Civic Reflection News Update — December 2009

Upcoming Training

Our next public civic reflection training will be held at Columbia College Chicago on Michigan Avenue from noon on Thursday, January 28th through 4:00 p.m. on Friday, January 29th. Yes, it will be cold outside, but we promise plenty of hot coffee, good food, and stimulating conversation.

Click here for our registration form. Because the holidays are such a busy time, we've extended the registration deadline until January 8, 2010.

Spotlight

Faith and Action Discussion at WBEZ Chicago

On November 17 Krista Tippett, the moderator of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith, joined Project on Civic Reflection staff members and more than two dozen civic leaders interested in faith-based service for a breakfast reception and civic reflection discussion. "Salon: Faith and Action in a Diverse World" was held at the WBEZ studios on Navy Pier. Project on Civic Reflection senior associate Adam Davis led the group—which included representatives of the Islamic Heritage Foundation, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, The Chicago Community Trust, and others—in a conversation centering on the question, "How do our religious and philosophical beliefs impact how we conduct ourselves, particularly in a world where so many people around us are likely to hold different beliefs than we do?" Participants explored this question in the light of two poems, Mary Oliver's "The Buddha's Last Instruction" and Rumi's "Say Yes Quickly". Both poems are included in Hearing the Call across Traditions: Readings on Faith and Service, published by the Project on Civic Reflection in partnership with Interfaith Youth Core and the Illinois Humanities Council.

The previous evening, Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, had conducted a public interview with Krista Tippett at Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church. Patel "turned the tables" on Tippett, asking her the kinds of probing questions about her religious upbringing and the development of her faith that she normally asks others. (To hear what Tippett had to say about religion in journalism or to listen to a story about her Southern Baptist grandfather, click the second link below.) Nearly 800 people turned out for the event, and 300 more listened to the live webstream on www.wbez.org and www.speakingoffaith.org. Titled "Evolving Faith: Meaning, Ethics and Ideas," Patel's conversation with Tippett was one stop on Tippett's national speaking tour, which is supported with a grant from the Lilly Endowment.

• Listen to the salon at WBEZ.
• Listen to Eboo Patel's conversation with Krista Tippett.
• Read a blog posting on the Patel/Tippett interview by Don Hall, Events Coordinator at Chicago Public Radio.

Who's Doing Civic Reflection?

State Service Commissions

The Texas OneStar Foundation, which administers AmeriCorps Texas, sponsored a two-day training in October for facilitators statewide. The Project's Adam Davis and two of our trainers—Lowell Jaeger, a poet who teaches creative writing in Kalispell, Montana, and Amy Thompson, who runs a management consulting service in Austin—co-led the workshop, whose participants represented Central Dallas Ministries, United Way of El Paso, Family Eldercare, United Cerebral Palsy of Texas, and many other state organizations. Among the readings the group used in practicing the art of facilitation were Toni Cade Bambara's short story "The Lesson" and Billy Collins' poem "The History Teacher". The training is being supplemented with follow-up e-newsletters and conference calls to keep participants connected as they lead programs in their own communities.

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ServeMinnesota hosted a facilitation training for AmeriCorps program directors and staff on November 10th-11th, led by Adam Davis. Two program officers at ServeMinnesota, Marc Hosmer and Stacey Scherschligt, and the Minnesota Literacy Council's statewide program manager, Sadie O'Connor, helped deliver the training. All three attended the Project's September 2009 training in Chicago. The AmeriCorps directors at the ServeMinnesota training will be taking the practice of civic reflection back to the organizations they work with, which include the Minnesota Conservation Corps, the Minnesota Reading Corps, and Multicultural Communities in Action.

Other Service Organizations and Conferences

On October 14 Illinois Campus Compact hosted a six-hour mini-training in Springfield to help VISTA community service directors get going with the practice of civic reflection. Some participants are already leading discussions at their school sites, and recently three of them led a civic reflection conversation via conference call, using Bambara's "The Lesson," for the larger group of VISTA leaders. They plan to hold more of these discussions as a way of exploring the meaning of VISTA's focus on poverty. This fall Illinois Campus Compact also launched a pilot civic reflection series organized around readings in Hearing the Call across Traditions.

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On October 25-27, Interfaith Youth Core hosted its 2009 Conference on Interfaith Youth Work. Themed "Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World," the 6th annual IFYC conference was hosted by the Center for Civic Engagement at Northwestern University. Kelli Covey and Adam Davis co-led three civic reflection workshops titled "Talking across Difference: Why Do We Serve?" One workshop was with IFYC Fellows, interfaith leaders from campuses around the U.S. and the world, who attended the conference as part of an intensive six-day orientation.

• Click here for a pdf of the complete conference program.

