Navigating Sea Change: Jim Kenney and Common Ground

Not many people would suggest that we are living in an age of moral growth. In a time of war, fear of terrorist attacks, gang violence, familial disintegration, crumbling health care and education systems, reality television, and ever greater widening of the gap between rich and poor, it's easy to argue that we are engaged in a mad downward spiral.

Jim Kenney believes otherwise. The Co-founder and Executive Director of the Deerfield-based adult education center Common Ground, Mr. Kenney writes, lectures, and teaches that we are, in fact, more likely experiencing a "clarion call" than a "death knell." While not blind to the many challenges faced by our planet, Kenney uses the analogy of "two waves converging in the same time and space. One is powerful, but subsiding, the other just gathering momentum and presence, but not yet cresting." He argues that at the meeting of the two "they are nearly equal in amplitude and influence, but with no clear way to determine which is rising and which descending." Kenney suggests that we are living at the confluence of these waves and are witnessing the inevitable chaos.

Kenney provides a "litany of hope" as evidence for this sea change, including: increased awareness of human rights, feminist contributions to emerging culture, a possible decline in human population growth, initiatives to combat the problem of intimate, coercive violence against women and children, and a developing openness to interreligious encounters. Environmental awareness, the decline of patriarchy, and the ongoing exploration of the mind-body connection in health and spirituality are also included among many other points.

Kenney co-founded Common Ground in 1975 as a "center for inquiry, study, and dialogue." Common Ground offers workshops, lectures, forums, and other events devoted to the world's great cultural, philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions. Recent lecture topics have included "The Postmodern President: Assessing Ronald Reagan," "Vietnam: The War that Changed Our Idea of War," and "The Da Vinci Code: What's Fact, What's Fiction?"

Common Ground is located at 815 Rosemary Terrace in Deerfield, Illinois and offers events at Evanston, Crystal Lake, Tinley Park, Elmhurst, as well as their Deerfield headquarters. They can be reached by phone at 847.940.7870 or online at www.cg.org.

This article appeared originally in the Winter 2004-2005 issue of Chicago Learning Guide Magazine.