Sacred Space #13

Angie Arndt:

My idea of utopia is that there'd be no more need to fight about it because really what we're all seeking is there's a lot in common.

Cyrus Hagge:

I've always teased my more Buddhist and Yoga friends about reincarnation because I think reincarnation happens instantaneously. You know, you're trying to quit smoking or stop drinking coffee. Next thing you know you've got a cookie in your hand or a cigarette and you just keep making that mistake over and over and basically reincarnate. Do it again and again until you see your way out of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and welcome to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast number 13, which is airing today. Sunday, December 11, 2011 today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we are exploring the theme of sacred space. We have a variety of interesting guests to discuss this theme, including Angie Arndt of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, philanthropist Cyrus Hagee and Dave Holman of Safe Passage. These individuals will help us explore the idea of sacred space both within ourselves and in the world around us. We believe this is a particularly appropriate theme for the holiday season and we think will inspire you to be creating your own sacred space wherever it is that you are listening from. We have a very special show which we've called Sacred Space. Genevieve Morgan is in her own sacred space elsewhere, but she's with us in spirit. So John McCain and I will be bringing in Sacred Space for our listeners this week. We will not be having deep Dish because we certainly can't do it with Genevieve Morgan, but we're going to be dishing a lot on Safe Passage and what it means to be a part of this organization that I visited last week with my son who's a long term volunteer down there. Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we read from the book Our Daily Tread which was written in honor of our late friend Hanley Denning. All proceeds benefit her organization, Safe Passage. Safe passage provides approximately 550 children with education, social services and the chance to move beyond the poverty their families have faced for generations at the Guatemala City dump. Visit them online@safepassage.org and continue to listen to our experiences with Safe Passage throughout this show. This week's quote is from Raymond Carver and did you get what you wanted from this life? Even so, I did. And what did you want? To call myself Beloved. To feel myself beloved on the Earth. For more information on our daily tread and to order this book, which would make a great holiday gift, visit islandportpress.com or go to the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page. D O C t o r lisa.org or like us@drlisa on Facebook. Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we feature a segment we call Wellness Innovations, which is sponsored by the University of New England. Improving your spiritual health may not cure an illness, but it may help you feel better, prevent some health problems, and help you cope with illness, stress or death. Learn more about spirituality and health on our website drlisabelisle.com learn more about Wellness Innovations of all sorts at the University of New England website une.edu

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The Reverend Angie Arndt, MS, graduated from the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine in 2007 and has been serving as Dean and faculty member ever since. She is a member of the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth and teaches Connection, Parenting and Houses of Healing at the Main Correctional center and is also a trainer at the center for Grieving Children. She's married and has two sons in college. The Chaplaincy Institute of Maine is an interfaith wisdom school that offers an intensive two year chaplaincy program for those seeking to deepen their spiritual growth or ordination as interfaith ministers. This is a perfect topic for the holidays. I think you and I were glad you think so. Yes, right. The reason we talked, the reason we Decided to have the theme of sacred space in December is there's a lot of pressure this time of year for people as far as doing things that we feel like we're supposed to do to celebrate something bigger. But it seems to me that things get lost. Tell me what the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine does and how it is that you're able to sort of be a placeholder for the community as far as the sense of spirituality.

Angie Arndt:

Well, our mission is to help individuals who are seeking to deepen their spirituality. That's one track that you can participate in chime, but also who want to then go the next step of being of service around spiritual support of individuals. And because we are interfaith, another word for that is we are preparing community ministers, people who are ready to show up in the world in all different capacities, all different settings. One of the ways I like to describe it is we're ministry outside the box because we do not have a box that we have to fit into. Our training is to embrace people where they are in their spiritual journey. And that doesn't have to look or sound like anything anybody else is doing along their spiritual journey. It's very individual. So we first put the. The curriculum is designed to help the students first when they spend the first year. We call it the way of contemplation. We invite them to go inward in their own journey, looking at their own values, their own spiritual legacy. There's a lot of time spent on, you know, we have to look back to where we come from. Many of us tend to step away from our roots. Our traditions tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater in the process. So the first year way of contemplation is designed, as I say, to look inward the of sort. The second year is the way of action, the way of service. And that is inviting our students to start to step into internships in community, whether that's in a structural setting like a hospital or hospice, or it can be. We had a student two years ago who started walking the streets of Portland with Grace Street Ministry, serving the homeless. So as I say, we literally meet people where they are instead of expecting them to show up where we are. So it's very much community based. And I think in terms of sacred space, it's learning to understand that wherever you are can be sacred space. It's all in how you're looking at it. As people begin to understand and seek alternatives to the traditional paths that in some ways restrict openness. Because of the rules and the regulations and the doctrine, people Are I often like to say that I consider what we're doing as a ministry of peace because if we, if more and more people could be, could open to understand all the different ways to the divine, a lot of the. Well, it'll take a long time to get to this point. But my idea of utopia is that there'd be no more need to fight about it. Because really what we're all seeking is there's a lot in common, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

All paths.

