Clare Consultation, LLCMarch 4th has it all over Super Tuesday
I drove into Cincinnati from Manhattan. How many times will I be able to say that? Not many. And it was no minor feat. I’m guessing this is not the least bit surprising to any of you. Still, we say these things out loud to one another – partly as a request for validation – a “wow” that fits with the relative enormity of the accomplishment. The vast majority of Americans don’t… Read More
Leap Year and Minding the Gap
It happens relatively rarely in a lifetime, this date that adjusts for the inaccuracies in our calendar. I can’t help but take comfort in the reminder that human ingenuity requires human fallibility. Dine (Navajo) weavers, Yakama beadworkers, Appalachian quilters sometimes become so good at their crafts that they purposefully place mistakes in their work. It’s an act of humility, recognition that nothing humanly constructed can be perfect. Most of us don’t need… Read More
Man Up – Dedication to Community before Distraction
“In a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us.” A friend in North Dakota just sent this to me. His name is Anthony. He’s a black man, a gay man. He’s a playful prophet who lingers profoundly on the living side of dead serious. Today, his quote came from a man named Sogyal Rimpoche. The trouble with distraction seems vast. The people I’ve been spending time with here in the… Read More
Georgians in the Radical Act of Listening
I want to tell you about the last three groups to hear about 100 VOICES – AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE. Night before last in a Decatur, GA neighborhood, about 20 women who know each other from the Presbyterian church they all attend gathered the way they do every month. They come for dinner, community and inquiry at the home of Kent Leslie author and scholar. Most of the women are in their 60’s… Read More
Keeping Courage
I’ve just spent the past three days crossing the Southern tier states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama into Georgia. I’ve spent precious time with relatives – kin by birth and kin by choice and community. Along the slow roll of land falling toward and then rising up from the Mississippi River’s reliable flow I found story after story, learning after learning. In the three years since I last drove these Southern highways… Read More
The Highest Point in Austin
Last night I stood in my friends’ kitchen. Lori, the mom of the family was working on white bean soup and her eldest daughter, Eliza was sitting on the counter delivering the speech she’d give in class the next day. Eliza is 14 and a first year high school student at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, a public school in Austin,TX. Her speech was on the life of that… Read More
Politics in Texas – Intractable Threat or More Like the Weather?
The people I’ve talked with in Texas this week say two things. My friend Cindy, a white business woman in Grayson County sums up one of those things. “The divisions in this state are so strong, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to talk to each other. It just starts out hateful with neither side willing to back down.” As she talks, she describes how community proceeds in spite of the… Read More