I think there's safety in being heard and understood. You feel as if whatever it is you want to be understood about matters.
Jubilee hopes to "inspire people to LIVE GREATER", by modeling for us how to engage in difficult yet necessary conversation with people of immense difference.
Sometimes the discussions are cringeworthy. Other times, they're beautiful. Always though, they're challenging:
Do I sound that arrogant?
Am I that uncouth?
Could I be wrong?
Here are a few of my favorites/most challenging.
Once you humanize someone, when you're having a conversation . . . {once} I start looking at you as a person and listening to what you're saying, {I} really realize that it's not that different. We have different situations, we have different information, but we're all trying to do the best {with} what we have.
There are relationships in my life that are severed beyond repair. Yet, I wonder if that could change. If I saw others as trying to do the best they can with what they have, if I understood that their information and situation was and is very different than my own, maybe we'd be able to sit and have a discussion. Maybe we'd find some middle ground.
Maybe.
I think you make choices, personal choices, every single day, on how you live your life and how you treat people and how exist in the world.
I think it's that people are so determined to make other people wrong.
Jeremy really bothers me. Not because he's confident or because of what he says (okay, some of it is because of what he says) but because of how he says it, and why. He isn't there to have a discussion, to refine his thinking, or to consider another's perspective. He's there to prove others wrong.
Faith is faith because it's based and founded on faith, not facts. And in order for a discussion to happen, in order for two unlike individuals to grow and learn and find some common ground, they have to be willing to concede their omniscience. And because Jeremy is unwilling to do so, his passion, his education, and all of his credentials amount to nothing.
So he stands outside the circle, unable to contribute a word. And when he's invited in, when he's allowed to join the discussion and be with the people, a moaning works through the group and no one hears a word he has to say.
You can watch more people try to find Middle Ground here. They're pretty great, covering topics such as:
- Pro-life and Pro-choice
- Liberals and Conservatives
- Pro-Gun and Anti-Gun
For more on . . .
The Need and Difficulty of Good Conversation
A Heineken commercial that inspires more than a drink
Fall in love in 36 questions, and two music videos
Marriage. And Race Shouldn't Matter.
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