Open

You guys.  The internet has been driving me NUTS since last Friday.  But it’s been my fault.  I purposefully go on comments of controversial postings and read AAALLLL the opinions, most especially the ones I don’t agree with. WHY DO I DO THAT? It’s not like I enjoy feeling antagonized.  I don’t.  I lived through all my kids' twos and threes.  I definitely know that I don't enjoy antagonization.

The truth is, I do it because I have this nosey side of me that is really interested in humanity, even when it’s despicable. 

Do you want to know how I got that way? 

It started in college at Sonoma State. I was in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies.  It was a school within a school with a lot of soon-to-be-teachers in the program, as the purpose was to “learn to learn”.  It was a completely new experience for me. No more sitting in the back of a lecture hall, hiding. In this program, I had to use my voice, which I initially hated, because like I said, back then my MO in class was to quietly do my work and always, always, find a larger person to sit and hide behind.  In this program, there was no choice- you participated or you failed. Honestly, this was never something I would have chosen for myself, but because I was transferring from another school, my counselor had said, “Oh, you want to be a teacher.  Well, this is the program most of our teachers graduate from.” So, plop.  That’s how I landed in Hutchins.  

Every class was small, no more than 13 students.  We sat around a circular table and would seminar. That meant that every week we showed up to class with our professor as facilitator, prepared to discuss the ideas and concepts from whichever book or books we had been assigned that week.  Sounds totally hippy dippy, right? That was the reputation the school had on the larger campus.  Other students scorned it as a cop-out from doing the typical “lecture/ note taking/exam” course of study.  I can tell you for sure, that the workload was more intense than the other student’s- more reading, WAY more writing, and much more critical thinking and analyzing than memorizing stuff for a test.

Despite hating it, I soon became sort of enthralled with the seminar process.  It took me a while to get used to the fact that the goal wasn’t to be right, but to be open. The people who were the most unsuccessful in seminar were the ones who monopolized the conversation or acted like their word was the final say on the subject, and let me tell you, their behavior made it all the easier to discount their opinions because of that. The people who were respected were the people who listened as much as they spoke and used their classmates’ perspectives to either shape or change their own.  Those were the students I tried to emulate, and when it became apparent that people saw my opinion as valuable to the discussion, I became even more motivated to bring thoughtful, provocative discourse to the class. 

Alas, hippy dippy couldn’t last forever, and we all know that college is usually an ideological place that has nothing to do with the real world. On breaks, I would go home and try to have the same kind of discussion we were having in class with my dad, and instead he’d get angry and call me a bleeding heart liberal and I’d be all “BUT THAT’S NOT HOW YOU SEMINAR!” and we’d get mad at each other and stomp off to opposite sides of the house. There, I would stew about his stubbornness and for the first time (but far from the last time) face the fact that most people aren’t interested in taking the time to have a deep, thoughtful, respectful conversation about the differences in their opinions. Or, at the very least, they’re just not willing to change them.

But this week, especialIy, I wish so badly that they were.  

When I’m reading through all these comments regarding the SCOTUS decision,I’m looking for the other perspectives because I’ve been trained to look at all sides. I want to sit down with these people and talk, respectfully, but then I look at the comments again and I think, “Oh God. No I don’t.”, because it’s plain that it’d be the kind of conversation that would make me want to jump off a cliff, or eat glass, or spoon out my eyes, or I don’t know-whatever you can think of that’s equally gruesome.  There are too many different opinions, too many people with their minds made up. If all the comments across all the internet were one big seminar, y’all, there would be an uneven balance of people monopolizing the conversation and acting like their way is the only way. I see Christian friends being called bigots, when I know how much their faith means to them, and I see how they are confused about how to live according to The Word in today’s society.  And I see my gay friends and those who support them fed up with being told that they are less than, not good enough, and not equal by the laws of a faith that is not even theirs (and actually, just to be clear, I do have some gay Christian friends, so it is their faith too).  There is not a lot of listening, not a lot of love in action.  And that’s on BOTH sides.

Two hundred thousand years of humanity, people.  You’d think we’d have figured out by now that drawing lines in the sand and yelling across the sides about who’s right doesn’t get us anywhere productive.  If this decision from last Friday bothers you, or if you’re angry at Christians for their beIiefs, I ask you to please get off the internet and go find someone to have a conversation with, and make sure it’s someone with a different perspective than you. The internet is not a place for these discussions.  These conversations belong face to face, with a person, with their eyes, with their body language, where you can see their emotions.  Not behind a screen where you can be insensitive with little accountability. 

There are people out there who are saying that it's impossible to have mutual respect if you also have different beliefs, but I think that’s wrong.  They’re not exclusive from each other, it just takes more work.  It takes opening up and softening.  PLEASE, LET GO of being right and work on being open. The law has passed, it is done, and what is left for us now is to find a way to be better humans together under the decision.