Andrew Himes has written a fascinating book, a mixture of personal memoir and history lesson, which traces the roots of his family’s commitment to fundamentalism and his own evolution toward a different kind of spirituality. In his writing Himes is courageous and vulnerable and the book is meticulously researched. He has given those who are concerned about the polarization of left and right in our country and the impact of fundamentalist thinking on our politics an extraordinary gift. The book is unexpectedly generous, loving and ultimately wise. Anyone who cares about the fusing of the political with the spiritual will find much to learn here.

Andrew Himes grew up in a family which was completely committed to fundamentalism, an offshoot of the Southern Baptist denomination. Raised in a close and loving family, and coming of age in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Himes could have been expected to follow the family religion and become a preacher or evangelist himself. Instead, starting at age 13 he began to question and secretly to rebel against the family’s ideology and values. Growing up when the Civil Rights movement was at its zenith, and with the family’s history of having owned slaves before the Civil War, one glimpses the forces the young Himes had to contend with. His rebellion broke out in the open when he entered college and embraced Maoism, Leninism and the leftist politics that were so popular during the Vietnam War era. The internal struggle to listen to one’s conscience or to abide by the values and teachings of one’s family is a struggle I know well. The wounds acquired from the effort to emancipate and differentiate oneself as an adult can run very deep. It is to Himes’ credit  that in this book he reveals a path to reconciliation and deep compassion for his family’s spiritual beliefs.

Himes takes us on an amazing journey as he traces his family’s history, from Scots-Irish pioneers who settled in the American south in the eighteenth century, to the family’s acquisition of wealth through slave-holding in the years before the Civil War. The sections of the book which reveal the family devastated by the losses of that war are particularly compelling. The focus on his grandfather, John R. Rice, a famous and influential saver of souls and later editor of the Sword of the Lord newspaper, was particularly illuminating for me. Himes describes his grandfather’s story of why he committed his life to becoming an evangelist. When Rice was preaching as a young man he had the repeated experience of watching people who were lost and in great emotional and spiritual distress, suddenly finding extraordinary peace in a matter of moments when they realized they were loved by God. Realizing he could be the conduit for such experiences, the senior Rice chose this as his life work. As one who has also witnessed and experienced such  transformational experiences, I understood immediately the extraordinary effect of this on John Rice. It is altogether human to want to give meaning to such mysterious events. We humans are all too wont to make up explanations and collapse them with an inexplicable thing we have witnessed. Out of such explaining ideologies are born. Eventually the explanation becomes confused with the actual experience.

This book could have used some editing to cut down on the redundancies within it and to tighten its length. Nevertheless, for those willing to stay with it, Himes book is rich, generous and deeply compassionate. It is possible to love those people whom we disagree deeply with. This is Andrew Himes’ gift to us.

As I write, the world is pouring out its heart to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake.  I watch, stunned at the magnitude of the devastation and awed by the magnitude of the generosity this tragedy has elicited. Something about natural disasters brings out the best in people. Perhaps this is because we would want others to treat us with compassion were we the ones in desperate need.

Having worked with people closely as a psychiatric nurse for the past forty years, I have come to know one thing:  human beings want to be known.  We want to be seen and treated with compassion.  This is why giving to Haiti is so important and why it was so important during Katrina, and during the Tsunami of 2004 and other disasters.  But what is not often appreciated is that humans want to be known and seen during conflict, and when they are in deep turmoil.

We Cannot See the Other as Human During Conflict

We seem to forget this during conflict. Perhaps it has to do with the stormy emotions roiling around inside of us: rage, hatred, revenge.  In the midst of conflict our opponent, who may have been a friend before now becomes an enemy.  He or she becomes other.  Their humanity is gone.  This is true as well of people we have decided we don’t like, those who hold different political, religious or social viewpoints from our own.

Dehumanization Gives Us Permission to Kill

The is especially true for political leaders dealing with other nations.  We saw this during the Bush era when Iran, North Korea and Syria were labeled the Axis of Evil. This objectified those countries as well as their citizens.  It’s very hard to solve a conflict with an opponent when you have dehumanized them and of course, it’s very easy to kill them, bomb them, or commit any atrocity you wish.  They are no longer human beings who have hopes, memories, or dreams for the future.

