Learning with Friends: Reflecting on Episodes 1- 4 with Nancy Gabriel

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity)

Beth Tener 

Hi, this is Beth Tener. Welcome back to the Living Love podcast. This is Episode 5. This week’s episode is called Learning with Friends. I am going to do some reflecting on the first four episodes up until now. A few weeks ago, I created a community conversation. I invited my first four podcast guests and other friends and family to join me on a Zoom conversation about the episodes so far and what people were learning and discovering as they listened to them.

For me, I don’t like just broadcasting. I want to get into conversation and hear from people. We had a great conversation. I recorded that and pulled a few clips in quotes. Today I’ve invited Nancy Gabriel back, who was my first podcast guest. She is a good friend and a facilitator. We listen to some clips and then build on them and talk.

Creating learning and reflection spaces is a theme you’ve already heard me talk about with various podcast episodes. This will be a chance to experience it today. I’ll be offering an approach that I hope you can use to take these podcast conversations into your own conversations. I’ll quick review what the first four episodes were, and then share how we did the conversation. Even if you didn’t listen to all of them, or even any of them, I still believe you’ll find what we talked about today to be interesting.

• The first episode was about the spaces we come together, with me and Nancy talking about how we create communities, classrooms, workplaces that generate more trust and sense of belonging and love, rather than fear and separation.
• The second episode was with Reverend Charles Gibbs, and featured the story of United Religions Initiative. They spent a lot of time setting up dialogues across religions and across people with very different experiences all over the world in different places. They took the time to arrive at a common vision document that allowed the work to continue over the last 20 years, with different cross sector initiatives to be happening with religions working together.
• The third episode was with Libby Hoffman, where we shared and discussed the story of her work with John Cocker in Sierra Leone healing after the civil war there.
• The fourth episode was about the village where I talked with Kile Adumene about the shadow side of the American focus on individualism and mobility and leaving home. We explored how the values of the village and rootedness and caring for each other, which she experienced firsthand growing up in Nigeria. She has lived in America and we discuss what she sees as the differences.

We’ll be looking at the patterns across those stories today and look at how to apply this at home.

I’d like to share how I set up that community conversation because this is a nice method you can use for a reflective circle at the end of a meeting or workshop. I learned this from Sarah Peyton and I’ll put her website on the resource page. She’s a wonderful teacher of nonviolent communication and resonant listening and collective trauma healing.

In her community, they use this “needs met and gifts received” approach at the end of workshops or conversations. My first questions in that Zoom community conversation were: What need did the podcasts need? And what gifts did you receive? People could answer either one.

What Sarah taught me is that when someone is in a small group or big group shares something truthful or stretches, afterwards, their nervous system can crash with a bit of shame, for example feeling “geez, did I share too much?” We might call this like a vulnerability hangover. You ask: ‘Am I still in the group? Do I still belong?”

What the rest of us can do to support that person is to let them know how we were moved by their expression. This can help their nervous system come back into feeling in a comfort zone. So, instead of offering advice, or quickly changing the subject, or even saying, “Wow, you were brave to say that” it’s more effective to actually name how you were touched, informed or changed by what they said. If they shared something, and you were to say, “wow, you’re sharing really helped remind me that the need to be gentle, and kind with people who are going through that kind of experience” or something where you show what you got out of it from their sharing.

We did in that session with all the podcast guests. It was a wonderful experience to hear people share the needs that the podcast met for them or a gift they received, both for me and the people who shared their stories. Then the second conversation we had was the question, what story or idea resonated for you? And how might you apply that in your life and work?

I invite you to enjoy this conversation where you will hear some clips from that one, and me and Nancy talking about it. We’ll include in the show notes, any document or ideas that resonate, and a link to an article on how Sarah Peyton does group reflections.

Beth Tener 

Nancy, I’d like to welcome you back to the podcast. We’ve had four episodes since you and I did the first one.

