Description

The questions this Brown Paper seeks to explore are big. They are about our capacity to love big, to love through injustice, to love beyond borders and betrayal.

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This paper is about our capacity to love our world back into Balance. Balance at the structural level, within and across systems like education, justice, food, housing, health, the media, and community development, is made possible by people and organizations cultivating balance within and between one another. We need to ask ourselves if we are building the kinds of organizational structures that not only allow for but cultivate balance. Are our structures replicating and perpetuating the power imbalances that led to the problems our work is meant to address? Are we replicating and perpetuating work patterns rooted in extraction and exploitation? Are our organizations too top heavy? Too reliant on specific individuals? If one piece is pulled from our collective Jenga will we topple over? Does our own self-talk and communications with others mine us of our energy and disturb our peace? Balance as an organizing principle not only motivates us to attend to the energy and relationships we may have neglected, it also offers ways forward when the big questions and big crises that our organizations and communities face feel overwhelming.

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Balance asks us to start with ourselves and attend to our inner imbalances, then move out from there to our relationships to find what needs mending, and from there to our organizations to shine a light on culture and power dynamics, leading us finally to reenvisioning the systems that impact what we need to live.

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When we find ourselves stuck within binary questions, Balance pivots us towards the middle path. Questions like to be pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine become questions like, “How can we ensure our communities are healthy?” “How can we avoid becoming too reliant on one solution or another, and instead take a holistic approach to ending the pandemic and protecting those most vulnerable?” Balance as an organizing principle helps us avoid throwing people away when they have caused harm, and instead looking at how the harm can be addressed. Balance leads us to root causes and whole systems solutions. Balance is one of the keys that will help unlock our capacity to build a world organized by Love and care.

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