By Elizabeth Walker
I don’t like conflict. I guess I am afraid of it. When I sense it, I tend to walk in the other direction and pull my tentacles into my introverted self.
This hasn’t actually been working all that well for me. I have way too many rents in the fabric of my human connections. And these days we all have too much stress caused by rifts in our country, our town, and our congregation.
When I watched our recent congregational meetings, I was struck by how little listening seemed to be happening. It seemed to me that most of us came to the meetings with entrenched positions, hoping to change the minds and votes of others, without doing much listening and without a goal of understanding. Our political opinions are of course important, but so are our human connections.
Because these conflicts are painful to me, and because I really want to believe that I can find solutions better than pulling in my tentacles or leaving the congregation altogether, I have sought and found a book that is helping me.
It’s called I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, written by Mónica Guzmán, a liberal Latina living in Seattle. Her parents, immigrants from Mexico, voted for Trump, twice. The political differences between them are huge, and yet she loves them deeply and wants to continue to have them be a central part of her life. Family is family.
Professionally, Mónica now works for Braver Angels, an organization that is teaching people to build bridges across political divisions. In one dramatic example, she took a busload of liberal Seattleites to meet and talk with a group of people from a Red county in Oregon. She taught them how to have meaningful conversations, with the goal of expanding understanding and reducing polarization.
She asks, can we learn to talk with people instead of about them? Can we learn the skills of making these connections?
She suggests, for instance, that instead of asking “Why do you believe that?”, which can make people defensive, we ask “Would you tell me how you came to this belief?”, which elicits personal stories and connections.
Mónica’s book teaches us to build these kinds of bridges between ourselves and people with whom we might disagree. The point is not to convince them to believe what we believe or even to come to compromise. The point is to start conversations with curiosity instead of judgment, to invite and listen to their stories so that we better understand where they are coming from, and hopefully to lower the walls between “us” and “them.”
If you want to see her in action, Mónica Guzmán has a TED talk and a You Tube interview at Town Hall Seattle.
With the support of the QUUF Healthy Community Team, I want to learn and think about her ideas with other members of our congregation, to use them to help heal our own divisions.
I am looking for 12 good people, members of QUUF, who can bring their curiosity and their open minds, hearts, and ears to learn and practice these skills together in a five-week circle. We’ll meet in person so that we can look into each other’s eyes and get to know and trust each other better. For virus protection, we’ll meet in the Sanctuary with its excellent ventilation system. Vax cards and masks required. We’ll meet on five Thursdays, 10:30-noon, starting September 15. I am calling the group Building Bridges.
You can enroll now at Sign-Up Genius. Please get the book on your own and read Part 1 before the first class. I’ll be in touch.
If the class fills before you can sign up, or if you can’t make these meeting times, I encourage you to read the book anyway and find people to discuss it with. If you want to form a Building Bridges group of your own, I am glad to share my facilitation plans.
The more of us who understand and practice these skills, the better we can help mend the rifts in our families, friendships, communities, and congregation.
Before I got to Port Townsend in 2013, members of QUUF worked together to build a Fellowship Hall, a Sanctuary, a building for Religious Education, and several beautiful gardens. Thanks to all of you who did that! Now I think it’s time for us to work together to build some bridges.
I hope to see you there.
With peace and love,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Walker is a QUUF member, a holistic nutritionist in private practice, and a former college professor of health and psychology. She has taught in ALPs and OWL. You can reach her at Elizabeth.walker317@gmail.com.