What if more and more people in the U.S.A. came to realize that “sustained” polarization was destructive to their well-being; not an answer to what ails us, in the long run?
What if more and more people recognized the validity of Ben Franklin’s words –
"We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately"?Wikipedia suggests that the meaning of this phrase by Franklin, at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, meant that signers of the Declaration, as well as colonists in general, had to help each other and support each other or they were doomed.
What if more and more people took heed of these words, reinforced, in recent days by the tragedies of our recent hurricane devastations and the mass shootings in Las Vegas – and realized that we need one another more than we need our divisions, regardless of the differences between us of race, religion or other creeds.
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| Bridge Building: One Person At A Time |
Polarization can be a necessary and good thing, as mostly we are different enough from one another to need to define ourselves with some intricacy. But, at a point, we must unite to find common ground in order to move forward.
My hope is that we will come through these troubled times we are now facing to discover the importance of this, along with an awareness that we will need time in order to heal our divisions. One of the examples of a project I have long admired that has successfully helped heal deep and serious wounds that divide is the Compassionate Listening Project.
Recently I revisited the web site of that project to review their achievements for myself – and – draw hope and inspiration from the work they have accomplished in the twenty years or so they have been active in reconciling divisions of the most horrendous divides, particularly in the Middle East and between both Jewish and German Holocaust survivors. In becoming somewhat familiar with this project through a friend who was the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors, I discovered that storytelling was an intrinsic piece of the success of this project.
Their success reassures me that New Horizons and myself are on the right track.
Imagine healing wounds between Jewish and German Holocaust survivors with a respectable number of these people being either former Nazis or their children?
We do not need to bring ourselves to a bloody war of factions, with more causalities than we have already seen, in this Beloved country of ours, to start looking toward a brighter future than we have presently -- and beginning to build it now, even in the midst of our polarization. Small steps in leaning in to one another can be a beginning. Storytelling and story “listening,’ as we officially launched as a project last Saturday is a further step.
Please consider this an imperative next step for yourself, personally.
We believe this is a critically important next step, if what you have now is not to your liking!
Developing the art of sharing personal stories, in the service of building community (and rebuilding) unity in our country will not come easily, even with the best of intentions. Yet the yearning to tell and listen to stories is ingrained in humanity. This is a very special way we connect to one another.
We may be the only animals that do this. Yet given half an opportunity, the exchange of stories arises out of our depths as naturally as sunshine and fresh air. We saw this occurring at last Saturday’s workshop. We needed only to provide a minimum of guidance and structure to set the ball rolling.
Once we did we were pressed to find an ending to the delicious exchanges that were then created.
The vehicle, storytelling and story listening, that circumstances have now led New Horizons to offer in order that we continue on with our exceptional community development mission, centrally focused on building small “zones of peace” throughout our local community and beyond, will grow from here forth, we anticipate.
In our county, alone, there are pockets and pockets of individuals and groups who are, minimally, finding unity in churches, synagogues, special interest and support groups. Within these, people often find their way to one another, based on the likemindedness they share. We are after a stretch beyond this.
We want to fortify the links that are relatively still intact, even if minimally, and also reach across the divides that are less than the ideal of like thinking!
Few people, as we saw on Saturday, have yet attained the level of artfulness needed to significantly overcome the hurdles we are currently facing in our nation and even in our local communities. But we can learn. And, in that realization lies our hope!!
One thing is certain, once we get started telling our stories with the true potential for connectedness we all carry, more and more people will be wanting to continue on, almost non-stop. Our new “Zones of Peace” Storytelling Workshop Series is already showing us this.
Please plan on joining us for our next “Zones of Peace” Storytelling Workshop event on Saturday, November 11.
This is important! You won’t be sorry!
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