Special note: Duane will be presenting this project at the GATE (Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment) Conference in Los Angeles on Saturday, February ^4th. The conference is being live-streamed and will feature stories of a positive future and includes: Eckhart Tolle, Jim Carrey, Marianne Williamson, Jean Houston, Louie Anderson, Edward James Olmos, and many other transformational luminaries who support transformational entertainment and media. The live events begin at 9:00 AM, Saturday, February 4th and continue into the evening. Both events can be accessed through the following link: http://www.livestream.com/gatelive.

This project, like so many others, has had a long journey to come to fruition. For me, it started many years ago when I became increasingly aware that our major systems of food, water, energy, government, and money are approaching crisis points wherein they would begin to break down. In the fall of 2007, I gathered with a small group of people from the Tipping Point Network to address strategies for co-creating a positive, life-affirming future for Humanity. One of our exercises was to do a blind poll of how much time we felt there was between then and when the systems collapse would show up. Most of our answers fell in the 2-10 years range. (We were off by a year with money—the system collapsed one year later in the Fall of 2008.)

We began to brainstorm with each other what it would take to survive and thrive in the Great Transition we would find ourselves in. Working with a theory of change developed by Berkana Institute used by communities around the world, and synchronistically appearing today in a blog on the Great Transition by Joe Brewer, we came up with four strategies:

1) Help stabilize and slow down the destruction of the old system.
2) Support and nurture new, emerging systems.
3) Find and train the Bridge Builders in conscious leadership.
4) Change the story: Name and amplify the New Paradigm emerging.

Berkana’s Theory of Change

I became particularly intrigued by and called to attend the last strategy: Change the Story. This has been the primary focus of New Stories and why I joined the board. For years I had done extensive research on the Rapture and the archetype of the Apocalypse, so dominant within several of the world’s spiritual traditions. I simply could not understand how a model that says some of us are the good guys and will go up to heaven while the rest of the people and planet burn could be a very functional form of change. It did not bode well for Earth or most humans. Even the New Age version of the story in the Celestine Prophesy, while not necessitating the destruction of the earth, is still in the same pattern of the good guys ascend (in this case, the ones with the higher vibrations) and the rest will be left behind to suffer.

I began to see how insidious our unconscious thought pattern is of trying to get out of here, as if here—Earth–is such a bad place or we—Humans–are also bad and need to be redeemed. It’s a powerful story, running in the background that expresses itself in many ways, from wanting God, Allah, the White Brotherhood, or aliens to rescue us, to hoping to be the chosen ones who get relieved of embodiment on Earth. This story inherently rejects embodiment, matter, Earth, and Life. I knew there had to be a better story and went in search of it.

I connected with Duane Elgin in one of his seminars on the Living Universe and, finding a soul brother, began to collaborate with him on discovering stories based on different underlying assumptions such as:

Earth and the Universe are alive and thus sacred.
Life itself is an astonishing miracle.
It is a rare and precious privilege to be embodied.
There is no planet we could get to with our current propulsion systems within 180,000 light years – the time-span of time homo sapiens on the planet.

So this is it. You and I are it. We are it. Our planet is it. We have come to a point in our own evolution where we are conscious of evolution itself, and we now have enough power to choose our own destiny with what we know. What will our story be? Working with Jeff Vander Clute, web wizard extraordinaire, Duane and I began to explore not only the stories themselves but also how to present them in a form consistent with the principles of emergence and collaboration. We went through several iterations—Evolutionary Voices, Emergence Speaks—before adopting the wiki format, which gives the opportunity to grow the stories as we grow in our understanding.

There are better stories of how change happens, what really works in evolution, and who we can be as Humanity. These stories are right in front of us, in the processes of how Life has unfolded, in what we have discovered about the evolution of the Cosmos, and in what we have learned about our own physical, psychological, social and spiritual development. We know what health is and what supports it in our own bodies. What supports the health of Humanity? How do we take responsibility for the future of our species?

This is what we’re exploring with the Great Transition Stories: how we hold what is happening to us that allows us to participate in our future in new, life-affirming ways. The Great Transition Stories wiki is a place to gather the growing data on what we know about what works, where stories are emerging that are in alignment with our own and our planet’s processes, and who is pioneering positive change on the ground. It is a collaboration that is growing. We hope you’ll join us.

We face big challenges and it will take an equally big vision to transform conflict into cooperation and draw us into a promising future. The most difficult challenge facing humanity is not devising solutions to the energy crisis or climate crisis or population crisis; rather, it is bringing images and stories of the human journey into our collective awareness that empower us to look beyond a future of great adversity and to see a future of great opportunity. Stories of great transition offer alternative big-picture perspectives that place our time of transition in a larger context and illuminate a promising future. These narratives are of universal concern, simple and relatively easy to understand, emotionally powerful, and able to call forth our higher potentials; and all involve a time of profound initiation and deep transformation.

