If we are in rhythm with nature, we are in rhythm with ourselves. - Micah Hobbes FrazierIf we pay close attention, we can experience the wonder that emerges from the beauty, magic, miracles and patterns all around us. Wow! Isn't it amazing? The world is full of emergence-one of the best concepts I have learned for discussing this 'wow,' this wonder. Nick Obolensky, author of Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty, writes emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergent strategy is a way to build complex patterns and systems of justice and liberation through relatively small interactions. I am often wowed when I imagine the scale of transformation that could come from movements intentionally practicing this way of being, on our own and with others.
I have learned emergent strategy in conversations with, and by listening to, a chorus of people who inspire me when they talk about how they have learned and changed in exposure to nature. Here is a small collection of pieces from organizers, facilitators, and artists at the precipice of wonder and strategy.
Zigzag Randomly
"When I think of the lies around leadership I was taught as a child, I think of Brownian motion. Growing up middle-class and college-tracked, I was fed a heavy diet of 'leadership' rhetoric from a very young age. Everything was about how to be a better leader. It seemed suspect to me. I mainly wanted to read, learn, have fun, and fight injustice when necessary, but not in order to run for office or anything.
In college, when I learned about Brownian motion-the way small particles, suspended in a gas or liquid, appear to dance and zigzag randomly-I thought, yes, this is what happens when everyone is obsessed with being leaders. You got all these fast-moving atoms pushing around the molecules willy-nilly, unable to cooperate and coordinate consensually and intentionally to form larger intentional patterns.
It's still something I struggle with, the unlearning of patriarchal and corporate leadership forms, while also accepting that Brownian motion is just a part of life. I don't have to feel frustrated with inefficiency or blame it on hyper-individualism all the time. Sometimes it just is what it is. - Katie Lonke
Cultivating Trust as an Organizing Strategy: Lessons from Mycelium Mushrooms
"Mycelium mushrooms have been one of my greatest teachers of trust. The word mycelium means 'more than one.' The mycelium organism is a dynamic root system of mushrooms that utilizes trust as a mechanism to build and sustain a vast, reciprocal, underground network that connects the roots of trees and plants and skillfully shares nutrients and resources to support the health of the entire ecosystem with which it moves.
This mycelial network cannot exist without trust. The mycelium communication highway recognizes and believes in the collective ability to channel and receive nutrients where needed, protect against parasites, and expand roots into necessary sites of growth. The network process also fosters intergenerational relationships that welcome the myriad of ancient wisdom and connections that reside in older trees to benefit younger trees. These mushrooms affirm a commitment to building relationships of trust that encourage all life to bloom. One that I aspire to embody more and more in my organizing practice." - Adaku Utah
The Pace of Water
"Glaciers and rivers change my idea about the time span in which change happens. When it seems like nothing is moving, you could be changing the face of the Earth. It makes me more patient. I've gotten a lot better at not getting demoralized when the first effort doesn't work, staying with it." - Ashindi MaxtonSeasons
"I think the most obvious learning that's always in our face, and that we sometimes forget about in this work, is the notion of seasons. And their importance. It impacts your ability to go slow or fast, but also helps you appreciate those qualities more. We have to organize in a way that makes sense for the moment, with a long view for changing conditions, learning to appreciate how those conditions give us the freedom to flex different muscles. But I think more often than not, we are caught unawares by seasonal shifts-'Oh, shit it's winter; I guess I needed that coat.' Even though we know it's coming every single year."- Mervyn MarcanoDevastation as a Source of Liberation
"A tornado comes with a vengeance, but its vengeance is not against you; it's against the things that hurt you and keep you disconnected from your purpose. We are the tornado. A tornado creates conditions for the impossible. It doesn't wait for you to recognize your liberation. The aggressive, unyielding love of the tornado doesn't allow you to run away from yourself." - Jasmine BurnettNurture Your Garden
"When a plant sends all of its energy down into the roots as opposed to when it is trying to bloom. When blooming, the plant expends all of its energy making flowers, and then making those flowers into fruit. This process takes a tremendous amount of resources. Better have good roots. From nature, I have learned to unapologetically attend to my garden." - Lottie V. SpadyBeing of Nature
"Every aspect of nature is its own distinct contribution, sometimes greatly opposing the properties of another, and yet they find their complement together, and there is no question of belonging. Nature invited me into listening. It invited me into synergy and serendipity, and that coordination is both planned and spontaneously co-created. Nature asked me to widen in my heart and trust that the answers live way beyond me or what I can directly control." - Vassilisa JohriShe Holds Us Still
Prentis Hemphill and Kasha Ho are two of the most beautiful humans I have ever met, and they found each other, and I love and learn so much from how they live.
Prentis: "I moved to Hawaii two and a half years ago to be with my partner, whose family came here generations ago to work the plantations. Soon after moving, I had this experience of sitting in our backyard in the Palolo Valley of Oahu, which was mostly a section of jungle and less a yard. But I was sitting there on the dirt considering Western psychology (I'm a therapist) and this concept of the 'good-enough mother,' of being an imperfect but mostly present mother as enough to raise a healthy child. I was thinking about the isolation of Western parenting and how the burden fell absolutely on women, but also I was considering and feeling this human longing to be held completely.
