Notes from Seth | Gathering this Summer
A few things on my mind this season — what I’m learning, where I’m wrestling, and what’s happening across my work. Thanks as always for gathering here.
The Messy Middle
This summer I sat for my third guided medicine journey in three years. I’ve come to think of these as a “force reload,” how you might reboot your computer after the screen freezes. I also came away with new questions, and some answers.
The big one: stay in the messy middle. I have a reflex to resolve discomfort fast, to get to the tidy answer, the decision, the next move. But the medicine kept pointing me back to the question itself. Sit with the question. Trust that we already carry the answers, and that they surface on their own time, not on my schedule.
The other thread was about appetite, and how many ways there are to feed it. So much of mine has run through emotional eating. But touch, laughter, music, dancing, and art can satisfy my cravings, too. (Sara and I recently experienced Tank and the Bangas at the Skirball, and what a joyous evening it was to dance, sing, and move our bodies together–it was a beautiful gathering of old, young, white, Black, big and small bodies grooving in sync.) When I become irritable, or impatient, the work is to slow down rather than act on it. Not everything needs a response in the moment. I’ve learned from the medicine, and my friend and colleague Gamal J. Palmer, that the answer comes by staying with the question a little longer than feels comfortable.
Notes on Governance
We’re in a moment when the lines between nonprofit, for-profit, and public stewardship are being redrawn in real time. A few years ago, OpenAI reworked itself from a nonprofit into a for-profit. California and Texas traded blows over gerrymandering. Each is, at bottom, a governance question: who gets to decide, and who holds them accountable?
I see it up close in the organizations I work with, each with its own shape. Jewish Studio Project, built around creatives. Jewish Long Beach, carrying a 26-person board. LEMO, an LLC paired with a Foundation. The mayor of San Francisco, a former nonprofit CEO, wrestling with what it means to move from leading an organization to a city. Two initiatives that I run, Chavurot and College Success Collaborative, are fiscally sponsored, with no board. Different structures, same underlying tension: who gets to decide, and who holds us accountable?
What I keep coming back to: good governance is ethical, provides real oversight, and stays generative: a board that asks questions rather than rubber-stamping answers. Governance consultant Ananda Valenzuela shared these two “golden rules” for board roles: 1) Loving accountability, and 2) Generous resourcing. Other rules of thumb I’ve come to follow:
Keep boards to no more than 15, ideally 8–12, paired with an advisory council for depth and reach.
Meet quarterly with intention. Committee work is important work.
Hold an annual in person retreat to align on goals and think beyond the calendar.
Run an annual self-assessment of both the CEO and the board.
As we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, I’m grateful for a summer full of big and small trips: to New York, Los Angeles, Lake Arrowhead, Chicago, and Big Sur. I wish for America more compassion, care, and the knowledge that our shared identity, our individual divine sparks, can build bridges across divergent histories and mythologies. Happy Birthday to us.
