The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘spirituality’

Yes, I admit it. The question in the title isn’t terribly nice. It usually precedes a dismissive statement: “Why should I listen to you? You got us lost last time.” “Why should I listen to you? You don’t know anything.”

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?

Dialogue professionals think of dialogue as a process, and to a large extent they’re right. Process plays a big role in bringing people together and helping them reach across divides.

Still, I tend to define dialogue more broadly. Besides the scheduled conversations and formal meetings, dialogue is something that can happen anytime, anywhere, even without warning—a spontaneous event and a response from the heart.

Earlier this week I wrote something for a CEO. I knew I hadn’t nailed it: his ideas were all there, but his voice didn’t come through as it should—even though the text was nearly verbatim from my last interview with him. I was at a dead end, so I sent it to my contact at the CEO’s company for her feedback.

She saw the problem too, and responded with input that I never would have come up with. Her specific edits may or may not make the final piece, but in some ways it doesn’t matter (just as it doesn’t matter whether my bon mots make the cut). More important, her insights sparked a new point of view that helped me get back on track.

To make the final text the best it could be, I needed her.

That, to me, is dialogue, just as much as processes like Open Space or World Café or Appreciative Inquiry. The give-and-take lifted me out of my own one-person’s perspective—one perspective among billions—and helped me see things in a different light. 

And this is why I believe dialogue as a habit of the heart is so essential. If we cultivate the inner attitudes that facilitate dialogue—openness, humility, a passion for truth seeking, a willingness to risk—we will be ready for these chance encounters. We will naturally respond with an open spirit and a listening ear, no matter what comes our way.

This is even more important when it comes to our adversaries, because they set off the automatic fight-or-flight response within us. As we cultivate “the spirit of dialogue” within ourselves, we will notice that response replaced with something else: curiosity. “How dare you believe that?” is replaced with “How did you come to that?” “I don’t want to discuss it” yields to “Tell me your thinking.”

When was the last time you experienced everyday dialogue like this? What did you learn? How did it make you feel? Feel free to share your thoughts.

I did not see this coming, and frankly, I’m pretty embarrassed about it.

A while back, I wrote a column on the still-hypothetical “national conversation on race.” A dear colleague emailed me this week to point out, graciously and civilly, that the ideas in the column had “white as normal” written all over them.

She’s right.

Like many other white people, I tend to see myself as more or less normal. I don’t see how my ideas arise in part from my position in society: membership in the privileged race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. I think I think like an everyday person. I actually think—at least to some extent—like a white, middle-class, male, straight person.  (If you think this is a tempest in a teapot, check out the Witnessing Whiteness book and blog, or the ten misunderstandings white liberals have about race. Or enjoy Colbert’s take on the issue.)

My colleague’s comment horrified me. The last thing I ever want to do is exclude people, however unconsciously. Yet if it’s unconscious, how do I know I’m doing it?

Shelly Tochluk, the author of Witnessing Whiteness, provides an interesting way to think about this. In writing about her attempts to foster discussions around race at her college, she notes:

I’m not perfect, and neither has been the enactment of my anti-racist practice on campus. I know that. But, I also know that taking one step at a time, continuing to reflect, and continuing to try and rectify and challenge areas where I’m not as good I want to be is a powerful thing…and essential for those of us who need to stay motivated to keep stretching ourselves.

After ruminating on this awhile, I’ve come out with four lessons for myself. I would love to hear what you think of them. 

1. Everyone has to start somewhere. That somewhere is usually with one’s own story, background, experience, etc. The ideas I have are inextricably bound up with who I am. You might say that the best I can offer to the world is who I am.
2. Who I am is severely limited. Same with who you are, or the neighbor down the street, or Barack Obama. Each of us is exactly one person, with exactly one person’s perspective.
3. To expand my perspective, I need you. Specifically, I need to listen to you. Verbal dialogue lies at the heart of that listening. But it could also mean reading the books you love, absorbing the music you enjoy, hanging out with the people you hang out with.
4. This type of dialogue is hard work, and it leaves us extraordinarily vulnerable. It calls for an inner strength that few can muster alone. That’s one reason I believe people of faith are so well qualified for dialogue. They don’t need to muster the inner strength alone because they’re not alone. With the presence of the Divine to encourage them, they are emboldened to take the risks needed to reach out and be reached out to.

When I think about this last point, it brings to mind a prayer at the end of the Episcopal Mass: “Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.” Serving, loving, and listening take strength and courage. So when we screw up and get slapped down—as we inevitably will when pursuing dialogue—we acknowledge our blind spots and go to the Source of that courage. Then, refreshed, we return to the fray.

On Tuesday evenings, several of us in the local chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society get together for prayer, including the ancient monastic rite of Compline. Because of the liturgy we use for Compline, we always pray Psalm 91.