Miracle During WW I–Enemies Become Brothers

I saw an extraordinary movie recently called Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas), based on actual events  of French, Scottish and German soldiers who ceased hostilities and celebrated Christmas Eve together at the front during World War I.  Positioned in trenches close to one another, the soldiers were shocked when a German soldier approached across the battlefield carrying a Xmas tree singing Adeste Fideles. The night was clear and cold.  Soon everyone was exchanging food, alcohol, photos.  It just happened. The next day their officers agreed to a truce and buried their dead.  Later they engaged in a spirited game of soccer.  All were later reprimanded for fraternization with the enemy.  Yet something sacred had happened there and everyone knew it:  they were not enemies but brothers.

A Different Way to Live –No Enemies

My practice now in every conflict in my life, large or small, is to refuse to treat anyone as an enemy.  I go into any potential meeting or conflict with an open heart, determined to meet my opponent as a human being, to learn about them and to bring curiosity and a spirit of discovery to our meeting.  This approach has never failed me and my life is the richer for it.  It occurred to me recently that any outbreak of war or armed violence is a failure of human communication.  It may have been preceded by hundreds of  encounters where people could have seen each other as human, could have listened to each other’s needs, wants and yearnings, had it even occurred to them that this was possible.

The wars we now see as inevitable may one day be seen as optional, even as unnecessary, as humans learn to practice and master more empowered  ways of relating to other people, refusing to be cowed, refusing to bully, and insisting on being open, generous, straightforward and clear in all their dealings with all people, all of the time.                                                                              

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Frank Rich’s column, Tiger Woods, Person of the Year in the New York Times is a brilliant dissection of how  Americans  have been scammed by con artists of every stripe from Bernie Madoff to Ken Lay to real estate agents who brokered bad mortgages.  He draws dots between apparently unconnected social events and ends with President Obama’s current political plight.  Many Americans are disenchanted with him because they have been hyped and spun one too many times.

A Con Artist is Nothing Without an Easy Mark

How is it that we have been taken in so easily and so often? We need to look more deeply at ourselves, and ask why we have been conned so many times.  There is some connection here, I think, between our ability to be truthful with ourselves and our ability to create a more peaceful nation and world.

When someone lies to you, whether it’s your cheating spouse or some flimflam huckster selling gew-gaws, we know deep down in our guts that we are being lied to.   It may be a voice in your head that says, “He/she is lying to me,” or it may be more subtle, a feeling of unease somewhere in your body, but something inside is telling you, “Something is wrong here.”

Silencing the Voice of Truth Within

This is our inner truth-meter in action.  It’s trying to tell us to listen, to take action. The problem comes when we ignore the promptings of this inner truth teller.  We suppress the message of our inner self because we have some fantasy, need, or old belief that we have been taught about how we ought to behave, which conflicts with the promptings of the truth teller.  And so we betray ourselves, give in and buy the house with the big mortgage we can’t afford or that get-rich quick scheme the investment salesman is touting.

Most of us have been raised to be patriotic Americans. If the President says we are going to war because our security is threatened, by gosh, we will follow him, even if the evidence he presents is more than a little dubious, even spurious, and our insides are screaming.

The Demands of Listening to One’s Inner Truth

There is a cost to honoring the voice of truth inside you. It requires you to be vulnerable. It may demand that you take risks you don’t want to take.  It may force you to come to terms with relationships that are uncomfortable. It might mean you have to do some difficult growing up.  But life on the other side of growth is always superior to the dishonesty that came before.

Americans are now paying a terrible financial price for the lack of internal self-awareness that preceded this recession.  Many families in this country have also paid an unbearable price in the loss of loved ones in the thankless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,  all because we did not look long enough and hard enough within, or acted too late once we realized what was happening.  I have written previously in this blog about my own failure in this regard.

