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The Ripple Effect: Why Small Acts of Kindness Matter with Zach Manntai · Neighbourly: Real Stories of Care and Community

• 0:02
  It's so funny when you think about the the concepts around the early
• 0:05
  church of how they were known by their love, how they were
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  known by the way that they postured themselves from
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  this bottom up approach that the kingdom of God was
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  just seen throughout the early church because
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  of the way that they lived with all parts of their lives.
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  You knew that they were Christians and you wanted to be with them. You
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  knew what it was like to be loved by them, and
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  that posture that they provided as an example to the
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  world changed culture.
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  What if kindness isn't a moment, but a rhythm? What
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  if changing the world doesn't look like a grand gesture, but like showing
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  up again and again? This is
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  Journey with Care, a podcast by Care Care Impact where curious
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  Canadians find inspiration to love others well through real life
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  stories and honest conversations.
• 1:05
  A few years ago for my fortieth birthday, my wife organized a Go
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  GoFundMe so that I can finally get my dream acoustic
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  guitar. It wasn't cheap, not something we could have
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  justified on our own, but friends and family showed up.
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  People I've journeyed with, done life with, sat across the table
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  with, they all chipped in. And on my birthday, I walked
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  into a guitar shop, and I picked it up and brought it home.
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  I'm still in awe of the generosity and love that put that guitar into my
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  hands. It wasn't just about getting a nice instrument. It was about what
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  it represented. It was their way of saying, we believe in
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  you. We believe in what God is doing through you. And to this
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  day, I think of those friends and family every time I pick it up.
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  What's even more beautiful is that the gift didn't stop with me.
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  I've been able to lead worship with that guitar, not just in my home church,
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  but in other communities too. It's a way of sharing back what was
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  given. And the truth is, I couldn't have measured the ripple
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  effect of that gift in that moment. But over time, I've seen
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  how small acts of kindness, when rooted in love, keep
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  moving outward. That's what Zach reminds us of in this episode.
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  That kindness isn't always loud or measurable. Sometimes it's just
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  presence. Sometimes it's showing up with what's in your hand and
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  trusting that God will multiply it. Our guest today is Zach
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  Mantai, someone who's not only a friend of the podcast, but someone who's
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  helped us kick off this Cost of Indifference series with his thoughtful,
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  honest reflections on compassion, fatigue, and sustainable care.
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  Zach is a community builder, a systems thinker, and a
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  passionate advocate for youth and mental health. He works at the
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  intersection of faith, public health, and justice. And he doesn't
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  just talk about kindness, he lives it in the everyday.
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  What I love about Zach is that he brings both conviction and humility
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  into every conversation. He helps us zoom out to see the bigger
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  picture, but never loses sight of the individual. In today's episode,
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  we pick up where we left off, exploring the quiet power of
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  small acts of kindness and how over time, they
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  ripple into real change. So, Wendy, let's get this
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  conversation going. I would love to. So good to have you back here,
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  Zach, in studio with us to talk about this next episode. But before
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  we get started, I wanna ask you, if kindness were a mascot,
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  like a character or an animal or something that you can imagine, what would
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  it be and why? What a strange question,
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  Wendy. And, yes, it's wonderful to be back. But I can say I had
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  never thought about kindness as a mascot or a character in
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  in any way. And so I decided to come up with a strange
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  one. So follow this if best you can. The best answer I could
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  come up with was a b. Now one of
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  the things about kindness in our conversation today that I think is interesting
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  is that bees are often thought about in their
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  busyness and their work ethic. But think about this. Bees
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  perform small tasks unnoticed yet have enormous impact through
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  pollination. They're essential for ecosystems, and they symbolize
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  really how small, tiny impacts accumulate over
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  time to support the broader community. So I would say
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  that a bee would make a fun mascot for kindness. Well, that would
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  make a fun mascot very profound, very deep. And I
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  have to say I was gonna counter that with a bumblebee as well because my
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  AI I'm gonna be full disclosure. My AI said you should say a
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  bumblebee.
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  I think we need to buy the costume and and just run with it, Wendy.