Nancy Gabriel

Thank you, Beth. It’s really wonderful to be here again.

Beth Tener 

We picked a few themes to talk about today. The first clip I refers to a story from the first podcast with Nancy, where she shared stories of how at the beginning of a meeting, we focus on human connection, before content. Here’s a response from our colleague and friend Betty Woodman to Nancy’s story,

Betty Woodman

“Circling back to what I was saying before. Having everyone check in at the beginning, and really think about where you were: positive, negative, whatever that was…that brought me back to grad school. One professor that did it in a seminar. Every single class we started that way. It was one of those wonderfully small 12-person seminars. But it took time. You are right about that. But after we did that, our group just became so close knit. And our conversations were much deeper and richer and really productive.”

Beth Tener 

Nancy, I’d love your response to what Betty was saying about how taking the time for human connection, builds a close knit group, how do you see that unfolding?

Nancy Gabriel

I love that story from Betty. The idea that that approach was used in academia was really inspiring for me. Often the way that learning happens, it’s very didactic. The professor understood that building community among the students would help the students learn better in an environment where that isn’t the norm. I found that really inspiring.

Beth Tener 

I did too. This does take time, but we know it can actually go faster. We are then able to move at the speed of trust, once everyone’s cleared out of what’s up for them that day, the actual work can go quicker. I recently attended the Resonance Summit with Sarah Payton, and learned about the neuroscience of this. When people are in fight/flight or they can get into feeling an alarmed aloneness. When you feel too alone by yourself, your systems are more vigilant…when we don’t know where we fit in the group. If no one’s actually honoring and welcoming us and seeing us, if we’re just transactional, and “get the work done.” If your brain is in this state of vigilance and alarmed aloneness, it has to put a lot of effort into that rather than good thinking. When there is positive social engagement and connection, a feeling of warmth and care gets established. We feel part of a group. What the scientists now realize is, the thinking part of our brain can be more active. Isn’t that fascinating?

Nancy Gabriel

That’s really fascinating. Your point about it takes more time made me think about time is linear and how that might play into this. Our assumption is that time is linear. Even though it takes more time, we get the work done.

Beth Tener 

We know when we facilitate groups, we hold the agenda loosely. You can tell there’s tension or upset in the room, we let that rigid time agenda go. If you take that time, then the rest of the stuff flows. There’s moving out of the mechanical, industrial, linear time to realize we have to be flexible with time and then things can move in a more organic way.

Nancy Gabriel

Right. That is part of the dominant culture, it looks at time as linear and structured and that is heavily preferenced. In my past, I focused more on where I said I would be at a certain time. If I’m not there, then I need to move on. With this other way, I hold time more loosely, still getting done what needs to get done, but in a more organic way that has some flow, and creates the opportunity for something new to emerge that you didn’t imagine when you were building your structured agenda.

Beth Tener 

Yeah, beautifully said. I’ll add in one other part that Betty mentioned. Here is a clip of her talking about a law firm she’s working with and how hearing the story of what happened in Sierra Leone, with their conflicts gave her inspiration.

Betty Woodman

“So that is an interesting thing, that time question. You start to look at the quality of what’s happening. It caused me to think about a law firm that I’m working with and some regular meetings that I’m having. As much as I enjoyed that experience back in grad school, I haven’t been doing that. I was thinking that could be useful for a whole lot of reasons about because of some of the turmoil that’s going on there. I think I’m going to include that in my next meeting.

I was also thinking more about the example in Sierra Leone, thinking, Oh, my goodness, if people could really reconcile and get together with the atrocities that happened between neighbors and family members, certainly this law firm can resolve some of their issues that they’re having at the moment between parties. So thank you for these really insightful conversations.”

Beth Tener 

Reflecting on the stories of the podcast, we heard from several people about the importance of peacebuilding work. Libby spoke to it as did Charles with the interfaith work. We spoke of how much we need that in America, in our neighborhoods and in different places. It is needed here.

