Follow Me to Freedom, Leadership / Followership and Shane Claiborn and John Perkins

Posted on Sunday November 18, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Come along as we live out this conversation … there are many obstacles—so much suffering, poverty and violence. But our God is familiar with suffering. Our God can swallow up armies and pour out bread from the heavens. Wall Street may fail us, but the God who takes care of the lilies and the sparrows will never let us down. Our Savior has stared evil in the face and overcome it with love. And now we are invited to join the triumph of the cross … and to lead others on the narrow, rugged road to freedom. – From the back cover of the book

The cover for the Audiobook Version of Shane Claiborn and John Perkins book Follow Me To Freedom: Leading as Ordinary Radicals ( Google Books || Amazon ). I uploaded it for my blog post Follow Me to Freedom, Leadership / Followership and Shane Claiborn and John Perkins one of my Book Reviews.

I have really been inspired and encouraged by Shane Claiborn, and you can read my other book review A Look into Joining the Irresistible Revolution. While, I am somewhat familiar with Shane and the Simple Way (the intentional community Shane is involved with), I had not heard of John Perkins before. Interestingly enough, Jamie, my co-worker who lent me a copy of this audio book does know him.

As I am living a considerable distance from work, read my blog post When it Rains it Pours for some more information surrounding my move to Prosser, I was able to listen to the whole book in just a little over a week. During my car ride, it monopolized my time, not even leaving very much space for my normally appreciated National Public Radio listening Fervor. I came to find out later about the week (I believe that’s how long she said, but it might have been considerably longer) that spent with John Perkins. She talked about how her time spent with John challenged her perspectives on life and even influenced her later decision to move into the impoverished and underserved community of East Pasco. I also found out from her that he is an 82 year old advocate.

I didn’t read the book itself, so I am not sure how it flowed in its conversational format, but it seemed perfect for the audio format. It’s really structured as more of a conversation between Shane and John and goes back and forth between the two. I’m actually curious how the book displays the differences in voices that were so easily displayed by the portraying authors’ voices.

There were a number of really emboldening stories, [deep thoughts][18], topics that are import to me (community, leadership, how to follow, politics, etc.). Many of the topics addressed came back to relationship and community and how to do community development. The organization, Christian Community Development Association, came up a number of times. It really spoke to me in my position as the chairperson of the Pasco Discovery Coalition. Some of the methods of organizing these movements, the foundational inclusion of what they call indigenous leaders were all such promising topics. Now it will be trying to figure out how to help guide our coalition in that direction.

I would highly recommend this book, especially in its audio book format for any reader.

When it Rains it Pours

Posted on Monday November 5, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

A photo taken by Ami while were both still living down in Cusco Peru during my travel experience of my Jaunt Down South 2010 . It showcases how during the rainy season in Cusco Peru, the rain really pours down and the streets turn to rivers. During the peak of the rainy season (i.e. December to February) it can have an average of 133.9 inches receiving 401.7 inches of precipitation of the expected annual 707.8 inches per year in just those three months. Read the Wikipedia Article for more information regarding Cusco’s climate .

For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on… So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow; will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. – Jesus in Matthew 6:25-34 in the NASB

In my second year at Columbia Basin College earning my AA Transfer Degree, I remember being in stress management class. I believe it was the first time that I was exposed to what I have heard over and over in my professional life regarding stress. He discussed a concept of clustering. This could be referred to as chronic or complex stress. This clustering is when an individual experiences a number of stressful events all near the same time period. Both in my life story and so much more in my experience working in mental health over the years, I can really see the truth and frequency that clustering happens.

Over and over in my interactions with my clients, I’ve heard them discuss complex stress even when they don’t understand it as such and only see it as a matter of their daily lives. Working with Medicaid clients and the severely chronically mentally ill at Tri-Cities Community Health’s Behavior Health Services Department (Neuva Esperanza Community Counseling Services), unscientifically I would propose that majority of our clients are experiencing the most complex trauma and stress. In thinking about it, I realistically don’t have any client who is only experiencing one major concern in their lives. Their lives tend to be series’ of crises and other problems. As a clinician, it can often times be difficult to discern what their underlying needs are or what issue to work on first.

