spirituality

By in Culture, Images Tags: , , , ,

I shot this photo of Ricardo last week. He lives in a motor home in Española, New Mexico — more about him below.

 

But first, when asked these days, “Paul, what do you do?” I struggle to answer. Because my work doesn’t fit any specialty (coder, real estate agent, lawyer), and I hold no traditional job title since I stepped down from President and CEO of For The Children last year.

But even as a generalist with no descriptive job title, the focus of my work today is lucid and grounded in the core of my life mission statement: To work to end the order of ignorance and injustice in the world.

So for over a year, I’ve only said “yes” to ventures addressing more dire social needs.

Here they are.

First, I immediately launched the Child Rights Foundation. Having worked across the nation addressing the issue of child maltreatment, there can be no doubt that this is the single greatest problem we face today. Five children die daily in the U.S., but we never hear about it because we can’t see them; their deaths are hidden from the public’s eye. There’s nothing sensational about it, either. It’s not like a hurricane, fire, or mass shooting — just a trickle of five per day, every day, year after year. But five children a day is a Sandy Hook School shooting every four days. And in terms of costs to our nation, $2 trillion annually, triple our national defense budget!

Part of my work with CRF is with children from the most marginalized cities in the nation — currently, Española. I teach and mentor teens in high school (when I am in town). And I am working with community and state leaders to provide…something for them because there’s little if anything.

Second, I’ve launched the Critical Thinking Initiative, bringing together professors of philosophy and education from some of the world’s leading universities. We are using thousands of years old tools — logic — to train K-12 teachers on how to teach students not what to think but how to think. This work has been tested for over a decade in Australia, with outstanding outcomes.

This work — combatting ignorance — is crucial to my personal mission. Masters like Socrates and Jesus deemed ignorance as the core of human suffering. Socrates went as far as to claim that evil is ignorance (i.e., Hitler was ultimately ignorant of the value of all human life). Jesus forgave those torturing him “…because they know not what they do.”

Third, in Española, I’m throwing myself into the battle against fentanyl. You’ve heard the basics on this insidious substance. I won’t add anything other than working at the epidemic’s epicenter with the city’s only shelter and rehab center. Tremendous social workers bring saving lives. And then providing them with the tools they need to flourish.

That’s where the photo of Ricardo comes in. And I’m happy to say he is fentanyl free! (If you don’t know about the plight of this nondescript city, just read this LA Time article).

Lastly, I continue to advise clients with my firm, Telos Consulting. Sometimes on a pro bono basis with smaller organizations without resources. Of the hundreds of thousands of nonprofits, the smaller ones are doing some heavy lifting, working in hundreds of communities nationwide. These are the ones that, too often, require the most help in creating sustainable best practices.

I’m always humbled by the countless men and women I meet who don’t feel called into the nonprofit sector. Yet they nonetheless lead in other ways that bring transformational differences.

To all laboring for justice and equity, bravo. We share one planet. We’re in this together.

Happy Monday!

P.S. I’m always eager to meet like-hearted laborers, so feel free to email me at paul@paulmartin.org.

Frankl, Dostoyevsky, and the Other Side of Suffering

By in Parenting, Personal, Philosophy, Relationships, Spirituality Tags: , , ,

 

The rudders of pleasure and pain drive us, as Aristotle told us. All of us. Every action — based on this innate proclivity from the moment we wake until we sleep again…

Avoid pain. Pursue pleasure.

But what about suffering? Aristotle didn’t mention suffering. And there’s a difference. Right now, my calves are sore from a sprinting workout — pain.

Countless children are experiencing hunger, disease, severe abuse, and neglect — that’s suffering.

It was Frankyl who, while in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, realized that despite the freedoms ripped from him, he nonetheless possessed liberties: he could exercise, encourage others, and refuse to demonize her captors.

He never lived in denial with any form of toxic positivity. He accepted reality. And, he accepted his ability to, nonetheless, exercise his few freedoms.

And it was Dostoyevsky (understanding too well due to his violent and unexpected epileptic seizures) who said, “Accept suffering and be redeemed by it.”

I lost my Mother two years ago. For some reason, the loss jolted my senses this week yet again.

Some of you have experienced loss and the subsequent stages: denial, depression, anger, and bargaining.

Day by day, and year by year, I am coming to realize the redemptive part of this loss, this suffering, and it brings such hope.

