Walking Each Other Into Stewardship
There is so much about stewardship that awes me.
I am in awe of how stewardship requires us to shift from ‘owner of my (organisation, or land, or animal, or building, or idea, or relationship)’ to ‘being gifted the responsibility of responding to what this (organisation, or land, or animal, or building, or idea, or relationship) needs, for a while’.
I am in awe of how the actions that arise out of stewardship seem to bring us into right relationship. I am in awe of how stewardship contains thoughtfulness, commitment, elderhood, responsibility, relationship, inter-being, diversity, awareness, and love. I am in awe of what I discover about myself when I accept the invitation. And I am in awe of how much the role challenges and shapes me.
When I hold stewardship up, I discover so many different manifestations available to us. We can choose to be stewards of our relationships and our neighbourhoods. We can choose to be stewards of our organisations, communities, and groups. We can choose to be stewards of our own and each other’s creativity. We can choose to be stewards of the roles we hold. We can choose to be stewards of our ancestors, community wisdom, and the shared stories and lessons that humanity holds. We can choose to be stewards of Earth’s ecosystems and all their inhabitants, humans included.
Yet, I find many of us - myself included - being challenged by what stewardship asks of us: to choose actions that are needed, actions that are not always in alignment with our preferences, actions that might sometimes negatively impact us (or at least seem to).
When it comes to our organisations and communities, this challenge can look like standing clear in our agreed principles and taking action when those principles are not followed, even if it might make us unpopular or lead into potential conflict. It can look like supporting our organisations and communities to take a direction that excludes our future participation if their needs are in contrast to our needs, even if that means letting go of financial income. It can look like leaving an organisation or community if we find ourselves at odds with the leadership and we cannot find a way forward that isn’t helpfully disruptive, even when we might feel grief for what we’ve no longer got access to. It can look like stepping down from leadership if we cannot serve well, even when it means letting go of our related privileges.
This is an article about stewardship, about imperfection, about the sometimes gap between what stewardship requires of us and what we’re willing to offer - or seems available to offer. It’s about the new lands that we find before us when we accept that we might only ever be imperfect stewards, and about how stewardship can only be a community carry.
An Impossible Ask
A while ago I was invited to visit a regenerative-focused retreat centre, an old mill that had been acquired by the new owners very recently. It was a magical place, welcoming visitors into its sumptuous and fecund lands with open arms, the low-lying winter sun a golden halo upon the morning’s frost-born droplets spread like carpeted upon the land. It was wonderful; beautiful, mystical, energising, and nurturing.
But as we undertook a tour of the property, and the new owner spoke of their already detailed plans for 150-people festivals and an area for tiny houses and an eco resort - pointing to what will be adjusted here, cut back there, and introduced over here - I began to shrink. A voice from within started asking: How can this be regenerative? Where is the time for quietly and respectfully listening to the land’s needs? Where is the time spent forming relationships with its quirks, its inhabitants, its visitors, its cycles, and its voice? Where are the needs of the birds, the plants, the moss, the trees, and the waters? Where is stewardship?
I excused myself and left, the unease disrupting me for days, an unease that transmuted into lingering questions: when did we lose such connection with stewardship that her gentle asks can’t be heard through the bigness and immediacy of human plans?
And: what is the part I play?
And: how do we answer the invitation into stewardship in these times?
The unease that rose up that day was not just at what I was hearing. The unease was also recognition of the ways I often harm without meaning to, recognition of my own clumsy human ways, recognition of the often distance between what stewardship asks and what I am willing to offer - or even seems possible to offer. The unease was filled with grief, shame, and frustration for my sometimes closed ears, sometimes shifting morals, and sometimes self-focused choices. Mostly, the unease was an agonising awareness of the seemingly impossible gap between paying rent and bills, planning for an uncertain future, navigating life’s challenges, enjoying life’s pleasures, being social, being adventurous, loving travel and meeting new cultures, taking care of loved ones, taking care of my own needs, doing fulfilling work, earning money - and answering all the big and small invitations into stewardship.
