And, oh, yes, money.  That’s particularly important in developing countries where very few people have the funds to make their new homes earthquake or storm resistant, once the international recovery funds dry up.

Some good news, reports earthquake engineer and founder of Build Change,  Elisabeth Hausler, Ph.D., is that “in a place like Haiti, building a house to withstand an earthquake can also help it to withstand a hurricane, particularly by tying the roof down to prevent it from flying off in strong winds. For earthquake-resistant design, the roof is often tied to the walls to provide some kind of bracing effect for the walls.

When India was devastated by a January 26, 2001 quake that killed well over 20,000 people,  Hausler was halfway through a civil engineering Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley. At the same time, she was undergoing an existential crisis:  how could she do something truly meaningful with her training?  How she turned that question into Build Change, which helps create safer housing in developing countries, is a textbook example of how the mind of a visionary works.

Visionary Habit 1: Letting Problems Affect You

Most of us feel overwhelmed by the news; many ignore it altogether. Elizabeth Hausler watched reports of the 2001 quake and knew she wanted to do something.  At the same time, she was also increasingly clear that she did not want to work for the kind of developers who would be eager to snatch up civil engineers of her professional caliber.

As she watched news reports, Hausler reflected on what she already knew as an earthquake engineer, including the limited loss of life in earthquakes in California, where structures built to recent earthquake codes generally ride out tremors with minimal damage.  As she saw the need for skilled brickmasons to help rebuild India, she thought, “I can do this!” having been well trained by her father, a master mason.

By 2002, she was a Fulbright scholar in India, where she could roll up her sleeves and help.

Visionary Habit 2: Honor and Expand What You Already Know

As an earthquake engineer, Hausler was skilled in technology to resist earthquakes. Thus, she knew how to prevent buildings from collapsing by using such practices as tying together concrete columns and bond beams, steel reinforcement, and “toothing” the masonry to allow the structure to move better.

Working in India and later in Iran after a huge quake there, she realized she had a lot to learn about how cultural norms and challenges impact building.  For instance, people in many developing countries don’t want to build their homes from wood (the most quake-resistant material), but from brick or adobe (the most likely to fail in a quake if not handled properly). Nor do they usually like round structures, which tend to ride out earthquakes.

Everywhere she saw the need not just to rebuild quake-damaged structures, but also to prevent future problems from quakes. This, she envisioned, would require a focus on training people how to build safely, as well as a lot of education for consumers and government workers about why safe construction was both necessary and achievable.

Visionary Habit 3:  Work with Others Who are Compassionate and Skilled

Hausler learned from numerous people how to become a change agent.  One of the most important was Martin Fisher, a Ph.D. engineer who co-founded Kick Start to help people in Africa break the poverty cycle and to “create a new, successful, scalable, replicable, and sustainable solution to poverty.”

Hausler also worked with people who focused on funding the kind of work she was called to do. By 2004, she had a working board and a 501(c)(3) status for Build Change. That year, she was named one of the world’s best emerging social entrepreneurs by Echoing Green for her plan to “promote and implement affordable, disaster-resistant construction in less developed countries.”  www.echoing.green.org

Visionary Habit 4:  Adapt Your Vision as Necessary

Of course, Hausler and other members of Build Change are moved by the rescue work that’s happening now in Haiti and the re-building work that will happen later.  Tempting and necessary as this work is, Hausler found that Build Change serves best when it is true to its specific mission, which as stated on the brochure as:

Build Change is an international non-profit social enterprise that designs earthquake-resistant houses and trains builders and home-owners in developing countries to build them.

What Can Your Learn from the Story of Elisabeth Hausler and Build Change?

What challenges and opportunities in the world now call you?

What visions might emerge if you reflected on this question:  “how can my skills, interests, and passions best be used to serve others?”

As always, your comments are welcome.  Many blessings,

Pat McHenry Sullivan

Such a miracle is happening now around Pakvilai Sudhaswin of Oakland, CA and Johnnie Woods of Seattle, WA. Right about now, they should be landing in Baltimore, MD, one step closer to Johnnie’s donation of a healthy kidney to Pak. Kaiser Permanente, Pak’s insurer, will pay the costs of Pak’s care at The Incompatible Kidney Transplant Program at Johns Hopkins.

In reporting this to you, I pray you will add your prayers not just to Pak and Johnnie, but to all others who need healing, and to all who support them. I pray that in seeing some of the many blessings of their story, you appreciate more of the blessings in your own life, and see how you can act more from your own capacity to bless others.

The Richest Blessings of Today and Tomorrow Benefit from the Blessings of Today and Yesterday

No one can pay for Johnnie’s sacrifice of a healthy kidney and whatever it takes to recuperate from the surgery. No one could pay for the priceless innovation and caring that have kept Pak alive so far. In fact, none of us can pay for all the innovation and caring that have gone into creating the best of the world today.

If has often been said that in everything we do, we stand on the shoulders of those who go before us. On the most technical level, the plane that transports Johnnie and Pak stands on the shoulders of over a hundred years of aviation innovation, and thousands of years of dreaming that humans could fly.

The surgery that has been pioneered at Johns Hopkins stands on the shoulders of centuries of medical research and on centuries of teaching and sharing information — including via the Web. The nursing and other care that will return Pak to vital health depends on the wisdom of many fields, from finance to administration to operations management.

