Learning to Live in Liminal Space

Synthesis Statement: Sessions 1-5

October 2025 — February 2026

Recognizing the Polycrisis

This program is available to anyone, but it will likely resonate most with those who feel a calling — people deeply troubled by the polycrisis unfolding in the world and wondering how they might help. Not merely to observe or cope, or simply optimize what sits within their own circle of influence, but to help steward something genuinely better. That sense of calling becomes the entry point. It is also, in many ways, the first practice: saying yes to a path whose destination is not yet visible.

The world we are asked to face is real, and in many ways it is dire. Ecocide. The human-driven disruption of the climate. An unstable and concentrating global economy. The erosion of civility. The weakening of democratic institutions and the rise of autocracy. These are not distant abstractions. They are the living conditions of our moment. The uncertainty circles not around whether the Old Story is ending, but around how it will unravel and over what time.

What does the world look like 10, 25, 50, or 100 years from now? As artificial intelligence displaces entire categories of work, as climate change reshapes the face of the planet, as wealth and power consolidate in new and intensifying ways, these questions are not rhetorical. They hang in the air. They are the reason this work matters.

The complexity of these problems exceeds our capacity to solve them on our own. We must admit that hubris helped bring us to where we are and allow humility to guide us forward. While science works hard to find solutions, will it reverse climate change quickly enough? Will we find a way to halt species loss? Will our concern for ourselves individually allow us to see past ourselves and care for others? For marginalized communities? The world’s poor? 

Yet, the deepest truths of the world's mystical traditions remain the same. Stay humble. Stay open. Rumi writes: Be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up…When we are able to make friends with that beauty, we shall become a mighty kindness. Jesus pointed out the difficulty for the self-sufficient man getting into paradise being comparable to a camel threading the eye of a needle. We need to be open, to be humble, and to be willing to receive help. 

Practice as Foundation

And so, in this program we practice. Daily. We commit to some sort of spiritual engagement. Prayer. Meditation. We find music that inspires. We find and create poetry and art. We write. We create community. We transmit and receive transmission. These practices are not decorative. They are the means by which we shift our interior space so that we can better face and serve the exterior world.

Through this work we begin to recognize something uncomfortable: the Old Story is not only out there, in governments and corporations and markets. It is deeply entrenched in our way of life. It is the story most of us were raised inside. It shapes our instincts about time, productivity, sufficiency, and control. The interior reckoning and the exterior reckoning are inseparable.

To move away from the Old Story we must begin, slowly, to detach from it. Not through rejection or rage, but through a conscious stepping away. We ground ourselves in a space that allows us to see the dying old clearly, to live among its institutions, and yet not be enveloped by it. We give it no heart. Only our witness, our grief for those harmed by it, and our energy directed toward what may come next.

The New Story and Its Seven Qualities

If the Old Story is ending, what replaces it?

The program suggests that the New Story cannot be built simply by opposing the old. The more we focus our attention on what is dying, the more power we inadvertently give it. Instead, we are invited to become a seedbed for what is emerging, placing our attention, imagination, and effort into what is life-giving.

Seven foundational qualities help orient that emerging story:

1. Respecting women and feminine principles

2. Respecting the land as sacred

3. Time no longer seen as linear

4. Non-hierarchical dynamics of power and control

5. Communities of all types

6. Oneness

7. Love

These qualities are not inventions. They represent the recovery of wisdom that has long existed in indigenous traditions, spiritual teachings, and the natural patterns of life itself. Their suppression has caused profound harm. Their recovery opens the possibility of healing.

As the program reminds us: Through it all will run the axis of love, from the center of the Earth to the center of the cosmos, present in every cell of creation.

Each of these qualities names both a place where the Old Story has failed us and a direction toward something more whole.

Stepping into Liminal Space

The program then turns toward one of its central teachings: liminal space.

Liminal space is the threshold, the space between what was and what will be. The terrain of transition. A sacred space. 

To enter liminal space is to consciously step away from the Old Story without yet having arrived in the New. This can feel disorienting. Our culture trains us to rush through uncertainty, to fill the unknown with activity and noise. This program asks something different: to dwell in the in-between.

From this vantage point we gain perspective.

When we make the subject the object, when we can look at the Old Story rather than only looking from inside it, its hold on us begins to loosen. We gain autonomy. We gain agency. We can live within the institutions of the old world without being captured by them.

Reflecting on this idea raises an interesting question:

Are we ever truly outside liminal space?

Once we loosen our attachment to certainty, life itself begins to appear as a continuous threshold, always unfolding between what has been and what may yet become.

To remain steady there requires practice. The simple orientation the program offers captures the posture well:

Witness
Grieve
Pray
Act

These four movements offer a way of orienting ourselves to the great challenges of the world. They describe a posture toward suffering and transformation. But they do not describe the texture of ordinary living.

For that, the practice of mindfulness, of stillness, of presence become essential. These allow us to inhabit each moment with awareness rather than reactivity. They are the ground from which witnessing becomes possible and from which compassionate action can emerge.

In some ways this is not unlike exercise or healthy eating. At first the effort can feel unnatural, even forced. But with time the body begins to recognize what is good for it. What once felt difficult begins to feel normal, even necessary. The longer we fall away from those practices, the harder it is to return. From the inside, though, it becomes clear that this way of being is simply the healthier place to live.

Witnessing, grieving, praying, and acting offer a way of responding to the world. Mindfulness and presence offer a way of inhabiting it.

