The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘spirituality’

Previously on The Dialogue Venture, we looked at one of the world’s most misunderstood virtues—humility—and how it holds the key to dialogue. In the process, I boiled down humility to two basic claims about the self: 

1. I’m only one person.
2. I am one person.

The first helps us see our perspective as one among billions and, therefore, acknowledge that others’ ideas might hold as much truth as our own. The second reveals the utter uniqueness of our own beliefs, values, and perspectives—and how, rightly used, they could create more robust solutions for the issues that face us today.

Nice theory, right? OK, let’s see how it plays out in the real world.

I knew next to nothing about healthcare in 2008, when the latest hue and cry for reform began to take shape. A single-payer plan made a great deal of sense to me at first. But as “only one person”—and an ill-informed one at that—I could see how limited my perspective was.

So I sought out other voices. Republicans spoke of tort reform to reduce exaggerated malpractice suits, interstate commerce between insurers to boost competition and lower costs, triggers to the public option. Democrats talked about requiring health insurers to cover people regardless of pre-existing conditions or catastrophic illness. As I listened, something dawned on me: all these ideas had merit.

I hadn’t heard anyone say that.

And that illustrates the contribution of “I am one person” to dialogue. I don’t know the technical ins and outs of the healthcare system, but I do have an unusual ability to consider both/and solutions. In a world where either/or is the dominant paradigm, that’s a valuable gift.

So in a grand dialogue on healthcare, or any issue, even non-experts like me have a role to play. The more people we bring to the table, the more gifts and perspectives we have at our disposal, and more thoughtful the solutions that arise.

This also makes humility an essential component of social change. What if a robust policy framework arises from our grand dialogue? As “only one person,” I look at the power of the Congress, the complexity of the bureaucracy, the staggering challenge of swaying public opinion, and I despair. But, in “I am one person” mode, I look at my gifts and realize I can write. So I write op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, and missives to individual legislators. At the same time, I see that I need others with expertise in recruiting volunteers, drafting legislation, and lobbying elected officials—so I join with them to wield exponentially more clout than I could by myself.

In other words, humility opens us to power of we.  

Humility calls us to hear everyone. Humility calls us to contribute what we have while realizing its limitations. Humility draws us together to think and act with power. Imagine what might happen if everyone cultivated that kind of humility within themselves.

Humble. Humbled. Humility. The words don’t even sound pretty. They’ve come to denote some very unpleasant feelings.

I am convinced that they hold the key to dialogue.

Few words generate greater misunderstanding than humility. In the minds of many, it signifies humiliation, self-denigration, low self-esteem. Even the dictionary enshrines such definitions: Google humble and definition and see what you get. Eating humble pie is something no one wants to do. Being of humble means is something no one wants to be.

But there’s a better way to think about humility, and it can release all kinds of potential within us. Rightly understood, humility is complete clarity about our individual selves and our place in the universe. As the Holy Cross Associates’ Rule puts it, “Humility is not self-denigration; it is honest appraisal. We have gifts and deficiencies, as does everyone else.”

So what does this have to do with dialogue? To find the answer, let’s think about “our individual selves and our place in the universe.” I reduce this to two basic claims: 

1. I’m only one person.
2. I am one person.

Take the first claim. I am only one person among billions. My perspective, therefore, is one among billions: I see only a small sliver of reality as it is. It stands to reason, then, that others’ perspectives on reality might hold as much truth as my own. If I am curious about the cosmos, I want to hear these perspectives. If I care about the monumental challenges of our age—challenges far, far beyond my reach to solve—I want to hear the ideas and solutions of others. Our collective wisdom is our best chance to see all sides of each challenge and, perhaps, arrive at effective solutions.

Now for the second claim. If my perspective is one among billions, it’s also the only one of its kind. I don’t know whether it might hold the key to solving a problem, or blessing another person, or stimulating a discussion that needs to happen. So it’s important that I share it—tempered with the realization of its place as one perspective.

By cultivating this type of humility, we see what we know—and how much we don’t. We can appreciate just how unfathomable a mystery the universe, and the Divine, truly are. With those realizations, we see the value of sharing and listening.

In other words, the value of dialogue.

This is dense stuff. So an example or two is well worth exploring. Let’s look at one next week.

The next post for this blog is all ready to go. It deals with dialogue and airport security. I’m very interested in getting your thoughts on it.

But I can’t bring myself to post it. Not this week.

The complete devastation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, overshadows everything else for the time being. Our divisive issues melt away, at least for a while, in the face of such suffering. While our daily work is certainly important, calamities like this remind me, at least, that it’s just one part of the human endeavor.

At times like this, other parts of the human endeavor take precedence.

There will be plenty of time for dialogue on Haiti, especially in addressing governance, susceptibility to natural disasters, and the grinding poverty that plagues so many Haitians. Now is not that time.

If you are a person of faith, I invite you to pray, or meditate, or light a candle—whatever your tradition calls you to do—for the people of Haiti. My prayers for them inevitably start and end with silence, because words fail me. But God hears silence too. 

Just as important, please give whatever you can to the relief effort. www.redcross.org is a great place to start. 

We’ll talk more next week.

Fluff the pillows, vacuum the rugs, and get your questions ready. We’re going to have a guest.

In thinking about the dynamics of dialogue, I’ve become intrigued by evangelism and the tension it introduces between Christianity and the rest of the world. Many Christians view telling others about Christ as a core requirement of their faith. Many of other faiths see the practice as an offensive, old-school sales pitch, with one person pressuring another to convert. That would make evangelism antithetical to dialogue.

It would, that is, if we defined evangelism exclusively as a one-directional hard sell. But could it possibly be that simplistic? My attempt to think it through led to my recent article in Next-Wave.

Since that article appeared, I’ve heard from several Christian leaders who are also working to redefine evangelism. In the process, they may have something to say to those among us who find the traditional model reprehensible.

One of those leaders is Jeffrey Johnson, who’s come out with Got Style? Personality-Based Evangelism. His thesis is that Christians, while all called to evangelism, must approach it according to their individual personalities. If, for instance, you’re more relationally based, you might focus on nonverbal evangelism, rolling up your sleeves and helping your neighbors. If you’re more analytical, perhaps you engage others in thoughtful discussions of certain topics. (Hmm. Sounds like dialogue, yes?) While allowing that a few Christians are hard-wired for assertive evangelism, he questions the overall effectiveness of this approach in a skeptical and diverse society.

So can dialogue and evangelism peacefully coexist? That’s what we aim to find out. Next week, Johnson comes to The Dialogue Venture as part of a blog tour to promote Got Style? I have questions for him, but I’d like to include yours as well.

If you have a question or two, please send them along before Friday noon (Eastern Standard Time). You can use the comment space on this post or just contact me directly. While I can’t guarantee I’ll use every question (especially if we get tons of them), I’ll include as many as I can.

This could be an opportunity to pick the brain of someone who’s trying to break down a few old walls. Help me help him do that. Think up some questions and fire away.

The front-desk person at our local gym can be uncommunicative at times, or so I heard before my wife and I joined recently. I’m drawn to people like that. So I set out to get to know her a bit.

On my first day, I made a few lame jokes while filling out the application. She only responded to the last one, but that gave me hope. Every day thereafter, we exchanged a few words as I checked in. Bit by bit, she started to talk more. Now she gives us a big smile whenever we come in. At 6:45 a.m., that’s a major accomplishment.

In my musings about dialogue, I find myself coming back to a bit of sage advice from the biblical Book of Proverbs: A soft answer turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1). Have you ever seen this in action? Perhaps you’ve encountered a snarly co-worker whose whole face relaxes when she hears a kind word, a defensive co-worker who shows his human side when someone expresses genuine interest, or even a stressed-out child who responds to a soft voice.

A kind word, a soft voice, genuine interest: these are so easy to give away. Yet the signal they send is game-changing. In their presence, people open up, their hearts soften, their barriers come down—even if only a little at first. They see you as someone who, just maybe, can be trusted. Each “soft answer” builds the trust a bit more.

Now imagine that I wanted to discuss abortion, or gay marriage, or even a possible improvement to the gym with the front-desk person. Because we’ve built a bit of openness and trust, she is much more likely to hear me and respond honestly—in other words, to engage in authentic dialogue.

An apocryphal story from the 1978 Camp David peace accords tells of the opening meeting between U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Egyptian head of state Anwar Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Before delving into control of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the Sinai, and other issues that nearly derailed the talks, Carter asked Begin and Sadat to talk about their families. As each man talked affectionately about his spouse and children, his adversary glimpsed the human side of the person across the table. That bond, it was said, contributed to the breakthrough. The soft answer, the genuine interest, inspired them to dialogue more deeply than if they had approached the negotiations without it.

Here as elsewhere, I think people of faith have an exceptional advantage. A connection with the Divine fosters what St. Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit,” including gentleness. We can be gentle because it springs from the Divine within us. I found an online devotional that expresses this well from the evangelical Christian perspective.

Try it. Find an unpleasant person and respond to her with a soft answer. The results may surprise you.

Put a recovering fundamentalist and a professional astrologer in a car for an hour, and what do you get?

What you get is interesting, to say the least.

We’ve been talking lately about the need to set aside our preconceptions in order to truly hear the other and make dialogue more fruitful. But how does this work in real life? A story might give us some insight, so here we go.

