On this Journey Together with Hugh Brewster
/NORM: Welcome to another in our series, “On Further Reflection,” with Norm Allen. We have had a few of these videos and podcasts over the last year, and we hope this one will be of interest and some encouragement to you as you have a chance to meet my friend Hugh Brewster, who is the next generation of Touchstone circles of friendship. He and I have been friends for nearly 10 years (and his dad has been a friend of mine for a lot longer than that). He is one of our younger leaders – younger generation group. I called them ‘The Young Lean Guys’ when we first started because they were in their 30’s and a lot leaner than me. And they are now…
(To watch or listen click these links or the ones at the end of the blog)
HUGH: Wait a minute! What are you saying, Norm? Just say it to my face!
NORM: But they are starting to see the degradations of age as they get to their mid-forties – and so it’s fun. Hugh and I have been on this journey together. He is executive director of a non-profit, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a world-class frisbee player. So, we’re going to have a conversation around several subjects. But first I’ll get him to give a thumbnail sketch of who he is, and then we will just chat away for a while.
HUGH: Thanks, Norm. You covered the key themes, I guess, in terms of a thumbnail sketch. I started off as a high school teacher, but most of my career has been spent in the non-profit or NGO space. Some stints with UNICEF, 10 years with World Vision, a little bit with Refugee Reception in Toronto, and currently I lead a small international NGO headquartered in Toronto, called Transforming Faces, where we support teams that care for kids born with cleft lip and palate. Beyond that, frisbee – ultimate frisbee – is one of the passions of my life (it has been for a long time). I get a lot of joy out of that. And then definitely, my identity as a dad, as a father is a huge element of who I am. My eldest is almost 15, going into Grade 10. My middle child is 8 ½, going into Grade 4, and my smallest son is going into JK in the fall. So it’s a bit of a range – it’s busy times. The pandemic is not easy for parents! I don’t think anyone is going to come peek through my little screen here. But it has happened on Zoom calls, where a little face will appear, and I think, “Why is that person looking at me funny? Oh! It’s my daughter is peeking through my screen!” So this might happen – but just be forewarned.
So, we’ll start right now. I’ve been married for 20 years to my wife Leanne, whose background is in education and a bunch of other things. We co-own a house with another family that we went in on together fourteen years ago, to split a Toronto house. We have our own kitchens, our own spaces, it was an innovative model at that time, and we’ve set up shop here much longer than I necessarily thought we would – but we’re really happy here in east Toronto.
NORM: You’re one of those people who takes advantage of the bike lanes in Toronto. So you…
HUGH: One hundred percent. Yes, I think in the last year, I’ve taken public transit to work, maybe two times. Now I’ve graduated from just using my own bike – I’m not a great bike mechanic. In the wintertime, the city has a bike share program. I bought a membership, and any time it’s crappy weather, or snow, or sleet or rust, I just borrow the city’s bike, get to work, and take it back. So, I do have a bit of that annoying superiority complex when I look at transit now.
NORM: One of the things over our ten years of friendship that has been interesting to observe has been your developing more and more responsibility in your vocation; and you’re now the executive director of Transforming Faces, a Canadian-based, but international work for children who have experienced cleft palate, and need not only surgery, but need all the attendant services of speech therapy, and even dental care that may go on for several years – and maybe even subsequent surgery. You work quite differently than what most of us would think of surgeons flying over from Canada. So, can you talk a bit about the work that you’re doing?
HUGH: Sure, yes. Delighted to. I’ve been with Transforming Faces for over three and a half years now, and I think one of the things that really delighted me as I was considering this job was its model. As you mentioned, Transforming Faces is twenty years old now, and from the beginning has not relied on flying surgeons from Toronto or elsewhere, in to do the work. From the very beginning, there was some really good advice given to the founder saying: You know, there are people in Ethiopia, in India, in Peru who can do this work. What they might be requiring is funding. They might be requiring training or capacity building; but your role can be more of a supporter as opposed to a doer. And that resonates with my understanding of international development – that eventually, we want to work ourselves out of a job, right? We don’t want to continue to do this, so at some stage when governments and their economies have developed to the point where they can sustain this, we want cleft lip and palate to be something that every family has access to care for. And that every child born with cleft lip and palate would go on live a full life and pursue their dreams.
