Robert Gard Lecture Series

The Fourth Annual Robert E. Gard Lecture

Presented at the University of Massachusetts Arts Extension Service
2001 Arts Management Institute June 15, 2001

by Patrick Overton, Ph.D.
Director, The Front Porch Institute
Astoria, OR

Introduction

Receiving the Robert E. Gard Award is a particular honor for me. Not only is Gard one of the most important leaders in the community arts development field, he was one of my mentors and had a tremendous impact on my life. Because of this, I will attempt, whenever possible, to interject the work of Robert Gard and the influence it has had on me and the work I do into this lecture. Because I am delivering this lecture just two weeks before my 25th anniversary in the field of community arts development, most of my presentation this morning will cover not only the content of my current work, but also personal and professional reflections of the development of our field over the last twenty-five years.

This morning's lecture will contain the following: Personal Reflections; Exploration of the Metaphor Cultural Ecology; and finally, Introduction to Poetry of Place.

I. Personal Reflections
As I look at the past twenty five years of my work - I have to give consideration to those things, historical, emotional, spiritual, and political that I believe, upon personal and professional reflection, shaped who I was before I began this work. Several things come to mind. I would like to share them here.

My earliest moment of cognition - that is, the first time I can really remember "remembering" myself in the context of what was happening in the world around me was in 1961. There is one experience deeply burned into the surface of my soul, the skin of my innermost self. To this day, I can see what I saw then and remember what I felt. I was leaning over to pick up a newspaper on the short front porch of our house. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon. It was in the summer, which for us on the west coast, meant the sun was beginning to be crowded out by the late-afternoon fog, but not quite, not yet - what I always thought of as that in-between time, a sort of "half-night requiem" that stood in the middle of one time and another. I remember picking up the newspaper and opening it up and seeing the headline in large print. I remember that moment, the smell, the feeling of that experience - when I read the words "Cuba Missile Crisis: War Possible." I remember thinking to myself , "It's true, we are going to die - we are going to kill ourselves." I remember that I wasn't afraid. What I felt was more of a kind of resignation that everything we had been told as we grew up, the threat of the bomb, the hiding under our desks at school - all of that was real. And I remember that what I felt that moment was less a "quiet desperation" than a "desperate quietness."

I remember that moment, standing at the edge of my life, watching when my childhood turn into adolescence. And I remember feeling how little of what was going on was in my control, how helpless I felt, how lonely I was at that moment. No one was around to share it with, I was by myself. And, as I prepared this presentation, I have come to the realization that this feeling has continued through most of my life. There I was, caught between the world of the threat of the bomb and the world of this threat becoming reality - caught in between too very scary and unimaginable things. And I wonder to myself now, what is worse? The fear of something happening or having that something actually happen. This was my own personal experience with what I think we need to recognize as the Boomer Generation's "Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome." My generation grew up with this "threat," and I believe it has taken a toll on us as individuals and as a society.

A second experience that shaped me occurred one day when I was a freshman in high school. I had just finished lunch. I was leaving the lunch room, out into the courtyard between the cafeteria and the main school grounds and someone in my class walked by and said - Hey, I just heard somebody "offed" the President." It seemed cold and mean to tell me that way - not because I was someone who was deeply involved in politics, this was 1962 for goodness sakes -
activism hadn't reached the high school grounds yet. But I remember the experience of shared grief - not just my own, but the grief of a large number of people that engulfed everything - and I remember standing there - before I knew the details and the descriptions and saw the tape replay again and again and again - I remember standing there, in the courtyard atrium, facing the west wall, frozen for half a second - caught in between the world of protected politics and the world of ruthless and violent destruction of leadership. And, as if the assassination wasn't enough, I remember watching television with my mother when they moved Lee Harvey Oswald from the jail and the man stepped forward and shot him, committing the first live broadcast of a murder.

I remember I was shocked, I was scared, and I felt a grief deeper than anything I had felt before. I now realize I was deeply scarred by those days of grief in November. And I know that journey through an assassination, murder, and state funeral, took my political naivete and consumed it with grief. None of us would be the same again.

My third important, defining experience was when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon. I realize I could have picked another moment relating to the space missions- perhaps when John Glenn orbited the earth, being the first American in space, or any of the other Mercury and Apollo missions. But for some reason, it was the actual stepping on the moon that I remember the most. I remember sitting there with my family, watching the television. Walter Cronkite provided the voice-over for what was happening. All of us full of awe for what we were doing, amazed at the capacity of the human mind and spirit. And then I stepped outside after watching it on the television, looking up to a bright moon and a cold, clear night next to the Pacific Ocean. I listened to the constancy of the waves, on the one hand, and looked at the white orb that had just been conquered, on the other. As I sucked in that cold night air I remember wondering what was next - what wonderful thing will we do next? The possibilities were unimaginable. It was a magical moment.

