Still Standing

Still Standing

There’s so much on my mind today.  It’s the Day of Caring eve in our office.  It’s noon and all the sites have been delivered their stuff.  Stuff is the technical word for ladders, wheel barrows, paint, stain, rags, brushes, shirts, you name it.  Amazing!  Tomorrow we’ll have hundreds of folks painting, landscaping, staining and doing all kinds of things to help agencies help people in need.  Special congratulations to Diane Mathews for saving us tons of money on stuff this year.  Her relationships with Shooting Star, Lowe’s and Leave Your Mark really have made them part of the United Way family.

Today we also launch video on our website.  We’ve come so far since our great social media task force and raising awareness council helped us join this century.  Jan Sanderson Taylor has done so much work on our website and social media!  She is an amazing staff member.

It’s campaign time!  We’re already at 23 percent of our $875,000 goal.  Lance Reyes is doing a great job as campaign chair.  Our division chairs are rocking and the campaign volunteers are so enthusiastic.  It’s fun only doing a good thing!

So still standing…does it mean we’re still standing?  Of course, we are.  It also is about something all together different, sort of.

Last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to attend Still Standing.  This is an amazing workshop with horses.  Not being a horse person myself, I was pretty ambivalent.  The others in the workshop were horse people.  Cheaters.  Well not really but you know how I felt.  We arrived, sat in the arena, and received instructions for the day.  Simultaneously, someone let five horses into the arena.  The horses galloped around and played, laid down, and just kicked around.  It looked like they were having fun to me.  Sort of the usual arrive at a meeting thing and check in and mess around.  Two played together, four played together and always there was this one watching, wondering, and noticing.  Again it was just like some meetings I’ve been in.  The group of Still Standing includes Anne Kellogg, Tedi Tate and the Herd.  I don’t want to share too much about the exercises because I think everyone should have the same amazing experience.  The instructions, while always offered with safety first, are intentionally vague.  What a powerful learning experience!

There are individual activities with the horses as well as a group activity.  I found it to be extraordinary as a leadership exercise.  Listening, watching, learning, wondering, noticing is something I can always learn from.  For me the exercises were not unlike community collaboration meetings.  There are groups; there are loaners; there are outsiders; there are those desperate to be included but too quiet to say so.  The list is long.  They are large and small and powerful and weak and loud and quiet.  There is so much to say and yet so little that needs to be said, other than this is an experience to be had.  I was reminded quickly of work in the learning community, the early and later days of the meth task force, the formation of CAN, the ending homelessness in 10 years planning group.  Check out Still Standing’s website at www.stillstanding.us.

And not only are we still standing, we’re rocking.  Check in, tell us how you are.  Enjoy the pictures and for those of you wondering am I moving fast in the action shot that has me blurry, the answer is yes!  Horses are big.  So are community issues.  Here’s a new and creative way to contemplate them.  Thanks Anne, Tedi and the Herd!