Divine Discernment

Last November, I began a period of discernment. After a weird and disturbing professional experience, I was up for a personal transformation. I used the phrase period of discernment strategically to stem the tide of what next questions from well-meaning family and friends. Also, to tend to the paradoxes of my own heart. One wise colleague said, give it a year. More recently, a confidante who saw me through it weekly wondered why it was taking so long.

Paradox (creative tensions) at the center of it all.

Like, how to hold the grief of eldercare when the old guy is actually doing ok. On the one hand, he provides a daily innoculation toward the inevitable. I instinctively watch for the sleepy heaves of his chest as I move quietly through the room. Morning greetings feel profound when Dad jokes, well, happy to wake up. Yet, each day, a task requires me to imagine the times ahead when he is not.

These are the combined exercises of the mind, heart, spirit, and gut. The old management term compartmentalization has revealed its error. Those painful separations into which I was professionally groomed were never truly disambiguated. My internal intelligences weren’t vanquished by setting them aside. Rather, they coiled into powerful rages below my conscious mind. Temporarily rendered mute to my awareness, but unmistakably evidenced in my body. Reintegration requires a constant unpicking and reweaving of my relationships to others in whole context.

These paradoxes are also at the center of my cultural policy work. Thirty years ago, I was crushed to find that a prideful paucity undergirded the policy framework for the arts in American life. Listening closely to dear DC colleagues over two decades made it painfully obvious. Funding conversations rode the same racist, misogynist, homophobic, classist rails as I had experienced in business and academics.

Colonial colloquialisms masqueraded as practical advice.

It’s ultimately all about money and power. There isn’t enough for all of us. Sorry, someone has to lose for others to win. Cultures themselves must functionally compete to exist.

Grasping that was terrifying. The top cultural leaders of the land are themselves markedly inhumane in their management philosophies and practices, communication and advocacy strategies, and professional ethics. Notions of scarcity among the most privileged produce a toxic haze that invites all of us to think lesser of ourselves and our country.

It acted like cryptonite on me at times. I felt delusional, believing so deeply in the creative promise of the democratic experiment. It made for some lonely moments among beloved colleagues, too.

Closer to home, I was characterized as both naive and woke by the Arizona arts executives and appointed commissioners who targeted me last year. It felt entirely absurd at the time. For 90 days, my public persona was cast about in an undignified whisper campaign. Though I was the target, the exercise was (and still is) to mask their own acute leadership dilemmas.

One arts executive budgeted his expected grant much higher than the public panel scored the organization’s proposal. He was short on projected resources and embarrassed in front of his board. In our zoom call, he raised his voice and pounded a fist on the desk. He threatened that he would fire staff and blame it on me. Finally, he was reduced to a pleading puddle as he surmised I would not coddle his entitled emotions.

I offered several workable alternatives — cooperative efforts that could garner much more in resources for the whole arts ecosystem — including his organization’s respected work. He was white with rage. Later, he wrote a five-page diatribe, circulating it among our professional network but never sending it to me. Instead, a commissioner read an excerpt into the record at a public meeting. He accused me of being a smarty pants for suggesting we could do and be more together.

His unregulated emotions and unmanaged expectations evolved into starkly unethical (and likely illegal) actions. Within days, he generated more questions about me among my peers. He found another old dude defensive about his reputation, and out came another public letter. I was unstudied, unskilled, uncouth, and he would tell on me to the then-Governor if I didn’t get ladylike quick.

We’d been colleagues for two decades and Facebook friends for nearly as long. When I contacted him directly to understand his motivations, he blocked me. I later learned of another whisperer — a colleague whose career I’ve fostered in countless quiet ways. A final letter came from the arts advocacy organization; the one without enough cultural literacy to remove ‘citizens’ from its name.

Some creative tensions do result in breaks, unrepaired in this lifetime. Good riddance, but also a waking sadness about what they need not have done, along with delays and missed opportunities. Sorry for those who are cleaning up unnecessarily. Many talented folks stood by, avoiding accountability and defending norms. Those weedy tendrils of transactionalism are invasive in Arizona. Resources siphoned off by the undeniably fortunate — that is a grievous state.

I am turning a corner, though, as my period of discernment reaches synthesis and conclusion.

I’m reminded that in August 2022, I endured the tension headaches, stress shakes, insomnia, and digestive strain by swimming hard every day. Disorienting and reorienting myself through dives and drills that helped me physically cope with the funhouse mirrors at work.

I recall that throughout September 2022, I focused on de-escalation and asked the team to aim for a negotiated resolution. We would not move from our legal and ethical boundaries, I assured them. I was determined in the face of relentless skepticism. The short-term prospects were dire for me, but I knew we could make a crack in the concrete. We laughed together, they can‘t take away my birthday.

In October 2022, I came to grips with my fate. No less than a state HR director, two attorneys from the AG’s office, the commission staff, chair, vice chair, and board, along with five arts executives from the largest Phoenix institutions and one former legislator collaborated to remove me from the room. All haphazardly informed by the fragile egos of three white guys playing daggers with their dictionaries.

I was fired in a demeaning public session at about 3pm on October 26, 2022. By 5pm that day, my email was off. Moments later, my Facebook account was hacked. Porn was purchased with my credit card and posted on my page. Proving the fraud, reversing the charges, verifying my identity, and unlocking my account took the next three weeks.

Those days were terrifying in a different way, wondering if even more sinister attacks were aimed at me. Weeks before the 2022 election with vigilantes at voting boxes in our home district, I couldn’t be sure. I briefly felt that protective urge to cower. Luckily, it tapped my rage. A truer version of myself was set ablaze.

The markings of a leadership crucible are unmistakable. Powers begin to swirl. Polarities arise. The material of the work turns elemental, transforming from one state to another. From excitement to intense fear, for example. Change in a positive direction is no less daunting in the heat of it. As a leader, the trick is to go toward the fire — to be transformed and shape the future from the other side.

In my own case, incensed by the stupidity and injustice, I raged onto the policy page. Commanding ire and fire, I churned out a groundbreaking proposal for arts in public service – a plan that taps federal resources to build the creative workforce in Arizona. Brilliant colleagues rallied on LinkedIn (not hacked) and got it circulating within days.

I sent it to federal, state, and local electeds and their key staffers.

I made sure that our good citizens of the arts could not ignore it.

I let a reporter know it was in development. They said to call them if it amounted to anything.

Social media busybodies told me to shut up, then disappeared in the face of facts and argument.

Allies politely asked me to lead my own defense.

I did fall apart for a time, then.

The holidays came, the new year rang. Family kept me feeling safe. Defensiveness finally melted into discernment through a sojourn in our DC home. Time and distance bore witness, though not taking it personally is nonsense advice.

In the last year, I have examined my circumstances and measured my own mistakes. At this age, wisdom aches like everything else.

I’ve also seen clearly the harm others do. Few amends have been made, so I have consciously said my goodbyes. Last on my list is to write a few letters to the boards and bosses of the bullies who messed with me.

Looking back, it was all magical fall, humane happenings among more potent swirls of spirits and sorcery. Ancestors above and aliens out in the inky night skies. I smile now at the sweet silences and gentle goadings of all our comings and goings.

Also, a bow to the cosmic choreographer deftly dancing across divides, drawing out devilish details in the divine. Another thing I’ve learned this year – I am a witch of water. Yes, there are days in the ditch. I don’t mind.