I didn't realize then that this moment would define me, shape me in a different way. For eventually I discovered that we paid a price for conquering the moon. Well, not so much the moon, as our newly found knowledge and dependency on science to define our purpose, our value. On the one hand, we were no longer bound by earth's bonds. But we gave something up - we diminished the power of myth. That evening we destroyed that silly little metaphor - we killed the man in the moon. There I was, caught in between the object of more lines of poetic verse than any other thing in the world and the emerging power and dominance of scientific knowledge. As I look back on it, I think it was the beginning of what I refer to as the death of metaphor - the loss of our imaginations. I am convinced it isn't the "dumbing down" of our culture that has hurt us as much as it is the "numbing down." We couldn't play children's games anymore, we knew too much. Now we were too "grown up" for games. We were too rational and scientific for poetry. And this mentality carried over into our curriculum and our emphasis on knowledge and logic over intuition and creativity. We watched a man walk on the moon, and we grew up very quickly. And, since then, we have continued to learn too much too quickly and the more we know the less we know what it is we should do with what it is we know. Now it wasn't just that the "world was too much with us" but now the "universe was too much with us."

My fourth moment of personal transition/transformation was standing on the deck of the USS Providence, the flagship for the Commander of the Seventh Fleet in 1968. We had left the Gulf of Tonkin and gone into Danang Harbor in the early hours of the morning to provide ground support fire for our troops. Even though we were the Sixth Fleet Flagship, we had a ship's captain who wanted the Providence to be a fighting flagship. I was on watch that evening in the communications tower. I was told that when I finished my watch I had to go out and watch the five inch and six inch mounts fire. I was told it was spectacular. And it was.

I stood behind the six inch mounts on the communications deck and watched them fire their shells inland - providing ground support fire for the land troops - experiencing both the visual and kinesthetic rush of the massive explosion and vibration created by the firing of the shells - the July Fourth envy of any place but there. Then something happened - something I hadn't counted on. It was a precise moment, a moment that has defined me, shaped my entire life since then. I happened to watch in the general direction of where the shells were being fired and saw one of the shells explode. That is when I knew what it was I was doing. I wasn't watching the war on television. I saw the horror of what was happening first-hand. I saw the shells explode - I saw the fire ball - and I stood there realizing that I had just I witnessed the death of someone or ones - and then I suddenly realized that I was killing people - and I was out there enjoying the pageantry of war without understanding the end result of my actions. At that single moment, on a cloudless night in Danang Harbor, half-way across the world from where I grew up, the Vietnam War moved from the television screen in my family room to right in front of me. The war was no longer on taped broadcast, it was live - it was real - and it was horrible.

Few people can point to one single time - one place when they know they lost their innocence - I can. And I have yet to reconcile what I saw and what I was part of - what I did - with what I believe to be the real value of life. To this day, there is nothing in my life that has had a greater impact on me. I have never been able to fully resolve this internal conflict. It resides to this day, in the deepest part of who I am. I returned home to a country in crisis - hostile anti-war demonstrations and angry parents denouncing the flag burners. If ever there was a time when I, and all of those who fought in a war, were caught in between - it was then. There were no parades, no waving flags, no flowers. And, there was no necessary justification for our actions. We had no resolution, no moments when we were allowed or even able to begin to justify what it is we had seen and done. We were the first generation in the history of this country who were denied the rationalization that we had done the only thing we could do - fight and kill because our way of life was threatened. In essence, we were denied the denial. From that moment on, I knew only one thing for sure - there is no just war, there is just war.

My next significant event came not too long after my return to the States. It occurred while I was in college. What a contradiction of terms I experienced - from Vietnam to being a college student in the late sixties. Talk about being caught in between. I am not sure I ever fully resolved that dichotomy. I remember watching the various student uprisings because of their opposition to the war, and I remember being conflicted because down deep inside I began to believe they were right. But to fully accept that thought meant that I had to accept the fact I had participated in something that betrayed my innermost values. It was a very difficult time for me. But that confusion, that internal conflict gave way to a more unnerving event than anything I had seen or experienced in Viet Nam. It happened when I was in a room of people my own age, watching late afternoon television, when the news broadcast broke in, "Special Report - Kent State Shootings." All of us sat there, dumbfounded, overwhelmed at the sight of National Guard soldiers shooting at and killing students - just like us, because they disagreed with the war. Casualties of war, in our own country - casualties of democracy and freedom of expression. All of us, casualties of our growing anger. And I remember the feeling I had when I saw the film clip the first time - it was the same feeling I had when I saw the bomb explode on the hillside in Danang Harbor. It was the sick, grief-stricken moment when we experienced the lost innocence of an entire generation. And I am not sure any of us have fully recovered from that event.

The next event is a positive one. It happened while I was in College - in a movie theater in Enid, Oklahoma, when I went with some friends to see "2001- a Space Odyssey." There were two moments in that film when I experienced something very rare in my life - when I was confronted with a visual image that stunned me, amazed me so much I was stupefied. (Isn't that a great word? It means to take something in and be unable to respond, to be "full of awe," speechless. In the study of mysticism, we refer to this as one of the markers of the mystical experience. It is called ineffability - being unable to talk, move, or communicate - to be grasped and held by the experience - to be timeless and placeless - transported somewhere but not knowing where. It is very similar to the moment of creative insight we often refer to as the "ah hah" moment. I also believe this is one of the key convergence points between creativity and spirituality.).

