Setting Out to Find Home

I just got The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood, in the mail. I ordered it Christmas Day with an Amazon gift card from my semi-estranged sister. It's been on my wishlist for over a year, but now I had to have it - and it came to me in a beautiful way.

Why now? Because now I've met Penelope and we've embarked on our own odyssey.

I met Penelope Stuart Bourk at the Whidbey Institute in November. She's an artist who has sculpted wood and fiber into intricate and evocative expressions of Homer's Odyssey. She had installed her "islands" as part of a lecture on the spirituality of home. Each sculpture/"island" was accompanied by a page of text which summarized this part of the Odyssey, offered her reflections, and asked generative questions. I was fascinated by these sculptures which ringed the large room where the lecture would be taking place, and delighted when I discovered the artist among the small crowds around the pieces. I listened and commented and was almost disappointed when we were called to take our seats for the "main event."

But, before I took my leave of her, Penelope said, "I would love to talk with you more - please take one of my cards and email or call me. I live here on the island and you could come and we have plenty of room if you wanted to spend the weekend sometime." I was surprised at this generous, intimate offer from a woman I just met - and I happily took her card.

A week or so later, I wrote to her and told her of the resonate power of her pieces. I also asked if she could send me the accompanying texts as I wanted to use them as tools to meditate about the concept of "home" and journeying from and to such. This was particularly poignant for me as I'd spent the last year and a half "homeless" - even though I never lacked a warm, safe place to sleep or enough food. The psychological and emotional toll of living on borrowed time in borrowed space had exacted most of my energy and resources and I feel I'm just now feeling "at home."

Her reply was wonderfully disappointing. She wasn't going to send me the "tongues" (her term for the texts) - she wanted me to join her in taking her work to the next level.

Long story short: we are now partnering in bringing together a group of people to do together what I wanted to do alone! What we are calling "The Odyssey Project" is shaping up to be a kind of on-going workshop that explores "Home" through conversation, art, and practice with the goal of supporting - of all things - the soul of leaders! This is work that has emerged from my heart and feels like a gift in every possible way - and that is how we are offering it. We're not charging people for this workshop (partly because it's a "beta" and we're going to draw them into developing the curriculum) and we're not being paid (although we are on the lookout for grant opps). I'm doing it anyway - even as I face continued under/unemployment in the next few months. As Larry Parks Daloz put it in Common Fire, I can't not do it.

Penelope and I are set to launch around Chinese New Year; we will welcome the Year of Earth Ox with a diverse group of people who are passionately "nostalgic" - a hot desire, yearning for Home and willing to commit to journeying together for about a year (only one-twentieth of what Penelope and Odysseus has to endure!).

I'm almost dizzy with excitement!

What We're Willing to Pay

I'm learning about business and corporate culture. I have the impression that service-based business is harder on employees than product-based business, i.e. the softer professions have a tougher environment than the harder professions. As an very small case study, I'm thinking of the difference between two places I've worked recently: Waste Management and Microsoft - both international corporations (though very different in size); one is service based (waste collection/management) and one is product based (software & technology).

I think the difficulty for service-based/"soft" employees is due to the service-based business having less room and motivation for creativity and innovation. When one is selling stuff, this stuff tends to need to be "new & sexy" so people will want it. When one is selling a service, especially a basic one (waste collection, medical care, etc.), reliability and consistently are more valued than new and flashy. It's rather like other soft professions that are basic to our society - education, social welfare, emergency services, utilities; these are generally undervalued in dollars compared to professions that produce luxury items...and services.

Perhaps that's the difference. Folks working to provide luxuries are treated better than folks providing basics. The culture of basics is bureaucratic, micro-managing, distrustful, and focused on maintaining the status quo. The culture of luxuries is open, trusting, supportive, and focused on doing the best work possible. As much as I've shunned business and corporations for all the "bad" those entities do in the world, I've found that they hold many of the values as I do for how they treat people - respect, trust, support, encouragement, fun. The worlds of government and academia in which I've spent so many years are furtive, stress-filled, grasping, draining.

Perhaps it's been my position in these environments, that of entry-level and mid-management; agian, position of basic service to the whole endeavor. I'm sure these characteristics show up in all work places, in all places where people have to be together who don't necessarily choose each other.

How can we better value the basics and those who provide them? Can the basics also be realms of creativity and innovation? Is there something implicit in sustaining basic services/products (food) that demands objectification of the workers, i.e. treating workers as drones or mechanistic cogs, who provide them? I want to think that we have the capacity and the technology to treat every kind of contributing worker well - but do we have the will? Is it just too much to pay for what our food is worth? Do we really need so much "disposable income" so that we can buy things and services we don't need?

Well, I guess consumerism (not necessarily capitalism) needs us to do that. If we were to flip our value system upside-down and tax "bads" instead of "goods" - as has been suggested by Alan Thein Durning - and paid more for spinach than for a latte...what? Would civilization collapse? Would our children be better off? Would we work as hard, as long, and as thanklessly as many of us do now? I've noticed a gap in how we are with each other and I want to bridge it. One first step would be to find out if anyone is on the other side of the chasm who could catch my kite and real in the first cable.