INVITATION:

Embrace the Way of Reconciliation

In a recent audio address to Minnesota Public Radio, Parker Palmer said, “I am my darkness, and I am my light.” He then asked the question, “What can I learn from both sides?” and shared a deeply moving story about Abraham Lincoln, who struggled with the darkness and light, both that within himself and that at play in the nation. Lincoln, “the great reconciler,” refused to divide us as a nation.

To RECONCILE means 1) to restore balance and harmony, or
2) to make consistent or congruent. Reconciliation is not the same as compromise.

QUEST-ION:  

How can I walk
in the way of reconciliation?

Before we can answer that question, we need to ask another:

What is blocking my way?

 

Let’s start here. In Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote,

“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because
they are separated.”

Fear and separation keep us from one another. In a recent book about civil war in Liberia, the author of And Still Peace Did Not Come, wrote, “In life we make the best decisions we can with the information we have.”We forget this. We forget that someone who has a belief or opinion we consider to be ignorant is operating within different context than perhaps we are. He or she has a different worldview informed by his or her unique experience.

So how can we, individually and collectively, walk in the way of reconciliation? Perhaps, borrowing from the field of photography, we can adjust our depth of field. Depth of field is a term referring to objects at a distance that are brought into focus.

How might we adjust our settings — our mind set — to allow for a greater depth of field and appreciate the diversity of experience reflected in our world?

I have been examining this question from various angles and asking new ones. Here are some of the particular questions I’ve been asking. Consider them with me. I would invite you to doodle whatever comes up for you around these questions.

What can I learn from the birth and death,
day and night, light and dark?

What can I learn from the environmental extremes in our world?

What can I learn from my calm center and my spinning thoughts, from my clarity and from my confusion? From my enthusiasm and joy? From my ambivalence and sadness?

What can I learn from the diversity of cultures in my own community?

And here’s a difficult one from the realm of politics:

What can I learn from the extreme voices on the right and left?

[By the way, Parker Palmer, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this post, has a new book called The Heart of Democracy. I encourage you to read this book as we moving into a heightened political season and consider choosing the way of reconciliation as opposed to playing into the divisions at work in our society.]

CREATIVE REVOLUTIONS TOOL FOR LIFE & BUSINESS:

Where is the range of balance? What can I learn from someone with a vastly different perspective? What can I do when I feel like all of the voices are coming from extremes and not representative of we, the people? Let’s look at:

The Beach Ball Balance Bounce

The first lesson we can learn from this tool: we live on a round planet. In our lifetimes, many of us shift our perspectives. We share this round planet with people who have widely varying perspectives — religious, political, social, cultural and more.

Each of us has an opportunity to begin where we are and to extend our embrace further and further, beginning with our neighbor. Consider yourself to be the dot in the center of the beach ball. Envision the little tab that lets the air out of a beach ball. YOU have the choice. I have the choice. Do we let air out. Do we add another voice of contention and contribute to the self-destruction of our world? Or might we choose something different…

We can restore balance and harmony through civility and respect, by honoring one another as we begin by identifying each other as common sojourners through this beautiful world big enough for all of us. What if we begin to extend our circle of kindness and compassion just a little bit? Can you imagine a world filled with circles of acceptance, interlocking? What bonds might we make? What common ground might we find?

I believe the way forward — one sustainable system for flourishing humanity — is to embrace the way of reconciliation. Nothing separates us from each other unless we allow the beautiful diversity of belief, opinion and experience to force us further into the Real of Right and we choose to reside outside the sphere of love that holds us all.

You are that I am.
I am that you are.
We belong to each other.

 

 

Mentioned in this post:

P.S. IF one way you are embracing the way of reconciliation is through a business that begins with WHO YOU ARE, I’d love to support you in clarifying your brand message and identifying the next best steps to get visible. Remember you must reserve your 1/2-day Revolutionary Brand Accelerator Strategic Visioning with Dawn by May 15 to save nearly $300! And, yes, you can book it for anytime now through October! It moves back to full investment in less than two weeks.

{ 0 comments }