Life and Its Constant Search for Balance

A photo taken at Tony Romas for our Baby Shower. You can check out the photo album, It’s a Boy! Family & Friends Baby Shower. It displays a photo of a balloon that was at our baby shower with the words “It’s a Boy” written on it.

On Saturday, October 13 Minnie and I were at Tony Romas celebrating the life growing inside of Minnie and getting ready for our baby boy that is expected to come in January 2013. We were completely focused on celebration prep and all of the friends and family that would be attending. I made these pretty snazzy invitations in Adobe Illustrator.

A graphic I created in Adobe Illustrator. This is one of the first graphics that I have ever created completely free hand without importing any other images. The front of the postcard displays a monkey I drew using shapes and merging them using the pathfinder function, two tags that state the event details and our registry. It is all designed to look like a gift with colored geometric design in the background and ribbon. There is a back side to the postcard that you can check out and I have uploaded the Baby Shower Announcement Postcard Front Adobe Illustrator File so that you can see more of what I did.

A graphic I created in Adobe Illustrator. The simple graphic displays more detailed information regarding the even along with space for a stamp and address block to be handwritten in. There is a front side to the postcard that you can check out and I have uploaded the Baby Shower Announcement Postcard Back Adobe Illustrator File so that you can see more of what I did.

We were preparing for a baby shower and had both of our families and friends from all over to celebrate at Tony Romas restaurant and to give us baby gifts because we didn’t have anything. As we were celebrating this new upcoming life, we had no idea that Minnie’s mother would pass away in a little over a week. You can check out the photo album, It’s a Boy! Family & Friends Baby Shower, on Facebook. During the baby shower, we had everybody participate in an activity where the guests wrote pieces of advice on a note card for Minnie and I. I really thought this was a cool idea, and wanted to find a great way to share them with everybody. I made a picture collage and a flash object.

This is a collage I made in Adobe Photoshop of the various advice cards we received from our guests we used as an activity during our baby shower. You can also see the Facebook album. It was inspired by playing around with Google’s Picasa Program I realized that I couldn’t make all of the changes I wanted to, so I ended up making it in Photoshop. The Photoshop tools I utilized were pretty basic. Over all of the individual cards, I added a stroke, some inner shadow and some drop shadow. To add a title to the picture, I used a square shape with stroke and pattern overlay. The text of the title just has some drop shadow and utilizes Bradly Hand font. I’ve also uploaded the PSD file so you can better see what I did.

The day after the baby shower, Teresa Garcia, Minnie’s mom went ended up going back to the hospital. She had fallen a couple of weeks before, but had not been improving even under her doctors care. While there was a lot of different factors and things that happened, all of which I’m not going to share here, her mother ended up in the Intensive Care Unit at Kadlec Hospital being sustained by life supportive machines. For over a week, Minnie was at the Hospital all day every day with her family and friends. After I would get off work, I’d head to spend time at the hospital too. This gave us a lot of different things to think about and consider.

She and her family had to make decisions about what quality of life is and what her, Teresa Garcia’s, desires would be given her living situation. It was not an easy week with a myriad of other things that came up and difficult situations. Last Monday (10/22/12) the family made the decision to take Minnie’s mother off of life support and she passed away several hours after that. You can see her death notice and her obituary in the Yakima Herald.

I took the rest of that week off to be able to be supportive and to help with the arrangements. During this time, we were asked to move in with her father and help to support him in Prosser Washington. We packed up all of our stuff and put two thirds of it into a storage unit in Pasco and moved the rest of it to their ranch. This week, I’ve been back a work but it’s been hard to catch back up. Other then moving and all sorts of other crazy stuff… I also got my wisdom teeth pulled (all four of them).

Hard for the Economy as For Individuals

Posted on Saturday September 15, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Yesterday, I was listening to an article on NPR’s Planet Money Even If You’re All-Powerful, It’s Hard To Fix The Economy.The article was all about how difficult it really would be to fix the economy. Using a computer generated model of the United States economy, they try to change various variables associated with the economy to improve it. What they find is that regardless of how many variables they change and how drastically they change those variables… it never gets back as good as it was. It makes me think of the work I do with some of my clients. Often times, when people have psychotic episodes and their mental health deteriorates, they won’t come back to their original baseline of functioning. This is not to say that when somebody experiences a new psychotic break that they can’t improve. But it is like they lose their ability to get back to the same normal that they once had. I guess it is the same for the economy. It almost like in both of those systems, too many things become broken and it becomes very difficult to get back to the same level you were at before.