A growing team of storytellers has gathered more than a dozen enormously valuable, deep stories that offer beacons of hope for a promising future. The Great Transition Stories project is pulling together these positive narratives from many sources from around the world and bringing them into one place where they are easily accessible to educators, media makers, businesses, and more. This is a non-profit, trans-partisan, and open-source project whose goal is to assist humanity at this critical juncture by making these powerful stories, and supporting resources, readily available to the mainstream world. To illustrate the work of this project, here are summaries of four widely recognized stories for describing the human adventure:

1. A Global Brain Awakens: The human family is moving from a long history of separation to nearly instantaneous global communication and connection. We have developed tools that are supporting a quantum increase in our collective communication–and our collective consciousness–as a species. Our ability to communicate has enabled humans to progress from nomadic bands of gatherers and hunters to the edge of a planetary civilization. Because we are in the midst of an unprecedented revolution in the scope, depth, and richness of global communications, the impact of this revolution on our future will be equally unprecedented. The “Global Brain” is a metaphor for the worldwide network formed by people coming together with communication technologies that connect them into an organic whole. As the Internet becomes faster, more intelligent, more ubiquitous, and more encompassing, it increasingly ties us together in a single communications system that functions like a “brain” for the planet Earth.

2. Humanity Is Growing Up: Over tens of thousands of years, the human species has been learning and maturing. We have moved from our childhood as awakening hunter-gatherers to our late adolescence as a species on the edge of a planetary civilization. We are now moving collectively through a rite of passage, toward our early adulthood as a human community. In shifting from our species adolescence to early maturity, we seek a new relationship with the Earth, one another, and the universe.

3. Integrating Indigenous Wisdom: Indigenous peoples have a feeling of communion with the land and bring a natural sense of participation with the life force that infuses work and play in everyday life. These are vital capacities to reintegrate into modern cultures where people feel alienated from the Earth and one another, and regard the land and other people as resources to be exploited–resulting in great damage to the Earth and imperiling our future. Indigenous wisdom reminds us of our oneness with the Earth as an interdependent, living system; our oneness with each other and the other forms of life that are our companions; and our oneness with the universe that is our cosmic home.

4. Humanity Is on a Heroic Journey: Humanity is on a heroic journey of development and discovery with three major stages–separation, initiation, and return. The core narrative concerns our movement from a long stage of separation, and into a time of profound initiation, and then to a long journey of return. After thousands of years of separation and differentiation, humanity is now moving into a time of initiation where we face the consequences of that separation. From that initiation may come insight, connection, and a journey of return to the Earth, one another, and the cosmos.

This is a rare moment in human history when we are beginning to develop, for the very first time, the “story of, by, and for all of us.” There may be no more important task for humanity than to cultivate narratives in our collective imagination that can serve as beacons for guiding us into a promising future. No single story is adequate to tell the great story of humanity’s journey. Therefore, in the coming weeks, I will blog about a number of narratives that, taken together, provide the themes for describing the human journey in this time of great transition. I hope you will join the dialogue as this series continues to explore deep stories for a promising future.

Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and trans-partisan media activist. He is the director of the Great Transition Stories project that, in turn, is a project of New Stories. Duane will speak about this work at a major gathering in Hollywood on February 4th, sponsored by GATE–the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment.

This post was also published on The Huffington Post on 2/1/2012

I first heard them a few months ago from Bob Stilger who had been working in Japan as a witness and host and facilitator for the cultural transformation underway in the aftermath of the disasters in 3/11. See his blogs about his journey. See my previous blog about him.

Several possible images flickered through my mind about what a Future Center would be and how it might function and why it is emerging now. Nothing I could fantasize came close to the very exciting and fascinating reality that’s unfolding as I write. A Future Center is not the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon or the Battlestar Galactica. It is not a place in the future with unfamiliar or weird costumes, gadgets and behaviors. It is not science fiction.

A Future Center is here now, wherever people choose to stand and work together in Circle to co-create their future. The Future is where what we are experiencing now as the rapidly changing conditions of our lives meets all of the skill, knowledge and wisdom gathered over our lifetimes, directed by our intention and where we put our attention. A Future Center is conscious evolution in action, choosing our destiny in relationship with the planet we inhabit.

Many people are experiencing new conditions for their lives—financial loss, homelessness, the after effects of tornadoes, fires and floods. Yet in few places have the destructive forces of both Man and Nature been so concentrated as in the 3/11 triple catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan. Perhaps that is why Future Centers are emerging in Japan. As a wise Japanese Elder said: “Perhaps this happened to us because we could respond.”

And responding they are. When systems collapse so dramatically, new ingenuity is called forth. How can the ingenuity that sees new possibilities, new kinds of relationships, new points of view be gathered and disseminated? This is the purpose of a Future Center.