Sitting on that ground, it occurred to me, through my body first, then my thoughts, that the Earth, the land was the key. The Earth has held everything that's ever happened to us. And in psychology we see health indicated by our romantic or familial or work relationships, but there's never an assessment of our relationship with place and land. It was a huge realization for me to feel that as a healing justice organizer and practitioner, I could borrow from the ground because it has always had the most capacity. And I can keep pointing our people in the direction of the ground and the land to hold what seems impossible. For Black people in the U.S., this is a complicated conversation and one I feel is critical to our collective healing."
Kasha:
The question is:
Can I get bigger than myself?
Not lose myself or let myself go
but become wide enough to contain all that is true.
Resist the temptation to retract around what is right
or makes me feel in control.
Broaden my hips out wide like the valley.
The Earth holds all of this
and doesn't feel responsible.
Her water is moved by the moon.
Her surface is warmed by the sun.
And she doesn't fight the feelingor feel self-conscious.
We have torn and prodded and blown her apart.
She holds us still.
Without contempt.
We kill each other and hate each other on her shores.
She witnesses.
Sends rains to cleanse.
She doesn't question her existence.
She just continues to be.
From the Online Zine Let the Choir Say Wow to accompany Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.
"...the isolation of Western parenting and how the burden fell absolutely on women..."
"How a woman imparts to her partner the meaning and significance to her of the father-child transaction--fatherneed itself is of huge consequence to their children and to the access they wil1 have to their father. The mother's enthusiasm for promoting father-child connectedness is also shaped by the kind of marriage she finds herself in. Compared to the mother-child relationship, the relationship between father and child, whether within or outside marriage, is more strongly correlated with the quality of the co-parental connection, according to Belsky's research group. Men often withdraw from their child when not doing well with the mother, whereas mothers may draw even closer to the child when they are not doing well with the father. Is this good for the child? A very large "it depends" is the answer. If the mother moves to amputate the fatherneed, the child will suffer; if she moves to separate her needs from her child's in such unhappiness, the child can manage better. Marital satisfaction itself, however, is clearly both a source and consequence of paternal involvement. My hunch is that the reason fathering is so sensitive to marital fortunes is that expectations for fatherhood wax and wane with economics, politics, religion, the weather, and so on, leaving men, women, and children casting about for the fatherstick or some ideal by which to measure any particular father's performance. Indeed, it is the very dearth of clear expectations that is so disorienting, even toxic, for the men and women doing their best to find the way to keep fathers and children close. Yet when mother and father can figure out their own version of how to satisfy fatherneed and stick to it over time, the benefits to their children are significant. This holds true even if there is no marriage. In his important Baltimore study of teenage mothers and their kids, University of Pennsylvania professor Frank Furstenberg found that father presence by itself has relatively little impact on outcomes for adolescent children. However, a strong father--child bond, especially if the father lives with the family, is associated with a variety of positive outcomes for the child. And this happens most often when there is good co-parental relationship. Indeed, even the level of attachment to the mother was found to have little impact on the well-being of the children as they entered adulthood unless associated with a good co-parental relationship. Furthermore, the study concluded that a poor father-son relationship was worse than no relationship at all because they interfered with the child's capacity to develop other, healthier, connections, and they typically rendered the mother less capable. Matrimony for the sake of matrimony does not protect from the toxicity of an unstable, conflict- laden relationship between parents. But when mothers respect their partner's fathering, kids thrive." pp149-150 Fatherneed 1987
As Dr Kyle Pruett found, women are the gatekeepers of a father's influence in their child's life. They either facilitate or obstruct the bonding process. He also showed how women have difficulty opening that gate, because they do not understand the father's parenting style. Men are not hairy women. They do not relate to nor view the world through the lens of women/mothers (tears, chatter, emoting). It is precisely because of this that their influence is vital to the balanced and accelerated development of children to full maturation.
The Feminist mindset since the beginning of its formal influence upon the family structure in the mid 18th century has had as one of its primary objectives the neutralization and then superfluity of fathers. They have succeeded in large measure through appealing to vanity.
Mallory Millet, speaking of her sister Kate's founding of NOW:
"So, they infiltrated every system and department in education, media, entertainment, government, justice, Wall Street, you name it and they're there. For decades since they started their stealth invasion the father in every sitcom has been debased and, most of all, clueless. I am dumbfounded at the efficiency with which these women recruited others and wheedled their way into everything in fifty short years. Oh, yes, woman is one hell of a powerful force. Now, we have a nightmare army of militant feminists: Lois Lerner, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Huma Abedin, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, Samantha Power, Elizabeth Warren, Cheryl Mills, Maxine Waters, Donna Brazile, plus the main outlaw, Hillary Clinton, lying and obfuscating us into chaos." Frontpage Magazine , 13 Feb 2018