Witnessing

Witnessing, we have seen, is a tool we use to allow ourselves to separate from the old. It allows us to recognize the pathologies, the hubris, the maladies, the corruption, the destruction — what the Buddha summarized simply as the suffering that emerges from the old story.

As we come into liminal space and allow ourselves to witness, we create that separation for ourselves. Not to dismiss reality, but to ground ourselves in a larger perspective.

Witnessing allows us to see and know much more, precisely because we realize we do not actually have to hold everything we see. We do not have to carry it. It is not ours. Or rather, it no longer needs to be.

And so the question arises: what do we do with what we witness? What do we do with tragedy?

We grieve.

Grieving

Grieving allows us to process the tragedy of the Old Story. It allows us to objectively see and understand it. It allows us to own our own participation in it and then let it go.

We must make peace with our shadow. We must make peace with our tragedy. We must make peace with our mistakes in order to move forward.

And so we grieve.

We grieve for the loss of what we love. We grieve for parts of ourselves and our communities that will never know full flourishing. We grieve for the losses and sorrows of the world. We grieve for what we expected but never received—for unconscious disappointment, loneliness, and a diminished experience of self. And we grieve for the unacknowledged and untended sorrow of those who came before us, for whom we can no longer help in any direct way.

Grieving opens the heart. If we allow it, it opens us to communion. One person’s grieving becomes everyone’s grieving. The more we allow for witnessing and grieving, the more we reconnect with our innocence and our deeper intentions, the more we allow ourselves to move toward love.

Operating from a place of love reshapes the world.

That is the basis of the New Story. A world created from love, from a sense of communion and oneness. From there hierarchy begins to soften. Time loosens its grip. The land is understood again as sacred. Masculine and feminine come back into balance. Communities begin to form around care rather than control.

Life begins to emerge in a more organic and unforced way.

And that emergence is seeded in liminal space, once we separate ourselves from the Old Story and choose to live differently.

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Grieving in Liminal Space

Following Session 5: Grieving in Liminal Space

February 10, 2026 — March 10, 2026

Synthesis Statement

This session helped us expand into a broader perspective of living in liminal space. The previous period was about witnessing, but many of us struggled with a metaphor about looking at the chaos and destruction of the dying old story as though you were standing in the next room. For many of us, it just felt passive, helpless, complicit even. Bill empathized with our struggle, valued the work we were doing, and recognized this to be a challenge of the course format as well. Living well in liminal space is a four-fold embodiment of Witness - Grieve - Pray - Act. We had only covered witnessing so far, and thus felt stuck, but witnessing does not occur in a vacuum. In this next session, by opening to Grieving in liminal space, we were able to better integrate witnessing as part of a process and not as a fixed act.

Bill also shared that the goal of the ‘other room’ metaphor is to help one stay grounded amidst the chaos. We can see and understand that all of this is happening, and maybe even begin to better understand why, when we are not feeling the ground falling from under our feet.

Thus, we moved into grieving.

We took time to consider those in all of creation who might be ‘crying’. We thought of those marginalized populations, the poor, the sick, the helpless, we thought of the plants and animals near extinction, we thought of the ignorant who knew no better. We felt their tears. We took time to grieve.

We spent time deepening our understanding of grief. One of the great values of grief is that it touches and honors something that is holy, something that is sacred. And that, that holy, that sacred, that is something we all have in common. The whole of creation shares that which is sacred. The more we can open to our shared grief > the more we can open to the sacred > the more we can open to one another > the more we can collectively heal.

We acknowledged that grief softens the heart, and that by feeling it, we are able to stop carrying it alone. Because of this, it is essential and healthy to grieve together so that all may understand how to do so. Grieving needs to become a habit. We need to share lamentation. This work needs to become public, so we all may move on.

When we hold grief unto ourselves, it can harden us, which ultimately contracts us away from others, away from community, which then further reduces connection and support to and from one another. We need the opposite. Grieving needs to be public. Shared. The more we grieve together, the more human we can become, and the better we will grow and evolve together.

I found myself wondering: Is there an official shared day of grieving? Should there be? What would it mean to publicly acknowledge lament as part of civic life?

Witness (the end of the old story)
Grieve (for the pain associated with endings)
Pray (for those in pain)
Act (for the good of all)

Report on Practice 

Grieving in the World

This period I tried to pay particular attention to grieving – for elements in my personal life as well as for events in the world. I saw our country engage in more wars: military, cultural, and class. We bombed Iran. Kansas rendered all transgender people’s driver’s licenses immediately invalid. No runway, immediately effective. We watched ongoing deep federal cuts and eligibility tightenings to Medicaid, SNAP, and ACA marketplaces, reforms that analysts say are reducing social-safety-net support for millions of low-income families and projecting income gains mostly for the wealthiest earners.

 The Bowl of Tears

In the session, we had a ‘bowl of tears’. An assignment we had was to find an opportunity, a location where we felt the world needed to soften its hardening a bit and to open to grieving and a new story a bit more. Perhaps it was a political institution, perhaps a location of a symbol of some sort. There, we should perform a ritual of sorts, and pour the bowl of tears there. I decided to pour the tears over myself. I wanted to open myself up even more. I felt hardened from my own past experiences. I felt I could do a better job of loving, of hearing, of holding, of being compassionate.

I slowly poured the tears. Some over my head. I drew lines across my forehead, down the center of my face, under my eyes, touched my cheeks. I poured a bit over each shoulder, onto the back of my neck, and the rest over my heart. I prayed that my heart would open and that my actions, my speech, my writing, my intentions, my life would serve to help spread compassion, to be where I need to be when I need to be there, so that I may be of service.