So that brings me to the next topic. Podcasts can allow us to share stories from different fields, cultures and geographies, in a way that they can cross-pollinate. Here’s a clip from Charles, on our call, talking about the potential of how podcasts can help us come out of fragmentation to see what what’s needed and how it can be co-arising.

Charles Gibbs

“Part of what I think the both the reality and the potential of this podcast is awakening us to that reality that there are so many ways of knowing so many language systems, so many fields of endeavor, that talk about creating the space to allow those to be fully present on their own terms and bring respectful, appreciative engagement with each other. I think that’s part of the mastery you bring in weaving this together. You may not make clearly every connection because that would displace everything else in the podcast, but enough to point to: “This may have come from here, but it connects here and here and here”. And there’s an implicit invitation in that: How might it connect for you? And how might it evoke things for other people?”

Beth Tener 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, Nancy.

Nancy Gabriel

I think Charles was maybe talking less about podcasts in general, and more specifically about your podcast, because I think that really is an intention behind your podcast. And it’s also an expression of who you are seeking out – the stories and making the connections. It’s exciting to think about how this is going to evolve and deepen as your podcast goes forward.

Beth Tener 

As we have worked as consultants and facilitators, we go in and out of different projects and initiatives in different communities. Part of what I’ve loved about that role is that ability to cross-pollinate and be able to point to here and there and to see the patterns. We call it co-arising. In all kinds of places people recognize things are fragmented and ask how do we collaborate across organizations? That same need is arising at the level of towns and getting the housing and childcare and other systems working together, or at the larger scales as well. How we see the patterns as similar?

Nancy Gabriel

One of the things that’s interesting in these first podcast stories is how things are happening in very different locations at different scales. But there is that commonality of the work happening with similarities in the way that it is being done.

It made me think of Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest. When I get overwhelmed or discouraged by, what seem like many complex, interrelated challenges and wonder how are we going to address them, his book is a reminder that things are happening everywhere at all these different levels. These podcast stories are an example of that…and this idea of those different efforts co-arising together and getting to a point towards – this way of being is now the way. That is incredibly inspiring.

Beth Tener 

Yes, I go back to that book as well. I just found a video with Paul Hawken about his book Blessed Unrest. I think he got up to inventory that there are 2.5 million organizations working on social justice, environmental protection, regenerative agriculture, all these different topics, globally. There’s a video, I’m going to put it in the show notes of him giving a speech. It’s like the movie credits, with a long list of organizations going up the screen. And it’s going to go on for hours, because there are so many. There is something really heartening in that as well.

Nancy Gabriel

And it was written in 2007. So we know so much more has occurred since then and there’s been an evolution in the way we’re doing the work. It is more community centered, has more of an equity lens. We heard that in Libby’s story. We hear that in the way Kile approaches the work. And I think that that is an ingredient that maybe wasn’t there as strongly in the past, but is there now and is deepening and that really gives me hope. Because that’s where I think the change is going to come. It’s a remembering and an emergence at the same time.

Beth Tener 

I agree with that. And I, having worked a lot in what we call the environmental silo, I can see that social justice and the need to center communities and the need to heal the past and justices, and rebuild a spirit of solidarity across issues that has grown so much since 2007. And the connecting up of people saying we’re all in the same movement here.

Beth Tener 

Well, that’s a good link to the next part of what I wanted to talk about today. We heard in several of the stories about the need to center communities in this work. We heard with Catalyst for Peace and Fambul Tok of how they went into the communities and asked “what do you need?” In that story from Libby, people in the village said “no one ever asked us before.” We discussed how the outsider can play a positive role coming in and truly listening in a respectful way, recognizing the answers are within this community. The assets and gifts are here, if we come in with eyes to see that.

Charles story with the United Religions Initiative was much the same. They didn’t say “we have to get to an answer.” It was like, “What could we do together?” I’d love to delve into what we heard in these stories about that idea of centering what the village and the community needs and how the outsiders can encourage that.

