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Right Use of Power
power with heart news
February 2014
Greetings <<First Name>>!
In this issue we explore issues of privilege, power and diversity. Understanding privilege is essential in the right use of power. Articles by Cedar and guests, CEU's and poetry offer insight into these issues. We encourage to comment on Cedar's blog and start a conversation!
Note: Try clicking "View it in your browser" link at the top of the email (above the header image). You will be able to translate the newsletter into various languages, share through Facebook, etc.
In this issue you will find:
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Earn CEUs at Home
Featured Mini-Course:
Influence, Values & Diversity
CE Hours =1
Ethics is right use of power and influence. This min-course focuses on the wise use of the influence aspect of power. Find out about eight values that have global agreement. Diversity is a big topic to understand these days. As Karen Armstrong says, our differences define us, but our common humanity can redeem us. We just have to open our hearts.
There are many other CEU Mini-Courses that you can browse online.
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Workshops & Trainings
Boulder, Colorado
Right Use of Power Workshop:
October 4-5, 2014
Facilitator's Training:
October 6-7, 2014
Presented by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.
Contact: Cedar Barstow
North Carolina
Right Use of Power Workshop:
July 20, 2014
Presented by Julia Corley
Register
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Featured Guild Member
Natalie Collins
Natalie Collins set up Spark. (www.sparkequip.org) and is an independent consultant working to prevent and respond to violence against women and enable others to do the same. She is also the Creator of DAY (www.dayprogramme.org), an innovative youth domestic abuse education programme. She speaks and trains on understanding and ending domestic abuse and gender injustice nationally and internationally.
Since training as a RUP Facilitator, Natalie has integrated this knowledge throughout her work and made right use of power a core principle of all she does. Natalie is a member of the first group of RUP Facilitators in the United Kingdom.
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The Meaning of a Decent Society
An Article by Robert Reich
in Nation of Change
It’s the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else.
Although it’s still possible to win the lottery (your chance of winning $648 million in the recent Mega Millions sweepstakes was one in 259 million), the biggest lottery of all is what family we’re born into. Our life chances are now determined to an unprecedented degree by the wealth of our parents.
That’s not always been the case. The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the American Dream.
Read the rest of the article here
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Privilege Trumps
By Natalie Collins (Featured RUP Teacher)
and Cedar Barstow
In our book, Living in the Power Zone, my husband Dr. Reynold Feldman and I name four different kinds of power: personal power, role power, status power and collective power. As compared with role or positional power that is conferred by education, training, appointment, or election, status power is determined and conferred by our culture. Cultures confer higher or lower status differently. Elders have higher status in Asia than in the West, globally, women have lower status than men, albeit to differing degrees. In the West, Christians have higher status than Muslims. Generally, poverty, homosexuality, disability, lack of physical strength or stereotypical beauty, and minority membership carry lower status globally. Status is conferred by society, not based on equality or justice, but on birth or accidental or social circumstances. Persons with higher status automatically have increased power and influence. Rich, white, heterosexual men, for example, may be the last to understand the power that comes with status since they are embedded in privilege. As the saying goes, "The fish are the last to discover water." Those with lower status have less power and influence and are vulnerable to being oppressed, abused, exploited, discriminated, and disrespected.
Read the rest of the article here
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Utopia
By Nobel Prize Winner (1996),
Wislawa Szymborska
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From "A large number", 1976
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
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Boulder, January 2014
The number of participants was 21.
The setting was snowy Colorado.
The Training was in right use of power.
Six more RUP Facilitators are now psyched to offer programs for medical students, community mediation, people in China and Japan, hospice caregivers, and people interested in de-activating shame, bodyworkers, at-risk youth, and teachers. Three Guild Members took the training again (1/2 the fee) and were glad they did. Take off and fly, all of you!
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