NORM: You had a virtual annual meeting which I attended a few weeks ago, and in there was a video with stories of children and their parents and comments, one of the things that struck me (apart from the joy of seeing some of these restored faces) was the undergirding spiritual conflict – or whatever you want to call it – that people experience shame because it was a curse from God, because – and also gratitude to God when they saw the transformed face. There was this really interesting nexus of weird religious thinking that connects with the work that you’re doing.
HUGH: Certainly. I think that the context is quite different. Transforming Faces works in Asia, Africa, and the Americas – with different beliefs, different worldviews in each of those places. But one thing that does link all the families that we support together, is the sense that in the community there is bias, there is the idea that shame should be associated with cleft lip and palate, and in some places that this is definitely a spiritual problem – you know that in India, there can be the belief that this is somehow karma. That if a mother goes outside in a full moon, that this is a punishment – there’s cleft lip and palate. Or in Myanmar, the idea that maybe you laughed at a child who had a disability, and this is your payback. In Uganda, the idea that maybe this is a spiritual practice from a neighbour who is out to get you. And the manifestation of that would be a child born with a cleft lip and palate.
Our hopes for our kids are very much tied up into how we see the world. In many places, there is this idea that a physical manifestation of something that’s different, scary, or unusual, is actual the reflection of a spiritual reality. That’s very difficult. So, on top of the shock of a mother or hopefully, parents, seeing a child come into the world that looks different – there is also immediately this shame. Whose fault was it? Or, who did this to you? Or, how could you produce a child like this? It’s quite common unfortunately, for men In particular, to disappear in many of the countries in which we work. After a child [is born] who has cleft lip or palate, the dad just takes off. So, there is a spiritual element to it; and then also, as you saw on that short video, people will turn to give thanks to God for a successful result. They see that their child for whom they thought life was over, there was no hope, that they would never move forward; now seeing that my child can go on – can get married, can go to school, can have a fulfilling life. This is something that people bring back into their real experience of joy and gratitude to God.
NORM: Yes, it’s interesting, because we have a lot of strains of that same sort of religious thinking – either in the sense when a tragedy happens, it’s a judgement of God on a particular community of people – because they are evil, or whatever it might be – but they are definitely different from whoever is exercising judgement. Or it becomes: why was God not doing something different? As opposed to: maybe God is present in the surgeons and physiotherapists and speech therapists, that might go on in what you are doing in the face of something that is quite difficult. Because there’s also a gender thing there, it sounds like. In the sense that women can become victimized and blamed for something that is – just something.
HUGH: Exactly. There is that element. It’s different in every country – I don’t want to summarize everyone – but that theme, that women disproportionately bear the brunt of community expectations, familial expectations, husband’s expectations – that’s definitely a factor. And you talk about here in Canada – yes there are manifestations of that. Even in the expression that sometimes people will say, “Oh well, you know, God would not give you more than you can bear.” Or if you lose a child, “Oh, it’s God needed another angel.” These are really corrosive, unhelpful beliefs – I’m not sure where they come from. Some of them may be rooted in a particular faith tradition or Christian tradition; others are sort of ‘out there’ – it’s a nice thing to say to somebody. But in my experience, it’s really a very unhelpful thing to say to somebody.
NORM: Now, you were telling me earlier this morning that you had just come off a video conference with sixty or more people from around the world, with experts in your area. Obviously, the work is not going on right now in a lot of countries because of the pandemic. Maybe it’s started again in some places, but you’ve been restricted in not being able to travel. Talk about what you were doing this morning with…
HUGH: Sure. So, the other element that is distinctive about Transforming Faces that is really exciting for me is that it embraces the idea – sort of akin to how we have treatment here in Canada for cleft lip and palate: it’s not just a surgery. Surgeries are important – they’re critical. You want to have a good surgery to get your child off to a good start; but kids generally need (especially with the cleft palate) speech therapy in order to communicate clearly. There will be challenges often with teeth and oral hygiene. There could even be issues with kids’ jaws – it requires a team-based approach. And so, from the beginning, Transforming Faces has been embracing a team-based approach; it needs to be multidisciplinary. So, from the beginning – also because we don’t travel individually to do the work, the work itself – of treatment – happens from locals. The idea of trying to do some of that support virtually has been a part of how we have had to do things, and even more so now.
