Seeking Common Ground
Workshop # 35
John Helding
Together we'll explore ways to discover and communicate our common needs, truths, and ways of being in the world. Instead of emphasizing differences, can we learn to identify and celebrate common ground? In our personal lives? Within Quakerism? A week of building community, developing communication skills, and seeking common ground.
Percentage of time:
Worship/worship-sharing 25; Lecture 15; Discussion 20; Experiential 40
Open to all
Full Description
My hypothesis to put forth for the week states the belief that our culture, our faith community, over states and magnifies differences and fails to focus on, define, and work with our shared values, beliefs, and practices. And in the work of peace making, conflict resolution, and community/relationship building so much of the work we need to do revolves around identifying just such common ground.
The workshop will explore differences and commonalities at both a personal level and at the faith community level.
My expectation for the participants is for them to gain insight into their own patterns in terms of emphasizing differences or commonalities. To create a safe place where participants can share the pain and frustruation at feeling or being made to be different, seperate, the other. To get in touch with their own communication styles that get in the way of discovering common ground, and to practice communication skills (emphathy work, needs identification, I message communication) that can enhance their ability to establish common ground with another person or within a goup.
As a part of the workshop, I'm planning the possiblity for us to have a group project of defining common ground within the Quaker FGC Gathering Community through a informal sampling of the Gathering community to create a picture of just how different or similar we really are on issues such as theism/non-theism and Christianity/universalism.
The daily schedule will be fairly structured and experiential. We'll start with check ins and excercises to build and establish community and safety within the group. From there we will step into excersizes to help us identify our own beliefs, needs, and ways of being. We'll practice interpersonal dynamic/communication skills that we'll use in discovering common ground with others and then practice those skills. Through all of this we will apply these discoveries both to our personal lives and to our experience of our faith community.
