Happy Holidays.

Every year around this time, there’s a certain level of fuss about that phrase. “It’s the Christmas season, dammit!” goes the line of thought. “Jesus is the reason for the season! Why can’t we just say Merry Christmas?” Happy Holidays, to people who argue this way, is too vapid, too “politically correct,” to describe what December is really about.

I’ll admit that Happy Holidays is kind of vapid. Because of my faith tradition, Christmas is a treasured holy day for me. At church on Christmas Eve, I will be delighted to wish my fellow parishioners Merry Christmas.

Outside of church, though, it’s a different story. The U.S., where I live, is not predominantly Christian as it once was—not by a long shot. Millions of people here are Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, followers of no faith tradition, you name it. And often (as with Hanukkah) their holidays and festivals take place in December as well.

So when I encounter people at the store, or on the street, and I don’t know their faith orientation, Happy Holidays seems the best way to greet them with good cheer while respecting their beliefs about life. If I’m addressing a group—either physically present or virtually, as on Facebook—it’s usually a safe bet that someone in the group doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Happy Holidays is a way of showing respect to those people too.

This is a basic principle for dialogue. Without a perception of respect from their dialogue partner, few people would willingly share their convictions in dialogue. That showing of respect creates a welcoming place in which people feel free to express themselves without fear of recrimination.

So…to my Jewish friends, Happy Hanukkah. To my Christian friends, Merry Christmas. To all my friends, Happy Holidays.

Partly because of this event, LGBT people and issues have been dear to my heart ever since.  Perhaps this was God’s way of preparing me to become an Episcopalian—a Christian denomination riven by hostility over LGBT issues. Perhaps it was God’s sense of humor that placed me in my specific corner of The Episcopal Church: a liberal (i.e., welcoming-to-LGBT-people) church in a conservative diocese in a liberal national church in a conservative worldwide church.

But wait, there’s more. Once a year, I serve as a representative from our church to the diocese’s convention—which makes me a quasi-liberal surrounded by ardent conservatives.

This is a tense and painful place to live. To be sure, I am one of many comrades in this place: a sort of no-man’s-land in the culture wars. But we are outnumbered—and surely outshouted—by those on either side.

So why would anyone in his right mind continue to live there?

Here’s why I do: Because I will not abandon my LGBT sisters and brothers to a theology I find deeply flawed. Because I believe that my conservative sisters and brothers have great gifts to contribute to the world at large. Because I believe that dialogue has power. Because God calls me to peace and compassion, not to anger and the severing of relationships.

This is why I am deeply honored to have been invited to a most exceptional dialogue. Evangelicals for Social Action has asked a dozen pastors, therapists, scholars, students, writers, and “other struggling saints”—gay, straight, liberal, conservative, what have you—to a two-day conversation about LGBT issues. We will convene in November to get to know one another, share our stories, explore our perspectives, and generally live side by side for a short while.

The dialogue will not be easy. But the very fact of it thrills me. And if the emails we’ve exchanged so far are any indication, this could be something special. No one has brought up the “clobber passages” in the Bible. No one has debated genetics or biblical literalism. Instead, we’ve explored deeper issues of sexuality and gender and personal stories. Some of the participants, at least, are well versed in bridging divides. They bring rich and eye-opening experiences to the table.

If you are the sort to pray, please pray for this gathering. If not, please think of us in November. We may not change the world. But perhaps God will make us a tipping point for reconciliation—or at least one tiny example of living in peace and compassion despite our differences.

Over the past few years, the show’s organizers have done an outstanding job in making the show bigger, better, and friendlier to exhibitors. I have been continually impressed with their energy and good cheer. They needed all of it and more for this year’s show—because the usual location was smack in the middle of flood-ravaged upstate New York.

Not to be deterred, the organizers found an alternate location: same town, but now a hotel high on a hill. Still, there were many questions in the air, and on Facebook things were getting testy. Some exhibitors started to question the wisdom of moving forward with the show. (I was worried about it myself.) Others jumped in to disparage the questioning—and the questioners. Virtual voices were raised. People ascribed ulterior motives to those on the “other side” of the debate. I’m sure some relationships were damaged in the result.

I think that conversation could have gone differently. I wish I had acted differently.

For one thing, I wish the organizers had communicated specific answers to our questions. I believe that in many cases, people act from reasonable motives and assessments, so when I hear their reasons I can often go along with their decision. Even if I disagree with it, I at least understand and appreciate their logic. So perhaps more specifics from the organizers could have defused the Facebook kerfuffle and got us all pulling in the same direction.

