There will be a new normal on the other side of our immediate radical discontinuity. That new normal is not likely to be red or blue or black or white or brown. Most likely it will be some new shade of green as nature and natural boundaries have the final say over human vanities; we can only fake it so far.
We need to think like beginners because we are beginning yet again. Bad ideas get people killed and languish, especially when they ferment over time and explode in a noisy mud-wrestle for all the marbles.
When TC and I arrived at Jim and Renate’s home near Cape Town a couple weeks ago, Jim gave me a hard copy of an internal 1997 working paper I must have given him when he visited me at The Carter Center back then. It had been marinating in his garage for all that time. He had come looking for ideas that might be relevant to the brand-new South Africa at that time under President Mandela. Their Constitution built even more separation than ours, but simultaneously opened space for a new level of hopeful collaborative possibilities.
The Interfaith Health Program was still a toddler working with a beginner’s mind about what faith has to do with health at public scale when I wrote this in 1997. Of course, we had no idea that only a few decades later I would look wistfully at South Africa’s democracy, still solid despite the racist rants of some, as ours crumbled, gray and creaky.
This was before we had the unhelpful language of “social determinants,” “population health,” “population medicine.” It was also before “leading causes of life” or “boundary leadership.” The Memphis Model was not even a glimmer, although I had met Howard Clinebell there at The Church Health Center and he had asked me to write what became Deeply Woven Roots and the foundational idea of the 8 strengths of congregations. But there are traces of all of that.
The core idea around which all else revolved was the “social commons.” That’s the phenomenon which bore the fruit of health for all. Or not. In England the commons where the animals grazed were brutally “enclosed,” sort of like some wish to happen in our country, except now for people instead of sheep. It now seems wildly naive to speak of a “social commons.” But that is where health is formed.
To quote my younger self: “The social capacity to care for each other is much like the agrarian commons in the old village scheme. The commons was not paid for on a fee-for-use basis. It was a voluntary resource on which all could depend for survival. So it is with the caring capacity. Robust social capacity has clear financial benefits as it prevents injury and disease, increases likelihood of motivated self-help actions and obviates some direct costs such as transportation that might otherwise be forced into the payment process. The social commons becomes even more important as the capacity of nuclear families becomes less reliable due to fewer parents in the home or increased physical distance between family members.”
That internal document was about accountability for the assets, privileges, powers, policies and investments. If the goal is health and well-being of everyone, then nothing is more important to think about than the social commons. It’s where we all live, red or blue or the whole Pantone catalogue of blended colors.
When the public space is noisy, angry, contentious and loud, that is precisely when some grown-ups must think the most, and clearly, about being deeply accountable.
“There are better and worse ways to relate to the social commons. The path becomes clearer and our actions accountable as the components of what might be called the caring capacity are chased into the open. Key questions to ask include: Does every vulnerable person in the county know somebody who cares about them? Does everybody know who to call for food, a simple answer about a drug? Does every temple have relevant, trustworthy health education and service referral material easily accessible? Are there an adequate number of congregations with health committees? Do the congregational health committees have a working relationship with each other and their points of contact in other parts of the health system? Are the various service providers smart enough about the informal health sector to be respectful and supportive? Are there safe places for new data or surprising insights to be examined carefully by diverse parties? These are all things that can be described, valued and, sometimes, even counted.”
Why think more when everyone else is shouting and pouting?
“Accounting is, without exaggeration, prophetic work, even sacred, because it allows us to catch a glimpse of how our resources might align with the ultimate flow of life that seems to tend toward health.”
