Beyond Polarized Questions

Happy Friday!

When you want to learn about something new, or about something old, how do you ask your question? Where are your feet pointing? What are your hands engaged with when you seek to know something? What is the intention in your heart? What language do you use to ask this question?

I've heard it said that the quality of our questions has an impact on the quality of the answers we find. I believe this statement to be true. And I also believe that the quality of the heart's intention in asking questions can make a world of difference as well in what connection we share with others as we seek the answers.

A theology professor I once had back in the mid 90s, one day said that the way the church framed the question of whether gay, lesbian, bisexual (and now trans, Q +) could be members in the church would only lead to polarized conversation in the answer-seeking. For many years, I witnessed and experienced this polarization...he has been right.

If the questions we are currently asking only frame our searching to polarize the conversation, heaven help our suffering. During mediation and conflict certification training, my course facilitators provided the image of people each on their own mountains yelling at the other from their point of view, their 'right knowledge' as a key image depicting conflict. The picture of polarization.

What I value and love about circle process, principles and practice is the agreement to come down from the mountain of your 'rightness' and return to the value of connection and heart-centred sharing. With an open heart, a listening heart, a sincerity of heart , circle members are called to listen and be present to perspectives and stories and understanding beyond what is 'right' on any one side or mountaintop. The circle, by nature, has no sides and no mountaintop. No angle is superior to another.

In circle what we agree to is the common ground of the purpose for gathering, hosted at the centre. In the centre, our purpose is equidistant to us all. It's not to say that circle is easy. It can be very challenging. What it does offer is a brave way to be present to each other and our questions because we enter circle agreeing to listen with heart until we get to hold the talking piece and speak with heart (not ego), connecting to the centre!

Some might call this civility or good manners. And likely it is. It is also the call to engage with the heart, with non-judgement and compassion for experiences, perspectives and ways of knowing that are different from our own and yet equidistant to the centre of the collective purpose.

When I think about the collective purpose or shared purpose of our human experience, it seems to me to have lots to do with love, compassion and kindness toward one another, creation and the planet, to life itself. Wisdom texts and Indigenous teachings from all parts of the world echo this understanding.--in fact taught us these teachings for our benefit.

So what if I lived life as though I was living in circle? What if I view the purpose of this big circle as a gift to learn about love, compassion and kindness (and thus all the inherent virtues or 7 Grandfather teachings embedded therein) and that the heart of another's story brings richness to the whole? Every story and understanding is equidistant to centre and purpose. The closer to centre and to the collective purpose your story is, the greater the value to the whole.

And what if the spaces between myself and others and our stories are filled with breath, with pause, with light, with ancestors sitting with us, with stillness of the night, with the power of synergistic flow and creativity? What would or could happen? What would I see and hear and feel sharing the centre with all others?

Today, as I look at all the polarization of conversation and ideas used as weapons to undo and destroy us, I wonder and imagine what might we need to frame our narrative differently, inviting new stories, different questions and perhaps new answers. I wonder who would show up at this circle----curious, ready and humble enough to engage in an ancient indigenous practice to be something more together than we are by ourselves? Just for today, I focus on centre, on the purpose of why we are all here together at this time....where everything is connected in the circle of life. I wonder what question is worthy to be asked of this day relevant to the purpose of why we are here, sitting at the rim, together. I wonder...... Peace. Shirley Lynn Martin