The United States is still a young country, an adolescent as countries go, and has never suffered an invasive war as so many European countries have.   We have never been conquered, never been vanquished, humiliated or humbled.  We could take this time to turn within and learn the habit of self-reflection and how to take responsibility for our actions. In short, we could learn to grow ourselves up.  If not, life may force these lessons upon us.

Growing Up and the Possibility for Peace

What does all this have to do with peace? Simply this:  people who are in touch with their depths make better choices about their lives, as individuals and as citizens,because they know what really matters.  It’s called wisdom I think.

Questions of Inquiry:

1.  If you’ve read Frank Rich’s column, what do you think of his analysis of Americans being scammed and bamboozled?

2. What will it take deepen their authenticity and become more actively involved in the politics of their country and the world?

Other blogs I’ve written on similar themes:

1. Lies of the Mind-Part II.

2. On Moral Maturity: Growing Ourselves Up.

The first signs of the current partisan divide occurred during the 2008 election.  I hoped that division would go away once candidate Obama became President.  That didn’t happen, and within months the divisive ranting grew from a rumble to a roar.  How did the joy of the victory on election night turn so quickly into dark and vicious rhetoric?

From the birther movement to the Tea Parties to the popularity of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I tried helplessly to understand what was going.  Mostly I was just scared.  The notes of hysteria in the rhetoric, the barely suppressed racism, and the ever-present possibility of violence terrified me.  Having lived through three assassinations in the 1960’s and seen a nation divided by the Vietnam War, those bitter days were and are still vivid for me.  I did not want to see blood in the streets again.

A Win-Win Solution Appears in the Transpartisan Alliance

I was familiar with the Transpartisan Alliance, a group that has been working for several years to unite Americans across political divides. TA seeks to include all positions and points of view with the underlying premise that all perspectives are needed in order to find win-win solutions. Our current politics is completely saturated with a win-lose, attack/fight approach that is exhausting to participants and to the public.

Having focused their work on the national level for some time, TA is now shifting its attention to grassroots political organizing.   When the first Seattle TA meeting was held in October 2009, I was present. To our dismay, all those at the first meeting identified themselves as progressive, liberal or independent. No Republicans, Conservatives, or others on the right were present. Our challenge was obvious.  Go out into the community and find those citizens and bring them in.

Conservatives and Libertarians Are Not the Enemy

As I did not know any Conservatives or Libertarians, I set myself the task of going out into Seattle to meet some.  I hit pay-dirt when I found a Conservative group meeting at a coffee shop on a Saturday morning.  I had no intention of converting anyone to my political point of view. All I wanted was to establish human relationships with the people there.  I wanted to understand why they were conservatives and what had led them to embrace this way of thinking.  I decided to be completely honest with these folks. I told them why I was there and about TA.

I had a remarkable experience that morning. I was warmly received and the people there shared generously about why they had embraced their conservative beliefs. They felt disrespected and unheard by most liberals.  They felt powerless about what was happening to their country and their way of life. They said they were looking to the Constitution for a way to make sense of what was happening in Washington D.C.

Standing in the World of the Other Changes You and Perhaps Them as Well

These folks, I discovered, were not my enemy, but simply people I had never bothered to deeply listen to before. When I left that meeting, it was on a cloud of joy. I no longer have any fear of conservatives. A few days later I met with a group of Libertarians and helped them put their newsletter together. Once again I was treated like an honored guest.

To see the world differently, as others see it, is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive.   I had changed and my experience of the world had shifted.  It’s clear to me that all human beings, whoever they are, long to be heard and understood in some fundamental way.  We may not agree with each other about the best way to solve problems, but we all yearn for the experience of being acknowledged in the fullness of our humanity.

When we see the other this way it opens a path to working productively with each other.  Of course problems will always arise.  If we start however, by creating a foundation of trust and mutual respect as human beings, our ability to solve the multitudinous problems we face can only be enhanced. A human politics, a truly civil politics is, I believe, truly possible.