My Friends Place Presents - Will Rage for Food – All Ages Event

Posted on Saturday July 28, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery is putting on an event, My Friends Place Presents: Will Work For Food. I’m really excited. I started wanting to put on this event several months ago. I remember thinking about how much of a need in the community there is, but how few kids are actually coming to MFP to stay. With about 1,500 teens in the Tri-Cities have been homeless at some point in their lives, according to national statistics… I can’t imagine any reasons why we should ever be empty. It’s gonna be a really amazing event. We are having four DJ’s coming and doing their show.

This design project was created for My Friends Place’s Event, Will Rage for Food. I made it in Adobe Photoshop. I got some of the images through a Google Image Search. I took the DJ Mixer and the Girl, but I made everything else. The following are the images associated with this event

This is the poster I created for My Friends Place’s Event, Will Rage for Food. I made it in Adobe Photoshop. I got some of the images through a Google Image Search. I took the DJ Mixer and the Girl, but I made everything else.

This is the flyer I created for My Friends Place’s Event, Will Rage for Food. I made it in Adobe Photoshop. I got some of the images through a Google Image Search. I took the DJ Mixer and the Girl, but I made everything else.

This is the Facebook Cover Photo I created for My Friends Place’s Event, Will Rage for Food. I made it in Adobe Photoshop. I got some of the images through a Google Image Search. I took the DJ Mixer and the Girl, but I made everything else.

Developing Strengths, Tim Roth’s Strengths Finder 2.0 Review

Posted on Saturday May 26, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Tom Rath’s Strengths Finder 2.0 Book Cover. You can read Developing Strengths, Tim Roth’s Strengths Finder 2.0 Review.

I’m currently helping out at my agency, Nueva Esperanza Community Counseling Services, with a working group redesigning out treatment plan that we use with our client. It’s been a good process and I think something important to consider. In participating in this process, I have been thinking about how we develop strengths. I decided that since I was thinking about strengths perspective, I should put up some information in my resources section.

I also recently finished reading a copy of Tom Roth’s Strengths Finder 2.0 (make sure to check out all of my other book reviews). I’d recommend the book, but I will acknowledge that it takes some homework time to really gain any significance from it.

To really get the most out of Strengths Finder 2.0, you must purchase a new copy of the book (or a book that has an unused access code for their website). The book really is only supplemental, and I felt like it was almost like a sales pitch for their web program to examine individuals strengths. The majority of the learning I accomplished seemed to come from using their Clifton Strengths Finder. This is basically an assessment that attempts to help you discover what strengths and assets you have have though choosing answers on a web based form.

I did find the results to be valuable, and informative. I also really appreciated hearing about a strengths perspective from a different source (i.e. not just about mental health, but seeing the value in the business / personal life). It’s been an interesting couple of months reading (don’t worry, it didn’t take me a couple of months to finish this book, as it’s quite small). I’ve also been reading Plato’s The Republic. While I haven’t finished, I hope to within the next couple of weeks, so you can look forward to a review of that book too. But to give you a small look forward, I’ve been amazed how many theories and modern ideas are espoused in Plato’s work, including strengths perspective.

Pasco Discovery Coalition Logo Ideas

Posted on Sunday April 22, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

I am very lucky at my job, to be able to be a part of a some community organizing. I have started to be involved with meetings associated with the Pasco Discovery Coalition. I’ve just started, so I am very much in the learning phase of participating in their coalition, but I believe it will be a valuable learning experience. While we were at our last meeting, they had mentioned that somebody was working on a website for them, and it got me thinking about a logo. Teresa (the current co-chair) described that she has been using geese flying in a “V” formation as their logo. She said that it was based on how birds will have different birds fly as the lead bird at different times, and how much better they are are able to fly together.

Nobody had asked me to make a Logo, and I am not even sure if they really need one, but I like pushing myself and learning a little bit more about graphic design, so I decided to throw some of these designs out there. I wouldn’t call any of them finished products, but it was interesting for me to work on. Some of them I like, some of them I don’t (I posted all of them, so you could see my design process).

