Creating Social Change and The Beginner’s Mind

I hadn’t participated in an event like this before.  I didn’t recognize the name of the organization, but as I read the email, I saw that I received the invitation on the recommendation of a young colleague who was a “change-maker” in this organization’s program.  The organization works “at the intersection of faith and social change.”  I had no idea what that meant.  But I was asked to attend a luncheon followed by a series of presentations.  These were pitches to be made by entrepreneurial “change-makers.”  To support my colleague, a young African-American minister, I decided to go.

Eight people from around the United States made pitches to a group of about fifty people.  Questions were limited to three former program graduates.  Really, I was just there as an encourager of these new “change-makers.”  Some of the ideas pitched were very bold and creative:

1. A virtual reality-based therapeutic protocol for mental health clinicians to use in working with members of nationalist hate groups looking get away from a life built on white supremacist values.
2. A professional network of African-American women entrepreneurs partnered with women establishing businesses in Uganda.
3. An interactive fitness app for use in middle and high schools to get kids more active.
4. An umbrella organization to build a network of dinner groups for millennials who are invited to share their life stories with each other (in order to build real-life community).
5. A program model to reduce recidivism among released felons that works to address issues of trauma as well as offer practical skills to this population.

Yes, the program ideas for social change were varied, unique, and could have considerable impact.  The sponsoring organization, DO GOOD X, was providing technical support and teaching business models to bring these ideas to fruition for women and people of color who hoped to be change makers in their communities and beyond.

As I returned home from the event, I thought about what I witnessed.  Of late, I’ve been in something of a dark place because of the politics of the United States.  The country is being ripped apart and people are hurting each other.  I recently thought about Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign of 1972 and how we, as a nation, struggle with the same issues she hoped to address when I was in high school.  A friend of mine who was a kind and saintly man was shot at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Shortly after, I saw the movie Bohemian Rhapsody (a movie about Freddie Mercury) and was left overwhelmed with grief because of the number of talented people who died because of AIDS while governments stone-walled solutions. It all led me to a certain kind of pity-party which began with the thought, “Nothing really matters.”  From there, my mood became darker.

Somewhere along the way, the Buddhist concept of the beginner’s mind occurred to me.  To put it simply in the context of this essay, one who is older, experienced, and has developed expertise (all of which can be good) usually sees limited solutions to the problems they face based on previous experience.  But it’s very different from the beginner’s mind.  The beginner sees possibilities and countless solutions.  Buddhist practice challenges adherents to return to the beginner’s mind, to see these new, to begin again as one were a novice.

This same message is found in the writings of my hero, Teresa of Avila.  While she’s writing about contemplative prayer, her advice is true for many things.  She admonishes her readers to return often to the stage of the beginner, the suckling, the infant.  Teresa enjoins those on the contemplative path to experience prayer — and really all of life — as though it were new.  It’s in this kind of newness that hope, creativity, refreshment, and yes, social change occurs.  When we depend on tired, old, familiar perspectives, we fall further into darkness, as I was last week.  But the beginner’s mind:  that’s where new life can be found.

Honestly, I have no idea whether virtual reality protocols can help reduce hatred or if millennials really want to gather in a dinner club to form a community.  But I do know that these are not things I would have conceived.  My ideas for social change are those of an old-timer.  I did my best work in creating organizations and being parts of movements in my 20’s and 30’s when all was truly new to me.  I had the proper role at DO GOOD X as an encourager.  At the same time, the new ideas reminded me to get out of myself and rediscover life with a beginner’s mind. That’s how change will happen.

Photo Source: Foter.com