Category Archives: politics

Holding Stories of Humanity

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My intuition knows.

“My TBL is so long, I should only listen to new books.”
“I should listen to my open non-fictions and keep learning–The Fourth Turning, Man’s Search for Meaning, Born Liars.”
“I should start something relevant to now, to help me help, like I Never Thought of it That Way.”

Nope. Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly wins, and it’s all good. I can only engage with this story in this moment, and I know exactly why. My review from earlier this year:

Donnelly retells Beauty and the Beast with astute and imaginative gender role reversal. Such exquisitely clever writing, an intricate and stimulating story, and so many life lessons intertwined and artfully presented–HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Heroine is nerdy, kind, and complex, caught between her own strong, gifted nature and toxic, choking social norms. Hero steals a reader’s heart with his own one of gold, his fortitude and loyalty. Ancillary characters provide depth and elaboration to the twisty, always engaging story arc–11 hours of audio went by in a flash–I could hardly put it down. I have admired Steve West’s solo full cast performances in books like For Love of Magic and the Queen’s Thief series, but his talents shine forth on even brighter display in this piece more than any other: Men, women, children, and personalities that span all of humanity and our full sweep of emotions, quite literally.
I have purchased the book in print now to annotate and consolidate lessons in self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration… All from a reinvented fairy tale. BRAVA!

Sometimes we can approach politics from a new and different angle. Tonight I approach by way of excellent fiction. Thank God for gifted writers like Donnelly, who show us our hearts, traumas, demons, and foibles with compassion, humor, and grace. Fiction’s paradox is that it provides escape and introspection all at once–freeing us from while also bringing us deeper into ourselves. Themes from Beastly Beauty that speak to me in this moment:
-Rigid and destructive assumptions based on convention, expectation, and limited information
-Despair and Hope
-The healing forces of deep, abiding Love
-Faith in self, others, and humanity in general
-To be known in one’s wholeness
-Invention and co-creation
-Urgency for action lest the world as we know it ends
-Collaborating with ‘the enemy’
-The slow turn of trust
-We, together, are the answer

“…Self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration…” How many of us think we do these well, and ‘they’ do not? How many of us believe the ‘others’, about half of the voting population, are unworthy humans, willfully, destructively ignorant, and otherwise unfit to wield a vote? We are sure, just based on how they voted, right? Of course this is true, just look at the facts, we insist. We forget that our perceptions are already half formed in advance of information input, and shaped by more than just ‘facts.’

How do our self-delusions of superiority and attitudes of disdain keep us separated, miserable, and collectively utterly dysfunctional? I ask this of myself and us all, my friends, Red and Blue alike. We are all emotional beings with the capacity for reason. Our decisions are emotional at their core, filtered, mitigated, and moderated by rationality, unless and until we get hijacked. Our degrees of awareness and self-regulation are directly proportional to our degrees of intellectual humility, openness to perspectives other than our own and thus openness to change, and the psychological safety for vulnerability provided by those surrounding us.
How well do we provide the latter for one another, even in our own tribes? Try expressing a dissenting view among friends one day and see.

I had meant to recommend this book to you all tonight, even including spoilers to make my case. Again, nope.

I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us all tonight; this one happens to speak deeply to me.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us so we may all feel seen, heard, understood, accepted, and loved, no matter who we are, how we voted, or anything else about us.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us because these are the stories that save us from and for one another. I hope you find stories that do this for you, too.



Holding What Helps

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Checking in, friends. How are we doing? *sigh*

I know some of us are still distraught, distressed, and reeling. I sit with you in spirit and hold space for your anguish–I share in some of it, for sure.
Some of us don’t understand the distress, can’t feel with it. I sit with you also because I know you; I know you don’t want anybody to suffer, especially from fear of what has not yet happened (and which you sincerely believe will not happen). I ask you to hold space with me for my friends who suffer now. Because that is the human and humane thing to do.

These three days I have had meaningful and at times challenging conversations with
my Red friend in Indiana
my Blue friend in Chicago
my Red friend in North Carolina
my Blue friend from Chicago who spent time in Indiana this weekend
my Blue Braver Angels friends in Colorado and Illinois
my Blue Dot in the Red sea of Texas friend
my Blue friend in Oregon

I list them now to remind myself that this is what holds me up–connecting to my people. It was hard at times. There were tears and a range of emotions. I realize now that I’m distressed and hijacked most by judgment and lack of empathy. This awareness helps me self-regulate. I know I’m escalating when I stop asking questions, so when I notice this next, I can take a breath, reset, and decide on the next action.

