Tools and Practices

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. —bell hooks

Our fears, fueled by stories that—advertently or inadvertently—demonize people based on religion, culture, national origin, or other differences, can easily dominate our attention. At the same time, there are redemptive stories that inspire hope and possibility for reaching across differences and working together for a higher good.

As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. —Pema Chödrön

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make sense.
—Rumi

Hurry: A poem from the Afghan Women's Writing Project

Where the Mind Is Without Fear

"It is precisely in a period of great spiritual and societal hunger like our own that we most need to open minds, hearts, and memories to those times when women and men actually dreamed of new possibilities for our nation, for our world, and for their own lives. It is now that we may be able to convey the stunning idea that dreams, imagination, vision, and hope are actually powerful mechanisms in the creation of new realities—especially when the dreams go beyond speeches and songs to become embodied; to take on flesh, in real, hard places."

I listen to the silence I have in the past called inertia. What I hear is almost a voice in the hollowness…it is the calling of talents and potentialities that wait to bud in the dark recesses of ourselves, beneath the static and cacophony of everyday life. —Dawna Markova, “I Will Not Die an Unlived Life”

Potentiality: the ability to develop or come into existence

In stillness there is richness—a richness of attention, timelessness, connection, possibility, peace. Carving out moments to quiet the noise of modern llfe or the tensions of this political moment can feel illusive. Yet, it is in just a moment we can disappear into the miracle of the sun peeking through a bank of clouds, or the breath that animates us. Pablo Neruda invites us to “count to twelve and…all keep still.” Regardless of language or difference, he calls us to inhabit “a delicious moment” allowing for the possibility of compassion and connection.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.
―Gwendolyn Brooks from “Paul Robeson”

Unity and interconnection may seem obvious, simple to some, but barriers stemming from our fears, images we see in the media, or our experiences, can keep us insulated, afraid to step in to, build, or nurture community—unity. Anger, misunderstanding, and prejudice can further imprison and limit us.

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
—John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

We're experiencing a time when divisions between and among people are deep and raw. During contentious times as these, we often hold even tighter to our views; we lose patience and our ability to listen.