OLD Whidbey Life Magazine

Author: Mark Forman

  • How to Build Bridges During Polarized Times

    How to Build Bridges During Polarized Times

    BY MARK FORMAN
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    July 5, 2017

    Regardless of your political or cultural orientation, it’s hard to overlook the fact that our country is in the midst of almost unprecedented polarization. Heather Johnson has been wrestling with that challenge. As the executive director of the Whidbey Institute, she says, “It’s difficult to maintain equilibrium with the intensity of vitriol at every level of society.” Johnson addresses this polarization by striving to hold a larger perspective. For her, the question is: “How do we grow our capacity to respond? How do we mature ourselves to become people who can see and understand things differently?”

    A graduate of Pacific Integral’s Generating Transformative Change leadership program, Johnson also has a bachelor’s degree in finance. This breadth of background and skills is well-suited to a position that demands pragmatic, as well as visionary, talents. In fact, even as she applies herself to the tough work of leading an organization that aspires to nurture community at a time when so many of us seem to be talking past one another, a major part of her focus is on a capital campaign that seeks to add significant new housing to the institute and support other key initiatives.

    Later this month, on July 22, a groundbreaking ceremony will officially kick off the first phase of the housing portion of the campaign. That’s the pragmatic part of Johnson’s contribution to the stewardship of the institute. The visionary component, though, is guided by her desire to shift the frames through which we navigate our social conflict. She says she’d like to encourage people to “step back from saying ‘we’re failing to do this right’ and rather to ask ‘what are possible deeper purposes for all of this?’”

    Heather Johnson speaking at the Whidbey Institute (Photo courtesy of the Whidbey Institute)

    She adds, “I don’t proclaim to know what those purposes are. I do know that we have a lot of learning, a lot of growth to do. And we’re being presented—in really big ways—with the deep chasms between who we are as human beings now and who we’re being called to become.”

    Johnson believes that we’re being asked to recognize that our development as human beings is ongoing: “Growing up” is an endless process. And that there is a simplicity on the other side of the complexity we feel ourselves swimming in; a simplicity that lives at the core of our inheritance of global wisdom traditions.

    Through technology and the proliferation of media outlets, we inhabit worlds that are more and more insular. Because they’re filled with like-minded people, they can feed polarization. “There is a subtle pattern arising when ‘like-minded’ people come together, learn together, and find solace with one another,” Johnson says. “It can grow into a crusade mindset or the belief that the answer to the problem is to indoctrinate the other into the right shared ideology.”

    Johnson participates in a creative exercise during a Salish Sea Bioneers Conference at the Whidbey Institute. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Institute)

    As executive director of an organization committed to catalyzing positive change, Johnson is sensitive to the potential traps that can lie in that work. One of her goals is to invite people beyond a mindset of “If they’d be different, we’d be OK, and the job—the positive change work—is for us, with our ‘right’ idea, to go and indoctrinate them with our right idea.”

    At the heart of the Whidbey Institute campus is Thomas Berry Hall. Though the institute’s work is not about Berry’s teachings in particular, his work holds an important anchor for its focus. Thomas Berry was a Catholic priest, a cultural historian, and ecotheologian. One of his quotes has been a particular inspiration for Johnson: “The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

    To Johnson, the approach of indoctrinating others with the right idea represents a “collection-of-objects” mindset. As she puts it, “If we are trying to change the world in a positive way through engaging with others as objects to fix, we’re inherently in our own way.” This is a concern she expressed as early as August 2015, when she moved from program and associate director to executive director.

    Johnson brings a group together by ringing the Chinook Bell in the Thomas Berry Hall Courtyard. (Photo by Mercia Moseley)

    In an open letter to the Whidbey Institute community, she wrote about constructs, defining them as: “The meaning-making structures in which we are steeped—cultural, racial, religious, familial, generational—which allow us to see the world and our place in it in unique ways.” Although constructs are important for those reasons, she pointed to the risk that they “can also make us blind to perspectives beyond our own. We are all, to some degree, in over our heads, doing our best to navigate being human in a changing world.”