So, during this pandemic, we had a discussion this morning with three really dynamic speech therapy professionals – one from India, one from Nigeria, one from Santiago, Chile – each sharing the strategies that they are employing right now to try to reach families during the pandemic. That is TeleHealth: how can you use available resources for speech therapy by Smart Phone? Or by the computer? What else can you be doing in terms of face masks and getting access to different kinds of protective equipment that will allow you to continue the work? It’s very difficult. My heart breaks especially for the most vulnerable. Around the world we’re saying, the idea is that it affects all boats – all of us are in the same sea, the impact of the storm is very disproportionate – the most vulnerable are the most effected. And that’s even more so true In places where – for example, our partner in India was sharing, “Yes, there are some families for whom finding enough food for that day is actually a higher priority than speech therapy,” and we need to acknowledge that. We can’t insist these parents bring their kids for speech therapy, when they are spending a lot of their day in this pandemic, their regular is job interrupted just making sure that they can feed their kids.
I think the opportunities through Zoom and other media are so important, Transforming Faces is really invested in the idea of collaborating. My sector, unfortunately, has a real history of competition, in some negative ways of carving out space for each other. And as a smaller organization, and a Canadian-based organization in particular, we have been able to really try to lean in, to being a kind of catalyst for collaboration. On this morning’s call we had 60 professionals from about 20 different countries. That would be reflective of a variety of different cleft NGOs, and beyond saying, “We want to work together to find solutions, to hear one another – to lift up the voices of those leaders in the field.” In places that are actually doing the work, as opposed to saying, ‘Oh – the experts in Toronto are the ones that need to be teaching everybody.’ So that’s been an important part of the ethos for TF that I’ve appreciated.
NORM: You were also supposed to be representing Canada at some major frisbee competition in Australia. Talk a little bit about how you got into Frisbee, and how you are able, even in your dotage, to compete at a high level.
HUGH: ‘Thank you, my dotage.’ Yes – I am a passionate fan of Ultimate Frisbee. I think I probably started at Pioneer Camp as a boy or teenager, where we were throwing around disks, playing without any rules; but in university, when I got started, was when most people picked up the sport, with rules and a way of playing. Right from the beginning, it really captured me. I’d grown up as a soccer player – but I think the combination of the fine motor skills of learning how to throw the disk in all these different ways, combined with the really highly aerobic - you’re cutting, running, always in motion – those things really appealed to me. This has been my passion in team sports. I can motivate myself to do training, or running on my own – but really, it’s a means to an end. I really like to express that with others, and that idea of a team journey – people working together, expressing different things – that’s been a key focus for me. So – yes! – I had the opportunity four years ago to represent Canada at the World Championships in the U.K. and then this time, in an older division (so now I am in the forty-plus division), I was selected for the national team to compete in Australia. Unfortunately, along with the Olympics and everything else, its been postponed. Hopefully, it gets off the ground next year. We’ll just have to see whether my finances and everything will allow for me to try to do it next time. We are waiting to see, it’s a joy to compete at the national level. These guys are all kind of crazy about this sport.
NORM: We started an intentional conversation around ten years ago. We knew each other because your dad is a friend of mine of long standing. We ran into each other at a conference about younger leaders and had a conversation around ‘next generation leadership.’ When you asked me a couple of questions on what I thought about your generation of leadership, I mentioned that when I was your age (which was in your late 30’s), I was starting Touchstone, and getting advice from various people, I went to a guy who essentially was my age now (in his 60’s back then), and he discouraged me completely. There was no need for what I was thinking about. I just realized that I never wanted to be that kind of a person. Your generation has to figure out your own way of doing things, but maybe the old guys can give you a bit of wisdom and perspective on some things – but you still have to develop your own spiritual journey, your own leadership style. And so, talk a little bit about what fuels your inner person as you go about this work, sports, family, and all that sort of thing.
HUGH: I think one of the things that’s been a major blessing in my life is – we’ve talked about my career – but I’ve been able to find roles that allow me to express my spiritual beliefs in a tangible way. Transforming Faces (the charity that I lead) is not a religious organization, and yet it embraces this idea that even kids born with cleft lip and palate are important – their story is meaningful – that fundamentally, many of our partners around the world would say, “Yes, we think of kids being a gift from God,” or in Christian and my own terms, “made in God’s image;” that every human person has that innate value, and that call to be able to pursue a full life. In my case, a lot of times wrestling against the barriers of poverty – through that, the sense of accompaniment - that God is rooting for us and spurring us on to be able to express some of that creativity and joy that we have In us, based on our created-ness. It’s been lovely to partner with people in places like Ethiopia, Thailand, Myanmar, who from their own perspectives have really embraced this particular niche of disability or development work, that particular intersection, and that has really been a fuel – passion – for me, to say, “I want these children to be able to experience a full life, to be able to pursue a real, meaningful inclusion in their communities” – that is of spiritual value for me.
Take a look at Hugh’s organization - Transforming Faces website: https://transformingfaces.org
When it comes to sports, I think I touched on that idea of teamwork, I think that is something. I think a lot of people are experiencing me as a kind of intense, serious guy in some ways, but…
NORM: They definitely experience you as an intense, serious guy. But it’s good.
HUGH: Yes, I think my teammates would probably say the same thing. But there is an emotional element for me about that journey of working together – and that I experience in my small team in Toronto, I experience that in that solidarity of trying to work well, to be a good support, to be able to let others lead in their own context, but to be that support, about working together. That moves me. Those are some of my greatest joys. I was reflecting during this pandemic – I came across one of those tournament draw sheets. This was a tournament – you go to the main space (some of you who are into sports would know this) and you kind of keep track of what everyone one is doing – they write down the score, and you make the semis, and then you go to the finals… And so someone found that, and this was from 5, no from 6 years ago now…
NORM: When you were a much younger man.
HUGH: So I circulated it among – through the pandemic it was being dropped off on people’s porches, and the next guy would add some comments, and it went all the way through. But when I think about a time of great joy and fulfilment in my life, I remember after winning this tournament – a tournament that happened in Winnipeg, for the right to represent Canada. It meant that our team would be the core, they would add other people – but if you won this tournament (it happened to be against our arch nemesis, some of these key guys who had always beaten us from Vancouver) – so we worked all the way through the tournament for this moment; and it was in doubt, we were behind, we might not pull it out, and then we came and we triumphed! I just remember sitting back with a beer – all of us, just looking out at the sunset, and we were thinking, “This is amazing. We did it. We worked for months, and months, and months – years, really – to get to this point, and now the payoff is that we are going to represent Canada in the big tournament.”
I think that idea of being created in God’s image, but also that sense of wanting to work together, of having a story that leads people to really be motivated, on a vision, with passion, to pursue a goal together, to really appreciate one another – that’s something that for me in frisbee has been really true, and thankfully, I’ve been able to experience that in my professional life as well.
NORM: One of the places where we connect is in the area of contemplative prayer, and in spiritual friendship – the concept that we try to develop some inner stillness, so that we can listen to the moves of the Spirit in our own lives, and conceivably partner up with some friends and do the same thing for each other. So that team thing that you’ve been part of – helping to create a group that worked together with a couple of other fellows nearly 10 years ago, to create – and you’ve been meeting regularly. Can you talk a little bit about that team, and what you do together?
HUGH: Yes – I think that ties in a little bit about your question about the ‘younger leaders,’ (although we are not so young anymore) – but we’ve really developed over time a liturgy or an agenda for how we meet. And so for us – all men, all dads, all husbands who are trying to do well in all of those areas – and, as opposed to having “I give some leadership, or my friend Tim gives leadership to the structure, into making things work,” – really, when we show up on a Wednesday morning on Zoom right now for example, it’s not as though someone has developed a ‘study’ to take us through. There is a moment of centring around some of these contemplative prayers that’s really helpful – I think it anticipates what we’ve started in this current fad (I hope it’s more than a fad) – this idea of having an app that helps you to be mindful, or to do some meditation – we have that sense of centring in. There is a passage of Scripture that we read a couple of times together, out loud. We spend some time thinking about what resonates, from the news etc. into that passage or in our own lives; and then we move to a time on just doing some updates on those key elements that are happening in our life in all those spheres. And maybe allowing some of that sacred story that we looked at that morning, to be able to inform our discussion or challenge us in new ways. And that has been an agenda that has worked itself through, and had some ebbs and flows… But there really is a core group of guys who look forward to it, weekly – to be able to come and to go through this. We know what we expect out of the time, and then there is some excellent trust and understanding that is built up between the guys in this team element, as you brought up.
