Breaking Through the Political Noise
First, listen to a stellar music video. You won’t regret it.
Life is better with you by Michael Franti… Love all ya’ll
Secondly,
LISTEN TO ME!!
Jk, you don’t have to listen at all, but if you want to it might be nice for you.
As I review my thoughts around last nights dialogue (to convey them to you, which is what I’m suppose to do here) I conclude that it’s nearly impossible for me to summarize an hour-in-a-half open ended discussion. Instead of summarizing, I’m just going to tell you some insights I had from the dialogue. We’ll see.
Something that was very powerful to me was when Roger, my dad (btw), brought up the subject of Christianity and politics. Whoa. Hold up Roger. Politics? Religion? Even though this is a dialogue forum where anything can be talked about, really? That? Should we really go there?
Well, yes we should, and, he did! And it was beautiful. He’s been coming for a couple months now, and it was evident he has a grip on how to present such topics in a thoughtful way. He started by saying something like, “It’s been on my mind a lot. I’ve been watching a lot of news, and all these news channels tell me different things. One, how can we work through this noise? How do we know who to listen to? Two, I think Trump lies a lot, but the word on the street is that if I’m a republican I’m suppose to vote for him. I just don’t trust him. He doesn’t seem to care about people. I’m a Christian and the more I think about what Jesus wants, I think he wants us to love. Love seems to be the main point. But a lot of time it doesn’t seem like most politicians are acting in love.”
Roger (my dad) seemed to almost have a visceral response to his experience with current events and how they are communicated to us. He even said, “I really hope I’m not offending anyone, I just don’t know how I can vote for someone that lies all the time. He just lies.” He seemed to really wonder how to make political decisions, and really wants to make the right one. His openness made me think about two things:
1) LABELS. Was my dad loosening his grip on a ‘I’m a republican” label? I mean, it’s not that surprising. My dad has been loosening that label for awhile. Which brought up another idea we discussed: Are there absolutes? If Christianity or being republican are absolutes, is there wiggle room in there to be open to other ways of being? Well, a wise participant said YES. She claims she has many absolutes that are shifting all the time. Could absolutes only be viewed in the present? For this current moment, I am absolute about idea A: I need chocolate. In 5 min, I may vomit from eating too much chocolate. I therefore, am Absolute(lyl) certain I don’t need chocolate.
Honestly people, I’m still struggling to grasp this concept. All I know is that if we hold on too tightly to our beliefs, labels, opinions, we’ll be missing out on new beliefs, labels, and opinions. And that’s super sad to me. If my beliefs, labels and opinions are truth, why would I feel the need to defend them anyways? Why wouldn’t I be open to others?
2) Could love be our guide? The question has come up more than once- who guides us? How do we know we’re doing the right thing if we don’t have doctrine or news or elders telling us what to do and believe? I wonder, if we sit quietly with our decisions, beliefs, labels, programming, would we come to the conclusion that our intuition leads us to the answer: that the solution needs to be based off of… wait for it… could it be…. LOVE?
I learn something every week from each participant. This week, among other wonderful insights, the insight that dialogue truly changes our thoughts and opens our hearts to new ideas, was my greatest take away.
Oh, and that my dad rocks :)
