“There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.” -adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy
We sit in our living rooms and complain about what is happening in the world.
There is much fodder: war, pain, sickness, poverty, violence, abuse. Our easy access to information makes it even more difficult to ignore. Each notification fueling the fire of our anger, anxiety, fear and hopelessness. Each notification giving us a new opportunity towards apathy.
We sit in our living rooms and complain about what is happening around us.
Here too there’s much fodder and yet it is closer to home. Context matters, so does distance. Some of the ailments are similar: neighbors struggling to make ends meet, co-workers trying to balance their lives, family members attempting to stay connected in difference.
We sit in our living rooms and feel the tension of these days.
More instruments of connection have not made us closer; more information has not freed us and more technological advances have not made life easier for those who struggle most.
What are we to do?
Sometimes the best next thing is something familiar, a practice with deep roots that has not been attempted for a while.
It was time for an experiment.
In this case, it was a conversation. A small group was convened by the Lincoln Community Foundation, an idea inspired by their strategic initiative, Prosper Lincoln.
Twelve people, some of whom had not met before, centered around a topic of interest. Coffee and sweets helped anchor our time together and after some short introductions, the conversation began.
My role was to keep the conversation moving, to facilitate. One of my guides in this process is the thinker, activist and writer adrienne maree brown who sees facilitation as “tending to the collective wisdom in the room.”
There was so much wisdom in the rooms where we gathered. This wisdom was rooted in each person’s experience of the world. The experiences created a tapestry of being human, a way of seeing one another, each witness revealing a larger truth about our future as a community, the challenges of today and the dignity of difference.
Every conversation needs a container, a set of basic agreements. Here is where adrienne maree brown was once again called to help us.
Her Principles of Emergent Strategy gave us the container for our ninety minutes together:
- Small is good – small is all.
- Change is constant. Be like water.
- There is always enough time for the right work.
- There is a conversation that only the people in this room right now can have. Find it.
- Trust the people. If you trust them, they become trustworthy.
- Move at the speed of trust. Connection is more important than mass.
- Less prep. More presence.
- What you pay attention to grows.
- Never a failure, always a lesson.
There were no obvious answers to all that ails us – but what I experienced was the awe of gathering, of creating space for humans to connect with one another. The conversations moved to new connections, to promises of catching up again and to the recognition that something beautiful had taken place.
I also saw the grace of difference, the ways that when – face-to-face with another – disagreements become opportunities for more conversation. Not to convince, but to see the other more clearly. Gathering in this way is a school for humility, a place to practice being and belonging.
Love was generated, prosperity emerging one moment at a time. We sat in a room in our imperfections, in half-baked ideas, lack of preparation and next things in our minds – there reality was found.
We sat in a room and tried something, something that all of us can do.
There I found hope.
Go, gather around tables, seed a conversation, watch the wisdom emerge. It is one thing all of us can do, to connect, to see and be seen, to prosper.
Jump in and Connect
Grounded in the 2025 Lincoln Vital Signs report and shaped by hundreds of community conversations, Prosper Lincoln’s work in Connections focuses on increasing opportunities for people to improve their economic status, supporting engagement within neighborhoods and building resident-led neighborhood initiatives.
Do you know someone who gets neighbors together to tackle shared issues? Who is building connection and trust? The person neighbors count on and makes everyone feel valued in your community? A local advisory group will choose 20 of these neighbors to receive up to $4,000 and other resources to support their work.
Get more information, apply for an award or recommend a neighbor at https://awards.weavers.org/en/lincoln/2026/.