Then I took a warm shower, because those tears were really cold. :)

Dead Poets

I meet with a small group of people who have recently lost loved ones. We call ourselves a Dead Poets Society. I found our most recent meeting particularly related to our New Story Community for two reasons. One because of how this period was a reflection on grieving, and two, because of a topic that arose. I found myself sharing a story that was very much my Old Story. I don’t know why, I just felt like I had to share it. I think in part I was nervous and it was familiar; in part I just felt like I needed others to hear it so I could let it go. I guess I needed witnesses, and others to help share the grief for a moment. And they did. And the next day, I almost felt bothered, embarrassed even, that I had recounted the story because it was not my current story. It was my past. It was not where I am now, it is where I was. But for some reason, I could not be where I was in that moment. I was trapped in the past. Still looking for a way to get grounded in the present. I was, in that moment, in the room, not in the next room looking back.

Or maybe I was starting to look back and not quite yet realizing I was separating.

Facing Reality: Buechner

I have been reading The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner and found a passage particularly powerful. In a matter of just two paragraphs, he shared three profound (to me) insights.

Buechner’s father had recently died, and his mother was going to take her kids to Bermuda for a bit to live and grieve. His grandmother urged them “to stay and face reality…because if you do not face up to the enemy in all his dark power, then the enemy will come up from behind some dark day and destroy you.” Face reality. Don’t run from it. There is a necessary hardening that keeps you grounded.

But then Buechner cautions against hardening yourself too completely: “to do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do–to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst–is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.” This is about internal transformation. You have to stay permeable enough to let something holy work in you. The steel that protects can also prevent you from becoming more fully yourself.

Buechner finishes this section: “Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift. He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from [God] himself, a helping hand.” This is something different from the second insight, though related. It isn’t only about being open to transformation. It’s about relational receiving, the willingness to depend on something beyond yourself. Community. God. One another. The open hand.

Not three steps, but three facets of the same truth. They cycle back on one another. You cannot fully receive without first facing reality. You cannot be transformed without opening your hand. And the open hand, over time, softens the steel.

Olympia Testimony

This period I also found a few opportunities to Witness > Grieve > Pray > Act. Perhaps the most outstanding, and most novel for me was traveling to our State capitol to testify before the House. I had seen a Senate Bill making its way through the legislature that was relevant to the death of my daughter. Passing the bill would enable the mobilization of coordinated resources to locate missing persons who are in a mental health crisis or actively suicidal. This bill would protect folks with autism, dementia, and others who might be lost and otherwise hard to locate.

So, I brought my wife and son, and we went to Olympia, sat before the House Committee on Community Safety, and told them the importance of making such resources safely available for rapid response.

What stayed with me afterward wasn’t the testimony itself. It was my son, sitting there, watching how this all works. Seeing the capitol. Understanding that real people show up and tell hard truths and try to make things better. I was glad he saw that. I was glad my community knew I was there.

The grief did not stay inside. It moved into the world.

And for the record, sometimes good enough ends up being good enough. I had written a three-minute statement. It was polished. It was measured. It was concise. Others called it powerful. It said all it needed to without fluff. When the session began, the Chair cut testimony time to ninety seconds. As the hearing progressed, they shortened it again to sixty just before the bill was called. I had to improvise on the fly. My testimony was no longer polished. It wasn’t perfect. It was simply what I could offer in the moment. Despite the interior chaos I felt, the Chair thanked me for my testimony and remarked that this bill, if passed, would become part of my daughter’s legacy. And my wife and son had a chance to hear that too. My son heard that acting matters. That showing up matters. That telling the truth, even imperfectly, matters.

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Witnessing in Liminal Space

Following Session 4: Witnessing in Liminal Space

January 12, 2026 — February 10, 2026

Synthesis Statement

Making the subject the object.

We, by and large, begin immersed in the Old Story. The first few sessions helped us recognize that there is an Old Story, that a New Story may be possible, and that there is a transition between the two. Those early sessions worked to loosen our attachment to the old and to help us step into the Liminal Space.

This most recent session was about seeing ourselves in that liminal space—about recognizing what it looks like and feels like to be there.

Understanding what it looks like.

Its textures.

How to dwell there—in the unknown, in the discomfort—comfortably.

We talked about how our habits, our normal ways of looking at things, very likely tie us to the Old Story, and what it might mean to move ourselves differently—to see ourselves from within liminal space rather than trying to observe it from a distance. What practices and perspectives might help us remain there? By better understanding that space, we may be able to immerse ourselves more fully within it.

We discussed a four-fold movement for nurturing ourselves in liminal space:

Witness the end of the Old Story

Grieve the pain associated with endings

Pray for those who are suffering

Act for the good of all

We will spend more time with the latter three in future sessions. This session focused most deeply on Witnessing.

One story we discussed came from the Old Testament. When the Jews were led from slavery in Egypt toward the Promised Land, they wandered the desert for forty years. Geographically speaking, Israel is not a forty-year journey from Egypt. Rather, it took time for the older generations—and perhaps more importantly, the older paradigms—to loosen their grip and pass away.

We also discussed a Sufi story of the Mullah who searches for his lost keys in a familiar, well-lit place rather than venturing into the darkness where they were actually lost. This brought to mind an idea often attributed to Einstein: that the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.

