Julie Glover was awarded the Institute of Noetic Science's 1994 Temple Award for Creative Altruism, one of two such awards given to "people whose lives and work embody the inspirational light of unselfish service motivated by love." (Bo and Sita Lozoff, profiled in issue 3, were the other 1994 recipients). For twenty-three years Julie was one of the leaders of a youth project in Manhattan called The Door. She now provides consulting services to communities and programs seeking to improve the life situation of their young people. The basis of her work is that young people need a sense of belonging, regardless of where they live.
Meeting the Shepard
I have met Julie and talked to her a number of times on the phone. From the time we first spoke, she has been trying to help Heron Dance. I became aware of Richard Green through her. She has become an advisor and sounding board. Julie has a deep humanity. In many important ways her message has to do with the difference between running one's life for professional standing, and running one's life for a greater purpose. At one point in a conversation, we got off on a tangent, but I think what she said then tells a lot about who she is: "Service is an exchange. Service is acting out of what is. The truth of how we are all brothers and sisters. When you serve, you are both getting and giving. If it's not running both ways, there is something off. Even if you are working with poor people who are dying, people who have `nothing,' they give of their essence.
"I know, having taken care of someone who is dying, how much you get when you are available to that human circumstance. You get at least as much as you give. It is hard to explain if you haven't done it, but you get of someone's essence. You get something that is real and true. There is a connection, a consciousness that you enter into....People who spend time with the dying experience `the crack between the worlds.' The ground rules change and you live on the level of essence and connection."
When we talked about young people, similar issues came up: caring, connectedness. What I think of as matters of the human spirit. "When you get close to young people and see the absence of support in their lives, it is very moving. Many of the things we took for granted growing up are not available today. Neighborhood support, general physical safety, a functioning school system. Young people don't get what they need from adults -- guidance, presence, adults that are interested in them, things to do, developmental opportunities. There are drugs all over the schools, alcohol abuse. Parents are busy dealing with their own lives, and often don't have a lot of time for their children. What messages are we giving our young people? What kinds of concern and support? When kids try to find something to believe in, they are hard-pressed.
"Young people need opportunities to contribute, to be connected with adult life and with communities. They need a role, something that helps them feel good about themselves. By contributing, you define who you are in relation to your culture and society. The cultures in less industrialized societies do this organically -- there is a rite of passage, a role for the adolescent and young adult. They feel important because they contribute and know they are needed. If we would just take our young people seriously as resources, that would be enough. In societies that do, there is little or no delinquency. On a desert island this would all occur naturally. We would find ways of creating a sense of family, of connectedness. This is not rocket science, but somehow it doesn't get through to adults in our society. The needs of human beings are seen to conflict with the needs of the market economy. It really comes down to whether or not we value our youth and pay attention to them."
I asked Julie about the impression many have of inner city kids: violent, drug addicted, etc. "Many of these young people live under extraordinary stress. The options open to them are usually very limited. Challenging situations bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. The reality is that most people who work in youth centers work there because they enjoy the young people so much. When you get to know them, you come to respect and love them. The light and life in these kids....they are survivors. I have great respect for the majority of them. Not all of them -- in the end people are people. But some of the best people I have ever known...ever...in terms of what they have taught me about integrity and honesty and heroism are inner city youth."
In 1971, Julie was working as a social worker in East Harlem. She found that important health services and developmental options were not available to young people anywhere in the inner city. A group was formed to come up with solutions. Ultimately, more than twenty different professional disciplines became involved: psychiatrists, physicians, artists, teachers, vocational counselors, nutritionists, lawyers, social workers, etc. The Door came out of that process. "We all had the dream of creating a youth center that would really work, and be a policy model for others. A place adolescents could come and be accepted as people instead of being seen as walking problems. Not `Here's the AIDS case' or `Here's the drug problem' but `Here's the human being.' If they have the choice, young people won't come to a center where they are dehumanized. We wanted to create a conscious community where they would not only receive professional services but would also join with adults in a process of learning, growth and exploration. We realized that the process had to involve us changing our own consciousness, our own values, our own ways of being in the world. We felt that could best be accomplished by building a real community.