Angie Arndt:

But we need to understand the differences. All paths are not the same, but they're ultimately trying to get. So we need to respect and honor that. Whatever path you're on, it's cool, it's yours. We don't have to be threatened by it. That's the hope. So learning to meet people where they are and give them an experience of true acceptance as to where they are in their journey hopefully will allow the ripple effect of they could then turn and accept someone else's way of being.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

With the economy being the way that it is and the recession that's occurred over the last few years and the conflicts overseas, how do you think this has impacted people's need for a spiritual home, a spiritual sacred space?

Angie Arndt:

I think it's growing, as I say, exponentially. I think people are thirsty for meaning to understand what is this all about. And really our responsibility is as individuals, we have to start with ourselves. You can be out there protesting or fighting for bigger things, but unless you're doing the work internally, it's not the real work. And so I think these times call for, as all times have, they call for us to keep returning to ourselves, to our own truth, to our own understanding of what we're here for and stepping into it. And many of our students come midlife and later saying, okay, I've done the traditional, I've done what was expected. I'm still thirsty. I'm thirstier than ever because it wasn't hold as much meaning. So there's a lot of personal seeking meaning and then turning that into. Now that I tap into the meaning of myself, I understand part of that is to help others. And so it's a two part.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you think? That's. What have you seen as the Dean students biggest challenges are that first year when they're looking inside themselves, the biggest

Angie Arndt:

challenge is, well, the students love to say that we at Chime turn them inside out. And so the biggest challenge is that we will peel away the layers of resistance, of conformity, of understanding. I mean, just a workshop on the history of Christianity that Alone can be enough for a student whose roots are in Christianity to just, you know, shake their foundation. So it's. The biggest step is saying the work is inside. First number of students come wanting to be of service. They're ready to jump right in. Put me in a hospital. Put me. And we're like, not yet. If you're going to be able to be truly present for someone else, you've got to be truly present for yourself. What does that mean? Where are your patterns? Where's your limited thinking? Where's your stuckness, if you will? And they come wanting to do it, but there's still a whole lot of resistance once we really put it in front of them. And right beside the resistance is beautiful opening.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you think leads to this resistance? What are the causes?

Angie Arndt:

Well, we all want to. I mean, we want to break down our containers, but we want to protect them as well, because it's all we know. So it's that, are you sure I have to give up this understanding or this viewpoint or, you know, can't I stay safe with my little security blanket? And. And we're like, well, just lay it down for a little while. You might pick it up again. We're not saying you have to again throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we do want you to really look closely. And honestly, it's an honest inventory that helps one move towards authenticity. We just spent a weekend retreat, which is an annual, and this year's theme was Celebrating the Divine Feminine. And it was an absolute I was honored to witness as students, open to. What does that mean? For many, it was the first, you know, first time even exploring the Divine Feminine. And for many, they have a deep understanding of it. So it was wonderful watching them share with each other. In that process, one is. Can't help but be opened. You know, whether it's a lot or a little, the opening begins is to understand A bigger. A bigger sense of the divine, expanding our definition of the divine. There is no one word, one language. It's that which can't be named. And yet all we do is try and name it and label it and put restrictions. And so this process is an opening to bigger understandings.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And somehow it's a comfort with ambiguity.

Angie Arndt:

Mm. Well, you have to start to get that way. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What suggestions do you have for people who are listening as far as creating their own sacred space or more finding a way to go within or deal with some of these aspects of spirituality that you've dealt with so clearly yourself?

Angie Arndt:

