Community Allies, LLC.
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™
  • Services
    • Community Development >
      • Sector Survey
      • Working Group Meetings
      • Sponsor Afterschool Labs
      • Community Events
    • Organizational Services
    • School Professional Development >
      • Teacher Trainings
    • School Programs >
      • Recent Programs
      • Outcomes After School Program
    • College Resources
  • Events
    • Housing Forums
  • Resources
    • Blogs
    • Vlogs
    • Social Media
    • Podcast
    • HSIC Podcast
    • Newsletter
    • Housing Resources
  • Contact
  • Supporters
    • Community Partners
    • Corporate Sponsors
  • Donations for Trainings/Programs
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™
  • Services
    • Community Development >
      • Sector Survey
      • Working Group Meetings
      • Sponsor Afterschool Labs
      • Community Events
    • Organizational Services
    • School Professional Development >
      • Teacher Trainings
    • School Programs >
      • Recent Programs
      • Outcomes After School Program
    • College Resources
  • Events
    • Housing Forums
  • Resources
    • Blogs
    • Vlogs
    • Social Media
    • Podcast
    • HSIC Podcast
    • Newsletter
    • Housing Resources
  • Contact
  • Supporters
    • Community Partners
    • Corporate Sponsors
  • Donations for Trainings/Programs

ARTICLES

Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™ Part 1: Creating Room for An Expansive Heart to Dwell

5/16/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Sarah Hobson
President/Founder
 
Last night, my neighbors and I stood on our shared balcony and gazed together on the beauty of the moon. The moon reflects the sun’s light. In a lunar eclipse, the earth blocks the sun’s light. When we watch a lunar eclipse, as we look at the moon, we see the shadow of the earth as it moves in front of the moon.

Last night, the majesty of the moment captivated us. I am especially grateful to Wenjie (Harry) Wu who had a magnificent telescopic camera that helped us compare what we saw in the sky with what appeared in his pictures (his photo is above).
​
One of my neighbors asked me – “do moments like this make you more overwhelmed by how vast the earth is or do they bring you peace?” In truth, moments like this simultaneously fill me with wonder, awe, fear, comfort and peace. I step into an expansive and creative mind, heart, and spirit that lines up with what I feel in my own heart. 

I feel the immensity of the earth blocking the sun’s light and sense in the awe and fear that fills me how I and the entire world are at the mercy of something much larger than ourselves. The earth’s shadow moving its way across the bright reflected sun’s light on the moon reminds me of the unnecessary suffering of so many people across generations of time because of the selfishness and brokenness of humankind.

And yet, simultaneously, I also feel a deepened intimacy with the creator of this much beauty. I feel like I am locking eyes with my creator. I feel like my creator is making Himself known to me, being fully transparent with me, filling my soul with life so expansive it never ends. I feel seen. Known so completely. Held. Loved. Covered by the one who knows the darkness well and has made a way for me to see that my creator holds the world in His hands, no matter how dark it gets.

And all I want to do is gaze into my creator's face and bask in my creator's beauty and hold onto my creator's generous love for me, learn again how to live for the rest of my life from this place of awe, gratitude, and love. I sense that even though the earth is blocking the light from the sun, the light has won. The darkness cannot put out the light. The light will always make its way to me. 

I begin to hear again the inner dialogue that passes between me and my creator, and I open to how my creator’s spirit is showing me more ways to live and love so deeply that no matter what darkness I encounter, when I turn inward, I will always find the light and know how to let my creator’s reflected light reach through the earth’s shadow to those around me.

There is a Bible verse that has always been my guiding light. It has always spoken to me, called me into the expansiveness of my creator’s heart, spirit, and mind. It is the inspiration behind Community Allies and Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™. It is this Psalm from King David.

Psalm 27:4 “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” A few verses later, in a way I totally resonate with because I too often need to speak to myself this way, David writes “My heart says of you, “Seek his face! Your face, Lord, I will seek.” (Psalm 27:8). 

