Here is the link to the discussion group mentioned before. Please see rules and updates if you want to post there. It is an open and public group, so if you just want to review what others have written, you do not need to join and don’t need to be on Facebook:
Blue Boat Passengers
@RachelRott , only my first line was addressed to you. (I thought that was clear from separating that line out, but apparently not, sorry!)
After that, I make my “general comment,” which is addressed to things I have heard many different places and my own different take (but what is relevant, I believe, is that we cannot look at the “listening” phrase separately from the “reason” phrase or Value title). I tend to think about the issues from multiple points for a while before I try to give my own impression or “position.”
As far as the “listening,” in my view, the very problem (and one I have experienced repeatedly, maddeningly, and damagingly) is that those who may cause the most harm, whether out of a desire to have their views prevail or just because they are focused on other things, are not themselves listening. This entire Article II Revisions project involves listening to proposed “new ideas” with an open mind.
Elsewhere, I’ve been posting “UU bookshelf” titles, a never-complete list of books I 've read and/or am reading or considering reading related or that I thought could be helpful to the divergence in understanding, views, and frameworks UUism isi currently undergoing on some of our most crucial issues. Some that mention the importance of listening are “How to Know a Person” b y David Brooks (recommended by our minister, very popular at our local library right now, so I had to order a copy); High Conflict, by Amanda Ripley; “You’re Not Listening,” by Kate Murphy, and even our current common read, “Repentance and Repair.”
Listening with respect, to me, does not mean we then decide to adopt the same opinion or do the desired action. It means we keep an open mind to first try to hear and understand what everybody is saying. Then, using reason, compassion, and our desire for justice, we come to a community understanding together.
The listening and wonder and compassion-motivated reason go hand in hand. This addition may also ameliorate some concerns about other covenants in other parts of these Values, about which people have expressed various concerns. You say you cannot covenant to this because of misuses you have seen. Yes, I have also seen that and have experienced it. But I have likewise experienced profoundly othering and marginalizing effects from so-called “love” on the part of people not good at listening. What of other people who have experienced being shut down as “out of covenant” when they were stirring up “good trouble” but were not listened to?
If we want this Article II Revision not only to “pass” but to truly represent “our shared values,” in my view, that means listening and compromise.
2 Likes
RachelRott,
Hi. I am curious. Is your reaction to “respect” the same or different in the Reason and Equity (Stebbins) Amendments?
In the Reason Amendment, it says “respect the views of others.”
In the Equity (Stebbins) Amendment, it says “respect . . . one another.”
While I agree with what you’re sharing here Rachel, and I also see the hope and commitment in the bit that Kerry L shared from the RJTF in comment 17 above. Though what the quotation describes as a negative or contrast sums up how as a BIPOC UU, I have experienced some white UUs use arguments for peace and reason to dismiss what I say.
Regarding the last bit, here’s an example. I can respect that I disagree with UUs who claim that white supremacy culture isn’t a thing but I don’t want to ‘covenant to listen’ to their monologues that racism doesn’t exist.
I’m vaguely holding the idea that some people might weaponize and misuse any language to dismiss and attempt to silence others so I’m trying to do the balance of listening/read/witnessing others in this space even as I personally disagree.
I’m also looking forward to the DRUUMM Spring Caucus this Sat for members on A2.
2 Likes
Thanks, @LeilaniDavenberry We are probably thinking of some of the same kinds of weaponizing (but which I also consider–and tried to explain why–as prime examples of people who do this weaponizing not listening).
I used a different illustration elsewhere, a firsthand one: As someone who’s had years of experience dealing with people (both HCPs and uninformed conversational bystanders, as it were) about experiences of injury, disability, and chronic pain, I am not willing to listen to people opine and lecture about how pain is only experienced in the brain, all you have to do is just put it out of your mind, etc. (This may be true to some extent for some people with some injuries. It was true of me for earlier injuries. It is not useful as a judgy, generalized claimed solution used to dismiss people dealing with the actual situation.)
ETA: This doesn’t suggest that any marginalization experiences people may have had are the same or similar (for one thing, what I describe above developed during my adult life). I do suggest a strong similarity in the RESPONSE–that is, there is some understandable but aggravating human tendency to think we know better than the person talking about their experiences or to pose challenges as if we are the first ones to think of them , and to attribute biases to others we don’t see in ourselves (one of many reasons I like to listen to the radio show Hidden Brain). This can be combined with power imbalances, positional (health care provider: patient), societal (historic biases in our country long embedded into law), etc. Thus, I think most of us, if we stop and think about it, can recognize scenarios where we have experienced this–maybe it was a bad boss at your job or a rigid bureaucrat at your child’s school, for example.
Therefore, I feel we should be able to realize that this pushback exists and may be a common and sometimes devastating trend people may have to struggle against, and which we should not be reinforcing in our congregational life if we care about one another. (In another public group recently, someone posted a brief diatribe laying all the blame for homelessness at the door of the homeless–another good example of this kind of thinking, in my view). We should not be trying to mandate people be forced to listen to others discounting their own experience (and at the same time, we should be encouraging people to listen better to people who know their own experience in a way we never can).
[Not sure why the font got messed up and is resisting being fixed above, sorry!]
If I’m not mistaken, it seems to me like both the concerns and the hopes expressed for this Value are trying to point towards the same or a similar goal–that people will learn to listen with respect to one another’s experiences, accept that each person is the expert in their own life situation, and that it is possible to find better pathways for community dialogue and decision-making.
