexual orientation, causes many to flee the Church.

Those of us who know that such actions are antithetical to our beliefs and to the teachings of Jesus, who love the traditions, the history, the texts, and the people of the Church, find ourselves perplexed by the way Christianity is seen by so many, even those who claim to follow Christ.  We long to manifest the Church as a source for social healing rather than for rancor and division.

• What if we were able to apply the tools for building healthy relationships which have been discovered in the last fifty years to the language for personal, relational, and social transformation which have been part of our faith for the last two thousand years?
• What if we were able to transform our local congregations into schools in which we learn and teach about the qualities which are present in just and stable relationships?  
• What if the local congregation became a beacon for justice, hope, and healing in a society which threatens to lapse into oppression, despair and estrangement?

Transforming Relationships: Discovering a Vision for the Church is committed to creating that future.  We will do it by mapping our existing language for transformation (being born again, distinguishing life in the flesh from life in the Spirit, having faith in the resurrection, etc.) onto the most robust tools for deepening our awareness of ourselves and each other.  We will apply these tools to those events in our common life where we most fear alienation and estrangement.

You are invited to join us.  A group is currently meeting each Wednesday morning (except when Ministerium meets).  We will continue until the crush of Christmas stops us.  Then in the third week of January we will reconstruct ourselves into two groups .  If you are interested in joining this program in January, please contact me.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Executive Director of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution

314-853-9385 (mobile)

Internet Resources for IFS Community Building

I have written in a prior post about my interest in developing a more robust IFS Community and connecting that community to the Center for Self Leadership in a manner that promotes mutual accountability. While there are many avenues for creating and sustaining this relationship, one of the most promising is the use of the Internet. The Community is spread out all over the globe and the Internet erases distance.

I have a strong concern that we have not made good use of the tools the Web provides us. Just at this most recent conference [October 2010] I often noted that there are tools we could have used that would have greatly enhanced the experience for those of us in attendance and which could have included those who were not.

• We met in a venue that had Wi-Fi coverage but the resource was not accessible to us. It is a simple matter to get an Internet connection and set up a wireless access point. This would allow for a great many things.

• When a presenter has a presentation to which we want access, we pass around a piece of paper on which we write our email addresses. As we do this, we are distracted from the talk and likely to make entry errors or to write undecipherable characters. It is much easier to go to the web site to get the presentation materials or to go to the forum page to sign up for notifications about the resulting conversation.

• I had a great chat with a guy named Frank who teaches spirituality at Claremont. I would like to connect with him but we didn’t exchange cards. I would like to go to the roster of Conference attendees and do a search for him. But there is no such roster. One could be easily constructed by the attendees themselves.

• At one workshop I attended, excitement about the topic was so high that we had nearly universal interest in generating a subsequent conversation or retreat. We know there are others who were at other workshops offered at the same time or even others who were unable to attend the conference who will be interested. It would be great to send a notice to anyone in the community who has indicated they want notification when events in this field are planned.

Creating these options is not difficult. It will take very little work and the cost can easily be born by those using the tools. We don't need to create new ways to harness the Internet to meet our needs. The resources are already available and many of them are free. Let me just spell out my dream system, recognizing that the design of the social networking site should be created by the community itself.

How it might work
When someone goes to the CSL site to purchase a service or resource they are invited to login or to create a profile if they are new. Everyone who creates such a profile becomes a member of the community. The community is defined as those who have ever purchased a book, a training, or a conference slot from CSL. Similarly, when someone offers a workshop for the Conference, they sign in or sign up. Everyone who comes to the Conference or training is a member of the community.

Each member has a profile page on which they can post information about themselves which can only be accessed by other members. They can restrict that information to only those members they have created a "friend" relationship with. They can link to their own web site or they can link to a file they have placed on the Community site if they don't have their own. Thus a presenter can upload a file that other members can access (as with a workshop presentation).

Each member's profile will show what Conferences they attended, what trainings they have completed, and perhaps other items like when they led or assisted at a training or presented at a conference. This could be a sort of IFS resume.

Members can form groups around interests. Any member can create an interest area and any member can join that group if they share the interest. Thus there can be an IFS and Breathwork group that can easily communicate with other members of the group.

Members can control what notifications they get about the activities of other members. They can chose to receive email whenever another member offers a workshop or when anyone in their interest group makes a post to the forum.