Nancy Gabriel

It reminded me of a community impact project that we worked on where we wanted the larger community to define which community we would focus on would be and what the issue might be. We went about that by asking the community to identify the assets, gifts and talents that already existed. I don’t know if you remember this, but we had a big flip chart and you made this beautiful basket on it. We invited the community put on post it notes of the assets and gifts that already existed. It was beautiful and overflowing.

I so strongly remember the sentiment in the room was “we only hear what we don’t have or what we aren’t, or what’s wrong with our community. We have appreciation to see – we aren’t that – we are this. More as possible when we are moving this from this place, and not from a place of scarcity or not- enoughness?

Beth Tener 

I remember that one of those meetings, and I wrote a blog about it, which I’ll put in the show notes with a picture of that image. I remember one of the residents from the community stopped and put her hand on your arm and said, “Thank you for asking that question.”

It reminds me of Charles who talked about appreciative inquiry as the foundation of all of their  conversations trying to find where and how the different religions could find shared purpose. Libby talked about how people get taught to lead with their deficits and their problems, because that’s what the funders or those with resources, want to see. And then you start to only see that.

I loved her story of how they showed up at these villages, looking for who are the local leaders, who could we help encourage to step into their leadership and, accompany them with coaching support. That’s such a different way of showing up as a helper than the way we often come in with answers or a short-term project and leave. You are not growing people, in the way that we heard in some of these stories,

Nancy Gabriel

It is a shift, I think from going in with a fixing orientation to a holding, and creating the spaces for healing.

Beth Tener 

I’ve thought about the healing were a lot. You know, at one point, I came up with this quote, talking with Kile: “you can’t action plan healing.”

I said in a meeting yesterday “ when you create spaces where you’re truly listening to the people, you go in not knowing. My friend asked “how are you going to get people to come to a meeting? Or how can you get a funder to support it, if you don’t say that, you’re going to end up with a set of recommendations that will go to this person?”

It’s this is the tension of the current way we expect work to deliver outcomes and what’s needed to do community centered work. With that, you have to come in with a different set of expectations and trust that you’ll get there.

Nancy Gabriel

You don’t go in trying to fix, instead, the work in the stories of the podcast is focused on connection and interdependence and interrelatedness. And coming from that place, from a place of wholeness, we can identify ways to move forward that are more whole. Whereas when we come in, in a fixing fragmented way, we come up with solutions that are fragmented. So we don’t even use the solution word in the other way. It’s not about fixing. It’s not a problem-solution.

Beth Tener 

What it takes to do this work, we’re trying to unlearn the old way that expects us to walk in to rooms as professionals and have all the answer. This idea that we’re the leader who tells everyone where to go and we need to be persuasive and convincing. If we recognize the wisdom is in the room, that there is potential there that is not yet realized, or that we need the whole system to come to a shared understanding that no one of us has. To do this, we have to show up not knowing the answer. And that can be very uncomfortable.

Nancy Gabriel

It sure can. I know even in my own consulting work with you, we joke about this, we are operating in an expert model, but we don’t believe in the expert model is the way forward. I feel a tension in this work of unlearning that has to happen both as a consultant coming in and not having the answer because we’ve been trained that we should have the answer or a way forward. There’s unlearning with people who in the community or in the groups you’re working with, because there’s that expectation that you’re going to lead or have the answer. I think we need to be able to sit in the discomfort, in the not knowing, in the chaos sometimes. We have to hang in there and trust that together, there will be a way through. That really is one of the challenges of this work.

Beth Tener 

I want to go back to the story from Sierra Leone of the village that took a long time to get to and the way that they felt when people showed up with genuine curiosity, and without an agenda or saying they knew the answer for them. The people could feel the difference in that. How have you seen it to work when people can get comfortable in the not knowing. What happens, what changes?

