The Working Edge

Yoga instructors sometimes talk about practicing at “the working edge”—the physical place where your body is both working and at ease. You are simultaneously reaching for a deeper expression of a pose while also feeling relaxed and balanced. You possess both intensity and moderation, intention and composure, confidence and humility. In short, you are doing wacky stuff with your body and you are still breathing.

It is at this sort of a “working edge” that the Orton Family Foundation is striving for in our Heart & Soul project towns. We hope to both encourage communities to really work to identify and describe what it is that makes them special, while understanding that this sense of place is often nuanced, complex, secreted in the inflection of a dialect or the clothes people wear. We challenge neighbors to bridge divides and find common ground, when most “real” places boast entire histories of conflict—cultural, economic and otherwise. We believe that the values, or heart and soul, of place can be translated from abstract notions into concrete, measurable conditions of everyday life on the ground. However, we also believe that one citizen’s understanding of a community’s character is different from another’s.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), we have our work cut out for us. And we can’t do any of it without your input. Where is the working edge in your work? In your community?