“Spirit in Action is an invitation”: Jessie Cocks

Jessie Cocks has been a participant in SIA’s Circles of Change .  Among many other accomplishments, Jessie cofounded the American Peace Test in 1985 (non-violent direct action to end nuclear weapons testing) and was part of the late Carl Sagan’s seven person think tank on building a mass movement for social change (1986-88).  And congratulations to Jessie on being a newly elected member of Kennett Borough Council.  To learn more about Jessie, check out her website.

And if you get inspired by her comments below, remember that Spirit in Action is offering a  Leadership Network Training  in the Philadelphia area in January 2008, and we’re currently accepting applications.   Here’s Jessie on her experience with Spirit in Action:

Pamela and Phyllis are two of the best facilitators I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot).  Fabulous modeling for all and as a woman of color and a white woman.   Witnessing them as a participant, experiencing them as co-leaders was a training in and of themselves.  They brought co-facilitation to the level of of seamless, organic art – extraordinary. They had obviously done a ton of their own work and totally respected each other.  No one had to be one up.  

Spirit in Action is an invitation to go inside and figure out how our sense of spirit relates to the big picture.  It honors a need that too often gets neglected in our work, as we think, “We don’t have to time, we have to stop the arms race,” or make other excuses not to do the work that has to be done in order to move towards nonviolence.  

Spirit in Action has the vision of how we can do things differently and how to not emotionally abuse each other and ourselves.  It’s a vision of how to honor spirit or how to do self-care, even if someone is an atheist.  There is plenty of room for nonbelievers.  It’s a beautifully nonjudgmental approach to what spirit is that so carefully leaves the definition open.  Circles of change help us identify what we’re for.  Resistance work is so often about what we’re against.  Even when I was doing work against nuclear testing, what I wanted to do was create communities for change that could work on other issues like housing in communities.

Nonviolence is love in action, but that wasn’t considered part of the curriculum.  Nonviolence was the essence of my approach.

At the core of it, it’s the foundation that often gets forgotten, the foundation of a new vision of the future based on nonviolence. 

It’s a brilliant format that can completely fit any movement, from churches, synagogues, pagan circles or any issue focused movement.  At its base, Spirit in Action invites people to work from a place of love instead of from a place of fear.  In 1985, when I was starting the American Peace Test, a national and international nonviolent direct action to stop nuclear weapons testing and building communities of nonviolent resistance around local social change issues, I wanted to call it Spirit in Action or Love in Action instead of the American Peace Test.  So this is a perfect fit for me. 

I think SIA invites us to take a look at the ethical implications of our spirituality and how to include play and humor in our work.  It invites us to look at how we can be led by spirit to deep, lasting social change.