Expanding my sense of inclusion... again and again
A practice of learning how to sit in the fire
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My values of inclusion. My belief that everyone belongs. There’s enough room for all of us here.
The times we live in continue to invite me to deepen my ability to live these values. Pushing me to figure out how to do so in the moment, in practice, in the face of people and worldviews that are so wholly different than mine.
Collective healing, as I have come to practice it, helps me do so.
I wrote this piece here on collective fragmentation a few years ago when I really found myself coming face-to-face with how my own values of inclusion were quite incomplete. I was seeing so much judgment coming from other “good-hearted liberals.” Judgment of those who hold differing political views, differing religious views, differing worldviews. It's part of an insincerity that I sometimes see within the left around these espoused values, and it was an inconsistency that I saw within myself that I sought to expand and dance with. Reckon with, really.
But it’s one thing to intellectually want to live these values more fully, and it’s another thing to do it in practice. To figure out how to respond to subtle hate and inherent judgment in the moment. How to be in relationship with a person whose worldview requires them to stay closed in certain ways. The worldview relies on it. How do I choose to respond when that comment is made? Or what do I do when that person isn’t able to make eye contact with me?
To be face-to-face with a worldview that is counter to my values of inclusion, and figure out how to respond to it in a way that doesn’t pull me away from my value to be inclusive is full of tension and unanswered questions.
Collective healing, as a practice, helps me work with that tension. In practice it looks like creating a lot of space for what I'm feeling and experiencing in order to help it move and unfurl, for guidance and the right answer for that moment to reveal itself. I practice this on my own and in community, so that in the moment, at dinner or in a conversation in passing, I can tap into that capacity for spaciousness and quickly figure out how I’m going to respond.
Collective healing allows all of the different dimensions of my inner world—the feelings of anger and hurt and woundedness—to have their proper space. To not be shut down or pushed away, and to not take over or run a muck. Instead they are seen and receive care, in the moment and more fully at home or in Circle.
Through collective healing, I create space for different parts of me to debate each other. The part of me that thinks it's best to push back against the person. To defiantly stand up, pound my fists on the table and say, “Stop that! Why are you doing that?” That part is able to debate the other part of me that says, “No, hold your calm. Stay composed.” See if you can expand and rise above what's happening, see what's happening from there. Meet the moment and this person in a way that doesn’t feed into the larger cycle of putting each other down. Hopefully move the needle forward of creating more safety and belonging in a way that heals and amends the source pain that that worldview comes from.
By creating space like this through this collective healing practice, the wisdom within the tension can show itself to me and clarity about how to respond arises. What are my boundaries? When have things gone too far? What do I need in this moment? What are larger goals or other considerations to keep in mind?
This kind of clarity is that type that will certainly change tomorrow, and the next day, and 10 years from now. It is the kind that works here, but doesn’t work there. Which is why collective healing is not an answer. It's not a solution. It’s a practice. It is a way of showing up to the tension that lives in the times we are part of, and to help the guidance and wisdom that lives in that tension reveal itself. Because as much as we need policy agendas and concrete longterm solutions, we also need tools that help us respond to uncertainty and that supports emergence. That help us find answers that make sense today and most likely won't make sense tomorrow. Because that’s the nature of change, more generally, and the nature of the times we live in, specifically.
Hope you enjoy (linking again here), and would love to hear what tensions you’re sitting in the fire with these days.