The first thing that left me speechless was that five second clip at the beginning of the movie. It was when the monkey threw the dead animal bone up into the air in wild jubilation at his warrior triumph. We watched it rotate in slow motion until the bone transformed/morphed into what we believe to be the grand achievement of the human species - the rotating space station. All the while, we were listening to the rhythm of the Blue Danube Waltz. There is was, thousands of years of history portrayed in just five seconds of celluloid images. It was powerful. It was awesome. It was breathtaking. I still have difficulty finding the words to express what I felt at that moment.

The second part of the film that took my breath away, was at the very end of the movie when, totally unexpectedly, the end became the beginning again. The metaphorical fetus that suddenly appeared represented an entire history of philosophical and theological debate - defined in an image created by a human being. That is when I understood the power of metaphor to communicate, to convince, to convey possibility. When the lights came up in the theater, all I could do was sit there on the edge of my seat with my hands clasped together in a kind of prayer for understanding. I do not remember ever being moved like this by art before.

I recognized the power of metaphor to present and to represent life as it was, as it is, and as it could be - all at the same moment. Simultaneous images, thoughts, messages making my head spin. It was truly one of the most "awe-full" moments in my life. It was there I realized that art was the antidote to the numbness, the anesthetic we were all subjected to in our culture. Art is the "aesthetic" that awakens our senses, un-numbs the soul. This is when I began to understand my calling as a writer - a poet. It is when I realized that my whole life had been filled with unarticulated moments, just like those of Stanley Kubric's, but he had somehow found the way to do something with it - squeeze it out of his imagination and "express" it in a way that it became part of his reality and, as a result, part of my reality. It is when I realized I wasn't just a victim of circumstances surrounding me - that I could use the power of metaphor, of words, to take back control of my life and the life of those around me and to become someone whose life could shape and mold and influence those around me. This was when I began to realize, perhaps for the first time, what my mentor meant when he pointed at me as a young, angry, 17 year old and said "poet." Now, years after it was spoken out loud, I realize he knew what I didn't know, what I hadn't learned yet - that the word poet wasn't an adjective describing what I would do as a person - it was a noun, it was my name, describing who I was as a person. The power of that realization has been the passion, the energy, the vision that has driven everything I have done as an adult.

My final personal remembrance of a significant event that shaped me was the resignation of the President of the United States - Richard Nixon. I had watched the process unfold. I was in seminary at the time. Of course it was preceded by the impeachment hearings and the revelations in the newspaper and all of the Deep-Throat intrigue that marked the entire experience. But I remember that moment when Nixon stood at the door of the helicopter and held up his hands in the now famous gesture of the double peace sign - with the bead of sweat on his upper lip - realizing that he was a crook - that he had betrayed the public trust - that he had violated the oath of office, which was a sacred oath. I realized then that my trust had been violated - and that it had been going on long before Nixon and Johnson and Kennedy and God knows who else or how many. It was then I realized the depth of the state of denial that I had been living with - that all of us had been living with.

This was my realization that we were a sick nation - even though we could own up to it with the impeachment - it was still part of the body politic, something that had been going on for decades, perhaps even centuries. We had never really had to face it before, deal with it before. We were children of the social/political innocence and we were willing to do this - we were willing to not know - but we couldn't hide from it any longer - it was there, in our face, on the television and in all the newspapers. Our President had lied to us, and all of us knew it. And I am not sure we have ever been able to trust anyone in political office since. And this, perhaps more than any other thing, is the cause of the jaded side of who we are as a generation. And I remember thinking to myself, "This is what we fought for Those of us who went to Nam and those of us who fought here to stop the war - this was the prize - the laurel wreath for a generation of idealists who believed that we could make a difference, that our life mattered? There was a lot of idealism shattered that day, and it wasn't just for our generation. This one touched everyone in our culture, and we continue to experience the fallout from that betrayal, that violation of public trust.

These were the events that shaped my life, that influenced who I became as an adult:
A threat of war that could annihilate life/existence as we knew it - reducing the scope of our ability to think into the future -making us a generation of survivors of a war never fought - victims of Pre-traumatic Stress Syndrome - a generation of children, victims of a war that never happened. Wounded without even knowing it, caught in between a world where might triumphs and a world where we might be destroyed by the very weapon we brought into existence - the twin faces of creativity: constructive and destructive. Both possible, one final. And the atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki become the new "David" carted to edge of the gates of our new city, heralding a new age. And the cloud still hangs over us, to this day, judging us, holding us accountable for the power we unleashed and the responsibility for the absolute power it has to create or destroy.

The death of a President and the devastating loss of the idealism of Camelot - having comfort stripped away from us, ripped apart within us by the power of an assassin's bullet, letting us all know that each of us are vulnerable - each of us who dreamed could be the next victim. And it was the beginning of realizing that there were forces in the world that were violent and dark and evil. It was the introduction, although we didn't know it at the time, of the power of one individual to hold a whole country, perhaps the world, hostage. And now we have returned to that power - after decades of regional and fanatical terrorism - the reality that one man/one bomb can change us forever. And this week, we reel from the reality that the final victim of the Oklahoma bombing has just died. Scared and scarred. Unable to reconcile the reality that haunts us as a generation, even today. Unsure of what is next, but knowing it could be more terrible than anything we have yet experienced or imagined. Caught in between the death of Camelot and the birth of terror.