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  Yeah. I'll come on the podcast wearing it. I'd like to see Johan in a
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  Bumblebee outfit. I, I probably would pay money to see
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  that. I might too. Well, hold on a second. You did a fundraiser before for
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  dancing, so now I think it needs to be Bumblebee costumes. That is
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  true. We haven't put Johan on, Facebook live
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  with anything crazy like that yet. So I can ugly dance. That's what I
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  thought. But Yeah. Well, I I did already at Christmas. So,
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  anyway, we're in our series, the cost of indifference. And today, we're really wanting
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  to focus in on the ripple effect, looking at
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  small acts with big impact. And so,
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  Zach, you have had a lot of experience in on
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  micro levels, at grassroots levels. To get us started,
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  why do small acts of kindness often go unnoticed but
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  still have a huge impact? Well, I think
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  that one of the struggles in our life is that we we look for
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  those big momentous events to define our
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  life. And yet, my wife and I, we've been in
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  a relationship for now almost nineteen years. And what
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  has built up our relationship with each other has been
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  those moments in between those big things. And so
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  I would say that when we think about the small acts of
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  kindness, of presence, the key is
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  really about saying, I can trust you. I can believe that you're gonna
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  be here with me. And that creates a building
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  of momentum in a relationship like a flywheel that says, Hey,
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  I know I can trust you with the big things because I trusted you with
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  the small things and you followed through. And so those small pieces of
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  just kindness and presence, they significantly change the way that
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  you feel, whether it's feeling seen or or even just
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  feeling like you are allowed to be who you are supposed to be. And I
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  think that that's an intentional shift away from a
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  selfish, more, navel gazing, as my
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  mother used to call it, mindset of the world. Yeah. No. That's really good.
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  And so what you're saying is that kindness isn't really, like, an
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  event. We're doing kindness. We're doing an act of kindness.
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  It's more of a posture or a habit that we have, and it's,
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  like, drop by drop that you build trust. And particularly when
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  we're talking about caring for community,
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  particularly journeying with those going through difficulty
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  who have had a lot of trust broken with them. There's a
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  lot of traumatic stories that have gone on in their
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  lives that building trust doesn't happen over one bouncy
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  castle event. It it happens over a thousand cups of coffee, doesn't
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  it? And so that is an important thing that we can
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  often undervalue. And yet why
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  do we keep gravitating towards
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  bigger acts that are are a little bit more tangible
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  or more event like?
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  So in a lot of the work I do, we are looking for
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  KPIs, key performing indicators. And
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  the easier thing would be to say how many times
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  has that big thing happened. If I had to count every single
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  time I said something kind to my spouse or my
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  kids where it's a part of my every day, it's
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  really hard to do. Imagine walking through the day having one of those
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  clickers that the staff used to use going into Costco,
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  where it's like click, click, click all the day long. It's a lot
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  easier to say, How many times did I go and do
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  that big, grandiose overture of my love for this
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  person? But I think when we really do
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  think who matters most, it's not about the big
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  things. It's about that long term posture
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  that you're describing. And I think if we do think about it through the
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  lens of that, whether it's in our churches or in our community
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  groups or just in our neighborhoods, the people that
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  we truly can rely on are the ones that have been there
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  through a lot of those things, and not just
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  the ones that show up like a no offense to our politician friends.
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  The politicians looking for the photo op. That's not the kind of person that I
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  really feel like I can rely on. I think it's easy in our
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  Canadian society to almost see acts of
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  kindness or being kind as a bit transactional, and I think
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  it creeps into our relationships just like it creeps into the shopping
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  malls. When I pay a dollar, I wanna get something back at
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  Dollarama of value. When I am kind, I want
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  reciprocated kindness and gratitude for what I have,
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  whatever that transaction looks like, even towards people that may
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  not have anything monetary of value
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  to give back to what I'm doing. There's a a bit of that mentality
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  of I scratch your rack, you scratch mine
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  creeping in to how we care for others,
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  and yet we have to, like, break away from that transaction. I'm I'm reminded in
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  in Luke 16, I think, verse 10. It says,
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  whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in
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  much. It's those little things, those unseen things where we're not
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  expecting gratitude, we're not expecting recognition.
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  That's what forms the character of an individual.
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  % agree. And I think back to your question on why we
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  gravitate to those bigger ones, it's really great to
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  feel like I gave you something and you gave me something if it's a
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  big deal. If it was just those little grains of rice,
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  one after another, it doesn't matter. But when I go back to
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  my, hey, callbacks, bees
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  require significant amounts of pollination to create the fruit that
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  we need. They don't just do it once and everything's done. They
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  have to keep going back to the flowers, and they keep going back and building
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  honey, and keep on going back to the flowers, and keep on building
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  honey. And they do this over and over and over again to
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  create that beautiful harvest
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  that we have at the end of the season. But
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  if they only went once and said, I did my thing
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  waiting for the food, the apple would never grow. And I think
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  this is what's really difficult about our transactional world. Capitalism,
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  it's toxic. That's at the end of the day. This is what it is. When
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  it weaves its toxic fingers into the fabric
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  of our society, every single thing we see
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  needs to be worth it to me. Now, a friend of mine
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  used to argue with me often about even our faith, where you
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  submit to Jesus so that you can get to heaven. You submit
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  to his authority, not because it's what's best for you and the people around
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  you, not because that's what was always intended, but because it gets you out of
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  hell. And I think that kind of
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  transactionalization in the church, it just breeds a
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  sense of I did my task checkbox.