How’s Your Mental Efficiency, a Review of Arnold Bennett’s Book

Posted on Monday February 13, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Arnold Bennett’s book cover of Mental Efficiency

My mom and I have a long tradition of listening to books on tape (well, really I guess they were CD’s mostly) when we would travel. When Minnie and I were driving back from Olympia this weekend, we continued this tradition. We listened to Mental efficiency, and other hints to men and women by Arnold Bennett. Really, I think it is more of a collection of essays, but he has proven to be a timeless writer even with more than 100 years between its first being published and now.

Arnold Bennett was an English journalist and author who died in March of 1931. He wrote on a great number of different topics, and at least with this edition, his very British sense of humor is displayed magnificently.

The book starts out with an article he wrote about mental efficiency, asking readers how we can train our minds similarly to how we would train our bodies. He then includes some of their own responses along with his own proposal for rectifying mental degradation. He even gives some specific, as he calls them, mental calisthenics. These include writing a diary, writing a journal, contemplating about deep issues, reading and responding to what we have read (a part of why I figured that I should respond to this work in particular), and other activities. The rest of the book seems to be taken up with his own contemplation of some of life’s own issues. These issues pertain to marriage, success, books, and contemplation.

Bennett’s chapter on books was interesting. He spent a considerable amount of time discussing the degradation of personal libraries due to cheap re-prints of books. This section made me laugh as I had downloaded a free version of his book to listen too, the ultimate in cheap re-prints of books.

His section on success was also particularly interesting. As he did throughout his book, he used a number of partially well put together analogies to give thought to his points. He described one form of success as though it was through a game of roulette. This is a description that I find highly beneficial. He argued his case only a very small minority obtained acclaimed success due strictly to talent. While he did not directly relate this to the mentality of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps, I find it apt at arguing the same point. In my field of work, this is something that I frequently see. The fact that many people are trying to make it, but it’s really often times like a game of roulette whether or not they make it.

All in all, I would say that it is a good and timely read. It is a book that you can download for free from Gutenberg Project or even find a free audio book download as I did.

2012 Have a Heart for Kids Day

Posted on Saturday February 11, 2012 by Jacob Campbell.

Writing Letters to my Representatives during Children’s Alliances’ Have a Heart for Kids Day.

It has been a busy couple of weeks at work. I’ve been burning the midnight oil the last couple of weeks. We’ve had lots of changes happening at our agency. We’ve had three case managers change their positions in the last couple of months. My case load has increased by about 20 clients, with new ones being add almost daily it seems. I’ve been doing a lot of intakes at the Juvenile for my work, which has been good but also busy.This weekend, I got the opportunity to attend my fourth annual Have A Heart for Kids Day. I’ve been searching through my blog posts from previous years, trying to find out if I’ve written about my experiences for Have a Heart for Kids Day before, but I was unable to find anything.

It all started in the first year of my BASW program while I was at Eastern. Every year for a while, the EWU Social Work program used to bring a group of students to participate in Children’s Alliances’ Lobby Day, named “Have a Heart for Kids Day.” They would bring us up in a bus or van, put us up in the Governor Hotel. The next morning we would go to The United Churches of Olympia’s facility right next to the capital building. There we would have some key note speaker who would talk about Children’s Alliance, a legislative advocacy group for children in Washington. We would break up into workshops and hear more in-depth about some of that year’s legislative issues around children. We would talk about effective advocating to our legislators. We would then march to the capitol steps and chanting and hold signs. After the march, we would break up and go and give letters and try to talk to our legislators. It’s always been a pretty great event.

Last year after getting back from South America, I had called up the School of Social Work, and made plans to meet up with them there. I ended up Couch Surfing for the first night, then staying in a motel the second night due to the pass being closed with snow.

This year, Minnie and I decided to go ourselves. I tried to connect with the EWU students, but I’m not sure if they went this year. It was a powerful experience, as usual. I ended up having a early morning meeting with Senator Jerome Delving.

Being so close to Puyallup, we also went to Minnie’s sister’s house and got to stay with them. It was a pretty great experience.