Once upon a time, I took part in a writers’ group with an accomplished astrologer. As we went around the room to introduce ourselves, and she began to discuss her profession, all my defenses went up—the vestige of my fundamentalist Christian past, during which I had learned to equate astrology with evil.

How ironic that we would have to drive to an event together.

During that drive, we discussed her approach to astrology, and I had a choice. I could leave my conservative filter in place, spending the whole time “defending myself” against this “evil” and trying to find holes in the theory behind it. I could also lay the filter aside.

By choosing the second course, I absorbed so much more than I would have otherwise. She told me—and I heard—about the vast gulf between serious astrology and the tabloid version, the practical aims and goals of the profession, and other things that, together, painted a portrait of a viable alternative worldview.

The moral: What I heard about astrology from an astrologer was far different from what I had heard from Christian preachers. Only by setting aside the preacher’s voice in my head could I begin to grasp the reality of the astrologer’s world.

What difference did it make? I still don’t consult astrologers, and I could probably quibble with aspects of their thinking. But in my fundamentalist days, I feared astrology as a wicked practice that could seduce me if I didn’t watch out. An honest conversation dispelled that fear forever—and allowed me to approach other belief systems with curiosity and welcome rather than fear.

Perhaps more important, by setting aside my preconceptions, I could extend grace and a listening ear to my astrologer friend. How many of us could use a dose of that?

This past Wednesday, our interim priest said his last Mass before retiring to Maine. In honor of the occasion, allow me to tell our dialogue story.

He would have been at home in the Middle Ages; I fall into a fuzzy moderate-to-liberal spot on the spectrum. He lamented the decline of proper authority in the Church. He summarily dismissed many perspectives I found worthy of exploration. Some of his comments were withering. Yet when I objected to a point in his sermon one Sunday, I could not manage to keep my mouth shut.

That led to nearly a year’s worth of email discussion on all manner of things spiritual. We exchanged views on evangelism. We wrestled over the Jesus Seminar and the literal truth (or lack thereof) of the Bible. We discussed the state of our own local congregation. 

An academic exercise? Not even close. This priest came to our church when I was in a pivotal but delicate phase of reevaluating my beliefs. My inner wrestling kindled a desire to talk with clergy, because we think about the same things and they’re more educated than I am. Into this situation walks a conservative, combative old priest.

And the dialogue changed my thinking in some unexpected ways.

For one thing, it gave me a place to articulate the vague theological cross-currents in my head. I realized, for instance, that it was possible to hold the Bible as divinely inspired and still accept it as what Marcus Borg calls it: a book written by humans about God. I decided that my progressive friends were right in their embrace of gays and lesbians but maybe not in their denial of the Resurrection. The dialogue allowed me not so much to adopt the priest’s ideas but to test my own.

In short, I learned more about myself, more about what I could believe, and perhaps even a tiny bit more about the Divine.  

Not that the discussion was not all peaches and cream. His emails could be strident; I got exhausted at times. Moreover, I couldn’t see that the dialogue was giving the priest anything new to think about. Is dialogue even worth the effort when one party gets nothing out of it?

Every time I worried about this, I came back to one email. 

Early on, I expressed a desire not to let our discussions get in the way of his church work, and his response stunned me: “If only you knew how deeply many clergy, myself included, long for discussions of this kind.”

We’ve talked here about dialogue’s role in resolving issues and promoting mutual understanding. But maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe dialogue can be a tonic for the gnawing loneliness that is part and parcel of the human condition. Even if we solve nothing, even if we learn nothing, we have talked. We have listened to others share the things that matter to them. Sometimes that simple connection is all we can ask—and more than we could ever hope.

I wrote last week that for dialogue to work, we have to open our minds and hearts and keep them open, even when the discussion boils over. But how on earth can we do that?

I don’t think we can—not on our own.

Yes, there are things we can do. The longer we practice openness, for instance, the more it becomes woven into us. Eventually, we become open almost by habit. 

But practice alone is rarely enough to effect lasting change. One reason is the typical failure of sheer willpower: think dieting and you know what I mean. A second reason is the position in which openness places us: by definition, we become extraordinarily vulnerable—especially to those who attack us and defend themselves. The willingness to be open is one thing; the emotional capacity to be open is quite another. It calls for an inner strength that few can muster alone.

This is where the Divine comes in. 

As we seek to encounter God on an ongoing basis—in prayer, in meditation, in reflective reading of sacred texts, in communities of believers, in the world—the Divine Spirit fosters a connection with us at the core of our being. In the process, that same Spirit also molds us, gradually, into people more “in the image of God”: people of peace, of justice, of compassion. The Benedictines call this conversion of life: a slow, persistent turning of one’s life, from the inside out, to something better.