Peace By Design is back.  I am back. It is good to write those words.  I stopped writing this blog in March 2009.  I did not know If I would ever write again.  I only knew I was bone-tired and could not go on.    I no longer knew what peace was or how to achieve it.  How dare I write about it from that weary place?

Where have I been last nine months? Good question!  I worked at my job as a psychiatric nurse but the rest of my life was up for re-invention.  Not working actively at peace, and specifically, not writing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  The critical voices in my head shrieked  that I should be writing now! As if I, single-handedly, could save the planet with my writing.  Could it be that resting was more important than writing? And so - - I rested.  I slept late.  I dawdled and dithered away my days.  I took long walks on trails in the woods.  I meditated.  I took a poetry class.  I learned to dance Zydeco!  I cooked healthy meals for myself.  I read and watched lots of movies.  My house never looked so clean.

Learning How to Play!

Then something mysterious began to happen. I laughed more.  I began to like my job .   One of my core beliefs about peace has long been that true peace arises, not from the absence of war, but from the presence of joy.  If peace is an interval between wars, then humankind is always waiting for the next war to break out and people never know what true safety feel like.  But if we are truly secure, then people will laugh, dance, play, sing, eat and celebrate life.  Joy will break out and humans will delight in life.  If joy were ever-present, who would jeopardize that wonderful state for the grief and losses of war?

Would Creativity Every Return?

One of the books I read during my time off was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert . This book struck a chord with me, as it has with so many millions of other readers.  I realized that I was living out, on a miniature scale, the same kind of retreat that Elizabeth Gilbert had pursued across Italy, India and in Bali.  It was enormously reassuring to me to know that there was something universal about this inward quest.   When a tide goes out, leaving the beach high and dry, the water will eventually come back in.  I had to trust that eventually my passion for peace would return and I would write again.  Listening to Stefan Sagmeister speak on TED talks about the power of time off and the sabbatical was also very inspiring to me.

A Surge of Energy and Excitement

Sure enough, the tide began to turn this fall, when I found myself getting  very concerned about the polarization of American politics.  I was drawn to the work of the Transpartisan Alliance and when this group came to Seattle in late October, I became involved with them.  I will be writing about this work soon.  As my sabbatical draws to a close, I find myself resting in deep peace and quiet joy.  It seems like a rich place to begin again.

I turned on Bill Moyers’ Journal on television last week and found him talking to British scholar Karen Armstrong. Ms. Armstrong told him how she had developed the capacity to see the world as someone radically different from herself saw it, in this case, the prophet Mohammed in 7th century Arabia. This was a compelling moment for me because this is a subject one does not often hear about in today’s discourse. Moyers and Armstrong had a fascinating exchange on what happens to someone who has learned this skill of seeing the world as another sees it, particularly if that other is an enemy. Anchored in the world’s spiritual traditions, Ms. Armstrong has recently created, with many others, a Charter for Compassion, which she also talked about with Moyers. What does the ability to place oneself in the world and experience of another have to do with cultivating compassion?

Learning a New Skill that Goes Against the Grain

The entire transcript of this conversation is available at the PBS website, as are the emails from people who watched the show. Much of the conversation between Moyers and Armstrong concerns the difficult challenges of learning the skill of practicing how to really see the world as others see it, or as Ms. Armstrong says it, “re-creating” their world view. This is a vital skill for forwarding world peace. Armstrong describes how the resistance to practicing this skill is rooted in the ego, i.e. that we love arguing and making people wrong. From there Moyers and Armstrong jump into a discussion of world politics, from terrorism to fundamentalist religions. Armstrong urges listeners to hear the unspoken needs and emotions underneath the political rhetoric, to calm and quiet the public passions.

Human Beings Love to Criticize Each Other

Many people wrote in to express their opinions about this show. When you read these letters it is interesting how few of them actually cite the main ideas of the show, i.e. the skill of learning to see the world as others see it, the issue of the ego and how it expresses itself in the realm of politics and religion, and how human beings love to make each other wrong. Many of the letters were highly critical of Moyers and Armstrong. Which makes you wonder if those listeners really got what the program was all about. Interesting!

