It is Fall. The wind is moving. It is uncomfortable to be caught without the right layers amidst leaves and the first snowflakes. But the change of seasons and the movement of the air is also welcome.
The movement brings up a memory: in an early community fund design session, Hélène Lestlin of Good Work Institute compared money to water. Sharing an image of the water cycle and gesturing with her arms, she said, “Money is like water-it should flow! It is a resource. It can be poisonous or dangerous when stagnant, but it can be nourishing and support life when it flows and moves!”
Kingston Common Futures moved money for the first time this year. I hope the process is helping to heal our individual and collective relationships with money. Those relationships are bound up with power and privilege. But we are shifting how money flows in our Kingston community, who has the power to make decisions about money, and how those decisions get made. I am bearing witness to so much beauty, wisdom, and generosity through this inspiring work.
At the same time, I am preoccupied. The needs of our community are clear, and the disparities of resources remain palpable. Micah of Good Work Institute often says that money carries our collective trauma. How do we tend to that? What collective and individual trauma responses are we stuck in–fight? flight? fawn? freeze? In Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine talks about the need to reset the nervous system after a trauma: to shake, to laugh, to shiver.
At the end of each year, we are called to give. My inbox floods with requests for donations from amazing non-profits, projects, arts groups, and community initiatives. I gather gifts to share with my friends and family. I hope to spend time in exchange with them over the holidays. Is it possible this giving and receiving might act like a community reset? A shaking up of resources? An invitation to laugh together? Does this movement lighten the trauma carried in our currency?
This year, I invite you to pay attention to where you send your resources, and therefore, what you are inviting to grow, as adrienne marie brown suggests. My economic power as an individual is limited, but I still have a lot of choice! With a pause and a little consideration, there might be more options than you think. For example, earlier this week I decided to check if there was a local shop where I could purchase a hard drive to store video footage from our Commoning Exchange in October. I discovered Kingston Computer Works. I hadn’t heard of it before, but walked over and got exactly what I needed. On the way, I stopped in for a hot cider at Rough Draft and ran into three folks I love. My errand offered me joy, love, and a much needed screen break. The currency exchanged stayed in the local economy, circulating at least a little bit longer in the hands of my neighbors.
The past year has been challenging for many of us amidst national and global economic uncertainty. Seemingly steady funding that has dried up. In whatever capacity is in reach, I hope we can steady each other this winter. I hope we can hydrate our local businesses, community groups, and spaces. I hope our resources can flow and we are emboldened to give to each other, as my colleague Angélica Medaglia put it, “with the unconstrained movement of the wind or the life-affirming fluidity of water.”
