The Outward Facing Clique

Well, hey there, Cadre. Happy Tuesday. My name is JC Lippold. If we've never shared space or time together before, thank you for the opportunity to do so. Tuesdays here at Cadre is our building community day. This is the day that all of our live streams are about the ability of a human being to connect with another human being that may be one on one. That may be one on many. That may be many on one. It may be in the world of how do we communicate to make connection. It may be how do we wrap ourselves around a shared idea or concept and create movement together.

It may be how do we allow one another to stop, to cease to listen? A lot of different pathways in the idea, in the world of building community. So we're already doing it. Noofy lover, DJ Kurka bee. Speak, wonder. Jules, it's so great to see you. Because even what we're doing right now is exactly what this whole day is about. Building community. Speak, wonder. I remember. Hey, Luke. How are you, my friend? Speak, wonder. I remember the day. I remember your birthday. I remember our ability through a screen like this where only one person gets to speak and many others gets to type.

How we created a birthday party for you and across the United States, we sang birthday wishes your way. So Tuesday is your day to come here and consider how we influence and impact how we are influenced and impacted by one another. You'll see me at the 10:00 hour central standard time talking about the idea of the outward facing click. This is the concept that I came up with and started to use back in my late teens and into my twenties when I was working in a lot of nonprofit and youth work. It was my vocation, my opportunity to bring young people together.

I was a high school tennis coach. I was a high school theater director. I was working in an ELCa Lutheran church, actually, a couple of them bringing young people together in a space where they could exist and grow and learn and connect and experience stuff. And it's at this time that I came up with this idea of the outward facing click. When I say the word click, what do you think about? Feel free to type in a chat. What you normally think it about when you hear the word click, like a click of people or that group of people is very clicky.

Normally in our western culture, the idea of a click is, I'm going to assume, in your head, in your heart, in your experience. Thank you, Marisa being excluded. Yeah, right. A click is base value. A group of people who have a shared, shared something. Speak wonder says exclusive group, impervious to outsiders. Newfie lover says mean girls. Yeah. Now, the cool thing is you shared the experiential lens on click. In reality, what is a click? Neutrally? A click is a group of people who have a shared something that excites them, that moves them, that spurs them into feeling something happening.

Maybe we think of it like epoxy. Epoxy, right. Two things that alone don't have as strong of an impact as when they're mixed together. You mix element one and element two together, and you create an epoxy. Something has great power. I like to think of a clique as a group of people and something that they care about. You mix those two things together, and whoo. You create a strong, strong power. Now, all of you, imagine if, rather than that click, being exclusive or averse to the outsider, imagine right now, we are all standing in a circle, facing one another and seeing people that we relate to.

What if all of a sudden, we all turned 180 degrees and faced out, out into the world and exercise our ability to bring people in rather than being excluded, being inclusive rather than being mean girls, being nice human beings, rather than an exclusive group, impervious to outsiders, an inclusive group excited to welcome rather than popular girls. What about seeing the power of the populace? It's the weird thing about humanity. Whenever we care about something. Listen up here. Whenever we care about something, it's really easy for us to try to make that thing be exactly what it is to us.

This thing is special to me. Now I need to have other people understand how it should be special to them, too. And in reality, what we're doing is we're taking away their ability, their opportunity to find something special in it to them. So when we talk about building community, I'm talking to people who are leading organizations, people who are living in neighborhoods, people who are part of families, people who are walking down the street amongst a bunch of faces that they do not know the names of.

If something becomes more special to you, then the people that. That something is affecting, including yourself, that is what's given the idea of a clique a really bad name. So I'm going to go back to when I was youth directing. I was at a wonderful, wonderful congregation in a suburb in the Twin Cities. I grew up as a polish catholic kid, and all of a sudden, I'm working for the Lutherans in Minnesota. We're in the middle of Luther land. Lots and lots of people who love the idea of Martin Luther and grace and social justice, things that super important to me, as an outsider, a polish catholic guy, they welcomed me in.