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  I can do that. When it's pay it forward or something like
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  that, it turns it into a rat race rather than a
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  sense of I actually do get something out of this, but it's
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  because we succeed. And that communal sense of
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  value when it's small things building up over time, that's
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  what creates a healthy community. That's what creates
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  a sense of belonging, where our values
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  submitting to each other, supporting each other, lifting each other up over and over and
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  over again, that's what creates the fabric of
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  a community that is strong to be resilient enough to handle the things
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  when they do go wrong. But if we don't have that, if we just have
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  these big stakes in the ground that says, hey, there was that one time that
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  person did that thing for me and it was great, but there's nothing in between.
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  It's difficult. And so it's easier to do. Hey, I don't
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  know about you, we're at the age probably where we don't get asked anymore, but
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  that person that would show up to help you move into your new house, out
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  of an old one into a new one, how often do they show up for
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  coffee, like you talked about? Those hundreds of coffee cups
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  versus just they showed up at these big events. Weddings and funerals, we're
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  at that stage of life where it's starting to become more funerals than
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  weddings. But if you're not a part of my day to day, can I really
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  rely on you? Can I really trust in you? And so thinking
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  about it through that lens, you have to shift it away from
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  this is what's best for us. I am selfishly saying community work and
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  the things I do in this are going to benefit my family. They're
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  gonna benefit my community. They're gonna benefit my neighborhood.
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  But the difference would be, would I do it even if it didn't
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  today? We talk sometimes about that hundred year vision. Right? That's right. And
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  yet we live in such an instant world. We wanna see results
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  now, and we're conditioned to see results now. It reminds me of you
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  know, Zach, that we run the care portal, and it's a care sharing
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  technology that connects churches to real needs in their
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  community because this need has been made known by the the
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  community member with their social worker or you have it working at front
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  lines. And it it becomes known to the church that, hey. Can you
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  help with these these acts of kindness? Now you
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  might ask, will a pack of diapers because they
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  really have nothing and maybe a mattress to keep them off the
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  floor, are those acts of kindness actually doing any greater
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  good? Or where is the evangelism? Where is that
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  big the big goal, the fire insurance, if you will,
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  for these people that are are in crisis? When can
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  we share the real good news? And there's
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  a there's a tension there. I see the heart and the
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  the intention for the best interest of our
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  community. But if somebody simply does
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  doesn't let their left hand know what their right hand is doing and vice versa,
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  and they give that pack of diapers out of, obedience, out
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  of just kindness, out of their heart to that young
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  mom so that they can be on their way for reunification,
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  is that person simply giving clean diapers to a
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  baby to waddle into hell? Or is there a greater
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  greater story here that isn't just about fire
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  insurance, that acts of kindness that we actually don't need to know the
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  outcomes of every single person? In fact, these people that
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  we share kindness with, these small acts of kindness,
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  perhaps they have so much more intrinsic
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  value to give to us if we just sit down and listen.
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  Yes. And while I can I'll I'll challenge you on this. Even in that
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  moment, there's still a sense of what's the transactional
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  value because they're gonna provide value even though I don't recognize it. I think
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  that we need to remember this. When we come back to Jesus and
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  say, when did we see you hungry or thirsty and give you food and
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  something to drink? When did we see you with no place to stay and
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  invite you in? When did we blah blah blah. Guess what?
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  Even in those moments, the faithfulness was asked of us. The
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  question is, did we do it? Whether it was ever going to come back to
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  us or not. Because what we do to the least of these, we
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  do to God. And I think this is what's hard is
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  that, yes, absolutely, we can we have to
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  decolonize and think through the value
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  proposition of someone who is viewed in our society
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  as less than and see them as value added,
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  as imago dei, made in the image of God, beautiful
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  as they are, without us needing to fix them and sit with them and
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  say, I do believe I can learn from you. I do believe that you provide
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  value to us. And yet, to those that would
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  still feel like they're a drag on society,
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  they're not helpful, they're harming us, guess what? How
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  we treat them when they can literally give us
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  nothing is still a reflection of how we see God. And I
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  think this is what's so difficult because those are the things that are
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  every single minutia, those grains of sand that we
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  see and we're like, it doesn't matter. But it builds up,
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  and it speaks to who we are. Yeah. I I couldn't
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  agree more with that. And and the the whole idea, it's not
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  on, if I do this, they will become more productive
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  then. Or if I do this, they will get a hand up then,
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  even if that addiction cycle continues, even
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  if there are tragedies and mental health conditions
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  that land them into endings that we
• 17:24
  don't want to see, and yet we got to have at least five
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  cups of coffee within their journey, it it's because
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  people are worthy of humanity. They are humans.
