February 20, 2024 • 76 mins
Beth Mount lights the path toward recognizing the unsung brilliance of individuals with disabilities. Our episode welcomes this extraordinary social artist, who shares her transformative journey from working in the shadow of Milledgeville State School to the forefront of advocacy for inclusion and visibility. Beth unveils the hidden strengths of those often pushed to the edges of society, and how even the smallest acknowledgment can spark monumental change.
Inspired by the wisdom of Carl Jung, and the writing of James Hillman', Beth dives into the concept of the 'soul's code'—that inner beacon, and higher purpose, guiding each of us. Beth eloquently navigates the symbolism of the star in our lives, emphasizing the importance of every individual's purpose in constructing a more inclusive community. The exchanges within this episode are a powerful reminder that our collective contribution is key to overcoming systemic barriers and fostering environments where every person's potential can flourish.
Wrapping up, we explore the 'Garden of Soul'—a metaphor for the nurturing spaces that foster personal and communal growth, as shared by Beth during her tenure working with New York State's OPWDD and District 75. We delve into the nurturing power of love, the healing exchange of gifts, and the profound impact of community as a mosaic of support. Join us as we celebrate the intricate beauty of the quilting process, reflecting life's creative journey, and consider how we too might become attentive gardeners and artists, cultivating, weaving, creating our communities.
Beth recommends reading:
- Pathfinders - John O'Brien and Beth Mount
- The Soul's Code - James Hillman
- We Are Companions on the Journey (The Garden of Soul Quilt)
You can learn more about Beth's work at:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Hasbury (00:04):
Beth Mount is a social artist, a catalyst for
co-creation, a writer and thecreator of Personal Futures
Planning, a person-centeredplanning practice developed more
than 40 years ago.
Beth has guided people who carein creating the organizational
and social conditions that allowpeople to thrive.
Beth Mount (00:25):
To see people in a different light, to see people
who are not usually seen fortheir gifts and their potentials
and possibilities.
Not only has that beenimportant to the people and
their families, but I also haveoperated from.
Any group of people who arebeing left out has gifts to
(00:45):
bring, has something that weneed to know and learn from them
.
That is essential to oursurvival.
David Hasbury (00:53):
I'm Dave Hasbury, and in this conversation we
explore the journey to embodythe gifts and higher purpose in
all of us.
We delve into Beth's practice ofmaking the invisible visible,
uncovering the power ofattention and visualizing
patterns of conditions thatallow people to thrive or
inhibit and diminish capacity.
(01:15):
We examine the impact of ahistory of attentional violence,
structural devaluation andstructural violence, and we look
at the co-creative change thatcomes through the weaving of
relationships between a person,their support circle, service
organizations and theneighborhood where they live.
(01:36):
A while ago, when we werechatting and throughout
different conversations thatwe've had, the phrase making me
invisible visible has come up.
I associated with a number ofpeople, but I certainly
associated with you in partbecause so much of what you've
(01:58):
done for so long is about makingthings visible, and so I wonder
if you could talk for a bitabout both parts the making
things visible, but then theother part about the invisible,
the importance of making what isnot seen.
So I just wonder if you couldtalk for a bit about that in
(02:22):
your work and how you processthe world.
Beth Mount (02:27):
So why am I so passionate about making the
invisible visible?
So I think I can't address thatquestion without going back 50
years ago, to when I firstencountered people with
disabilities in MillagevilleState School the largest
institution in the world at thetime, by the way who were so
(02:50):
abandoned and so dehumanized andso discarded in just deplorable
conditions 12, 15 people in aroom with one staff person in a
pole, barely clothed, drain inthe floor, no sense that people
are people.
And there's no question thatsomething inside me then clicked
(03:15):
, that just felt the injusticeof that, the wrongness of that,
and that the challenge ofdiscovering what would be
involved in creating conditionswhere people could not only
become visible in their humanitybut actually thrive became
(03:41):
really my journey of these last50 years, and so I don't think
I've ever let go of thatquestion.
Not only have I held thatquestion about supporting us to
see people in a different light,see people who are not usually
seen for their gifts and theirpotentials and possibilities.
(04:05):
Not only has that been importantto the people and their
families, but I also haveoperated from an understanding
and actually this is a referencepoint, for this comes also from
Carl Jung, who has had a biginfluence on how I think about
both the visible and theinvisible, but one of Jung's
(04:26):
teachings was related to thisnotion that every marginalized
group of people in any societyis actually bringing something
to that society that it needs toevolve and to grow.
And so any group of people whoare being left out and, in a
(04:47):
sense, carrying the shadow ofthe dominant culture, has gifts
to bring, has something that weneed to know and learn from them
that is essential to oursurvival.
Yeah, so, having grown upduring the civil rights era
right and watching the impact ofthe African American black
(05:10):
community in Atlanta, georgia,becoming visible and becoming
lifted up, and the potential andthe possibilities being seen by
the wider culture and theincredible dynamic and power of
that movement, of that socialmovement, to me what we've been
(05:30):
doing in the disability worldhas a similar call to it, which
is the world needs us.
The world needs this reality inorder to be a healthier society
.
David Hasbury (05:44):
First of all, I love that notion of that which
has been marginalized andrejected actually holds a gift
for the wider communal life thatwe have, and I know that the
Millageville experience actuallyagain made naked the
(06:12):
dehumanizing of people.
But when you were there, whatdid you see, aside from the
treatment of people, what didyou see in the people themselves
?
In order to feel thatsomebody's been dehumanized, we
actually have to see thehumanity in somebody.
So what did you see among thesepeople that who were being
(06:34):
treated awfully?
Beth Mount (06:36):
I think it's important to also pull the
camera back and make note of thefact that I had grown up with
people in my family who wereliving with a disability.
People in my family are mycommunity In all the places we
lived when I was a child, wealways had a neighbor who had a
child with a disability at home,and that was back in the day
(06:58):
before 90, from 142, before kidswith disabilities went to
public schools.
So they were just at home andthey were with their families,
and my own brother had a verycomplicated existence.
And there were other members ofour family who had been living
(07:19):
with disabilities and might havestill been kind of hidden away
or not very.
Their lives had not beennecessarily very developed in
community, but they were not.
That was back in the day whenone really only had two choices
to keep your loved one at homeor to put them in an institution
(07:42):
, and the system reallyencouraged families to
institutionalize their lovedones right.
So I think, on some level, whatI was aware of at that moment
was that the individuals in thisroom are no different from the
people that I've grown up with.
They're just living inconditions that are horrendous,
(08:07):
and so if that's the case, thenwe, the collective, we could do
something about this.
David Hasbury (08:15):
Well, one of the things that you've mentioned and
thought about is this idea ofmaking visible what goes missed
by a lot of people because ofthe kind of global art
overarching kind of view ofpeople.
(08:35):
But you have this thing aboutmaking visible pockets of
possibility, so like experienceswhere small things happen that
actually many people would miss,but for you there's something
about actually lifting those upin some way so that they can be
seen.
Can you talk a little bit aboutboth the process of noticing
(08:58):
those pockets of possibilitiesand then the kind of what it
takes to actually lift those upto be seen?
Beth Mount (09:06):
Well, another.
This is a continuation of thetheme of making visible, because
the early formation of personalfutures planning was, in fact,
a pedagogy.
It was a process of supportingpeople to tell their story and
having it unfold literally,literally become visible on wall
(09:28):
charts, across a wall, with agroup of people who were
invested in the individual andinterested in change.
And what we learned early on isthat and this is one of my
signature gifts, I believe wasjust this very simple color
(09:49):
coding that I stuck with foralmost 50 years, which is green
was the color for when thingswere going well and people were
alive and conditions andexperiences were uplifting, and
red was the color of things notgoing well, when people were
stuck, when conditions were notgood.
(10:10):
And we learned early on andthat, if we just stay true to a
certain amount of color codingthat what emerged on the paper
were themes in people's lives,threads you know in retrospect
I've come to call them the kindof the souls DNA that what we
(10:37):
began to see is a pattern andwho people are when they're at
their best, and a pattern and inwho people are when they're at
their worst.
And nine times out of 10 peoplewere spending most of their
lives locked into the pattern ofwhen they were at their worst.
(10:58):
Okay, the other color that I amfamous for is yellow, is the
yellow highlighter, because oneof the things that we did
rigorously in those early daysand I still do this, if I'm
involved in a plan is we startunderlining in yellow.
Where is this?
Where is this key to thisperson's life?
(11:21):
Where is this gift?
Where is this pattern that, ifwe can redirect our attention to
the green, we can strengthen?
Okay, it doesn't take longbefore a beautiful vision can
unfold for the person.
However, if we're not alsotaking on the organizational
(11:44):
constraints, the what we nowcall the social body, the place
that people live and belong, ifwe're not also opening up
opportunities in that part ofpeople's lives, then what we've
identified as what's possiblecan't unfold.
(12:05):
This brings us back to makingvisible what is the pattern in a
person and what are theopportunities in a place, the
place that they live in, and howdo we strengthen the connection
?
One little experience at a time.
I mean, I can't emphasize thatenough, because in our practice,
(12:31):
while we might generate afairly large vision for what
could be a more generative,fruitful life, oftentimes that's
a 10-year vision that emerges.
It's not a six-month vision,it's not a 12-month vision, it
doesn't fit into any of ourideas about time.
(12:51):
But what matters is that wefind seeds from that big vision
that we can start to plant.
Many of the stories I've toldover the years they truly begin
with two hours.
People made a shift in Ken'slife from a situation that was
(13:12):
really not working to findingthese two hours where he could
start to really shine.
Then, okay, that's a key.
What can we do to enlarge that?
What can we do to keep buildingpeople's engagement and the
things that really nurture them?
The point is just that thepersonal center planning that
(13:35):
I've practiced has never, hasalways had connected to it
Planning with the person andtheir family, working with an
organization to change and alsobeing connected in the community
, working at the level of localcommunity to find assets and
(13:57):
places where people can belongand contribute in the local
community.
If we disconnect those threethings really it's four things,
because I said I mentionedfinding the gifts in the person
with their support circle.
That's actually number twoGifts in an individual,
(14:18):
cultivating relationships withsupport circle, changing
organizations and buildingcommunities.
If you disconnect a plan fromany of those things.
You come back three or fouryears later and nothing's
happened.
People have been left with thissense of possibility and just
stuck In the same old situation.
David Hasbury (14:41):
In the early and continues to be, but in the
early part of making thingsvisible for you, it was simply
colors, like speak and record incolors.