The unease I felt held so many impossibilities. Could I afford to rent or buy the land so that I can spend years with my ear pressed to the ground, listening carefully to the land until it shows me what it wants from a steward? No. Could the new owners afford to spend years with their ears pressed to the ground, listening carefully to the land until it shows them what it wants from a steward? I’m guessing no. Aren’t there many small and large ways that I live out of right relationship with the ecosystems I inhabit, the universal laws I know I answer to, the communities that matter to me, my work, my relationships, and love itself, even though I hear the call to stewardship in so many ways? Yes. Does stewardship often feel like an impossible ask? Yes.
The Stewardship Heart
I recently spent three days with a group of people exploring what opens up when a group holds a perspective of prior-unity. At this event, I met an inspiring climate activist and researcher. We spoke for a while about activism and I shared that for the last few years I’ve been deep in the question: how can I step further into my innate rights as a human being and speak up for what I believe in?
Or, why do I hold back from certain types of activism when I see and experience things I know are not in right relationship?
Or, how can I step more fully into stewardship?
In response to my question, I was gifted a phrase that rearranged my cells: the imperfect activist. She spoke of how impactful many imperfect activists can be compared to a few so-called perfect activists, and how this framing of imperfection can give us agency. Our conversation left me with a new doorway into stewardship, that of the imperfect steward.
Later on in those three days, I sat in a group with a man who embodied the stewardship heart. That’s the phrase that landed in me as I sat listening to him talk so emotively and vulnerably about his life’s work and of how his role is to protect this work and bring it to the world. It’s impossible to write about such a visceral experience but sitting with such a lived example of embodied stewardship reminded my every cell that accepting the invitation into stewardship is beautiful.
A Community Carry
The impact of those three days has sank into my bones. Not just the gift of the imperfect steward and the felt experience of the stewardship heart, but also the impact of being weaved into a new constellation, into a new community.
What’s become obvious is that all this time I’ve been missing seeing something central about stewardship: while stewardship is absolutely a personal relationship between each of us and life, the often-felt gap between what we are being asked to give and what we feel we can give is a community carry.
The doorway into imperfect stewardship is being weaved into constellations of place and relationship and human beings and non-human beings and ancestors and, if important to us, to whatever it is that we connect to beyond these. Every imperfect steward needs to be thoughtfully and lovingly weaved into constellations of strong council and strong councils, wise elders and elder-born wisdom, wise youngers and younger-born vision. We can answer the call to imperfect stewardship more fully the more we walk ourselves into indigenousness, the more we re-root ourselves into place and the relationships we can find here, the more we connect with our ancestral lines behind us and before us.
The more woven we are into constellations of relationship and place, of elder and younger, of council and love, the less likely we are to run off too far and too quickly in the wrong direction. The more woven we are into these constellations, the more we can quiet down the bigness and nowness so that we can hear what’s actually being asked for. The more we are woven into these constellations, the more we can find new avenues to navigate the everyday pressures and norms of Western life.
Walking Each Other Into Stewardship
Stewardship is not always easy.
Standing clear in agreed organisational or community principles and taking action when you see that action needs to be taken is not always easy. Supporting our organisations and communities to take a direction that excludes our future participation if our needs differ is not always easy. Leaving an organisation or community if we find ourselves at odds with the leadership and we cannot find a way forward that isn’t helpfully disruptive is not always easy. Stepping down from leadership if we cannot serve well is not always easy.
But we do not have to face the challenge alone; stewardship is, after all, a community carry. Just as we can walk ourselves into place, we can walk each other into stewardship.
Thank you to all the teachers that weave(d) new perspectives into me and me into new perspectives of place, and skin, and constellations, including Sophie Strand, Bayo Akomolafe, Charles Eisenstein, Leny Strobel, Tyson Yunkaporta, Thomas Steininger and Elizabeth Debold of Emergent Dialogue.
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