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  And I think back at I I've been reading a book. I think it's called
• 17:39
  The Price of Humanity. Maybe I'll put it in the show notes. It's a it's
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  a secular humanistic book, but it's really talking about how philanthropy
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  went wrong. And it got me to think differently, which I
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  love being challenged on different thoughts out there. The piece
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  that I really picked up on, when we look back in history, when they started
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  building public libraries, Public
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  libraries was an act of philanthropy. It still is to this day. It's a
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  common place where everybody can meet. It's not on a project
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  because, oh, because you're of low economic status, you can come in here, and we're
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  gonna project you or or give you what you need. It's
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  not because you have a certain high class membership that you can
• 18:20
  everybody can take out books. Everybody can sit in those spaces.
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  And they were designed they are designed as beautiful pieces of
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  art, architecture that we can all enjoy
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  because we are all human, not on
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  the outcomes that we produce. We're not productions. We are
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  humans. This is the struggle, though. Right? It's it's in that
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  moment. I think one of my own personal
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  struggles is that I acknowledge, and and I think that
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  this is core to any of the conversations I have.
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  I haven't figured out how to do this right all the time.
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  I wrestle with, I don't have time
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  for this, or, but what's the value in
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  this? What's the what's the return on investment?
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  I wrestle with that more often than I wanna admit.
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  And so to any listener, I need you to remember this.
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  Wendy and I, Johan, we're speaking to ourselves.
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  We're challenging ourselves and reminding ourselves that this is
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  the way that God has called us to live. It's
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  not perfect. We're not done. This is just us
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  reminding ourselves as much as you that this is the path that
• 19:37
  we are called to walk. And I think that's really
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  hard because that moment where you're like,
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  hey, you are beloved. You are you are worth
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  the the death of the creator, God on the cross, period.
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  But do I have time for that cup of coffee? Do I have time to
• 19:56
  slow down? Do I have time in my life?
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  And I think as we talked about on our last time
• 20:04
  together, there is a chance to feel overwhelmed with all of the
• 20:07
  needs. And I think this is why, for
• 20:11
  me, recognizing and reminding myself that the small matters.
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  Because sometimes, even though I wanna talk about the big things, the
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  things that no one sees, the small things. You know
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  what? I can do that, and I hopefully can do that consistently.
• 20:31
  But you're right. Doing many small things and giving many
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  yeses in small ways, it's like a dripping tap.
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  And pretty soon, we're wondering, like, why are we so exhausted? Right? And
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  so we can almost make small
• 20:45
  yeses into micro events Mhmm. That
• 20:50
  we don't have to say yes to everything. And I think that's
• 20:54
  why Jesus gets away from the crowds, not because
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  of he was tired of people touching the hem of his cloak or or doing
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  miracles, but I feel like he needed to get
• 21:05
  away to get back to that bigger picture. God, center me
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  to your purposes. I wanna get away with you. I wanna remember
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  who it is that you've called me to be and and what my place in
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  this to be. Because you're so right. We can also get into the like, where
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  we have to be little Jesuses to everything, and we have
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  to be little kindness Karens. That's the wrong
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  word. But we have to do kindness to everybody and just be
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  nice, and get maybe nothing
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  done. I don't know that tension. But I think if we
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  were not looking at it as events, but as posture,
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  like breathing in the way we interact when god's
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  sentences come up in the grocery aisle or in a
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  meeting or in different encounters that we have around the
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  kitchen table with family, can we have a
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  posture of kindness? And what could that do if we
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  all assume that posture? I don't wanna get too
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  political here, but imagine if we
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  adopted small acts of kindness in a posture
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  of kindness in this day and age that we're living
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  in. I think there would be a lot of huge
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  impact globally. Agreed. And this is
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  where it becomes a a challenge
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  to say we need to change what we
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  measure. We need to change the value of those things
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  and really lean into that posture
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  mentality of this is just the way that we are called to live.
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  And if I can do that, even with a greater
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  intentionality, I found that
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  it's like a question of how do I know
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  which way to walk if I've never seen it walked this way? So
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  sometimes there is a pressure to feel like I need to model this. I
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  need to model what kindness in these small, repeatable
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  moments looks like. And that can in and of
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  itself become a pressure. But if I know that I'm not the
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  only bee, this changes everything. I'm in
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  a hive that is a part of what is supposed to be
• 23:19
  happening. And we're all in different roles, we're all in different
• 23:23
  places. It will take the pressure off of all of us, but we each have
• 23:26
  to commit to saying, this is what we're in for. We're walking out what
• 23:30
  God intended through our identity, through, this is
• 23:34
  who we are as the people of God. This is what like,
• 23:38
  it's so funny when you think about the the concepts around the early
• 23:41
  church of how they were known by their love, how they were
• 23:45
  known by the way that they postured themselves from
• 23:49
  this bottom up approach that the kingdom of God was
• 23:52
  just seen throughout the early church because
• 23:56
  of the way that they lived with all parts of their lives.