2 Likes
Hi LeilaniDavenberry,
I wonder if you might comment on a discussion I’ve had in multiple venues:
When someone inside or outside of our communities uses hate speech, we might remember our IDEAL from the current 6 sources - which is also echoed throughout the Proposed Revision: “Confront powers of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”
Remember, “Listen” does NOT mean forever/ad nauseum; “Understand” does NOT mean only from the speaker’s perspective; “Respect” does NOT mean agree with the speaker; and “Respond” does NOT mean do exactly what the speaker wants you to do.
In fact, by “listening, understanding, and respecting” - even to a very minimal degree if that is all we can tolerate when confronted with hate speech - we may find we are able to “respond” in ways which “Confront powers of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”
Your thoughts?
1 Like
Hi Kara:
Thanks for your sharing. I agree with what I think you mean (if I might pick different words) in the first two paragraphs (starting with when and remember.)
However in my previous comment I had meant hateful speech/racism in UU spaces/inside our communities and my not wishing to ‘covenant to listen’.
It’s possible I just am not understanding your third paragraph. My comment/reply to it is that I do not need to work at growing my tolerance or capacity for listening to racist speech for example, in the same way I do not wish to covenant to listen to it either. My lived experience as a BIPOC UU is hearing and reading and experiencing racism inside our communities and despite that I’m still here and still a UU. For example I experienced racism at a UUA facilitated meeting that was supposed to be welcoming our previous minister, I called it out and left the meeting.
1 Like
Hi Leilani,
I’m glad that when you experienced racism, you “called it out and left the meeting.” It sounds like that’s exactly what you needed to do.
I will try to put your experience in the context of what I meant to convey in my second and third paragraphs above: It sounds to me like you “listened” for as long as you could/should tolerate it! You thought you had “understood” enough to know that you did not want to hear any more. And you “respected” the person (not the racism) enough to “call it out” to them. I think that, plus leaving the meeting, was a very appropriate “response.” You “confronted powers of evil” with what I might call “tough love.” Hopefully there was also an opportunity to heal from that experience and to move forward in a constructive way?
I’m NOT suggesting that you need to “grow your capacity for listening to racist speech.” I do hope that human beings can grow our capacity for metaphorically and/or generically “listening” to PERSONS using hateful speech in order to understand why they have become so hateful, and to try to understand whether or not there might be some way to reach them - all as part of our search for truth and meaning, trying to make sense of our Interdependent reality and build Beloved Community.
(I suppose some of my idealism comes from the fact that I’m a psychotherapist by trade. I listen to people express a lot of angry and hateful things, sometimes directed at me. I often fall short of how I wish I could respond. But there are some magic moments when someone feels understood and their anger melts into tears.)
Any thoughts about all of that?
Thank you for your clarification. Though generally it doesn’t change my thoughts about not wishing to ‘covenant to listen’. If it was to covenant to respect and remain open. I would be ok with it. As a BIPOC, I have had several white UUs assure me if I only listened to them, got to know them better, let them process at me about their journey - I would come to understand their words and actions were not racist (even though I was experiencing racism at the moment as especially as their prioritized their feelings and learning, their privilege at me.) It is the standard practice and expectation (of some white folks) to expect BIPOCs like me to be calm, to listen, to educate others as they are actively saying racist things at me. I just cannot get behind “covenant to listen” because of how often this type of wording is used to center white UUs fragility. I appreciate your desire for making sense and building community but it is not the job of BIPOCs to give audience (listen) to some white UUs hatespeech for greater learning or for magic learning moments. Though it is very beneficial to me personally if folks like yourself caucus and have listening circles with other white UUs to help them on the journey.
Another reason I’m not in favor of this amendment because ‘openness to change and scientific understanding’ are already explicitly named in A2. And I’m not into valuing reason for sake of reason as BIPOC because this has been used throughout time for terrible, all of the name of reason and science.
I strongly prefer the A2 draft has C-2.3 has ‘sacred, secular and scientific understandings’ better than proposed amendment. And the language in A2 ‘heritages of freedom and reason’ - already in section C-2.2 and in under generosity, I like the way interdepedence, care, respect and mutuality in A2 are described better rather than covenanting to listen as this amendment would propose.
2 Likes
Hi again Leilani,
Your experiences with being told or expected to listen sound painful 
I personally feel called to “listen” as much as I can, and I like it when another person chooses to listen to me.
So thanks for the conversation!
- Kara
1 Like
This amendment states, “…informed by reason, evidence, and the results of science,…” Very similar, in my opinion, to where these ideas show up in the proposed Inspirations section: “…and are inspired by sacred, secular, and scientific understandings…”
In the past, science has been one of our sources, not a principle. Now, as in the past, I think science is still a valuable source/inspiration/knowlege that informs and inspires. So yes, keep them, keep them in Inspirations. By placing one of our inspirations in the values, and not also including the sacred and the secular in the same space, I feel there is a strong inference that can be read into it (science as a Value) that science trumps the sacred and the secular.
If I may lean into the Pluralism value for a moment, I respect that each individual receives inspiration from whichever concept, practice, thought and theology resonates for them AND on the level of congregation and denomination we are being asked to welcome multiple inspirations into our UU spaces without dictating a priority of one over another, which is what I think this amendment does.