That has two profound effects on dialogue. First, through this conversion process, we find ourselves not so much practicing virtues like openness as watching them flourish within us. The connection with the Divine opens us automatically to the world beyond our own skin. We begin to see things from a larger perspective. We become acutely aware of our place in the universe: as one person among billions, with one perspective among billions. We almost can’t help but be more open.

Second, when we enter into this encounter, we no longer need to muster the inner strength alone—because we no longer are alone. In the Christian and Jewish scriptures, God continually reassures his people with the words “I am with you.”

This, I think, is why people of faith are uniquely positioned to lead the movement toward fruitful dialogue—because they are connected with a transformative Power than can orient them toward fruitful dialogue. How ironic, then, that many people of faith have developed reputations for the very shouting and contentiousness that plague us today.

It is time for us to act out the words of the magnificent Shaker hymn: “To turn, turn will be our delight, till by turning, turning we come round right.” If we turn toward God, we turn toward dialogue—and take up a critical role in transforming a world that so desperately needs it.

Let’s try some word association. I’ll give you three words, and you say the first word that comes to mind. Here we go:

Intolerant.

Rigid.

Confrontational.

Did you read these words and instantly think fundamentalist, or conservative, or something like that? I have, for many years.

To those of us who think along such lines, let me tell a story.

A friend recently wrote me about two of his old classmates, buddies since high school, who have had a falling out. One is a mainstream Protestant minister, seminary-trained, with 20 years’ experience. The other just became born again and is sharing her newfound (fundamentalist) faith with the minister. My friend perceives that it’s the minister, “liberal” as she is, who’s become defensive.

I can imagine that, because I see it in some of the progressives I know. They’ll embrace anyone of any stripe—except conservatives. They view fundamentalists through stereotypes and have little interest in hearing traditional perspectives.

So what does this show us? Certainly that intolerance is not confined to one specific worldview. If we go deeper, though, we might just find that (to borrow from Pogo) we have met the intolerant and they is us.

I know this is true of me. I am delighted to enter into dialogue with Hindus, Baha’is, New Agers, gays, you name it. But Baptists? Health insurance executives? Do I have to?

Yes. Dialogue calls me to encounter everyone. No exceptions.

But how? This is what makes authentic dialogue far more than just a series of techniques for use once we’re at the table. To talk with those who set our teeth on edge and our blood pressure soaring, we have to prepare our inner selves—to till the soil of our souls, as it were—long before we start the dialogue itself. By cultivating such virtues as humility, openness, an ability to risk, and a commitment to love, we gradually become people of clear mind and open heart, which empowers us to share with anyone.

Goodness knows we need this. What might happen if, say, single-payer advocates and health insurance executives were to prepare their inner selves and then come back to the table? No, they probably wouldn’t agree on a strategy for health care reform. But at least they could conduct a civil conversation, a give-and-take that might clarify the issues for the rest of us—including our elected leaders—and thus clear a path to a better solution.

Idealistic? Perhaps. But given the current state of the health care discussion—or the debate over abortion, or gay marriage, or any other issue—surely it is a place to start.

When the born-again pastor’s wife said she might be OK with evolution, I could feel my eyes widen.

Here’s why. Born-again Christians—sometimes called evangelicals, the Religious Right, etc.—take the Bible literally. As one bumper sticker puts it, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Holding to this doctrine means believing that God literally created the world in six days, as written in Genesis 1.

At least that’s what I thought I knew about born-again Christianity. And I thought I had a good reason for knowing it. I spent my teens and twenties in the born-again culture. Even now, I attend the annual convention of an Episcopal diocese that is dominated by born-again folks.

As it turns out, though, I don’t know much. It took a two-hour conversation with the pastor’s wife—a dialogue—to show me that.

This isn’t the only time a dialogue has opened my eyes to my own misperceptions. After a born-again relative read an early draft of my book, she called me out on a passage that criticized her brand of faith for rigid thinking. As we exchanged views via email, she pointed out that many groups exhibit this thinking. More important, her comments—made gently and civilly—embodied a distinct lack of the rigid thinking that I had attributed to her group.

What I’m learning through these experiences is that we broad-brush any group at our peril. Labeling people as born-again, or liberal, or Southern, or Latino—and failing to go beyond the label—leaves us unable to see them as unique individuals. Instead, we perceive each person as a unit of a monolithic culture, and we respond to what we think we know about that culture. Our perceptions stay the same, and we do not grow.

When we dialogue with an individual in that group, everything changes. Suddenly the subtle variations come to the fore. We have to hold our preconceptions about the group more lightly. We see the essential humanity behind the stereotype. And our perspective expands so that, the next time, we can approach the other with less presupposition and more openness.

Yes, sometimes we don’t know what we think we know. But there’s a great way to learn: one dialogue at a time.