• 24:00
  And you don't see a lot of
• 24:03
  it was just too much work to be a Christian. It was like you
• 24:07
  knew that they were Christians and you wanted to be with them. You knew what
• 24:11
  it was like to be loved by them. And that
• 24:15
  posture that they provided as an example to the world
• 24:19
  changed culture. And I think that we have
• 24:23
  abandoned some of that for our moral majority kind of
• 24:27
  mindset. And if we actually do believe that we're supposed to
• 24:30
  pick up our cross and follow Jesus rather than pick up the sword and cut
• 24:34
  off the ear of of the person in front of us, I think we
• 24:38
  have we've gotta figure out who we are. Yeah. That
• 24:42
  is so good. And and I think what you're broaching on here, what I'm hearing
• 24:45
  is that kindness and our posture towards others
• 24:50
  is also intention with calling,
• 24:54
  and who we are called to be, who that early church was designed, and what
• 24:57
  is our DNA going back to our our corporate calling as
• 25:01
  as a community of believers that we are all busy bees
• 25:05
  working alongside each other. It's not just about writing the check or giving the
• 25:08
  tithes so somebody else does the work. We are all
• 25:12
  part of building that up. But then also there's
• 25:16
  personal awareness, I think, that needs to happen
• 25:20
  because if we're not self aware, if we don't understand
• 25:24
  how god is I'm not saying, like, we perfectly understand. There's no task
• 25:27
  to do that, but we can have clues
• 25:31
  as to how god has called us and how how we are wired and to
• 25:35
  lean into those things that god has created us for. It
• 25:39
  also makes it more purposeful in those small acts. Because I I think
• 25:43
  there there we can be try to be multipurpose busy
• 25:46
  bees rather than maybe directional
• 25:50
  small acts of kindness bees, if that makes sense. Or we can
• 25:53
  also be just kind in the cheap seats, but
• 25:57
  not really get in the game, not really get into the trenches
• 26:01
  that god has called you to speak before authorities or god has
• 26:05
  called you to develop this organization or god has called you to start
• 26:08
  this nonprofit or or have a soup and pie.
• 26:12
  Whatever it is that god has wired you, that it's also intention of, like, is
• 26:16
  this aligned to my calling? It doesn't mean I don't bake
• 26:20
  cookies. Well, it probably does because I don't like baking cookies. I know
• 26:23
  how, but just don't ask me to bake cookies. I'll go buy them from the
• 26:27
  store. It doesn't mean, though, that I have a objection
• 26:31
  towards kindness and and helping out where I can, but I'm gonna
• 26:35
  probably say yes to posturing my kindness into
• 26:38
  areas where I can shine the best.
• 26:42
  I don't know if that makes sense to you, but I'm just processing.
• 26:46
  No. It absolutely does. I think this is where, as a community
• 26:49
  of faith, we expect Christians to look a
• 26:53
  certain way. And I think when we we say it's like you got to be
• 26:57
  a pastor, a professional Christian, to really be serving God in that
• 27:01
  calling, we actually demean
• 27:05
  those other parts of our life. If you're an amazing
• 27:08
  baker, all the props to you. But Wendy, if that's not
• 27:12
  who you are, that's okay. And yet
• 27:16
  the question then becomes, how best do do you show that
• 27:20
  kindness? How best do you image God in the spaces and the places that
• 27:24
  you have been given opportunity in? And then
• 27:27
  exploring that and being okay with it being a
• 27:30
  journey because I think that that's the value proposition. It's not
• 27:34
  a fixed point. It's not a I've arrived. It's a posture and a journey
• 27:38
  and a path that is not always linear, and it puts us
• 27:42
  in a position of saying, hey, I see value
• 27:46
  in each of these pieces. Like, Jesus talks about this. We're a
• 27:49
  body, and if we're a body with different body parts,
• 27:54
  that's okay. Lean into that. But then lean into it not
• 27:58
  in a way that says, I don't have to care. I never have to bake
• 28:01
  cookies because I'm not a baker. That's just not my thing. That's
• 28:04
  that's harmful. That's that's selfish. That's not actually saying,
• 28:09
  I'm willing to be a blessing in the way that is needed in front of.
• 28:12
  But when I have a choice of baking or setting up
• 28:16
  chairs or whatever it might be, lean into it. And that's
• 28:19
  okay, but do it for God's glory. Do it to bring hope to this
• 28:23
  world. Do it so that those that are in front of you
• 28:27
  know that they are beloved by the creator god. And if you do that
• 28:31
  with whatever is in your hand, be the best bee you can
• 28:34
  be. Yeah. And and be the person that could take the
• 28:38
  mic, but also the next moment, clean the toilet
• 28:42
  when nobody's watching. Right? We do what we need to do, in
• 28:46
  a posture of humility and service. And I would also
• 28:49
  say, though, that as we do good in small
• 28:53
  acts of kindness, I don't know about you, but for myself, that's
• 28:57
  when I've learned about myself. I didn't know what
• 29:00
  would cause me to become alive until and I that's
• 29:04
  not why I do it, but it just something awakens or the way people respond
• 29:08
  or the way, those opportunities keep resurfacing.