I see this dynamic playing out in my own life. When I think about how to prepare my child for the future, I recognize a generation raised in a world of ubiquitous technology. They have never known a time when nearly any question could not be answered with a few keystrokes. While I can teach fundamentals, I have a hard time anticipating the institutions or industries that will dominate when his generation becomes the primary workforce—assuming society even resembles what we now imagine over the next fifteen to forty-five years. Similarly, it feels implausible to expect today’s legislative elders to meaningfully regulate emerging technologies like AI. I consider myself relatively tech-savvy, yet my child can run circles around me on my phone, just as I once did around my parents.

The point, at least as I am beginning to understand it, is that we may need to loosen our attachment to inherited ways of thinking and operating in order to give ourselves space to discover what might yet become.

We also talked about the need to recognize that the Old Story is dying and that, in a sense, it deserves hospice care. We are invited to allow it to die gracefully—with the least damage to itself or to those around it, with the least fallout, and with care, dignity, and respect. Marie Kondo offers a simple wisdom here: when letting something go, thank it for what it gave you, and then allow it to depart.

In meditation, one of the goals, as I understand it, is to make the subject the object. We are often trapped in our minds—thinking endless thoughts, feeling endless emotions, pulled in countless directions. But when we step back and witness this activity, when we create even a small amount of space, we begin to know ourselves differently.

I am drawn to Sri Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry practice. We ask ourselves:

I have a body, but I am not my body. Who am I?
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. Who am I?
I have feelings, but I am not my feelings. Who am I?

In this practice, awareness slowly shifts toward the consciousness that is witnessing sensations, thoughts, emotions, and experiences as they arise and pass.

As we root ourselves there, we begin to empty ourselves out—not in a diminishing way, but in a receptive one. Perhaps this is how we become vessels for Spirit. Perhaps this is how we step more fully into liminal space and begin to sense what might arise that feels aligned with a New Story.

And so, through witnessing—within ourselves, in the world around us, and in the broader Old Story—we give ourselves space. Space to listen. Space to remain present. Space for something new to emerge.

We were offered a poem during the session, whose final lines stayed with me:

The rest of this must be said in silence
because of the enormous difference
between light and the words
that try to say light.

A few other lines I jotted down over the course of our session:

• When in doubt, practice loving kindness.

• Liminal space is a place to refill your tank.

• The prophets may sometimes sound angry, but they speak from anguish—their hearts broken open, their love outpouring to all.

Bill also shared something deceptively simple that resonated deeply with me. We were coming off the holidays—a time I often experience as overwhelming: too many people, too many activities, too much noise. Bill said that rather than focusing on the holiday season, he looks for holiday moments.

I loved this.

That shift—to be present and open to noticing those special moments that arise—feels far more manageable, and perhaps more meaningful over time. It feels like another way of witnessing. Stopping, now and then, to smell the roses.

Report on Practice

Witnessing as an Opening

Witnessing was at the center of this period’s practice. Our invitation was to engage with the news—to stay informed without becoming consumed by fear or worry, while still holding care and compassion. That distinction feels important.

It is easy to slip into apathy. Cognitive overload. Especially for empathetic and caring people. But the aim was not withdrawal. It was presence—staying with the chaos and seeing it for what it is.

During this period, I attended a summit for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. One moment in particular has stayed with me. A survivor spoke about spending decades of her life being exploited—used for others’ gain, physically and financially. She was entertainment. She was an asset. She was property. More than five decades after being coerced into a life marked by violence, drugs, and confinement—often bought and sold—she was now standing freely before policymakers, practitioners, and advocates, speaking on her own behalf.

What struck me most was the challenge she offered. Their ask is large. And it is not unfair. It is for change.

If all we do is listen for our own benefit, are we not also exploiting them—however unintentionally? If we witness without responding, without allowing ourselves to be changed, what kind of witnessing is that? 

That stayed with me for days. Weeks, even. I did hear them. I witnessed them. But to what degree was that enough?

I don’t think true witnessing is a closed act.

We can see something and let it pass. But I attended with an open heart and an open mind. I went to truly listen. In doing so, I allowed their stories to shift something at my core. They have shaped how I think. They influence the conversations I have. They inform the decisions I make.

Since the summit, I have written about the experience and spoken about it publicly, including at a City Council meeting. That happened because of witnessing. Would it have occurred without that specific insight into exploitation? I honestly cannot say. But I do know that my worldview expanded, and that I will carry those stories into future conversations and decisions.

Witnessing, I am learning, is much more than simply seeing something happen.

A Realignment of Habits

My wife was traveling for a few months before the holidays. This was the longest we had been apart since we married more than a quarter century ago. My experience probably included all the elements you would expect. I missed her presence, and I enjoyed my autonomy. I had to do more for myself and less for someone else. I had more to manage around the house, yet fewer people around the house to account for. All of that was fairly easy to anticipate.

What was a bit more interesting was the living-without-a-partner-and-then-getting-them-back part.

At first, it was a bit like moving out of your parents’ house as a kid. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want. There’s a sense of unlimited freedom. Not that I ever felt bound — my wife and I have always been supportive of one another’s interests. Still, we would always check in with each other: what are you up to, do you want to do something together, what does the rest of the day look like?

Living “alone,” that check-in simply wasn’t there.

I was free to move as I pleased. I flowed more naturally across work, rest, socializing, exercise, reading, recreation, bathing, cooking, and sleep. Over time, certain rhythms emerged — some more prominent than others. It was, honestly, a fascinating way to come into contact with myself.

Then, months later, anticipating her return became its own experience.

Of course, I was excited to see her and be with her again. I could feel that something important had been missing. My partner. My confidante. My emotional co-regulator. And alongside that excitement, there was nervousness. What would reintegration be like? How would it affect my flow? Would it put more on my plate and feel heavier? Or would it take something off and feel lighter?

