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Brian Rubin

Brian Rubin is an alumni of the Bridge Alliance Leaders Mastermind Cohort. He is Founder and Principal of Bstory, an initiative that uses the power of collective story to breathe new life into our civic and moral imaginations. He lives in Bowie, Maryland with his wife and two sons.
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    Civic Soul

    The walls that divide us must be knocked down

    Brian Rubin
    https://twitter.com/bchrisrubin
    January 05, 2022
    breaking down walls
    Pict Rider/Getty Images

    Rubin is an alumnus of the Bridge Alliance Leaders Mastermind Cohort. He is founder and principal of Bstory, an initiative that uses the power of collective story to breathe new life into our civic and moral imaginations.

    I am sitting here in the quiet of what writer Helena Fitzgerald called “Dead Week“ — the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve — when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real. She states, ”To some degree, I think all of society feels a little aimless during these few days.”

    In some ways, this describes what many of our lives have felt like during the pandemic. There is a part of me that wants to reflect and think about what it means to build a post-pandemic world, but what sense does it make to design the future in an unpredictable world? I say this as one who is inspired by the future and what could be, but quietly wonders what good it does to dream of a new world when there are no signs of the pandemic ending any time soon. Being stuck halfway between possibility and fulfillment often produces a peculiar mood.

    Perhaps this was what one of my intellectual and spiritual heroes, Howard Thurman, was grasping for when he penned “The Luminous Darkness.” Thurman published the book in 1965, the same year Congress passed the historic Voting Rights Acts. He describes this brief book as an analysis of the anatomy of segregation and the ground of hope.

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    As he muses and reflects on the space between legal segregation and the hope for better days through the legal advances, Thurman admonishes us that “The walls that divide must be demolished … cast down, destroyed, uprooted.”

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    bridging divides

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    Leveraging big ideas

    Civility won't save our souls

    Brian Rubin
    https://twitter.com/bchrisrubin
    October 20, 2021
    Thought bubbles in disagreeent
    Fanatic Studio/Gary Waters/Science Photo Library/Getty Images
    Rubin is an alumnus of the Bridge Alliance Leaders Mastermind Cohort. He is founder and principal of Bstory, an initiative that uses the power of collective story to breathe new life into our civic and moral imaginations.
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