Power and Love*

Back in May, someone recommended ‘Power and Love‘, a book by Adam Kahane.  I’ve only just got around to reading it – and it was one of the most accessible ‘social change’ books I’ve read.  It’s essentially about balancing ‘Power’ – the drive for self-realization and control-over – with ‘Love’ – the drive for unity and connection.

As Kahane admits, these ideas aren’t new (although he describes new ways of implementing them).  For example, he quotes ‘one of the greatest practitioners of nonviolent social change’, Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic’.

Understanding this dynamic is core to nonviolence, and needs to be core to peace and justice work.  I asked one of my interviewees this July about the power dynamic between funders and grantees.  His response was that I had asked a typical Quaker question.  I was surprised – isn’t power something we should all be talking about?  Reading ‘Power and Love’ I remembered how fundamental this understanding is to my way of thinking, and to the way that the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust – a Quaker organisation striving for peace and justice – works.

Now, threads linking all this keep appearing, unexpectedly.  Out of the blue I had an email from Linda Mitchell, who works with Mike Love of Together for Peace in Leeds (www.t4p.org.uk).  It was Mike who recommended the book – thanks, Mike.  Then, by chance I met a foundation colleague who’s worked with Adam Kahane’s organisation Reos (www.reospartners.com).  It turned out he has also worked with my South African colleague, the wonderful facilitator Rebecca Freeth – who has also worked with Reos.  In a fortnight’s time, Rebecca will be helping us to run a gathering of grantees, and now I’m looking forward to that event even more.

This week, at a workshop of the European Programme on Integration and Migration EPIM (www.epim.info), I saw how the power-and-love dynamic can play out in a funders’ collaboration.  Grantees value support and direction from funders – as long as it’s done with love, rather than from a ‘power-over’ perspective.  Grant-makers value working closely with grantees – as long as there is honesty and transparency about the power dynamics that exist.  It’s not easy to get right, and partners may sway towards power and then back to love, and back to power again, but when it works great things can happen.

*Adam Kahane (2010) Power and Love Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Frustration (but trying to keep positive)

After an extremely useful day, talking with and learning from Tom David (www.tdavid.net) and with Paul Carroll and his colleague at Ploughshares (www.ploughshares.org) I was looking forward to my last week in the USA, consolidating what I’d gathered there, going through the reports I’d gathered, and doing some real work on the write-up.

It had been an early start and the weather was hotter than most Californians enjoy.  Admittedly I felt tired as I began the journey home: but I didn’t realise how tired until I realised that between airport security and boarding the plane my laptop and I had parted company.  A couple of days, lots of emails and phone calls later, I had to accept that it wasn’t coming back.

With it I lost most of my notes, lots of reports, and quite a lot of analysis.

There was no point in crying, although I felt like it for several days.  Instead I abandoned myself to family time – more cuddling the baby, feeding her family and just hanging out with them generally.  We’ll never enjoy saying goodbye, but by the end of our stay I think we were all saturated with each other’s company.

Trying to look for the positives, it was good to have time for a few other things, including beginning to learn to play my new banjo (a Deeering Goodtime 2, if you’re interested).  Deprived of the reading I’d compiled, and having to resort to paper for note-taking, pushed me to realise that I rely too much on modern technology.  So this was a forceful reminder not only that life isn’t all work – but also of how much I love work: reading, thinking, and putting ideas together.

Now I’m home again – missing little D of course, but very ready to get back to work – although I’m also determined to keep practicing the banjo.