So much of my training from the world has oriented around self-sufficiency, independence, and individualism. So when trouble, confusion or hardship come, my temptation is to dig in, take it on, solve it myself, and triumph over it. It is in fact what the world would say is a healthy go-getter mindset. 

For me, this training casts a shadow over who I am called to be and how I am called to create my life. When instead of intellectualizing every challenge I face, I build a life where my creator can dwell, I am freed up to root myself in hearing my own voice as it is intertwined with my creator's.

I can lean into my creator's spirit in what I create for every area of my life (friends, family, work, career, etc), and I am freed up to root myself in more and more of the expansiveness of my creator's heart, to step into the protection my creator's light brings, and to reflect more of my creator's light as I go.

This is my story. It is the spirit in me and behind the work I do. My faith and my worldview are not something I impose on others or on organizations who invite me in, but just as I invite others to share their stories in all I do, this is my story of the heart I feel beating through me that fuels my passion for people and for organizations. 

I love to facilitate change-making teams who together create room for something larger and more expansive to appear. Inevitably, the change needed in our industries, in our communities, and in our families makes itself known through the team’s collective gifts and insights that are revealed as we learn what it means to build thriving communities.

The change-management approach Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™ comes from many fields, the core fields being ethnodrama, literacy, teacher research, and community development. Each of these fields points to the power of intentionality, thoughtfulness, care, and reflection in building our lives and communities. 

​Each of these fields points to the individual as a member of a much broader collective, a broader collective than in our worldly training we often have yet to see or consider. Each of these fields helps us see more dimensions of ourselves, our families, and of the many communities who are shaping our lives and vice versa. 

Each of these fields helps us get better at creating our lives in step with a more expansive mind, heart, and spirit. In the process, we discover the special gifts, talents, cultures, and skills we bring to the larger collective, and vice versa – all that people who may not look, talk and act like us bring. 

When we slow down to build communities rooted in this kind of intentionality, we together step into places of transformation. We expand our inner and collective capacities to engage in change-making with those who see the world much differently than we do. We start down the path of building and sustaining communities and organizational cultures that support each of us individually and collectively in thriving.

In Honoring Stories and Integrating Curriculum™ Part 2: Cross-Sector Change-Making, you will learn how this change-making approach is taking hold in the mortgage industry.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Sarah Hobson, Ph.D. specializes in supporting teams, departments and schools, businesses, and government agencies in building inclusive innovative change-making communities who understand how to connect well with and join diverse populations in providing needed sustainable resources for all youth and families.

    Archives

    February 2023
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    November 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019

    Categories

    All
    Advocacy To Stop GBV
    A Learning Stance
    American Ties To Guns
    Black History
    Black History Celebration
    Breaking The Cycle GBV
    Building Life That Fuels Passions
    Business Cross-Sector Solutions To Pressing Needs
    Change-Making In Schools And Businesses
    Christmas In St. Louis
    Collective Action
    Community-Centered Market Research
    Community Development
    DEI That Strengthens Cultures
    Digital Resources
    Drinking Deep Sustaining Joy
    Esater History
    Ethnodrama As A Container
    Ethnodrama Origin Story
    Father's Day
    Free Responsible Press
    Gender Based Violence
    Gun Owners Heart To Protect
    Health Disparities Across Demographics
    History Earth Day
    HSIC Part 1: Room To Dwell
    Introducing Ethnodramas
    July 4th Story
    Juneteenth
    Master Of Multitasking
    Medical Inequalities And Infant Mortality Rates
    MLK On Leadership
    Mother's Day
    Our St. Louis Immigration Stories
    Passover History
    Resource Women
    Self-Care In 2022
    Self-Care In 2022 Part 2
    Sowing To Silence
    STL Arts And Culture Organizations
    STL Case Study 1
    STL History Spotlight
    StL Racial Zoning
    StL Women History
    Sumner High School History
    The Sound Bites Of Our Times
    What Next America
    What We Do
    Where We Are
    Woman Change World

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2019 Community Allies, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Proudly powered by Weebly