Opening Hearts and Minds: Speak Peace
Workshop # 27
Bonnie Tinker
Learn practical tools for speaking peace when confronted with violence, bigotry and fear. Facing the fear behind discrimination and war, we will construct nonviolent responses for use in our personal and political lives. Through worship we will look at our fears and seek courage to use words as instruments of peace.
Percentage of time:
Worship/worship-sharing 25; Lecture 10; Discussion 35; Experiential 30
(PT)
Open to all
Full Description
Expectations and objectives for the week:
- Workshop participants will practice centering in nonviolence when facing verbal disagreements or attack.
- Each participant will identify specific goals which may such things as creating responses to particular issues, sustaining a non violent presence under specific circumstances, or deepening their spiritual response to conflict.
Topics:
- We will learn a method, LARA (more information below), for remaining centered in nonviolence while witnessing to concerns of peace and equality.
- We will review classic nonviolent action theory and practice and of some more recent tools developed by Quakers for witnessing to the poser of non violence during conflict (AVP, Compassionate Listening, and The Listening Project).
- Group participants will determine issue focuses; the facilitator brings experience confronting sexual orientation discrimination, providing public education on family equality and to end the war in Iraq, and civil disobedience to protest the culture of war, advocate impeachment proceedings and to discourage military recruitment.
- We will be primarily issue focused, delving into interpersonal conflict only when the issue is clearly related to an issue of discrimination, violence, or spiritual witness.
Format:
We will open and close with 15-20 minutes of worship daily; worship sharing type queries will be provided for some of the worship. I will send out a recommended reading list to those registered in the workshop. Some reading materials will be handed out, but I do not anticipate many participants will find time for reading during the Gathering. We will use personal sharing, some writing, and small group discussion with a lot of practice time involving role plays (optional participation), and presentations to the group following the practice time.
Bring information about other systems you like for using verbal nonviolence, and any exercise you have found helpful for developing listening and nonviolent response skills. Bring stories about specific conflicts you or your meeting are currently facing. We will be primarily issue focused, delving into concerns about interpersonal conflict only when the issue is clearly related to discrimination, violence, or faith based witness.
LARA: Using Non-violence for Transformative Dialog
(Condensed excerpt of article in Quaker Peace Teams News)
We live in world so violent that even our speech is militarized. We can change this on an individual level and in the process transform ourselves. When we speak non-violently we also open the possibility of a non-violent response from those who disagree with us.
We do not have to tear communities apart when we disagree with one another. It is possible to come to unity, as many Quaker communities have demonstrated by fully embracing marriage equality.
A team of speakers at Love Makes A Family, Inc. developed a simple method for centering ourselves in non-violent, transformative speech.
The theory is simple. Non-violent action, and speech, conveys the message, “I will not harm you.” The workshop is named “Opening Hearts and Minds” because we recognize that you can’t have change unless you are open to it. Change usually happens in this order: first hearts, then minds. You can’t really change anyone else. All you can do is to open yourself so that change becomes possible.
A simple acronym creates a framework to help us identify this goodness and change our habits of verbal aggression.
LARA: Using Non-violence for Transformative Dialog
LARA: Listen. Affirm. Respond. Add.
Listen. This is the time to remain deeply silent while listening for the heart connection. Go behind the content of the argument to try to identify with the good intentions of the speaker. This is the point where you disarm, setting aside defenses which cast the person you are speaking with as an enemy and look for a basis of friendship.
Affirm. In the first words out of your mouth, use a parallel “I” statement to affirm that you recognize the person as someone who shares your intention to make the world safe for all. This statement raises a white flag. It says “I am open to you and I will not use my words to hurt you.” Gandhi says that to engage in non-violent action we must avoid the fight or flight action. With your affirmation, you have set aside the “fight” reaction.
Respond. Do not side step the point raised. Respect the person you are speaking with by giving a direct answer to their concern. This is the point where you avoid the “flight” reaction. With your direct response you indicate that you are present and will not flee the disagreement.
Add. Now that you’ve established a connection, add a piece of information that puts the issue in a new light. My Dad, who worked for AFSC said that when you open up a dialog with people you have changed their expectation. They expected a fight and were prepared to treat you as an enemy. If you have shown that you are a friend, they have a different expectation of you. They need some new words, a place to hang their new feeling.
For those of us raised in a culture of violence and domination it can be difficult to live the non-violence that we hold dear. LARA is a tool to pull us back from fear and anger so that we can open our own hearts while engaging in honest dialog.