Forums are generated by members and the administrator of the forum is the person who created it. They can choose to moderate all posts or leave the forum un-moderated or can appoint another member to be the moderator.

Members can search the profiles of other members to find all persons named Frank, or all with the word Claremont in their profile. Email can be sent from within the site.

Making it happen
It is most unfortunate that Noah Rubinstein of GoodTherapy.org was unable to attend the conference. He has generously offered to enhance the social networking capabilities of the CSL site and it may well be that he has already charted out these or similar enhancements. I deeply hope that we can have such resources in place as we prepare to gather in Boston next October.

CSL and the IFS Community

Is the Center for Self Leadership a corporation or a faith community?


This is the question I heard myself ask aloud in the last workshop session of the 2010 Conference as we were considering the relationship between IFS and Christianity (Mary Steege, Sunday morning). I can say without hesitation that for me this is a community of faith and I know that to be the case for many others who see themselves as part of the IFS Community.

At the same time I remember that at the workshop on using IFS with Groups (Tracy McNabb, Friday afternoon), one newer member of the community (only four years), who is someone nearly everyone at the Conference knows by name, tearfully acknowledged a part that feels like an outsider. When Tracy invited others in the fishbowl group to check and see if they had similar parts, every hand went up. This may just mean that we all have parts that feel like an outsider, but the fact that this arose so immediately in the demonstration group suggests this is a common fear that the community is not addressing as well as it might and as well as I would like it to.

My perspective on these matters is informed by my role as an ordained minister and pastoral counselor who incorporates the distinctions and practices of IFS into all of my work. Some of that work is as a consultant with local congregations and faith-based organizations about team building and conflict resolution. From that perspective it seems to me that the mission of the Center for Self Leadership can be greatly enhanced by clarifying the nature of the relationship between the corporation and its employees on the one hand, and the community and its members on the other. How these two entities (corporation and community) envision themselves and their relationship is starkly different. This difference was highlighted for me at the Town Hall Meeting when Jon, bombarded by suggestions about what might be done, responded that we don't have enough resources. Many around him reflected back that we are awash in resources. The difference is whether "we" are the Center and its paid staff, or "we" are the community of IFS proponents and practitioners.

There once was the Internal Family Systems Association (IFSA). It functioned as a membership auxiliary to the Center. A couple of years ago IFSA went away with the promise that its functions would be picked up by the Center. Two new activities of the Center that seem related to the identification of and support for community are the implementation of a credentialing program and the erection of a forum on the web site. The credentialing program actually has nothing to do with community building but, in the absence of anything else, it appears as the only way to get to be "in." This may be one of the reasons for the resistance to the program.

I will say more about our web presence in a bit, but the forum is too low on features and too high on central control to really be a good platform for community development. I know of groups on LinkedIn and Yahoo which have sprouted and I have started groups on Google. The longing for connection within the IFS community is bursting forth spontaneously because there is insufficient outlet for this impulse within the programs of the Center.

I know nothing about the staffing of the Center, but I suspect that no one on the Center staff has responsibility for community development. This probably just falls to Jon along with everything else that no one else has on his or her list. I joked to a friend at the conference that the Center needs a chaplain. She thought we would do better to find a different label for that role but agreed that it would be nice to have someone identified whose responsibility it is to nurture and support the relationships between the various aspects of the community. This is not to say that we don't already have some folks with crazy mad skills in this area. It is only to say that none of them has the authority to act to do community resourcing.

Because the Center exists virtually, I suspect that most of the juices for community building are absorbed in creating a strong sense of "we" among the staff.

In Stephen Greene's excellent workshop (Friday morning) on IFS and neurobiology, we were reminded of the distinctions that Dan Siegel makes about chaos and rigidity and their relationship to differentiation and linkages on the way to integration. All systems can become chaotic or rigid but the place where there is the greatest flow is a region between the two where integration lives. We construct integration through a balance of differentiation (distinguishing this from that) and linkages (connecting this with that). Chaotic systems lack connections. Rigid systems lack distinctions. We need both for integration.

It is my sense that, to the Community, the Center looks rigid. To the Center, the Community appears chaotic. To move toward integration we will need to differentiate and build linkages.

When at the Town Hall Meeting we began to discuss concerns that the vision statement was too broad and that we need a more specific mission statement, we were moving toward greater differentiation. We were seeking to identify some measurable objectives. We tend to be better at distinctions than connections. I noticed this also in the formula of the vision statement. I don't remember the words, but what I got was that we are trying to support the awareness in the world that there is such a thing as "being in Self" and to encourage everyone to become able to be there and to hold that awareness and energy.