It starts as a place of listening to what is happening around you. If people who are alert and watchful come together like scouts for a wagon train and share what they have seen in their forays forward, a vision begins to emerge of the larger surroundings, the larger pattern. What are people needing, what’s feeding them, where are the healers, what songs are coming forth, where are love and community blooming? What factors contribute to that happening? What new possibilities become visible as we listen to each other?

A Future Center isn’t a thing as much as it is a process of witnessing, a collecting of multiple perceptions, a gathering of ideas that are working and then choosing to do something together that serves the community. What’s key in the Future Center isn’t the physical walls or where it’s located. It is the set of principles of how to be with each other in a creative life-affirming way that forms the structure which holds a Future Center together.

Many of us have not been taught the skills to function well in the kind of community interchange that goes to deeper levels of trust and acceptance, truth and vulnerability, wherein lie the possibility of creating something new and beautiful. Future Centers are training centers for the kinds of skills that enable us to heal our communities no matter what disaster befalls us. Japan is pioneering a way to listen, to respect, to have compassion for and to act together in a way that supports wholeness, that brings out the best of the collective creative human soul/mind/spirit. Simply put, a Future Center is a really good way to help a group of people discover what they want to do collectively and collaboratively.

As Bob Stilger says: “It’s not any complicated technology.  It doesn’t require huge dollars to be able to do. It’s noticing what’s actually going on and then working with emergence within the system. People come together asking “What can we do around this particular issue?  What can we do with our community to make it better? What we can do with this particular opportunity?” Part of what the Future Center movement does is build awareness of a very flexible yet very powerful reflection-action methodology for people to listen to each other and figure out together what they want to do.

“It is not difficult, but does require hosts of the dialogue and a core team that is designing the whole dialogue process.  It’s important to articulate the principles and the processes and the methodologies that make it possible for work that we naturally know how to do as human beings to become more powerful, more effective and have greater impact.”

In the Future Centers that Bob is helping to establish in Japan, there are a few basic principles:

First: Name the phenomenon that’s already beginning to happen and invite more of it.

Second: Start with the basic understandings for community building that have evolved out of Berkana Institute and other groups working with community based organizations in different parts of the world.

a) Every system is filled with leaders
b) The knowledge and the wisdom we need are already present.
c) We have enough resources to begin.
d) We just need to have a sense of direction and then begin taking steps.

Third: Choose and work with a core set of dialogue methodologies: Circle, World Café, Open Space Technology, Pro-Action Café, Non-violent Communication, and others as ways to host a deeper interaction among people.

Fourth: Be aware of the seven steps which naturally lead to collaborative action:

a) Build relationships
b) Identify Needs
c) Gather Data
d) Generate Ideas
e) Converge around what we want to do
f) Prototype solutions out of that convergence
g) Communicate results.

Much more detailed resources can be found by going to Bob’s Blog and reading his eight page summary of a 30,000 foot overview of Future Centers.  Deeper resources include a 43-page guide to Future Centers that elaborates the principles, processes and the methodologies being used right now in Japan to initiate the Future Centers movement.

I’m beginning the “soft launch” of something that has grown out of my work in Japan over the last several years.  The Transformation Institute:  Community, Business and Personal Transformation is coming to life at web address Robert Theobald and I used for our work from the mid-nineties until his death just before the beginning of the new century.  Seems very fitting and appropriate.

Frankly, I don’t know exactly what the Transformation Institute is.  I just know it wants to be born.  Several questions contribute to its formation:

• We will encounter more and more collapse of existing systems in the coming years.  How can we use collapse (disaster/emergency/revolt) as a springboard to transform our communities and our lives into ones which are healthy, resilient and thriving?  A friend in Japan made a critical observation last April, speaking of the triple disasters in Japan.  She said “we caused this.”  Three simple words.  They make us face the fact that while a natural disaster occurred, it was precipitated by an array of human choices.  Many of our choices will lead to more collapses.  Will we try to reconstruct the old normal, or can we learn how to use the energy of collapse to transform to a new more desirable state?
• While there are differences in our community, business and personal lives, transformation of the three is interwoven.  How will we reconceptualize and recreate the relationship between these three aspects of our lives? One of my biggest lessons in Japan has been seeing what it looks like when business is still a part of community rather than apart from community.  I’m not trying to glamorize business in Japan or say there are not issues and problems, but what’s been striking to me are the ways in which community and social needs trump financial profit.  CSR isn’t enough, it feels kind of like an “oh, and, by the way, I wonder if there is something good we ought to be doing.”  What would it be like for community, business and personal to conceive of themselves as integral parts of a greater, related whole?
• There is a great, latent potential for great cooperation and greater learning linking the whole of the Pacific Rim.  We are an ecology together.  How might the diverse insights, questions, knowledge and experience of countries, cultures and peoples on the Pacific Rim be invited into a deeper co-creative relationship?  How do we honor the particular problems and potential present in each context and learn together a we work to create a future that works for all?
• Finally, the emergence of a new Tohoku Region in Japan will be a teacher to all of us.  How do we learn with and from the people of Japan as this beautiful Tohoku region comes back to life? What can those of us elsewhere around the rim contribute as people in Tohoku learn how to work together to create the communities, businesses and lives they want?  I remember the feeling in early April when I was co-hosting a group of 40 or so business leaders in Japan.  We began with grief, sadness and confusion that turned into excitement within three hours.  The shift was remarkable.  When I sensed into the shift these words came back to me:  we’ve been released from a future we did not want!  How can Japan lead the way in transformation?