To Practice Compassion Daily Brings Peace

I have never read any of Ms. Armstrong’s books before but I was deeply impressed by her maturity and by who she is as a human being. Anyone who has been able to take the profound spiritual step of imagining themselves into the worldview of other human beings so different than themselves, especially ones from other centuries and cultures, has performed an amazing feat of transformation. We are all so anchored in our egos, believing that our identities are our true selves, that we are have tremendous resistance to opening the doors to finding our commonalities with other human beings, especially those we label enemy. This is terrifying for many people. Yet, when we take this step, the peace it brings is profound and liberating beyond measure.

Those who have been reading Peace by Design know that talking to enemies and seeing life from the viewpoint of the other is at the very heart of this transformational approach to creating a world at peace. I urge you to check out the Armstrong interview with Bill Moyers. I also refer you to blogs I have written previously on this topic.

• www.peacebydesignblog.com/letting-go-of-enemy-making
• www.peacebydesignblog.com/partnering-with-the-islamic-world
• www.peacebydesignblog.com/learning-to-be-at-peace-with-differences
• www.peacebydesignblog.com/seeing-the-world-as-others-see-it

Have a comment? We want to hear from you? Have you experienced seeing the world as others see it? tTell us about it.  What are your experiences with compassion in action?

It is not often that a film leaves me awestruck, literally speechless and filled with wonder. I had seen pictures of Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures in nature before, yet seeing this film about him, and watching him in the act of making his ephemeral creations is something altogether splendid and unique. It brought me to a state of intense aliveness and excitement. It is rare that a work of art can do this.

Sculptor Works in the Natural World

Andy Goldsworthy, a Scottish sculptor, has been quietly following his own path for more than two decades now. He does not work in a studio. The natural world is his canvas. He is fascinated by the energy of the universe as it manifests in stones, rocks, flowing rivers, flowers, sticks, berries, bracken, snow, ice, branches, everything that one finds in nature. He uses no tools but his hands. He creates forms that may last minutes, hours or years, until they melt or sweep away in the tides, rain or snow.

Goldsworthy Fascinated by Flow of Energy and Time

“Art for me is a form of nourishment,” he says in the film. He is fascinated by the energy that flows through the landscape, not to hold it or stop it, but to be one with it, to witness it. You will see him create an extraordinary looping icicle sculpture by breaking pieces of ice and sticking them together with saliva. Magical instant beauty!

One Astonishing Image After Another

In another scene you watch as red liquid trickles over a rock face in a tumbling stream, and one thinks instantly that this is blood. Then one discovers that Goldsworthy has found iron oxide pebbles in the stream, pounded them into dust and dissolved them in water to make the blood red liquid and then poured it into the stream.

Goldsworthy wanders through the town where he lives in Scotland, describing its sheep herding history and picking bunches of yellow dandelions as he meanders. Later the camera pulls back to reveal a hole in some rocks in a stream bed filled with a mass of gold dandelion heads. The shock of the gold delights the eye.

At one point Goldsworthy painstakingly creates a fragile hanging sculpture of twigs. It is so delicate. How long can it survive? As he attaches one last piece the whole lacy structure collapses in a pile around him. I felt a deep sense of loss at first, as if a child or a beloved pet had died, and then I thought, “This is just part of life–all things die and some things have very brief lives–let it go.”

It’s About Paying Attention

As I was watching this film these words from one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver, The Summer Day, kept going through my head:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention . . .

In the end, Goldsworthy’s work, and Mary Oliver’s poems too, are about paying attention to this exquisitely beautiful planet we live on–and falling in love with this world, knowing that each one of us is part of this creation.

Connection of Rivers and Tides to a Peace-Filled World

What does Rivers and Tides have to do with creating a world that works for everyone? What does all this have to do with creating a world at peace? I think it has something to do with experience peace right here, right now by looking, by paying attention, wherever we are, by noticing the sun, the sky, the rain, the stars, the trees, and the blessed and infuriating and wonderful people who share this extraordinary planet with us.  Perhaps then, when and if there comes a time when we have to choose to go to war, we will remember the preciousness of life itself and the beauty of our glorious, living earth and we will put away our guns, think of future generations and let love guide our actions.

