The Power of Agency

Today's post comes from a muse on the book, "Leading Causes of Life" (LCL) by Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray. "Agency" is the third leading cause of life (after connection and coherence and before blessing and hope). Agency is the energy that allows (compels?) us to do something. The authors of LCL also say that agency is all caught up with the idea of call. Agency is just so much more energy if it is not focused by a sense of purpose - a call.

Having two young men in my house with ADD/ADHD, I know all about unfocused energy. ;-) Often, especially in the morning and at night, there is a huge amount of energy in my house - most of it being used in distracted actions that lead to limited outcomes. My children are a metaphor for how much of our activity as humans is done as well. Many well-meaning people (WMP) "do" many things each day, but they do them without a purpose or a sense of a call. Much of our healthcare is delivered in this same episodic or random manner. In fact, if one reads the healthcare literature and the critiques of healthcare with this bias, it becomes quite apparent that we have lost the focus for what we need to be doing.

Agency and call have been lost in healthcare - some believe that they were never there. However, it is important to realize that not very long ago, spiritual matters and health matters were one and the same. Health was interpreted in the face of communal norms and values. What values are we interpreting our healthcare by in 2011? How does the ever increasing cost of providing "sick" care lead to ever increasing social injustice and division? Where's the agency and call?

Possibilities Journey, Inc (www.possjrny.org) is working to try to uncover the sense of call and to return healthcare to a communal perspective. Our sense of agency comes from our vision that the next iteration of healthcare is integrated with all the communal people and programs that lead to life. Come and join us on that journey and rediscover your sense of agency and call.

Peace,
Dan