So, circling back to witnessing: when she arrived, I noticed myself slipping back into old habits. I checked in with her frequently. Context matters here — we both primarily work from home, so it’s easy to wrap up a meeting, see what the other person is up to, then head back to your desk and dive into whatever comes next.

But fairly quickly, I realized something.

I didn’t always need to check in with her first. And she didn’t need me to do so either. It was often healthier for me to check in with myself. What did I need next? What was my current flow state? Once I decided I was going to go for a hike, for example, I could then mention it to her and ask if she wanted to join.

In the weeks that followed, something subtle but meaningful shifted.

We became stronger both together and apart. More comfortable together, and more comfortable not. We could come and go to our respective obligations, keep one another in the loop, connect over shared moments — coffee, walks, meals, a movie, a dance, a date — while still maintaining a healthy autonomy that, somehow, I’m not sure we fully had before.

It’s honestly hard to say exactly what changed. We’ve been together a long time. We’ve been through a lot. There have been peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows, clean lines and blurry ones.

But something feels stronger now. Cleaner. More grounded.

And it feels like it includes a deeper kind of witnessing.

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Listening to Survivors of Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Summit on Crime Survivors: Commercial Sexual Exploitation

January 29, 2026 – Seattle City Hall

This week I attended the second annual Summit on Crime Survivors, focused specifically on Commercial Sexual Exploitation. I went because I knew this was an area I did not understand well enough, particularly as it relates to our region. I wanted to learn, to listen, and to better orient myself to a reality that is often discussed abstractly, if at all.

The morning included remarks from organizers, elected officials, judges, advocates, and service providers. There was discussion of efforts to support victims and to mitigate harm upstream. A recurring theme was the lack of stable resources—especially for prevention. Funding for services is often reimbursement-based and uncertain, which makes long-term planning difficult and proactive work nearly impossible. This pattern is familiar across the nonprofit and government world: we regularly affirm the value of prevention, yet struggle to fund it because its success is, by definition, difficult to prove.

Just last week, I spoke with the executive director of a homeless shelter who shared a variation on a story he hears often: “If I had just had $500 to fix my car, I’d be fine right now. Instead, I lost my job, my car, and now I’m here.” Money to keep shelters open or to provide food is easier to secure than money to fix the car before everything collapses. Different issue, same structural problem. We fund crisis response far more readily than early intervention.

What stayed with me most deeply, however, were the voices of survivors.

While there was a formal survivors’ panel of three women, the room itself was filled with survivors. Many of the people I spoke with casually—standing in line for coffee, chatting between sessions—were survivors. Their presence, their attentiveness to one another, and their quiet leadership were striking. One woman noticed I had taken a seat in the back of the room and immediately invited me to join her table. She was a survivor. She was kind, grounded, and extraordinarily aware of others. Throughout the day, she made space for people, checked in on them, and helped orient those who seemed overwhelmed. Without any formal role, she became a kind of unofficial host. Watching her care for others was deeply moving.

Another survivor I met while waiting in line for lunch—I’ll call her “T”—shared a sense of real discouragement. She had prepared extensively to testify before a legislative committee in Olympia on these very issues. She was scheduled to testify remotely near the end of the session, but as earlier speakers went over their allotted time, she was ultimately cut and never given the opportunity to speak. Preparing to publicly share a deeply personal story is not a small thing, and having that opportunity disappear carries its own harm.

When I mentioned that I had recently met one-on-one with the state legislator who chairs that committee, her entire demeanor changed. She lit up. There was surprise, relief, and something like hope all at once. She immediately recognized his name and role, and I could feel how much it mattered to her that someone in that position was paying attention. I shared that he had raised this issue himself in our conversation—that it clearly mattered to him, that he and his staff were actively researching approaches from other countries, and that this work was not peripheral for him.

It didn’t undo the fact that she had been silenced that day. But it did seem to lift something. There was a sense that her preparation hadn’t been wasted, that her voice belonged in that space even if it hadn’t been heard yet. The timing of that exchange—having spoken with him just weeks before, having this be the very issue he raised unprompted, and then standing in that lunch line with her—felt quietly profound. I felt genuinely honored to be able to share that moment with her.

The survivors’ panel itself challenged many common assumptions. Two of the three women had been groomed or manipulated into exploitation at a very young age. It was decades later before they fully understood themselves as victims. This is the reality of coercion: being forced into something in ways that are not always immediately recognizable as force.

Another panelist, a trans woman, shared that a roommate had secretly filmed and livestreamed her for years without her knowledge—capturing not only her body, but her transition. That detail mattered. Not because it made the crime worse in some abstract hierarchy, but because it revealed how exploitation so often intersects with vulnerability, identity, and moments of becoming. Her story made clear that exploitation adapts itself to whatever intimacy or exposure it can extract.

All of these women were used—unknowingly, non-consensually, and unwillingly—for the benefit of others. Two of the panelists were over sixty years old and had only been living freely for less than a decade. They were from here. They went to school here. They saw classmates drive by while they were trapped in circumstances they didn’t understand and couldn’t escape. One woman said that given the number of times she had been beaten, threatened, sold, drugged, and placed in life-threatening situations, “it’s a miracle that I’m alive.”

What I keep returning to is the cost of telling these stories.

Survivors are repeatedly asked to recount deeply personal trauma in rooms full of professionals—caseworkers, lawyers, judges, policymakers, and concerned citizens. This is not therapeutic entertainment. It is emotionally taxing. It takes something each time. And if listening is where it ends—if stories are gathered but systems remain unchanged—then even well-intentioned attention risks becoming extractive.