According to these criteria, itactually fosters growth and
brings the best out, or itactually diminishes who somebody
(15:03):
is.
Colors was an important part ofthat, the sense of the parts
being uncovered and engaged.
So a person discovering what's,discovery of a person,
discovery of the people who careabout that person, discovery
(15:24):
about the capacity of anorganization and discovery about
a community, all of those beingimportant.
I'm sitting in front of me.
I have the quilt that youcreated called the Garden of
Soul, which we're on a podcast.
So it's people can't see whatit is, but it's an absolutely
(15:45):
gorgeous vision.
Your work over the years has hadcombinations of style.
Some are actually collectingwhat people are creating and
curating them into an image, andsometimes it's you actually
(16:07):
working through your ownunderstanding.
I get the sense that the Gardenof Soul is a little bit of that
, that it's about you trying tomake sense of the world, but
it's.
We'll make available in thedescription how people can see
this and the companion articlethat goes with it, called we Are
Companions on a Journey In itand the reason I'm coming here
(16:31):
is because of what you saidabout these four parts and I
wonder about the connection Init.
The top section of the image isa large star with a
four-sectioned cross in thecenter of the star.
You mentioned Carl Jung earlier.
(16:52):
You mentioned color and I knowfrom the little that I know Carl
Jung that symbols is animportant part of the power of
symbols and this gets to themaking visible part.
I wonder if you could talk alittle bit about that star and
what that's, because that starsshow up in your artistic work
(17:17):
Often.
They're important pieces and Iwonder if you could just talk
about the star and what theimportance of that as a symbol
is to those four parts that youmentioned earlier the person,
the circle, the organization andthe community.
Talk a little bit about thestar and why is that important
(17:39):
to you and can be to others?
Beth Mount (17:42):
Well, you're right, the star shows up in almost so
much of what I do and there aremany layers for why it feels
important to me.
So let's start with theuniversal understanding of the
star.
Throughout, all time and in allcultures the star represents
and in all religions and alleverything the star
(18:03):
metaphorically represents, aguide, right that?
And in the first peoples, formost of humanity, the stars have
guided people right.
So there's literally the starsthat guide us, and then there's,
metaphorically, the scrollsHigher purpose for us.
(18:25):
So, once again, the starrepresents In my imagination,
the, what Carl Jung calls thisdam on, which is the call, right
that we each are here with apurpose and a defining image.
And James Hillman calls thisboth the understanding that
(18:50):
every one of us has a star andthe deciphering of that meaning,
of that star as the soul's code.
So we all, we have a soul, oursoul has wisdom, our soul has
has is like a companion, andit's our work and it's a
(19:12):
lifetime right.
We're all in this, we're alldiscovering what is the mark we
make, what is the DNA that Icultivate, that I develop, and
how do I live that, how do Ilive that out so that I'm living
into my higher purpose and inour work we're supporting other
(19:38):
people to live into their higherpurpose Because, sadly,
throughout history this notionof a higher purpose was sort of
colonized for people who wereprivileged and the idea that
everybody else who doesn't havea certain amount of privilege is
sort of an underling to otherpeople's Call to other people's
(20:00):
star.
So we live at a time thankfullyas challenging as this moment
is for other reasons whereAlmost all marginalized groups
are calling, you know, aremaking a stronger case for their
capacity to live into A higherpurpose, to have conditions.
(20:24):
I mean, um, often we call thelimitations of living into a
higher purpose that arestructural, structural violence.
That this notion of structuralviolence is not even necessarily
a really aggressive thing.
Of course it shows up that way.
Structural violence limitsPeople and limits the people who
(20:48):
support people to see andimagine those possibilities and
then To have a better shot atreaching for those possibilities
.
Okay, so that's sort of the bigpicture of why the star Is
meaningful.
Then there is the Contributionthat John O'Brien and Connie
(21:11):
Lyle O'Brien have brought intoour work, which is helping us
interpret the meaning ofinclusion, the possibility of
inclusion, using 5 valuedexperiences, the 5 value
experiences.
The star shows up in almostevery artwork that I've ever
(21:32):
done.
The 5 value experiences show upin virtually anything that I've
ever written, because itprovides such a clear picture Of
what we're reaching for In thiswork of supporting people to
(21:52):
live into their highestpossibility.
And I, because I've known Johnand Connie and I've been
connected with them almost 50years and was a part of that
early formation Of those ideas Ican't imagine doing this work
without the clarity that comesfrom those 5 value experiences.
(22:17):
It's not that we ever even getthere, necessarily, but that it
just serves as a guide for Us inour work and in the Measure of
how we're doing.
You know how are we doing, howare we really doing?
It's supporting each person tolive into those 5 value
(22:41):
experiences In a multitude ofdifferent ways.
So there's, you know, thissimple idea that there's 5 value
experiences, and then there'sthis incredibly complex
Actualization that varies Widelyfrom life to life, right, but
(23:02):
still it helps illuminate whatwe're what we're doing.
David Hasbury (23:07):
So the star is.
You know and I would, becauseof what you mentioned about the
historical Guide that stars havebeen it is very resonant for
people, there's that kind ofsense.
It's one of those things.
That's a simple symbol but itactually ties into something and
(23:32):
I wonder if you could just talka little bit about that, and
you briefly mentioned it.
But just, you talked aboutstructural violence and in many
ways this is kind of the Contrato structural violence, because
the structural violence isrooted in seeing people in a
(23:56):
certain way as not being human,as not being whole, as not being
valued, as all of that kind ofstuff.
And when we devalue people wecan do terrible things to them.
We see that now happening inbroad strokes around the world,
that as soon as we actually seeothers as less than, as, not
(24:20):
even as inhuman as all thesekinds of things, it unleashes a
parade of structural violence inpeople's lives.
And I wonder what yourexperience has been or how you
see your experience ofintroducing these ideas of the
(24:44):
star and higher purpose.
What happens when you takethose to places where people are
kind of stuck in a lot of ways?
What happens and how peopleshift when they're given the
opportunity to just take a lookat their situations differently
than they've historically beenhanded them.
Beth Mount (25:07):
The other concept that's directly related to
structural violence isattentional violence.
So and this is an auto-sharmerterm that suggests that and the
two things that goes side byside that attentional violence
is not to be seen in terms ofyour highest purpose and it hits
hardest those who are at themargins.
(25:29):
Attentional violence is frozen,is interlocked, I should say,
with structural violence.
So we have structures ofsociety that are hardened in a
way that diminish lots of peopleand keep them stuck, and
attentional violence.
(25:51):
So let's just take that back toeven the color coding.
When I look back now, I can seethat what we were doing in our
simple color coding was justshifting our attention right
Together.
We were becoming aware thathere is this information in the
(26:15):
green about what works forpeople and where life is for
them, and here is thisinformation in the red about
what doesn't work and wherepeople are hurting or stuck.
Here is a pattern in the green,you know, like a DNA, of what's
possible being revealed to uson these charts.
(26:38):
And as we sit here and see this, we want to break the chain,
right.
We want to shift fromattentional violence to
attentional potential, right.
So we want, as allies, we wantto use everything we can to
(27:03):
focus on potential, not, youknow, the invisible sides.
We want to bring ourselves toshift these patterns.
The challenge is that theissues always much bigger than
just the individual.
So if we can't find ways toalso shift the patterns in the
(27:28):
way we show up in organizations,in our communities, in our
families and our relationships,then it's extremely hard to hold
on to the shifts that arepossible for people.
It's very important, when youthink about the star in the
(27:48):
visual garden of soul, it's veryimportant to appreciate that
the star is only part of thewhole big picture.
The equally important focus ofthat image is what I call on the
ground.
Right, it's in the bottom ofthis image and the ground is
(28:10):
where the real work happens.
And one of the and that's whatI call a garden of soul.
Right, if you're notcultivating the garden, we can
do all the pretty pictures inthe world, we can do all the
plans and they can be beautifuland we can bring in all kinds of
art, but that's not the pointof the art.
(28:31):
The point of everything we'redoing, the point of social art,
is to get down, you know, to godeeper into the ground that
people are living in, walking on, living with every day, the
constraints the red, thepossibilities, the blue and to
(28:56):
dig deeper, to work harder atthat part of the puzzle of the
picture.
One reason I felt called to makethat image is I had already
been, I had been working in NewYork State with both OPWDD, the
(29:16):
state and also young peoplecoming out of District 75, and I
had a special ed in New YorkCity schools.
I'd already been doing thatwork for 15 years.
Okay, and the way that Iconstruct my initiatives around
person-centered work, they'realways focused on a handful of
(29:37):
people and I do everything I canto follow those people for
years.
So there are people that I'vebeen a part of their journey,
that I've been following what'shappening for them for 40, 45
years.
Now.
That's important because, astime was passing then this was
(30:04):
in 2008 when I started thatimage 25 years already of doing
person-centered work it was justblindingly clear that when
things were going well forpeople, they had a garden right,
the real work was being done onthe ground to cultivate the
(30:26):
conditions for people to thrive,and where things had not taken
off, that hadn't happened.
Unfortunately, that was also ata time where person-centered
planning was becoming more andmore popular and from my point
of view, it was becomingdisembodied from this other half
(30:48):
of the picture.
Right, that everybody's allexcited about the plan and, look
, I'd be the first to say that'sthe most interesting.
I mean, that's always where Iwould rather be.
I would always rather be in aroom with people and their
families and allies creating aplan.
It's thrilling to be a part ofthat.
It's just that if we're notalso paying attention to these
(31:13):
other ways to shift, we're notdoing the work.
The making of Garden of Soul wasmy way.
Talk about making visible.
You see, I could have told thatstory through a comparative
analysis, right, much like I didin my dissertation where
there's a group of people whoare involved in this and there's
(31:35):
a control group who are nothaving this experience, and we
watch and follow what happensover time, right?
What good does that kind ofanalysis do?
In the world that I inhabit, theartwork has the potential to
really tell a bigger story, andso, in a way, in summary, in a
(31:56):
way, what that one piece of artconveys, seeks to convey, is
what I could see, havingfollowed hundreds and hundreds
of people over time that when wecould align those conditions at
the bottom of the image, lifecould become really interesting
(32:18):
for people.
When we could not, thingsdidn't go anywhere and people
would just stay stuck.
And it's very important toemphasize that this had nothing
to do with what the limits werethat people individually faced.
So people who were profoundlybehaviorally challenged or
(32:44):
cognitively labeled, with verysevere cognitive impairments,
they could thrive with the rightgarden, with the right
conditions, and people who hadmuch less challenging learning
issues could stay completely andtotally stuck in the absence of
(33:08):
the cultivation of that socialfield, that garden of soul.
David Hasbury (33:14):
There's a lot in this and I want to come back to
that garden part in just asecond.
But I want to step back for abit because you referenced two
phrases that had to do withviolence.
One was attentional violence,and I got the sense that in many
ways that was about how ourattention is shifted away from
(33:35):
who somebody is and either makesthem invisible or actually
believes there's something thatmagnifies a part of them, that
hides other parts of them, andso what happens when you're not
seen is like a violence, likeit's like who you are is
violated by that, and I thinkthat's a very common thing and I
(34:00):
think it's something that weall have to be very aware of,
how we participate in that.
But I wonder if you could justtalk a little bit about what the
structural violence part is.
What you mentioned that Ottoputs those two side by side
attentional and structuralviolence.
What's the structural part?
What, what, what?
(34:21):
How is that recognized?
How do we see that?
Beth Mount (34:24):
So when I think about structural violence, I
immediately go back to my earlyexperience with normalization
slash, social role valorizationwhere, through the lens of the
body of work that WolfWolfensberger brought us, we
(34:46):
could go in as a team In a 5 dayreview of all kinds of human
service settings and take Apartwhat we were seeing that
organization doing across 50different lenses ratings, 50
(35:07):
different ratings.
It would become Ratherastonishing to see how these
organizations were structuredAround devaluation and I
actually prefer in our world, Iprefer now the use of structural
(35:27):
devaluation at almost overstructural violence, because we
use the worst structuralviolence.
We all kind of go wait minute,you know we're not doing
anything that's hurtful topeople.
But devaluation is much moresubtle and much more pervasive
and of course it cuts across allkinds of communities.
Devaluation you know it'sracism, it's homophobia, it's
(35:51):
devaluation comes up Refugeecrisis, you name it.
But what this lens of Ofnormalization did is it helped
us understand how Locked inthese organizations were to
(36:12):
devaluation without even reallyknowing this right.
Unfortunately, in the earlyyears of person center planning
the organizations that hostedperson center planning they
wanted to change and once theysaw this In the same way, once
we saw what was possible forpeople on a chart once we saw
(36:35):
when we were stuck asorganizations and what might be
if we made really significantchanges.
Organizations made huge changes.
They moved out of groupprograms, they moved out of, you
know, they moved away fromcongregation to real
individualized supports.
(36:55):
And that was almost that wasalmost 50 years ago.
Because they had Insight andthey were activated to make
these changes and they had acertain authority To make these
changes because, partly becausethe Supports were so undeveloped
(37:18):
.
So you know people, in a way,people had more freedom then.
So there's no question, forexample, in America, because the
majority of our supports thatare available to people with
(37:39):
disabilities and their familiesare Our Medicaid supports that
we have inherited a model, amedical model, what?
Whether we like it or not, welive under the shadow of a
framework for funding that isinherently medicalized and
(38:04):
reinforces Practices that lockus in to not seeing whole people
.
We're obsessed with labels and15 minute increments and
Paperwork and so on and so forth, and that becomes really clear
when you visit people in othercountries.
(38:24):
They may have way less fundingfor services, but it's, it's not
A medical model.
Now it doesn't mean to say thatthey don't have their own
variation or version ofdevaluation Right, everybody
does.
David Hasbury (38:41):
Well, I just think it's important and while I
I certainly understand your thenotion of structural
devaluation, structuraldevaluation is what allows
structural violence to actuallyOf course.
I mean that's it's like theprecursor to the actual.
You know, you mentioned yourfirst story of Millageville and
(39:05):
the.
You know, the one person in aroom of 18 people with a pole at
the door and a hole on theground and prodding people to
kind of stay away from eachother or all that kind of stuff.
Clearly those people weredevalued, but the way they would
be treated and I know my entryinto this work was was in a
whole behavioral thing, thethings that were done to people
(39:29):
that were literal violence andthey were structurally enforced
violence, like they were madelegitimate by the structural
devaluation.
They kind of said there's areason why we're doing this to
people and we've done thathistorically.
It certainly exists.
So so I want to talk a littlebit about the little bit more
(39:53):
about the garden and cultivation, because that is, as you
mentioned, it's actually thebigger part of the quilt, is the
cultivating part, the, and Iwant you to just pick some of
those things that you feel weneed to attend to in our
cultivation.
What are the kinds of thingsthat we have the power to
(40:20):
actually engage with.
So take us on a journey intocultivating.
Make us all gardeners.
Beth Mount (40:30):
So in the center of this piece between the star and
the garden, is a hand, is a, isa hamster, it's.
It's a hand that symbolizesonce again in almost every
culture.
The handprint symbolizes themark that we make and also the
hamster represents a protectiveenergy.
(40:53):
That is is a guide for us,another, another source of
guidance.
So it's a powerful symbol andalmost every culture.
And so when you think aboutgardening, unless you're in, you
(41:15):
know, some kind of agriculturalMachine, like gigantic thing.
I'm talking about little gardens.
Let's, let's use the image,let's not use the big
agricultural industry, let's usethe little gardens that are
outside, in the backyard, andcountless, whether they're
(41:35):
vegetable gardens or flowergardens or gardens of creatures,
but that the work of the handsis key, like we actually.
And so the hands and work.
First of all, they symbolize asmany of us as possible, getting
(41:57):
our hands Involved on the plow,if you will right, and in
particular, valuing and bringingin the hands that intelligence,
the wisdom of the people whoprovide the most support, which
are usually parents, directsupport, allies, teachers, right
(42:20):
, the people who are with peopleevery day.
So we wouldn't even think ortalk about this issue of
cultivating the garden withoutlifting up the people who are
actually providing Real care,real support on a day to day
basis.
So the hand means a lot ofdifferent things, but it's right
(42:41):
there in the middle, so justwant to emphasize that.
And the hand is the connection,it's the link, it's the bridge
to this garden space, and insidethat garden space are different
elements of what we payattention to.
(43:02):
So, all right, keep in mindthat all of this work is about
how we use our attention.
So 1 of the most importantimages is a circle of support.
It's individual, with 4 or 5people in their lives and with
the support circle thatdramatically increases the
(43:25):
possibility that we're going tohold on to that star together
and we're going to support eachother to work towards it and
we're going to be involved inthe journey in a mutual, as
equals and mutually.
You know, we're all gardening,we're all living daily lives
(43:46):
that are complicated, maybe theperson with the disabilities at
the center of a circle, buteveryone, everyone's life
matters in that circle.
So that circle is sort of the1st order of a space that's
holding on to potential and andthe and taking on the things
(44:08):
that Need to be in place inorder for life unfold.
There's another image, that is aneighborhood.
So the neighborhood representsanother aspect of what are we
paying attention to?
The neighborhoods that peoplelived in?
(44:30):
And, of course, this is anotherElement of of of my Orientation
to all of this work.
I mean, you've heard me saypeople have heard me say, if you
don't know what's in people'sneighborhoods, I don't want to
talk to you about a person'scenter plan, because what's in
people's neighborhoodsOftentimes contains as much
(44:52):
information about what might bepossible for people as any of
the planning and thinking aboutthe individual.
So that's a whole other podcasthow we discover what, the what
the what the possibilities are,the wisdom in a neighborhood,
the openings in a neighborhoodand how, how we discover that
(45:17):
and how we support people tomake connections in in their
local neighborhoods.
And that doesn't take away fromthe possibility that you might
learn to use a subway to go fromBrooklyn to Staples in
Manhattan to work on a job right.
To talk about Knowing theneighborhood doesn't mean that
(45:39):
we're limiting people's choices,but it does mean that we're
tapping into a gold mine that wedon't even know.
We don't even know where thegold is until we spend more time
in people's neighborhoods.
Okay, there's another square inthat, in that garden you think
(46:02):
about.
Each 1 of these things is apart of the garden that you're
cultivating.
The other square has to do withhow are we finding a variety of
ways for people to show up?
How are we increasing theresources that people have, the
opportunities?
That's what I'm looking for.
How do we increaseopportunities?
(46:23):
People have To live into aricher life and of course,
there's infinite number ofpossibilities.
But the 4 that we focus on themost in the work that I do all
these, all these years is let'ssee what we can do to build more
(46:46):
relationships.
That's 1.
Hopefully we.
There's a support circle tostart with, but there's more
relationships to cultivate.
1 can't have too many, really,but it takes a lot of work to
cultivate those relationships.
There is the issue ofneighborhood what's on your
block?
(47:06):
There is the issue of work andvolunteerism.
So supporting people to havereal jobs in real communities
has always been the heart, apersonal futures planning, and
so in every plan that I've everbeen a part of, even with the
(47:28):
most complicated people anywhere, we're asking the question
About vocation what is the jobthat we can imagine people
growing into?
Where is the opportunity foreconomic development?
So we're trying to increase themoney that people have to live
on and live with and, moreimportantly, or as importantly,
(47:51):
a valued role with highexpectations that comes with
real work.
Okay, then finally, in that 1area of that of the garden, is
this question of associationallife.
So how are we doing Atdiscovering where associations
(48:12):
are and helping people belong,be members, step in, have a role
and cultivate relationships?
Okay, so that's that part ofthe garden Right.
And so, last but not least andthen there's a middle point
that's important to mention, the.
(48:32):
The 4th area is what I think ofas a design team is slightly
different group of people thatare organized around the star,
but they probably have anorganizational role in all of
this.
So they are people in aperson's life who are working
(48:55):
administratively and anadministrative Role to find
funding right, to create moreflexibility, to support people,
to have good Personal support,to deal with the countless ways
that bureaucracy interferes.
And I think a bureaucracy islike a pest.
(49:17):
You know, like anybody whokeeps a garden is very alert to
the past.
They come in and eat your leadsand it's not only bugs but also
rabbits and deer.
You know like who's going toeat this and who's going to
devour that and no matter howbeautiful those flowers are, if
you haven't paid attention tokind of safeguarding the past,
(49:41):
it's you're going to get eatenalive.
Right, those, those newpossibilities are going to be
eaten Now.
So a design team one of thethings a design team does is
kind of firewall as best theycan this garden from the past
and find new ways to bring inmore energy resources, good
(50:03):
people and intelligence rightInto the situation.
