I got a little stuck when I was trying to come up with my plan from the very beginning because I have had a hard time truly parsing out the various influences on my faith and leadership. This is partially because there are pieces of my childhood that feel like a blackhole of memory, and partially because it feels like I was raised with two distinct and separate approaches to faith and relationship under one roof. Similarly, my institution is Catholic, but so often acts more secular. I can tell you in all places that ARC feels very much like it is in the water, but it’s hard to pull out distinct characteristics. 

Lindsay gets a shoutout for unlocking an insight that finally helped me write out a plan – she named the ways that she’s started thinking of the absence of DCA as an indicator of the likely presence/influence of ARC. 

I think what follows is by no means comprehensive, but it should at least give me a good start and a place from which to dig deeper as I go along. 

Faith: first and foremost, I need to spend a lot of time intentionally reflecting. My mom’s approach and the Catholic realm of my upbringing certainly had a large influence, as did my dad’s approach, the Lutheran church and youth group realm, and likely (though harder to put a finger on) the cultural influence of popular media and being raised in the midwest had significant influences as well. I’d like to try to piece apart some of these influences and put a name to them as much as is helpful. I think I had glimpses of/encounters with the possibility of DCA as well in my upbringing, so I’d like to notice and name those as well. One initial influence I’m specifically thinking of diving into is to notice my own reactionary tendencies. I have come to notice that I have had an easier time in some ways rejecting ARC in my own individual faith because of the ways I’m reacting against authoritarian tendencies in my family of origin and I want to get curious about that. 

Leadership: I think by the nature of the beast, US higher ed and academia are places that prize certainty, expertise, and “power over.”  I know I benefit from being in the mission-based division of my institution, which allows me to use my voice to invite people into a different way of being, but I don’t know that I always use that in the ways that I would like to. I’ve held relational and subversive leadership roles in my institution for a while, but I have just now been handed a significant leadership role that has institutional power. I am glad to be in JOH at this moment because it has made me realize that I want to seriously engage ways that I (and those around me) rely on ARC-based tactics for leadership and seriously lean into the ways I can move towards DCA work with my team first, and then hopefully move towards that change with those around us. I may consider moving through some of the Common Table with my team if it feels appropriate as we get a little more firm in our team identity. 

Institution: This one is still tough for me to get specific with a plan – I constantly have a hard time naming the elements of my context because it feels so complex and multi-faceted. I can already identify ways the influences of ARC show up on a more individual level with things like donors, students, or team members – I’d like to spend more time being curious about this, rather than judgmental. On a bigger level, I’d like to work to take a step back and notice the habits and tendencies of power-wielding, certainty, and hierarchy rather than my default tendencies of accepting them as reality or getting frustrated by them. I think the true ideals of a democratic, covenantal, and abolitionist Christian faith align well with a Jesuit approach to education and spirituality, so I think to work against some of the norms of capitalistic higher education, I will need to get serious about the consistent practice of identifying when ARC tendencies show up. 

That…. feels like a lot! I think the sum total of my plan could be named as this: intentionally cultivating the practice of noticing rather than just going along with the way things are and have always been.