When I first started working with the model, it took me a while to "get" what it means to be in Self. But once I had the distinction [both knowing the theory and embodying the experience] and gained proficiency with the awareness practices that are able to reliably build that awareness, I found that I can pretty much be in Self any time I want. Any time, that is, when I am alone. It is much harder to do when others are around. When I am with others I find it much harder to hold Self energy. The real trick is to be in Self with others.

Thus, it seems to me, the loftier vision is not just to be in Self, but to be able to be in Self with others such that they are able to be in Self. And more than that, to, in the context of the relationship we create when we are both in Self, be able to witness together the parts we each have that carry burdens such that those burdens are eased.

My vision is that the Center and the Community may both become able to be in Self with each other such that those parts of each that are pushed to extreme positions are witnessed and their burdens eased. While I absolutely believe we have the will and the wisdom to do this, we are not there yet.

The harder part for us is not the making of distinctions, but of building healthy relationships. We need to focus more on the creation of new linkages and we need a mechanism for creating and sustaining those connections.
 
In the absence of these linkages we miss some great opportunities to promote the mission of the Center and the Community. We have persons and small gatherings of IFS practitioners who are committed to the model and the mission and who want to make things happen in their communities but feel either unsupported or actually discouraged in doing things on their own without direct support or direction from CSL. The net result is that the Center is seen as anxious to maintain control. Such control makes good sense as there is a very understandable wish to protect the purity of the teaching and that it be offered in the best possible light. Nevertheless, this control feels as though it is coming from a manager. It doesn't feel like Self energy.

One of the ways we can strengthen and clarify relationships is through the use of social networking technology on the Internet. I don't mean to suggest that online tools will do everything we need, but the Internet offers many robust options. I have written a second post that spells out in detail what I know to be possible and what I hope we will agree to in terms of social networking for the IFS Community.

Whatever the medium, I deeply hope we will create the mechanisms by which we can maximize the power of this great community.

Team Building

Every system fluctuates between being too constrained or rigid and too loose or chaotic. The place of greatest integration and effectiveness--flow-- is somewhere between the two. We want to have both clear distinctions between the various parts of the system and clear linkages between those parts.

Further, a part of a system may appear to be too rigid from one perspective and too chaotic from another. A couple trying to set a budget may find one person urging greater flexibility in the budget while the other wants tighter controls.

When a system appears rigid, we may think we need to get it to loosen up and relax some of the tight linkages. In fact it works better to differentiate the various parts of the system. When a system appears chaotic, we may think we need to get it to be more homogeneous. In fact we do better to support the creation of better connections between the various parts.

What this means for an organization, like a church, is that the overall health of the organization is furthered by doing two things well. One is to clearly identify and differentiate each of the parts of system with regard to the roles--the rights and responsibilities--of each person, committee, or board. The second is to identify and support each connection--the flow of information and energy-- between all of the differentiated parts.

If one were to map out the organization one might get a huge sheet of newsprint and show each of the officers and committees and informal groups as nodes in a matrix and then draw lines to indicate the way information and energy flows between them. So one of the nodes is the event of Sunday Worship and related to this node is the Pastor in the role of Preacher and the Choir and the Ushers and so forth. Each node brings information to the event and energy in the form of some kind of resource, a sermon, a hymn, collection of the offering, and so forth.

If one were to map the whole organization in exquisite detail we could easily cover a whole wall. We normally only map the larger structures and we do that with a document called the By-Laws or the Constitution. Or we may have Job Descriptions or Standing Rules. Such maps are much easier to carry around and to access.

But by-laws and job descriptions are not always followed. We adapt the organization over time to fit new circumstances. Sometimes we amend the by-laws and sometimes we amend how we do business to bring the two into line with each other. But sometimes issues arise that aren't referenced on the existing maps. We don't have the guidance about what to do that would come from a prior agreement. We have to construct a new way of being with each other in the organization.

Typically we discover the need for a new agreement because of the presence of a conflict. Some node in the matrix isn't getting the information or the energy that it needs or expects from another node in the matrix. While this is troublesome, if we have a way to address the situation creatively we can repair the matrix and restore or create a higher level of functioning in the organization. This requires that we see the conflict as an opportunity to be explored and embraced, not as a problem to be avoided or suppressed.