Origin Story: Part Two
Why we're here: finishing the story
Dear Ones,
As you may remember, in response to feedback from some of your fellow readers, last week I started telling the story of how we all arrived here.
I’m finishing that story today.
Read on for the rest….
With Love,
Cecelia 💗
PS:
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PPS:
As a reminder, I am publishing extra public posts on Fridays, in the coming weeks/months, as For the Love of Humanity gets established and continues to get the word out about what we’re doing here.
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If you’d love to do that but it’s financially difficult for you right now, let me know. I’d genuinely be happy to comp your subscription and welcome you into the fold — no questions asked.
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I told you the first part of the Origin Story of For the Love of Humanity last week. And where I left off was when I got a life-changing diagnosis:
Breast Cancer.
Record-scratch.
A Life-Changing Diagnosis
I was young. I hadn’t even started regular mammograms yet. I had not thought about breast cancer more than just in passing, really.
And suddenly, I had to wrap my head around not only the fact that I had this disease I never imagined I’d have — but even more, that, even though I had been operating with the implicit understanding that I had decades to live still, that was not guaranteed. Like, at all.
I realized just how fragile these lives we’re living are.
You probably remember from the first part of the story last week that I had already been struggling to feel well, since experiencing yet another brutal bout of burnout — which I first succumbed to, as it turns out, about a year before my diagnosis. (I think they’re related, but we’ll talk about that another time.)
So I wasn’t gonna mess around with this diagnosis.
I was going to drop any distraction. And I was going to fully focus on — and truly prioritize, finally — my holistic wellness.
Thus began what I’ve somewhat jokingly called my “unplanned sabbatical.” I almost entirely withdrew from my public life. And I focused on my treatment — and on supporting my body, mind, and spirit throughout it all. A year-and-a-half journey brought me through multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, and more. Another way I referred to this time was my “cancer cocoon.”
So.
Here’s the thing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience of taking an extended break of some sort, but if you have, you’ll likely agree with me that your view of your life can become SO much different, if/when you step away from it for a while.
You can gain a whole new perspective on everything.
See with fresh eyes.
Reach new clarity.
I certainly did.
One of the gifts being within my “cancer cocoon” granted me was fresh clarity on my work in the world.
I realized I had been going about it all wrong.
And I saw how it needed to change.
My Long View
I started my adulthood living within two monasteries, while studying for and earning my Bachelor’s degree in English. After that experience, I moved into one intentional community, followed by another… and soon, I had moved into what was essentially an ashram, where I dedicated my days to study and growth within the inner mystical spiritual path. I have often joked that I have “monastic tendencies,” and those tendencies continue to this day.
I was eventually ordained as a mystical priest, while in the process of attending graduate school to become a social worker and earning my MSW.
Like I told you last week, social work led me into fundraising.
As a lifelong writer, grant writing was a natural entry-point for me. Before long, I became quite the expert in that realm — writing proposals for every layer of government (federal, state, county, city), and to private institutional funders too.
And I soon moved into practicing all the other elements of nonprofit fundraising and development, as well (from working with boards; to PR, communications, and marketing; to event-planning; to building relationships with donors; to writing fundraising appeals). I voraciously studied and followed so-called “best practices.” I was a true generalist.
I was really getting the full picture of this work.
And before long, I started becoming uncomfortable.
Things felt weird.
Perhaps because of both my spiritual and social work training, or even simply because I was especially in touch with my own humanity, I often noticed how much various gnarly societal dynamics — related to race, class, gender, and more — were creating lots of opportunity for dissonance, extra stress, and unique pressures.
Not fun.
Not life-giving.
Not very loving, that’s for sure.
I’ve now been working in this field of philanthropy for more than a decade-and-a-half. And I’ve been working to transform its unhealthy, problematic daily realities and pervasive systems for most of that time.
The “Systems Change” We Actually Need
As I mentioned, I’ve been involved in efforts of systems change in the “industry” of philanthropy (including nonprofits and fundraising) for a long time now.
In a word, these efforts have been trying.
Rough.
Hard.
Here are eight words, also very true to my experiences in these efforts: like banging our heads against a brick wall.
Notice the our?
I used that language to make clear that I’m not just talking about myself, here. This kind of work is never the work of an individual, and I have many collaborators who have struggled alongside me over the years.
We are tired.
We are worn down.
Some have even started to lose hope.
With good reason.
And here I am, asking you not to do that. Because I am seeing another way, one we haven’t tried yet, one that was right in front of me the entire time.
I didn’t see it, because I was playing the game the way I had been taught to play it. I was being “professional” and only accessing, and revealing, certain parts of who I am.
Lots was compartmentalized, tucked away.
Meanwhile, I did my best to navigate the universes I found myself in, striving to keep my integrity intact.
But do you see the conflict, there?
Maintaining one’s integrity is actually pretty difficult if you are not allowing yourself to bring your full humanity to the table.
Integrity means “the state of being whole, undivided.”
So.
I wasn’t in full integrity.
And that stops now.
I was ordained a mystical priest before I became a professional fundraiser.
And I prioritized my spiritual development long before I started learning about “development” as a means to raise funds for mission-based work.
This focus on spiritual development and growth is absolutely core to who I am. And it is core to who I’ve been as a fundraiser, as a result.
Yet, I’ve never explicitly talked about anything related to it in my work — and I’ve certainly never written about it publicly.
To be clear, it wasn’t a secret.
Many who know me knew this about me already — though most people who knew me professionally did not.
Yet.
I have often heard some version of this feedback from people, often in professional settings: “You have such good energy.” Or “There’s just something about you. Something special.” Or “I just really like to be around you. I always gain so much just by being with you.”