Great question. There's a wonderful book that we have our first year students read called the Way We Pray and she in it I can't remember her author, the author's name, but in it she offers up a plethora of ways that we really can consider prayerful. And it blows it out of the pew and on your knees model it expands it to doing art, to having perhaps a home altar where you create a corner of a room where you dedicate that space to when you're in it, whether you're meditating or sitting quietly or going into a yoga pose. That's the space where you intentionally say, when there I am going to be still and open to whatever that is that I'm opening to. So I think that's a resource that helps one discovery. Probably much of what you're doing already could be considered prayer, but it is that shift in intention that shifts it from being just a simple thing you do every day to a prayerful activity. For me, discovering that the walk I take every day with my dogs and I would never give that up, but I didn't know why. And it was the help of understanding. It was with the understanding that when I begin that walk, if I begin it with the intention to be pay attention, to be open to what is true during that time, it's a prayer. And so I think to create sacred space is all about just what intention you bring to what you're doing. Thich Nhat, Hanh, the Buddhist monk who many people now are very familiar with here in the west, he loves to invite us to wash the dishes as a prayer, as an act of mindfulness is his language. That's a prayer. When we come fully into what it is that we're doing and fully engaging, we're open to something bigger than our ego and our box breaking out of the box. So I think it's intention and we can begin every day. The work I do in the prison, probably the thing I enjoy the most is helping the women see that even there, especially there, they have an opportunity to decide when they wake each day, how they want to start that day. It's not to say that a prayerful practice is going to make your life bliss and everything's going to go along, but it is, it's taking back the power, the control, control, but the ownership of one's journey. Instead of always saying, oh, it's out of my hands, I'm a busy mom, or I'm a prisoner, or I'm an overworked executive, or those are all the reasons. Reasons I can't. Well, we can spend our life doing that or we can start to say what's important to me. I'm going to own that and put it in the foreground of my life. I remember Jacob saying to me in my interview as a student, chime is about inviting you to put the sacred in the foreground instead of the background. And I didn't really understand that for a long time, but it's been six years now. I'm starting to get it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did. This is sort of switching gears a little bit. But you mentioned safe passage earlier on as one of the things that you did prior to even beginning the chime work. How did that change your life?

Angie Arndt:

Watching Hanley know that she had found her calling was an incredible experience for me. There was no doubt in her mind once she came across that situation that, you know, as the story goes, she sold everything and moved that right. There is an example of someone who is listening to what they're being called for. Many of us may have witnessed that same dump and, you know, and not been able to acknowledge it as the calling. It was. So that was huge. Just watch her. Because that's when I was involved. It was the very, very beginning when she was first coming to Yarmouth with her big pictures and saying, help. And then I think when I interviewed her, one of our assignments at the Chaplaincy Institute is to choose what we call a planetary chaplain. Somebody whose life is dedicated to serving in a greater sense than themselves. And I chose Hanley as a first year student. This was the year before she died. And when I spoke with her about was so clear that she was so interfaith because she would not allow any one denomination, even though some of them were offering her a lot of money to become their mission. You know, she resisted that and she said, no, no, this has to stay. It's spiritual. She knew that on a. On a. Really. She knew it in her core, but she didn't want to trap it. Therefore, in the trappings of one organization. And I didn't understand that until I was doing my planetary chaplain project and I interviewed Marina and then Hanley and Rachel. And it was just so clear to me that she was on a spiritual quest is a big word, but that what she was doing, giving these children a chance was spiritual work of the very physical nature, you know, and she allowed them and honored them by leaving anyone's doctrine out of it. She allowed them to stay in touch with theirs. And that took a lot of strength. It could have been, it would have been the easy way out for her to take the first offer of a whole lot of money to join one church's mission. But she didn't. So I. That informed me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it informed me in hindsight and I was really, really pleased and proud to be part of that, her efforts at the beginning and to this day, I mean, in my peripheral way, sponsoring a child. But yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, Angie, tell me what the future looks like for Chime and maybe for yourself and your situation, your position within China.

Angie Arndt:

Well, we are growing. Each year we have more and more students coming out of the woodwork, coming from all different angles. I think what I love best about it in terms of working with the students is they are all so different and they come from totally different backgrounds with totally different agendas, if you will, as to where they want it to take them. So I think we will continue to grow carefully, slowly. We do not. One of the big pushes in this day and age is to embrace distance learning model whereby people can learn through the Internet. And we are still resisting that because we really are quite strong in saying that what we're teaching people is to be present to people. Not sure you can learn that through a screen, even with Skype and all those other tools. It really is about being present. So we're going to start. Hold tight to that. You know, we don't really know. We just keep doing it. We're, you know, we do the best we can on the limited resources we have, but so I think we'll. We'll just keep doing it. I don't know that we're going to do it differently or we tweak and fine tune, but. And personally I'm getting clearer and clearer that it is the teaching that I'm called to. I have the good fortune to get to teach a class on weddings. I teach a class on children and meeting the spiritual needs of children. So I hope to do more of that of teaching. But I don't have huge plans to go. You know, I think it's important to me much of what is challenging in this day and age is the push for growth, the push for more, the push for. And we're doing it just fine. So I think we'll stick to what we know and we'll be ordaining another 16 this spring, which is hugely exciting. So, yeah, we're in a good place. We just want to hold on to that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That sounds great. You're doing great work. How can people find out more about your organization?

Angie Arndt:

Well, we do have a website, of course, chime.org, no, chimeofmain.org, sorry. And the website has everything, how to contact us, what the curriculum looks like. So we also have public workshops one weekend a month. We offer full days to the students, and many of those are open to the public. So if someone wants to come and just spend a day with us and get a sense, they can sign up for one of those and be in touch, you know, let's start the conversation because it takes for some, it takes many conversations for others. You know, they jump in the day before, but we're there to help one discern where they are in their journey and whether it's the right time. So give a call.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Great. Thank you so much for coming in. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. And I know that the conversation we've had will actually instigate a few people to think about their own sacred spaces.