An accomplishment that broke the boundaries/limits keeping us confined to earth - opening up a kind of universal idealism - the power of the imagination that knew no bounds - was not limited to anything except our willingness to go to the new place - to give up the comfort of what it is we know and understand and embrace the power of the possibility of existence. We were giddy, we were gifted, and we were deluded. But, for that brief time - for those brief moments we were in between a world of knowledge and the diminished power of the imagination - little did we know how much of this we would lose, or give up, as the price to pay for this new knowledge, this breaking of the bonds that held us on earth. Where could we go next? Anywhere we thought. And it was exactly that arrogance that got us into trouble with our planet, with our nations, and our communities.

An unpopular war that left an entire generation wounded because there was no glory/no honor in it. For the first time in history, a generation refusing to buy into the propaganda - standing at the edge of social collapse, and being part of a generation willing to say no, for the first time. We were caught in between this "uncivil rest" of facing the destructive nature of war with realizing how much our entire culture, economy, politics rested on the concepts of war. A whole generation caught between the idealized patriotic version of the "just war" and the harsh reality of accepting the fact there is just war.

A confrontation on a college campus when National Guard soldiers shot and killed the enemy - except they weren't the enemy, they were the good guys - at least, they were our own. And it wasn't "friendly fire." And we not only remember the loss of those who died but also the agony for those who, like I did on the deck of the USS Providence, lost their innocence to a moment in a war that claims casualties to this day.

A movie - a simple creative act - a metaphor created by an artist that reached out from the screen and, like the theologian Paul Tillich described the nature of true, authentic art - grabbed hold of me and shook me and, to this day, will not let me go. A movie that taught me that art is the deep voice that struggles to express what it means to be human and part of the human community. It challenged me to acknowledge the very thing we turn into a weapon often began, first, as a tool - there are two kinds of creativity - constructive and destructive and we constant have to make the choice between the two.

The dishonoring of a President - the dissolution of trust of our government - the end of political naivete and the beginning of the jaded sense of self and community - the end of blind faith and the beginning of unrelenting scrutiny that has resulted in the most intrusive and obnoxious presence of media and media outlets possible. It is the obsession that can't be fed and the world is not only "too much with us," it is absolutely now, too much "in us."

Now, as I look back on all of these moments that shaped me, influenced me, I realize they are more than events that brought me to this work - they are also the events that occurred while Robert E. Gard was doing his work as a community arts developer. My guide, my mentor, not only lived through all of these significant cultural experiences - his worked was defined by them, perhaps even driven by them. Preparing to deliver this Robert E. Gard Lecture, I realized that his work was just hitting stride when I was born in 1948, it was coming into fruition and fulfillment when I was a teenager, and it was being pushed beyond the limit by the time I was a young adult. So, when I reached the point in 1976 when I began my work - most of Robert Gard's major contributions already had been made. So, when I had the privilege of meeting him in 1980, in person, and having the opportunity to experience his personal power and vision, I realized I had already been shaped by this man, influenced by his work and his vision. Meeting him gave me the chance to identify the impact. It also gave me the opportunity to personalize the relationship and enjoy knowing him as friend and colleague. And I value those three years, short as they were.

I have shared all of these reflections to document my observation that I, and most of those my age, are a generation of "in-betweeners." We are a generation caught in between the way life was and the way life will be - caught at the edge of "what was and what will be"- the twin, paradoxical images of constancy and change. And the image for our experience is the twin-faces of the Roman God Janus - seeing both the beginning and the ending at the same time - caught in between all that was and all that will be. We are "threshold steppers," the generation whose decisions and actions have influenced, transformed almost every aspect of our culture. Yet, most of the time we did not make conscious decisions to be a generation of change, we were forced into it by the circumstances of our life.

We are the generation of change and transition so powerful, so overwhelming, most have yet to be taken in, let alone grasped. A generation that experienced moments of social, political, and spiritual significance of such enormity and earth-shaking magnitude, they have yet to be understood or explained. Yet they are here, factors of influence that mold and shape my work - our work - unlike anything else around us. We are a generation who have spent our entire lives standing at the edge - able to look back - able to look ahead - but hardly ever able to just look at where we are now, and enjoy it. We have been driven by the discomfort of this particular existential stance - driven by the obsession by knowing all of the horrible realities that have occurred during our lives, combined at the same time, with the understanding all the incredible possibilities that exist - simultaneously in front of us - prodding us - pushing us to choose - which one, which way, which "was or will" that defines our work. And this is why I believe we do our work. We are caught in between two cultures, two ecosystems. And the work we do makes us, Cultural Edgeliners Who Nurture the Poetry of Place.

II. Cultural Ecology - Standing At the Edge

In this next section of the lecture, I want to introduce the concept of cultural ecology. I also want to discuss how I believe the nature of our work makes us cultural edgeliners. The word "ecology" comes from the Greek word "eikos" (house) and "logos" (study of). So the word means, "study of the house. In the broadest sense, it is not just about the physical environment - the biology of the wetlands or the activism of the environmentalists - although it is certainly connected. This word much more encompasses the Native American concept that earth is our house - our home, and what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.