It’s an exciting time.  Much is possible.  I invite you to help me think about how the new Transformation Institute might contribute to the possibilities which surround us!

Cheers,

Bob

I’ve been back in Japan for a quick visit.  When I left in mid-December, my intuition was that I should come back for a quick visit to begin the new year.  I wanted to know what the energy would be of the new year.

Incredible, overwhelming, stupendous. Those are a few of the words that come to mind.  Yesterday, on one of the coldest days in Tokyo this year 120 people showed up for a day long workshop on creating a network of social issue future centers.  We scheduled the workshop in early December and thought that perhaps 30 or so people would come.  Towards the end of the month, my dear friend and colleague Nomura-san from Fuji/Xerox’s KDI realizedt he would dedicate himself to launching a new Nonprofit Organization this year which would grow a network of social issue future centers. Miratsuku, the NPO founded last year by our dialog colleague Yuya Nishimura (http://emerging-future.org/), will incubate this network.

We started with stories.  I talked about different community work in Tohoku which was Future Center work — it just didn’t carry the name.  Nomura-san talked about the principles and practices of Future Centers that we’ve been articulating over the last year.  Then four different people talked about the work they were already doing which could easily be called Future Center work. When we planned this workshop we were using last year’s language of a network of 500 Future Centers.  But I saw immediately that was too few.  The energy in the room was for at least 1000!

I talked about the reasons we can plan on finding, creating and connecting 1000 Future Centers in Japan when then are only ten or so in Europe.  In Europe, a Future Center is a building.  In Japan a Future Center is a BA — a hospitable space which hosts the energy, dreams and possibilities or a group of people who come together to get something done.  And the energy in Japan is astounding right now.   3.11 has been the cause of great destruction, devastation and grief AND it has also sparked a sense of release from a future we did not want.  What’s happening — all over the place — is that people are stepping forward to take responsibility for their own lives.  It’s what we saw in the four presentations — one on TEDxTokyo which was one of the first TEDx programs in the world and which continues to morph into a more and more activities, one on Hana Lab which works to empower college aged women, one of a major insurance company that has embraced Future Centers as a way to get their work done, and one on an extensive community involvement program in Kyoto.  In each case what they’re doing is releasing energy and co-inspiring each other.

When I first arrived in Japan in 1970, one of the first phrases I encountered for describing Japan was “the nail that sticks up gets pounded down.”  This was one aspect of collective culture — people did not individuate.  They did not stand up for what they wanted.  Well, what’s happening now is that the same collective culture is becoming a force to help all nails stand up!  And this is a powerful shift.

So this work is already happening.  Why are Future Centers needed?

At The Berkana Institute we’ve talked for years about the power of a four stage process:  Name, Connect, Nourish and Illuminate.  Naming gives power.  It makes something going on visible.  Connecting begins to build a system of action which serves to increase the power:  we inspire each other.  Nourishing people doing Future Center work with explicit principles, practices, methodologies and resource materials make it possible to do even better work.  Illuminating the work already being done tells powerful stories which inspire and inform others.  We believe that by consciously creating a wide network of Future Centers it will be possible for more and more people to step into creating Japan’s future.

And the time is now.  There’s a readiness.  An eagerness to get to work.  In April of last year when I arrived three weeks after the disasters, the main emotional tone was grief and trauma; something else was stirring, a sense of the future being now — but grief was what was most present.  In August the mood was one of “it’s time to do something, but we don’t know what to do.”  By the end of the year there was another shift — a quiet determination that was beginning to quicken.

And now it is time.  If we had held yesterday’s workshop in early December, we probably would have had 30 or so people.  They would have been getting ready — but I doubt the spirit and determination we saw yesterday would have been present.  Professors, students, business people, NPO leaders, government officials, men and women. Youngest around 20 and oldest around 70.

The second half of the workshop was people talking about what they would contribute to build this network of 1000 social issue future centers.  We announced Future Center week for 2012 for the end of May.  Last year we made an all out effort to have 5 future center sessions in one week.  This year we want to have 100!

