Interstitium

Written By LegacyWorks

In this time of giving thanks, I am feeling grateful for so many things. Our remarkable team. Our phenomenal partners, funders and clients. The culture of authentic connection, curiosity and openness we cultivate together. How that culture welcomes each of us with our great gifts and growing edges. The beautiful work we get to do together in our communities and on the land. All the learning of the past ten years and even the past ten days. How all of this never ceases to surprise and amaze. 

For ten years I have struggled to describe LegacyWorks Group, how we do what we do, and why it’s so powerful. Those of you who have worked side-by-side with us understand, in the way you know a thing in your heart. You refer us to funders and partners with the very best testimonials, and yet you too struggle to describe us. I often wish there was a job description for what we do that would convey the essence in an instant (I’m jealous of school teachers and pilots on this front). Since there’s no job description for what we do, like humans always have, we turn to stories, metaphors and symbols to try to explain. We liken ourselves to the mycelial networks that connect trees in forests and all ecosystems. We talk about the way our work expands like a spiraling nautilus shell and the way we work to bring social, ecological and economic elements into alignment like converging rings.   

impactmodel

In this week’s episode of RadioLab and in an accompanying piece in Orion Magazine, Jennifer Brandel gifted us a surprising new metaphor in her story of the discovery of a previously-unknown-to-western-science system within our bodies. This new system appears to connect all the organs and other systems that maintain our health and wellbeing as organisms. "A fluid-filled superhighway spanning the entire body" in Jennifer’s words. The gobsmacked scientists and researchers who uncovered it christened it “the interstitium” in honor of the role it seems to play in the in-between spaces of our bodies: integrating and connecting all the organs and other systems that maintain our health and wellbeing.

Western science and medicine failed to see a system that moves nutrients, information and fluid around the body since we didn’t believe it existed. Our beliefs and stories shape our worlds. Its “discovery” opens up all kinds of possibilities, from new cancer treatments to opportunities for integration and exchange between Western and Eastern medical approaches. Wow wow wow!

“The interstitium offers us a new metaphor for the often invisible work that we and many others do in our communities and society, bridging across organizations and agencies, stitching them together, stepping in to connect, coordinate and make things better in countless ways.”

Taking the metaphor one step further in her recent piece in Orion Magazine, Jennifer offered up a new word - “interstitionary” - as a kind of job description for this work. “Just as scientists can now see the interstitium everywhere they look, I see these people everywhere who are bridging, connecting and serving as conduits, keeping systems in communication, operable, healthy” she says. She can see it so easily because it is precisely the kind of in-between work that she does in the world.

So in this time of giving thanks, I feel especially grateful for the surprise arrival of this great gift. A discovery that creates countless possibilities, a new metaphor for our work, and even a new job description for the often invisible, always magical, and, I hope, now easier to describe work LegacyWorks does - connecting, bridging and doing what’s needed to make things work way better. Thank you so very much Jennifer, RadioLab and Orion. 

I’m writing to you today because you are an integral part of our community - a community of partners, leaders, changemakers, catalysts, visionaries, funders, and doers. Needless to say, there would be no inter-stitching without you. There would be no LegacyWorks. There would be less hope and far fewer possibilities. Thanks to you though, LegacyWorks and the work we do is real and growing at a remarkable rate. Now that we know what to call it, I wonder how much more will become possible? 

Towards a far brighter, vibrant and loving future, with wonder and gratitude, 

Carl

“We’re in a paradigm shift. We’re moving away from the scientific way of looking at the world as objects, to seeing a system-based world that’s all about fluid, currents, connections and relationships.”

- Arthur Brock as quoted in Jennifer’s piece in Orion

A few invitations for you: 

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