Some of you who follow this blog live here in Raleigh and are part of the NRCC community. For you, for eight Wednesday evenings this summer, we’ll be revisiting conflict resolution. It’s one of the more enjoyable things we do together. We learn together, we laugh at ourselves, and we internalize a technique that helps us get to the bottom of the really intractable conflicts in our lives.
We learn that 95% of all conflicts can be resolved by healthy, reasonable people having healthy, reasonable discussions. When we put our best effort into understanding one another’s perspectives, we can usually negotiate a reasonable compromise that gives everybody enough of what they want to settle things down.
But then there are the other 5%.
Often, the intrinsic content of the 5% issues are not qualitatively different from the 95%. However, unlike the 95% they touch some reactionary part of our hearts that makes healthy, reasonable discussion virtually impossible. That’s when the technique becomes especially necessary. It gives us guard rails to keep us from falling over the emotional abyss.
If you’re in town, come on out this summer.
But that’s not the point for this series of blog posts. Conflict resolution is another in a series of shifts that happen when “non-duality” gets worked out in daily life. Last fall, we did a series of posts challenging our “two-ness” view of reality, and taking seriously, the idea that everything is connected (oneness). We talked about how quantum physics is reshaping our most fundamental assumptions about reality, and how this seismic shift moves us closer and closer to how our Christian mystics and contemplatives talked about reality.
Just before the holiday break, we were talking about how “oneness vs. two-ness” changes the way we live. When I no longer assume that I am a “one,” you are a different “one,” and God as yet another “one…” we approach everyday issues in very different ways.
If we take seriously that everything is connected, we come to our lives with very different instincts. We combat human trafficking differently. We talk to little girls diagnosed w/ Crones Disease differently, and so forth.
It also changes how we approach the intractable relational conflicts that so plague our lives.
In this series of posts, that will be our focus. Follow along. Tell me what you think.
The way you emphasize how acknowledging “oneness” impacts the way we resolve conflict is extremely eye-opening. I think that the interconnectedness of creation stands in stark contrast to the western individualism that has infected our Christianity, and that it does so in an important way. It’s our individualist mindset that has turned the gospel into little more than a cheap sales-pitch. As a result, we’ve lost the inclusiveness of the gospel–the fact that God is bringing his kingdom to earth, and that he desires all things to be reconciled unto himself. When we understand this, we recognize that our engagement in conflict resolution serves as a picture of the grand conflict resolution that Jesus is enacting in this world. I look forward to seeing more of your insight in future posts!
woo hoo! i love your comment, amanda!
we’re not just rethinking how to resolve our conflicts. we’re rethinking the very nature of reality!
that means we have to think differently about how to combat human trafficking (previous post), how we think about pain and suffering, etc…
– how we think about politics, economics, etc.
– how we think about what it means to be human
and of course…
what it means to be christian in the quantum era.
so yes, let’s talk about connectedness… as it bears on a lot of things (but for the next three posts, how it bears on conflict resolution).
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two things…
1. as i said a couple of posts ago, the community i’m part of is going through some growing pains that need my attention, so i reduced my posting schedule to Tues/Thurs. the conversation goes on… just a bit slower.
2. i don’t think i know you personally… or if i do, i can’t make an association between your name and a face. one of the beauties of the internet is anonymity, so feel free to reject my invitation, but i really like to know about the people following the blog. want to tell me a bit about yourself?
sounds like your spiritual journey has taken you on christian paths. also sounds like you’re questioning some of the traditional interpretations of christianity. true? do tell!
doug