NORM: I think one of the things that you do well, when we are on our game in our circles in our little racket here at Touchstone, it’s understanding that we are part of this ongoing story of God’s engagement with humanity, as opposed to each spiritual event is a sort of transaction. So what you’re doing is picking up a conversation that goes on – many people are doing their intentional praying on their own; but at the same time, you’re connecting once a week as part of an ongoing story. It’s not: okay, this is now our religious moment – this is just a conversation about what’s going on in our story. I think you guys have done a good job of that particular thing.
One of the other places where you and I started to meet on a regular basis for a while - you experienced a significant loss around 10 or 11 years ago. And I wonder if you would be willing to talk a little bit about that. Because that’s been a very shaping experience for you and Leanne, and for many of us who watched you process this thing.
HUGH: Thank you. I think the group (at that time at least, and definitely through the years since) has been helpful for me in processing some of that experience. Which was – 10 years ago (I guess almost 11 years ago now), my wife and I were pregnant with our second child. It had been a difficult journey to get to that second pregnancy. And about halfway through, had an ultrasound – that was routine until it started not being routine. Until they said, “Let me check one more thing,” and “Maybe check…” and then, “Why don’t the two of you wait outside while I look at something else.” And of course, we were looking at each other: “What? What is this? This can’t be good.” And probably one of the most difficult days of my life. Waiting from there to get referred to somebody else. And then ultimately, having someone with some authority saying, “Basically, from what we’ve seen – that we don’t expect your child to have a long life outside the womb; and basically, we should be scheduling to end this pregnancy.” That’s a bit of a shortened version, but obviously devastating. All the different words.
I think as we think about what our own commitments – not thinking about anybody else’s, or anybody else’s story, but my wife Leanne and I both had a strong sense that since our son was totally healthy, happy as far as we knew, doing all the right things inside the womb, that our responsibility to be parents (whatever that looked like) would extend further. The child wasn’t in any pain – there was nothing else that was wrong – except that once our son made it outside of the womb, his life was likely going to be quite short. So, there was a journey, then, of months, of looking forward to his birth, but also grieving his birth. Looking forward to what was coming and being grateful, and yet also having such profound sadness, of our dreams for our son likely being crushed. And yet holding on to some other hope that this was still the right and faithful thing to do – to continue this story as long as it could. He was born, and his sojourn on this side of the womb was quite short. That was a huge disappointment. In a larger season of sorrow, that was even still a very big disappointment. And very difficult.
NORM: And you ended up having to make choices that obviously he - and his name – you named him Josiah – and you did have a funeral. So, you did all the things that maybe went against what was expected. But treated him with the same dignity that you would have treated any other child. Which is one of your core values as you expressed it as it related to Transforming Faces. That is something that is at the core of who you and Leanne are. Yet even then, though that was sorrowful, you had lots of time over the next years to process grief (and both of you processing it differently). So out of all of that – what are the lessons that you have learned out of the experience?
HUGH: I think that is a helpful observation: that it’s not a question of months or weeks of journeying – you know there was a journey to get to the pregnancy, there was a journey to Josiah’s birth, and then there was definitely an ongoing journey since his death. I think my wife who has done quite a bit of thinking and study about grief – she wouldn’t describe grief as something you ‘get over,’ you are hopefully moving to a space of integration. Where my son’s life and death is just part of who I am, part of the story; and obviously has emotion attached to it. But – is not something that is debilitating on a daily basis, at this point.
NORM: But it’s not like it disappears.
HUGH: No! It’s integration – it’s part of who we are, and who I am, who my wife and I are, and who my family is.
NORM: A friend of mine lost a daughter to suicide when she was a teenager. And it’s a long, long time ago – 25 years ago or more. And he says, you never get over it. But it’s the soil out of which the rest of your life grows. So, it becomes a place from which other things emerge. Capacity to care for others, whatever it might be. My observation would be – that’s been part of your formation, and your capacity for friendship with others, and compassion for the world.
