The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘Episcopal Church’

Can you start a dialogue just by showing up?

Miki Kashtan’s friend did. At a conference on reconciliation, this friend realized with despair that there was no exploration of gay issues on the agenda. On the third day of the conference, after praying and wrestling with the omission, she stepped to the microphone, announced to a conservative audience that she was gay, and simply made herself available. And people started coming. She didn’t try to change their mind; she just listened. (Miki puts this much more eloquently than I ever could; you’ve got to read the post.)

In short, Miki’s friend was present, in her attendance and her few words.

This past weekend, I attended the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany. Before us was a contentious resolution that touched tangentially on GLBT issues: the endorsement of a formal covenant for the worldwide Anglican Communion. For several weeks I had studied the issue, solicited opinions, reflected, and prayed; from that work emerged a position that could respect the covenant’s supporters while saying no to the covenant itself. On Saturday, I articulated these thoughts in 90 seconds from the floor of the convention.

In short, I was present, in my attendance and my few words.

And people started coming. One first-time delegate, who had no idea how conservative the diocesan leadership was, expressed relief at finding a kindred spirit. The head of a progressive organization in the diocese thanked me for speaking up. Yet so did the diocese’s conservative firebrand, who generally brooks no nonsense from “liberals.”

Experiences like these leave me with so much hope…and a few lessons. One involves the timeframe of dialogue. I have no illusions that one 90-second speech—or a boatload of 90-second speeches—will change the basic mindset of 400 convention delegates. Neither will they inspire all of us to listen respectfully and dialogue civilly all the time.

But each time we do something like this, we give people a glimpse of the flesh-and-blood on the “other side.” We reveal that we’re human, use logic, and come to our positions in good faith. Then, the next time we do it, our listeners might be a bit more accepting of us, a bit more willing to listen, whether they agree or not.

The other lesson is like unto it. It’s easy to think of dialogue as this intense, formal, sustained effort, with facilitators and flip charts and study circles and such. Those efforts are worthy of applause. But right in the midst of our daily lives, we can move dialogue in seemingly tiny ways, like presenting oneself at a convention.

When we do, people will come.

Have you ever started a dialogue just by showing up? Did simply expressing who you are draw people to you? What happened?  Please share your experiences by clicking on the Comments line below.

Two weeks ago, our church held a Quiet Day—a day of silence, reflection, and mini-sermons in preparation for Holy Week. On the schedule was a silent Mass, which replaces the verbose (and beautiful) Episcopal liturgy with simple movements and gestures. In keeping with that, the facilitator’s first talk dealt with words: how they feed us, how they get in the way.

His ideas opened some new insights during our first period of silence. Two basic categories of words emerged in my mind: words that clutter and words that penetrate.

We’re all familiar with the first kind. These words fill our world: they entertain us, they convey our culture, they help us get by, but—like the mediocre actor whose presence remains onstage as we sit passively in the audience—they do nothing to connect with us or feed our souls. They inhabit our TV programs and our ads, our celebrity gossip magazines, the sound bites of our pundits and the posturing of our elected officials. They just keep coming at us.

The second kind leaps off the stage and approaches us face to face. They are well-chosen words, uttered with thought and reflection. They include the maxims and truths that cut right to our hearts and reveal a slice of truth. When I think of this category, my favorite words from St. Thérèse of Lisieux come to mind: “Jesus does not demand great things of us, but only surrender and gratitude.” They are the words we live by. They transform us.

This second kind is what we need in dialogue. The words that shed new light on old wounds and culture wars. The words that help us connect with people we may have considered our enemies.

But the more I reflected on all these words, the more it dawned on me that they’re not enough. Silence has a role to play, and it is indispensable. To understand why, realize that the cluttering words have done their work: they form a web of chatter that—together with the kids’ schedules and the work deadlines and whatever else—fills our mind. The sheer volume of words seems like wallpaper: adding texture to the background, but undifferentiated one from another. The truly important gets lost in the shuffle.

By enshrouding our dialogues with silence, we clear out all that mental clutter. As a result, each word from our dialogue partner comes through more clearly. We’re better able to consider it undisturbed by our automatic responses and preconceived biases. And when we let silence intersperse itself throughout our dialogue, it gives us time and space to more fully weigh each word, whether it might have merit, and how it might affect our own thinking.

Silence and penetrating words don’t come naturally in our culture. It requires deliberate effort to foster them, bring them to fruition in our lives, and let them transform our dialogues. But they are like any practice: the more you practice it, the better you get—and, even better, the more you come to cherish it. It’s a big step toward becoming a person of dialogue.

P.S.: One place to see this dynamic in action is the Clearness Committee. We’ll look at this in a future post.