So I will say just finish onthis note that when we are
getting all of those things,when we're attending to all of
those things, so I would neversay getting all of those things
(50:26):
right, because I, I don't know.
There's no such thing asgetting all these things right.
The challenge is attending asbest we can.
Then we have the not only agarden of soul, but also what I
call a pocket of possibility.
The pocket of possibility is aplace where the conditions have
(50:49):
been cultivated for people tolive their best life Right and
so so, yeah, that's, that's howI work.
David Hasbury (51:03):
Yeah, I really appreciate that and I love the.
I don't even want to call it ametaphor, although it is a kind
of external experience.
The whole garden idea isanybody who spent any time in a
garden with your hands dirtywith and then watching something
(51:24):
grow, you know, like going fromthe early spring season when
the ground is gray and there'snothing growing Until, gradually
, something happens, that thingsstart to grow.
It's a very powerful way ofexploring this.
What?
What interests me a lot in this, though, is the notion of
(51:49):
tending a garden is that's thelanguage that you use.
You tend to garden, right, andyou talk about attending.
You know you talk aboutattention.
I see that our ability to holdattention long enough for things
to grow is pretty fragile, andso I wonder what you see?
(52:17):
I mean, obviously, all thosethings that you mentioned in
that tending, including thedesign team kind of thing, but
what makes it possible forpeople to hold their attention
long enough for something togrow, and not only long enough
for it to start to grow, but tosustain it?
I know earlier you talked about, you know, watching
(52:37):
relationships and people over 40years, and I know if you're
like the people, I know thatit's a very like, every year in
the garden is a different year,and if you're not paying
attention, it can all not growor the pest can take over, or so
(52:58):
anyway, I just wonder if youcould talk a little bit about
that.
What does it take to keep ourattention, even if it's not
perfect?
It's like what I see so oftenis that people's attention is
sucked out of them.
They're they're actually notable to pay attention because of
the structural things that arein place.
So I wonder if you could justtalk a little bit about what it
(53:21):
takes for us to hold ourattention long enough for
something to grow.
Beth Mount (53:27):
Well, I think what you're naming is the crisis of
our time, right?
So is there's a crisis in our,in humanity at the moment, where
it's getting increasinglydifficult for people to hold
their attention on creating theconditions, cultivating the
(53:49):
relationships between people andcultivating the quality of the
relationships between people.
And so it's a crisis, thiscapacity to cultivate and attend
.
And I think we, I can't addressthat question without talking
about love.
So, you know, the first thingthat comes to my mind when you
(54:13):
ask how we do that, well, thepeople who do that best in
general are people's families,are the parents, right, starting
with the parents.
Now, not everybody has parents.
I don't mean to grandma, thefit, the core, the place where
one has grown up and belongs,for better, for worse, as
(54:36):
challenging as every singlefamily is.
There's no such thing, as youknow, this sort of at least I
don't know if there is this sortof bubbling perfect family.
Forget about that's ridiculous.
But family is the place where,if we're fortunate, we have
(54:58):
experiences of being cared forand about and we are potential,
is nurtured, and so much of whatunfolds for people happens
through the commitment, thedevotion that comes with love.
So, that said, we know thatfamilies get beaten down to the
(55:22):
ground, with all thecomplexities of getting through
the day, and services andorganizations that hurt more
than help and all the othercomplexities of devaluation.
So I'm not romanticizingfamilies and I'm not suggesting
that, and that's why we work sohard to create good supports
(55:48):
that are other people who comein and bring everything they can
, their best intention, bringtheir love into a person's
development, into a sense ofwhat's possible for people.
And you know we don't talkabout love enough, right?
(56:11):
Because it's no such a mystery.
And and yet I was.
I I found a quote by one of mymentors, dinga McCannon, who is
an amazing artist and but Ithink it.
I think this quote really getswhat we're talking about here.
Dinga says an artist lives onfaith, the kind of faith that
(56:39):
the image comes.
So imagine that what we'rethinking about here.
The image is that star ofpossibility.
The potential comes, the new isborn with love.
You fall in love with everycreation and you want to see it
through.
If you don't fall in love, youwill not stick with it, period.
(57:05):
You won't stick with it.
You have no idea how it willturn out, but you trust the
process.
You trust that what you do tocreate order out of what is
generally very messy, chaoticreality will heal the world.
(57:25):
I love that right, because hereis a story, quilter Number one
falling in love with every piecebut imagining that her devotion
to each creation has some smallripple, and healing the world.
I think that's hugely importantfor us in our work.
(57:48):
Absolutely, maybe not even inyour lifetime, but in some way
you might never understand.
So this might you know, thesethings we hold so dear.
They truly might not beactualized in our lifetime, but
(58:09):
things will happen that we don'tunderstand.
Something always comes fromyour commitment to the process.
You will have no idea what thatmight be, but the new is
revealed through the creativeprocess.
So for me, dingus way ofthinking about creativity ties
(58:33):
together this quality of fallingin love, ties together devotion
, the commitment to stickingwith it, no matter how confusing
and difficult.
So this is, and Truly imaginingthat devotion in some small way
(58:57):
that you can't possibly fathom,is healing the world.
Right, like, oh my gosh, okay,this is not a person's inner
plan, this is, in some small waymaybe healing the world, and
that something new will berevealed.
And I think that's a big partof what keeps us engaged is we
(59:22):
anticipate.
We want to be a part of therevelation right.
We want to see what can comefrom our commitment and our
puzzles and our struggle and ourconfusion and our challenges.
We want to see what might comeand then we want to celebrate
(59:45):
that.
We want to tell those stories,we want to lift those up and
every time something surprisingand generative happens in the
life of one person, we want toimagine what it might take to do
that on behalf of some morefolks.
David Hasbury (01:00:05):
Well, it is interesting that we live in a
very antiseptic world and so thenotion of love doesn't get
addressed nearly enough, becausesustainability does require
love.
You must love something inorder for you to sustain the
(01:00:28):
journey, to kind of be with thatwhich you love and the who that
you love as they go through allthis.
And it relates to me, toanother element which is gift.
So any of the parents that I'veknown, and including myself,
(01:00:55):
when a child comes into yourlife, when a child has come into
their life, there is a sense ofbeing gifted, there's this
sense of receiving this awesomemystery in your life.
And then as you watch thatperson grow, no matter what
their capacities are, you watchhow they navigate the world and
(01:01:20):
it kind of just enhances thatsense of gift that comes from
them.
But I wonder if you could talk alittle bit about the importance
of uncovering, discovering,naming gifts and how we, how we
(01:01:40):
attend to discovering whatpeople's gifts are, because for
me the falling in love is in theexchange of gifts, and when you
actually bring something tosomeone else's life, consciously
or unconsciously, it bringssomething out that in that
person.
(01:02:00):
So I wonder if you could justtalk for a bit about your
understanding of gifts and howwe actually can uncover what
gifts are, for.
The thing that you talked about, dhinga, mentioning the kind of
changing the world kind ofelement, comes from the exchange
(01:02:22):
of gifts, the falling in loveand the thing that comes from
those things that you can't evenpredict what it would be.
So, anyway, I just toss it outto you as something to think
about, because it's been animportant part of the language
that many of us have shared fora long time the notion of
everyone has a gift.
Beth Mount (01:02:43):
Well, I, the person who comes to mind who's spoken
more wisely and and moreeloquently than anybody I know
about gifts is Judith Snow,right?
So I think, if we want tounderstand giftedness, the
(01:03:05):
discovery of gifts and what'sinvolved in cultivating gifts,
judith is an incrediblephilosopher and artist to learn
from.
And so, for people who don'tknow Judith, I think it's fair
to say she was the first personwho created a support circle in
our world, right, the Joshuacommittee, which was created to
(01:03:29):
support her to move out of anursing home with all the
challenges that she had.
So Judith navigated her lifefor many years until she passed
a few years ago in a kind ofbrilliant way, with in need of
constant support and verycomplex support, and I have a.
(01:03:55):
There's a quote from Judiththat I think resonates for me in
the question about gifts.
She says sustained, vibrantrelationship demands that the
person with a disability beviewed with a different vision
and listen to with a differentear, for most of all, the
(01:04:20):
alternative possibilities is tosee and hear the person as a
welcome fellow traveler.
We must see our shared journey,our shared life journey, as one
of transforming human sufferingby creating the supportive
(01:04:40):
relationships we all need tosustain life and of celebrating
together life's joys andvictories and surprises.
And so I think of Judith when Ithink of the question of finding
gifts, because that's one ofthose multi dimensional ideas.
(01:05:09):
Giftedness, that, yes, there'sthe specific gift that each of
us brings, that are being a goodlistener, or sense of humor, or
care about other people, orcreativity, whatever those
things might be.
But then there's this biggersense of giftedness, which is
(01:05:31):
that Judith was so insistentupon, which is that society
needs me, it needs us, peoplewith disabilities.
It needs our giftedness, ourpresence, in order to strengthen
itself, right, in order forsociety to evolve.
(01:05:55):
And so that, to me, is such animportant element of thinking
about giftedness, becausethere's the individual
giftedness that we hope touncover and reveal and our
journey with people.
But then there's this otherquality of healing.
(01:06:16):
You know, healing a societythat doesn't know how people
might support each other, thatdoesn't appreciate vulnerability
and dependency and the qualityof relationships that can grow
from that.
When we treasure vulnerabilityright, when we treasure
(01:06:40):
complexity and interdependence.
David Hasbury (01:06:44):
There were many things that you shared that were
important, but I think the oneof the things that I'm taking
from this is the attentionelement and how we can pay
attention, because out of 168hours in a week, how much time
are we devoting to the attentionnecessary to cultivate
(01:07:07):
relationships, gifts,connectedness and to ultimately
heal the society?
It is probably one of thosetimes when it feels like the
things that we know are valuableto the lives of the people with
(01:07:27):
disabilities that we've come toknow they are as valuable to
the rest.
Only we can pretend like we cansurvive without them, and the
people that we've come to knowwho are more vulnerable in some
aspects of their life need thesethings in order to survive.
(01:07:51):
You know, relationships arevital in order to survive.
Being seen as an equal is vitalin order to survive.
Making a contribution is notjust a good thing.
It's actually going to keep youmore likely to being able to
(01:08:15):
participate and take care ofyour own life as well as the
life of other people.
So, anyway, the attention pieceis really an important thing
for me that I was grabbing fromthis, along with all the rest,
which I'm glad is recorded,because I can always listen to
it again For a future podcast.
