Earlier today, the Lace on Race staff and I immersed ourselves in sharing about our lives and ethical journeys. We come from different places, and enjoy diversity in how we ‘do’ our ethical and relational walks, but I am gratified to say that we share a common core. I listened to (or, more accurately, read) their stories closely. And I found myself doing what I often do–reading in the white spaces, taking off my metaphorical glasses and tuning in to the liminal spaces, as Radha once said; listening for what ears cannot hear and eyes cannot read. Listening for the fragrance, the gestalt of the words. And feeling my eyes well up.

I treasure the stories we told each other. We cleaved even tighter in the telling; in going inward with each other, we nourished each other and gave each other nourishment to turn outward to you all, and to our outer world–the reason we find ourselves together.

Yes. I read and re read, and then didn’t have to read anymore, because their words and their hearts were burned onto mine, in the black letters and in the white spaces. I could feel their weight, those words and the white spaces in and through and between them, and felt held as well when I shared my story.

You know I just told you the secret, yes? We do, or at least hope we do, competent work that will be enduring: we love to engage; love to talk about vision and mission; love the partners we have curated, and love each of you.

That isn’t enough.

If you sat in on Admin Chat, you would see an odd ratio.

For every minute we spend on the minutiae and on the administrative tasks of producing Lace on Race, for every minute we spend in vision and mission, for every minute we discuss the community’s growth and challenges, both as a group, and of the individuals that comprise it, we spend a lot more time cleaving, learning more and more about each other, trusting and being trusted, holding and being held. To the casual observer it would look like an extended kaffeklatch; talking about babies, and nail strips, and metal forging, and gardens. About if Marlise felt the baby, and asking about Claire’s appointment, and checking in on Danielle, and making sure I eat something other than Fritos and mango salsa. You would think we are just a group of friends who only occasionally do the stuff of an organization.

You would be wrong.

This is a big deal. I, and the Admin team feel strongly that the organizations we have been a part of, collectively so many, have it backwards. They focus on the tasks, on ‘goals’, on ‘product’, pushing outward. Only rarely, if ever, do organizations do what we do–focus on nurturing a cohesive relational center that holds, even with disagreements (we have them), frustrations (we have those too), and even seeming failures. We know that the work we do depends on us modeling something not often seen in organizations.

Love.

Of all stripes. In order for us to love you effectively, we need to do the work to love ourselves and each other. We need to practice the relational skills we exhort you to, and we need to do this in a container that is unbreakable.

But still fragile. Each of us has challenges brought into the work that could, however unintentionally, undermine the work we have chosen to dedicate ourselves to. Including me. Especially me. Each of us brought our stories into the circle, stories both admirable and less so. Each of us risks with each other every time we encounter each other. Each of us dares to be known and seen, and chooses to know and see, in and out of the white spaces.

Lace on Race is our work. Doing the internal work to be, each of us, a place on which the others can stand; and nurturing the shared mound of dirt on which we have planted our collective orange tree–that is The Work.

Only then do we look outward; to you all and to the world. Only then, with a shared foundation, do we dare to exhort and guide and lead and serve. Only then do I dare to write, and Marlise dares to edit, and Danielle dares to engage, and Claire dares to advise. Absent love–for ourselves, for each other, and for the tree we fertilize with our individual and shared histories, and water with our tears, and lean on when it’s hard–absent that unrelenting love it’s just another job.

Just another job. That one might do with ‘associates’ or ‘coworkers’ or even ‘colleagues’. Something that you do for your own gain; if good stuff happens, that’s great, but it’s not the purpose, despite high minded vision boards and mission statements.

We have seen in these last weeks of the current crisis, just what the relationship is between the workplace and the people who populate it. How corroded it is; how eroded and dissonant it is from those high minded words. We have seen just how alone we actually are; and not just because of necessary social distancing. We have seen small cracks in social containers become yawning fissures, and we have seen how people hoard 17,000 bottles of sanitizer, or fill their garages with toilet paper, and fistfights over clorox wipes. We have seen the strata laid bare–who can flee the scene to private islands; who can shelter in place with deliveries plopped on their door; and the workers who risk so we can have rib roast. We have seen how divided we are, despite what Burger King and Microsoft insist in their ads.

We have seen the disease. And it isn’t Coronavirus.

The disease, the dis-ease, is alienation. It’s isolation, not of the body, but of the heart and soul. It’s separation, not from a handshake, but from true self. It’s estrangement, not from the life you led, but from the life you say you want.

The Cure is Connection.

I want growth for you all. I hope that you learn more and more, that you learn to speak out, that you learn to share more and more reflexively, that you learn to ask better questions, that you move with quickness and resolve and with minimal clench.

None of that matters without connection. None of that matters without the connective tissue of community. None of that matters without Leaning In, Planting Roots, Growing In and Up. Only then does one Grow Out.

But I have learned that connection is in itself a risk. And it’s something that many have not felt fully capable of leaning into.

It is a great work to believe you are not only capable of, but also worthy of, connection and community. There is a confidence married with a humility that can be scary. Lean In anyway.

What we are doing here has influenced many. That’s great. But I care less about individual achievement than I do about learning how to truly Meet.

Meet Yourself. Meet the Other. Meet, and then serve.

The container will hold you. The connective tissue of community will bind you and give you firm standing to risk and to cleave.

Thirteen years ago, in the living room where I am typing these words, I was not sad. I was not angry. I was disconnected.

And my story almost ended. And we would not be here today.

Connection equals continuance, equals continuity, equals a community we can believe in.

Keep walking.