When I was a little kid, I remember my grandmother telling me, "God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason." The message was that I needed to listen at least twice as much as I spoke.
On November 8th, I found myself glued to the television as the election results came in. At the same time I was monitoring Twitter and Facebook for reactions among my friends who range all across the political and social spectrum. Fear. Disgust. Jubilation. Excitement. Anger. Rage. Joy. Hope. The emotions were all over the map depending on one's point of view. Then came the predictions. Some were dire. The end of the world. The end of our economy. The end of our way of life. Some were ecstatic. America will be great again. The economy will rev up. Incomes will grow. Life will be like it once was. Some were extreme. Jackbooted thugs in the streets. The end of civil rights. People fearing for their lives. Or the other end of the spectrum. Economic prosperity for everyone. The end of crime and the return of law and order. Peace in our time.
We are now a week out from the election and I wish I could say things have calmed down. Despite a gracious acceptance speech and an even more gracious concession speech from both parties, the angst has only continued to grow. Despite a gracious meeting between President and President-Elect and a peaceful transfer of power (which we take for granted FAR too often), it hasn't calmed our acute anxiety as a nation. The ubiquity of tools like social media give everyone a platform to share their deepest feelings publicly with the world which in turn invites a visceral response. As each person reacts to another person, it starts a chain reaction of hate, anger, and fear that only increases as each person weighs in on the conversation. The result? Relationships are lost. Friendships torn asunder. Families break apart. And the wedge in our country is driven deeper. The pessimist in me doesn't see much to give me hope.
But I am a Christian. As such, I am commanded to pray for our nation. Pray for our leaders. Pray for the future of our country. I do so everyday. At the same time, I am also called to work for justice and peace. I am called to exercise wisdom and humility. To be compassionate and kind. So how does one do that in a world where we seem so apt to yell and talk past each other?
Over the next four weeks, I want to offer what I am calling "Post-Election Spiritual Practices." These are concrete actions each of us can take in order to contribute to the common good of our society. They are deeply practical as well as deeply biblical and spiritual. They are adapted out of a book written by Hugh Halter titled, Tangible Kingdom, and I offer them humbly with the hope that we can take some of the "heat" out of our national discourse.
Listen
The first practice is to listen. Going back to the folk wisdom my grandmother shared with me, we do have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Perhaps it IS better that we listen more often than we speak...or tweet...or Facebook rant. There are a lot of people in our country today who are afraid. They are scared. They are uncertain. They feel personally betrayed. Personally attacked. They are concerned about the future. They wonder if they will be deported. Oppressed. Lose the rights they have gained. There are others who are jubilant. Excited. They feel personally vindicated. Personally justified. They are pumped about the future. They believe they will gain back the rights they have lost. So what does it mean to listen to one another? To actually create space to hear the other side? The following are some great "active listening" strategies - Do's and Dont's -to employ as you engage with your friends and neighbors around these issues.
DO...
- Make space in your heart and mind to actually truly hear the other person. Suspend your own thoughts for a few minutes to give them an honest listen.
- Let the other person speak without interruption. Without being quick to judge or condemn. Without being quick to diminish or dismiss their concerns.
- Actively try to place yourself in the other person's shoes and see things from their perspective. Try to learn from their experience.
- Resist the temptation to formulate your own arguments against them as they speak.
- Honor how they feel even if you do not agree or feel the same way.
- Ask clarifying questions when you don't understand or paraphrase what they have said to make sure you have heard them correctly.
DON'T...
- Make assumptions. Most people have very good reasons for why they believe what they believe.
- Assume the worst. Most people are not motivated by hate or racism or rage or a desire to do evil to others.
- Jump to conclusions. Most people are open-minded and willing to compromise if they feel they have first been heard.
- Have an agenda. This is not an interrogation. This is not about winning an argument. Most people are reasonable unless they feel they are being attacked.
I normally am not a fan of television shows but a few years ago, I got hooked on Lost. It was an incredible show with all kinds of twists and turns that made my mind bend in all sorts of good ways. One of the episodes focused on the choice the survivors of this plane crash needed to make once they realized they were not going to be rescued anytime soon. Jack, by now the defacto leader, offered this thought at the end of the particularly tense episode, "If we don't live together, we will die alone." I think the same is true for our country today. Our strength comes from our unity...not our unanimity. It is less important that we all agree and more important that we all trust. Are there evil people in our midst with all kinds of nefarious plans? Yes. But we "cry wolf" far too often and we do not give our leaders a chance. We fall into the trap of binary thinking, ascribing ultimate categories like "good" and "evil" to those who agree and disagree with us respectively and it makes unity impossible.
Listening helps humanize the "other." It pushes us beyond the caricatures. The gross exaggerations. The straw men we've created that are so easily knocked down. Listening forces us into relationship and through relationships, minds and hearts are opened to the truth.