And at the time I was a polish catholic guy who was also gay, who was now working in a, in a lutheran church who at the time had not affirmed homosexual beings. All of a sudden, we created this beautiful, beautiful group of people. All of a sudden, this youth group became the youth group for the agnostics and the atheists and the artists and the creatives and the Mormons and the Jews and the Muslims and the Catholics and people who simply wanted a group of people, simply not meaning easy, but simply going, wow, I'm a young person where my prefrontal lobe has not developed at all or completely yet.

So things like reason and calm and passion, these are free flowing elements of my being. I'm existing in an environment like a public school system or private school system, lots of different school systems, working into this church where there are cliques in the way that you're speaking about them. And this group became the outward facing clique. The prerequisite for participation was that you were a human being who desired to be connected with human beings, who would cause you pause, who would cause you to go, huh?

This person who sees the world differently than I is seeing my ability to see the world in a different way as something that's beautiful. Now, again, these were twelve to 18 year olds. But I'll tell you this, outward facing click where the prerequisite for participation was to see someone else seeing the world differently and seeing beauty within that, even though it was designed for twelve to 18 year olds. This outward facing clique broadened people from the ages of six months to 90 years old. Because all of a sudden, the prerequisite for participation was not within age or belief structure or activity or interest.

This was in a church. The prerequisite wasn't even church. We had people who walked in and said, I don't believe anything that you believe, but I see the value in being around a group of people who are seeing me as much as I'm seeing them. Like we would see a beautiful piece of art, like this piece of art by Shanji Phillips, a friend of mine on the wall here. If it is in you to build community, my friends, consider the things that you care so much about. Does your care exclude people from caring, or is your care large enough to invite them to find something in themselves, through themselves, with themselves, amongst others, to do the same in a very different way?

What is your prerequisite for participation in the things that you care about? Because it is very human, my friends, to care about something so much that we take away someone else's ability to be a part of it. Every Tuesday here, we're going to be looking at the idea of the outward facing click. In other words, looking at something that you care so much about that it is so easy to curve in on yourselves and then to take a pause and to go, huh? This thing that I have found, that has power over me, that has power through me, deserves to have power over and through others as well.

That's what we're doing at Cadre right now. I see my friend Miss Shannon Paul. You can go ahead and check in on Miss Shannon Paul's livestream on Thursday. One like, talk about someone that you want to be in the sphere of, and I am grateful to be in the sphere of. You saw Mister Luke chiming in before. You can see Luke playing in on the live streams as well. But here's the thing that I invite as we leave today, whenever you find yourself curving in on the idea that you are isolated into some specific being, maybe you look at how we have the live streams broken out here each day.

Maybe you're like, oh, I'm a building community person. Uncurve, open up, face outward and see how you are so much more than that. And I apologize for the world that maybe makes you feel less than that. You have every right to feel excluded. The world is really, really good at caring so much about a thing that it goes, no, you're not doing it in the right way here at Cadre. Hopefully what you find is that the world is so much bigger and so much more complex, and you are the example of that. You are the exemplification of that.

You do not fit into any click, into any box, into any community. If it is excluding. This is the opportunity to open up. Speak, wonder. You said, I have called you out. I hope I'm calling you out into a world that you see more of yourself, y'all. My friend DJ Kirkby just shared a little sunshine. You're gonna see DJ Kirkby sharing a little bit of love on Wednesdays starting, I believe, next week. You are part of a wonderful community here, an outward facing clique that is saying to the world, hey, you.

I don't know you, or I do know you. You are like me, or you are not like me and you belong right here. Speak. Wonderful. I'm glad I gave you a good nudge because speak, wonder. Guess what? You're nudging us right back. Everybody. Have a bright rest of your Tuesday reach out risk to connect I am here. We are here. You are here. And that's a good thing. We'll talk to you later.