The following are excerpts from the book, Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. We have attempted to excerpt those portions that the authors themselves indicated were particularly important. However, it is a complex study and any summary is going to be simplistic and incomplete. We hope these excerpts will whet the appetite of some who will go on to read the book, and that it will serve as an informative and inspiring introduction to those who would otherwise not have been exposed to these ideas, whether they go any further with them or not. They are part of the foundation on which the Common Fire Foundation's work is based.
Threshold People and Hospitable Places
Reflecting on the lives and experiences that shaped the lives of our interviewees, it is clear that no single event or influence will ensure a committed life. Moreover, no one life includes all the contributing factors we identified. Some lives might have had only a few powerful formative experiences; others might have been shaped by many less intense ones. Taken in combination, however, it does appear that certain experiences increase the likelihood of forming the citizens we need for the twenty-first century.
We see two master patterns: trustworthy and transformational relationships with threshold people, and hospitable spaces within which those relationships may develop and new forms of agency be practiced.
Mentors
At least three quarters of the people we studied were significantly influenced by mentors or mentoring environments... [By mentor we mean] a somewhat more experienced person of either gender who enables young adults to make the transition from the adolescent's dependence on (and resistance to) authority, to the adult's ability to include him or herself in the arena of authority and responsibility...
Mentors appear in many forms, including senior managers, professors, inspiring speakers and writers, master artists, job supervisors, coaches, public leaders, college chaplains. They function as compelling women and men who recognize the emerging competence of the young adult, challenge limited notions of possibility, and offer themselves as beacons toward significant purpose. Often mentors know their proteges over an extended period of time; sometimes they serve only briefly in “mentoring moments”; and some – authors for example – exercise influence only from afar.
When they influence the formation of commitment, mentors usually embody that commitment themselves, often modeling ways of seeing problems and offering helpful analysis. While passionately invested, they have a long-term perspective that draws the protege into the larger, systemic awareness crucial to the ability to see oneself not only in relation to work and profession, but to the society and the global commons as a whole.
Mentoring Environments
If one is to enter the world of adult work as it now is, a mentor who can “teach you the ropes” and “help you climb the corporate ladder” may be enough. We have come to believe, however, that if young adults are to form and act on a vision of society as it could become, they may well require more than a mentor alone. In a complex age of cultural transition, a mentoring environment may be even more significant. For young adults need to know that if they choose the road less traveled, they will not be alone. There must be the promise of a new sociality. The questions of love and work, partners and purposes are intimately linked.
In a mentoring environment, a number of strategic influences are accessible to young adults. These include mentors with complementary strengths and perspectives who gather around great questions and important tasks; a diverse group of friends and colleagues who share common challenges and hopes; and resources such as time, critical learning experiences, texts, and, when necessary, equipment, technical skills, and other knowledge. A mentoring environment that serves the formation of a commitment extends the influence of the mentor and creates expectations of not simply “my career” but rather “our common work on behalf of the larger good.”
The Formative Power of Context
Most of the people we interviewed seem to recognize in their adult years that, just as they have been influenced by their own settings, in order to influence people they must in turn look to the shaping power of the contexts in which people live.
Who Are My Partners?
No one has a vocation alone. One of our strongest findings is that whether single or married, virtually everyone spoke of the importance of partners – kindred spirits – who share and help sustain the work. They may be family members, friends, former schoolmates, professional colleagues, or members of the same religious community. Often geographically dispersed, they are linked by mail, telephone, fax, meetings, common projects, e-mail – but most of all by a connection of heart and mind. As one person put it, “They are the people you call (or sometimes just think about) when you are down, when you are up, when you are just trying to muddle through.” They provide perspective, comfort, advice, challenge, and most of all, the confirmation that one is not alone in the sometimes bone-aching, heart-weary commitment to the new commons.
Constructive Engagement With the Other
While no single experience can ensure a committed life, we found one common thread in the life experience of everyone we studied... The single most important pattern we have found in the lives of people committed to the common good is what we have come to call a constructive, enlarging engagement with the other...
Encounter With “Otherness”
The encounters with otherness described by those we studied took many forms. An artist who has established a nationally recognized program enabling the elderly rural poor to realize their artistic talents spent his childhood in a lively mix of European cultures in Chicago; a housing advocate grew up in Denver but became friends with a girl fro Mexico during a Scouting Jamboree; a prominent civil rights leader was confined with asthma as a child and read about people from other countries; and a man who spent over fifty years working for peace was reared in an upper-middle class WASP community, yet became best buddies with an Italian boy “from across the tracks” and fell in love with an Irish Roman Catholic girl.
But the differences were not only in ethnicity or nationality. Some had family members or friends who were “other” because of a disability or mental illness. A woman who now works with the homeless traces her commitment to having been asked by her teacher to care for retarded children in her school. The experience helped her to get over “the initial fear you get of people who are so significantly different.” And in a few cases, the “other” was not another human. One person described the importance of learning to care for abused animals, and another spoke movingly of how his encounter with dolphins enlarged his understanding of both communication and intelligence...
As we sifted through dozens of accounts, it became apparent that what distinguished a simple encounter from a constructive engagement was that come threshold had been crossed, and people had come to feel a connection with the other...
The character and significance of this shared feeling with the other emerges clearly in Samuel and Pearl Oliner's study of the rescues of Jewish Holocaust victims... Only on one item did the rescuers stand out: “their tendency to be moved by pain. Sadness and helplessness aroused their empathy.”
Marginality
Sometimes we are the other. A number of the people in the sample group grew up feeling marginalized...
Three-fifths of those we studied experienced marginality as a consequence of circumstance rather than choice: racial discrimination, sexual orientation, physical disability, intellectual or educational attainment, illness, family pain, poverty – or wealth. For some a sense of marginality came from circumstances as simple as feeling too small, too fat, too smart – in some way simply too different. Whatever its source, among those we studied, it appeared that although few would wish it on others, most have been able to transform the pain of their marginality into a deepened capacity for compassion and a strength of identity and purpose. This has also been observed in an important study of women leaders who have promoted social change, suggesting that “early experiences of personal discrimination and acute awareness of social injustice were a source of subsequent commitment.”...
Some believe that people can only become sensitive and respond effectively to the welfare of others when they have been wounded themselves. We have not found this to be the case. Rather, another kind of value-based marginality, experienced by one third of our sample, also appears to foster the capacity to care for the common good.
Douglas Humeke, author of a gripping case study of Fritz Graebe, a German engineer who saved hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust, describes what he calls a “religiously-inspired non-conformity” that appears to have spawned a number of rescuers. By this he means membership in a community that holds a set of religious values which place them at odds with the surrounding majority culture, but which instill in them a responsiveness to the needs of others: for example, the Huguenot village of Le Chambron in France where villagers sheltered thousands of Jews during World War II.
Not all of the marginal communities and families in our study, however, are religiously inspired. We also saw the significant influence of small progressive schools or powerful short-term affiliations and experiences such as conferences, intensive learning communities, task forces, or political coalitions which held values at odds with prevailing mores. And for some the family nourished important values distinct from those of the mainstream...