We’re getting traction.  This work is going to have to be nurtured and supported.  We’re going to learn our way into it.

The Future is Now.

Blessings,

Bob

They give an immediate overview of the disaster of Fukushima.  They are part of a large collection of images and PDFs at http://cryptome.org/nppw-series.htm

Fukushima is so hard on my heart.  It just feels impossible.

In the nineties I spent six years on the Governor’s Nuclear Waste Advisory Board in Washington State, home of Hanford Nuclear Reservation.  At one point we were spending $4-5 Million a day planning clean-up.  At the end of the day, what’s clear is that we really don’t know what to do with the nuclear waste we’ve created.  I recall one project where millions of dollars had been spent trying to figure out how to alert people in 10,000 years who might discover buried waste.

I look forward to finding ways of supporting the people of Fukushima as they rebuild their lives and their communities.  And I send them so much prayer and energy and support.

First, we gathered 60 people together for three days of dialog about their leadership at the KEEP at Kiyosato.  They came from all over Japan; two thirds of them in their 20s and 30s.  It was our fourth Youth Community Leader Dialogs since May; they have now involved more than 200 people  — many of whom either live in or have volunteered in the disaster areas.  Each time the mood has been different.  I’d call this last dialog “quiet determination.”  One young man from Fukushima, location of the nuclear disasters came to the May dialog.  Something started to grow in him.  He was a bit afraid of it, but the idea would not leave — he had to start bringing people in Fukushima together to talk and to listen to each other.  He’s ready now.  Small steps.  Important steps.  People finding their way forward.  And that is what in our collective field.  In May’s dialog the grief was overwhelming.  In September, confusion dominated the field.  Now, quiet determination.

I came back from Kiyosato to spend a morning with ETIC — the Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities (English:  http://www.etic.or.jp/english/index.html; 日本語: http://www.etic.or.jp/).  They’ve been doing creative work for many years and now they are working with 20 communities in Tohoku to place young social entrepreneurs in those communities for 3-12 months.  AND, they are working with community to build community — not just sending in the young experts to tell people what to do.  The ETIC Fellows join a growing number of “U Turns” — people who grew up in Tohoku and left who are now returning to help and “I Turns” — people who never imagined themselves living in Tohoku who are now dedicating their lives to work with people there to recreate a ravaged region.  As I told Kogi Yamaguchi, the program director, if I was Japanese, I’d be doing exactly what he’s doing.  More quiet determination.  People just stepping in to get the job done.

The last three days have been with the Goi Peace Foundation (日本語: http://www.goipeace.or.jp/japanese/index.html; English:  http://www.goipeace.or.jp/english/index.html).  And it’s been quite a journey!  Goi Peace Foundation gives a Peace Prize for outstanding work to one person each year.  This year’s prize when to Bill Strickland,  social innovator and the President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation—an extraordinary jobs training center and community arts program, which gives disadvantaged students and adults the opportunities they need to build a better future.  Last Friday I sat in as young social entrepreneurs told Bill about their work, then on Saturday I was part of the panel at the Peace Prize Forum which talked about how we create the future now.  Yesterday, Susan Virnig, Alan Briskin and I joined Bill and leaders of the Goi Peace Foundation on a day long visit to Ishinomaki — one the areas of extensive tsunami damage, which I visited first in April (see earlier notes:  http://www.resilientjapan.org/content/id/6c0ebc).  It was Bill and Alan’s first visit to Tohoku, Susan’s second and my third.  We each felt overwhelmed.

Both what’s been done and what remains for doing are staggering.  Last April many thousands of people were in shelters; now all the shelters are closed and people are either in temporary housing or have moved in with others.  The long corridors of debris that are visible in the slide show on the home page of this blog have been consolidated into mountains of rubble.  People are discovering how to get on with their lives.  They are just doing what’s  needed.

We were joined by Yamamoto-san, President of Peace Boat Vounteers.  He’s been in the area since April working with as many as 200 Peace Boat volunteers a week who have come to help.  They just show up.  Willing hands needing to help.  They’ve moved tons of rubble and listened, listened, listened as people have shared their grief.  Yamamoto-san has worked all over the world with Peace Boat relief efforts — he’s never seen destruction as extensive as Ishinomaki.

We spent time in the community of Ogatsu.  They now work under a banner of OH GUTS.  And they have guts.  It was both heartbreaking an inspiring to talk with the Junior High Principle.  His school was totally destroyed.  The building stands, but rubble not students populate the corridors.  When the earthquake came, the evacuated the children outside.  It saved their lives.  Had they thought the third floor of the school, a fair distance inland from the ocean would be safe — most would have died.  But when the waters came, they ran into the surrounding hills.  The waters covered the three story school.  It took the Principal eight days to find every child from the school — most of them spent three days in the surrounding hills in freezing temperatures while the waters receded.  He found them all.  They survived.  Miracles do happen.

