Dialogue with Dignity
Our cities are in flames, and our citizenry is busy choosing sides against each other. Now is NOT the time to be giving into despair.
Next Sunday, August 2, at 12pmEST/11amCST, join me and an AMAZING panel assembled by Alice Maher, MD, and Niquie Dworkin, PhD, to talk about how we can change our public dialogue through respectful listening and conversation.
You can register for the webinar and Facebook group at Changing Our Consciousness, Inc.
Panelists include professionals in education, psychotherapy, and entrepreneurship. We come from a wide variety of faith backgrounds—Presbyterian, Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish—and from both the United States and abroad (U.K. and India).
We have agreed to certain guidelines to facilitate our conversation:
Come, practice talking with us about the things that matter.
Next Sunday, August 2, at 12pmEST/11amCST, join me and an AMAZING panel assembled by Alice Maher, MD, and Niquie Dworkin, PhD, to talk about how we can change our public dialogue through respectful listening and conversation.
You can register for the webinar and Facebook group at Changing Our Consciousness, Inc.
Panelists include professionals in education, psychotherapy, and entrepreneurship. We come from a wide variety of faith backgrounds—Presbyterian, Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish—and from both the United States and abroad (U.K. and India).
We have agreed to certain guidelines to facilitate our conversation:
- To speak for ourselves and from our own experience, using “I,” not “you,” when expressing our thoughts.
- To refrain from criticizing each other or attempting to convince each other that our viewpoint is correct.
- To listen with resilience when we hear something that we find hard to hear.
Following the webinar on Sunday, August 2, the audience will be invited to participate in a Facebook group discussion for two weeks, after which there will be a follow-up webinar with the panelists on Sunday, August 16.
Come, practice talking with us about the things that matter.
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Milo and Bevelyn Beatty modeling the kind of conversation we hope to have. |
Those rules are reasonable. If it were up to me, I'd add one more:
ReplyDelete* Phrases such as "my experience," "my sense," and "my viewpoint" are fine. However, use of the phrase "my truth" is forbidden, since it implies the non-existence of "the truth" (whatever the truth might be).
Thanks for promoting us Rachel! Interesting comment about the idiom "my truth." The person who uses it has a point of view is that it is fine to speak about her own truth. The commenter feels strongly that that phrase shuts down dialogue. How might these two people speak to one another? Can they get beyond the particular phrase to a more substantive conversation?
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