In our personal lives and work, may we all strengthen our capacity to meet setbacks with understanding. May we even be redeemed by it.

Happy Friday, and have a blessed weekend.

 

Troublemakers, Juneteenth, Trauma: A Letter to my Staff.

By in Uncategorized, Politics, Religion Tags: , ,

Hi all:

Audacious goals. Some call them North Stars. Regardless, for centuries, men and women have committed themselves to radical visions — reform and change and revolution that seemed impossible to the masses.

The greatest exemplar was Jesus.

As one studies any movement, the people behind the movement must be considered — the organizers and idealists and troublemakers who were crazy enough to lead and join and work and believe that transformation was possible and that their persistence could bring it about.

I think of our audacious goal at For The Children, our North Star: An end to family-induced childhood trauma and eradication of the cycle of neglect, abuse, and abandonment.

I mean like, who do we think we are?

Answer? — we are no different from those organizers and idealists and troublemakers. We really aren’t.

Saint Francis and Martin Luther and Florence Nightingale and William Wilberforce and Harriet Tubman and the thousands that worked alongside them, and now…

Opal Lee.

From Thursday’s article by NPR: “At the age of 89, Lee decided her new life mission was much like that of Granger: ‘I knew I just had to spread the word about Juneteenth to everybody.’ The best way to do that, she figured, was to help get Juneteenth accepted as a national holiday.”

Eighty-nine! And today the entire world is learning a new word, Juneteenth, and the meaning behind it. (And millions get a day off work.

As followers of Jesus, we follow the most extraordinary lineage in the history of mankind. He spawned a movement, an audacious one, turning “reality” on its head — a message of the last being the first, the poor being rich, the weak being strong, the losers being winners, the outcasts being those he chose first.

An end to family-induced childhood trauma — what could be more of an audacious, and possible, goal?

Last thing. The reason I chose Judith Herman: she was one of these pioneers, audacious, working for decades to advocate for the reality of trauma, PTSD, against the powers that held to the mind-over-matter canard. But Herman was unrelenting. Trauma and Recovery might be a bit dense. But it is the single greatest work that paved the way for doctors, academics, and organizations like ours to treat and heal victims. The New York Times called the book, “One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud.”

I look forward to reading with you and understanding the core of what our children face.

Happy Juneteenth, and we can do this…

For the children,

Paul

 

Compassion Fatigue: Day 31

By in Uncategorized, Foster Children Tags: , , , ,

Compassion fatigue.

One month ago, gripped by the harrowing statistics regarding children in foster care, I wrote this on Day One:

May is National Foster Care Awareness Month. Each day of this month, For The Children, I will say something about “The New Epidemic.”

Why “new?” — because reports of child abuse have dropped. Why have they dropped? — because mandated reporters (teachers, pediatricians, coaches) with their eagle-eyes, aren’t able to see the kids. They can’t see the bruises or the dissociation or the trembling. 

On average, 5 children die every day from child abuse. Because of COVID-19, that average is on the rise. 

Incidents of sexual abuse are also on the rise. For the first time, over half of the visitors to the National Sexual Assault Hotline were minors. Of those who called with concerns related to the COVID-19, 79% said they were living with their perpetrator.

I’m writing today to raise awareness. I will write every day this month.

For them. 

Writing is hard. You probably know what I mean. But writing about this new epidemic wasn’t hard. The words rolled off my fingers. There was a crisis. So I wrote about it on day two and day three. 

But the writing got harder. Because every morning I receive an email from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). And the email lists news stories about child welfare. And I read about how – all across the country, and the world – children were suffering, in unprecedented ways. Sexual abuse and physical abuse — and I could help wonder what it must feel like to be locked in an apartment for months with your abuser. I thought about the children I’ve met. Victims. 

Compassion fatigue.

All you’d see on the news every hour is COVID-19 COVID-19 COVID-19 but noting – zero – on those who live in the shadows. Children. Minor children of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. These ones not suffering from the virus, per se, but from something I believe to be far more dangerous: family-induced childhood trauma.

Writing about the children wasn’t a too much problem on day four or five, which I titled Urgent Versus Urgent.

***

In January, I visited my psychologist for the first time in over a year. I seemed to be dealing with symptoms of depression. Everything in my personal life was flourishing. At RFK, our work was expanding to new states and new countries. 

There was no “reason” for the depression. But something was up. Have you ever felt that way? — you just now something’s wrong even though everything in your life is going really well.