I use the word here because I believe this word best describes how I understand the work I do. For a long time, I used to call myself a community arts developer. I knew what I was about was developing arts in a community setting and that, as I learned in my first job in Boonville, Missouri, by necessity impacts and develops the sense of community around me. But now, I find the term "community cultural developer" perhaps more accurately describes what I do. I do community arts development and I am beginning to realize how that work impacts the culture in which I do it. The word culture doesn't point to a particular place or community or geography but rather to that silent, invisible set of roles/rules/regulations that define a community and give it a shape and form.

In order to understand this, we must broaden the term to cultural ecology - study of the rules/roles/regulations of the house - the invisible culture that surrounds us, influences us, determines, to a large degree, who we are, what we do, and why we do it. In the book, Deep Ecology (1985), a collection of articles on Living As If Nature Mattered, Dolores LaChapelle writes "Ritual is Essential." She states that most native societies around the world have three common characteristics: they have an intimate, conscious relationship with the place; they are stable, "sustainable" cultures, often lasting for thousands of years; and they have a rich ceremonial and ritual life. Native societies see these three as intimately connected. I think our work as community cultural developers is about relationship with our place, trying to make our confusing and unstable culture sustainable, and doing so by promoting/producing/performing ceremonial and ritual life. We are part of the deep ecology movement.

Several years ago, I co-presented at a conference in Indiana and had the pleasure of meeting John Caddy and Mary Altman, describing their Rural Initiative work in Minnesota. In particular, I was intrigued with John Caddy's presentation of the ecological concept of "the edgeline" that place between two distinctly different eco-systems. As I have thought about this concept, I began to explore the thought that we who do this work, artists/community makers alike, are indeed edgeliners, "in-between two different cultural ecosystems" We are in a cultural environment that is teeming, creating, assimilating, merging - this is what we do. We take what is and what is yet to be - and, as cultural edgeliners, find a way to put that into words - to name it. But this isn't metaphor - not in the traditional use of the term. It is what Philip Wheelwright wrote about in "Metaphor and Reality" when he discussed the term "diaphor." Metaphor means to take one thing and make it another - for example - the term "Cultural Edgeliner" gives a name to our work. Diaphor is something very different. Diaphor means to take two very different things (such as, two very different ecosystems) and combine them together. In the process, a third new thing is created. The edgeline is the in-between place represented by the term diaphor - the place of combining, the place of creating new things. This is the place where we do community arts development.

And in so doing, by naming it, we in essence bring it into existence. So the work we do is very much connected to the ecology movement - and the ecology movement is beginning to be viewed as an overarching one - what I want us to be doing is to acknowledge how the culture in which an ecosystem exists is impacted/altered/damaged when it isn't sustainable. And I believe the work we do in trying to create sustainable communities is very much about what I call nurturing the cultural ecology of the poetry of place (I will discuss poetry of place later in this lecture).

Scientists know that the minute we step into an ecosystem to study it, we have altered it. The same is true for those of us who deal with community making - the moment we step into that culture, we have influenced/affected it, changed it in some way. So there is a lot of responsibility associated with the work we do. And we are not always as careful of this as we should be.

In the book, The Small Community (1942), by Arthur Morgan, he describes how, in what he knew to be modern times, the small community has played the part of an orphan in an unfriendly world. It has been despised, neglected, exploited, and robbed. He describes how the large metropolitan cities have skimmed off the cream of the small community's young population. And he relates that even though the small community has supplied the lifeblood of civilization, it has been neglected. He believed it was time that the fundamental significance of the small community be recognized. Unfortunately, the situation he described in the early 1940's has not gotten any better. And now, in the world in which you and I live, the small community is more at risk than ever before.

In Community Life in a Democracy, also published in 1942, John T. Frederick talks about what we must do in rural/small communities before cultural activities start to happen. First, he tells us that the notion that culture is something that has to be imported into a community or imposed upon it from without - is false. In fact, he emphatically says this notion is "false to the arts and false to democracy." He believed cultural efforts that impose outside influences, even those that are very good in themselves, "may have actually a deadening influence on the life of the community if they are not integrated with a philosophy of culture as a living and local thing." It is here he introduces, early on, the seeds of understanding the term "cultural ecology." And this leads to the second common and destructive fallacy he believes surrounds the arts in small communities "which is the notion that artists are rare, exceptional, and highly specialized persons and that the practice of the arts should be limited to these people." Here he, as others in the community arts development movement have done so eloquently, introduces the concept of what I call "rural genius." That is, the belief that art lives within people, all people, and our task is to provide the invitation, the opportunity for that art to be "expressed." It is this concept, this belief in the innate ability/talent of everyday people that is the driving value of the community arts development movement. And it is an attitude, a belief we must bring with us to the work we do.

In the same book, Frederick proposes that any constructive program for arts and culture in small communities should consist of "continuous and participative local activities rather than of occasional elements brought from outside and demanding only passive reaction." He believed it should be a program for all, not for a chosen few. He believed it should be a "program that recognizes that the highest good in the arts come from the practice of them and that this good can and should be enjoyed in some degree by everyone." From my perspective and personal/professional experience, when this happens, it not only changes individual lives, it begins to change the very nature of the community itself.