But, of course, the organizers are not mind readers. They can’t anticipate every concern. So my part in the general conversation (the part I wish I had played differently, and the part any exhibitor could have played) was to ask the questions. Not inflammatory questions like “How can you possibly have the gall to hold a show when people are suffering?” or “Why are you putting our animals at risk?” but specific questions like “What do you know about conditions that we don’t know? Where can I get information about the roads? How wet is the hill where the outside portion of show is taking place? What can the hotel people tell us? What does the federal disaster area declaration mean for us?”

In a nutshell, here’s what I’ve learned: If you have information, share it. If you should have information (as an event planner, a leader, etc.), go get it and then share it. If you’re not privy to information, ask good questions. Whoever you are, assume good intent on the part of others until proven otherwise.

I think this goes for dialogue in general. Do you really know what the “other side” thinks about the issue at hand? If not, what questions can you ask that will help you understand their thinking? What can you share about your perspective that will help them understand you? Is someone in the dialogue missing key information or access to a respected source that could clear up misunderstanding?

Question for the day: Have you ever been in a dispute where one missing piece of information resolved the whole thing—or at least made it easier to understand where everyone was coming from? Please share your story here.

To my left, two young women talked animatedly about dress styles. To my right, a boy of around six jabbered to his father about the baseball game they might take in later, as Dad listened with obvious patience, attention, and love.

It felt so blessedly ordinary. People—just people—talking and listening and paying attention and, by doing so, affirming each other.

This feels like something very fundamental to the human spirit. Part of us is hard-wired to be social: to talk and listen and pay attention—in other words, to use the basic abilities that are also the ingredients of dialogue.

I wonder if we can tap into this “ordinary” part of us in extraordinary circumstances, when dialogue is of the utmost importance.

Perhaps this is why some longtime public servants fondly recall the days when they’d fight like mad on the Senate floor and then head out to the local pub with their adversaries. It’s probably (as mentioned in last week’s post) what former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in her days as an Arizona legislator, had in mind when inviting the warring sides of an issue to her house for Mexican food and beer and chat. It’s hard not to relax one’s iron grip on contentious issues in such a relaxed environment. As they prattled and swapped stories and talked about nothing much, I imagine, they stopped being “politicians” and started being people—just people. They tapped into that “ordinary” vein. They allowed their humanness to come out.

And they saw the humanness in one another.

I would submit that it’s harder to mount a savage attack on your adversary once you’ve seen her human side. So these opportunities to be “ordinary” open a door, if even only a crack at first, to talk and listen.

What might have happened if, a week ago, President Obama and Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Cantor and others had pushed away from the debt negotiation table, changed into polo shirts and khakis, and took in a Nationals game? What if they’d shared some nachos and bought a few beers and yakked about anything but the debt? Would it have eased the negotiations, fostered more respect, led to a better, and better thought out, solution?

I think this sounds more naïve than it actually is. Why do you think parents give warring toddlers a timeout, if not (in part) to help them take a breather and regain their center? Who’s to say it can’t work with adults?

Considering what doesn’t work in Washington—and the fajitas and beer that have worked in the past—why not give it a try?

1. Set aside your preconceptions—however temporarily. By doing so, we can transcend our own filters (through which we see the world), clearing our minds and hearts to listen more fully to other perspectives. Had Republican congressional leaders done so, they might have at least heard the views of some distinguished economists that tax increases should form a part of any long-term effort to address the debt. Instead, the leaders have refused to even consider the notion of raising taxes, dismissing any explorations to the contrary and thereby restricting the potential of the dialogue to reach the best solutions.
2. Do not repeat sound bites ad nauseam to address complex issues. The very structure of our news media—fast, brief, pithy, designed for today’s shorter attention spans—puts leaders under tremendous pressure to communicate in sound bites. But while sound bites might illumine an isolated aspect of an issue, there is no way they can communicate the full complexity of something like the national debt. Moreover, when we hear the same sound bites over and over, we begin to assume they are the only way to think about an issue. To borrow a business cliché, these terms set the “box”—and make it more difficult to think outside it. That goes for the people using the sound bites as well as those who hear them. So we need to retire phrases like “job-killing tax hikes” and “balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class.”
3. Treat the issue with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. When ice-in-the-veins economists start using words like catastrophic and very significant, one would do well to approach the issue with instant and extreme seriousness. Add in the constraint of a time limit, and there is precious little room for wasted effort. Yet our leaders continue to talk past one another and not with one another. Other dialogues in other settings—a mutual sharing of views in an interfaith forum, say—can take their time to evolve and explore and meander as necessary. Not so here.
4. Use anger carefully. Part of being human is that we come with the full range of human emotions as standard equipment. Communication tends to work far better in a spirit of calm and open-heartedness, but sometimes (see above) open hearts and minds are in scarce supply, and intransigence rules. In such cases, a judicious expression of heartily felt anger might be just the thing, on the chance that it could wake people up and reset their orientation toward resolving the issue at hand. That’s why I have no beef with the president’s alleged sharp words to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

I’ll bet you’ve drawn your own lessons from this affair. What have you learned? Do share. And to any congressional leaders who might be reading this: Please. Do the right thing. The debt is serious business; give us serious solutions.

