Meetings can be a bland obligation or a terrific opportunity for dialog and deepening shared values. Often, today’s agencies are swept up in meeting after meeting that all too often have little to directly to do with non-violence and peace-making.

A culture of gentleness calls for a transformation of an agency’s focus and values. At the continuous center of our dialog we need to put supportive management chores secondary to the very life and meaning of the service system. Again, money and resources are needed to carry out the work into the future. This is not the question. The question is we must  place our values at the center. The way discussions go now a days is to spend our time placing leadership energy on the “things” of running a system; while there is importance to this, it is not central to the life of the system.

We must move away from a culture of cubicles, daily dances with data, and planning the life of others without touching them.

This does not mean that we must eliminate these endeavors; it means that we need to introduce a degree of moderation and re-orient agencies to real people with real needs. It means meetings and planning that focuses on how the caring community can make this particular person or group feel more safe, loved, loving, and engaged. If the meeting just centers itself on “behaviors”, the precious time is wasted. We need to focus on what we want the person to become rather than what we want to get rid of.