When The Political Becomes The Personal

Well New Horizons’ Annual Board Meeting has now come and gone. Thank goodness we’ve had the prayers behind us we’ve had (see Comment from Lorenzo York "Open Letter To Our Loyal Followers"). We sure needed them for yesterday’s meeting. It was like almost no other, except for a rare few, I’ve ever known; stormy weather is what we got to, polarization for a time! 

Nonetheless, as usual the principles of New Horizons got us through the Dark into the Light. The very same ones I/we strive to share with you through our various programs and projects, including this blog site, hoping that our collective wisdom, accumulated over the more than forty years that New Horizons has existed, will uplift you.

Stormy Weather

Dialogue versus debate got us through, as indeed it should. Still we had some heated polarization on our way to the common ground we ultimately negotiated. And surprise of surprises that I would not quite have anticipated, the outcome was that the complexion of New Horizons is now about to change, markedly. 

The open letter to my board members  I shared with you certainly did predict that “the times they are a changing” at New Horizons, as well as elsewhere throughout our country!

I had also foreseen that a shift had been brewing for a while at New Horizons, somewhat independent of those brought about by Trump and Team. Yet I had not realized how very much of what I was sensing had to do with the fact that the political has now become, more and more, the personal and was intruding itself on our organization. Personally this had brought about an intersecting of what is personal and professional in me into a bit of a collision with long time board member, Lisa Boyer. All of this heightened by our present political climate and about to bring us right up onto major changes about to occur at New Horizons.

The bottom line which I will hope to be able to clarify and articulate, over time, is that I am about to be phased out of New Horizons and go off somewhat on my own!!

Imagine that!!

Yesterday’s board meeting brought that which had been brewing to a head!! 

Turns out that living out what my Higher Self was visioning, even though I had predicted it in my open letter, had a few bumpy spots when discussed at our board meeting, with more rocky roads to come before we get to the smooth sailing

So now what??  Well we don’t know yet.

What we do know is that the political has now become so very personal that a differentiating must now occur between me, New Horizons’ Founder and Executive Director, and New Horizons as a non-profit entity.

Isn’t that interesting?  But is it surprising?

Turns out now that New Horizons and I have out grown each other.  For more than forty years New Horizons and I have been able to grow together, harmoniously.  As far as I was concerned, as well as others, we were so symbiotically connected, like mother and child, that it was natural for others as well as “us” to almost always see us as one.  But wouldn’t that naturally be the way, as I am the Mother of New Horizons!

But politics has now become personal, especially these past months since Trump’s election and Hillary’s downfall (which I didn’t mind much at all except for the consequences of Trump being Trump) that New Horizons was kind of getting to be like too many cooks in the kitchen. Very much like when a mother and a daughter need more space for each of them to flourish. So they finally need separate kitchens.

The symptom showed itself around my strategy of bringing an outrageous plan, “swamp draining” or alternately “instead of swamp draining,” into the fold of New Horizons programs and projects. As you may recall, Lisa Board Member wasn’t having that at all!!

When that episode finally got clarified and articulated it turned out that my self-definition was definitively about getting to the root causes of the Dark Side, now being especially embodied in Trump and Team, shaking up that mess or mass, whichever you choose to call it, articulating how I have come to know and understand it – and – then setting out ways to transform it to its higher good.

Well that’s one way of addressing current political and societal circumstances. But, I was reminded in no uncertain terms that New Horizons is about unity! My personal/professional agenda, however, gets to unity, as an end goal.  But my approach relies on doing that -- after a long, arduous heated battle with the Dark Side that may, in fact, not ever pan out on the side of the Light.

So you see New Horizons and I have come to a parting of ways, at least in some fashion.

I will stay on, at least for the time, as Executive Director. But now I am to also go off on my own, more and more separating myself, as mischief-maker-in-residence while New Horizons moves forward with its every intention of building small “zones of peace.”

So you see, the turbulence of our political “climate change” has now become so very personal that it’s not quite certain what a clearing from the stormy weather of present day U.S.A. will look like when it clears. But we have our dreams and our intentions, translated into actions, and we will get to the other side, sooner or later.

No one and nothing can take this from us. That’s who we are, the collective of New Horizons, and each and every one of us individually.

Stay tuned in. More on the way!