My therapist introduced me to the term, compassion fatigue — a disorder known to those who work with ailing populations:

Those who have experienced compassion fatigue describe it as being sucked into a vortex that pulls them slowly downward. They have no idea how to stop the downward spiral, so they do what they’ve done since medical school: They work harder and continue to give to others until they’re completely tapped out.

I now had a name for my new pyschological state of affairs. Always a good first step. I soon went to the literature, working on self-care and awareness. More yoga and prayer and exercise.

I began feeling better.

Then COVID-19 hit the headlines I wrote about maybe being stuck in DC with Coronavirus. After 5 days, quarantined to a hotel room, I returned home. 

Work intensified. We developed new programing. How do we reach these children? Who will help them in this time of crisis?

***

When I interviewed for this role, during one of the many interviews, I was asked, “What do you believe to be your greatest strength with respect to this role?” Without hesitation, I responded, “compassion.”

This is weird to write. I’m just helping it real. I’m most certainly not like Mother Teresa or anything. But I feel the pain of others. Many who know me know this aloof kind of logical socially awkward introvert; that’s just my exterior. It’s my personality. Inside of that exterior — I can be kind of a mess when I see people suffering. Literally — somewhere in my chest, I feel it. Sometimes I have to gasp for air. Especially when the pain is the pain of a child. I don’t know why. It could be because of what happened when I was a child, but I’m not ready to write about that.

Maybe you feel the pain of others, too.

***

I remained connected to our RFK chapters and to HHS. Our RFK team began working on a national partnership to help the new emergency first responders: social workers. 

I wrote on days six and seven and eight. It was getting harder. 

Day 10, the entirety of my post read, “I can’t write about the pain. Goodnight.”

Compassion fatigue.

Day 11:

I don’t want to read it, anymore. 

The morning reports. About the children. Not your loved and sheltered and guided ones. 

The millions shacked up with torture. Torture. In America. COVID-19 makes them illusive to the press. Who talks about them. No mandated reporters to help. 

I feel for the homeless; I fear more for children of rampant neglect, abuse, abandonment, far more. 

Children. 

They will end up incarcerated unless we act. 

Unless we act. 

We can act.

I didn’t write again until May 17, day 17. Then day 19. Then day 24.

Today is the 31st. Last day of National Foster Care Awareness Month.

Last post for the month.

I will keep speaking and writing because the children are still at home and there will be a flood of new abuse reports in the upcoming months.

But I will probably take a break.

Because compassion fatigue.

I Surrender: Day 19

By in Uncategorized, Foster Children, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Spirituality Tags: , , , ,

Surrender. You can only do so much. 

Sometimes, you’ve gotta let go.

Some things you can change. Some things you can’t.

You can pray. 

You can act.

You can raise awareness.

But sometimes, surrender. Because you can only do so much.

The world is full of suffering. Insidious kinds of suffering. I wrote about suffering here.

Atheists use suffering as an argument against the existence of God.

Their logic goes like this:

  1. If God exists, he must be good
  2. If he is good, he would not allow needless suffering (like children being locked up in homes with their abusers)
  3. The world is full of needless suffering
  4. Therefore, God does not exist

Philosophers call this puzzle the Problem of Evil: Technically, The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.

Some suffering is from natural evil — disease and disasters.

The other is due to human evil — things people do to others, bringing physical and emotional (or both) pain.

***

(As an aside, I’m reading The Book Thief for the first time.)

Humans can’t do anything to prevent natural evil; we can’t prevent earthquakes or tsunamis or tornadoes. 

Surrender.

But human evil — physical abuse and rape and verbal abuse and greed — can be stopped. 

People have choices. (Though I do hold to a libertarian view of free will, I still, often, find myself afraid that most of our actions are done without decision — we are in autopilot more than we want to believe.)

Even so, human evil is prevalent. (You and I have played our own parts in it.)

***

When my children were young, one of our prayers before bedtime was the Serenity Prayer. We’d pray it after the Our Father, Glory Be, then Anglican prayer of repentance. Anyway, it’s not really Christian, but it’s a good one: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Acceptance and surrender are the same thing.

 The good news is that human evil can be curbed through education, intervention, legal sanction, attending 12-Step meetings.

But even then, you can only do so much. Evil still happens.

Children are still hurting.

I Surrender.

1 2 3 4›»