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Notes for
the by Paul Pribbenow, Ph.D. |
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Philanthropy is a journey. Let JGA be your guide. Johnson, Grossnickle and
Associates LLC
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Volume
Two, Number Six (August 2001) ****** "What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how." (W. Wordsworth, from "The Prelude") NOTES FROM READERS >>What you think<< I trust and hope that
your summer has been relaxing and refreshing.
It has been relatively quiet here, with just a few notes from
readers, many of them personal updates, for which I am grateful. Ray Marshall, one of
our Canadian colleagues, writes wisely of the value of “letting go”
of self-imposed expectations, learning to be where you need to be.
The idea of being present to others has come up often for me
these past several months. My
brother, Dean Pribbenow, suggests that being present for your child is
one of the core lessons of being a parent (which my wife and I soon will
be, to our adoptive son from Vietnam!) Several of you write to
thank me for what you call the “service” of these newsletters.
I’m intrigued by that notion.
The occasion to think, reflect, be led to new words and concepts
(or reminded of those faded from our minds), consider alternative
perspectives—perhaps a service, but certainly also a labor of love
(which I believe it must become for all of us).
The work of philanthropy…the labors of love.
Our work, our labors. Some of my closest
advisors suggest a slight adjustment editorially in these
Notes—namely, drop a page or two from each issue.
Which I will do, both as a way of focusing better on what I think
is most important (we can all use a good self-editor!) and also as a nod
to my readers, whose lives and schedules don’t always allow for so
much text. Let me know what
you think. Occasionally, I (or my
colleagues) refer to items from previous issues of Notes.
If you have not been a subscriber previously, and wish to review
our conversations, past issues of Notes are available on-line at www.jgacounsel.com.
The website version of Notes also includes helpful hyperlinks to
sources for purchasing or subscribing to the various publications
mentioned in Notes. I
thank my friends at Johnson,
Grossnickle and Associates for their abiding support for our
reflective practice. ****** REFLECT
ON THIS >>I
need your help<< Not long ago, Fred, the
president of the small Lutheran congregation I serve as interim
minister, and I were outside the church after services and a woman
pulled up in an old, rusted-out car.
I had met her before and knew what she wanted.
“I need your help,” she said, “My husband is in the
hospital in Indianapolis and I need money for gas to go and visit
him.” I had no way to
evaluate her request, no context for knowing whether she truly needed
the money or not, what she might do with the money if I gave it to her,
but she was asking for my help; she was asking me, and so I gave her the
ten dollars I had in my pocket, said that I hoped her husband would
recover, and she was on her way. As she pulled away,
Fred looked at me and said exactly what I knew he would say, perhaps
what he should have said, “I’m not sure she was telling the truth.
I’ve seen her around and she often comes to the food pantry
several times in the same day, trying to get more than she deserves.”
I agreed that I might have been duped, it was hard to know, but
she had asked for my help and I responded as best I could. I need your help.
This is such a difficult issue for those of us in this
contemporary age. The
requests for our assistance come in slicker and slicker forms—in fact,
some of us create those glitzy forms—and you never quite know what to
believe, or whether someone is trying to put something over on you.
What is the right thing to do? These questions were on
my mind as I recently read the familiar
biblical story of the so-called Good Samaritan.
The parable seems to offer an obvious answer to our dilemma: When
someone is in need, we have the obligation as neighbors to respond to
that need (not to pass by on the other side).
What could be simpler? Clearly,
then, I did the right thing; I was a Good Samaritan to the woman asking
for my help. But I wonder if we
might look at the story of the Good Samaritan from another perspective,
not from the view of those of us called to help, but instead through the
eyes of those who, like the traveler on the road, robbed and stripped of
all he has, need our help. Can we put ourselves in the place of the needy, see what it
is like to ask for help, to need a neighbor? I think that asking for
help is much more difficult than giving.