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When I created this blog in April 2008, I announced my intention to publish regularly on Tuesdays and Fridays. I have lived up to this commitment over the past year. Together, my guest bloggers and I have produced over one hundred blogs about peace. My vision of peace was, and is, one of possibility, of what could exist on this planet, if enough people chose it consciously: a world filled with joy, fun, abundance, a world that worked for everyone. This would be a world where violence would become less and less relevant. War would gradually disappear as human beings began to shift their thinking, their listening and their speaking about peace, war and armed violence.  What they intended with the full force of their will, would come to pass.

Overwork and Exhaustion Leads to Freedom and Joy

I have always believed that I should be the change I wish to see in the world. A recent crisis in my life showed me that I was not, in fact, living out what I most deeply cared about.  I was close to breakdown, was exhausted from overwork. I was not having any fun and it seemed I was working constantly on this blog and doing it all by myself. My life had no joy. I was in despair and was close to giving up. Last week I finally saw that I could make a new choice about how I live my life and about how Peace By Design is written and conducted as an enterprise.

No More Hard Work!

I have chose to take an entirely new approach at this point to bring integrity to my life and to the blog, so that everything in my life reflects my passion for a life founded on and committed to joy, aliveness, love and a peaceful planet. In effect this means “no more hard work”. I am now revoking my promise to publish every Tuesday and Friday. I will now be writing blogs only when I am filled with joy, love or inspiration! I may write five times a week or once a month.  My promise is to follow the joy, to look for that which is fun, enlivening or that which excites me or turns me on. This is a bold and exciting experiment in my life and frankly, I feel liberated, set free! It is a very strange feeling and it’s making my heart beat faster and I notice I’m kicking up my heels in a little dance. Whooee! This is fun!

We’re Having a Party and You Are Invited!

I invite you, my readers, to join me in this experiment in peace and full living. I am eager to find more guest bloggers. I am looking for people to share their ideas for how we can create a world that works for all beings. What visions do you have for a peaceful planet? How are we going to get there? Do you want to review books or films? What other topics should we be writing about here?

As I look outside my window this afternoon the sun is shining. Spring is coming. Sun dapples the evergreens and their boughs sway in the gentle breeze. Despite all the enormous problems in the world right now, this moment is incredibly beautiful. I am at peace and deeply grateful for the gift of life itself. I am eager to hear from you.

Wanna play? Get in touch! Leave a comment.

Some people had difficulty with the blog I wrote on March 2, 2009 about the name calling going on between liberals and conservatives in this country that occurred after  President Obama’s speech to Congress about the fiscal crisis and the country’s future. It appears that I have far more faith in the capacity of all Americans to come up with creative ideas for the country than do many other citizens. Some readers have expressed their doubts to me that Republicans and conservatives lack the ability to come up with any viable ideas for dealing with the financial meltdown or our future.

Faith in Conservatives to Serve Comes from Dynamic Facilitation

Why do I have such faith in the capacity of conservatives to eventually come up with good ideas that will serve the country, even if we haven’t heard many of these ideas yet? Does it come from my basic stand in like not to make or keep enemies? Perhaps. It also comes from the fact that I’ve had training in a process in which people from diverging opinions routinely work on solutions to difficult problems and come up with breakthrough solutions. It is called Dynamic Facilitation and it a form of eliciting transformational thinking in groups. It is radical, exciting work. Once you have participated in it, you will wonder why the U.S. government is still doing business the old argumentative way.

Choice Creating Brings Out Best in People

Jim Rough, the originator of the DF model, has been teaching this work since 1990. The DF facilitator establishes a zone of thinking and talking known as Choice Creating, where sudden shifts and unexpected breakthroughs are normal. This is especially useful in times like these, when people face a collective challenge, and need to pull together with all their creativity, to face it. They need to bring their highest and best selves to the task. I can’t think of a better time than right now for our national leaders to use a process like Dynamic Facilitation.

