Connectivity and Tradition

Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey Ph.D.

There is a Sufi story retold by Idries Shah⁽¹⁾ that is called "The Founding of a Tradition." It goes like this.

Once upon a time there was a town composed of two parallel streets. A dervish passed through one street into the other, and as he reached the second one, the people there noticed that his eyes were streaming with tears. "Someone has died in the other street!" someone cried, and soon all the children in the neighborhood had taken up the cry.

What had really happened was that the dervish had been peeling onions.

Within a short space of time the cry reached the first street; and the adults of both streets were so distressed and fearful (for each community was related to the other) that they dared not make complete inquiries as to the cause of the furor.

A wise man tried to reason with the people of both streets, asking why they did not question each other. Too confused to know what they meant some said: "For all we know there is a deadly plague in the other street."

This rumor too, spread like wildfire until each street's populace thought that the other was doomed. When some measure of order was restored it was only enough for the communities to decide to emigrate to save themselves. Thus it was from different sides of the town both streets entirely evacuated their people.

Now, centuries later, the town is still deserted and not far away are two villages. Each village has it own tradition of how it began as a settlement from a doomed town through a fortunate flight in remote times from a nameless evil.

Some of us in AFTA live on parallel streets. The Connectivity Committee wants to challenge this tradition by collecting stories of inclusion and exclusion and by offering new possibilities for greater participation by more members. With this in mind, eight of us met for lunch at Thursday noon, not a traditionally appropriate time for committees to meet, but a time that worked for us. Participants were: Judith Myers Avis, Gonzalo Baciagalupe, Robert Carroll, Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey, Maria Flores, Ivan Inger, Jeri Inger, and Mathew Mock. Committee members were encouraged to invite others to join us and anyone who asked about the committee was invited to come as well. We began our tradition with deciding as a group where we would have lunch as we walked along the street. At that lunch we decided that the Connectivity Committee would always be an open committee with hopefully different people attending and participating each year. Any AFTA member who expresses an interest can join the committee. Members will participate in different ways. Some of us, like Peter Fraenkel, will have specific projects such as the Elders Video Project. Others of us will write for the newsletter and work with developing threaded conversations on the web. Still others will come to lunch and join in a yearly conversation that examines issues of inclusion and exclusion. This year at lunch we continued to discuss ways that we could bring into the wider AFTA consciousness past disruptions such as the Women and Violence Plenary that we believe have never been fully addressed. We left the lunch with an intention of carrying an attitude of inclusion back into the annual meeting. We were not alone in this effort. Many people expressed a feeling of greater inclusion, especially at events like the awards dinner, which, in the past, have been uncomfortable for many. As an organization, however, we still struggle with issues of identity politics, with people separating from each other in their perceptions of, and goals for, the organization. One way we think some of these issues can be moved along is by challenging the top down tradition of committee membership. Traditionally, the Board has formed committees. The President chooses the Chair for each committee and then the chair selects the members. It is possible for someone interested to approach a Chair and ask to be put on a committee, but this is not widely known and breaks an unspoken rule about how people are chosen. Our hope is that once this rule is questioned, committees will be open to a wider group of members.

Do you have other questions about how AFTA is run? Let us know and we will try to trace the history of our traditions and examine our unspoken rules. On a final note, just to make clear that there really are no secrets, has anyone ever wondered why and to whom Carol Anderson gives out stickers? The true story is that when Carol was a new member at AFTA she was shy and brought stickers as a way to get herself to go up to people she didn't know and start a conversation. Since then she has brought stickers to every AFTA conference and places them on the badge of anyone she passes by.

Please join with us in collecting stories of AFTA's cherished traditions as well as the ones that we no longer wish to hold.

Notes:

1. Shah, I., (1970) Tales of the Dervishes, New York: Dutton.

Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey is an Adjunct Faculty member at Smith College, Research Fellow at the Center for Innovative Practice at Smith, and Co-Founder of Sisters Inc., an organization developing programs for rural women and girls. Her current research project is about the effects of managed care on children and families.