We have a hard time imagining that we can’t take care of
ourselves, that we need someone, that we must ask for someone to go out
of their way to help us…we have a hard time saying “I need your
help.” And because of
that I think we have trouble understanding what it means to be a good
neighbor. Being a good neighbor
means that there is mutuality, at least two sides to a relationship.
It is not simply someone who needs help on one hand and someone
there to help on the other…it is two people, both in need, both able
to help. Can we imagine
ourselves as both the needy and the provider? “I
need your help” may be the most difficult words we self-sufficient 21st
century humans have to say, which is why I gave the needy woman the cash
I had in my pocket. I need
your help, she said, and the neighbor in me, trying to figure out how to
say those same words when I am in need, responded as best I could.
It wasn’t about being a Good Samaritan—it’s actually pretty
easy to be the giver—it’s about the commonality of need—it’s
about sharing all we have and do not have. Learn how to say, “I
need your help,” and from there (!) learn what it means to be a good
neighbor, not just to someone, but with the others in our
lives, both friends and strangers, with whom we share all that we have
to offer each other. [Questions for discussion: How do you respond when a street person asks for your help? What might we learn from how others ask us for help—think especially about someone coming to your door, calling you on the phone, stopping you on the street? What do you think it means to be a neighbor? Think about a time when you needed help—were you able to ask for it?] >>A
new definition of accountability << Peter Block, whose work
I’ve discussed here before, has a remarkable vision for helping
organizations become more service-driven.
His “Stewardship:
Choosing Service over Self-Interest” (Berrett-Koehler, 1993) has
been influential in my work as a manager as he urges us to consider how
to create accountability at all levels of an organization by placing
control close to the core work. In
a recent issue of “Leadership
in Action” (Volume 20: No. 6, January/February 2001), Block is
interviewed and offers these ideas about redefining accountability.
****** PRACTICE
THIS >>Reading
lists<< Summers seem a
traditional time for making reading lists unencumbered by professional
duties or disciplinary edicts. At
least that is our fond and nostalgic hope. Harold Bloom, the Yale
University and NYU humanities professor, suggests in a delightful “Harvard
Business Review” (May 2001) interview that our reading lists can
be the source of imagination and reflection on the human condition.
He recommends that Bill Gates (of Microsoft fame), and all of us,
start by reading the works of Shakespeare.
Reading Shakespeare, he says, “is like overhearing yourself,”
not hearing yourself, but overhearing yourself, learning about yourself
without self-consciousness. And
there is no better way to learn. He
also recommends Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” and calls Cervantes the
best of all novelists, teaching all of us how to develop richer and
newer egos by talking with each other.
He says that we must read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance,” which so captures the American ethos, while also
linking us to general human aspirations throughout the ages.
And finally, he says, we must read Sigmund Freud, the central
imagination of our times; the only Western mythology intellectuals have
in common. Bloom’s
provocative interview also includes: criticisms of contemporary poetry
(“it has no irony, which defines art”) and Harry Potter; his
contention that change always arises out of the unexpected, and that
good literature can increase our capacity for mastering change; and the
conclusion that American religion produces some unique opportunities and
strange dangers. Worth a
read. Not pretending to be
Harold Bloom, but nonetheless in her own way inspiring, Carolyn Foster
Segal, an English professor at Cedar Crest College, opines in “The
Chronicle of Higher Education” (July 6, 2001) that literature and
memories of summer reading are for her like Faulkner’s metaphor for
the past: “(N)ot a diminishing road, but, instead, a huge meadow which
no winter ever quite touches.” Books
are markers, books can save us—quite literally some of us believe. And that is why our reading lists must never be unpopulated,
no matter what season it may be. ****** PAY
ATTENTION TO THIS >>Following
up on the professions<< My interests in the
nature and meaning of the professions in America sometimes lead me to
fascinating alternative perspectives.