Finally, regarding one of the most thought-provoking and innovative books I have ever read - a serendipitous find during my doctoral review of literature - I owe this one to Robert Gard - whose book I was seeking - the Little Country Theater (1923). In this book, Arvold points out that there are "literally millions of people in country communities today whose abilities along various lines have been hidden, simply because they have never had an opportunity to give expression to their talents." He goes on to state that, in many respects, "this lack of self-expression has been due to the social conditions existing in the country, the narrow-minded attitude of society toward those who till the soil, and the absence of those forces which seek to arouse the creative instincts and stimulate that imagination and initiative in country people which mean leadership."

He goes on to state that the impulse to build up a community's spirit in a rural neighborhood may come from without, but the true genuine work of making country life more attractive must come from within. And further, "It is out in these places where the silent common people dwell. It is in these neighborhood laboratories that a new vision of country life is being developed. They are the cradles of democracy. It is here that a force is necessary to democratize art so that the common people can appreciate it, science so they can use it, government so they can take a part in it, and recreation so they can enjoy it."

This groundbreaking work of Alfred Arvold, who worked in 1923 within a narrowed geographical and philosophical isolation, and the countless others who remain unnamed in our story, provide a direct link between the arts and democracy. This essential relationship reaches its fruition in the work of our own Robert Gard, whose life and contribution to our profession is honored in this lectureship. Gard understood, as Alfred Arvold, Morgan, Frederick and all the other dynamic and powerful pioneers of our work did, that art is not for the people - true art is in the people, by the people, and of the people. This is the core value driving the "Wisconsin Idea" which influenced Robert Gard and many of these other individuals working in this field.

It is the essential recognition that a democracy is based on the participation of citizens - without citizens, those giving and taking, there can be no democracy. And, probably, there can be no community. It is like the French philosopher, Georges Gusdorf, said in his book Speaking (La Parole,1953) "language is not of one but of many; it is between." There is that word again - in-between. He goes on later in the book to describe the role of the poet (or, for consideration of all, artists), "The poet is the man who rediscovers speech thanks to a discipline that returns him to himself. The established language is a devalued language because the chief characteristic of community is to reduce value to the status of an object. . .The poet brings about the restitution of the word. He restores resonance to speech, he offers each word a new situation, and in such a way that its original power reappears." This, I believe, is the recognition of the power of language to create metaphor. Or, in light of my previous discussion, it is the power of diaphor.

This is when we fully understand the power of art to influence a place. Art invites us to express ourselves (to inspire - to find the spirit within) and when we express ourselves we discover a new, stronger and inspired sense of self. Our new sense of self enables us to discover the uniqueness of our own individual voice. And when we discover the uniqueness of our own voice we increase our desire to communicate because we discover we are able, capable, responsible, and this voice is the source of our internal locus of evaluation. We are driven by what we know to be good and right. This voice is the passageway to the true self, the deep self, the authentic self. It is not a voice of what is expected of us - describing one cultural ecosystem or another. It is not a voice that tells us what we must do to conform. It is a voice that drives us to do what we have to do in order to exist - it is our way of being, of coming into existence. Descartes had it almost right when he said"I think, therefore I am." Those of us in communication believe it should be "I speak (communicate) about what I think, therefore I am."

This is where we find our independence - our freedom of self-expression. And as we increase our self-esteem we are encouraged to share our voice with others - to take the risk of relationship - the interpersonal transformation that occurs when the "I" and the "You" become a "We." And, when we share our voice with others, in essence, we exchange our individual selves and become a part of, in relationship with those around us. And this is when we discover our own sense of community - of belonging. It is when we no longer live in a place but that place lives in us. Because of this, those of us who work as community arts developers help people become stewards of their place. And this is when we engage people by providing opportunities to participate in and experience the arts on a personal basis. And, when this happens, we engage citizens in the democracy of civil discourse. It is when people find the power of their own individual voice to express the ownership they have of their community because it is no longer someone else's place - it is their place. It is the place where they live and it has a name and they know that name. It is a place in which they are in relationship with it and neither they nor the community can be the same once this relationship is recognized and honored. This is authentic community and the arts don't just describe it - interpret it - challenge it - or rail against it when it isn't right - the arts are part of what makes it happen - the arts are integral to the entire process of helping individuals become authentic community.

Robert Gard was an cultural edgeliner. He sat one summer evening with his father on a hill overlooking a field of prairie grass. Shadowed with the flickering lantern light, feeling the cool, summer's evening breeze, he took the charge his father gave him seriously - the charge to go, and find the new prairie grass. We share the shadows of that lantern light - and we feel the summer's evening breeze brush across the top of the prairie sea, and we hear the same call. We feel the same charge to not stop at the edge and just observe, but to be a change agent, to move the boundary line, increase the edgeline, engage the possibilities.

This cultural edgeline that defines who we are and what we do - places us in a very unique position to influence the cultures around us. It enables us, perhaps even requires of us, to recognize that as cultural edgeliners, we are constantly doing the "Dance of the Tweeners." It is a dance about creating an invitation to join the circle. It is the dance that reminds us of the ritual connecting us to the earth, keeping us grounded. It is the dance that acknowledges that we are a generation of "in betweeners." But that doesn't necessarily mean we have been deprived, that we are victims. It means we are called to be stewards of that experience. From my personal value perspective, it means we are called to create points of convergence and, hopefully, even conversation between those cultures that we are caught in between, that seem to be at war in our world. A cultural war that demands we take sides in a rhetorical battle, a cultural polemic that is both destructive and painful.

