Reclaiming We The People
ServiceSpace
--Tom Mahon
1 minute read
Sep 5, 2014

 

Today's NY Times has an interview with Parker Palmer: Reclaiming 'We the People,' One Person at a Time. His thinking is very much parallel with ServiceSpace.

When I ask people to talk about politics on the state or national level, they say everything’s going to hell in a handbasket. But when I ask, “What’s going on in the part of the world within your reach?” the response is more promising.

The venues in which we live our lives — families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations and voluntary associations — create the vital infrastructure of democracy. In these settings we can develop democratic “habits of the heart” that can help us reclaim our sense of “We the People.”[...]

When I emphasize the importance of things like storytelling and being in right relationship, I’m not giving up on sorting out issues of right and wrong, good and bad. But if you’re not humanly connected, you have no chance to pursue these complex issues communally in a way that might be transformative.

The skills required to make safe space and restore civic community are human-scale and learnable. And people want to learn them once they’ve experienced the satisfaction of a political conversation that does not make enemies but creates a sense of civic community, of “We the People.”
  
 

Posted by Tom Mahon on Sep 5, 2014


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