"There is a certain ecstasy that you experience when you work collaboratively with other people. `Fellow travelers' build off of each other. It is a wonderful, enriching experience. The rewards are built in. It has to do with your own growth and development. What this world needs are vital, vibrant communities, whether they be in the inner city, the work place, or the suburbs. We need to be together in community. It's not necessarily living next door, but being together in spirit, in consciousness.
"Ultimately, we created over one hundred different programs: everything from AIDS education, drug education and vocational training to legal, social and health services. Classes using cutting edge learning techniques were offered in creative writing, nutrition counseling, health education, all kinds of creative arts: dance, theater, music, yoga, arts & crafts, martial arts, sports, as well as classes in independent living and citizenship skills.
"We involved disciplines that had a reputation for being fragmented and isolated, such as psychiatry and law, and invited their practitioners to join the `general dance' as it were, and to be part of the general living, breathing community, within which young people could grow and change along with the staff. You have to constantly fight the tendency to lapse into a group of independent services.
"In many ways, the twenty-three years I spent at The Door were an experiment in building and sustaining community. How do you facilitate that spiritual focus of working together in harmony? How do you serve in the world? I learned that you don't create community, you facilitate its expression. Even though for more than twenty years I have worked to make it happen and have seen it happen, I am not sure I can explain how it happens. And then after it has been built, maintaining it is a real challenge. Sometimes it stays going and sometimes it falls apart, but the tendency is for the synergy to fall away over the years unless it is constantly renewed.
"As part of the work of The Door, I helped other groups around the world develop programs that would emulate or replicate what we were doing. We invited people to come and experience for themselves the incredible energy of a strong, supportive community of staff and young people. People came for anywhere from a day to two weeks from places like Australia, Sweden, England, Mexico, Indonesia and Canada. I would try to focus with them on the spiritual dimension. What is in one's heart.
"There are thirty-six programs modeled on The Door around the world. There are good reasons that there are not more -- it takes a level of commitment and funding that is difficult to accomplish. And some of the Doors that were set up quickly lost their spirit. They became bureaucratic service centers. If people don't fill them with a consciousness and awareness, they are not solutions. The constant tendency is for the system to re-organize itself around the needs of the staff or of external funders rather than around the needs of the kids.
"Consciousness makes the difference. The intention to connect and engage. It comes from caring. It comes down to loving the young people in the program as you would your own children. You need adults with spirit because `You can't give what you ain't got.' You need money and skills to do the work properly, but you can run something with no money at all. If it has heart, it will move and touch people. Spirit is awakened in people to different degrees. It has to be encouraged. You don't create spirit, you allow it to be nurtured. You call it out. It is energy that can be neither created nor destroyed.
"We are one humanity. That is just how it is. Connection is hard to describe. You experience it. Like Forest Gump says, "I may not be too smart, but I know what love is." If you know what love is, it informs you. Its not a big deal. No one invented it. It is just how it is.
"I think that those who serve most potently, work on levels of consciousness that have to do with radiating love -- maybe God's love. My own experience is that people who work with love operate on some level deeper than the conscious. It is important that you have a brain and use it, but that is secondary. The basic premise is that you allow something to come through you. Then you use your intelligence to give your work form, to give your heart's work discipline and logic. But the transformative energy, that which can change events, that heals, that helps, that serves, comes from somewhere deep inside.
"You need both, but in the youth field, a common orientation is the career-building mentality. It is helpful that a person has `done their homework,' that they are trained and disciplined, that they have discernment, that they have been around, that they have information and knowledge. But all those things without the connecting energy of spirit will not transform."
Julie is now working as a consultant with communities to establish and improve their youth programs. She is also working for change: "The country is at a crossroads. There is a battle going on as to whether we lock kids up or we help them develop." Julie Glover can be reached at Glover/Kenny Associates, 356 West 23rd Street, Suite GC, New York, New York, 10011. (212) 929 5669.