• 29:12
  You don't know until you try, and sometimes we do need to have the
• 29:15
  courage to do it anyway even
• 29:19
  when we might be fearful, even when we feel insignificant, or
• 29:23
  even when we don't know if there's gonna be a good result, but
• 29:26
  we do it anyway. And then often the impossible can
• 29:30
  happen when we all have that posture.
• 29:34
  Agreed. And I think that's the beauty of this
• 29:38
  exploration because it stops it from being prescriptive. It
• 29:41
  stops me from being able to say, this is just the way it's gotta be
• 29:45
  and do it that way, and then God will be happy. It
• 29:48
  requires participation, and it requires you to say, what does it
• 29:52
  look like in my space? What does it look like in that? And
• 29:56
  being okay with the uncertainty about
• 29:59
  perfection and saying, but this is tov, this is good,
• 30:04
  this is something that I can I can walk with? Do you have
• 30:07
  any examples in Calgary or in some of your work projects that you've
• 30:11
  been doing across the country where small acts of
• 30:15
  kindness or when people all share
• 30:18
  that and embrace that posture of care and
• 30:22
  compassion where maybe larger things have
• 30:26
  resulted, a ripple effect, out of those
• 30:29
  small acts? Well, I'll be honest. A lot of
• 30:33
  those ripple effects probably haven't yet been seen. And so
• 30:37
  that's okay in some of the work I do. It is
• 30:40
  thinking longer term. It's saying, if we start this
• 30:44
  posture today, what will it look like for
• 30:48
  both this generation later on, but also potentially for other generations?
• 30:52
  One of the projects I'm really lucky to be a part of
• 30:56
  based here in in Calgary is called Planet Youth, and one of the
• 31:00
  value propositions is that it is what's called an upstream
• 31:04
  preventative approach to youth mental health and addictions.
• 31:08
  And as we sit in this space in in a couple of
• 31:11
  communities here in Calgary, One of the things that has to be
• 31:15
  really emphasized is how sometimes the slow posture
• 31:19
  of trust building has unintended and
• 31:22
  potentially far reaching impacts. I've spent the
• 31:26
  last eight months working with a group of youth
• 31:30
  where we're giving them agency in a world that has
• 31:34
  often taken that from them. We're giving them the power to make
• 31:38
  choices and make decisions about who they are and where they're going
• 31:42
  in a way that validates where they are today and not
• 31:45
  just what they could do for us later. And yet, while we're
• 31:49
  working with these 15 year olds, 18 year olds,
• 31:53
  there's also conversations with their parents, and there's conversations about
• 31:57
  their younger siblings, and there's conversations about how
• 32:00
  we create systems change in these neighborhoods
• 32:04
  that hopefully will have those long term
• 32:08
  impacts. And so watching these kids who have, for
• 32:12
  the first time ever really, felt like they could make
• 32:15
  decisions about their life and how they interact with each other
• 32:19
  over the last number of months has actually been a a really, I
• 32:23
  think, insightful thing to feel like this is what we've
• 32:26
  been working for, and we're seeing it almost a year into
• 32:30
  it. Whereas other pieces of this, I don't know if it'll take
• 32:34
  another generation to really see whether or not what we're doing today
• 32:37
  matters. But the kindness of
• 32:41
  just being human with another human, of saying, I see
• 32:44
  you. You are worth my time and my energy
• 32:49
  in these young lives is already
• 32:52
  significant. And I think that that's the kind of piece that
• 32:56
  is is really hard to, if we go back to measurables, it's hard
• 33:00
  to measure the speed of relationship. The speed of relationship
• 33:04
  as it equates to the things that we measure
• 33:09
  is really difficult. There's a phrase, what
• 33:13
  we measure matters, or what matters we
• 33:16
  measure. And so it's both reciprocal. If you are
• 33:20
  thinking about how many times you ask somebody
• 33:23
  out for coffee and you emphasize just frequency of
• 33:27
  coffees, you will possibly
• 33:30
  shorten the value of the coffee that you're present at because
• 33:34
  that's not necessarily the thing that you're measuring. You're waiting for the next
• 33:38
  coffee to happen. But if you're willing to sit back and say, how
• 33:42
  many minutes have I spent with people that aren't in my
• 33:46
  normal How many hours have I spent volunteering in
• 33:49
  different groups? How many times have I invited people over
• 33:53
  for dinner? There are different ways of measuring some of
• 33:56
  that impact, but it's a matter of saying, don't
• 34:00
  measure the wrong things. We have to value that. Right? And what I
• 34:04
  love about the example with the youth in Calgary that
• 34:08
  surely you all came together with a a compelling vision that drew
• 34:12
  you all together to to form this collective.
