extended cover letter
~ this assumes a following conversation - feedback more than welcomed ~
~ this assumes a following conversation - feedback more than welcomed ~
To whom it may concern:
Dear Whom,
Things change.
Of this a human being can be reasonably sure.
Sometimes everything changes, not literally but in the way that one mbday wake to a morning different from every other that preceded it. The night before made this possible because, in my case, the future I had imagined died with my little boy. Perhaps the sun set on the birthday that finally made you feel Old, or the doctor's assistant called to murmur the word metastasized, or it finally hit home that ten years ago the power equivalent of two nuclear plants was expended to run the vending machines in Tokyo each day. Now the figure is much higher.
And what remains is Now, and a series of questions and moments for making decisions.
Climate Change, Privatization of remaining space, food, water, air, and energy, the resulting moves toward War, and Extinction, for example, are not any more the burdens of tomorrow that humanity may be able to lighten, given sufficient reactive fear and growth of collective wisdom. Supremely unpopular (until they are recognized as heroism) choices for entire cultures to change are what stand between us and a dark tomorrow, blue like a bruise. The revisioning of education, business, and public policy to shape a culture of Peace, the work to which you and I are called, is not for someday but for Now and we are as prepared as we need to be to model and learn in this moment a new ethic of Community and conflict done well.
To that end I have a three-part request to make.
At 38 years old, and after working in a multitude of capacities in academia and the private and not for profit sectors, I am finally finishing a Ph.D. dissertation on the psychology and mythology of culture. Please read what follows which outlines my current readiness and hopes for the future and then, if I have held your interest, go to bdwc.net and read my story and qualifications. After reading, if you know of 20 hours each week of employment related to my vocation I may provide while I write, please contact me with information. My time of building this work with little regard for my personal longer-term sustainability has passed. Any additional assistance you might provide in securing a good working relationship is more than appreciated. If you are able to connect me with direct funding for this work at this time or in the future, all the better. I ask for the gift of your support.
If you feel moved to connect for other deeply felt or less clear reasons I welcome the chance to meet with you for an exchange of listening.
Warm regards,
Brandon WilliamsCraig
My current capacity:
- Discharging executive responsibilities in professional support of a shared vision
- Facilitating group processes designed and implemented to result in ongoing groups which discern and learn from internal mistakes, keep the needs of the greater community in focus, and make dynamic mission-moving decisions while improving the quality of life of everyone involved.
- Working within an existing structure to improve the sense of connection and practice of communication between members, building the capacity of the whole to respond quickly, flexibly, and ethically to difficult situations.
In 2008 I will serve an existing organization and finish my dissertation. Then, hopefully still in partnership with that group, I will return my focus to fostering a coalition of individuals and organizations to create a partnership that builds a culture which gives rise to Community on purpose. This community will support all ages in learning and practicing the Process Arts such that peace is redefined as conflict done well and the arising, worldwide, communitarian myth is reinforced in which individual freedom, martial nonviolence, and the hands-on love of all life are woven together.
I intend to do this by co-founding a community of professional conflict facilitators who will learn, demonstrate, teach, and offer public actions. This community may then grow to include study in all levels of academic, public, and alternative endeavor, a school of its own, a residential apprenticeship program, and offerings for the ethical deepening of business and the process of shaping public policy. At this point we may offer services to the international community. From the beginning the partnership will model the behavior it advocates but inevitably both succeeds and fails in realizing. It will welcome "external" change requests and critique, remain faithful to an ongoing auto-critical process, and be transparent throughout, changing, fostering, and sharing leadership regularly and growing only to the point that a felt sense of quality of relatedness will allow.
Labels: bdwc, professional
| posted by Unknown @ 9/24/2007 01:40:00 PM