Listening is essential. Human connection is essential. Empathy formed through real encounter is different from empathy formed through reports or statistics. It shapes judgment. It sharpens discernment. It changes how decisions are made.

But empathy alone does not correct structural misalignment. Systems that reliably fund reaction while struggling to fund mitigation will continue to produce harm, no matter how aware we become. Prevention is harder to measure, harder to justify, and harder to defend politically—but the cost of neglecting it is borne by real people, often for decades.

This experience did not leave me with answers. It left me with a clearer sense of responsibility: to stay attentive to where human connection should inform decision-making, to question funding structures that privilege symptoms over causes, and to remain unsettled when awareness is mistaken for action.

That unease, I think, is where the real work begins.

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A Veil to Protect Community

When a veil of ignorance is better for connection

I had an interesting experience at a recent council meeting.

In the run up to the election, some residents were expressing discontent about government transparency. Similarly, there is a community issue now that some residents feel has not been appropriately publicized with enough time or opportunity for the public to affect change. Putting facts aside, both the Mayor and I have discussed improving community communication and transparency in our new terms, and I have no doubt other councilmembers feel the same way.

So, at a recent meeting, our City Administrator shared that she intended to start publishing a report following council meetings that would summarize meeting activities and decisions made. I don’t know if this was her idea, the Mayor’s, or someone else’s, but I thought it sounded great. It felt like a practical way to meet people where they are. Not everyone has the time—or frankly the inclination—to watch a two + hour meeting or dig through packet materials. A short recap is one small way to reduce friction between what happens inside Council Chambers and what community members experience outside it.

She followed that announcement with a question for council: would we be comfortable publishing how each councilmember voted on each item in those reports?

The question itself was reasonable. Our meetings are already open to the public. Community members attend in person, meetings are livestreamed, and recordings are available afterward. Anyone can go back at any time and see how any of us voted on any item. Still, there was something a bit awkward about the moment—not because of the question itself, but because we were being asked, publicly and in real time, to name our comfort level with a particular presentation of transparency.

I felt deeply conflicted.

At a fundamental level, I believe in truth. I believe that we are all entitled to the truth, and that the obfuscation of facts is what so often leads to mistrust and conflict. All of our votes are public record. Anyone can watch the meetings and hear the discussion that led to those votes. So why the inner turmoil?

The Mayor went around the room inviting each councilmember to share their thoughts. One raised a concern about personal safety, noting that attacks on political figures seem to be increasing nationally. Importantly, that councilmember also expressed support for transparency and suggested that we could try publishing names alongside votes and reassess later if it became a problem. Others largely agreed that transparency was good and that sharing names and votes was acceptable.

Then it was my turn.

This is where circumstance mattered — but not quite in the way I first thought. I happened to be attending the meeting remotely. I’d been fighting a bug and didn’t want to risk passing it along. What mattered most wasn’t that I couldn’t fully read the room — it was that I couldn’t feel how others were holding the moment as I prepared to speak.

I couldn’t sense whether other councilmembers tensed up, or relaxed, as the question made its way around the room. I couldn’t see whether anyone felt defensive as they answered, or relieved, or simply thoughtful. And when it came time for me to speak, that disconnection somehow left me more alone. I couldn’t see heads nodding in agreement — or in disbelief. I couldn’t tell whether people were looking at me like I was saying something obvious, something risky, or something strange. I was speaking without knowing whether what I was offering was landing as shared insight or solitary dissent.

That aloneness may have heightened my discomfort — or it may have grounded me more deeply in myself. I’m honestly not sure. Without the usual cues, I had less ability to adjust, soften, or reassure in real time. But I also had less temptation to perform. I couldn’t read the room, so I had to listen more closely inward. And perhaps that made it easier to speak honestly about the tension I was actually holding, rather than the position I thought I was supposed to defend.

I tried to quiet myself and speak from my heart. I wanted to be honest about both what I believe and where I felt conflict. I said, essentially, that I support transparency. I stand behind every vote I cast and am always willing to explain how I arrived at a decision. I would never hide from that.

And at the same time, I wasn’t sure it was wise to print names next to votes in a summary report.

Why?

Because I think there’s a meaningful difference between accessibility of information and presentation of information. In the run up to the election, we saw how quickly debates can become contentious. I worry that a single vote — stripped of context and reduced to a line item — can start to function like a label. I would hate for a vote on one issue to cause people to feel that a councilmember is “on one side or the other,” and therefore not really representing them. I would hate for anyone to feel we are not accessible to them.

There’s also something about how we work as a council. Once we vote, we speak with one voice — the voice of the council. That doesn’t erase differences, and I’m not suggesting it should. But it does mean the action taken is collective. If a report starts to read like a scorecard — names next to votes, week after week — it may unintentionally train people to engage with us as fixed representatives of a camp rather than as neighbors trying to solve complex, evolving problems together.

So I suggested a middle path: publish the numerical outcome of votes, without names. “Council supported this measure unanimously,” or “This was a challenging 4–3 vote.” That information matters. A unanimous vote signals alignment. A narrow vote signals difficulty, deliberation, and real disagreement. The numbers tell a story without immediately personalizing it.

Keeping that thin veil between the numbers and the people might, in some cases, help preserve connection. Publishing names might just as easily deepen division.

This is where I find myself thinking about John Rawls, the American political philosopher who introduced the “veil of ignorance” in A Theory of Justice as a way of designing fair systems without knowing one’s own position within them — not in a strict philosophical sense, but in a way that feels relevant here.