Nancy Gabriel

I think that that’s when real possibility arises. I work with graduate students in medicine, in law, in a fellowship program called the Schweitzer Fellowship. They design a year-long public service project addressing an unmet health need in an under resourced community. The students go into the community, and they work with them to design a project. They have been trained to come in with the answer and to fix it. And we tell them “no, no, no, you’re going into the community, and you’re listening. You can go in with an idea, but hold it very loosely, because you don’t know what the community needs until you talk to them.” And that takes time, as we have discussed.

So we have these, typically Type A, medical students and law students, they want to go in and meet, they want to get the thing done, they want to have this big impact, they care very much. And we’re saying well, but you have to listen to and respond to the community. And that slows everything down. And it feels chaotic, because new things come in, and they get so frustrated. And they sit in that discomfort for sometimes a lot of the year -ong fellowship.

Beth Tener 

You sit with them. They learn to hold it with your coaching, right?

Nancy Gabriel

It’s true, and it’s uncomfortable for all of us. They come through, and they end up doing a project, which is so much better than what they had initially had in mind. It has much more of an impact in the community than they had envisioned. So often, that is a key learning that they take with them from the fellowship: this idea that we have to be in the not knowing. In that not knowing and learning and listening, something new and powerful can arise. Again, to see that happening in people who are going into professional fields where they are expected to know. You want your doctor to know, you want your lawyer to know. And now they are going in with more humility and understanding that they need to know, but they also really need to listen.

Beth Tener 

There are times you need to know and there are times where you need to show up listening for what the group’s telling you. I’ll share a story this past week. I host periodic gatherings of people working in social change. It’s a resourcing kind of day and we base it in what’s showing up for people now. We just do the opening circle, asking what’s a challenge or an aspiration or a place you feel lost, and listen to what’s in the group. Then that becomes what we focus on for the day.

I show up not knowing and ready to respond to what’s there. It takes training to be able to be that fluid. That day was so powerful. The previous day I’d been in a leadership training that was just one presentation after another, all talk and lecture and useful information, but we just listened and got Q&A  time with the speakers at the end. There was no asking: “what’s up for you? What do you need?”

The contrast between what emerged in those spaces and how I felt as a participant in those spaces, it really was kind of night and day. So we’re focused on this ability to tune and listen to where people are at and what they need. It’s a more human way of being responsive, I believe.

Nancy Gabriel

Let me share a story of how that plays out. In the fellowship, we had two fellows doing a project where they worked with middle school/high school students to create resources and opportunities for those them to see career paths other than college. This is in a low income, largely immigrant community. The students had ideas of what that might look like. They spent so much time trying to make those ideas work, and to meet with the administration and to try to figure that out.

In the meantime, they volunteered, they met the youth in different volunteering capacities, and they began to build relationships with them. They realized that the youth were really interested in the medical field. There are so many options in the medical field that don’t require an advanced degree.

So they started doing workshops with the youth. The first one they did was ultrasound. They brought ultrasound machines in and the youth gave ultrasounds. One of the teachers was pregnant, and she was willing to lie on the table, and they did an ultrasound. They saw the baby moving and the heart beating. I mean, the energy was electric! Next, they did phlebotomy and all these different workshops for these youth. They came back every week to the workshops.

It was just an amazing project because they went into it the orientation of we have some ideas, but let’s listen to what’s needed from the people we’re hoping to help.

Beth Tener 

A beautiful story. I love it.

Back to the theme of Learning with Friends, I feel that there is a malaise and an exhaustion and depletion amongst a lot of people in a lot of places. I think part of that rests in that we’re so fragmented, and we’ve got checklists, and lots to do, but we don’t interact in a learning way. We could be doing  social learning. I can do a whole podcast on this. Social learning is when you are in community discovering together and reflecting together.

That brings us alive. That is a joyful way of being human together. I believe if we invested more in the structures and the time and the space to do that, it would bring a lot of us out of that sort of depleted low morale situation.