I have a mediator’s heart and mind–I’m a boundary spanner, as a loving teacher once observed. I see, understand, and empathize with both sides of most conflicts, if I’m close enough. People in discord with each other often seek me for an ear and a think. I don’t tell them what to do. I ask about emotions, physical sensations, assumptions, attitudes, words, postures, goals, and trade-offs. What a privilege and an honor to be so trusted–and how reinforcing of my own tendency and reward.

Blue Dot friend reminded me tonight that mediation is not what most people in our national political conflict want. I see us as living in a toxic collective marriage with no exit by separation or divorce. Today feels like that quiet period after a big fight: The yelling has stopped, though emotions remain intense and raw. Exhaustion has set in, and self-righteousness still burns. Nobody wants to apologize or reconcile, defensiveness crouches at the ready, and the despondence of perpetual hostility seeps ever deeper. For me to stand waving the flag of bridging across division in front of certain people right now would be insensitive at best, exacerbating at worst. “Here, let me be the bumper between two oncoming bullet trains,” my friend analogized years ago when I told him I agreed to mediate an unresolvable conflict. I want to help, and my help does not apply in all places with all people. So my awareness must include the spaces and times when the work I feel called to do is not welcome or relevant. I can accept this, because the work is still useful in enough spaces for me to make a meaningful contribution. I’m confident I can find and enter them.

So, what helps? Sleep. Exercise. Nourishing food. Breath work, journaling, music, beauty. Cultivating connection. Self-awareness. Self-regulation. Effective communication. Humility. Curiosity. Kindness. Generosity. Empathy. Compassion. Hewing to my core values and my Why.

Most things will happen without my control or influence. And I am not a victim. I have agency in my response and how I show up for myself and others. This is how I help.

I Hold What Helps for Us. Whatever you need for comfort, calm, connection, and hope, whatever Helps you if you’re in distress, and whatever Helps you Help others in their distress, I Hold it all, for Us All.

Onward in our shared humanity, my friends.

The Coping Wheel from SEL Power Pack (I have no interests in their business)

Holding Awareness

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What an aberrant week.

Eating, sleep, movement, and mental activities are all deranged a little, and more than a little resistant to intentional redirection. The only function fully intact, if not heightened, is talking and connecting with people. Text, email, social media, FaceTime, in person. Many pages of journaling. Lots of music, no book input in any form–that is definitely aberrant. Fascinating.

I wrote last night about the work of connection across difference getting harder. It starts now. Already I feel the apprehension, the tension of engaging with both Blue and Red friends (not yet in the same gathering–that’s next level at this point). I have some general impressions of both groups formed over the years, not yet articulated formally on this blog– generalizing is not an ideal way to approach humans, especially individually. Still, if I’m going to talk politics with anyone, I will benefit from clarifying some things for myself–identifying and monitoring the assumptions I make and querying the assumptions that others may make about me.

I spent an hour today replying to comments from this month–thank you for your patience, dear readers and friends. I wrote to Donna, “Those of us in bridging spaces and mindset have our work cut out for us, no question. The path turns harder uphill and more rocky for the foreseeable future. And, this is what we have trained for. I feel excited, like an athlete looking to PR a different movement every couple weeks (which I’m actually doing at Ethos regularly! [emoji string])… Ya. Keep going. Slow and steady. Bend that long moral arc.”

I have trained for this, yes. And the terrain before me is both familiar and new. I have my usual equipment and skills. The path ahead will require new tools and movements. I may get hurt; I will fail to anticipate weather and obstacles. So I proceed with cautious confidence, awareness, and respect. I’m making my way slowly through Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, as I borrowed it on CD from the library and my only working CD player is in the car. Might there be parallels here? I’m an experienced relationship and communication ‘hiker’. Engaging and connecting across difference through the next presidential administration may be my Pacific Crest Trail. So, I will pack smart and walk with fellow proficient hikers. I bet we meet some pretty awesome folks on the journey, see some breathtaking vistas, fall down, sustain some cuts and bruises, and get our egos handed to us at least a few times. The learning and connections will be worth the costs, I am convinced, especially if we can help others on the trail, too.

This hiker is tired tonight, friends. So:

I Hold Awareness for Us of our own energy, tolerances and limits–these are dynamic.
I Hold Awareness for Us of the call to connection.
I Hold Awareness for Us of every person’s full humanity and value, no matter who they voted for.
I Hold Awareness for Me of the resistance that my words, attitudes, and admonishments may evoke. I will monitor my own reserves and boundaries. I will rest and find alternate routes when needed. Connection across difference does not necessarily need to occur in explicitly political conversations.
I Hold Awareness for the paths of possibility before all of Us.