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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

persistence

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Unnecessary ties

Let us lay aside every weight... and let us run with endurance. —Hebrews 12

Dependence of church members on civil government for material support should be avoided if possible, especially where such dependence would interfere with the Christian’s freedom to testify to the government of Christ.” —Friends of Truth / Glenside Friends Meeting, Christian Conduct

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…” —Hebrews 12

I know people who run races with giant tires chained to their waists—by choice. It’s resistance and strength training, and it works.

It’s also entirely voluntary. After their training and races are over, they take the tires and the chains off. They don’t walk through their entire life weighed down.

I’m learning from them, from my Quaker siblings, and from the writer of Hebrews.

The early Quakers interpreted this principle in terms of being bonded to the state, but it doesn’t only have to refer to those kinds of entanglements.

It could also mean not accepting work that you know includes ethical conflicts or people who’ll hamper your ability to resolve those conflicts. It might mean reconsidering your relationships and finally replacing old relational habits.

It’s not just a rule about what to do; it’s a rule about why it’s worth doing.

Cutting unnecessary ties and shedding unnecessary chains means relieving yourself of those “weights” that limit, discourage, and repress rather freeing and inspiring you to walk out your best values and sense of call.

I love that this verse follows a long account of community heroes—that “cloud of witnesses.”

As we change our lives, we’re in good company. Trimming connections that “hinder” you can just as easily mean walking in the footsteps of elders, mentors, colleagues, and friends. It doesn’t always have to mean stepping away from the known world into isolation.

Seek out the stories of those who’ve followed the paths you’re on. Situate yourself in their midst and allow them to nourish you. And then “run,” as they did, “with endurance.”

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The courage to be selectively transparent

Bros around a campfire at the Grand Canyon.Despite a 20-year healthy career in television and film, Taraji P. Henson is still a radically underestimated actor and producer.

From the ABC/WB series, Sister Sister, to this year’s Hidden Figures, Henson has shown remarkable persistence with her acting career, something that’s only benefited the characters whose stories she chooses to tell.

Not much in that career would have come together had Henson also digested others’ attempts to undermine her concerns.

In my personal sphere, I’ve been working on cultivating the kinds of friendships that allow me to share grief, range, love, and loss without filtering, and allow others to share that with me.

When that isn’t possible, I use my filter to protect my fresh ideas and work from people who don’t have the capacity (whether right now or ever) to walk along the way with me yet do plenty of time and energy to sneer from a distance.

Sometimes people’s advice  is less about you, though, and more about them pulling you down to their own limited expectations.

Henson says in a short web-video, “If you allow people to project their fear onto you,  you won’t live.”

That’s my experience too.

Watch the captioned version and be encouraged!

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The virtue you don’t want tested

At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can. —Frida Kahlo

Endurance. Perseverance. Persistence. Inner strength.

Each of these virtues draws praise in an era that worships the rugged individual who conquers circumstance with dogged will and fortune (but mostly dogged will).

Three months after the US presidential inauguration, the shine of “resistance” has dulled. So has the popular hope that we can abbreviate the next four to eight years; that we might not have to keep feeling the chaos, the uncertainty, the confusion, the ambiguity; that we might not have to keep watching headlines like the ones we’ve seen this week.

It may be true that “we can endure much more than we think we can.”

It certainly isn’t true for everyone.

And it’s an idea that, even under the aegis of common penal rhetoric like “no pain, no gain,” we don’t really want to test.

I have limits, and I’m sure Kahlo’s right that I’m more limited by what I think my limits are than by what they actually are.

But I don’t want to know how much we can endure, not when I watch what my siblings in Syria and Egypt and Myanmar and Michigan and South Dakota are enduring already.

Perhaps the reassurance that we can endure trauma motivates some people to hold their courage through it all. I’m hoping instead that it doesn’t give the rest of us cover to stand aside and merely look.

We need one another to do more than that. Much, much more.

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The strategy of hope

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. Attributed to Noam Chomsky.

In October, before the election, I wrote about hope, imagination, and possibility. Read that post again.

I’ve felt a little leery of hope lately. Some of my friends and colleagues have been sleeping poorly. I’ve struggled more with maintaining my sense of optimism while keeping up with and responding to a daily catalog of repressive orders and repealed social services.