Being cultural edgeliners, we recognize that what we really need to do is to change this "dichotomy" that implies we have to choose, creating debate, to a "dialectic" that understands these differences are in relationship with each other and require discourse. By doing what we do best in the arts - putting a voice to the unique cultural traditions and values of all people, we encourage the development and sharing of all voices in a community. We provide an invitation for people to be together, share together, learn from each other. We create an invitation for circles of convergence of various cultural subgroups to begin to discuss what it means to be "community" in the midst of all of these unique and individual voices. This may be the most important work we do as cultural edgeliners, as cultural ecologists.

What an understanding of cultural ecology and our role as cultural edgeliners does, is to remind us that we must be careful to respect and honor the culture of a particular place, a particular community. That is, we must nurture and encourage people to engage each other in such a way that they not only recognize that they must be stewards of their place, but also that the way they engage a place influences what that place is or can become. It is this work that Robert Gard said so eloquently would "alter the face of America." This engagement is what I call The Poetry of Place.

III. Definition of Poetry of Place

The word "poetry" stems from the Greek word poema which is related to the word poiein which comes from the root word poiew, translated "to make." When one looks up the word poetry in Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1989) it is defined in various ways. The first use is "the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts." Other definitions refer to "poetic qualities however manifested" and "The poetry of simple acts or things." The word is also defined as "the lofty thought or impassioned feeling expressed in imaginative words."

Again, using the Websters Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, poetics or being poetic, refers to "celebrating in poetry - as a place." So, for some reason, unexpectedly, the dictionary brings the two terms "poetry" and "place" together. This was one of those serendipitous discoveries for me because for years I have been using the term Poetry of Place to describe my work but didn't realize they were related as words. What I discovered is that poetry is not just about writing poems, it is also about naming place, or, to be more precise, about making place by giving it a name. In essence, to be poetic is to be a place maker.

Edward O. Wilson in a new book called Consiliance (1999) calls for, no argues, for consilant thought, a reunification/reconciliation between related things. In particular he urges us to overcome the gulf that has developed between science and the arts. In defining art, he states, "The defining quality of the arts is the expression of the human condition by mood and feeling, calling into place, all the senses, evoking both order and disorder. He goes on, "artistic expression, common to everyone in varying degree, rises from the artesian wells of human nature." In essence, what I think he is saying is that poetry is the art of convergence - using language (metaphor) to bring together in relationship what appears, in all other ways of sensing, to be separate. Therefore, it is appropriate to understand poetry as not just something that names a place, but also, through the act of poetry-making, influences and impacts the place at the same time. My understanding of the work we do as community arts developers is that we engage people in the act of "poetry-making" and this, in turn, by necessity, engages them in the act of community making. It is not a direct result, a direct benefit as a community developer might identify. But it is, distinctively and uniquely an "indirect" benefit of the world. This is why I believe healthy communities consist of healthy individuals. You start with the individual and the community follows.

In communication theory, we refer to this as the two functions of communication - the first is the expression of self - the "I am-ness" of me - the essence of who I am, squeezed, pressed out from the depths of my existence, surfacing through the expression of my senses and shared in some form, for others to hear/feel/experience themselves. This expressive function, as described by John Dewey in Experience and Nature is shared with the other function, the consummatory function (Dewey, 1929). This is the function of connecting with/relating to some other individual who is expressing him/herself. A way to think of this is the "you-are-ness" of someone else - this connection can (but doesn't always) result in a sharing. This sharing can then be referred to as a "we-ness" of being as one, or sharing in common. To "share in common" is the root meaning for the word "communication." Thus the aim of communication is not just to express ourselves but to share ourselves, to communicate ourselves with each other.

Therefore, community means to share as one, to have something common. This something goes beyond just the sense of place - for a sense of place is an experience of something that we take in and assimilate. But it is external to us, it is around us and influences us, but it is not in us. That is why I believe it is possible for someone to live in a community and not be part of it. Or, put differently, living in a particular place does not mean that we are part of that place.

Authentic community happens when people engage each other. And the way they engage each other, relate to each other, interact with each other impacts the place. And art, when it comes from the people in a particular place - becomes the expression of the "essence of place" - the core values of a place - those beliefs "held in common" that form the unique bond, the cultural glue that keeps a community together. It is what happens to a place when we engage in relationship between ourselves and others, and all of us and the place where we are. It is what happens when we are "in-spirited" by a place - we can leave the place, dislike the place, disavow the place, but it is forever a part of us. For it is no longer outside of us, we are in relationship with it. And when we enter a relationship, it is no longer an object - it has life and spirit, and it joins our own life and our own spirit. Once it is inspirited in our deep place, it is always a part of us. This is where the term poetry of place hooks up with my previous discussion of cultural ecology. When we nurture the poetry of place, we are being good stewards of the place where we live, creating a sustaining environment that nurtures the human spirit.

And this leads me to the conclusion that I am not a community developer or a cultural developer but rather, an individual developer. Because I believe that healthy communities consist of healthy individuals, my work has always focused on encouraging, nurturing, and inviting individuals to find their voice. You can't impose it - all you can do is invite it. You can't create community by imposing it from outside - it has to develop from within. Without individuals, there is no such thing as a community. There may be a physical place - a location with a name, a place where people live together. But that doesn't mean they are a community.

