A Good Discourse in the Nation, How we Begin Again

 The first requirement in healing our nation, is to stop labeling ourselves as us and them, because we are one people, even if divided by politics, by religion, by income, by education, by race, by values, by experience and by background.  We are still, a people, and the first thing we must see, is that what we want from this country, is for everyone to hear and for everyone to feel they've been heard.  When people don't feel like they matter, or like their lives matter, they stop listening.  When people don't feel important, they stop caring.  When they don't think anyone will hear them, they get angry.  

Dismissal of anyone, is just that, a dismissal, and it's something that builds walls, something we don't want, that makes more discontent more likely.  It makes reactionary policy also more likely, which is the least likely to satisfy for anyone.  We need to find a way to reconnect across the digital, intellectual, political, economic and personal divide that's been expanding as a result of the nationalizing of every race, the politicizing of every issue, that precludes ever granting the presumption of good faith to anyone who doesn't already agree with whatever outcome we desire.   

A house divided does not stand, and I would say, as a country, at this point, we're on our knees.   

It will take statesmanship, it will take courage, and it will take humility and it will take work, to begin the process of restoration in our national dialogue.  Rather than having individual channels that cater to what we prefer, we need to find the people who are working on the problem, and willing to discuss what they hope, what they know, and where they agree, and be committed to working to find as much as possible that can be done.  There is a lot of work to be done, and less of it completed when everyone is competing to show how whoever isn't doing what we're doing, is failing at humanity.  Whenever we see someone else as less than, we are failing at humanity.  We need to be aspiring to something better, and somehow putting love where little or none is.   

A good discourse allows for listening as much as talking, for giving and forgiving, as much as asking and receiving.  We need to pray for all of us, to have receptive hearts for each other, even those with whom we disagree...and whoever we can think of that we would ask the question, "Even them?" "Even these?" the answer is...and it's hard to recognize, because it would be oh  so much easier if it weren't, "Yes, even these."  

"But they are lepers.  They are sinners.  They are tax collectors."  my brain says in some format, and I'm sure everyone's does..."They did X" and "X" is horrible, and was horrible, and will always be horrible.  However Christ forgave the most horrible of acts from the most horrible of places, and we cannot be more merciful than Christ.  

So if we want a better discourse, a better reality than the one we can all point to, from the beginning of fallen and ordinary time, then we must ask for the peace the world cannot give, and give it to the world.  It will fall on those who hear it, it will return to us on those who do not.   Be the words "Peace be with you," and peace will be with your spirit, even in the hardest of times and you will have "a good discourse," if not with those around you, always with God and that will be sufficient.  

Let us go and make our visit.