As part of International Development week, BCCIC staff conducted short interviews to learn more about the work of their members. See the clips below – and enjoy!
How can we show international solidarity from BC?
What does ‘universality’ mean?
The ‘reverse test’
For more like this visit BCCIC’s website here!
Filed under Leading
Over the past few years, I’ve been invited to several ‘showers’ – friends collectively around a friend about to have a baby or about to get married.
I’m not a big fan of showers in the abstract. I’ve always imagined an actual river of pink-and-white-wrapped gifts, small and large, tumbling from about head-height over an unsuspecting recipient. The traditional approach involves excessive amounts of tissue-paper-stuffed gift bags and either plastic penises or baby-themed chocolate, depending on the occasion. Then there’s ‘bonding time’ with a group of women who hours earlier had exchanged names. The facilitator in me is fascinated by the group’s responses to games that involve counting items in purses, wordplays on love, couple trivia. It’s challenging to be sincere in the face of so many superfluous activities.
Despite my mockery of the worst of these, there are pieces I appreciate about the tradition of showers. A wedding, or a child’s birth, are big times of transition; it’s appropriate to gather as a community to support, share our love for a person, express appreciation and care. It’s a bit like a birthday, but on a grander scale – a big gathering, organized by someone else, all focused on expressing care and love for a single person.
I’ve been wondering how we could do the same – ‘shower’ love and care on someone when it’s not their birthday, and when they’re neither pregnant or engaged. In fact, when perhaps they are emphatically neither of the latter… when they’re doing fertility treatment, finally single again, or anxious about the future.
I’ve thought of it as a ‘love-in’ – that’s just in my mind, it needs a better name (any ideas?). It’d be an opportunity to celebrate a whole person – their and idiosyncrasies.
Either at the gathering or in advance, people would share words / phrases / notes of support or love. They’d bring photos they love, momentos of past times. Ideally there’d be some way of collecting these pieces and putting them in one place… something made on paper to celebrate the person of the day.
The tricky part would be figuring out who to celebrate, and why. I think the person themselves would be nominated by someone, or by themselves; it’d be most useful to celebrate someone who is going through a tough time, but somehow it’d be important to make the occasion celebratory rather than based in pity/charity. It’d be a boost through a low time, a community ‘harambee’ for mental health, an opportunity connect and laugh and share.
Now, what could this thing be called and how could it be framed? Could it be part of an existing network of friends/people, or a separate thing? How could we pick the first person to be ‘it’…? Email me with your ideas…
Filed under Building community, Thinking