    Johnson’s letter from two years ago has even greater relevance today. As she engages with people in a world that has become even more polarized since then, she sums up the challenges in an elegantly simple way. “It’s about how do we do this together, how do we actually recognize that, on this planet, we are all in this together—that it’s a reality, and then: How do we behave that way?”

    Sarah Sullivan, left, carries her child alongside Johnson during a community event at the Whidbey Institute. (Photo courtesy of Whidbey Institute)

    Tips for building bridges

    • Try on their perspective. When you feel yourself reacting to another, as difficult as it may be, try to imagine what it is like to live as them. What is it like to wake up as them in the morning? To live your days walking around in their reality? To face the challenges they face? To have the opportunities they have?
    • Listen for what others hold important. Behind the specifics of what others are expressing, be curious: What are the values that inform their position? What do they care about? And why?
    • Focus on what you share. What do you both hold dear? What motivates care and commitment in each of you?
    • Make a choice to build relationship. Particularly in this time, it can feel much more important to be right than to build relationship. Taking these steps asks us to make a choice to not turn the other into an object that needs to be corrected or protected against, but to see another as a human being, a person, with inherent dignity.

    Recommended Reading

    Mark Forman is a filmmaker and writer who moved to Whidbey Island with his wife Kathleen Secrest in 2015. Mark’s favorite projects include: “The King of the Hobos,” a film portrait of Steam Train Maury Graham, which aired on PBS at the beginning of Mark’s career; a promotional video for La Romita School of Art in the Umbrian region of Italy filmed in 2008; and a fund-raising video that he and Kathleen produced this fall as a donation to the Whidbey Institute.

    Read the other stories published this week

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  • Through His Own Healing, Lucas Jushinski Brings Healing to Others

    Through His Own Healing, Lucas Jushinski Brings Healing to Others

    BY MARK FORMAN
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    April 12, 2016

    If any Whidbey Islander has earned the right to indulge himself with an extended stay in Europe, it’s Lucas Jushinski. A veteran of the Iraq war — including service as a combat medic in the battle of Fallujah — and a successful local businessman whose generosity has benefitted Good Cheer and several other island organizations, Jushinski would be justified in laying back and just taking it easy. But his temporary residency in Grenada, Spain, has a deeper purpose and can’t really be called an indulgence. It’s a purpose that grew out of his eight-year service in the U.S. Navy.

    Lucas Jushinski behind the counter at Island Herb before leaving for Spain. (Photo by Michael Stadler)

    “I’d traveled to these different countries where people speak two, three, four, five languages, and I’m sitting there only able to speak English,” he recalls. In early February, Jushinski arrived in Grenada, determined to change that. His goal is an ambitious one. “I’ve dedicated myself to staying here until I can speak Spanish fluently,” he says. But Jushinski has pushed through far more intimidating challenges in his 40-year life. And the patience he cultivated in confronting those other challenges is serving him well in accepting the pace of his language acquisition. “It’s coming, it’s just slow. It’s slower than I was hoping for, but I’m okay with that,” he says.

    “Slower than I was hoping for.” The same could be said of his transition out of the military after suffering traumatic brain injury and PTSD stemming from his front-line service as a combat corpsman. And like many returning veterans, Lucas found that the effects of the large cocktail of drugs prescribed by VA doctors was worse than the conditions they were meant to alleviate. As he recalls, “I felt like a zombie. I didn’t feel like I was being healed at all.”

    Ultimately, the pain of that led to a moment of decision and a commitment to personal power. “I said okay, this isn’t working, and I took myself off all those pills. I had to find my own path of healing.” Support for that path came through the Warrior Transition Program at Evergreen State College, where Jushinski returned to finish his degree. “I started studying what warrior transition was and what it meant. It really started to help give me a better idea about the process I was going through, because I didn’t understand the process. I didn’t know what I needed at the time.”