Angie Arndt:

You never know.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You never know. It's true.

Angie Arndt:

That's the mystery. But thank you very much. Yes, thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast, we have the great pleasure of interviewing people in our Maine Magazine Minutes segment this week. Our co host, Genevieve Morgan is out and about in the world and we miss her. But I am going to stand in for her and do her Maine Magazine Minute segment. And I'm so fortunate because I'm talking today with Cyrus Hagee. Thank you for coming in today.

Cyrus Hagge:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm going to read a little bit about you. Cyrus attended Hebron Academy and received a construction technology certificate from Central Maine Technical College and completed a B.S. and MBA at the USM School of Business in 1985. His interests include owning Project Management Inc. A construction and property management company started in 1986, and commercial real estate. Over the years, he's worked as a carpenter, general contractor and commercial real estate developer. In 1994, he started acquiring and renovating old warehouse buildings in the Portland waterfront. He currently has over 100,000 square feet of office, residential and retail space under management. I had to pause there because I wasn't so impressed there with all of that space. But I'm even more impressed with the fact that you are volunteering as the chair of Ripple Effect, which is a youth leadership organization, past president of the Portland Downtown Improvement District, Treasurer of Space Gallery, which is a not for profit arts organization, past president of the Cumberland county ymca, member of the University of Southern Maine foundation, and vice president of Portland Rotary. I'm pausing again because I'm so impressed by you.

Cyrus Hagge:

Just can't say no to anybody.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You are everywhere. And in addition to that, you are married and you have three children. Three children. And you live on Munjoy Hill.

Cyrus Hagge:

Correct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Which is a beautiful and scenic place, as you've noted in the information you've sent along to us.

Cyrus Hagge:

It's a lot of fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. But you're not from Maine. This is Maine Magazine Minutes. And you're a very interesting person who is in Maine. And you have told me that you love Maine and it's a great place to be and clearly you're very much invested in the area. But you're not from Maine.

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, I grew up in Wausau, Wisconsin, but I came to Maine in ninth grade. I don't remember. I probably was 14, maybe 15. And I stayed. I never went back. I never went back to Wisconsin. Felt like that was ever home again. Maine became home very quickly. And after I dropped out of high school, I moved to Lewiston, started doing construction work, went to the, picked up all the building construction technology that I needed to eventually move to Portland and then go into business for myself.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

See, you're kind of. This is the interesting thing to me is that you're very much a self starter. You and I were talking before we came on air about the fact that you have had to. Our theme today is sacred space. And we were talking to Angie Arndt before. She's the dean at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. And she talked about how people have to go within themselves to sort of deconstruct and reconstruct these spaces to enable them to be spiritual. You had to sort of deconstruct and reconstruct. Tell me about some of your challenges. You told me you had some ADHD issues.

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, you know, when we were little kids. Now you remember. This is I just had my 40th high school reunion. They didn't diagnose ADD back then. Nobody really knew what it was other than you were a troublesome kid. So I was in a tailspin of failure. I basically flunked out of high school, didn't go back my senior year, moved, hit the streets, hung out, partied a lot, and discovered that if I work with my hands, I can function better, but I can't function in an academic setting. So I got into carpentry work and slowly was able to reconstruct my life in a successful way through just an endless string of small but successful decisions that led me in a good direction. Each time I did a good decision, it led to another one, to another one. And I look back at it now and I remember in high school I went to an alternative high school after I dropped out of boarding school. And I had a philosophy teacher who we had a class called this is it class. He was an existentialist. And the theme of it was is that you can build a life for yourself that can be successful and happy by making good decisions. But they don't have to be big. You don't have to do decisions that change the world. They can be as little as, okay, I will get up and go to work on time today. And as you start to accumulate those, you build momentum and eventually you are in a place that you feel very comfortable about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me how this has impacted your life. This is existentialism. And you were studying this in high school from what I understand. Yeah. So you're remembering this from this far back. What kind of sort of forward impact has this had?

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, the thing about existentialism, and I'm not a proponent of it, I'm just using this as sort of a foundation. I don't actively talk about it. I haven't actually talked about it probably for 30 years. But.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, there's no pressure here.

