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About two years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a retreat led by the renowned author and activist Parker J. Palmer. The retreat was based on a methodology called a Circle of Trust, drawn from Palmer’s writings, intended to help people step back from the noise of modern life, reflect, and return more centered and effective in their vocations. I was amazed at how, in just two days, this process brought 40 individuals together into respectful and strikingly honest discourse. It helped participants connect to their core values and sparked many new relationships.
This was not a one-off experience. The Center for Courage & Renewal, which creates these retreats, has served more than 50,000 people through similar programs. Studies reveal that they help people strengthen their sense of purpose and deepen their self-awareness and understanding of others.
I came away from my own experience wishing that every member of the Congress could go through the same thing. However, as a Pew Research Center study revealed this past June, polarization today runs well beyond the political realm, deep into the fabric of American society. It’s not just politicians who need to learn how to relate better; it’s all of us.
This August, Palmer’s book, “Healing the Heart of Democracy,” was issued in paperback. I read it on vacation. It’s full of practical and timely wisdom, a thoughtful read for the start of the school year — or the coming heat of the election season.
I connected with Palmer while he was on his own retreat in northeastern Minnesota, for this interview.
David Bornstein: What’s at the heart of “Healing the Heart of Democracy”?
Parker J. Palmer: “We the People” have succumbed to divide-and-conquer politics, so we find it difficult or impossible to talk with each other across our lines of difference. When we can’t do that, there’s no “We” in “We the People.” And when there’s no “We,” there’s no way to reach even a rough consensus on the common good or generate the people power necessary to hold our leaders accountable.
I’d guess that 15 to 20 percent of the people on the far right, and the same on the far left, are unable to participate in a line-crossing conversation. But that leaves at least 60 percent in the middle who can. And in a democracy, that’s more than enough to do business.
I mean, this country was born out of conflict. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 30 percent of the delegates walked out without signing the thing — and those who did sign disagreed so fundamentally that they were forced to create a conflict-holding system of government. In fact, they created the first form of government that treats conflict not as the enemy of a good social order but as the engine of a better social order. Conflict can be creative, and we have to recover that sensibility.
D.B.: What’s the main implication of this idea?
P.J.P.: We need to stop talking about “them” all the time — those people in D.C or our state capitols at whom we like to throw brickbats. Instead, we need to start talking with each other.
When I ask people to talk about politics on the state or national level, they say everything’s going to hell in a handbasket. But when I ask, “What’s going on in the part of the world within your reach?” the response is more promising.
The venues in which we live our lives — families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations and voluntary associations — create the vital infrastructure of democracy. In these settings we can develop democratic “habits of the heart” that can help us reclaim our sense of “We the People.”
But we’re as bad about caring for our democratic infrastructure as we are about maintaining our physical infrastructure. We spend way too much energy obsessing about those people in D.C. and the statehouse — energy we need to use locally to rebuild “We the People” and gain leverage on the centers of political power.
D.B.: Do you see evidence that repair can happen?
P.J.P.: Yes! For example, 16 states, via referenda or legislation, have now called for a Constitutional Amendment to nullify the impact of Citizens United, rolling back the power of big money over our political system. At least 15 more states have such calls in the pipeline. It’s an under-reported story, as is often the case with good news. [Citizens United is the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that permits corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts to influence elections.]
Those calls have come only because people at the local level have found common cause across political lines. So one answer to the question, “Yeah, but can this ever happen?” is, “It’s already happening.” We need to tell that story, take hope from it, and learn how it’s done from the people who are doing it.
D.B.: How do we talk across lines of difference more successfully?
P.J.P.: Well, here’s a clue from a poem, “The Place Where We Are Right”, by the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai: “From the place where we are right/flowers will never grow/in the spring./The place where we are right/is hard and trampled/like a yard./But doubts and loves/dig up the world/like a mole, a plough./And a whisper will be heard in the place/where the ruined/house once stood.”
