Post from Samantha: Integration and Integrity

Day 8: Bangalore, Karnataka

integrity

c.1450, "wholeness, perfect condition," from O.Fr. integrité, from L. integritatem (nom. integritas ) "soundness, wholeness," from integer "whole" (see integer). Sense of "uncorrupted virtue" is from 1548.

As many of you know, I can be pretty wordy. This has proven to be a positive and negative characteristic. Thus, when people ask what I think CLP ultimately aims to do, and I say “human liberation and wholeness,” it isn't totally unexpected.

Human liberation and wholeness includes an integrated life. A life where our love and our work and our family and our lives align in feeling, thought and outward manifestation. When we move from a life of “labor” to “leader” we're moving from a mentality of control to a mentality of change.

I'm working towards integration. I'm working towards integrity. And integration and integrity was the theme of this recent trip to Bangalore.

First of all, we took 22 people on two private vans on a 6-hour overnight drive from Pondicherry to Bangalore. 14 of these people were USA volunteers-- 8 youth and 6 young adults. Alongside them were 8 CLP-TYCL India leaders from Pondicherry-- young men who have spent the last year building the organization (Trust for Youth and Child Leadership) in Pondicherry, South India.

Saturday morning found all 22 of us in the Don Bosco Center in central Bangalore. Don Bosco is a powerful figure to me and I've had many run-ins with his present-day manifestations: a partner in Chennai working in slums to the Saint for the largest Catholic Church in a city in Mexico where I once stayed for CLP programming. Saint Bosco was a youth-organizing saint. He was loved by young people, having once said “Being young is reason enough to love you.” Thus, CLP arriving at Don-Bosco-Anything is a good opportunity to follow in his footsteps.

First Point of Integration: Water Justice from California to Karnataka

Upstairs we found a large circle of chairs and several representatives of The People's Campaign for Water, Bangalore. The leader, Prabhakar, and I had been talking over Skype and email for the passed four months, sharing information about water justice work in Bangalore and California. After introductions, I gave a half hour overview of the Human Right to Water campaign in California (currently AB685). There was a very active question and answer, a sharing of CLP-TYCL and a friendly goodbye.

Second Point of Integration: Representatives of CLP Riverside, Pondicherry and Bangalore...All in One Room

After lunch, we met with the CLP/TYCL Bangalore team at Saint Joseph's College of Arts and Sciences. This was an incredible moment for me: 14 USA leaders (youth and young adult), 8 Pondicherry leaders and several Bangalore representatives from the college and CLP all in one room.

I have to admit-- it caught me off-guard. Was this really happening? Had the CLP world folded in on itself?

Yes it had. And thank God it did.

What does it mean for all these groups to come together? It means that three sets of people from three different locales worked very hard to get to one place in a common struggle to cultivate relationships. Embracing all the complexity of whatever it means to “unite” people and build relationships. I have no illusions about the “joy” and “rainbows” of human unity-- I know unity is complex and dirty and messy and painful. Perfect is in the imperfect. Relationships are beautiful for their resilience and their fragility.Relationships take work and they require that we see beyond our immediate day-by-day tasks to the larger vision.

Like the story about the stonecutters. Once upon a time, there was a traveler who came upon three individuals working with stone. Curious as to what the workers were doing with the stones, the traveler approached the first worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” Grumpily and without hesitation the worker quickly responded, “I am a stonecutter and I am cutting stones.”

Not satisfied with this answer, the traveler approached the second worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” The second worker paused for a moment, sighed, but smiled a little and then explained, “I am a stonecutter and I am trying to make enough money to support my family.”

Having two different answers to the same question, the traveler made his way to the third worker and asked, “What are you doing with these stones?” The third worker stopped what he was doing, bringing his chisel to his side. He looked at the traveler with a beaming smile on his face and declared, “I am a stonecutter and I am building a cathedral.” Relationships are like that.

Third Point of Integration: Century of the Small

In the evening, Prabhakar met Shiva and I at our hostel to share more of thoughts about child and youth organizing. He reminded us of two important, complicated things: (1) the hypocrisy of neutrality and (2) the necessity of big. I struggle with both of these things. (A) I don't think of CLP as a “neutral” organization, but I know the temptation, particularly in the midst of building a broad base of support in a very diverse community. And I question the very foundation of “neutral”-- neutral only represents unthreatening, unchallenging implicit statements of support for the dominant narrative. Neutral is not really neutral, it can often be complacent. I don't find CLP to be this way.

As to the necessity of big. That one settles weird on my stomach. Arundhati Roy, a famous Indian activist and writer galore wrote in an essay that this century could be the century of the small:

“It's possible that as a nation we've exhausted our quota of heroes for this century, but while we wait for shiny new ones to come along, we have to limit the damage. We have to support our small heroes. (Of these we have many. Many.) We have to fight specific wars in specific ways. Who knows, perhaps that's what the twenty-first century has in store for us. The dismantling of the Big. Big bombs, big dams, big ideologies, big contradictions, big countries, big wars, big heroes, big mistakes. Perhaps it will be the Century of the Small. Perhaps right now, this very minute, there's a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Could it be? Could it possibly be? It sounds finger-licking good to me.”

On this night, as all the CLP leaders go to sleep in one city... and others rest in Pondicherry and Riverside, I stay awake wondering about the small and the integrity of the small. I wonder about the small upon the small upon the small. I wonder how they integrate.

And all that small stuff, all that stone cutting, is actually quite a big thing, isn't it?

I can see the cathedral already.

-Samantha Wilson, Executive Learner CLP