'You have to be a real human being. You can apply technique, but you need to engage.' -- note from conversation with Susan Weaver Van Lopik, Participatory Learning and Action practitioner with World Renew
"If you have come here to help us, you are wasting you time, but if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." -- Aboriginal Activists Group, Queensland, 1970s
Asset Based Community Development or ABCD was formally developed by John Kretzmann and John Mcknight at Northwestern University. You can learn more about it through the very earnest talk given by their co-worker, Cormac Russell linked here and above. Below are some personal thoughts and responses to ABCD, as we engage in this work here in South Hills.
ABCD and other forms of participatory development are attempts within the community development world to reckon with the mystery of free will. In our efforts to make the world a better place, we cannot make anyone choose a quality life. We are very capable of hurting one another, but we cannot through any force available make people in a place support the kind of place we want it to be.
In a world which has deconstructed authority and which emphasizes rights and de-emphasizes responsibilities, we must choose for ourselves to change, to love life, and to want something better. People--creative beings made in the image of God--are the ones who must choose to participate in any effort to create a better, more beautiful world. Each individual person is incredibly important as we have the power to act or not. Any organizer, manager, or leader knows that it is the willing contribution of those following them which makes their efforts effective. Any effort to force change in someone, even if we believe it is clearly for the other's benefit, will be met with frustration, anger, unwillingness to engage, and all kinds of resistance.
Jesus took the dignity of personhood into account during his ministry and continues to protect it as he loves and teaches us today. We might ask, "If Jesus is God himself and all powerful, why did he only feed a few thousand and heal some of the sick? Why didn't he conquer Rome to create just social systems? We have so many problems. Can't almighty God fix them?" Instead, Jesus arrived in a barn, grew up fleeing between countries, asked questions as a child and as an adult, and conducted his ministry on two feet and a donkey. Rather than fix everything with his divinity, Jesus built and taught a core community of men and women to love God, to love one another, and to proclaim the Kingdom of God. He invited people to change direction towards a life of grand celebration. "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near!"
And what was the human response in the face of such love? Many were attracted to it and by accepting the invitation to the Kingdom feast, they were opened up to transformation and healing. Others who were attempting to hold the world together by force were offended, and they crucified Jesus for his unwillingness to serve their visions of a better world. Jesus refused to play their game of trying to perfect the world by force so much that he--with access to legions of angels and the power of almighty God--let them do it. He so valued our personhood that he was willing to let us kill him, and in looking lovingly on those who would kill him, he destroyed death. He rose from the dead, affirming the promise that anyone who accepts the invitation to love and to be transformed by his grace will have eternal life. We are invited to change, to turn around, to repent, to metanoia--and the invitation keeps coming.
Asset Based Community Development then could be two things. First, it is merely a technique created to serve life and to continue to offer the invitation to be changed and to change the places we are in to be a touch more like heaven as a sign of what is to come. The invitation is to enter the wedding feast and to recognize what it means that God is king here and we are all brothers and sisters of one Body. Second, even ABCD could be a means of control, a technique to try hold the world to a preconceived vision. ABCD is merely a paradigm with a set of tools, and tools depend on how they are used.
The tools of ABCD are many and varied. A prominent one is the 5 question tool, where the ABCD practitioner asks neighbors:
1. How long have you lived here?
2. What is your favorite part about the neighborhood?
3. If you could change anything about the neighborhood, what would it be?
4. If we found other people who cared about that same thing, would you be willing to participate?
5. What groups or associations are you part of?
Another tool is Head, Hearts, and Hands. A group is gathered and everyone is asked to write down on sticky notes three things they know well enough to teach others, three things they are passionate about, and three things they are good at doing. In this way, a group can begin to see what they are capable of doing together.
Good ABCD is relationship driven and measured in terms of relationship. The technique is only good as it serves relationship. Neighborhood transformation is centered around resident initiative and driven forward by the force of people coming together. Each person must be the center of their own change in taking initiative and paradoxically be displaced so that the community can be at the center.
The community tends to be a vague concept, a sort of myth to discuss but never encounter. ABCD work reminds us that we always meet the community in individuals, and we work out the community story in terms of particular relationships. Relationship can never be forced, leaving those who want to work towards a better world and take part in a story large enough to hold all of us with the question, "What will it take for us to realize that we need one another?"
Birds:
House Sparrow
Chimney Swifts
House Finches
American Robin
7-18-16
Birds:
House Sparrow
American Robin
White Breasted Nuthatch
Northern Cardinal
Rock Pigeon
7-15-16
Birds:
Blue Jay
House Sparrow
American Robin
Finch
Northern Cardinal
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
7-12-16
Birds:
White Breasted Nuthatch
House Sparrows
Northern Cardinals
European Starling
American Robin
Mourning Doves
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Blue Jays
Chimney Swifts
Herring Gull
"Our true vocation is to become part of a people." -- Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove
Ubuntu: "I am because we are."
We are made up of one another's stories. This is the Southern African concept of Ubuntu. I can only understand myself in the context of who we are. And who are we? We don't seem to know.
Not really. When I say "we," I mean all of us. We do not yet have a story commonly shared which has room for all of us. Instead, we are splintered by our stories. We are often the villains in each other's narratives. As long as the enemy is still "them" and not the inhuman powers and principalities and death itself, our story is not large enough. We have not entered into a story that makes us "we."
We are African. We are African-American. We are white. We are Latino. We are Muslim. We are Christian. We have too many possessions. We do not have enough. We support this team. We watch this TV show. We play this sport. We are conservative. We are progressive.
What constitutes us?
Are we chosen by God, specially loved? Are we bound by blood? What is so powerful about some of these identities, such as politics or sports or religion, that they can cause us to hate other people? Or does it have less to do with those and more to do with the type of people we are?
In a place like the South Hills area of Grand Rapids, Michigan, we find the intersection of many stories. We have stories which trace back to the South and to Africa. Some begin in the Netherlands and Southeast Asia. We have stories of opportunity and industry and the loss of both. We have stories from the Middle East and India. And we must remember the stories of the people who lived on this land before European settlement.
As in most good stories, we sense that something is terribly wrong and needs to be made right. We have our characters and watch how they grow and change in love and struggle. We have some price to pay--some suffering to endure or journey to take--before we can find redemption. Or perhaps we have some tragic flaw, and blind to it, we let it tear us apart.
The questions here are similar to the questions in most places. How do we live in peace? How will we become free from fear and despair and live in hope and delight? How do we draw out a living from this place to support ourselves and to build a future for our children? And who are we when confronted with death and violence?
The South Hills area has become part of my story and the context in which I plan to live the next chapter of my life. In this blog, I plan to explore some of the many stories intersecting in this place. I will explain my story and how I have come to be a community connector intern for Great Lakes Urban. I will share with you some of what I learn about this place and ask others to share their stories. The goal is that we would come to know one another. Until we can do that--understand one another's stories and how we make and remake one another--we cannot know who we are or what we are doing.