We can talk across lines by talking about what we love, because a lot of us love the same things: our kids and grandkids, our country, the natural world, the idea that people should be able to get ahead in life. Then we can talk about our doubts, because we all doubt that what we love is being served well. Beginning a conversation with loves and doubts rather than political ideologies opens a new door to dialogue, driven by story-telling rather than political point scoring.
D.B.: Can you illustrate this?
P.J.P.: One time, I was in a major city to raise money for a program called the Courage to Teach [a retreat series for K-12 public school teachers]. I sat down in a bank board room with 15 movers and shakers, having been warned that they held conflicting positions on public education and would quickly turn the gathering into a debate.
Wanting to get ahead of that train wreck, I asked folks to introduce themselves by telling a story about a teacher who influenced their lives. By the time we got to the fifth or sixth story there were tears in some eyes. A man talked about a teacher who saw gifts in him that others had ignored. A woman told about a teacher who offered her daily relief from a hard home situation.
It was very moving, and by the time the introductions were over, there was only one question on the table: How can we help more teachers become the kind we’ve just heard about? We were able to fund the program in that community because we moved people from their political fixations to their loves.
D.B.: You talk about the ability to “hold tension in life-giving ways.” Can you show what you mean?
P.J.P.: People have a harder time dismissing or demonizing each other politically when they know a bit of each other’s personal stories. A while back, I was talking with a business lobbyist. He was arguing that business has no responsibilities to anyone except investors and stockholders.
Eventually, he turned to me: “So what’s your position on that?”My inner response was, “I disagree with you totally,” but I didn’t think that kind of argument would be fruitful.
So I said, “Let me tell you a story. My dad came to Chicago from Iowa in the Great Depression — 19 years old, from a blue collar family, with a high school diploma. He got a temporary bookkeeping job with a firm that sold chinaware and silverware to hotels, restaurants and railroads, later airlines. Eventually, he was hired as a salesman, and 50 years later he was owner and chairman of the board of E.A. Hinrichs and Co.
“Dad was deeply grateful to a society that had allowed him to fulfill some dreams, and he believed in using his company to give others a leg up whenever possible. So he sometimes hired people who weren’t the best and the brightest but had potential. One was a truck driver named Dusty who often made trouble with late deliveries, traffic tickets, etc. I heard a lot of stories about Dusty, his latest screw-up, and what Dad was trying to teach him. One night when I was 14 years old, after yet another story, I said, ‘Dad, why don’t you fire the guy? He causes so much trouble.’
“My father looked shocked and said, sternly, ‘But Park, the man has a wife and three children. Where else would he get a job?’
“So that is why I believe that business has a responsibility to folks beyond investors and stockholders. For my Dad, doing well in business and doing good in the world through his business went hand in hand. That’s why I believe what I believe.”
There was a moment of silence. Then my conversation partner said, very quietly, “Well, of course, that’s true.”
I don’t know what happened inside him. What I do know is that I helped create a “safe space” for ongoing dialogue with that story. To renew “We the People” we need lots of safe spaces where people can talk across lines of political division. We need to learn that, in the long run, it’s more important to be in “right relationship” than to be right.
[A discussion guide, focusing on how to create space for conversations across lines of difference, is available free from the Center for Courage & Renewal. Another group advancing this type of work is Living Room Conversations.]
D.B.: Is it at the interpersonal level that the repair must begin?
P.J.P.: That’s not the only approach, but it’s an important and neglected one when it comes to restoring democracy. Like all infrastructure repair, it will take time and patience and involve a lot of “invisible” activity. But for lots of us, it’s a close-at-hand form of meaningful political activity. We can reach out to our neighbors and find common ground — just like the folks involved in calling for an amendment to offset Citizens United.
When I emphasize the importance of things like storytelling and being in right relationship, I’m not giving up on sorting out issues of right and wrong, good and bad. But if you’re not humanly connected, you have no chance to pursue these complex issues communally in a way that might be transformative.
The skills required to make safe space and restore civic community are human-scale and learnable. And people want to learn them once they’ve experienced the satisfaction of a political conversation that does not make enemies but creates a sense of civic community, of “We the People.”
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David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.