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At Indiana's 2009 Governor's Conference on Service and Volunteerism, held in Indianapolis at the end of October, Kelli Covey and Ryan Lewis co-presented a session called "Service Is Not Simple: Reflective Discussion to Deepen Civic Engagement." A brief introduction to civic reflection was followed by a demonstration discussion and a question-and-answer period. The Governor's Conference is presented by the Indiana's state service commission, the Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives, and Indiana Campus Compact.

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Public Allies Chicago held a "reflective visioning" session last month, facilitated by the Project on Civic Reflection with Public Allies senior staff, to refine their mission and vision. Through the lens of Brecht's poem "A Bed for the Night", they discussed Public Allies' legacy or "footprint" and how the organization is changing. There will be a follow-up session for the staff to finalize the vision statement and decide how to measure success in its light.

University Faculty, Students and Staff

Project director Elizabeth Lynn presented and consulted on the uses of reflection in service learning at Southern New Hampshire University on October 21st. Throughout the day she met with small and large groups of faculty, staff and students from disciplines across the university, including liberal arts, education, graphic design, accounting and hospitality management. As one of four speakers in a series of luncheon conversations for 2009-2010 Civic Engagement and Service Learning at SNHU, Elizabeth presented on "The Civically Reflective Practitioner" and led a discussion of Robert Frost's poem "For Once, Then, Something"—an appropriate choice for a campus that boasts a Robert Frost Hall. Participants talked about what Frost's narrator is looking for when he peers into the well, what they themselves are seeking when they reflect, and what they hope, as teachers, that their students will see when engaged in reflective discussion.

Reflective reading and discussion will be incorporated into faculty, staff and student life at SNHU in a variety of ways during the 2009-10 academic year and beyond—e.g., for service learning in diverse academic disciplines, for staff and faculty development, and for a student service trip to West Virginia during spring break.

Humanities Councils

At the annual National Humanities Conference of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, held in Omaha, Nebraska on November 6-8, Elizabeth Lynn and Lowell Jaeger each led a session on "Civic Reflection for Board Members," using William Trevor's short story "Sitting with the Dead". Also at the National Humanities Conference, Humanities Montana received the Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize for Public Humanities Programs. The award was given in part for Humanities Montana's Public Affairs Initiative, which includes a civic reflection component. You may remember Humanities Montana, Lowell Jaeger's home state, as the site of one of our trainings in 2008.

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Project associates Georgina Dodge and Ryan Lewis co-led a facilitation training for librarians in Riverside County in October on behalf of the California Council for the Humanities. The council's new initiative, "Making a Difference," will provide staff at California libraries with training in civic dialogue facilitation skills and resources for offering theme-based civic dialogue. The facilitation training focused on readings for the themes around which the library programs will be built, including Martin Luther King Day, Women's History Month, and Memorial Day. The Project is following up with facilitator support and consultation as the programs are rolled out.

Corporate Professionals

Peter Cooke, one of the Project's new trainers, led a civic reflection session at the December meeting of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), New Hampshire Chapter, using Frost's "Mending Wall". Titled "Reflective Leadership," the session focused on the presence and absence of walls both inside corporations and between organizations and the larger communities to which they belong. Carol Richards, the president of the IAAP New Hampshire chapter—which will be celebrating its 55th birthday in January—said that participants appreciated the interactive nature of civic reflection and the way in which it offers "a non-threatening environment in which to discuss serious issues."

The IAAP, which has 40,000 members in the U.S., has the mission of enhancing the success of administrative professionals by providing opportunities for growth through education, community building and leadership development. Peter Cooke is President of Cooke Associates, a consulting, training and coaching firm.

New Resources

Review of Hearing the Call across Traditions

"I recommend this book without reservations for individual and group use for adolescents and adults. It would be a valuable resource for a high school or college course on interreligious studies or justice, or for adult conversation. Using it to develop interfaith dialogue would be a real blessing."

Read the rest of this recent review of Hearing the Call across Traditions: Readings on Faith and Service by Daniel S. Mulhall, the co-editor, with Jeffrey Gros, of The Ecumenical Christian Dialogues and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

New in the Resource Library

"For Once, Then, Something" by Robert Frost.

• Why do we reflect? What makes reflection difficult?
• How do we define who we are?
• What does it mean to seek the truth?

"A Red Palm" by Gary Soto.

• What does parenting have to do with giving?
• What is the value of work, for us as individuals and for us as a society?
• When we give or serve, what do we get in return?

"Say Yes Quickly" by Rumi.

• How are we connected to others?
• What does it mean to love humanity?
• What gifts do people of faith have to offer the world?

Have you come across a new reading for civic reflection? Share your suggestion with us—we'd love to hear from you.