“A mind is a terrible thing to waste” 

So goes the very powerful fundraising campaign launched by United Negro College Fund in 1972. It’s one of the most enduring tag-lines Madison Avenue has brought the world. It endures because the sentiment is universal.

Dust off the cobwebs, turn off the talking heads and find out what real people working on the front lines of social, political and educational change, are up to.

The season of “Summer Schools” is underway. It’s a glorious opportunity to surround yourself with the intellectually curious, to have your thinking challenged and be infused with a dose of positivity.

We are sadly lacking mature leadership on the island of Ireland and it has never been more important for all of us to develop ourselves into an active and engaged citizenry.

The McGill, Merriman & xChange Summer Schools are now behind us. There is ample coverage of all available and still time to consider The Thomas D’Arcy McGee Summer School in Carlingford  which will address “D’Arcy McGee, 1916 and Revolutionary Republicanism” and Tangible Ireland’s Ambassador Summer School which covers “Business & Civic Leadership”.

Don’t do it for yourself, do it for your children and grandchildren. Education doesn’t end with “qualifications“, it’s a life-long process. Model it!

Why? Frederick Douglas sums it up perfectly: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”

*(per the 2014 post – and an excellent incentive to mark your calendars for the 2017 events…)  The McGill Summer School will stream its programming on “Reforming and Rebuilding our State”. And there’s still time to plan an outing to Glenties. Audio highlights of the xChange Summer School about “Changing Conversations” are available. Still ahead are the Merriman Summer School where “Emotional Life in Ireland” will be explored; The Thomas D’Arcy McGee Summer School in Carlingford  will address “The Famine in Ulster”; Tangible Ireland’s Ambassador Summer School covers “Business & Civic Leadership” and there are many more.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools…

This adage conjures an image:

• a Singer sewing machine
• my frowning, 4’10” Italian grandmother and
• a judgment that if times got hard, my earning potential doing “piece work” would be pitiful.

Good that I’m better equipped for 21st Century “piece work”! Probably because the “tools” are more like “toys”.

My favourite new toy is Wordle. Their copy calls it: a toy for generating “word clouds”.

And I had been playing with it as directed – until…

Collaboration, cooperation, and a circle of like-minded souls changed all that!

Something extraordinary happened when Carol Conway, Freelance Catalyst didn’t use Wordle “as directed”.

She’s the dynamic facilitator who was directing, coordinating & tracking the content, tenor & tone of a  Summer School I attended this week. She employed Wordle to help.

The gift was not in this visual which highlights the output of 25 speakers, but rather that it was a key part of the process. Each day we submitted on post-its – words and themes that resonated with us as they came up.

In the evening, via the magic of the word cloud, she’d create and share an image.

That was powerful enough – but having slept on it – our breakfast conversations were even more enlightened.

Here’s why it mattered:

We think in images. Carol pointed out that we are exposed to thousands (did I hear 50,000?) of bits of information a day. We remember or focus on only a tiny fraction. In a crowded room, the attention of individuals was on different bits – and we all experienced those differently – through our individual filters.

This image of our collective process was a brilliant way to encourage reflection on what had percolated to the top of the group consciousness and encouraged some to bring their voices and passion to other issues that hadn’t been heard.

I delighted in the power it brought to the introverts in the room.

Their voices are empowered by reflective time. This allowed the extraverts to then could see what they may not have heard.

The visuals will speak for themselves!

A few years ago when a colleague’s grandson was only 6, he came home from school having been taught the biblical story of Joseph.

“Daddy, why did his brothers throw Joseph in the pit?”

“Because Joseph was his father’s favorite. Jacob didn’t treat the other brothers as nicely.”

The wee one went off. A good while later he was back, having seriously contemplated the matter at hand.

“They should have thrown Joseph’s father in the pit!”

That, dear readers, is precisely why we tell stories.

Whatever your relationship to, belief about, or even disdain for The Bible, the Book of Genesis is a good read. A psychology professor of mine once opened a class in group dynamics with:

“…and if you’re working with families don’t underestimate the complexity. Everything you need to know about that can be found in Genesis”

In an earlier post on Storytelling, I explored the archetypal nature of stories. Simply put, it’s the way in which groups, families, or societies behave, as demonstrated in common threads, patterns, or characters that appear across most human behavior.

Changing behavior, becoming resilient, and recovery of any kind all rely on our ability to observe our behavior, elucidate patterns, and reflect on their origin.

So whether it’s about a personal recovery – or a societal one, the lessons apply.

The six-year-old who has genuinely considered the parenting lesson at the core of the Joseph story will parent differently in later life. There is little doubt his own father’s parenting is at the core of his power to observe, reflect, and conclude.

There is application also to our wider human family and more specifically to us here on the island of Ireland. I would encourage us to consider the divisiveness of our “Green” & “Orange” narratives in the context of families, human behavior, and Genesis.

This Joseph story doesn’t begin with Jacob’s poor parenting. Jacob’s own father rejected him for his twin. His own favoritism of Joseph was born of his grief at Rachael’s death. Joseph was a motherless child, the first-born of his favored wife.

How much of this story is owed to that accident of birth? To the times in which he was born?

And if you never knew the historical context or the family background does it inform your understanding of Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers? Leave you more compassionate, perhaps?’

A “family conflict of legendary proportions” is how it is further discussed by David Lewicki, Our Dysfunctional Families (Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28), an excellent read.

I would argue that were we to explore the Irish historical narrative in this way, and other nation’s stories, we would come to a more compassionate understanding of ourselves and each other.

For more on changing narratives in Ireland see On Changing Conversations in Ireland or listen to a range of speakers from the Changing Conversations series at the XChangeNI Summer School 2014.