What Dynamic Facilitation can do:

• Resolve the really BIG issues
• Build community
• Assure excellence of ideas and problem solving
• Build a culture of decision making that is collaborative and respectful
• Develop participants to reach new levels of empowerment
• Improve meetings from ordinary (bickering?) into great ones

Dynamic Facilitation Focused on the Issue, Not on the Egos

In DF meetings, participants face the front. The meeting is all about the issue or challenge to be faced. It is not about personalities or egos. Each participant is equal and the facilitator is there to assure that each participant is fully heard. As a result each participant is:

• Authentic
• Open-minded
• Open-hearted
• Learning
• Engaged
• Efficient
• Respectful

A Process of Deep Integrity and Deep Humanity

I took a Dynamic Facilitation workshop in 2008. It was a remarkable adventure in being seen, fully listened to and completely honored as a human being, no matter what wild thoughts I shared.  I participated in a group which considered the issue of human violence from a deeply thoughtful place and I was moved beyond words by the deep humanity of the process.

Hey President Obama and Nancy Pelosi–Listen up!–Try this!

Because of this experience I can say, with passion and full knowing, this process would work with Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, legislators and executives, with anyone who wants to make a difference in the financial mess our country is in today. I commend the Dynamic Facilitation model to President Obama, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to members of the Opposition Party, and to all interested Americans.

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In the middle of the worst financial crisis in memory, President Obama gave a powerful and masterful speech to Congress and the American people last week. The speech received rave reviews from American citizens. Yet since the speech Republican leaders and media figures have been ranting and issuing calls for revolution and calling the President every name in the book. The rhetoric verges on hysteria.

Name Calling From Both Republicans and Democrats–Why?

What is going on here? Why are bright, highly achieving people from the government, media and financial worlds acting so bizarrely? Why are some forming Sons of Liberty groups and holding Tea parties? It’s not only the Republicans who are acting weird and calling names. The liberals on the left aren’t doing much better. Consider the blog from Bob Cesca on Huffington Post called The Wingnut Revolution which is dripping with sarcasm. I can understand Cesca’s frustration; his sarcasm is, under the circumstances, understandable. The question is, is this a helpful response?

Paul Jenkins, another Huff Post blogger, uses phrases like nut jobs and barmy to describe a list of Republicans who have, according to him, gone off the deep end. There are few people who have the patience to inquire into what is going on, to ask the deeper questions. Why bother? Because we are in a national crisis of unprecedented proportions and we need every-body’s help to solve it. If we keep calling names back and forth, we keep the discourse on the level of children bickering. Kids who call each other names get their feelings hurt. This kind of climate gets nasty very fast and it becomes impossible to work together.

President Obama has some extraordinary skills and keen instincts about where to take the country. His bipartisan impulses are wise ones. However there is one skill he lacks. He doesn’t have the skill of helping people to complete negative experiences and feelings from the past. He has never learned how to help people air whatever feelings of complaint or hurt are lingering from what has gone before, whether it is the last election or the fight over the stimulus package. Until people are complete with the past they cannot work together to create a new future. This is a vital skill to have and it is disappointing that Obama and his team do not, apparently, know how to do this.

The Republicans are needed to help heal the financial crisis. They are needed to help heal the energy crisis, re-invent the health care system and to re-design the education system. They are bright people and they have ideas and when those ideas are solicited from people who are no longer burdened down by resentment and negative feelings, but enlisted in solving the country’s problems they will come forward with dynamism and creativity.  Republicans are disorganized and frightened with their party in disarray. Democrats have been in this position themselves and can afford some compassion. It’s not a pleasant place to be. Indeed, the whole country is frightened.

People in our country, and our national leaders in particular, lack the skill of being able to be present to intense emotion and to contain that emotion so they don’t say the first rash thing that comes out of their mouth. It’s called emotional intelligence. They lack the skill of deep listening so they can work together respectfully in partnership. Perhaps this crisis will teach our leaders and all of us some valuable and much needed skills.

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