Now the principal is working closely with two others — a local fisherman and a “U Turn” from Tokyo.  They can’t wait.  They have to rebuild the community now.  If they don’t start now, chances for creating a viable community will diminish each each day.  Many things happening.  One is their own version of “cloud investment.” The local pearl industry was destroyed and will take a several years to rebuild.  But it takes investment.  Starting in September, people all over Japan were invited to invest 10,000 yen — roughly $125 — and their dividend will be a pearl in a couple of years.  Nearly 2000 people have already stepped forward and the re-seeding of the oyster beds has begun.  The big Taiko drums from the school were destroyed — but guess what, duct tape and old tires make good drums.  The sound may not be the same, but the energy of the playing the field of presence they create is.  Kids are making rhythm again.

As we spent the day driving around Ishinomaki, I don’t know how many times Bill said “we got to do something, man.”  He’s a doer.  He attracts energy and gets things done.  Like the people in Ishinomaki, he doesn’t wait for anyone.  He knows that when you pay attention to people, nurture them and respect them, they can get just about anything done.  The people in Tohoku are a lot like Bill.  They’re not going to sit around and talk something to death.  Yes, they will talk and they will listen.  They will grieve.  And then they’ll take the first step.  They’ll get something done.

That’s the energy stepping forward in Ishinomaki, across Tohoku and throughout Japan.  People are just getting on with building communities that work.

It’s a long journey.  As Hiroo Saionji, President of the Goi Peace Foundation, said in his opening remarks:  its time now to create a world that works for everyone.  It’s time now to meet together in peace.  It’s time now to set aside our behaviors that are destroying the planet and diminishing our lives.

It’s time to find and take the first steps towards a new civilization

Rikuzentakada was a jewel of a small community.  Population of 17,000, it had a mild climate and a great deal of natural beauty.  It’s downtown area was also built on a wide plain at sea level facing the ocean.  It has been completely destroyed.  It is just isn’t there anymore.  A few buildings are still standing — but mostly the shops and houses and businesses are simply gone.

We spend the day with two pretty ordinary guys.  Fukuda-san is a former politician in his mid-fifties.  He stopped working with government a few years ago.  Tamara-san is bit older; they’ve been friends for 35 years.  Tamara-san is the President of a large Driving Training School.  They are both filled with ideas they are putting into action.  Tamara-san has started a company called Natsukashii Mirai which means, literally, “the future you long for because you remember it from the past.”  It is a business incubator founded for a ten year period to give birth to 7-8 businesses that can make a difference in the community.  Part of the difference Tamara-san wants to make is that he want’s young people to go ahead and leave — as they will — and go to Tokyo, but to come back to good jobs in Rikuzentakada.

Fukuda-san talks about how government can’t create anything new.  People need to do that.  Govenment goes in circles, ending up in the same place.  Upward spirals are what is needed now.  We need to really unleash the creativity of people to make a new future that combines old traditions with new technologies he says.  We need to plan and build differently for a future we want, not the past.  Talk about new building styles and zero-emissions.  Crazy ideas like, perhaps the young people who can run from a tsunami should live on lower ground than old people – but in 30 or 40 years they’ve be old people so that won’t work!

They were both so alive and engaged.  They believe that what they are doing is important for the restoration of their community as well as a model for the rest of Japan.  Tamara-san, who has a big collection of smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, says I’m a merchant priest.  Later I say to him, I imagine you’ve been a merchant priest for a long time — 3.11 created a context in which you could step forward more and offer yourself and your ideas.  I asked, how do we help others step forward as well?  Iwai-san, an old friend and colleague, a business executive from Tokyo who has been doing extensive volunteer work in Ishinomaki, another tsunami struck community, joined us as well. His comment was powerful:  people have changed since 3.11, but the old system is still in place.  Fukuda-san and Tamara-san nod in agreement.

Their sense is that even though so much has been destroyed, we can create a wonderful new community.

When I arrived in Japan this past spring, three weeks after the triple disasters, I started to believe that the ways in which the Tohoku was re-created would have profound implications for the rest of Japan and all the world.  It seemed possible that the dynamics of collective culture, combined with overwhelming needs, might unleash a collective creativity.  That’s what is happening in Rikuzentakada!  We came here because Ooki-san, an executive with a major Tokyo public relations firm visited here twice the summer and was overwhelmed by what he saw.  He came to our of our Youth Community Leader Dialogs in August and came away thinking that dialog with youth here might be one of the keys.  The purpose of our meeting today was to test the waters.  I suspect we’ll be back both with Youth Dialog as well as Future Center work.

Part of what makes this story inspirational for me is that Fukuda-san and Tamara-san are, at many levels, just a couple of ordinary guys.  We find them in communities everywhere.  People who are called forward to offer their leadership in a time of need.  I suspect that if they lived in the US, both would be Republicans — but those labels really don’t mean very much when we start to work with each other in community.