HUGH: Certainly. I definitely learned a lot through that experience. I think one of the things that I try to be more intentional about is – when someone is going through something devastating and horrible, trying not to just shy away; trying to lean in. I think I’ve learned it’s often people, for good reason, trying to manage their own insecurities, their own hurts, their own fear of messing up, and so their response can be to say nothing, to withdraw. I think I’ve seen up close that it can be quite painful. I mean, our story was one of great support. The church community that we were a part of at that time sent people over to do our dishes in the evening, so that my wife and I could have a chance to chat. Or just to be quiet at the end of the day. We had friends who were very willing and faithful to walk alongside and just journey with us. Yet you also remember the assumptions that people can bring – the things that we say. Such as you mentioned – a health professional, a counsellor saying, “Well, no one would ever have a funeral for an infant. Who knows the infant?” That does stick. At a vulnerable time, saying the wrong thing does hurt. And yet – the answer is not to say nothing. The answer is to be invitational.
I think I learned a little bit about that with my group, or with other friends, saying, “How can I make myself a little bit uncomfortable? As someone who is more secure right now, and less vulnerable – how can I make myself be the one that is a little bit uncomfortable and engaging, and offering the opportunity for someone to share, if they want.” But also, being quite willing to step back, if the person gives the signal. Saying, “No, I hear you.” Or, “No, that’s not.” Or even to be specific about the ways that I could help. People would say, “Oh, let me know if I can do anything.” But if you are in a really dark space – if you are going through something traumatic, it is really difficult to reach out and say, “Hey – would you do this for me?” So, I’ve learned, it is more helpful to say, “Would this be helpful? Can I do this one thing for you? Would you accept this?” And the person can always say no, and that might hurt a little bit – but they are the one that you are trying to help. So, making yourself a little bit uncomfortable to make them feel more comfortable, I think is a key practice in spiritual friendship.
NORM: I think that you’re on to a couple of the core things that we over the years have learned, (and I still don’t practice as well as I would wish). But in the sense that when you’re coming to people, you’re coming to serve not your own needs, but whatever needs may ultimately be revealed. And sometimes our expectation or our definition of what their needs are is actually not accurate. So, going and listening, and then waiting for invitation to participate at whatever level people invite us to participate, becomes – you know it’s a discipline. So, there is so much of what we do; we are trying in a sense to fulfill either (to your point) our own insecurity. But go - be present. And you never know, something may just show up that you can go and do. But by being present, and being invited, and letting other people set the terms of the relationship, there is a kind of a freedom in that that becomes quite enriching.
HUGH: Yes, I would agree with that.
NORM: We’ve covered a fair bit of ground today. One of the things that I have appreciated about my relationship with you is that you’re a plain-spoken fellow. You do provide some significant leadership to that group, that it meets… We had a hilarious kind of exchange when the ‘Zoom-thing’ started – you made the mistake of inviting me to participate in the first Zoom meeting of your group, and I was thrilled. I thought, “This is great - I get to see these guys,” and I participated in my own particular way. So then, apparently – I was looking for the invitation for the following week, and I couldn’t find it in my calendar, so I emailed you and your partner in crime, and said: I can’t find the invitation. And he said, “Well, I deliberately didn’t invite you, because you changed the nature of what we do.” So, you decided that I can help – and so once a month, I get to participate and maybe bring up an idea to consider.
But it was really a liberating thing for me to discover – okay, I would love to participate, because I have a need to be engaged, and I am trying to find my way in this Zoom-world. And yet, I had to figure out: okay, do I really want to help, or do I just want to be stimulated? So, the capacity you guys had to actually say, “No, you are not helpful in this way, but you are helpful in this way,” was like a perfect kind of conversation. I am grateful for that experience that we shared together. I then was able to pass that on to our group that is 10 years your junior; and so, they managed to say, “Okay, Norm: don’t come and participate in our Zoom stuff either!” There is something about being able to be honest with each other about the helping process, that really is liberating for everybody.