Perhaps that’s why tonight’s quote resonated: “Unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”

Or, as I wrote four months ago, “Not all that has been needs to persist: the oppression that has been need not be.”

Like Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” these are faith statements, not fact statements, but the only thing that can transmute them from faith to fact is our work. Human activity in the lived world, human persistence despite backlashes: that’s the change that makes change possible.

More and more it seems to me that hope is less about mood and more about practice. It’s more accessible to me as a verb at times like this when there’s a lot I “just can’t” about but one thing I can do is get up every morning and try again.

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When persistence makes sense

Muscular man jumps into a lake. The rope is visible at the top of the image. The sky in the background is large and blue.
Photo credit: Blake Wheeler

Constant improvement includes abandoning the things that no longer work… When a strategy or an action doesn’t seem to be working, the rule is, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try once more. then do something else.’ The first time around a new strategy very often doesn’t work. Then one must sit down and ask what has been learned… Try to improve it, to change it and make another major effort. Maybe, though I am reluctant to encourage that, you should make a third effort. After that go to work where the results are. There is only so much time and so many resources, and there is so much work to be done.” —Peter Drucker

A hard thing about organizational work is living the question, “Should we keep this latest change or move on to something else?” Conventional wisdom says it’s irrational to repeat the same actions and expect different outcomes, and yet it can be hard to know in the moment whether to persist or to adapt.

The Adventist community is currently persisting with its debates on ordination, church order, and local conference variations. Commentators keep invoking Acts 15, a Bible chapter that describes an early Church meeting about the status and responsibilities of non-Jewish believers.

Last year, just before the General Conference session in San Antonio, TX, communicator and consultant Ray Tetz outlined his perspective on the Acts chapter. “When faced with the cultural issues surrounding circumcision, the early church preserved unity for mission by endorsing different practices for different peoples. Their decision then is our example now,” Tetz said.

Statesman-evangelist Mark Finley also engaged this chapter the previous fall. In his own appeals to General Conference delegates, Finley argued that the church’s debate about the status of women diverted members’ attention from evangelism. He then suggested that critics of women’s ordination ought ultimately to comply with the majority’s decision, whatever it might be.

For onlookers like Jason Hines, however, this is entirely ordinary.

Some people who’ve already spent years engaging church leaders on this topic are justifiably wearing down. For them, “constant improvement” includes “abandoning the things that don’t work” and releasing a resistant denomination with them. Other people keep calling us to stay grounded and hopeful, trusting that the next step will become clear. In the meantime, any of us might have tangible positive actions to keep focusing on instead.

In the end that’s all that persistence means: engaging long enough to experience the present moment with others, and caring enough to clarify the next step.

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Turtle Wisdom

44,881 words | NaNoWriMo Participant 2013I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time this year. My intention was to write 1,600-2000 words for six to seven days per week month-long, and I finished November with a total of 44,881 words. My NaNoWriMo total didn’t make me a “winner” by the rules of the 50-000 word challenge, but it did give me a structure for re-engaging my research consistently. I’ll be taking that accomplishment—and its momentum—with me into the upcoming year.

When I finished writing up my doctoral study in 2012, I wanted a way to tangibly mark the achievement and capture the lesson learned with something that would outlast the graduation pomp and smiles from visiting relatives.

After some thought, I settled on these pottery turtles.

My two turtles come from the hands of New Mexican Navajo artists Tom Vail Jr. (white-grey with rainbow) and Johnny Williams (glazed black). For the last three years of my program, I spent a few days retreating in New Mexico each fall, and these pieces remind me of the state’s artists, peoples, and land.

They also remind me of wisdom strains that I’d learned as a child and promptly forgotten through the years:

“Slow and steady wins the race…”

“The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong…”

“She that endures to the end shall be saved…”

and then the most prosaic, from one of my research advisors:

“Do a little bit every day.”

It was that last piece of counsel that helped me most through my research topic, around grad student fatigue and despite various family and personal derailments. It kept me current for most of NaNoWriMo, and it’ll also keep me on task with my goals for the coming year.

We’re still a few days away from the calendar turn. What goals do you have for your next 12 months? How can you break them down into manageable pieces? How will you “do a little bit every day”?