Cultivating Relationality in a Time of Division
Is it any wonder that we have a crisis of relationality in our nation? After diligently equipping our children to out-perform one another in a narrow number of ways—which becomes the primary focus of their young lives and formal education—it is left to congregations, to community centers, to social groups of various kinds to teach us how to be in complex relationship with one another—if that. By and large, even in relationally-oriented institutions, very few offer classes or training in how to engage well in the most fundamental of human needs: how to be in healthy, mutually meaningful relationship with one another. It is as if, en masse, we have collectively decided that these skills are somehow acquired by osmosis. And, if they are not learned by osmosis, we wait until someone ‘screws up really bad’ (gets into difficulty with their community, at their workplace, or in their personal relationships) and then we enact a disciplinary model: punitive action must be taken and boundaries put in place.
Indeed, at times, healthy boundaries and accountability are needed. But why do we, as a society, make almost no effort to teach, not just the fundamentals of human relationship, but the more advanced skills related to: what do we do when we screw up? How are we present to one another across deeply held differences? What should we do in the midst of volatile conflict? How do we ‘show up’ in meaningful ways for the diversity that we claim to value and constantly stumble over? What do we do with our own subjectivity and reactivity in the midst of such critical relational needs?
This is a spiritual crisis, for ‘spirit’ (however we choose to understand it) is ultimately about interconnectedness, interdependence, and the connective tissue invisibly binding everything and everyone to each other. When we are struggling with how to relate to one another—how to even care about one another—in one of the wealthiest nations in the history of planet Earth, a nation in which no one need ever starve or sleep without a roof over their head, and yet people do—there is a profound crisis of disconnection. When it feels ‘safer’ to only be among those who almost exclusively think like ‘us’ —cutting off neighbors, family members, community members, and co-workers who hold divergent needs and experiences—we are deepening that disconnection, not healing it or working with it.
The frayed connective tissue of our society must first be strengthened locally, wherever we are, with whichever groups of people we are immediately connected to. Only as tissue gets stronger, as it first heals and then grows, can it bear the harder and more weighty loads. Social, civic, and communal healing requires more than convalescence, or worse, hiding in cliques of uniformity. It requires building muscle, in this case a spiritual-relational muscle. This muscle, this connective tissue, requires challenging and transforming the faulty assumptions that have been shredding it; it requires practice with relational skills that many of us were never taught and some of us may feel embarrassed not to have or intimidated in learning; it requires patience and grounding in love, love, and then even more love. We are already—each and every one of us—siblings to one another and to all that exists at the level of ‘spirit,’ essence, the ontological nature of ‘all that is.’ We just need to start behaving like we really get that. The good news is that intentional practice and learning—not osmosis— can get us there.
This piece is an excerpt from a larger essay of the same title. A link to Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti’s full essay is available on our website, clfuu.org.
- Cultivating Relationality in aTime of Division - March 1, 2021
- A Thousand Ways to Pray - November 1, 2016
I’d like to read the full essay but don’t find it on the site.
Gary, here’s the link to the full essay: https://issuu.com/cwcommunityjournal/docs/weekly_41/6