Global Integrators—21

7Is for GIs

Seven Indicators for Global Integrators

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Member Care Updates and Global Integration Updates.

 

We think that the time is coming for a diversity of colleagues to join together intentionally, visibly, and practically on behalf of global integration (GI). GI put simply is how we skillfully integrate our lives and values on behalf of the issues facing humanity. Likewise we think that the time is coming for colleagues to carefully reflect and act on what it means to be good global learners-practitioners--to seriously consider what it means to be what we are calling global integrators (GI-People).

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This entry identifies seven core indicators--seven I’s--that we think are important to help guide Global Integrators. There are surely more too! The seven indicators are qualitative markers rather than quantitative measures. The descriptions below also include Member Care Updates which provide resources that specifically relate to the indicators. Indicator 7, Imparting your life (love) links them all.

Clarify your:

Interests
Involvements
Influences

Cultivate your:

Interior
Integrity
Inspirations

Impart your life

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1. Issues--Pursue your passions.

What issues matter to you the most? What are you passionate about? What are you naturally motivated to learn more about? In short: explore, expand, engage.

Clarify your interests further as you explore what other sectors, organizations, countries etc. are doing with regards to these issues. Be prepared to expand your “experiential boundaries,” knowing that it can be a bit uncomfortable but also rewarding. It may take time and effort to significantly connect and contribute. Don’t go alone but get involved with others. Find compatible colleagues with similar interests and key groups and networks in which you can be part and engage together on global issues.

2. Involvements--Till the terrain.

How much do you want to get involved in specific global issues?  With whom? What is realistic for you given your current commitments and need to make a living? Here is a “continuum of involvement” for clarification.

Informed----------Included----------Immersed

The continuum begins with more minor involvement in a global area, such as reading the reports, a journal, or a UN publication about things like human trafficking, climate change, or the sustainable development goals (informed). It then proceeds to a midpoint and the inclusion of a global area in one’s work such as road traffic accidents, child disabilities in a specific region, or non-communicable diseases (included).The end of the continuum could involve becoming a recognized participant in a global area or part of a group (organization, sector) such as working part-time in a human rights advocate in a non-governmental organization, developing culturally relevant psychosocial support for victims of gender violence, or setting up elementary schools for refugee children in a country (immersed).

 3. Influences--Get a grid.

What has influenced your desire and ability to connect and contribute more globally? The gird below can help you clarify these influences.

List 3-5 items for each of the six categories below. As you review your past, you will likely get a better sense of what your future course might look like.

•      Principles/Beliefs
•      Documents/Materials
•      Organizations/Groups
•      People/Models
•      Milestones/Gravestones (important events/experiences, for the better or worse)

 à Charting a Future Course

Applications for Member Care—Interests, Involvements, and Influences

Strategies for Crossing Sectors: February 2014. “How do we practically connect and contribute across sectors in order to stay in touch with our globalizing world and to further develop our member care skills? The first resource links you to core suggestions for Charting Your Course through the Sectors (from chapter two in the new Global Member Care book) [interests, involvements, influences, as per above in this entry]. This chapter also updates the international member care model (five spheres, 2002, O’Donnell and Pollock) to help guide us into the next developmental phase of member care. The second resource provides suggestions for how you and your colleagues can effectively use the multi-sectoral materials in the new Global Member Care book (from the Application section on the Global MCA website). Crossing sectors is a crucial direction that supports and shapes good global practice in member care.”

4. Interior--Self-Care 

How do you cultivate your inner world? What things do you do practically for self-care, personal growth, and resiliency?

Grow deeply as you go broadly. Practice the basics of self care, such as good nutrition, sleep, expressing gratitude, prayer/reflection, time with friends, exercise, etc. especially during seasons of stress and times of adversity.

Member Care Application—Interior

Resiliency Toolkit–Strengthening Ourselves and Others: November 2015. “This Update focuses on developing resiliency. It provides practical resources to  promote well-being and effectiveness (WE) for workers in mission, aid, and development as well as for member care workers themselves. The resources include brief assessments and articles–core items in a versatile toolkit to strengthen yourself and others. Periodically we do special Updates that feature items to put in such a member care toolkit. Five past examples are archived HERE: 12/2009 Resiliency, 8/2010 Self-Care, 3/2012 Work-Life Balance, 1/2013 Cool Tools, and 10/2014 Creative Healing. We finish the Update with a reflection on resilience from Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (available now as an ebook) as well as one of our favorite resiliency songs, Ready for the Storm.”

5. Integrity—Being Moral

How do you cultivate your highest standards and values? To what extent do you follow them both privately and publically? In what ways can you be susceptible to corruption—the opposite of integrity--in its many subtle forms?

Integrity is moral wholeness. It is living consistently in light of your highest virtues and values (moral wholeness). It acknowledges personal weakness and wrongness, including the possibility and likelihood of self deception/justification, and seeks to live act virtuously with courage and consistency.

Member Care Applications—Integrity

Counting the Cost–Living with Integrity and Courage: January 2015. “This month’s Update is a summons to act with integrity and courage in our lives–to support us as we “count the cost” of doing what is right and helping vulnerable people. The first set of resources features three thought-provoking items: a) a TEDx presentation by a humanitarian journalist on her experiences covering war and the courage of ordinary people; b) a compelling exegesis on Christ’s parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25; and c) the millennial homily by John Paul II honoring Christian martyrs in the 20^thcentury. The second set of resources feature three items that point us towards the personal qualities needed to do member care and mission/aid well: a) the recent Global Integration webinar on healing/mental health in our violent world; b) the compilation of articles in b) Sorrow and Blood and c) Serving Jesus with Integrity. We finish this Update by taking the call for integrity and courage to the macro level: the final video lecture from Jeffery Sach’s online course on The Age of Sustainable Development (safeguarding the world’s future—people and the planet).”

Member Character: July 2012. “This issue focuses on the development of character for all those in mission/aid, especially member care workers. We see character as the core qualities of a person. These qualities are consistent over time and also reflect one’s moral goodness. Character is shaped by our life experiences, including hardship and role models. We include two set of resources from a Christian Perspective and a Social Psychology Perspective, in order to stimulate your own character growth and to support you in your work.”

6. Inspiration—Sustaining Sources

What gets you going in the morning? And what keeps you going through life? Is there a set of beliefs and values, sense of purpose and meaning, to motivate and sustain you? Something transcendent? Humanitarian principles, ethical imperatives, sense of duty, love, faith, God? How do you cultivate these?

Member Care Applications—Inspiration

Jesus Christ—The Lord of Member Care: September 2015. “This month we feature the main person in the Member Care field, Jesus Christ. We have lovingly referred to Him in our member care writings over the years by many different names: the Master Carer, the Good Practitioner, the Heart of Member Care, the Multilingual Messiah, the Pearl of Great Price, the Precious Pantocrator (The Almighty), and the Pierced-One. These names are actually titles of great honor and they are the focus of this Update: Jesus Christ the Lord of Member Care (a new title!), the One whom we all seek to know, love, and serve with all our being.“

 7. Imparting your life--Love

How much is laying down your life and serving others part of your work and life in general? How much do you want to give of yourself to others, being compassionate, maintaining the human quality of your work--doing to others as you want them to do to you?

Love is not a soft skill. It is tough work. And it is core, in our view, for doing member care well, and doing global integration well, for doing life well.

 Member Care Applications—Imparting your Life.

Ordinary Heroes: March 2013. “This month we focus on ordinary heroes, especially those whose ongoing, sacrificial and often unrecognised acts of goodness truly help others. Member care workers, and the mission/aid workers whom they support, and the people with whom mission/aid workers support, can often fit into this definition of ordinary hero. The first set of resources focus mostly on understanding ordinary heroism. The second set of resources focus on supporting ordinary heroes, emphasizing women whose lives are ransacked by exploitation, poverty, and degradation.”

Member Care and Resiliency--Part 4

Salquatic Humans

Tear system for the right eye,
including the lacrimal gland (top left) and tear ducts (center right)—Wikipedia.

Human resiliency is the ability to face reality:

to deal with and grow through life’s challenges.

How resilient are you?

You may never know until you weep.
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Sometimes its helpful to create new terms, like salquatic. Its roots are Latin-based. This term is made up of two words: salis for salt and aqua for water. When you combine and contract them a bit you get the adjective/word salquatic, meaning "capable of crying"—ranging from being tearful to having tear flows.

Let’s combine the first two entries on resiliency (16, 28 December 2009)--emphasizing water and salt metaphors. We want to now focus on our special capacity to cry as humans.

Tears are a hydro-saline substance comprised of water (H20) and salt (NaCl). You know, saltwater. They are formed and stored in special repositories (glands, see illustration above) from which this substance is emitted, especially during times of strong emotion. I like to think of our tear glands as being filled with emotional saltwater.

Humans are salquatic.

And some are more so than others.

It is an amazing, healing, resiliency-building ability.

Resiliency and Pain

Resilient people are able to express their pain to others and to share the pain of others. They can cry. They can weep. They can express a vast range of “healing feeling” as humans, including deep sadness. They can certainly be negatively impacted by injustice and abuse, lost friendships, death of loved ones, and a host of other wrenching experiences. Yet because resilient people endeavor to squarely face their challenges, they are not usually overwhelmed. Their hearts can break but not be shattered. Their hearts can wound but also mend. They can call upon three intertwining qualities to help them manage reality:

1. inner strength, especially perseverance

2. good social support

3. deep sense of meaning in life, including belief in God.

Crying and at times weeping are key parts of human relationships, the healing process, and the further development of resiliency. Resilient people embrace all of their emotions and they help others do the same.

We along with other colleagues have certainly been learning what it means to be salquatic humans over the last few years. At times we have felt very much like Jeremiah, known for his broken heart as he persevered unsuccessfully in exhorting Judah to return wholeheartedly to YHWH (e.g., ‘but if you will not listen my soul will sob in secret and my eyes will bitterly weep;’ Jer. 13:15-19). We can also relate very much to “Paul et al” who were so often ‘afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing…so that the life or Christ would be more fully manifested through them’ (2 Cor. 4:7-12). Like the many Biblical models, we do not give up. We persevere until truth and justice prevail.