• 34:16
  But that in itself isn't a check mark to mark in a
• 34:19
  box. It's actually the being present along the way that is
• 34:23
  the work. Those are the ripples. And the outcome, that
• 34:27
  greater vision that might be seen in this generation or the next or
• 34:31
  the the next, that doesn't devalue the present moment.
• 34:34
  It it's being present in the moment with human to
• 34:38
  human, with each other that is the
• 34:42
  work while we might be striving for a goal greater than
• 34:45
  ourselves that we might all aspire to. And I think that's part of one of
• 34:49
  the biggest problems in the kind of work I do is that
• 34:53
  a funder wants a measurable in the short term. A
• 34:56
  funder wants the ability to say, did I give you something
• 35:00
  that you could use, or should I give it to somebody else?
• 35:04
  And when I think about Jesus and his talents, the
• 35:07
  question wasn't, did you maximize the
• 35:11
  value, but did you use what was in your hand? And I think
• 35:15
  when we sit back and actually change some of those
• 35:19
  expectations, It changes our entire
• 35:23
  interaction with each other away from that transactional state.
• 35:27
  And it's hard. The Calgary Foundation has been starting to do some
• 35:31
  pilot projects. They're looking at multi year, iterative
• 35:34
  approaches to funding. Because the bigger, longer term
• 35:38
  conversation matters more than just that six month grant timeline that
• 35:42
  they used to have. Some of their bigger grants require
• 35:46
  many years to actually see the fruits of those
• 35:49
  labors. But unless they're willing to both have a
• 35:53
  funder who's willing to support that, the groups that
• 35:57
  are looking to see this change won't ever see the change that
• 36:01
  they're looking for. And I think this is where it's really difficult
• 36:05
  to shift in a world that is looking for those
• 36:08
  metrics of success to touch the social space
• 36:12
  that we spend most of our time in. One of the things during COVID that
• 36:15
  was really difficult was that the cost of health care, the cost of
• 36:19
  impact to our world was actually being burdened by a
• 36:23
  large portion of us because of our inconveniences.
• 36:27
  And yet for a lot of the individuals that were
• 36:31
  healthy and young, they felt like this wasn't worth their time.
• 36:34
  And yet, when we sat back and looked at the cost of health
• 36:38
  care for the most vulnerable, it felt like they
• 36:42
  were saying something that, that came out of Charles Dickens'
• 36:46
  A Christmas Carol. Are there no poorhouses? Are there
• 36:49
  no asylums? Can they not
• 36:52
  just find a place? Well, if
• 36:56
  not, then perhaps they should just die and decrease the surplus
• 37:00
  population. And that sense of, no one would say
• 37:03
  that. How dare Scrooge or any other
• 37:07
  human say that they devalued human life? But by our
• 37:11
  actions, often, we do say
• 37:14
  those that are of the most vulnerable don't
• 37:18
  create value enough for the now and for the
• 37:21
  future. And so when I think about some of the people in
• 37:25
  the works I've been a part of my entire life,
• 37:29
  to actually have a economic justification
• 37:33
  for helping and supporting people, it's
• 37:37
  hard. But then the question becomes, is
• 37:41
  it worth it? In in a case where you're talking about in the
• 37:45
  in Planet Youth, this is a five year,
• 37:49
  dollars twenty five million initiative. So
• 37:53
  for the philanthropists who put money into this project, is it
• 37:57
  worth it? That's the question that they're asking.
• 38:01
  How do I show kindness every day and
• 38:04
  quantify that and show the value to a funder
• 38:08
  that says, no, they shouldn't just
• 38:12
  die and decrease the surplus population. These people are
• 38:16
  humans. They are made in the image of God. They are worth my time.
• 38:19
  And like you said before, regardless of whether or not they ever change and
• 38:23
  become a valuable member of society as
• 38:27
  far as the way that we measure it today. They are worth my time, and
• 38:31
  they are worth both the sacrifice of God through the death of
• 38:35
  Jesus, but also just through our lives, through our time. And
• 38:39
  if that's how we view the world, if that's how we shift this, this, then
• 38:42
  the kindness I show every day, that's using the
• 38:46
  talent that I have in my hand. That's investing it
• 38:50
  even if it's not for something that I can quantify easily here on
• 38:53
  Earth. Well, Zach, there's so much more that we can unpack, and I wanna
• 38:57
  encourage our listeners to follow-up next Friday where Yohan and I are
• 39:01
  gonna have second thoughts on this. There's so many,
• 39:04
  strings to pull on on what you have shared with us today. Thank you
• 39:08
  so much. Talking about the ripple effects, small acts
• 39:12
  that create big impact. Before we go, Zach, do you have one
• 39:15
  listener challenge that we can all put into practice this next
• 39:19
  week? I think I can. So here's my
• 39:22
  challenge to you, the listener. This week, intentionally reconnect
• 39:26
  with a neighbor or acquaintance. Send them a thoughtful message, meet
• 39:30
  them for coffee, or check-in with them personally. Pay attention to someone who
• 39:34
  might feel overlooked or different from you, and just show them
• 39:38
  that they are seen. That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Zach.
