Building Trust Game

Turns out that TRUST is important for relationships! It’s time to learn how to build it.

Here’s the scenario. You are going to be together with someone with whom you have major differences in attitude and opinion. You can employ Tactics, Speaking, and Listening to deal with the situation. Some of them are more helpful than others. Which of the following will you do and why? And what ones do you find yourself doing even though you probably shouldn’t?

TACTICS 

1. Avoid the person

2. Avoid the conversation

3. If THE subject comes up, Say nothing

4. Say nothing to them and complain to everyone else

5. Change the subject

6. Hang out around them

7. Express interest in them

8. Learn something about them ahead of time and do some research so you can talk about it

9. Calm yourself beforehand

10. Let someone else know what you are doing so they can support you

SPEAKING

1. Tell them they are wrong

2. Explain why they are wrong

3. Explain why they are wrong nicely

4. Call them names

5. Ask them, Do you REALLY believe that?

6. Ask them, Why do you believe THAT?!?

7. Ask them, HOW can you believe that?

8. Explain to them the ramifications on the world of what they believe

9. Ask them if they want to know what you think.

10. Explain how you are trying to be open to them, and that they aren’t doing that for you

11. Ask what brought them to believe what they do?

12. Ask clarifying questions

13. Reflect what you hear to confirm understanding

14. If asked what you think, use “I” statements instead of “You” statements.

LISTENING 

1. Listen for the weakness in their argument

2. Roll your eyes often

3. Interrupt

4. Listen for a pause… so you can get your point in

5. Listen to understand

6. Listen for the person behind the words

Heaven in a wildflower and hold infinity in the palm of your hand: Maia Dalager

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

--William Blake

Check out this video of a starling murmuration: 

Each starling is a data point that is constantly reacting and changing and is a part of a whole. Starlings can just do this. How can I be a data point that is also the change and a part of a whole?

I was talking with someone about Katy Schalla Lesiak and Bjorn Westgard’s podcast The Stories that Data Tell saying, I wonder if and how God is in data?' They were reminded of a moment they had looking out at the ocean thinking about it as an infinite number of data points rolling with and in the waves. I was thinking about the movie the matrix coupled with a line from the William Blake poem above and wondering how maybe so many things in nature are millions of data points that we perceive as a whole and present as a flower or a waterfall or the wind. 

I am continually connecting the To Get to the Other Side series to where it began with Erin Tripolino’s sharing of Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy. She says,

[Emergence] is another way of speaking about the connective tissue of all that exists --the way, the Tao, the force, change, God/dess, life. Birds flocking, cells splitting, fungi whispering underground. 

Adrienne Maree Brown also quoted Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,

All that you touch

You change

All that you change

Changes you

The only lasting truth

Is change

God is change

I read these and think about my friend talking about the change/data/god within the ocean and find comfort. God is change. The only lasting truth is change. Watching nature constantly react and change in very small movements that create systems and patterns like ocean waves beating up against a shore or a starling murmuration, I feel held and connected to God in everyday encounters and even the natural rhythms in me. Trees are so damn good at being trees, and I can connect to that same energy that lives in me and be a damn good Maia. 

This is my prayer and where I start today.

Excuse Us as We Pivot - again: Greg Meyer

We are a bit of a mess right now as we try to figure out how to be church in the wake of the pandemic and George Floyd’s killing. Yes, I realize that we’ve been saying that since we started 14 years ago. The truth is we hope to be saying it a lot longer because the day we think we have it all figured out is the day we become useless.

You ought to know, however, that the messiness factor is higher than usual as we navigate the racial dynamics of being a ‘mostly but not entirely white-bodied’ community. With all the discovering of homework us white-bodied folks have suddenly done (yeah, I’m one of them), homework that our black and brown-bodied brothers and sisters have known and dealt with forever, there is a need to each go to our corners to do our different work. But yet, we are one community. We are all people, children of God, human beings. And the goal is to pull together, not split apart according to our race or skin color.

So here is what we are trying right now. Our whole community gatherings are going to be designed – as best we can – for everyone. There are a million human hurts and joys that unite us all, no matter the color of our skin. We can and will dig into them. There is also some work we need to do separately. Our white-bodied friends are feeling the need to sort out their whiteness, undo the racism embedded inside, and cause less harm to their brown and black-bodied, immigrant, LGBTQ and native neighbors. We’ll take that work out of our community gatherings and find other places for it. And if you are not white you have special needs right now too. I won’t pretend to know what they are, but I want you to have space for that.

Epilogue – the image above: I was headed to the post office this afternoon and got stopped by the sign, “Construction Zone: No Thru Traffic.” It felt like the story of my life. A-l-w-a-y-s under construction. But, you know, I’m proud of that. And then the “No Thru Traffic.” Ain’t that true! So many people just want to get through it, get over it, not slow down. Well, if that is what you are looking for, sorry, we’re a mess. This isn’t the way through, this is the place for people who are willing to be in the moment and deal with what is at hand. This is the journey, not the destination. The place for people who are willing to be in it with us, not figured out, making mistakes, trying stuff, saying they’re sorry, bumping, jostling around and getting dirty.

So, Sunday mornings and other whole Fabric gatherings – We’ll work hard to fashion them to be for and by all of us, regardless of the characteristics that separate us.

Our individual work, we’ll support and promote that too, but it will be in Groups, special opportunities, and the like.

Stay tuned and excuse our mess.