It’s been a honor to be with them today and I look forward to my next visit.

We* spent a second day visiting four different places in the the Tohoku disaster area.  I’ll just talk about two.

Eight months ago today the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown hit Japan.  Back in the tsunami area of Miyagi Prefecture, I impressed with the extent of clean-up and it is still hard to look at the extensive damage.

We started the day meeting with Watanabe-san, the volunteer coordinator in Minami-Sanriku-cho.  Watanabe-san was born in Sendai, and was working in Tokyo when the disasters came.  A young man, he returned because he needed to help.  He found his way to the Minami-Sanriku-cho area where 7 communities with 2500 people were completely destroyed.  Slightly more than 200 lives were lost eight months ago.  About 700 people now live in temporary housing in the minami-sanriku-cho area.  Others have gone moved elsewhere in temporary or permanent housing.

The system around temporary housing was designed to get people out of shelters as quickly as possible with as much fairness as possible.  That means housing was assigned by lottery with no accommodation made for community or origin.  The 700 people are distributed randomly in 7 shelters and now live in the company of strangers with no former community ties.  They are complete scattered!  Imagine, first the life you know ends, then you live in close quarters with strangers for five months and then you move into temporary housing with even more strangers.

There was one large meeting facility in the area — the County Training Facility.  It sits a short distance from the largest temporary housing project which has 250 people.  Until a month ago, people had use of the facility — that’s no longer true.  The people who work there had to reclaim it so they would be sure to get a budget for their activities for next year.  It’s crazy!  Especially since people are scattered, they need someplace to come together as communities.  But they can’t.  Until they can come together as community, they are dependent on government — at the mercy of government — as applicants.  Meeting with Watanabe-san today the sixties radical was rising up inside of me -  “heck, why don’t you occupy the training center and demand that the county build you a center,” I said.  I know this won’t happen here — but heavens, the current situation is just stupid.  Later in the conversation we talked about the need for a Future Center session (see other blogs for information on Future Centers or visit http://wiki.newstories.org/wiki/Future_Centers.)  I left Minami-Sanriku-cho feeling sad — how could people here begin to make community again.

Several visits later we ended the day with Chiba-san.  A sea-going engineer whose home was Oosawa, a small village which he finally returned to permanently when he retired.  His village of 188 households was near the ocean and totally destroyed.  150 people lost their lives on that fateful day.  Those who heeded the warning and retreated to higher ground were saved; they had about 40-50 minutes before the tsunami came.  Those who thought they would be safe perished.  What we heard, as we listened to him, was a very different story than the story of the morning.

He and several others from Oosawa got lottery assignments to a temporary housing project about 1 km from the old Oosawa.  Chiba-san immediately approached friends in local government and asked if people could trade assignments — they said yes.  He and his old neighbors started to work and gathered most of those from Oosawa into the same housing project.  So they started with relationships and history.  And they immediate started helping themselves.  They started to self-organize to get things done — no waiting for government here.  Chiba-san is a very modest man, and it is clear that his determination played a key role here.  He’s a natural communtiy organizer.  As I listened to him, I started to hear several key principles:

• Don’t ever wait for government.  When you want something go to them until you get it.
• Don’t let problems grow.  Bring people together immediately to talk
• Make as many relationships beyond the community as possible.  Stay connected.
• Do whatever is needed ourselves as soon as we possibly can.  Don’t wait for anyone.

Several months ago they told the main nonprofit organization that had been working with them that they no longer needed their help — “please go help someone else who really needs it.”  They made additions and modifications to their housing so it suits them better.  They organized their own security system.  They knew it was also a time for celebration so this past summer they organized a big summer festival.  They have been reclaiming their lives.  I wasn’t surprised when one of my partners notice the Japanese translation of Meg Wheatley’s Turning to One Another on the library shelf.

Much is possible here in Tohoku — and it is going to take patience, perseverance, ingenuity, creativity and leadership.  It is humbling to stand with these fine people as they get on with rebuilding their lives!

*Yesterday’s group grew by three more.  Naho Iguchi, Yurie Makihara and her husband joined me and Susan Virnig, my spouse, who has done extensive work in Japan these last two years; Yuya Nishimura, my dialog partner here and the founder of a new nonproft, Miratsuku (Creating the Future) Kumakura-san, another Miratsuku Board Member and Teacher at Keio Unversity, and Ooki-san, a public relations executive who has created a Youth Community Dialog project in Rikazentakada after participating in the August Youth Leadership Dialog.

