My workshop about dialog

Posted by Helen on: 11.04.2007 /

I was very happy how this workshop went! I apologize in advance for not remembering everyone’s names and that I will forget to mention some of the interesting things that were said during the workshop. Please add them in the comments if you were there…

In July I led a workshop at the Midwest Emergent Gathering. I really wanted it to be more interactive than it turned out. I thought a lot about how I could make the one at Off The Map Live more interactive.

I invited Matt Casper and Rachel Stanton to help me with it since then at least there would be two other people there I knew would talk as well as me :). It also tied in with my workshop theme to have them help since the workshop was about dialog with people who are different and also online dialog. It was brave of Matt and Rachel to say yes and then show up since I was fairly vague about what I wanted them to do. (Not because I was keeping secrets but because I was fairly vague about what I wanted them to do)

I talked to Benjamin beforehand about helping too but he wasn’t sure if he’d be there and I didn’t want to push him to be. In fact he was, along with Meg his awesome wife. As it turned out, Benjamin was very helpful by being an ‘audience’ participant who commented and also laughing whenever anyone else said anything funny. I really appreciated that because it helped the workshop feel relaxed and friendly.

I had Matt and Rachel sit at the front with me and we started with each of us briefly introducing ourselves. Then I asked people to get in pairs with someone they didn’t know and talk about a memorable dialog experience for a few minutes. Matt Rachel and I did this too.

Then we reconvened and I asked if people would share what was shared with them - one person from the group did, then handily I had Matt and Rachel I could ask to share :). Matt talked with a student Jordan who prefers talking with people who are different because that’s much more interesting. He doesn’t feel at all threatened by what they share - which is great because I’ve run across that a lot. Rachel also talked with a student; they both talked about how they’d become much more open than they used to be about dialog with people who are different.

I talked with Ian, who turned out to be English like me (completely by accident or divine providence I ran into the other English person at the event) He shared how he finds it easier to listen than talk, but when someone else is respectful and curious about his views he feels comfortable about sharing. Like when a driver picked up him up when he was hitchhiking home from a Greenbelt (a Christian festival). The driver asked where he’d been and was interested so he shared all about the festival.

I asked Matt and Rachel about the difference between face to face and online dialog. Matt was funny and engaging as always, sharing that he thinks it’s much easier to put our foot in our mouth online. Someone else said they think it’s easy to put their foot in their mouth either way but much harder to take it out online. Which Matt agreed with - and I agree too; in person we can immediately clarify what we meant as soon as we see someone is offended or misunderstood us, but online it can take a while before we know that’s happened, so it escalates in their mind. Also from a technical point of view we often don’t have the power to erase the offending words that now are publically on someone’s blog or in someone else’s inbox.

I was happy that as the workshop went along, several people there did comment about dialog. I wanted interaction like this more than I wanted anything else for this workshop. It seemed like I didn’t have to say much at all, between people in the ‘audience’ and Matt and Rachel sharing helpful insights.

David asked whether being relational was part of the message itself. I do think it is; we can’t just talk about how great we are at being respectful and curious; if we are serious we need to role-model it. After the workshop he asked me what I do about very controversial topics on Conversation at the Edge. I said I often try to avoid a ‘head on’ discussion of them because those so easily can turn into debate, not dialog. What I find is that if we talk about a variety of topics, we make friends and then when something controversial does come up it’s easier to be generous with each other.

We talked about labels. We said they can be hurtful; they’re also somewhat inevitable. Rachel very wisely said something like “the key is - ask someone else to tell you what their label means instead of assuming you know what it means.” Rachel made a number of excellent comments; I wish I could remember them all.

One lady shared about being on the receiving end of labels that people tend to jump to negative conclusions about. She said people in her workplace who have known her for years suddenly get all awkward when they find out she’s a pastor’s wife. She says when people ask what her husband does she often answers with her husband’s previous secular work to avoid this happening. I asked how she navigates the awkwardness after it happens. I think she said it’s not easy and takes time. She also said people at her workplace showed how much they cared after she was absent recently because her husband experienced very serious illness. They asked about her and she found out they missed her.

I said something - or meant to - about how the person who is different might turn out to be a conservative Christian; it’s not necessarily someone is different because they don’t have faith. The night before I had been talking to Kerry and Tony who are more conservative than many people at the event. They probably were more in danger of not having people be respectful and curious to them at Off The Map Live than any atheist at it, because many of the people at the event have had difficult experiences in conservative Christian environments. It’s one thing to be kind and generous to people who belong to a group that has never personally hurt you. It’s quite another to be kind and generous to people from a group which has. But Jesus was very clear about his expectation on this particular point when he said

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best - the sun to warm and the rain to nourish - to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. (Matthew 5:43-47, The Message)

When someone is mean to us then we tend to think of them as our enemy which means they are the first person we are called to be kind and generous towards, not the last.

Anyway, back to the workshop…

Jim said he was from a fairly large church and he was here to learn. I loved that and I enjoyed talking with him a little after the workshop was over.

There were other comments I haven’t mentioned…

The last comment was from Luke who was there with a group from the Refuge in Colorado, where Jim and Matt aka Casper recently visited. Luke told his wife he’d love to have a beer with Matt. She said “What - to convert him?” He said, “No, I don’t give a shit about that!” When his wife came by after the session she clarifed that when he said that she was very relieved. I don’t know whether Luke and Matt managed to grab a beer together at this event. I hope they will sometime, if not.

I had a few things written down that I didn’t get to say; and I thought the session would be more focused on online dialog than it was. But what I found was, I didn’t mind at all that people who were there and also Matt and Rachel led the flow of conversation with their comments. At the end I noticed that quite a few people got in conversations with those they were sitting hear which was neat. I felt like, instead of transmitting information we’d had an experience of dialog in the workshop. And it was dialog with those who are different because even among the three at the front, we had an atheist, an almost atheist and a follower of Jesus. So we’d lived it a little bit as well as talking about it. To me that was awesomely kewl!

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Semi-Related Posts

• Constitution of dialog
• Is dialog possible between people of faith and people of doubt?
• Conference announcements
• Off The Map Live updates
• Protestants and Catholics in dialog
• Update on my newspaper dialog with Dean
• Update on church dialog in local newspaper

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