My friend the writer, urban farmer, and community imagineer Hugh Hollowell just posted something about an idea that I think is so important I wanted to devote this newsletter over to it:
I observed something this past weekend that suddenly made me understand something I have struggled to understand for years: That people who want more diversity to happen in their groups also [often] want to dictate how the diverse people act, and would put limits on those people.
Who the hell do they think they are to do that? And then I realized that for older folks especially, that is how they have observed change, and then they assume all people in that group should act that way.
A thing I see *a lot* - especially in people and groups that have seen themselves as historically progressive, that fought early battles for inclusion of people previously excluded - is how they point to the non-combativeness of the first person from that group they included and then expect that will be the way all people from that group will behave.
Example: I have had a personal conversation with someone who personally knew an incredibly courageous and influential writer and activist for the common good in the 1960's... He was also gay, and lived with his partner.
My conversation partner held the writer and activist (who was not officially out, but it was known to his friends) as the model for how gay people should act. i.e. They should leave all of their sexual identity in the closet.
Because the writer and activist had to (and let's be honest: chose to) act straight in order to get published and to have a lecture career, because he chose to diminish himself in order to overcome prejudice that would have otherwise silenced him, that is seen by people who knew him as the model for how Queer people should act.
Or the woman minister I know in my denomination, who was the first woman minister in her regional body, who is praised by her contemporaries as "knowing how to not be confrontational" and "knowing how to meet the group where they were". They praise this as if it is the model for how a woman minister should be, rather than acknowledging that this woman had to diminish herself in order to be seen as nonthreatening, OR recognizing that this particular woman had the choice, personality, and support structure that allowed her to do this.
Some people who are members of historically excluded peoples have the desire, giftedness, support structure, and mental health to purposefully choose to diminish themselves in order to advance the group they represent. Bless those people. But that doesn't mean it should be normative for us in the dominant culture to expect that, nor does it obligate them to perform in ways that do not threaten our dominance.
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I think Hugh is right. He speaks for me - on both sides of the equation. I have held back my truest self because the loudest voices demanded it - and I felt unable to overcome them; and I have also participated in those same community norms, stifling the fullest expression of other people.
And now we all have an opportunity to do something different. To gently peel back the layers that keep us from the core beneath the core of who we really are. To open. It's a cliché now, how Leonard Cohen says the crack is how the light gets in. But my friend Nancy Hastings Sehested says it's also the way through which the light gets out. It can be a scary and even risky thing to say who we really are, what we really think - or better still, what are our real questions. But when we do, when we open, a richer light can shine through us.
At The Porch, we want to help each other be ourselves - not more or less than, but who we really are, healing the wounds, claiming the gifts as our path to service, figuring out what we need, and learning how to ask for it. It's not rocket science - but it is miraculous, weaving our way into a better story, one step at a time.
So let's bring it, my friends. Bring your wonder, your wounds-becoming-scars, your quiet questions and raging concerns, your angular perspectives and enlightened opinions, your contemplative and your party animal - but most of all, bring the parts of yourself that have been denied, excluded, or silenced in the name of maintaining the false boundaries of "us" and "them", and let them flow into the bigger story of the evolution of empathy and connection between humans and everything else. And let's help each other.
You can be part of this helping-each-other in a number of ways, right now - by reading something at www.theporchmagazine.com, checking out How Not to be Afraid, or taking one of our Porch Courses. If you'd like to gather in person (in a small group), I'll be leading a week based on How Not to be Afraid at the beautiful Ring Lake Ranch in Wyoming later this year* and I'd be delighted to see you there. But whether or not you read or join any of these offerings, at The Porch we want to encourage a place in which the fullest version of you can find a home, and invite others in too. Don't withhold yourself from the light that cracks into, and through you.
See you next time.
*I'm told there is room for only six or eight more guests for that week, so it's probably best to register now if you're interested. It will be a wonderful week.
Gareth Higgins is an Irish writer & story activist, and founder of The Porch.