I don’t like Psalm 91.

Psalm 91, for me, is so upbeat as to be out of touch with reality. It includes verses like these:

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,

and the Most High your habitation,

There shall no evil happen to you,

neither shall any plague come near your dwelling….

[His angels] shall bear you in their hands,

lest you dash your foot against a stone.

I pray these words as my inner realist chimes in with “Yeah, right.” But I do pray them. That puts me in good company: people across faith traditions have prayed sacred texts for millennia. I’m sure most, if not all, have recited a text that did not fit their mood or mindset that day. Sometimes they’ve prayed texts that chafed against their whole outlook on life, as Psalm 91 chafes against mine.

So why even bother praying this way? Because it does so much good. Among other things, it orients us toward dialogue.

The key is what happens inside us as we pray words we don’t like. In this prayer, we allow the deepest part of ourselves to encounter wisdom outside ourselves, and the conflict between the two stirs up all sorts of things: 

• For one thing, the conflict awakens us to the fact that we—our feelings, our concerns, our schedules—are not all there is. We recall, instead, that we are part of a larger flow, which allows us to put our place in the universe in the proper perspective. In other words, the praying of sacred texts fosters humility.
• For another thing, the conflict with a sacred text confronts us with the disturbing possibility that God, life, other people, the universe are not exactly the way we understand them. This brings us to the mindset of I don’t know. The more I realize what I don’t know, the more curious I become about what you know, because together we might understand more clearly.

That curiosity, that realization of our own incomplete knowledge, drives us into dialogue with one another.

Have you prayed sacred texts as part of your practice? How have they changed you? Use the Comments function below to share your experiences.

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.

If you pray the Daily Office, you may have run across this passage earlier in the week: 

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge…but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:17-18, RSV) 

This comes from part of the Torah known to many scholars as the Holiness Code. According to the text, God has called the people of Israel to “be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (v. 2), and now he’s telling them how to do it. The list of commandments is an inspiration to anyone with high ethical standards: do not oppress your neighbor, do not be partial to the rich (or the poor) in judgment, leave produce in your field for the poor. 

And reason with your neighbor. 

It’s hard to reason without dialogue. Can we say, then, that God called the people of Israel—and, by extension, is calling us—into dialogue? 

Maybe. Speaking for God with certainty is risky business, of course. But it is interesting to find this command ensconced amid so many others that lay out the basics of just, fair, merciful behavior. 

Even more interesting is how close this passage ties “reasoning with your neighbor” to matters of love and hate. You shall not hate, so you must reason. You shall not hate, so you must love your neighbor as yourself. 

That says two things to me. First, dialogue is an alternative to hate—even a way through hate. It’s difficult to hate someone when she’s talking with you. 

The second thing keeps us talking: a commitment to love. When, in our hearts, we can commit ourselves to seek the other person’s good, for better or worse, we don’t give up. We might take a break from dialogue to clear our heads or let the emotion dissipate. But love keeps us coming back to the table—if not to agree, then to learn how to respect each other within our differences. 

Imagine what would happen if, say, the warring factions within the Christian Church acted this out. Might they actually find a way to live together, conflicts and all?

Do you have “channel markers” in your life? I’m referring to those people whose deep insights and good example command your attention. Wherever you are in life, you keep half an eye on them (as you would a channel marker when you’re sailing) to see what they’re thinking, writing, or doing. A glance at their words and actions helps you chart a straight course.  

Jim Wallis of Sojourners is one of my channel markers. He’s a born-again Christian with a deep concern for peace and justice issues—so he confounds the conventional wisdom that religious always means conservative (and that liberal always means godless). His prolific writing has found expression in three books, a popular daily blog, and the magazine where he serves as editor-in-chief.

Yesterday, he asked me to sign a civility pledge.

Not just me, of course, but anyone and everyone. Like me (and probably you, since you’re reading this), Wallis is deeply concerned about the climate of polarization that pervades U.S. culture. Like me, he believes people of faith have a unique role to play in nudging us toward dialogue. So he’s asking said people of faith to sign his Covenant of Civility as a critical step.

I’m skeptical of pledge signing in general: it’s too easy to pledge and too hard to deliver. (Think New Year’s resolutions.) But this may be different. According to the site, “church leaders from diverse theological and political beliefs” have already signed on. Just as important, Jim Wallis is a “channel marker” for a wide swath of the faith community—including, I believe, people in very high places—so anything he produces has more clout than the average effort.

Civility, as I’ve mentioned before, is only the first step, a precondition for the dialogue that draws us close to one another across all manner of divides. But it is an absolutely necessary first step, because you can’t talk—or, more important, listen—until you’ve stopped shouting. I encourage you to visit the site and sign the pledge.

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.

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.