I would love to have aconversation with you that is
(01:08:37):
about so let me say, when peopleget a chance to take a look at
the Garden of Soul quilt, theywill be in awe of how beautiful
it is.
It's just full of color andrichness.
The beauty can be distractingbecause I know from other things
(01:08:59):
that you've done and the waythat you work and how you think
the incredible process of makingsomething is where the real,
where things really lie, all thethinking, the imagining, the
feeling, the kind of makingsense, all of that stuff that's
(01:09:20):
behind this beautiful image isimportant, and I'd love to have
a conversation with you aboutthat, and I'd love to have a
conversation with you about howinviting other people into that
process of making actually canunleash all of that as well in
them.
So anyway, we will do that onanother time.
(01:09:43):
Thanks a lot for spending thetime with us now and all the
best in what's going on for therest of the week.
Thank you.
Beth Mount is a social artist, a catalyst for
co-creation, a writer and thecreator of Personal Futures
Planning, a person-centeredplanning practice developed more
than 40 years ago.
Beth has guided people who carein creating the organizational
and social conditions that allowpeople to thrive.
Beth Mount (00:25):
To see people in a different light, to see people
who are not usually seen fortheir gifts and their potentials
and possibilities.
Not only has that beenimportant to the people and
their families, but I also haveoperated from.
Any group of people who arebeing left out has gifts to
(00:45):
bring, has something that weneed to know and learn from them
.
That is essential to oursurvival.
David Hasbury (00:53):
I'm Dave Hasbury, and in this conversation we
explore the journey to embodythe gifts and higher purpose in
all of us.
We delve into Beth's practice ofmaking the invisible visible,
uncovering the power ofattention and visualizing
patterns of conditions thatallow people to thrive or
inhibit and diminish capacity.
(01:15):
We examine the impact of ahistory of attentional violence,
structural devaluation andstructural violence, and we look
at the co-creative change thatcomes through the weaving of
relationships between a person,their support circle, service
organizations and theneighborhood where they live.
(01:36):
A while ago, when we werechatting and throughout
different conversations thatwe've had, the phrase making me
invisible visible has come up.
I associated with a number ofpeople, but I certainly
associated with you in partbecause so much of what you've
(01:58):
done for so long is about makingthings visible, and so I wonder
if you could talk for a bitabout both parts the making
things visible, but then theother part about the invisible,
the importance of making what isnot seen.
So I just wonder if you couldtalk for a bit about that in
(02:22):
your work and how you processthe world.
Beth Mount (02:27):
So why am I so passionate about making the
invisible visible?
So I think I can't address thatquestion without going back 50
years ago, to when I firstencountered people with
disabilities in MillagevilleState School the largest
institution in the world at thetime, by the way who were so
(02:50):
abandoned and so dehumanized andso discarded in just deplorable
conditions 12, 15 people in aroom with one staff person in a
pole, barely clothed, drain inthe floor, no sense that people
are people.
And there's no question thatsomething inside me then clicked
(03:15):
, that just felt the injusticeof that, the wrongness of that,
and that the challenge ofdiscovering what would be
involved in creating conditionswhere people could not only
become visible in their humanitybut actually thrive became
(03:41):
really my journey of these last50 years, and so I don't think
I've ever let go of thatquestion.
Not only have I held thatquestion about supporting us to
see people in a different light,see people who are not usually
seen for their gifts and theirpotentials and possibilities.
(04:05):
Not only has that been importantto the people and their
families, but I also haveoperated from an understanding
and actually this is a referencepoint, for this comes also from
Carl Jung, who has had a biginfluence on how I think about
both the visible and theinvisible, but one of Jung's
(04:26):
teachings was related to thisnotion that every marginalized
group of people in any societyis actually bringing something
to that society that it needs toevolve and to grow.
And so any group of people whoare being left out and, in a
(04:47):
sense, carrying the shadow ofthe dominant culture, has gifts
to bring, has something that weneed to know and learn from them
that is essential to oursurvival.
Yeah, so, having grown upduring the civil rights era
right and watching the impact ofthe African American black
(05:10):
community in Atlanta, georgia,becoming visible and becoming
lifted up, and the potential andthe possibilities being seen by
the wider culture and theincredible dynamic and power of
that movement, of that socialmovement, to me what we've been
(05:30):
doing in the disability worldhas a similar call to it, which
is the world needs us.
The world needs this reality inorder to be a healthier society
.
David Hasbury (05:44):
First of all, I love that notion of that which
has been marginalized andrejected actually holds a gift
for the wider communal life thatwe have, and I know that the
Millageville experience actuallyagain made naked the
(06:12):
dehumanizing of people.
But when you were there, whatdid you see, aside from the
treatment of people, what didyou see in the people themselves
?
In order to feel thatsomebody's been dehumanized, we
actually have to see thehumanity in somebody.
So what did you see among thesepeople that who were being
(06:34):
treated awfully?
Beth Mount (06:36):
I think it's important to also pull the
camera back and make note of thefact that I had grown up with
people in my family who wereliving with a disability.
People in my family are mycommunity In all the places we
lived when I was a child, wealways had a neighbor who had a
child with a disability at home,and that was back in the day
(06:58):
before 90, from 142, before kidswith disabilities went to
public schools.
So they were just at home andthey were with their families,
and my own brother had a verycomplicated existence.
And there were other members ofour family who had been living
(07:19):
with disabilities and might havestill been kind of hidden away
or not very.
Their lives had not beennecessarily very developed in
community, but they were not.
That was back in the day whenone really only had two choices
to keep your loved one at homeor to put them in an institution
(07:42):
, and the system reallyencouraged families to
institutionalize their lovedones right.
So I think, on some level, whatI was aware of at that moment
was that the individuals in thisroom are no different from the
people that I've grown up with.
They're just living inconditions that are horrendous,
(08:07):
and so if that's the case, thenwe, the collective, we could do
something about this.
David Hasbury (08:15):
Well, one of the things that you've mentioned and
thought about is this idea ofmaking visible what goes missed
by a lot of people because ofthe kind of global art
overarching kind of view ofpeople.
(08:35):
But you have this thing aboutmaking visible pockets of
possibility, so like experienceswhere small things happen that
actually many people would miss,but for you there's something
about actually lifting those upin some way so that they can be
seen.
Can you talk a little bit aboutboth the process of noticing
(08:58):
those pockets of possibilitiesand then the kind of what it
takes to actually lift those upto be seen?
Beth Mount (09:06):
Well, another.
This is a continuation of thetheme of making visible, because
the early formation of personalfutures planning was, in fact,
a pedagogy.
It was a process of supportingpeople to tell their story and
having it unfold literally,literally become visible on wall
(09:28):
charts, across a wall, with agroup of people who were
invested in the individual andinterested in change.
And what we learned early on isthat and this is one of my
signature gifts, I believe wasjust this very simple color
(09:49):
coding that I stuck with foralmost 50 years, which is green
was the color for when thingswere going well and people were
alive and conditions andexperiences were uplifting, and
red was the color of things notgoing well, when people were
stuck, when conditions were notgood.
(10:10):
And we learned early on andthat, if we just stay true to a
certain amount of color codingthat what emerged on the paper
were themes in people's lives,threads you know in retrospect
I've come to call them the kindof the souls DNA that what we
(10:37):
began to see is a pattern andwho people are when they're at
their best, and a pattern and inwho people are when they're at
their worst.
And nine times out of 10 peoplewere spending most of their
lives locked into the pattern ofwhen they were at their worst.
(10:58):
Okay, the other color that I amfamous for is yellow, is the
yellow highlighter, because oneof the things that we did
rigorously in those early daysand I still do this, if I'm
involved in a plan is we startunderlining in yellow.
Where is this?
Where is this key to thisperson's life?
(11:21):
Where is this gift?
Where is this pattern that, ifwe can redirect our attention to
the green, we can strengthen?
Okay, it doesn't take longbefore a beautiful vision can
unfold for the person.
However, if we're not alsotaking on the organizational
(11:44):
constraints, the what we nowcall the social body, the place
that people live and belong, ifwe're not also opening up
opportunities in that part ofpeople's lives, then what we've
identified as what's possiblecan't unfold.
(12:05):
This brings us back to makingvisible what is the pattern in a
person and what are theopportunities in a place, the
place that they live in, and howdo we strengthen the connection
?
One little experience at a time.
I mean, I can't emphasize thatenough, because in our practice,
(12:31):
while we might generate afairly large vision for what
could be a more generative,fruitful life, oftentimes that's
a 10-year vision that emerges.
It's not a six-month vision,it's not a 12-month vision, it
doesn't fit into any of ourideas about time.
(12:51):
But what matters is that wefind seeds from that big vision
that we can start to plant.
Many of the stories I've toldover the years they truly begin
with two hours.
People made a shift in Ken'slife from a situation that was
(13:12):
really not working to findingthese two hours where he could
start to really shine.
Then, okay, that's a key.
What can we do to enlarge that?
What can we do to keep buildingpeople's engagement and the
things that really nurture them?
The point is just that thepersonal center planning that
(13:35):
I've practiced has never, hasalways had connected to it
Planning with the person andtheir family, working with an
organization to change and alsobeing connected in the community
, working at the level of localcommunity to find assets and
(13:57):
places where people can belongand contribute in the local
community.
If we disconnect those threethings really it's four things,
because I said I mentionedfinding the gifts in the person
with their support circle.
That's actually number twoGifts in an individual,
(14:18):
cultivating relationships withsupport circle, changing
organizations and buildingcommunities.
If you disconnect a plan fromany of those things.
You come back three or fouryears later and nothing's
happened.
People have been left with thissense of possibility and just
stuck In the same old situation.
David Hasbury (14:41):
In the early and continues to be, but in the
early part of making thingsvisible for you, it was simply
colors, like speak and record incolors.
According to these criteria, itactually fosters growth and
brings the best out, or itactually diminishes who somebody
(15:03):
is.
Colors was an important part ofthat, the sense of the parts
being uncovered and engaged.
So a person discovering what's,discovery of a person,
discovery of the people who careabout that person, discovery
(15:24):
about the capacity of anorganization and discovery about
a community, all of those beingimportant.
I'm sitting in front of me.
I have the quilt that youcreated called the Garden of
Soul, which we're on a podcast.
So it's people can't see whatit is, but it's an absolutely
(15:45):
gorgeous vision.
Your work over the years has hadcombinations of style.
Some are actually collectingwhat people are creating and
curating them into an image, andsometimes it's you actually
(16:07):
working through your ownunderstanding.