All that research and experience have cost a lot of money and time. It’s also cost something priceless, including imagination and heart-felt values that have driven people to give their best to their work, and to keep on innovating without guarantees of success.

It is impossible to count the blessings that return when work is done with love, when money is used for good, and good is done without regard to return.

Several years ago, when Pak needed a biopsy, she was cared for by ultrasound expert Wayne Leonhardt, whose caring heart and sense of humor have led to a lifelong friendship among Wayne, his partner, and Pak. Upon learning that Pak, a dedicated Buddhist, loved Christmas carols, Wayne invited her to his church for a carols service.

Pak fell in love with Unity of Berkeley, which honors the wisdom of all faiths, and began volunteering in the office when she had strength. There she met Johnnie, who worked in the office part-time while studying to be a licensed Unity teacher. Not long after Johnnie learned about Pak’s long struggles with chronic kidney disease, she offered her a kidney and has persisted through the years of roadblocks.

Pak’s faith and meditation practices have been key to dealing constructively with chronic illness, and she has developed mindfulness meditations to help others do the same.  Pak sometimes teaches meditation classes, and she dreams of having the strength to be a stress release counselor for veterans and people with chronic illness.

The Best Role Models for Spirituality and Work Combine Efficiency and Caring

Wayne is a perfect example. The skill and experience he brings to his work attest to years of training and attention to detail. The caring and sense of humor come straight from his heart. Developing his skill and experience have cost him and others a lot of time and money; his caring and humor are priceless and freely given.

What caring and other blessings do you offer through your work? Through the way you spend your money?

Who helps or has helped you become your most caring self?

How are you a blessing to others?

As always, many blessings to you, your work, and your relationships.

Pat McHenry Sullivan

True joy is an amazingly unselfish spiritual gift. Joy begets a light heart, plenty of energy, resourcefulness, and the longing to help others find joy. Thanks to the spirit and work movement, I’ve thoroughly learned how to distill joy out of any task, even when reality also includes sorrow, grief or other honest emotions.

Now, thanks to the new movie “Julie and Julia”, my full joy is back in cooking, eating, and sharing food with others. That may not be my paid work, but it sure affects all my paid work and dealings with money. Plus, I’ve got a whole new pair of role models for persisting in any vision around work and money.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Role Model for Any Challenge

In case you missed it, “Julie and Julia” refers to a hot new movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Julie is Julie Powell, who recuperated from the daily drudge of an often thankless job by cooking her heart out after work.

Julia Child is the legendary author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which for 50 years has brought a lot more joy into many American kitchens through her book and her PBS tv shows.

Both women sought purpose; both found it around food. Julie’s decision to cook her way through all 524 recipes in Julia’s cookbook and blog about it became a lively journey that intertwines her story and Julia’s. Like any great story, its essence is about all the things the characters learn and the new gifts they wrestle out of themselves in the process of living zestfully. Then there is the essence we can create for ourselves as we allow the story to become an ingredient in our lives.

“Julie and Julia” are loaded with lessons for the kitchen of any soul:

1.    Start with what you love. Whether looking for a new career or an answer to a puzzling problem, start with what you care about most, and give it love all the way. Do it with gusto, not drudgery, even when the task itself is difficult.

2.    Know and stay true to  your own standards. Somewhere inside, you know what really matters to you. Consider the wisdom and perspective of others and let them guide you, not rule you.

3.     Work with allies, not alone. Be an ally to others and find all the family, friends, and other companions you need to cheer you on, provide feedback, keep you honest, call out the best in you, and celebrate or cry with you. And when you’re being unkind in any way to those allies, fess up!

4.   Don’t limit your allies to people you encounter in the flesh. Julie met Julia only through her writings, her cookbooks and her TV shows. Yet, “without you here,” wrote Julie, “I would be a different persons — a smaller, a sadder, a more frightened person.”

5.   Don’t look for perfection in yourself, your allies and friends, your role models. Julie described Julia as a flawed woman of enormous energy and a great teacher who was funny, generous, and confident. … That’s what I love about her – she inspired because she was a woman, not a saint.”

6. Follow “the thirst to keep finding out, the openness to experience that makes life worth living. … [be willing to dive] into the next possible disaster…”

Dealing with food is a huge part of our lives and work — paid or unpaid. If God hadn’t meant us to enjoy it, why are there so many good things to eat?

The movie took me back to the joy of being in the kitchen with my mother, who used recipes primarily as a springboard for her own creativity. During our 13 years together she taught me to be fearless in the kitchen. I can only imagine what she could have done if had she lived past 1956, when the ethnic food explosion and cooking shows like Julia Child’s came into being.

I came out of “Julie and Julia” convinced that the only way I’ll deal with my own food-related issues is not just to cut the carbs and the wrong fats, but also to savor every morsel. After all, food that is savored digests better. Food that is digested sends out signals of enough and fills the body with more energy for a workout.

There are so many more food issues to explore around money and work, like the whole issues of organic and free-range versus factory-grown and depleted soil, and why the concept of fair trade is growing. Because these matter so much to me, I welcome your insights around them them.

But right now, whatever’s on your plate literally or figuratively, Bon Appetit!

As always, many blessings and come again real soon,

Pat McHenry Sullivan