Cyrus Hagge:

But the point is that this is it. There's no. As far as I'm concerned, do a good deed today, you'll benefit tomorrow. If you miss what happens at this moment, then you've missed it. This becomes a memory. So you have to be on focus. And if you've got a very short attention span, you can stay on focus on a lot of things. And over time, you get very good at juggling a lot of things. Which is why I went from being a carpenter to a general contractor to developer, because I could be in control of and see every piece of the puzzle that got a project done. My joke is happiness is hundred year old dirt. I just love tearing apart old buildings, going in and renovating them, and filling the dumpster to moving a tenant in, writing the lease, all of that. But all of that is part of that process of being there at the moment. And if you aren't there at the moment, you miss it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Some of these organizations that you have been a part of deal with kids, essentially kids and teenagers. Is that. Did you do that on purpose? Was that intentional?

Cyrus Hagge:

I got involved with the Y. Sort of a funny family history. I can remember as a kid, my mom having in the floor. She had a couch under a window in her bedroom, and she. And she did all her volunteer work from that location, and she had plans for a new YMCA that was built in Wausau, Wisconsin. And somehow someone said, why don't you go on the Portland or the Cumberland County YMCA board? So I went on the board, and then next thing I knew, someone said, you know, we could really fix the Portland Y, which is in a total decline, by tearing down some buildings and building in addition to it, and all we have to do is raise five or six million dollars. And I said, okay.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Five or six million dollars?

Dave Holman:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you just said, okay?

Cyrus Hagge:

Yeah. So off we went.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how did you approach that? What were your sort of initial steps?

Cyrus Hagge:

Just go do was funny, because, you know, believe it or not, we went and asked the lady for a million dollars. It was easier to create and convince her to donate a million dollars than it was to get $1,000 or $100 from other people. It's the same amount of work you have to craft a message that appealed. This particular family donated over $1.5 million to the Capital campaign. And we rebuilt the Portland Y, and we went from 1,500 members at the low point to over 4,000 today. So by, again, that sort of incremental process of what do we have to do? How do we organize it, and then go execute all the steps you can get places.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is this a message that. That you try to put forward for your own children?

Cyrus Hagge:

Oh, as my wife says, you never put the word should when you talk to your children. Maybe someday they'll figure it out, but I can't, you know, they're on their own. I can't make them do what I did. And a lot of them don't have the issues that I had where some of them can actually sit down and write a paper, but you can never tell your kids what to do. You can suggest that an outcome they might like. But you never. I always put the word should in and then it all falls apart. So I try to stay away from that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But it sounds like you do maybe just a little bit of role modeling, perhaps.

Cyrus Hagge:

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're out there, they're doing good things, they figured it out. But, you know, you can't. Your kids have to learn by making mistakes. And if it wasn't for mistakes, I wouldn't know anything. And I have made some humdrum. And if you make a mistake and you don't pay attention to it and learn from it, you'll make it again and again. I've always teased my more Buddhist and yoga friends about reincarnation because I think reincarnation happens instantaneously. You're trying to quit smoking or stop drinking coffee. Next thing you know you've got a cookie in your hand or a cigarette and you just keep making that mistake over and over. And that's. You basically reincarnate, do it again and again until you see your way out of it. So I hope that if anything I've passed on to my kids is that, you know, go out there and screw it up, make a big mistake, learn from it. And I've got projects I've done that went bankrupt. I've had to go to the lawyers and do workouts. And I learned from those projects how to do ones that are going to be successful because I made those mistakes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Does this also. So you talked about the ymca. What about Ripple Effect?

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, Ripple Effect is it's boys and boats is what Ripple Effect is. It's a youth leadership program out on Cow island, which is just out beyond Great Diamond Island. And we take kids from all over, kids that have money, kids that have no money, immigrant kids, and we put them out on an island, teach them, put them on the water in boats, teach them to climb a climbing wall, do ropes courses, do zip lines, and take them out of their normal life for just a couple days and then re put them back and we change them just a little bit and the success that we're seeing with it. Casco Bay High School is one of the schools that we do a lot of work with is just phenomenal. And we're going into middle schools now, taking 45 to 50 at risk kids and giving them an experience that gets them out of the way. They've been living to experience something new in hopes that we can kindle that one good experience that they can then build upon. So Ripple Effect is fun because of that, but it's also fun because you get to go out in a boat and go to an island and play pirate and do all sorts of fun stuff too. So very, very interesting organization.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And is this the same as true of a telling room where it's kind of a fun. If that's boys in boats as ripple effect, what would you consider the telling room?

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, that's kids with words. And people with learning disabilities don't do well with words. But I think the kids that go there who want to learn to write get taught how to write. And I think that's just amazing to see what happens to those kids after they're done. At the end, end of a year, they'd come up and they'd do a public presentation. There's a book published. And these kids, you should just see them, they're just beaming. And some of them can barely speak English yet they've learned to tell a story in English that all of us can relate to. It's a really remarkable organization, probably in my opinion, one of the most powerful groups of most powerful nonprofit in the city of Portland.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why?