I get the sense that the Gardenof Soul is a little bit of that
, that it's about you trying tomake sense of the world, but
it's.
We'll make available in thedescription how people can see
this and the companion articlethat goes with it, called we Are
Companions on a Journey In itand the reason I'm coming here
(16:31):
is because of what you saidabout these four parts and I
wonder about the connection Init.
The top section of the image isa large star with a
four-sectioned cross in thecenter of the star.
You mentioned Carl Jung earlier.
(16:52):
You mentioned color and I knowfrom the little that I know Carl
Jung that symbols is animportant part of the power of
symbols and this gets to themaking visible part.
I wonder if you could talk alittle bit about that star and
what that's, because that starsshow up in your artistic work
(17:17):
Often.
They're important pieces and Iwonder if you could just talk
about the star and what theimportance of that as a symbol
is to those four parts that youmentioned earlier the person,
the circle, the organization andthe community.
Talk a little bit about thestar and why is that important
(17:39):
to you and can be to others?
Beth Mount (17:42):
Well, you're right, the star shows up in almost so
much of what I do and there aremany layers for why it feels
important to me.
So let's start with theuniversal understanding of the
star.
Throughout, all time and in allcultures the star represents
and in all religions and alleverything the star
(18:03):
metaphorically represents, aguide, right that?
And in the first peoples, formost of humanity, the stars have
guided people right.
So there's literally the starsthat guide us, and then there's,
metaphorically, the scrollsHigher purpose for us.
(18:25):
So, once again, the starrepresents In my imagination,
the, what Carl Jung calls thisdam on, which is the call, right
that we each are here with apurpose and a defining image.
And James Hillman calls thisboth the understanding that
(18:50):
every one of us has a star andthe deciphering of that meaning,
of that star as the soul's code.
So we all, we have a soul, oursoul has wisdom, our soul has
has is like a companion, andit's our work and it's a
(19:12):
lifetime right.
We're all in this, we're alldiscovering what is the mark we
make, what is the DNA that Icultivate, that I develop, and
how do I live that, how do Ilive that out so that I'm living
into my higher purpose and inour work we're supporting other
(19:38):
people to live into their higherpurpose Because, sadly,
throughout history this notionof a higher purpose was sort of
colonized for people who wereprivileged and the idea that
everybody else who doesn't havea certain amount of privilege is
sort of an underling to otherpeople's Call to other people's
(20:00):
star.
So we live at a time thankfullyas challenging as this moment
is for other reasons whereAlmost all marginalized groups
are calling, you know, aremaking a stronger case for their
capacity to live into A higherpurpose, to have conditions.
(20:24):
I mean, um, often we call thelimitations of living into a
higher purpose that arestructural, structural violence.
That this notion of structuralviolence is not even necessarily
a really aggressive thing.
Of course it shows up that way.
Structural violence limitsPeople and limits the people who
(20:48):
support people to see andimagine those possibilities and
then To have a better shot atreaching for those possibilities
.
Okay, so that's sort of the bigpicture of why the star Is
meaningful.
Then there is the Contributionthat John O'Brien and Connie
(21:11):
Lyle O'Brien have brought intoour work, which is helping us
interpret the meaning ofinclusion, the possibility of
inclusion, using 5 valuedexperiences, the 5 value
experiences.
The star shows up in almostevery artwork that I've ever
(21:32):
done.
The 5 value experiences show upin virtually anything that I've
ever written, because itprovides such a clear picture Of
what we're reaching for In thiswork of supporting people to
(21:52):
live into their highestpossibility.
And I, because I've known Johnand Connie and I've been
connected with them almost 50years and was a part of that
early formation Of those ideas Ican't imagine doing this work
without the clarity that comesfrom those 5 value experiences.
(22:17):
It's not that we ever even getthere, necessarily, but that it
just serves as a guide for Us inour work and in the Measure of
how we're doing.
You know how are we doing, howare we really doing?
It's supporting each person tolive into those 5 value
(22:41):
experiences In a multitude ofdifferent ways.
So there's, you know, thissimple idea that there's 5 value
experiences, and then there'sthis incredibly complex
Actualization that varies Widelyfrom life to life, right, but
(23:02):
still it helps illuminate whatwe're what we're doing.
David Hasbury (23:07):
So the star is.
You know and I would, becauseof what you mentioned about the
historical Guide that stars havebeen it is very resonant for
people, there's that kind ofsense.
It's one of those things.
That's a simple symbol but itactually ties into something and
(23:32):
I wonder if you could just talka little bit about that, and
you briefly mentioned it.
But just, you talked aboutstructural violence and in many
ways this is kind of the Contrato structural violence, because
the structural violence isrooted in seeing people in a
(23:56):
certain way as not being human,as not being whole, as not being
valued, as all of that kind ofstuff.
And when we devalue people wecan do terrible things to them.
We see that now happening inbroad strokes around the world,
that as soon as we actually seeothers as less than, as, not
(24:20):
even as inhuman as all thesekinds of things, it unleashes a
parade of structural violence inpeople's lives.
And I wonder what yourexperience has been or how you
see your experience ofintroducing these ideas of the
(24:44):
star and higher purpose.
What happens when you takethose to places where people are
kind of stuck in a lot of ways?
What happens and how peopleshift when they're given the
opportunity to just take a lookat their situations differently
than they've historically beenhanded them.
Beth Mount (25:07):
The other concept that's directly related to
structural violence isattentional violence.
So and this is an auto-sharmerterm that suggests that and the
two things that goes side byside that attentional violence
is not to be seen in terms ofyour highest purpose and it hits
hardest those who are at themargins.
(25:29):
Attentional violence is frozen,is interlocked, I should say,
with structural violence.
So we have structures ofsociety that are hardened in a
way that diminish lots of peopleand keep them stuck, and
attentional violence.
(25:51):
So let's just take that back toeven the color coding.
When I look back now, I can seethat what we were doing in our
simple color coding was justshifting our attention right
Together.
We were becoming aware thathere is this information in the
(26:15):
green about what works forpeople and where life is for
them, and here is thisinformation in the red about
what doesn't work and wherepeople are hurting or stuck.
Here is a pattern in the green,you know, like a DNA, of what's
possible being revealed to uson these charts.
(26:38):
And as we sit here and see this, we want to break the chain,
right.
We want to shift fromattentional violence to
attentional potential, right.
So we want, as allies, we wantto use everything we can to
(27:03):
focus on potential, not, youknow, the invisible sides.
We want to bring ourselves toshift these patterns.
The challenge is that theissues always much bigger than
just the individual.
So if we can't find ways toalso shift the patterns in the
(27:28):
way we show up in organizations,in our communities, in our
families and our relationships,then it's extremely hard to hold
on to the shifts that arepossible for people.
It's very important, when youthink about the star in the
(27:48):
visual garden of soul, it's veryimportant to appreciate that
the star is only part of thewhole big picture.
The equally important focus ofthat image is what I call on the
ground.
Right, it's in the bottom ofthis image and the ground is
(28:10):
where the real work happens.
And one of the and that's whatI call a garden of soul.
Right, if you're notcultivating the garden, we can
do all the pretty pictures inthe world, we can do all the
plans and they can be beautifuland we can bring in all kinds of
art, but that's not the pointof the art.
(28:31):
The point of everything we'redoing, the point of social art,
is to get down, you know, to godeeper into the ground that
people are living in, walking on, living with every day, the
constraints the red, thepossibilities, the blue and to
(28:56):
dig deeper, to work harder atthat part of the puzzle of the
picture.
One reason I felt called to makethat image is I had already
been, I had been working in NewYork State with both OPWDD, the
(29:16):
state and also young peoplecoming out of District 75, and I
had a special ed in New YorkCity schools.
I'd already been doing thatwork for 15 years.
Okay, and the way that Iconstruct my initiatives around
person-centered work, they'realways focused on a handful of
(29:37):
people and I do everything I canto follow those people for
years.
So there are people that I'vebeen a part of their journey,
that I've been following what'shappening for them for 40, 45
years.
Now.
That's important because, astime was passing then this was
(30:04):
in 2008 when I started thatimage 25 years already of doing
person-centered work it was justblindingly clear that when
things were going well forpeople, they had a garden right,
the real work was being done onthe ground to cultivate the
(30:26):
conditions for people to thrive,and where things had not taken
off, that hadn't happened.
Unfortunately, that was also ata time where person-centered
planning was becoming more andmore popular and from my point
of view, it was becomingdisembodied from this other half
(30:48):
of the picture.
Right, that everybody's allexcited about the plan and, look
, I'd be the first to say that'sthe most interesting.
I mean, that's always where Iwould rather be.
I would always rather be in aroom with people and their
families and allies creating aplan.
It's thrilling to be a part ofthat.
It's just that if we're notalso paying attention to these
(31:13):
other ways to shift, we're notdoing the work.
The making of Garden of Soul wasmy way.
Talk about making visible.
You see, I could have told thatstory through a comparative
analysis, right, much like I didin my dissertation where
there's a group of people whoare involved in this and there's
(31:35):
a control group who are nothaving this experience, and we
watch and follow what happensover time, right?
What good does that kind ofanalysis do?
In the world that I inhabit, theartwork has the potential to
really tell a bigger story, andso, in a way, in summary, in a
(31:56):
way, what that one piece of artconveys, seeks to convey, is
what I could see, havingfollowed hundreds and hundreds
of people over time that when wecould align those conditions at
the bottom of the image, lifecould become really interesting
(32:18):
for people.
When we could not, thingsdidn't go anywhere and people
would just stay stuck.
And it's very important toemphasize that this had nothing
to do with what the limits werethat people individually faced.
So people who were profoundlybehaviorally challenged or
(32:44):
cognitively labeled, with verysevere cognitive impairments,
they could thrive with the rightgarden, with the right
conditions, and people who hadmuch less challenging learning
issues could stay completely andtotally stuck in the absence of
(33:08):
the cultivation of that socialfield, that garden of soul.
David Hasbury (33:14):
There's a lot in this and I want to come back to
that garden part in just asecond.
But I want to step back for abit because you referenced two
phrases that had to do withviolence.
One was attentional violence,and I got the sense that in many
ways that was about how ourattention is shifted away from
(33:35):
who somebody is and either makesthem invisible or actually
believes there's something thatmagnifies a part of them, that
hides other parts of them, andso what happens when you're not
seen is like a violence, likeit's like who you are is
violated by that, and I thinkthat's a very common thing and I
(34:00):
think it's something that weall have to be very aware of,
how we participate in that.
But I wonder if you could justtalk a little bit about what the
structural violence part is.
What you mentioned that Ottoputs those two side by side
attentional and structuralviolence.
What's the structural part?
What, what, what?
(34:21):
How is that recognized?
How do we see that?
Beth Mount (34:24):
So when I think about structural violence, I
immediately go back to my earlyexperience with normalization
slash, social role valorizationwhere, through the lens of the
body of work that WolfWolfensberger brought us, we
(34:46):
could go in as a team In a 5 dayreview of all kinds of human
service settings and take Apartwhat we were seeing that
organization doing across 50different lenses ratings, 50
(35:07):
different ratings.
It would become Ratherastonishing to see how these
organizations were structuredAround devaluation and I
actually prefer in our world, Iprefer now the use of structural
(35:27):
devaluation at almost overstructural violence, because we
use the worst structuralviolence.
We all kind of go wait minute,you know we're not doing
anything that's hurtful topeople.
But devaluation is much moresubtle and much more pervasive
and of course it cuts across allkinds of communities.
Devaluation you know it'sracism, it's homophobia, it's
(35:51):
devaluation comes up Refugeecrisis, you name it.
But what this lens of Ofnormalization did is it helped
us understand how Locked inthese organizations were to
(36:12):
devaluation without even reallyknowing this right.
Unfortunately, in the earlyyears of person center planning
the organizations that hostedperson center planning they
wanted to change and once theysaw this In the same way, once
we saw what was possible forpeople on a chart once we saw
(36:35):
when we were stuck asorganizations and what might be
if we made really significantchanges.
Organizations made huge changes.
They moved out of groupprograms, they moved out of, you
know, they moved away fromcongregation to real
individualized supports.
(36:55):
And that was almost that wasalmost 50 years ago.
Because they had Insight andthey were activated to make
these changes and they had acertain authority To make these
changes because, partly becausethe Supports were so undeveloped
(37:18):
.
So you know people, in a way,people had more freedom then.
So there's no question, forexample, in America, because the
majority of our supports thatare available to people with
(37:39):
disabilities and their familiesare Our Medicaid supports that
we have inherited a model, amedical model, what?
Whether we like it or not, welive under the shadow of a
framework for funding that isinherently medicalized and
(38:04):
reinforces Practices that lockus in to not seeing whole people
.
We're obsessed with labels and15 minute increments and
Paperwork and so on and so forth, and that becomes really clear
when you visit people in othercountries.
(38:24):
They may have way less fundingfor services, but it's, it's not
A medical model.
Now it doesn't mean to say thatthey don't have their own
variation or version ofdevaluation Right, everybody
does.
David Hasbury (38:41):
Well, I just think it's important and while I
I certainly understand your thenotion of structural
devaluation, structuraldevaluation is what allows
structural violence to actuallyOf course.
I mean that's it's like theprecursor to the actual.
You know, you mentioned yourfirst story of Millageville and
(39:05):
the.
You know, the one person in aroom of 18 people with a pole at
the door and a hole on theground and prodding people to
kind of stay away from eachother or all that kind of stuff.
Clearly those people weredevalued, but the way they would
be treated and I know my entryinto this work was was in a
whole behavioral thing, thethings that were done to people
(39:29):
that were literal violence andthey were structurally enforced
violence, like they were madelegitimate by the structural
devaluation.
They kind of said there's areason why we're doing this to
people and we've done thathistorically.
It certainly exists.
So so I want to talk a littlebit about the little bit more
(39:53):
about the garden and cultivation, because that is, as you
mentioned, it's actually thebigger part of the quilt, is the
cultivating part, the, and Iwant you to just pick some of
those things that you feel weneed to attend to in our
cultivation.
What are the kinds of thingsthat we have the power to
(40:20):
actually engage with.
So take us on a journey intocultivating.
Make us all gardeners.
Beth Mount (40:30):
So in the center of this piece between the star and
the garden, is a hand, is a, isa hamster, it's.
It's a hand that symbolizesonce again in almost every
culture.
The handprint symbolizes themark that we make and also the
hamster represents a protectiveenergy.
(40:53):
That is is a guide for us,another, another source of
guidance.
So it's a powerful symbol andalmost every culture.
And so when you think aboutgardening, unless you're in, you
(41:15):
know, some kind of agriculturalMachine, like gigantic thing.
I'm talking about little gardens.
Let's, let's use the image,let's not use the big
agricultural industry, let's usethe little gardens that are
outside, in the backyard, andcountless, whether they're
(41:35):
vegetable gardens or flowergardens or gardens of creatures,
but that the work of the handsis key, like we actually.
And so the hands and work.
First of all, they symbolize asmany of us as possible, getting
(41:57):
our hands Involved on the plow,if you will right, and in
particular, valuing and bringingin the hands that intelligence,
the wisdom of the people whoprovide the most support, which
are usually parents, directsupport, allies, teachers, right
(42:20):
, the people who are with peopleevery day.
So we wouldn't even think ortalk about this issue of
cultivating the garden withoutlifting up the people who are
actually providing Real care,real support on a day to day
basis.
So the hand means a lot ofdifferent things, but it's right
(42:41):
there in the middle, so justwant to emphasize that.
And the hand is the connection,it's the link, it's the bridge
to this garden space, and insidethat garden space are different
elements of what we payattention to.
(43:02):
So, all right, keep in mindthat all of this work is about
how we use our attention.
So 1 of the most importantimages is a circle of support.
It's individual, with 4 or 5people in their lives and with
the support circle thatdramatically increases the
(43:25):
possibility that we're going tohold on to that star together
and we're going to support eachother to work towards it and
we're going to be involved inthe journey in a mutual, as
equals and mutually.
You know, we're all gardening,we're all living daily lives
(43:46):
that are complicated, maybe theperson with the disabilities at
the center of a circle, buteveryone, everyone's life
matters in that circle.
So that circle is sort of the1st order of a space that's
holding on to potential and andthe and taking on the things
(44:08):
that Need to be in place inorder for life unfold.
There's another image, that is aneighborhood.
So the neighborhood representsanother aspect of what are we
paying attention to?
The neighborhoods that peoplelived in?
(44:30):
And, of course, this is anotherElement of of of my Orientation
to all of this work.
I mean, you've heard me saypeople have heard me say, if you
don't know what's in people'sneighborhoods, I don't want to
talk to you about a person'scenter plan, because what's in
people's neighborhoodsOftentimes contains as much
(44:52):
information about what might bepossible for people as any of
the planning and thinking aboutthe individual.
So that's a whole other podcasthow we discover what, the what
the what the possibilities are,the wisdom in a neighborhood,
the openings in a neighborhoodand how, how we discover that
(45:17):
and how we support people tomake connections in in their
local neighborhoods.
And that doesn't take away fromthe possibility that you might
learn to use a subway to go fromBrooklyn to Staples in
Manhattan to work on a job right.
To talk about Knowing theneighborhood doesn't mean that
(45:39):
we're limiting people's choices,but it does mean that we're
tapping into a gold mine that wedon't even know.
We don't even know where thegold is until we spend more time
in people's neighborhoods.
Okay, there's another square inthat, in that garden you think
(46:02):
about.
Each 1 of these things is apart of the garden that you're
cultivating.
The other square has to do withhow are we finding a variety of
ways for people to show up?
How are we increasing theresources that people have, the
opportunities?
That's what I'm looking for.
How do we increaseopportunities?
(46:23):
People have To live into aricher life and of course,
there's infinite number ofpossibilities.
But the 4 that we focus on themost in the work that I do all
these, all these years is let'ssee what we can do to build more
(46:46):
relationships.
That's 1.
Hopefully we.
There's a support circle tostart with, but there's more
relationships to cultivate.
1 can't have too many, really,but it takes a lot of work to
cultivate those relationships.
There is the issue ofneighborhood what's on your
block?
(47:06):
There is the issue of work andvolunteerism.
So supporting people to havereal jobs in real communities
has always been the heart, apersonal futures planning, and
so in every plan that I've everbeen a part of, even with the
(47:28):
most complicated people anywhere, we're asking the question
About vocation what is the jobthat we can imagine people
growing into?
Where is the opportunity foreconomic development?
So we're trying to increase themoney that people have to live
on and live with and, moreimportantly, or as importantly,
(47:51):
a valued role with highexpectations that comes with
real work.
Okay, then finally, in that 1area of that of the garden, is
this question of associationallife.
So how are we doing Atdiscovering where associations
(48:12):
are and helping people belong,be members, step in, have a role
and cultivate relationships?
Okay, so that's that part ofthe garden Right.
And so, last but not least andthen there's a middle point
that's important to mention, the.
(48:32):
The 4th area is what I think ofas a design team is slightly
different group of people thatare organized around the star,
but they probably have anorganizational role in all of
this.
So they are people in aperson's life who are working
(48:55):
administratively and anadministrative Role to find
funding right, to create moreflexibility, to support people,
to have good Personal support,to deal with the countless ways
that bureaucracy interferes.
And I think a bureaucracy islike a pest.
(49:17):
You know, like anybody whokeeps a garden is very alert to
the past.
They come in and eat your leadsand it's not only bugs but also
rabbits and deer.
You know like who's going toeat this and who's going to
devour that and no matter howbeautiful those flowers are, if
you haven't paid attention tokind of safeguarding the past,
(49:41):
it's you're going to get eatenalive.
Right, those, those newpossibilities are going to be
eaten Now.
So a design team one of thethings a design team does is
kind of firewall as best theycan this garden from the past
and find new ways to bring inmore energy resources, good
(50:03):
people and intelligence rightInto the situation.
So I will say just finish onthis note that when we are
getting all of those things,when we're attending to all of
those things, so I would neversay getting all of those things
(50:26):
right, because I, I don't know.
There's no such thing asgetting all these things right.
The challenge is attending asbest we can.
Then we have the not only agarden of soul, but also what I
call a pocket of possibility.
The pocket of possibility is aplace where the conditions have
(50:49):
been cultivated for people tolive their best life Right and
so so, yeah, that's, that's howI work.
David Hasbury (51:03):
Yeah, I really appreciate that and I love the.
I don't even want to call it ametaphor, although it is a kind
of external experience.
The whole garden idea isanybody who spent any time in a
garden with your hands dirtywith and then watching something
(51:24):
grow, you know, like going fromthe early spring season when
the ground is gray and there'snothing growing Until, gradually
, something happens, that thingsstart to grow.