Community doesn't exist without people engaging each other. A community doesn't exist unless people spend time with each other and share with each other. That is why the title of my first book describing our work in this field is called Rebuilding the Front Porch of America. I believe the arts provide all of us individuals with a place to converge, to be together, to get to know each other. The arts are actually one of the few "front porches" left in our culture. We need a place to live, I believe we need The Poetry of Place to make that place a community.

This is the power of The Poetry of Place. It happens all the time, and it is usually invisible. But we know when it is there. We know when we are in community because it is the connection of the deepest part of ourselves, as individuals, with those who are around us. That is why it is so comforting to us because it no longer is something physical. And it is essential to understand that the Poetry of Place is not just about creativity, but also spirituality. This is why I believe the relationship between creativity and spirituality is so important for us to understand. A good portion of my work these days is about connecting these two terms. In my life, I see little distinction between creativity and spirituality. I think they are two manifestations of the same communicative function - the inner self connecting with the world outside us.

As a seminary trained, ordained minister, I have spent most of my adult working life struggling with the prejudice that exists within the arts against organized religion. Many times, when people find out I am an ordained minister, they jump to conclusions, imposing their own prejudice against organized religion, ignoring who I am, never bothering to find out what I believe and why. Unfortunately, the same holds true when people in the institutional church find out that I am involved in the arts. Many times they jump to conclusions, focusing their attention on their prejudice against the arts. Here, more than any other aspect of my life, I find myself caught "in between" two important parts of who I am. For many years, I struggled with having to keep them separated. Now, I choose not to accept this imposed reality because it isn't accurate. If people want to be prejudiced, nothing I say or do will stop it. But, I do know this - if we don't start finding ways to engage in honest discourse about these prejudices, they will continue to tear our communities and our culture apart. We must learn how to create a bridge between our beliefs and I think one way to do this is to focus on the fascinating relationship between creativity and spirituality. We must move beyond the debate between Art and Religion and move into a genuine, authentic discourse about the relationship between Creativity and Spirituality.

Conclusion

So, that brings me to the end. What I have attempted to do is to present a case for understanding our work as community arts developers and community cultural developers as being essential for the health, wellness, and wholeness of the individuals in our communities. We have stood on the edge of our culture for too long. It is time for us to claim our rightful place, as cultural edgeliners, place makers, celebrators of and catalysts for the Poetry of Place. We may be on the edge, but that doesn't mean we are not an essential part of the process.

In closing, let me share one final personal story. When I first met Robert Gard, it was at a symposium I was responsible for as Director of the Center for Community & Cultural Studies at Columbia College, Columbia, Missouri. I convened some of the best and brightest community arts developers from across the country. The essays presented at this event eventually were published in the book Grassroots & Mountain Wings: the arts in rural and small communities.

I invited Robert Gard to provide the opening keynote address. It seemed logical. It was appropriate. After all, he represented the quintessential practitioner of the very subject we were going to be discussing, community arts development. He was our bridge, our connector between the field as it was and the field as it is. He was our "in-betweener." That was the beginning of a short, but powerful relationship I was fortunate to have with the man and his work.

After I finished my welcoming presentation on that first evening, Bob came up to me immediately, and told me how much he liked my poetry. He was energized, excited. And I remember replying, "What poetry?" And he said, what you just read - it was beautiful poetry. And I told him it was just prose. And I'll never forget his response, he said "It may be prose now but it is supposed to be poetry. Now get to work." That was Robert Gard.

And I did get to work. After a few weeks, I had a completed poem, the first one I have written about what our work means - what it is we do. And I owe it to Bob Gard. So I think it is appropriate for me to read that poem as the conclusion to this lecture. I read it with gratitude for the man, and I read it with appreciation for the work all of you do in this room. It is about art and art making. It is about community making. But most of all, it talks about what I now understand to be the "dance of the tweeners." It is called "The Circle."

The Circle

We are the people of the broken circle,
poets, prophets, and pioneers
who suffer from the blessing and the curse of blind vision.
We are the troubadours of a troubled time,
dreamers who reveal what has always been
but never seen before,
wanderers engaged in the quest for authentic community.

We are the singers who have not forgotten the song or how to sing,
dancers who defy the air and risk the leap,
artists who challenge the chaos and shape perceptions into form,
storytellers who mold muse and meaning into words -
seekers, all of us,
inscape artists in search of the soul.

We are the keepers of the fire,
guardians of the great mystery,
protectors of the lost language.
We are the children of the awe,
stewards of the gifts and the grace,
harnessing the power and the paradox
of grassroots and mountain wings.

We are the remnant who remember the future -
we are the dance that makes the circle whole.
Come dance with us.

We stand at the edge, you and I. We stand at the edge of possibility, in-between what was and what will be. We stand there inviting people to join us in the creative and exhilarating dance of the vital community-making work we do. It is a wonderful dance. It is our dance. Robert E. Gard knew this. His entire life was devoted to promoting this idea. That is why I deeply cherish receiving the Robert E. Gard Award this year. I can think of no individual whose name I would rather have on the title page of this lecture about my life's work than his