Cyrus Hagge:

Because it is helping kids who are really struggling to be able to communicate by writing. And it's a lost start now. And we text, we email, but very few people actually tell their story. And when you tell your story, it comes from the heart. So you know what it is. Matter of fact, I've been telling all my board members who need to go out and do fundraising, look, we're not fundraising. You're going to go out and just tell the story about what we do. And the telling room is one of those great stories, very, very well kept secret in Portland. I wish more people knew about it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is your untold story?

Cyrus Hagge:

Well, my untold story is that I'm very, very fortunate to be able to leave general contracting, retire from that and move into philanthropy. And it's been. And the people are figuring it out now, but basically Patty, my wife and I can go into a small nonprofit and coach them to grow and coach them to be bigger, to be better. So, for example, Space Gallery, which I'm treasurer of, we just did a capital campaign. We've doubled the size of the organization, we're growing the budget, we're having more and more people come in, participate in what's happening there. And so we can come in and help raise the funds to let an organization grow and then teach them how to grow, how to balance the budget, how they're going to fundraise all of those pieces and really give an organization a chance to Explode Telling room is another classic example. They were in a tiny little 500 square foot office. Now they're in 2,000 square feet. They're about to outgrow that. Their budgets are growing. They're serving thousands of kids now from up from a few hundred. That's that new hidden. I guess my hidden secret is that, you know, I can come in and work with an organization and help them get better at what they do because I've made all those mistakes so I can tell them what not to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, what message would you like to leave with people who have heard this interview? What sort of words of wisdom can you give them more thoughts for them?

Cyrus Hagge:

That's a good question. It's really not my style. I guess if I would say anything is that you can, if you're in a situation that you're not comfortable with, study it and figure out how to change it. Don't live with it. Don't be trapped in something that you can't that's dragging you down emotionally. Try to rethink what is it that you can change. What little thing can you do differently that's going to make you feel good, that's going to allow you to do some good for other people. And I think that when you get to a point where you can contribute a little bit to help other folks, that's the first step to changing your life if you wanted to. But there's nothing more rewarding than going to the graduation of a bunch of kids that have just had three, excuse me, six week outdoor learning experience and meeting the families and realizing that just that little change we did made a significant change in their lives and in their family's lives.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate all the work that you're doing. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. There's so many. I feel like we could keep talking for days if we wanted to.

Cyrus Hagge:

We could.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. There's a lot of things that you've been working on and, and I know that as part of this Maine Magazine Minutes segment, you truly are an embodiment of somebody who is doing amazing things for the state. So thank you from all of us.

Cyrus Hagge:

Thank you. My pleasure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Please visit us online@themainmag.com Our November December 2011 issue features new articles on other inspiring artists and entrepreneurs living in our state. Subscribe at Maine Magic or pick up an issue at your local newsstand.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast we have a segment we call Give Back in recognition of the fact that health goes beyond the individual and out into the family, the community and the world at large. This week is a very special Give Back quite dear to my heart because we have with us Dave Holman from Safe Passage. I recently returned from Safe Passage myself where I was visiting my son Campbell, who is a long term volunteer down there. Let me talk to you a little bit about Dave Holman, then we'll talk about Safe Passage again. This is such an important segment for me. Dave Holman has lived, worked and traveled in Latin America for many years and works for the nonprofit organization Safe Passage. As the outreach and communications coordinator, he first visited the Guatemala City garbage dump in 2003 where he met young children picking through trash. The experience of seeing young children not only out of school, but engaging in dangerous work involved involving hazardous materials in the Guatemala City garbage dump left a lasting impression on him that has influenced his work on issues of poverty and social justice. Working with Safe Passage has been a particularly gratifying experience, enabling him to be a part of the educational facilities rising like oases out of the edges of the garbage dump slums. I think that kind of says it all. But let's talk about this. Welcome. Thank you for coming in.

Dave Holman:

Yeah, thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Having just gotten back from Guatemala City and I don't want to make this all about me. I was just, I was struck with how dangerous it is, how dirty it is, how poor it is. Such a contrast from being here in the United States. Did you have similar feelings when you first went down?