HUGH: I think you identified something about uncomfortableness, too, about re-negotiating roles, right? Everybody appreciates you, and everything else – and yet we want to acknowledge that there is a different dynamic when there is someone who is older and wiser, and you know, looks more handsome…
NORM: protests…
HUGH: There is an incredible resonance here to my professional life, too: as a Canadian-based NGO, we don’t want to be the stars of the show. We’re thinking about cleft lip and palate care – we want the people in Ethiopia to be the stars of the show – and eventually, we want the governments to take over the role that we’re providing, even around funding. That is hard. And I think that some of my other colleagues in the charity world find it even harder, because there is something fulfilling about travelling over, and doing surgeries, or whatever it is… The reality is that you’re stuck in a paradigm that is actually causing more trouble. There is a way for you to be helpful, and I think that’s the line at Transforming Faces that we are trying to walk: How can we be helpful with the resources and the situation and the expertise that we have – and yet how can we not be the stars of the show? How can we not be indispensable? How can we be flexible to move? I think that’s a part of our spiritual friendship group too – saying: “Leadership is important. Structure is really important. And yet, how can we build it?”
I think that is what our group has been able to do. Tim and I and a few others who play some leadership roles – and yet, I am not showing up to say, “Here are Hugh’s 5 reflections on this passage this week – Tim is going to be next week, and whoever else is …” No – we’ve got a bit of a sense of how it works – anyone can ‘run it.’ We all hold each other accountable. Maybe I am going to be holding people a little more accountable if they are not fulfilling whatever our accountability is – but in general, everyone can say, “No, I am going to do this,” or “How about this question?” So, you are getting out of that situation – which is what I want to do in my professional life, too – of saying – it’s not: “Leader says something – Someone Else answers – Leader says something else – Someone Else answers,” – let’s build this like a web. We all have something to learn; we all have something to offer, and that has been something that really animates me – it’s kept us involved. It’s kept me involved for nine years.
NORM: Yes, it’s interesting. Years ago, there was an article in Foreign Policy magazine (or its equivalent) about the New Colonialism. And it talked about the fact that NGOs and the World Bank, were becoming the new colonialists, because they were the people going into developing countries to build infrastructure because they – the consulting firms – had access to capital and resources. You were having them stealing the best and brightest from the country, from government and healthcare or whatever, and going into the system – that became self-perpetuating. And so – there is a danger there. And it’s a spiritual danger that we can have, where, for our own need of being valued, that we want to impose ourselves in situations where our value isn’t actually there. We are still valuable – but we are not value-added for that circumstance.
Any final thoughts before I offer a little Celtic blessing on our time?
HUGH: I think another theme is that there is a space and a need – back to the core mission of Touchstone, and your mission. My experience has been with guys, but – that sense of intentionality, of having a structure that you work through – and of sticking with it, for the longer haul. That is not something many guys have met – a need people have met elsewhere. I think that’s some of the richness that I’ve experienced. I started off with something nine years ago, thinking, “How long do I stick with this?” This is now something that I look forward to every week. And I think that… there is a pay-off for committing to that sort of thing. It’s not committing in the sense of something that is horrible, and you are going to make it work, because you have to – but no, you want to be part of this because there’s not other opportunities to speak into these guys lives, and also there’s professional challenges.
Professionally, I could write that off – that time – as ‘leadership development,’ because I’m hearing from these really amazing leaders on the challenges that they are facing; it’s making me think about how I am approaching different challenges… Our group is actually about sharing resources from The New Statesman, or from wherever that people are reading and thinking about, because it enriches us, so it’s kind of a whole package, which is quite lovely.
NORM: And that’s the thing that we have talked about. You’re not trying to do a particular religious event or transaction. This is just part of the ongoing story of your lives together, or the ongoing story of God’s work with us as human beings. So, there is a benefit to seeing it as an ongoing thing. Obviously, we’ve got groups where people have been meeting together for 35 years. So, what you learn about each other over that period of time becomes quite extraordinary. The ability to say, “That person knows me, and knows my ups and downs, knows my history, and then can speak something into my life in a kind way,” – there’s something about that which only time and experience and intentionality can develop.
Anyway – thank you, Hugh, for taking the time. Let me read this blessing for the inner journey from a book called, “Anam Cara,” (or Soul Friend) by John O’Donahue. It’s a lovely little piece.
May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone – that your soul and its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique; that you have a special destiny here. That behind the façade of your life, there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
Amen and Amen.
So thank you, friend. I look forward to seeing you when Pandemic World is over and we can be face to face.
HUGH: Tell me when that is going to be – that would be really helpful for my planning.
NORM: I have no skill in the Prophecy area. I am a Salesman.
HUGH: Thanks, Norm.
NORM: See you buddy – take care.