    Part of the Evergreen experience involved volunteer work, which Lucas performed as an intern in the Good Cheer Garden. The simple processes of that work were therapeutic, “Digging dirt, getting on my hands and knees and planting food, helping people.” he recalls. The “helping people” part was especially meaningful for him. “Being of service again to other people was a big part of my healing. Working at Good Cheer was instrumental in my recovery.”

    During this time, Jushinski remained true to his commitment to steer clear of the synthetic drugs that had left him feeling he had “lost connection with humanity.” He was open to the possibility that the natural medicinal properties of certain plants could be beneficial. He obtained a medical cannabis card and began using it. The results were welcome. “I noticed how cannabis really helped me to calm down, to find some sort of peace of mind again. It helped me to sleep. It helped me in all sorts of ways.”

    That was 2011. At the time, there were no medical cannabis dispensaries on Whidbey Island. Dealing with the necessity of traveling to Seattle to buy his cannabis triggered a realization, “I can’t be the only one on the island who’s suffering, who needs to go off the island to get cannabis.” And it led him to a decision that would change the direction of his life. He decided to open a medicinal cannabis dispensary.

    Jushinski had no background in business, but he received support from the community, not only in terms of mentorship and financing but even with the set-up of the store when he was finally able to put all the necessary pieces together. “People also came together to help me build the store out, with construction. The community came together to help me when I was struggling.”

    As Island Alternative Medicine’s client base grew, so too did Jushinski’s awareness of the benefits people were receiving from the various cannabis strains and preparations that he carried in the dispensary. “I knew what it was helping me for, but then all these other people would come in and tell me their stories and I would be overwhelmed with how much it was helping people.”

    Some changes arrived with the legalization of recreational cannabis — including the launch of a new company, Island Herb. In the original dispensary model, Lucas would see only one person at a time. “And they would come back, they’d get complete privacy, and we’d be able to talk about their condition and what they’re going through.” In the new company, Jushinski has tried to mitigate the impact of that change. “I’ve hired a lot of great people to work there. So, usually when you come in, you don’t have to wait, there’s someone to help you right there.” Another way he seeks to maintain the original medicinal intent in an environment that now includes recreational use as well, is through training. “My goal is to send all of my employees to the medical cannabis program they offer at Seattle Central Community College.”

    Island Herb employee Bret Wilhoit helps a customer. (Photo by Michael Stadler)

    Jushinski remains grateful for the support he’s received from the Whidbey community — especially Good Cheer, to whom in May, 2014, he pledged to match up to $10,000 in donations. Cary Peterson, garden program coordinator for the South Whidbey School District, who came to know Lucas during his internship, believes his generosity is deeply ingrained and his success well-earned. “Lucas is a very generous and open-hearted person. That’s his intrinsic nature, and I’m just really glad he’s been able to flourish in this community.”

    As Jushinski focuses on his current challenge of achieving fluency in Spanish, he feels the day-to-day operations of the store are in good hands. “Eric, my store manager, and his team are super stellar performers. They run the store with integrity. They treat our customers with kindness and respect. And they all have a great amount of knowledge with regard to the products we carry.”

    And after Grenada and fluency? Jushinski is beginning to think about a new project: a retreat center for veterans dealing with PTSD. “I want to create a place where veterans who are suffering can come and experience a different type of healing than maybe they’ve had any awareness of. The VA and the military, they only know the pills, they only know the narcotics. They’re coming up with new ways, but I’d say that’s their primary way is through pills. And I want to show veterans that there’s a different way.”

    Mark Forman is a filmmaker and writer who moved to Whidbey Island with his wife Kathleen Secrest in 2015. Mark’s favorite projects include: “The King of the Hobos,” a film portrait of Steam Train Maury Graham, which aired on PBS at the beginning of Mark’s career; a promotional video for La Romita School of Art in the Umbrian region of Italy filmed in 2008; and a fund-raising video that he and Kathleen produced last fall as a donation to the Whidbey Institute.