Suji-san is in his late twenties or early thirties.  He came to Sendai from Tokyo in early April, just weeks after the disaster.  He just had to help.  And he has learned his way forward.  Today he is the founder and leader of Sanaburi Foundation. Sanaburi is the name of an ancient festival of giving thanks to the ancestors after the seeds have been planted.  The Foundation’s work is to support the planting of a variety of “seeds:”  the many projects needed to recreate this region.  He and others have established Sanaburi as an intermediary matching the needs of those who have money they want to invest in Tohoku and the needs of those who have work they want to undertake here.  Suji’s had some experience in community foundations and saw the need her.  Already Save the Children and a major UK donor have become partners.

Keita-san was finishing off a graduate degree in education in Yokohama when the disasters hit.  He game to Sendai in March.  He started off driving trucks of supplies needed in the region.  He kept working and working and looking for where he might be of the most service.  Just this week, two cooperatives in different parts of Japan have provided the initial funding for the “Foundation of Cooperative Community Creation.”  Like Suji, his purpose is to collect funds needed for work in Tohoku and to distribute them to those who can use them well in a way that satisfies donor’s desires for accountability.

Oyashiki-san has put his undergraduate degree at University of Tokyo on hold.  He came to the region in May.  His work has been with the “bedroom community” of Takajo.  Here’s what’s been happening.  For many months, people whose homes were destroyed by the Tsunami lived in shelters.  There was no privacy; everyone was connected, whether they wanted it or not.  All of the families of Takajo are now out of the shelter.  340 families — about 500 people — are now living in temporary housing.  They’re the elderly, the hardest to employ, the least resourceful, the most dependent.  Now they’re isolated in separate housing units; disconnected, unemployed.  They are a community within a community and, to some extent, the surrounding community turns their backs on these new residents.  The result has been both an alarming number of suicides as well as people getting sick and sicker because they have no relationships.  Oyashiki works with them.  Doing things like visiting all of the shopkeepers in the neighborhood and making a directory of the shops and what they offer those in temporary housing.  He also helps to set up ways to make sure everyone is visited on a regular basis.  He speaks of his work as trying to make a bridge from the old community to the new community.

Before going on to the fourth story, let me pause a moment here.  These are three young men (20s and 30s) who had no idea they would be in Sendai eight months ago.  They came because they felt a deep calling.  In part because they are young, they are able to walk through the normal isolating boundaries common in the region.  They are also able to enter into relationship with the other young people from the region.  They’ve stepped forward into work that needed to be done.  They’ve done so with commitment, passion and willingness to do whatever it takes to serve.

Okay, the fourth story.   This one from Tome, a community about 2 hours from Sendai which was ravaged by the tsunami.  We arrived at 7:30 in the evening just in time for the nightly meeting of the RQ Volunteer Center there.  RQ is a nonprofit organization which responds to disasters.  There are about 5 or 6 RQ Volunteer Centers in Tohoku.  We visited one.  Thirty people were seated on Tatami mats in the multipurpose room of a former school.  There’s an agenda on the whiteboard in the front of the room.  The basic agenda is reports from the 10 or so different teams on what they did today and what they plan for tomorrow.  The reports are brief and to the point.  The meeting closes by going through the community tasks needed for tomorrow — chairing the morning meeting, chairing the evening meeting, cleaning the baths, cleaning the men’s and women’s toilets and a few other basics.  After the close of the meeting, we spend 3 more hours talking with people about their work.  This is a completely self-organizing system.  The fellow who ran the meeting tonight arrived two days ago.  Of the 30 or s people now in the center, many come for 5-10 days.  Some have been volunteering in the center since March or April of May.  People come, people go.  They sleep in other rooms in the former school and cook for each other in the school’s old kitchen.  They come from a wide variety of backgrounds — ranging from one fellow who had spent the last four years biking around the world to one woman who quit her job as an elementary school teacher.

Tomorrow it will be 8 months since the disaster hit.  People are still showing up to volunteer on a regular basis.  They form teams going out and cleaning tsunami debris,  supporting the fishermen of the area in rebuilding their businesses, creating crafts businesses with women, visiting people living in temporary housing, playing with children, tending to the basic tasks of the RQ volunteer center.  I can’t imagine volunteers showing up like this after eight months anyplace else in the world!  As we continue our discussions, one of the things that comes up is they’re concerned about creating dependency:  are the people in the area getting lazy because we’re doing all these things?  The volunteers come from all over Japan.  Drawn by a desire to help.

I think this is just amazing.  All four stories.  People stepping forward because help is needed how. They’re finding ways to see what’s needed now and stepping forward to get it done.

Incredible energy and dedication.

*Five includes: Susan Virnig, my spouse, who has done extensive work in Japan these last two years; Yuya Nishimura, my dialog partner here and the founder of a new nonproft, Miratsuku (Creating the Future) Kumakura-san, another Miratsuku Board Member and Teacher at Keio Unversity, and Ooki-san, a public relations executive who has created a Youth Community Dialog project in Rikazentakada after participating in the August Youth Leadership Dialog.