• 39:42
  But before we let you go, we're gonna keep you on for our
• 39:46
  Care lingo. Alright. So this is our Care lingo
• 39:50
  segment where we take the mystery out of
• 39:53
  these care words and phrases that you hear in the caring space,
• 39:57
  social services space, trauma space, whatever space that you find Care
• 40:01
  Impact in, that's that's where you'll find the CareLingo words.
• 40:05
  And today's word or phrase, I I think it's a phrase today,
• 40:09
  is holding space. Holding space.
• 40:13
  Now when I first heard this term, I thought about, you know,
• 40:17
  when you send your most brave child out of your vehicle
• 40:20
  into the cold to find that parking spot that's
• 40:24
  close to the to the doors of the of the
• 40:28
  shopping mart. Right? They're gonna stand in that parking spot. They're gonna be brave.
• 40:32
  They're gonna put their hands to anybody trying to take that spot, and they're
• 40:35
  gonna hold that space for you so that you can get that parking
• 40:39
  spot while you circle around making sure that you get there.
• 40:46
  That's probably not the real definition. I don't know. Zach, have you ever done that?
• 40:49
  You got little kids, but, Wendy, you probably do it. I've never. I
• 40:53
  just pray and the angel opens a a spot for me. Think I've ever even
• 40:57
  thought to do that. What is wrong with you? Oh, you send your wife. Is
• 41:00
  that it? Woah. Woah.
• 41:04
  Well, you know what? I I love your definition, but I was thinking
• 41:08
  of God, of course. That's the right answer, Jesus.
• 41:12
  But he holds the whole world in his hands, you know, and
• 41:16
  so the whole universe, he's holding space. So
• 41:20
  when we see NASA out there at the space station, God's
• 41:23
  holding space. People might think we're crazy. Like, how
• 41:27
  do you hold something that's I mean, I guess there's air molecules in there, but,
• 41:31
  you know, holding space, it feels kinda like an oxymoron.
• 41:35
  Right? It does. And I think that this is the hard part for
• 41:38
  people trying to step into this world. It's like, how am I supposed
• 41:42
  to hold space? Well, holding space means
• 41:46
  crafting a safe and nonjudgmental environment where someone can
• 41:49
  express their experiences, emotions, and needs
• 41:53
  openly and authentically without feeling rushed, fixed,
• 41:57
  or minimized. Thank you for finding the
• 42:00
  correct definition for us, sir Zach. I will try not to send my
• 42:04
  children out in the cold. In fact, I don't you know what? It's my wife
• 42:08
  that makes me park close to the doors. I don't care where I park. I
• 42:10
  can go to the back of the lot. I'm good. And she always
• 42:14
  wonders, why are you parking back here? I see a spot way up there, and
• 42:17
  then, you know, I circle around, and sure enough, that spot's gone. You gotta
• 42:21
  do the Costco lurking, man. You just gotta lurk. Yeah. Costco.
• 42:25
  That's the worst. There's bigger space at the back. Right? So you're holding
• 42:28
  bigger space for people in in the back of the parking
• 42:32
  lot. Anyway, there's many ways to hold space, and there's one
• 42:36
  correct way. And thank you, Zach, for bringing that to light.
• 42:40
  Listeners, if you wanna get in on this Care Lingo segment, if you got some
• 42:43
  thoughts on holding space or any other future words that you wanna
• 42:47
  hear on the podcast, head over to our Facebook Care Impact
• 42:51
  podcast group. We got some postings there, and you can post
• 42:54
  whatever you want as well. Until next time, remember
• 42:58
  to stay curious. Looking forward to dissecting this
• 43:02
  conversation next Friday. Thank you for joining us on Journey with
• 43:06
  Care. To get more information on weekly episodes, upcoming
• 43:09
  opportunities, or to connect with our community, visit
• 43:12
  journeywithcare.ca, or find Care Impact on Facebook and
• 43:16
  Instagram. Or just check the show notes for these links and and all the
• 43:20
  links related to this episode. Share your thoughts, leave us a
• 43:23
  message, and be part of a network of individuals journeying in faith and
• 43:27
  purpose. Together, let's discover how we can make a meaningful
• 43:30
  impact.