The pinata has burst!

I often don't care for pinatas...for me, there is a strange message about the rewards of violence...small children blindly beating an animal effigy--or perhaps worse...a human effigy--until they successfully destroy it and are rewarded with the gifts that burst forth, competitively scrambing to amass the most for themselves.

I have to admit that what we have done over the past year with SUSTAIN has not been a whole lot different from the process of breaking a pinata!
In our case, the we have been beating on our orginal design of the learning initiative--the ego that we had invested in all its dimensions. Somehow, we've successfuly broken this thing open and gifts are pouring out. In our case, there is no hording, just sharing and it is a wonderful thing.

What I mean is that somehow, we have collectively stopped hanging on to the things that we originally created. To be sure, this has felt like a beating!  And now, those maybe even saw themselves in positions of "helping" are leading in unfettered ways.  Neal has taken the reins around passing out flyers, Nina has stepped up in nearly all spontaneous settings to interact with students, Pete has self-organized folks for student recruiting efforts.  There's more, but I need to go off to school.

I am just amazed at what can take place when one allows something to be destroyed.