When I’ve heard things like this, I’ve smiled, because I’ve known exactly why they were experiencing what they were experiencing. But they didn’t have all the information to know exactly why. And I didn’t offer it. Because it seemed like that was something to keep apart from my professional life.
No more.
Not just because I want to more fully embody my integrity — but also, because I’ve realized that integrating inner development and growth into the work of philanthropy, particularly systemic change, is essential to solving all of the problems we’ve been trying to solve within the field.
I’ve realized that integrating inner development and growth into the work of philanthropy, particularly systemic change, is essential to solving all of the problems we’ve been trying to solve within the field.
And this is why For the Love of Humanity is here.
We’ve been “struggling” against, “fighting” to change, trying to dismantle a well-established system that, like all systems, is designed to function a certain way and generally operates like machinery, with the occasional tune-up to forestall a blatant break-down. But like most machines, this system is built to keep on working, in the manner in which it was created.
Systems are huge.
Systems are, by definition, more-than-human.
They are the ways in which humans endeavor to collaborate with each other, to create a means to accomplish things bigger than just one or two could alone.
Systems have SO much potential to be powerful forces for good.
Yet, systems so often become powerful forces for maintaining a status quo that is actively harmful to many of the human beings within them.
The professionalized field of philanthropy (including all work in fundraising and nonprofits) is an example of this happening.
At scale, this field is now largely de-humanizing, rather than humanizing.
This may come as a shock to some, given the public image of this field as all about doing good and helping people.
Here's why this has become true: the more “philanthropy” has yielded to the wider, dominant culture we live in (one yoked to the realities of coloniality, capitalism, patriarchy, androcentrism, the supremacy of “Whiteness” and “White” ways of being, heteronormativity, lack of inclusion for those with disabilities, etc.), the less good it has done — and the more harm it has done.
Quite a lot of harm, I'm pained to say.
And this is what I have been working so hard to change…
…while seeing very little progress.
So.
What have I been missing?
What have we been missing?
Our perspective has been off.
We keep looking at the problem as one being “out there.” The system, as we talk about it, is something that we are pointing to.
We may talk about “fighting against” it.
We may talk about “dismantling” it.
We may shake our heads at its problems.
But the system is not out there.
The system is in here.
We need to take our pointer fingers, the ones we’ve been using to point to a system “out there,” and turn them towards ourselves, landing right on our own solar plexus.
The system is in here.
And “in here” is where we need to work on changing it.
Change From Inside-Out
Think about it.
Each and every moment that we are living within a system, actively functioning as a part of it, we are co-creating that system.
We may feel powerless within that system — and as an individual, we may be, to a degree. But when we widen our view and see the collective of humans that is a part of that system, we can see that the system would not exist at all without the people within it. And thus, each of the individuals is an essential part of a whole that functions as one, much like our own bodies and all of their cells.
Actions of individual cells can take down an entire body…
…like the cancer I experienced.
At the same time, the health of individual cells, mutually affecting and working in harmony with each other, is what creates a reality of robust health for the whole body.
The body cannot be healthy without healthy cells.
And healthy cells, working together as one healthy whole, make for a healthy system.
Here’s another metaphor to illustrate how this works:
Think of a rock being thrown into a pond.
Circles ripple out from where it went in.
This is exactly how change happens among humans, since we all share a common field of energy, like water in a pond — so our personal energy is directly, and easily, affected by others’ personal energy.
If we transform ourselves, the people around us will start to change too.
Then the people around them will start to change.
And so on…
…as the concentric circles reverberate out, getting bigger and bigger, eventually affecting most of the water in the pond.
Make sense?
So OK.
Great.
Widening, concentric circles of transformation in humans.
So what?
How does that change anything in our world… really?
Here’s an abiding truth that has probably been spoken many times. One of the people it’s been associated with is Albert Einstein — who is attributed with saying, essentially, that no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. Similarly, I think of Audre Lorde’s teaching that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
Our consciousness — who we are — is what affects our world most.
Remember.
We are human beings.
Not human doings.
Or human goings.
So our consciousness is what we need to focus on transforming.
If we can do that, we will have a whole new way to see and understand our problems… and to work together on changing them. If we can transform our consciousness, then — and only then — we can truly transform our shared reality.
If we can transform our consciousness, then — and only then — we can truly transform our shared reality.
We are human beings.
Being involves our essence. Being involves who we are at the most core level. Even more, our being carries inherent value. There is nothing it needs to do, nowhere it needs to go, to earn that value.
Is this the way most of us live?
I’d say no.
Wouldn’t you?
The inner mystical path is a process of going deeper and deeper into our inner being… until we get to our core, which is — spoiler alert — pure love.
Can you believe it?
I can.
Because I’ve been on that journey myself.
And I want you to come on that journey, too.
Because can you even imagine?
Can you even imagine how different this world would be, how different all of its systems would be, if they were being created by human beings who were fully conscious of their true selves? People who were fully attuned to love?
Wow.
What a revelation.
What a revolution.
Are you ready?
Are you ready for an entirely different philanthropy… which will create an entirely different world than what we have today?
Something more whole?
Something more human?
Something more loving?
We can find a better way forward.
Together.
Are you in?
A Special Note:
We will hold our first Community Coaching session next month.
Are you interested in gathering via Zoom for live conversation on these topics — and especially in exploring how to integrate them into your life and work?
Be sure to sign up for a paid subscription now, so you don’t miss that chance!
If you’d love to do that but it’s financially difficult for you right now, let me know. I’d genuinely be happy to comp your subscription and welcome you into the fold — no questions asked.
Community is what we’re about here, and that’s what we’re prioritizing here, every day. Join us!