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  • The Christmas Top: A 147-Year-Old Tradition Comes to Whidbey Island

    The Christmas Top: A 147-Year-Old Tradition Comes to Whidbey Island

    BY MARK FORMAN
    Whidbey Life Magazine Contributor
    December  21, 2016

    A few years ago, I was in Minneapolis working on a video project, and I drove past my grandparent’s home on 44th Ave. South. I parked my rental car on East 54th, so I could see into the back yard, which was only one lot from the corner. I remembered my grandfather planting a tree there when I was seven or eight years old. The reason that memory was triggered is that the most prominent feature in the yard was a large tree that towered over the small stucco bungalow. I don’t know if it’s the one my grandfather planted, but now when I think of him, I have the image of that tree and the thought of how something that grows imperceptibly can become so large over the course of a lifetime.

    James Linsley was a simple man who wasn’t impressed by “gadgets” or flashy things. When he was young, he dreamed of being a farmer, and he tried to make a go of it in northern Minnesota near Park Rapids. It was the middle of the Great Depression, though, and it didn’t work. The family moved back to Minneapolis, where he continued to work as a streetcar conductor and later a bus driver. But, like the tree that now dominates the backyard of the house my mother grew up in, somehow the memory of him is an out-sized presence in the family.

    Nothing symbolizes that presence more than the small brass top he would spin every year on Christmas Eve—a tradition begun by his father David Linsley in 1868. One of the family legends is about the time my grandfather arrived in Park Rapids by train on Christmas Eve. It was the early 1930’s. He was working for the streetcar company in Minneapolis while my grandmother, mother, and uncle stayed on the small farm they were trying to launch. A blizzard came, and there was no easy way to travel the ten miles from Park Rapids to the farm in Nevis.

    The brass top that has been spun on 146 Christmases since 1868 by Mark Forman’s family. (Photo by Mark Forman)

    He decided to walk. He had a flashlight, but it would never last the duration of the walk, so he settled on a system. He’d turn on the flashlight long enough to site the next utility pole on the road and get his bearings, he’d walk to the pole, and then he’d repeat the process … for ten miles. He stopped a few times to shelter in barns when there was one close to the road but mostly he just walked, one pole at a time, so he could be with his family for Christmas. I suppose that year he spun the top on Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve.

    Since 1868, there were only two years when the top wasn’t spun: in 1904 when it was packed inside a wagon as the family moved, and in 1959 when my grandparents visited my family after we’d moved to Illinois. My grandfather forgot to pack it and there was no practical way to retrieve it.

    I first saw it spin on the oak floor of my grandparents’ house in Minneapolis. This year it will spin for the first time on the floor of my home on Whidbey Island. My wife Kathleen and I moved here in September, 2015, and on Christmas Eve of that year, the top was spun by my nephew, also named James, in his home in Spokane. This year, I will spin the top for the first time as a member of the generation that is now responsible for maintaining the tradition.

    It seems fitting that I do this on Whidbey, which, for me, feels like a home I’ve returned to that I didn’t know I had. Physically, the extended family is spread out much more than it’s been at times in the past. So this will be a small ceremony, which also seems fitting. It feels true to the spirit in which my grandfather led his life, with humble simplicity but with great impact.

    Mark Forman is a filmmaker and writer who moved to Whidbey Island with his wife Kathleen Secrest in 2015. Mark’s favorite projects include: “The King of the Hobos,” a film portrait of Steam Train Maury Graham, which aired on PBS at the beginning of Mark’s career; a promotional video for La Romita School of Art in the Umbrian region of Italy filmed in 2008; and a fund-raising video that he and Kathleen produced this fall as a donation to the Whidbey Institute.

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    WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. You may link to this story. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.