That idea is usually about designing society without knowing where you personally will land in it. That’s not what we were doing. We weren’t designing society; we were deciding how to communicate decisions already made.

Still, the metaphor resonates for me. Sometimes a small, intentional veil can reduce the instinct to personalize and polarize. It can help people stay with the substance of an issue rather than immediately sorting the humans involved into categories. Not a thick veil. Not secrecy. Just enough to keep the focus where it belongs.

Importantly, the information would still be there. Anyone who wants to know how I voted can still find it. Nothing is hidden. The question is whether our summary should foreground individual names next to votes, or whether it should focus on outcomes and point those who want more detail back to the full meeting, where context lives.

Because context matters. A simple “yes” or “no” next to a name can mean very different things depending on the question. A vote against something can just as easily mean “not this version,” “not this timing,” or “I’m worried about unintended consequences.” A procedural vote — whether to advance a draft or bring something back — can get mistaken for a final position. Even in calm times, this happens. In polarized times, it happens faster.

When I finished, the Mayor acknowledged the perspective and emphasized that the meetings remain public and the recordings remain available. Anyone who wants to know how a specific councilmember voted can watch the meeting and see not just the vote, but the discussion that led to it. She then asked the council whether we were comfortable, for now, moving forward with publishing vote outcomes by numbers rather than by name. Council agreed.

It felt strange to voice something that felt slightly contrarian — even contrarian to my own instincts — and then see it accepted as our current approach. And it’s important to say this wasn’t about me persuading anyone. The City Administrator brought forward a good idea for improving communication. The Mayor facilitated the conversation thoughtfully. Other councilmembers raised valid points, including the idea that we could try full attribution and adjust later if needed. This was the council working through something together.

But sitting with it in the days and weeks since, it continues to feel right — at least for now, and at least in the context of a written summary report.

Sometimes hearing someone’s position on something creates division. And that position can be based on misunderstanding — either in your mind or theirs. That doesn’t mean the answer is less truth. It may mean more discernment in how truth is shared.

So it’s possible that this thin little veil — keeping the substance public while softening the personalization — will do more to protect the community than having everything out in everyone’s face at all times. The information remains accessible. Accountability remains intact. But the invitation stays open to see one another as neighbors doing difficult work together, rather than as avatars of a side.

And in a time when political division feels easy — and connection feels harder — maybe that veil is worth keeping.

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Longing for a New Story

Following Session 1: Longing for a New Story

October 14 – November 11, 2025

Synthesis Statement

In our first session, we introduced ourselves — not just our names or roles, but the deeper reasons we showed up. I felt genuinely honored to be among people who care deeply, who give large parts of their lives to service, and who seem to be asking similar questions about how to live well during times of uncertainty.

Together we explored the idea that an old way of orienting to the world is loosening, and something new is beginning to take shape. We’re in a liminal space — the space between stories — where the old no longer fits and the new has not yet arrived.

Our work, individually and collectively, is to become conscious of that transition and to learn the part each of us is called to play.

During a brief period of silent meditation, Bill said something as we were coming back: “…the community you are building.” That landed. It reminded me that while the future is unclear, creating community — real community — is already part of the work. It is itself a step into the new story.

It felt like a grounding place to begin.

Report on Practice

Over the past month, I’ve meditated for about twenty minutes a day. I’ve probably missed a couple of days, but overall I’ve been steady. My practice partner and I met weekly, except for the week he was traveling.

This stretch of time has been intense. My wife has been traveling for the past month and will be away for a little while longer. I’ve been single-parenting while continuing my City Council work and running a re-election campaign. And last week marked two years since my daughter’s death.

This is the environment in which I’ve been practicing.

Institutional Change & Creative Destruction

I read recently about this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded for research into how innovation and “creative destruction” fuel economic growth. This felt relevant as I’ve watched long-standing institutions destabilize in recent years. That destabilization can feel alarming, but somewhere in it I sense the possibility that we may eventually build better, more humane structures. Something new may yet arise from what collapses. And given how entrenched our institutions have become, perhaps this is the only way they shift.

Point of clarification:

“Creative destruction” refers not to destroying something and then building anew, but to how creative innovations inadvertently dismantle old structures. I’m not saying that’s what is happening in our current moment, though you could argue that some efforts or movements are attempts at it. More, I’m observing the opportunities that emerge when the norms and assumptions of institutional life are disrupted.

Disruption is rarely comfortable, but it can expose openings that were previously invisible.

Breath as Boundary and Bridge

I watched an interview with a Shaolin monk who said that breath is the unifying element between our physical body and our more amorphous mind. He described exhaling as “…when breath enters the outside.”

That phrasing lodged itself in me. During meditation, I sometimes try to feel that — not breath leaving my body, but breath entering the outside. It shifts my sense of boundary, subtly softening the line between what I think of as ‘me’ and everything beyond.

A Glimpse of Non-Duality

While meditating, I had a touch of a non-dual experience that clarified something I had previously only understood intellectually.

Spiritual literature often says that “there is no separation between self and other.” Many of us work to achieve some depth of knowing that, but it’s difficult to access with the rational mind. However, when we are actually in a non-dual state, the reason there is no separation becomes clear: neither “self” nor “other” exists independently. As soon as we form the concept of either one, we are no longer in non-duality. Even the idea of “non-separation” creates separation. 

Simply put, language dissolves at the threshold of experience.

All there is… is all there is.

