Civil Dialogue, the Key to Empathy
Empathy is tricky. It’s different from caring. We can care about people without a clue as to what is going on inside them. And it’s easier to have empathy for people who are like us, who respond the way we do to things or ideas or people and who share our culture and language. Extreme differences can make us ill at ease around others. The differences can be in looks, color, age, mental or physical ability, nationality, economic, cultural or even religious.
My mother grew up in the early 1900’s in Mississippi. There were only a few Catholics there and they Polish immigrants who all lived in one neighborhood. As a child she believed the nuns she saw when passing their school on a bus wore headdresses because they had horns.
Though some people are more interested and curious than afraid of differences, most are not. And negative experiences with a person different from us can make us nervous around all others like them.
Empathy comes easier with people who are most like us. Without time spent in intentional dialogue with those different from us, it is impossible to understand them enough to trust them or work together.
At this time in our own nation, we have become drastically alienated from people who only differ in their politics. And communication across that ravine has become almost impossible. So even with all our similarities it is impossible to have empathy for one another.
Without goodwill civil dialogue is impossible. Our language, our demeanor, our tone, misinformation, projections from our painful experiences build walls of fear and anger. We are like wounded porcupines unable to kiss and make up.
Both sides have lost perspective on what damage this is doing to America. Violence is becoming more and more common and even acceptable. Nobody wins in a civil war. More Americans were killed in our civil war than in all our other wars. We don’t see that if we don’t learn to work together for the good of all, we will self-destruct as a Nation. Get rid mental and verbal barbed wire and reach out.
Posted on February 3, 2025, in Uncategorized and tagged Caring across differences., Civil dialogue can heal alienation., Moderation is not defeat., No one wins in war......a generation dies., Understanding does not require agreeing.. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 
Well said. It’s sad our country’s technology advances by the year, but spirituality is an up and down process.
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I hang on to believing that evolution is a very slow process…..too slow to measure in one life time!!! American is a Johnny come lately. We haven’t been through what Europe and the Eastern world has over thousands of years. I figure it will take a lot more thousands for all of humanity to get the message! Supposedly time is relative ????? Any way I can’t get my head around eternity….. I figure we are on a journey similar to a doodle bug crossing the world, or maybe slower! Once decades ago right before Christmas I woke up in the wee hours with a horrible stabbing pain in one eye. It was excruciating. My husband was just recovering from the flu and our small town did not have an eye doctor. We would have to drive an hour to Nashville. I lay down on the couch in the living room trying to hold off until at least 8 am. As I lay there I decided to praise with each stabbing pain. I did not mean it, but I willed it. I did this for a while, and suddenly felt a presence I could not see, but sensed where it was in the room near the window. Then I had an over whelming sense of love pouring over me from there. I started praising with sheer joy even though the pain continued. Eventually I fell asleep and when I woke up the pain was gone. About thirty years later my mother came to live with us in the beginning of her battle with Alzheimer’s which was unknown at the time. A horrible fourteen years of dying by inches followed. We had built her a small house next to hours, but after about four years it became obvious that she wasn’t safe on her own. She lived with us for another three years, but started running away in the night. We were in an economic slump from a recession with three of our five children in college, so we were both working. When we wired all nine doors shut, she began to cook in the middle of the night and sometimes leave things burning. Her social security was not enough for around the clock care. After getting counseling, I finally agreed to put her in the nursing home. I was Associate Director of Religious Education at Ft. Campbell, Ky. It was a civil service position. I worked on Sundays and the Sunday after putting her in the nursing home I was in despair while driving home. My church didn’t have an evening service, but as I drove down a country road on the way home, there were people going into a tiny church. I thought of joining them, but it was an all black congregation and I worried that I would be intruding. So I drove on as a gentle rain started. I got a little way down the road and passed an elderly black gentleman in his “Sunday go to meeting” suit walking toward the church. I turned around an offered him a ride. When we go to the church he invited me to join them, so I took it as a Holy Spirit confirmation. It was a service with several small choirs singing. One of the songs just hit me. It was about someday understanding their long suffering. It kind of put our heart break in perspective. But after she died seven heartbreaking years later, I was in my car connecting with a friend between our two counties. As I waited I was crying and mentally shouting at God, “WHY? WHY! WHY!” I decided I need to get a grip and not ruin my friends day, she had enough troubles of her own. So, I got out of the car and went into a small shop I’d never been in. As I walked in the door, the first thing I saw was a card on a card rack with bright colored letters that said. “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” As short lived humans, we have no perspective of Eternity. I’ve come to think this life is a blip in time. When my fifth child was born with a hole in a heart valve, they wanted to wait on surgery because it not only was dangerous, but sometimes they would close in the first two or three years. For four years he caught every germ and about every two weeks would come down sick with a fever that ran off the thermometer making brain damage a danger. It soon took three adults to hold him down for a shot at each doctor appointment. We all went through some really hard times for four years, but ultimately in the usual last minute miracle right before surgery, God healed him. As I remember the horror of him getting the shots and the times he was so very sick, I compare those moments to a life span in eternity. Jesus suffered not only to flesh out the Love of God for us, but he is with us in our suffering, he hurts for us like I did for my baby. We are not alone. And somehow, though I have no idea how, our suffering has meaning. There have been times when with grace I have accepted things that used to wipe me out and grace came to get me through it, and I grew stronger and freer to live with less fear and more love. Sorry….I get carried away sometime with wanting so badly to pass on what I had to learn the hard way!!!!
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