“You are absolutely entitled to your belief.”

“Everyone is free to believe what they want.”

“You’ve got your opinion, I’ve got mine.”

My first thought: of course. Why would anyone—at least in liberal Western democracies—think differently? But if it’s so obvious, why are so many people saying it so often?

I’m wondering if, in part, it’s a defense mechanism: a subtle way of cutting off an emerging dialogue or debate before it gets too uncomfortable. “I can’t see how you believe that, but you know what? This is a free country. You’re entitled to your opinion, and I’m entitled to mine.”

That example—essentially, “agreeing to disagree”—worries me. It always sounds so good: by agreeing to disagree, we pledge to respect each other’s opinions and move on. We restore harmony and concord. But all too often, “agreeing to disagree” turns into a tacit agreement never to speak of the issue again. That cuts us off, not only from dialogue that might help us better engage the issue (and the “other side”), but also from a part of the other person. It prevents us from growing in our perspectives.

Certainly there are times when cutting off discussion is the best move: to calm uncontrolled tempers, for instance, or to gather more information, or to take a break from sensory overload. But I think we tend to cut off way too soon. We avoid getting hurt, but we cheat ourselves out of growth too.

What would happen if we hung in there? We might discover entirely new ways to think about an issue. We might see that our perspective is one among many—no more, no less—and that continued dialogue might help us uncover more of the whole picture. We might connect with people we never thought we’d connect with. We might build our relationships, broaden our worldview, even increase our curiosity and thirst for wisdom.

Yes, we might also get hurt. People sometimes play rough out there. So all these benefits come with a cost. Can we afford it?

I think it’s easier to afford if we draw our essential strength from somewhere else. That’s why I believe spirituality holds so much potential for dialogue: as we proceed from a core of strength at the essence of our souls, our sacred cows—or, more specifically, our defense of them—becomes less important. That empowers us to be flexible, to give and take, to listen to the other with attention and vulnerability. We dialogue out of strength, so the hurt—painful though it might be—holds less power to destroy us.

So maybe we seek out that strength. Maybe we push ourselves one more click before resorting to “you’re entitled to your own opinion.” Maybe we get to taste more of the power of dialogue to enrich our lives.

Because close relationships were involved, emotions ran high, and meetings became contentious.  At one point, we turned to euphemisms—divide, bud, grow—to soften the discussion. That was just too much for one of our most passionate and funniest members, so in the middle of one meeting he started in on a rant. He had had it with the euphemisms and the pleasantries and the dancing around the issue, he said, “and all because we’re afraid to utter that one four-letter word—split!”

The entire room dissolved into laughter. You could feel everyone breathe a little deeper. For a while, at least, the tension was gone, and we could talk with one another again.

Dialogues can get very serious and very intense. They involve sustained concentration, reflection, and listening, all of which require considerable work. Occasionally, therefore, we need a reminder that (in nearly all cases) the fate of the world does not depend on our getting this dialogue, in this place, at this time, absolutely correct. On these occasions, humor is nothing less than a gift from the Divine.

As I wrote in a poem many years ago, “Our work is serious; don’t take it seriously.” If we can hold that paradox in mind when pursuing our dialogue—and laugh a little along the way—we can be freer to make mistakes, stumble over words, explore trains of thought that go nowhere. Ironically, that freedom may help the dialogue flow more freely.

It also reminds us of something fundamental. By lightening up, we give ourselves permission to be who we are: human. And our common humanity may bind us together more than anything we can say.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in an otherwise serious conversation? Let us in on the joke. Hey, it’s Friday; we could all use a good laugh!

Our ironic postmodern culture is very good at dismissive. We’re always scoping out the credentials behind the statement—and the hidden agenda behind the credentials. “Why should I listen to you? You’re a [liberal/atheist/fundamentalist/Wall Street trader/Tea Partier/socialist/wingnut].”

But is there something to the question? Why should I listen to you (or read your book, or visit your blog, etc.)? Is it legitimate to pay more attention to one person’s opinions than another’s?

Sure it is. But we can take it too far.