Nancy Gabriel

In many cultures, that’s how learning happens. You learn from an apprentice you shadow people,

Beth Tener 

In Kile’s podcast when she was talking about the village, we talked about mobility and how people move on and leave home. She mentioned when she came Nigeria to America, she was surprised by the way that teenagers get to 18 they get  to graduate, either high school or college, it’s like, Hey, I graduated, and that there’s actually not a feeling that you’re still in the village as much like we have these signposts where it’s like you learned all this, you got a diploma, and now you’re good, as opposed to lifelong learning. You do not continue to be in spaces with different generations learning and being informed by each other’s wisdom.

I think there’s so much kinship and space that we need to reinvest in for that kind of ongoing learning, the ongoing feeling of being part of a community that needs to work together to change over time, not just to you got your diploma and you’re done.

Before we close, I want to bring in one more theme, which is we have been talking about the spaces where people come together and that’s where we started with you. In Charles story about the United Religions Initiative, where they brought people together by finding a shared vision. I have a clip here from my friend Bruce Nayowith, from our community call,sharing how he was moved by the vision that they eventually got to. First, here is Charles sharing the vision and then you’ll hear Bruce saying his reaction.

Charles Gibbs

“We people have diverse religions, spiritual expressions, and indigenous traditions throughout the world here hereby establish the United Religions Initiative to promote enduring daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence, and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the earth and all living beings.”

Bruce Nayowith

“I want to say about the mission statement, which is there’s something about the amount of time that spent polishing it, it did not feel like a camel, like a horse created by a committee. It actually had a lot of energetic potency to it. And when you hear that sentence, it’s like, whoa, like, that’s powerful medicine. There was something about that process. I just wanted to mention that it was very inspiring..”

Beth Tener 

I totally agree with Bruce. I’ve been thinking about that and conversation. I’m working in spaces where people are fragmented, or we keep hearing about bridging the divide. There was something in that of seeing: they were just tuning into the larger whole, and finding a shared bigger purpose that everyone cared about. That feels like a different movement than how do we bridge these two left- right divides.

Nancy Gabriel

I think Bruce said it beautifully. It’s remembering that we’re part of the larger whole, which is so important to this work. When we orient from that place, and not to a more fragmented, bridging a divide over an issue orientation, there’s so much more that’s possible.

I’ve been involved in projects that use the U process to look at how to make systems change. You’re coming down the left side of the U, it’s observe, observe, observe, learn as much about the system as you can. The bottom of the U is retreat, reflect. You take all of that learning and reflect and make sense of it. Then the right side of the U is try things. Go out and prototype, test it, if it works, keep doing it. If it doesn’t work, stop and do something else. We call that fail early. A

The retreat and reflect time is often thought about this opportunity to let the future emerge through you. When you’re quiet, (and often you’re out in nature during that time) then new ideas, possibilities, understandings can come into you and through you. You might have a topic or a goal, like Charles did then you do learning and listening and then you retreat and reflect. We have done it with groups in nature where you do a nature solo, you spend two nights alone, just you in the wilderness.

Beth Tener 

I’m not sure every group is getting ready for that.

Nancy Gabriel

I’ll tell you, there were plenty of people who are quite uncomfortable in that. You don’t have to do it that extreme. But the idea is this time to get quiet and then connect into the wholeness: nature, your own inner knowing your life experience. And with no intention except to see what might emerge through you from that. And then speak from that place when you come back together. It is a beautiful way to bring circle in. I have found that to be really powerful way to do this work in that context of wanting to be connected to the whole while you’re working on particular issues and challenges.

Beth Tener 

It’s a beautiful example. I keep going back to the word organic, but it’s working with the natural rhythms of how you bring the fragmented parts together to see they’re part of a larger whole. We need to work for the whole like Libby’s broken and mended cup metaphor. The community as a whole is almost like a living being that has its own needs. This is the shift I think it’s critical for us to make right now.