Consider two recent articles: Thomas Malone,
professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, who is featured in the May
2001 “Fast Company,” suggests that instead of professions (which
are but one way of organizing work in society), we may see the
reemergence of guilds as the means by which workers associate with
others who share an occupational affinity, develop skills, and share
needs for benefits and security. He
and colleagues are researching what these new-economy guilds (which were
the dominant form of organizing work in the Middle Ages) will look like
in the 21st century, suggesting that companies and other
organizations may become guilds, more loosely configured than the
traditional bureaucratic institutional model, more focused on providing
a context that allows workers to do what they do best, whatever that may
be. He points to the
emergence of guild-like organizations such as the Web Artists’
Consortium and even some college alumni associations that offer an
identity and benefits that are not linked to one employer.
Worth considering what this might mean for philanthropic
fundraisers. “The
Wilson Quarterly” (Summer 2001) reports on an article by St. Olaf
College professor, Gordon Marino (originally published in “Commonweal,”
3/23/01) entitled “Avoiding Moral Choices.”
Marino’s argument is that the growth in number and influence of
professional ethics experts (especially bioethicists) should be a source
of concern for our society. These
ethicists, often offering nothing more than common sense advice, pose a
danger—not because they’re necessarily wrong—but because the rest
of us, taking the easy way out, will avoid moral decisions and issues
with the excuse that they are too complicated and best left to the
“experts.” Unfortunately,
Marino says, there aren’t any. I
can’t help but think of the stem-cell research debate.
This argument has implications for many professions, as expertise
often excuses and skews the responsibility taking that must accompany
our lives in the world. >>Some
new resources<< A couple new sources
for your reflective practice. I’m reading a good
bit about the liberal arts these days and especially enjoyed Riches
for the Poor: The Clemente Course in the Humanities by Earl
Shorris (2nd edition, W. W. Norton, 2000), a fascinating
account of how the humanities can be a tool for social change. Speaking of
professionals and the professions, it is always helpful to remember that
there are those who do what they love as amateurs—and would have it no
other way. Consider Wayne
Booth’s wonderful book, For
the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals (University of Chicago
Press, 1999). I recently had a fun
assignment: serving as technical editor for the Nonprofit
Kit for Dummies, authored by Stan Hutton and Frances Phillips
(Hungry Minds Books, 2001). The
book and accompanying CD are quite well done—and particularly helpful
for nonprofits just getting started.
I learned a good bit from Hutton and Phillips. >>
A mindset<< I heard Garrison
Keillor read this poem on his daily “Writer’s Almanac” (August 8,
2001) and thought it pretty well summed up why being reflective can seem
so difficult. Read it out
loud—it makes an impact. For
poetry lovers, Keillor’s Almanac poems are archived at www.almanac.mpr.org. "the finger,"
by Charles Bukowski from Bone
Palace Ballet (Black Sparrow Press). the drivers of automobiles have very little recourse or originality. when upset with another driver they often give him the FINGER. I have seen two adult men, florid of face driving along giving each other the FINGER. well, we all know what this means, it's no secret. still, this gesture is so overused it has lost most of its impact. some of the men who give the FINGER are captains of industry, city councilmen, insurance adjusters, accountants and/or the just plain unemployed. no matter. it is their favorite response. people will never admit that they drive badly. the FINGER is their reply. I see grown men FINGERING each other throughout the day. it gives me pause. when I consider the state of our cities, the state of our states, the state of our country, I begin to understand. the FINGER is a mind- set. we are the FINGERERS. we give it to each other. we give it coming and going. we don't know how else to respond. what a hell of a way to not
live. >>Subscription
information<< Subscriptions to Notes
are simple to establish. Send
me an email at pribbenp@wabash.edu,
ask to be added to the list, and you will receive a confirmation from
the mailserver at Wabash College
that you are on the list. Please
feel free to forward your email versions of Notes to others—they then
can subscribe by contacting me. I
also am happy to send Notes as an MS Word attachment to an email, if
that would make reading it easier for some of you.
Just let me know. The
current and archive issues of Notes are available on-line at www.jgacounsel.com. >>Topics
for the next issue (October 2001)<< * A meditation on the choices we make * Attention management lessons * Lessons learned from
the Smithsonian |
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