First, a review of the reasons why some opinions are more equal than others:

• Expertise. If I can’t grasp the potential hazards of offshore oil drilling, I’ll give more credence to a mechanical engineer than to a U.S. senator or my Green Party friend who doesn’t understand the technical side.
• Vested interests. Yes, agendas do play a role. If that mechanical engineer depends on ExxonMobil for her livelihood, I’ll take that into account when weighing her words.
• Track record. Over the years I have found David Brooks and Thomas Friedman to be thoughtful, incisive analysts who approach each new issue free of rigid party-line bias. So when they write about the next big issue I’m more inclined to trust them.
• Time. I haven’t read any books by Richard Dawkins, the prominent thinker who often writes against the concepts of God and religion. I might gain a lot by reading Dawkins, and I’d certainly sit down with his articles or blog. But I only have so much time—and given what I know, I’ve decided that reading an entire book like his God Delusion is not the best use of it.

So. All we do is use this set of filters to decide whom to hear and whom to dismiss, right?

Not so fast. There’s an important distinction to be made here.  We can certainly dismiss ideas. We should never dismiss people.

Two reasons why. First, people are always surprising us. Perhaps my Green Party friend has done extensive research on drilling technology. Maybe Richard Dawkins has a message I need to consider. If we dismiss these folks entirely from our consciousness, we cut ourselves off from any opportunity to hear a perspective that could broaden our own. Those opportunities—and the wisdom they may engender—are too valuable to pass up.

The second reason has to do with intrinsic human worth. Nearly all faith traditions (not to mention other worldviews) find inestimable value in human beings. By paying attention to people, we affirm that value. We honor the person behind the opinion. And we fulfill the imperative toward compassion that springs from the heart of the Divine.

What about you? To whom do you pay attention? Are there some people whose opinions you can barely tolerate? How do you deal with that?

Values do not admit compromise; politics, which is the prudent application of values in pursuit of the common good, requires compromise.

Some of what we’re experiencing today as bitter political rhetoric may reflect the leaching of the values debate into the generality of our political life.

The problem with politics in which every question and situation is framed as a matter of fundamental values is that it makes compromise impossible. There simply isn’t any way to meet the other side even halfway without, in some fashion, ceasing to be yourself.

Rutten may well be right about the current interplay of discourse and values in contemporary America. But unlike him, I don’t think it has to be this way—especially if we come to the belief that we are not our values.

Here’s why that matters. I have often said that authentic dialogue calls us to set aside (however temporarily) our preconceptions, including our values, in order to listen with full attention and an open heart. That’s too much to ask if our values define us.

But what if our essence is deeper than that? Many faith traditions point to something deeper: the soul, the life force, the divine spark. If we identify with this essence, we can relax our death-grip on the other things we often use to define ourselves: status, wealth, and position in society, but also our proclivities, perspectives, and yes, values. That “relaxed grip” empowers us to set aside most everything to engage in dialogue—without “ceasing to be ourselves.”

This doesn’t mean values are irrelevant to dialogue. Indeed, they help us weigh what we have heard after we have heard it: what it might mean for us and our understanding of the world. But by not leading with our values—by not declaring certain things “off limits” or automatically filtering the other’s perspective through our own—we free ourselves to listen deeply. Deep listening builds trust, and trust is essential for making dialogue, and collaboration, work.

So we can hold values and still reach across divides. Good thing, too. How can we even hope for a civil society otherwise?

Like every national tragedy, the horrific shootings in Arizona last weekend have led to instant analysis of the broader picture—especially what this says about us, our laws, and the remedies required. A groundswell of voices is calling for dialogue, for reaching across divides, for “disagreeing without being disagreeable.” More stridently, pundits like Gary Hart have explicitly blamed our toxic public discourse for Jared Loughner’s actions.

Naturally, as someone who cares deeply about dialogue, I would join that groundswell in a heartbeat. Right?

Would that I could.

Look, I am always delighted to see civil, compassionate dialogue get the support it deserves. I think the president hit the right note in his Tucson speech: this tragedy can serve as a catalyst to re-examine our actions and behave more civilly. But precisely because I care about dialogue, I don’t want to connect it causally to the horror in Arizona. Not yet, anyway.

Why not? First consider the evidence—or, more to the point, the lack thereof. We still know precious little about Loughner. What we do know points to serious mental imbalance at the root of his actions. Almost nothing connects him directly with our scorched-earth public discourse. Any connection we make, therefore, is tenuous at best, at least right now, until more evidence comes in.

Consider too our emotional state. Simply put, we are a nation in shock. If you have ever experienced shock, you know it is impossible to think straight. Same deal here.

Authentic dialogue is about clarity, a quest to uncover truth wherever possible, a “listening together” to grasp what the situation is saying to us. By its very nature, this kind of dialogue—whether among friends, between partisans, or across the blogosphere—takes time: time to reflect, time to build on one another’s perspectives, time for new facts to emerge.

Yes, we do need to restore civil dialogue to our public square. The effort to foster it should proceed regardless of any connection with the Arizona shootings. In the weeks and months to come, there will be plenty of opportunity to reflect on that connection. But now is not the time. Better to grieve now and reason together later.