Dave Holman:

Yeah. Guatemala City is a very poor metropolis overall, but it has pockets of communities that are gated and wealthy and you would think you're somewhere in a wealthier community even than our own. So it has extreme inequality. And where in the US we tend to segregate those different communities in Guatemala, you'll often have them right next to each other, which increases the kind of contrast between the haves and the have nots. But it unfortunately dumps all of its trash into a ravine, a canyon that you probably saw when you were There that used to be far outside the center of the city on the outskirts. And because they don't really have any effective zoning to speak of, that has become a suburb of the city and the city is built up all around it. So now the garbage dump is truly in the center of the city in many ways. And it's a very shocking experience to see people really living without the basic necessities they need to survive in a healthy and happy way. It's sad that it's a daily reality for people that gets ignored even by many of the mainstream Guatemalan people who are living okay. They can ignore poverty in their own areas, just as we do here. So it's. But I think it is shocking for someone from the US where most basic needs are met, where school is free for most children to go down and see places where it's really not. And it's a major wake up call for someone like me going down there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, I'm familiar with the story. Hanley, of course, was my Bowdoin College classmate and we read every week from our daily Tread. I think, though, that people don't realize what it must have been like to be someone her age going down there, just trying to look into getting some Spanish language education and seeing all of this existing and deciding that she was going to try and make a difference. Did you have a sense for the sort of enormity of the task when you first went down?

Dave Holman:

Yes. And I think, you know, one of the amazing things about Hanley is she looked at something that everyone else thought was impossible and unchangeable and just kind of ignored the common wisdom, you know, and people, some people would think that's just stupid or naive. And many people that were close to her thought it was naive to think that. But despite that, she started a project that has succeeded in many ways in accomplishing things that were thought impossible. In that we have many of the children that were working in the garbage dump are now not only out of it, but getting an education and going to school. And her vision of being able to see that before it existed and having the courage to enter many situations that others would say are very dangerous, I think made her special, but in a way that everyone can achieve. You know, it doesn't take a martyr or a savior or someone who's totally abnormal to do what she did. It's something that takes a lot of heart. And I think that's, you know, you know Hanley very well, and everyone that speaks of her, you know, knows that she was someone with a Big heart that when she looked on a problem like this, couldn't turn away quite as easily as I might have, you know, been able to. Okay, I visited a horrible situation, a horrible place, and now I'm going back to my warm, comfortable, you know, modern life and I can maybe donate $5 or give something. And that's, you know, what most people can do. But she was someone who really was willing to roll up her sleeves, get down and dirty and treat the people as human beings and meet them and learn from them on their own terms and try to walk with them and figure out how she could help.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Can you briefly tell me what some of the current challenges are for safe passage?

Dave Holman:

Absolutely. Guatemala is a very hard place to operate, especially in an area with such high poverty. You get a lot of chaos. There's a lot of gang activity in these neighborhoods. And that's something that our programs are really trying to combat to get kids into a constructive academic or extracurricular environment and off the streets. Because when you're on the streets, many of these children have cousins and relatives who are involved in very dangerous activities. So I think gang activity and crime are a big issue to confront for all of Guatemala and for, for safe passage as well. Making sure that we're able to keep all of our children safe, all of our volunteers safe, and become a center where development of leadership in that community can happen in a safe place. That's one of the major challenges. And then, of course, fundraising and making sure that we're getting contributions coming in the door to support this kind of transformation is always a challenge. But we're also very blessed with donors who have been there and have seen it and know what's going on. And I think that's why a lot of people are very consistent and generous with safe passage. And then even the political situation in Guatemala is always quite chaotic. And, you know, things will close down for roadblocks, they'll close down for landslides. There's challenges that the project faces just to keep the doors open and keep the water flowing. And that here would just be fairly unthinkable. So there's the day to day challenges as well. And I bet you probably saw that people juggle them in a pretty remarkable way. And it all keeps functioning in an environment that almost any business or organization here would be pulling its hair out. So it's remarkable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, I can attest to the fact that there are numerous, multiple challenges. One day I was there and I was trying to wash my hands just because it's kind of dirty. It's near a dump and all that. And the woman at the adult education place said, oh, well, we think one of the neighbors is siphoning off our water. So that's why there's nothing coming out of the tap, which seemed really basic to me. But there are, yes, definitely some challenges. So it sounds like money would be a good thing, and I think it goes a long way down in Guatemala. How can people help Save Passage? What can people do to be helpful to your organization?

Dave Holman:

We offer a child sponsorship program where people partner with a child essentially and pay either part or all of the cost of their education. And that allows them also to develop essentially like a pen pal and mentor relationship with that student, where often for the first time, they'll get a letter once every couple months from someone who's rooting for them and who wants them to succeed and has positive reinforcement and, you know, helpful words for them. And many of the sponsors of children come down and visit their sponsor child and take them out to lunch and meet the family. And that is a very positive program that provides a sustainable form of interaction and support for the children at Safe Passage. So that would be a good example.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And information is available on your website about becoming sponsors?

