Dear friends in Christ,

A well known formula for dinner party conversations is to never bring up politics or religion.

Since so much of life is bound up in these domains, much of life must be sidestepped according to social orthodoxy. These dimensions of life often feel “loaded” or dangerous, as if they inhabit a mine field.

And they do when life is viewed as right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. If one’s personal ego is on the line, then it’s off to battle, dominate or be dominated.

The old advice to avoid them arises from widespread fear. Fear of argumentation. Fear of relationship disruption. What if the reason for avoidance is that so few of us know how to talk about difference and differentness?

Upon hearing something I don’t agree with, my body might tense, and I might begin to form a counterargument. If I go this route, I am stuck in the old paradigm; there is another way.

Continuing in the vein of The Rev’d Dr Frank Williams’ sermon on kindness from last Sunday, relationship becomes more important than who is right or wrong.

Kindness trumps the quagmire struggle. One rubric for encountering differentness is to say something like, “Oh, I see it differently. Would you be willing to share with me how you came to believe what you believe?”

Such a question is not a magical solution but it is one to lessen the intensity of polarization.

Such a question, when genuinely asked, can be seen as an act of kenosis, self-emptying. I put aside my own egoic investment in my opinion and open to the other person. What I hear I might find very difficult to abide, but I remember who is before me is a child of God.

Kenosis is how Phillipians 2:7 interprets the Incarnation of Christ. God emptied and put aside God Self in becoming human to show us how to be human. Every act of self-emptying could even be labeled as healthy selfishness. A paradox. Irony in the making. Imagine that.

Freedom and peace may come to those who practice the way of Jesus. No forcing. No insistence that others change their minds. Simple presence of one to another. Deep listening. You may be offering something the other has never experienced.

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard