New Conversations
We are now 3 ½ weeks post-election. We are living through a historic moment - the kind that will get its own chapter in the history books that our children’s children will be reading and will no doubt be grumbling about due to the length of the homework assignment. By then let’s hope that they will find it hard to grasp the significance because they live in a color blind world where men and women are not judged on the basis of racial stereotypes. Yes, this is a moment of historical significance and it also represents a historical opportunity to create a more civil discourse in our country and in the process come closer to realizing the vision stated by President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
No one I have asked has said that is a bad idea for Democrats and Republicans to reach across the aisle on the floor of the House of Representatives and the floor of the Senate to work collaboratively to solve the very complicated problems facing our nation. Here is a harder question. Are you willing to model that behavior for your elected officials? What I am slowly learning is that legislators, congressmen and even Senators tend to take their cues from us. We are far more powerful than we think.
What if you had the opportunity to sit down and engage in a respectful conversation with other members of your community without first knowing their political positions. Would you do it? Are you willing to do the hard work of suspending judgment while actually listening to a fellow citizen describe his or her thinking about how best to achieve our collective hopes and dreams? Are you willing to relax your grip on certainty for a couple of hours once a month and when someone at the table states a position with which you disagree fight down the urge to tell them they are just plain wrong and instead ask them to tell you more about the thinking they did to arrive at that conclusion?
What if we applied the Golden Rule to our conversations? What if we treated other persons engaged in conversations with us the way we would want to be treated? You already know what that would look like and how that would feel. Don’t you?
My hope and prayer is that many of us will do just that. And then how cool would it be to invite our elected officials to come home periodically and participate in those conversations. Not only would they learn what we are really thinking and saying in our more lucid moments, they might even learn from us how to solve some of the big problems we are facing. And then, they might even decide to follow our example and have similar conversations in Washington. Let’s seize the day and make the most of this opportunity before it fades away.
No one I have asked has said that is a bad idea for Democrats and Republicans to reach across the aisle on the floor of the House of Representatives and the floor of the Senate to work collaboratively to solve the very complicated problems facing our nation. Here is a harder question. Are you willing to model that behavior for your elected officials? What I am slowly learning is that legislators, congressmen and even Senators tend to take their cues from us. We are far more powerful than we think.
What if you had the opportunity to sit down and engage in a respectful conversation with other members of your community without first knowing their political positions. Would you do it? Are you willing to do the hard work of suspending judgment while actually listening to a fellow citizen describe his or her thinking about how best to achieve our collective hopes and dreams? Are you willing to relax your grip on certainty for a couple of hours once a month and when someone at the table states a position with which you disagree fight down the urge to tell them they are just plain wrong and instead ask them to tell you more about the thinking they did to arrive at that conclusion?
What if we applied the Golden Rule to our conversations? What if we treated other persons engaged in conversations with us the way we would want to be treated? You already know what that would look like and how that would feel. Don’t you?
My hope and prayer is that many of us will do just that. And then how cool would it be to invite our elected officials to come home periodically and participate in those conversations. Not only would they learn what we are really thinking and saying in our more lucid moments, they might even learn from us how to solve some of the big problems we are facing. And then, they might even decide to follow our example and have similar conversations in Washington. Let’s seize the day and make the most of this opportunity before it fades away.
posted by Randall E. Butler at 7:17 PM
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