When we pause it’s like a creative thing like even just the simple example of doing Wordle on my phone. Sometimes if I’m stuck, if I put it away, and don’t try and solve it and come back later, it drops in, all of a sudden, I can see it. Like you’re in the shower and you have the idea. That happens in groups. Like those two folks, took a break in the afternoon went for a long walk, and then they get some insight. All the parts have to come together in each of us. And then whatever the creative mystery of the new insights or what’s going to come in, wherever it comes from, can just drop in.

So that goes back to when we think about the traditional way work gets done. The new ways we have to shift and change and fund the work and make this time for this kind of collaborative work. That needs to different  –  it can’t be done on strict time agendas. I’m hearing this these days, like, Okay, we want this huge collaborative thing done, and we have the money and it all has to get spent by September. And by September, you have to get your action plans and groups to here. It  just isn’t aligned to the nature of what we’re trying to do here. If I were to change one thing for that kind of work, going forward to be really start to say how do we design it kind of the way Libby had the space tom in ways where you have time between the events, you have spaciousness. I think that’s a key part we need to be looking at to be able to even pull off the kind of impressive stories we heard here.

Nancy Gabriel

I agree. And the thing I would throw away is urgency. Libby didn’t approach that work with urgency. She didn’t say, “Oh, if we have to get this done. And if we don’t get it done in six months, these villages will never heal.” She went in for the long haul. And in that process, so many things cemented and really grounded, that are going to move forward without Libby needing to be part of it. Government has embraced the work. I think so much of where we get in our own way in this work is when we put the urgency label on things, because that just makes it hard to put the time and investment into the relationship building, which is ultimately what this work is. It’s relational.

Beth Tener 

Yes, the relationship building and the group sensemaking – how we together start to understand the complexity and the dynamics going on. And having that feel rushed or the pressure of some imposed deadline on a system it doesn’t work. Like I said, you can’t action plan healing. You can’t action plan on creative breakthroughs – they happen when you get the conditions.

Nancy Gabriel

These are complex systems and issues that need time in a group for people to be able to come together and to do the sense making, especially when the way I make sense of what happened is really different from someone else who came into the room who had a very different experience. It’s also true when one of those groups has been marginalized by the system for a long time and others have been privileged by it and are unaware of that privilege. I think really honoring that this is challenging work and doing it with grace and compassion is really important.

Beth Tener 

That was something Kile said of that love means grace, the grace of not being judgmental, or if you make one mistake, of pushing you out. We heard it and Charles stories where at the first meeting, they had people from such different life experiences who’ve never interacted. Their work took four years, They just took the time it took but now it’s you know, 20 years in and the thing is still going. Like in natural systems, there’s an in breath and out breath. You have the new experience, you need some time for it to integrate, and then you go back. It’s sort of that natural ebb and flow as we integrate and grow with the work. So we can’t push all the time. I think I was just talking with a friend this weekend about immigration. We need to have some ability to absorb new people and refugees and immigrants. But there’s a point where there’s way too many, and it’s going to overflow the society. So it’s having the balance right of the rhythm of this work and growth together.

Nancy Gabriel

And if we’re taking a more holistic or part of the whole approach, then we’re going to be creating the conditions so that all that immigration doesn’t have to happen.

Beth Tener 

Well, the climate might have different ideas.

Nancy Gabriel

That’s true, but a lot of what pushes people out of their land right now, is not they’re not leaving because they want to. They’re leaving because they’re forced to.

Beth Tener

Nancy, this has been wonderful to reflect on all the richness of those podcast conversations. And I look forward to future opportunities. And I hope that the listeners might take some of the questions we explored and use these podcasts to have your own conversations with learning with friends.

Nancy Gabriel

Yes, thank you again for having me. And it is always so fun to learn with you and to explore the questions together.