Jeremiah, by Michelangelo, 1508-1512

Quotes, Notes, and More

1. Conference. Here is another entry from Dr. Vance and Dr. Bethyl Shepperson’s weblog, The Encouragers (22 November 2009). It is a notation from a presentation by Scott Shaum on resiliency at the Mental Health and Missions Conference (19-22 November 2009).

“Comfort does not mean removal of trouble. Comfort means Presence in midst of trouble. God’s presence requires my presence. God with skin on Him. My and your arms, legs, ears. So in midst of trouble look for God at work. It’s a construction zone. Slow down. Hard hat, open heart—the path of Gospel ministry. Don’t assume you are doing something wrong, bad, or are being punished. Look with the eye of a miner who is digging for treasure. The whole book of 2 Cor provides the best glimpse of suffering’s superiority. We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, for ex, so that the life of Jesus might be repeated in our body. 4:10-12."

2. Book. The next brief quote is from John Fawcett’s edited book, Stress and Trauma Handbook: Strategies for Flourishing in Demanding Environments (2003—click here to see a book review). The quote is from the chapter by Cynthia Eriksson et al. It summarizes research on the adjustment of World Vision aid workers from over 30 countries:

"...for each of the mental health risk adjustment measures (depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and burnout) 30-50 percent of staff scored in the moderate to high-risk range. This is a significant number of people who are working and 'surviving' while experiencing considerable emotional distress. These staff may not be incapacitated by these symptoms presently, but we cannot deny the effects that depression, burnout, and PTSD can have on relationships, work, and personal health. An NGO's commitment to people includes the welfare of beneficiaries around the world, but it also includes the well-being of staff who commit their lives to serving and saving others." (p. 95)

3. Video. As we enter into a new decade we recommend watching the 13 minute United Nations Year in Review (located in the “See the Latest” section on the homepage of UN’s webcast site). This Review summarizes several major world challenges and the efforts of the United Nations in 2009. We see many disturbing events yet many encouraging examples of human courage and resiliency throughout this Review. Other examples of personal stories and international media reports are listed on the Media that Matters section of our Member Caravan website.

4. Tool. Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss. This resource is a creative and powerful way to help people work thorough grief. Tear Soup tells a simple story—with beautiful illustrations and trans-cultural relevance—of a women’s experience with deep loss in her life. Many important principles for dealing with loss are woven into the story. We highly recommend and regularly use this resource, available as a book and in DVD. Published by Grief Watch.

5. Music. Jon Foreman. The Cure for Pain. Jon Foreman is a 33 year old musician--singer, guitarist, songwriter. His music is creative, evocative, and varied. Struggles, yearnings, friends, and God are central themes which he effectively and often somewhat divergently weaves together in his lyrics. Listen to his above song (YouTube link) as well as to brief samples of his latest, superb CD: Limbs and Branches.

Courage.

Trust God.

Stay the course.

May your tears strengthen you and others.

Reflection and Discussion
1. How salquatic are you---how “well” are you able to cry? What in life has influenced your ability to cry?

2. Describe a time when you wept (“tear flows of emotional saltwater”) or supported another person who was weeping.

3. List three of your main worries right now. Then rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of:
               Difficulty to resolve  Emotional pain  Impact on you/others
Worry 1:
Worry 2:
Worry 3:

If your worries could talk, what would they say to you, in a couple sentences? What would you say back to them, in a couple sentences?

4. What is Jon Foreman’s “cure for pain” in his song? (see link above, point 5)

5. Read the short and thoughtful piece linked below. It overviews the life of Jeremiah. List a couple ways that your life or the life of someone you know is like that of Jeremiah. www.frontlinemin.org/jeremiah.asp

Member Care and Organisational Health

Signs of Organisational Health

I am back at Ards Friary, Donegal Ireland. In my mind. In my heart. I come here often. Thinking about healthy organisations. Thinking especially about healthy faith-based organisations. Orwell has been so helpful. But what are the positive examples? How did the Franciscan monks for example, such as here at Ards Friary, maintain a healthy organisational life--and a healthy community?

How rewarding it is to work in an organisation, a community, a team, a network, with these features:

1. Mutual respect among staff
2. Fair pay/compensation
3. Opportunities to make contributions
4. Opportunities for advancement and personal growth
5. Sense of purpose and meaning
6. Management with competence and integrity
7. Safeguards to protect individuals (staff and customers) from injustice
8. Responsibility for actions: owning mistakes, not blaming others or covering up
9. Honesty in communication and public disclosures: not slanting the truth or exagerating
10. Accountability for personal/work life: seeking out feedback and ways to improve, not ignoring or pretending
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Reflection and Discussion
1. How would you add to or adjust the above list?
2. What are the three core characteristics in an organisation that would make you want to be part of it and really contribute?