Dave Holman:

Absolutely, it's on our website. It's not just www.safepassage.org, and you can Google search that or type it right in. And we have sponsorship information and information on giving there, and any support is much appreciated. It goes a very long way because what you buy with a dollar here, you can literally buy for 10 or 15 cents in Guatemala. So, you know, many times, you know, we do ship down gifts and kind of school material and that sort of thing. But the reality is often that the shipping costs more than just buying it from the Guatemalan economy. And in many places, that goes a long way. Right now we have a project with the mothers to create a sewing group. So the mothers of the children are starting to sew the school uniforms that are required of the children. And that is a very promising project where instead of Safe Passage, paying some outside group to mass produce these uniforms in a factory, were now able to generate employment right in the dump area from people that otherwise would be going down into a very dangerous and chaotic environment to earn a living.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there are women down there who are also creating jewelry as part of the Kreamos project. Is that correct?

Dave Holman:

Yeah, Kreamos has been a big success. It was started three years ago. It was actually begun by Guatemalan university students who were volunteering at Safe Passage and had this Idea had seen jewelry made from recycled materials. So now the moms gather recycled newspaper cardboard magazines, make incredibly beautiful beads out of it, glazed beads, and then string them together in jewelry and earrings and bracelets. And they've been very successful. They're having trouble keeping up with the orders at this point, but that doesn't

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

mean people shouldn't order.

Dave Holman:

That does not mean people should still

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

put their orders in. Right?

Dave Holman:

You can find out about Krayamos through our website as well. It's a great holiday gift and it's inspiring to see again that transformation of the before and after. These are mothers who previously were spending all day sorting through trash next to bulldozers and vultures and people who are high sniffing glue and are now spending their time at home, you know, rolling up beads and making creative artwork that they're able to sell. So it's an inspiring situation to see that transformation happening right before your eyes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you so much for coming in and we will make sure that we refer people back to the Safe Passage website and I'm sure that many, many people will be hearing this and want to do some good work in the name of in honor of Hanley and help out with Safe Passage.

Dave Holman:

Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. Gracias. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Gracias. Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we read from my bountiful blog@bountifulpath.com this week's post is about Safe Passage and my Thanksgiving week visit to that organization in Guatemala City. It's entitled Safe Spirit and Reality. Signs of Hanley are everywhere. A painted wooden sunshine on the guadaria, or nursery school, declares this as Hanley's Garden. Hanley's portrait hangs near an artificial Christmas tree at the entrance to the school. These and other reminders belie the fact that it has been almost five years since her death. But it is in the children that her spirit seem most represented. I knew Hanley first as a sweet and slightly goofy high school kid. She smiled readily and found humor in many things. She was eternally kind. She was the type of person, I thought at the time, who might like children. Her spirit was itself childlike, joyful, gentle. When I attended her week in the winter of 2007, I was shocked to see her body lying before me, bereft of that spirit. Scheduled to get my passport photo that day for an upcoming trip, I followed through with the task. My photo retains a hint of the underlying uncertainty I had been feeling, a hint of the grief, tainted wonderment that my friend's spirit was no longer present on the earth. But of course, that spirit has remained. Every child who spends time at Safe Passage channels a bit of the spirit. Every staff person, every volunteer. There is an underlying sense of hope and purpose. The Safe Passage program currently serves 550 children and adults through work in three main buildings. The week I was at Safe Passage I saw every age represented, from toddlers engaging in water play to mothers studying for their sixth grade diploma. I witnessed first graders learning about healthy foods from the Very Hungry Caterpillar written in Spanish. I joined 80 year olds in a dusty rooftop yoga class. All around us, outside the walls of the program, poverty reigned. Homes were primarily shacks built of makeshift items found in dump forays. Shells of human beings roamed the streets, their minds evaporated by the glue that they sniffed constantly. Glue is known to reduce hunger pains. It also enables one to escape reality. In many parts of Guatemala City, it is easy to see why reality escape might be an attractive option. But within the walls of Camino Seguro or Safe Passage, a different sort of reality escape is taking place. It is purposeful and long term. It is made possible through educational and vocational programs. Every participant is taught self sufficiency, from the children who clean up their classrooms after lessons to the adults in the Kreamos program who are creating jewelry for resale. Every individual who wishes to make it so is being given the opportunity to move past their current circumstances, escape their present reality. It is in this sense of opportunity that the spirit of Hanley Denning remains most evident. Hanley, though no longer physically present on the earth, remains with us still. Read this blog post and others like it at bountifulpath.com this week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we explored the theme of sacred space. We began with a quote from Our Daily Tread by Raymond Carver, which asked, what do you want? And the response is to call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the Earth. It is in finding the sacred space within ourselves that we are able to call ourselves beloved and to feel ourselves be beloved on the earth. We explored this possibility with Angie Arndt of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine philanthropist Cyrus Hagee and Dave Holman of Safe Passage. We hope that each of you as listeners will be further enabled to find your own sacred space and subsequently perhaps go out into the world and create sacred spaces around yourself and others, which is especially important this holiday season. Thank you very much for joining us and for being a part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.