It's a very powerful way ofexploring this.
What?
What interests me a lot in this, though, is the notion of
(51:49):
tending a garden is that's thelanguage that you use.
You tend to garden, right, andyou talk about attending.
You know you talk aboutattention.
I see that our ability to holdattention long enough for things
to grow is pretty fragile, andso I wonder what you see?
(52:17):
I mean, obviously, all thosethings that you mentioned in
that tending, including thedesign team kind of thing, but
what makes it possible forpeople to hold their attention
long enough for something togrow, and not only long enough
for it to start to grow, but tosustain it?
I know earlier you talked about, you know, watching
(52:37):
relationships and people over 40years, and I know if you're
like the people, I know thatit's a very like, every year in
the garden is a different year,and if you're not paying
attention, it can all not growor the pest can take over, or so
(52:58):
anyway, I just wonder if youcould talk a little bit about
that.
What does it take to keep ourattention, even if it's not
perfect?
It's like what I see so oftenis that people's attention is
sucked out of them.
They're they're actually notable to pay attention because of
the structural things that arein place.
So I wonder if you could justtalk a little bit about what it
(53:21):
takes for us to hold ourattention long enough for
something to grow.
Beth Mount (53:27):
Well, I think what you're naming is the crisis of
our time, right?
So is there's a crisis in our,in humanity at the moment, where
it's getting increasinglydifficult for people to hold
their attention on creating theconditions, cultivating the
(53:49):
relationships between people andcultivating the quality of the
relationships between people.
And so it's a crisis, thiscapacity to cultivate and attend
.
And I think we, I can't addressthat question without talking
about love.
So, you know, the first thingthat comes to my mind when you
(54:13):
ask how we do that, well, thepeople who do that best in
general are people's families,are the parents, right, starting
with the parents.
Now, not everybody has parents.
I don't mean to grandma, thefit, the core, the place where
one has grown up and belongs,for better, for worse, as
(54:36):
challenging as every singlefamily is.
There's no such thing, as youknow, this sort of at least I
don't know if there is this sortof bubbling perfect family.
Forget about that's ridiculous.
But family is the place where,if we're fortunate, we have
(54:58):
experiences of being cared forand about and we are potential,
is nurtured, and so much of whatunfolds for people happens
through the commitment, thedevotion that comes with love.
So, that said, we know thatfamilies get beaten down to the
(55:22):
ground, with all thecomplexities of getting through
the day, and services andorganizations that hurt more
than help and all the othercomplexities of devaluation.
So I'm not romanticizingfamilies and I'm not suggesting
that, and that's why we work sohard to create good supports
(55:48):
that are other people who comein and bring everything they can
, their best intention, bringtheir love into a person's
development, into a sense ofwhat's possible for people.
And you know we don't talkabout love enough, right?
(56:11):
Because it's no such a mystery.
And and yet I was.
I I found a quote by one of mymentors, dinga McCannon, who is
an amazing artist and but Ithink it.
I think this quote really getswhat we're talking about here.
Dinga says an artist lives onfaith, the kind of faith that
(56:39):
the image comes.
So imagine that what we'rethinking about here.
The image is that star ofpossibility.
The potential comes, the new isborn with love.
You fall in love with everycreation and you want to see it
through.
If you don't fall in love, youwill not stick with it, period.
(57:05):
You won't stick with it.
You have no idea how it willturn out, but you trust the
process.
You trust that what you do tocreate order out of what is
generally very messy, chaoticreality will heal the world.
(57:25):
I love that right, because hereis a story, quilter Number one
falling in love with every piecebut imagining that her devotion
to each creation has some smallripple, and healing the world.
I think that's hugely importantfor us in our work.
(57:48):
Absolutely, maybe not even inyour lifetime, but in some way
you might never understand.
So this might you know, thesethings we hold so dear.
They truly might not beactualized in our lifetime, but
(58:09):
things will happen that we don'tunderstand.
Something always comes fromyour commitment to the process.
You will have no idea what thatmight be, but the new is
revealed through the creativeprocess.
So for me, dingus way ofthinking about creativity ties
(58:33):
together this quality of fallingin love, ties together devotion
, the commitment to stickingwith it, no matter how confusing
and difficult.
So this is, and Truly imaginingthat devotion in some small way
(58:57):
that you can't possibly fathom,is healing the world.
Right, like, oh my gosh, okay,this is not a person's inner
plan, this is, in some small waymaybe healing the world, and
that something new will berevealed.
And I think that's a big partof what keeps us engaged is we
(59:22):
anticipate.
We want to be a part of therevelation right.
We want to see what can comefrom our commitment and our
puzzles and our struggle and ourconfusion and our challenges.
We want to see what might comeand then we want to celebrate
(59:45):
that.
We want to tell those stories,we want to lift those up and
every time something surprisingand generative happens in the
life of one person, we want toimagine what it might take to do
that on behalf of some morefolks.
David Hasbury (01:00:05):
Well, it is interesting that we live in a
very antiseptic world and so thenotion of love doesn't get
addressed nearly enough, becausesustainability does require
love.
You must love something inorder for you to sustain the
(01:00:28):
journey, to kind of be with thatwhich you love and the who that
you love as they go through allthis.
And it relates to me, toanother element which is gift.
So any of the parents that I'veknown, and including myself,
(01:00:55):
when a child comes into yourlife, when a child has come into
their life, there is a sense ofbeing gifted, there's this
sense of receiving this awesomemystery in your life.
And then as you watch thatperson grow, no matter what
their capacities are, you watchhow they navigate the world and
(01:01:20):
it kind of just enhances thatsense of gift that comes from
them.
But I wonder if you could talk alittle bit about the importance
of uncovering, discovering,naming gifts and how we, how we
(01:01:40):
attend to discovering whatpeople's gifts are, because for
me the falling in love is in theexchange of gifts, and when you
actually bring something tosomeone else's life, consciously
or unconsciously, it bringssomething out that in that
person.
(01:02:00):
So I wonder if you could justtalk for a bit about your
understanding of gifts and howwe actually can uncover what
gifts are, for.
The thing that you talked about, dhinga, mentioning the kind of
changing the world kind ofelement, comes from the exchange
(01:02:22):
of gifts, the falling in loveand the thing that comes from
those things that you can't evenpredict what it would be.
So, anyway, I just toss it outto you as something to think
about, because it's been animportant part of the language
that many of us have shared fora long time the notion of
everyone has a gift.
Beth Mount (01:02:43):
Well, I, the person who comes to mind who's spoken
more wisely and and moreeloquently than anybody I know
about gifts is Judith Snow,right?
So I think, if we want tounderstand giftedness, the
(01:03:05):
discovery of gifts and what'sinvolved in cultivating gifts,
judith is an incrediblephilosopher and artist to learn
from.
And so, for people who don'tknow Judith, I think it's fair
to say she was the first personwho created a support circle in
our world, right, the Joshuacommittee, which was created to
(01:03:29):
support her to move out of anursing home with all the
challenges that she had.
So Judith navigated her lifefor many years until she passed
a few years ago in a kind ofbrilliant way, with in need of
constant support and verycomplex support, and I have a.
(01:03:55):
There's a quote from Judiththat I think resonates for me in
the question about gifts.
She says sustained, vibrantrelationship demands that the
person with a disability beviewed with a different vision
and listen to with a differentear, for most of all, the
(01:04:20):
alternative possibilities is tosee and hear the person as a
welcome fellow traveler.
We must see our shared journey,our shared life journey, as one
of transforming human sufferingby creating the supportive
(01:04:40):
relationships we all need tosustain life and of celebrating
together life's joys andvictories and surprises.
And so I think of Judith when Ithink of the question of finding
gifts, because that's one ofthose multi dimensional ideas.
(01:05:09):
Giftedness, that, yes, there'sthe specific gift that each of
us brings, that are being a goodlistener, or sense of humor, or
care about other people, orcreativity, whatever those
things might be.
But then there's this biggersense of giftedness, which is
(01:05:31):
that Judith was so insistentupon, which is that society
needs me, it needs us, peoplewith disabilities.
It needs our giftedness, ourpresence, in order to strengthen
itself, right, in order forsociety to evolve.
(01:05:55):
And so that, to me, is such animportant element of thinking
about giftedness, becausethere's the individual
giftedness that we hope touncover and reveal and our
journey with people.
But then there's this otherquality of healing.
(01:06:16):
You know, healing a societythat doesn't know how people
might support each other, thatdoesn't appreciate vulnerability
and dependency and the qualityof relationships that can grow
from that.
When we treasure vulnerabilityright, when we treasure
(01:06:40):
complexity and interdependence.
David Hasbury (01:06:44):
There were many things that you shared that were
important, but I think the oneof the things that I'm taking
from this is the attentionelement and how we can pay
attention, because out of 168hours in a week, how much time
are we devoting to the attentionnecessary to cultivate
(01:07:07):
relationships, gifts,connectedness and to ultimately
heal the society?
It is probably one of thosetimes when it feels like the
things that we know are valuableto the lives of the people with
(01:07:27):
disabilities that we've come toknow they are as valuable to
the rest.
Only we can pretend like we cansurvive without them, and the
people that we've come to knowwho are more vulnerable in some
aspects of their life need thesethings in order to survive.
(01:07:51):
You know, relationships arevital in order to survive.
Being seen as an equal is vitalin order to survive.
Making a contribution is notjust a good thing.
It's actually going to keep youmore likely to being able to
(01:08:15):
participate and take care ofyour own life as well as the
life of other people.
So, anyway, the attention pieceis really an important thing
for me that I was grabbing fromthis, along with all the rest,
which I'm glad is recorded,because I can always listen to
it again For a future podcast.
I would love to have aconversation with you that is
(01:08:37):
about so let me say, when peopleget a chance to take a look at
the Garden of Soul quilt, theywill be in awe of how beautiful
it is.
It's just full of color andrichness.
The beauty can be distractingbecause I know from other things
(01:08:59):
that you've done and the waythat you work and how you think
the incredible process of makingsomething is where the real,
where things really lie, all thethinking, the imagining, the
feeling, the kind of makingsense, all of that stuff that's
(01:09:20):
behind this beautiful image isimportant, and I'd love to have
a conversation with you aboutthat, and I'd love to have a
conversation with you about howinviting other people into that
process of making actually canunleash all of that as well in
them.
So anyway, we will do that onanother time.
(01:09:43):
Thanks a lot for spending thetime with us now and all the
best in what's going on for therest of the week.
Thank you.
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