The Metacrisis as Initiation

A quote I came across struck me:

The metacrisis isn’t something to solve — it’s an initiation we must undergo. We’re not facing problems that need fixing but a species-wide transformation that requires us to grow up. This isn’t about finding the right answer but becoming the kind of beings who can navigate ungovernable complexity together. The crisis is the curriculum.

This feels true for the moment we are in — individually, collectively, and through this program. We may or may not identify tactical levers for writing a new story, but what we are doing is creating a liminal space in our lives: a fertile ground where a new paradigm might take shape. The work ahead isn’t technical; it’s transformational.

This is about aligning ourselves — becoming. How do we shift our being in such a way that we can “navigate ungovernable complexity together”? Ultimately this becomes an individual act of consciously working with others for the benefit of yet others — all of us.

This was also aligned with my earlier comment about “creative destruction.”

Liminal Space as Sacred

My practice partner shared something that reframed liminality for me.

He pointed out that liminal space isn’t only “the unknown between two things.” It also refers to moments, places, and experiences that open us to the sacred.

This moment — in our lives and in our shared history — is sacred. All moments are, but when we recognize that a shift is happening and remain present to it, honoring it, we may find the openings that invite our highest contribution. Sacredness blooms when attention meets transition.

The Drawing Assignment

Our homework assignment was to draw a picture of ourselves moving from the “Old Story” to the “New Story.” The prompt initially led me to imagine a figure stepping away from the Old Story. Later, the image evolved into a meditator — perhaps because my practice this month was rooted in meditation, or because the shift we’re undergoing feels interior as much as exterior. 

I kept thinking about emerging structures like co-ops, B Corps, universal basic income, concepts of pluralism, and shifts away from structures like Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and tribalism. These “new” concepts are promising, but they already exist; they’re not the New Story itself. The New Story is still undefined, still forming. It may or may not include these newer concepts. Doing the art project helped me feel this territory — the evolution toward what may come.

Integration Through Reflection

Finally, I want to note that simply taking the time to record these reflections has been meaningful. It’s easy to notice something, or have an idea, and move on. Being accountable — to others and to myself — and the act of writing it down helps crystallize the moment and integrate it more fully into my being.

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Reports on Practice: An Introdcution

In October 2025, I joined a year-long leadership and spiritual development program called the New Story Stewards, led by Bill Grace. The program meets monthly and asks participants to maintain a daily contemplative practice while reflecting on questions about how to live and lead well during times of profound transition and complexity.

I came to this work for reasons that have been building for years. My life exists at several intersections: public service and inner work, organizational consulting and spiritual practice, the demands of showing up for my community and the quiet necessary to stay grounded in myself. For a long time, I've been looking for a structure that could help me integrate these dimensions rather than toggle between them. I've also been seeking a community of people engaged in similar questions—not just intellectually, but as a lived practice.

The program has given me both: a container for sustained contemplation and a group of fellow travelers who take the interior work of leadership seriously.

Why Make This Public?

Each month, participants are asked to write a brief "Report on Practice"—a summary of how our daily spiritual practice has unfolded, what insights have emerged, what we've struggled with. I've found myself writing much longer reflections than required. What started as a program assignment has become something closer to field notes from an ongoing experiment in paying attention.

I've decided to share these reports publicly for a few reasons.

First, accountability. There's something clarifying about writing for an audience beyond myself and the small circle of program participants. It sharpens my attention and makes me more honest about what I'm actually experiencing versus what I think I should be experiencing.

Second, connection. I suspect others are navigating similar territory—trying to show up with integrity in their work and communities while also doing the quieter inner work of becoming more whole. If these reflections resonate with even a few people, that feels worthwhile.

Third, offering. For years I've benefited from others who've been willing to document their own practice and process publicly. This is part of that larger gift economy—making visible some of what usually remains private, in case it's useful to someone else.

And finally, integration. I'm building this site as a place to bring together different threads of my life: reflections on civic leadership, notes from books I'm reading, examinations of ideas I'm working with. These Reports on Practice belong here. They're part of the same orientation—toward learning how to be more present, more useful, more aligned with what matters.

What to Expect

These reports are personal and incomplete. They are written from within the process, not from some position of having arrived. They document what one person is noticing, practicing, and becoming as I try to show up more consciously in my life and work.

You'll find reflections on contemplative practice—meditation, walking in nature, working with mantras and silence. You'll find thoughts about community, about disconnecting from old patterns and orienting toward new ones, about grief and gratitude. You'll find stories from daily life: conversations that shifted something, music that opened a door, small experiments in living differently.

The writing will vary. Sometimes more structured, sometimes more stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes focused on a single insight, sometimes ranging across multiple threads. These are field notes, not polished essays. I'm keeping them that way intentionally—the roughness feels truer to the work itself.

I won't be explaining the program's framework or curriculum in detail. That's not my story to tell, and it's not the point. What I'm offering here is simply my own experience of engaging with questions about how to live well during complex times, how to cultivate an interior life that can sustain outer work, and how to stay grounded and useful when the world feels increasingly ungovernable.

An Invitation

If you find yourself drawn to these questions—how to live with integrity during times of transition, how to balance action with contemplation, how to stay connected to what's real and human amid so much noise—then perhaps these reports will resonate.

You don't need to be in a formal program or have a developed spiritual practice to engage with this material. You just need to be curious about the relationship between your inner life and your outer work, between who you're becoming and what you're able to offer.

I'm sharing these reflections in the spirit of companionship for anyone walking a similar path. We're all figuring this out together, and sometimes it helps to know what someone else is noticing along the way.

New Reports on Practice will be posted monthly as the program unfolds. Shared with the program founder's blessing, to ensure these reflections represent only my personal experience.Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

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