“What a time in the U.S. to be asked to talk about conflict resolution,” says Kathleen Klompien-Wedberg as she begins her sermon relating to our Peaceful Practices Curriculum. She notes that the past few weeks have seen the world in a time of war and aggression on multiple fronts.

Yet our passage in Matthew 18:10-22 about trying to reconcile, again and again, the the songs we sing about God’s love and seeing from one another’s point of view, the interactions with the children this morning — call us to be looking at our situation with humility, with creativity, and with discovery. We’re not doing this by ourselves.
Discovery is endless in the world of little people. Discovery is a humble posture. Juxtaposed with belief, discovery demands that we ask questions rather than give answers. Kathleen quotes French philosopher Emile August Cartier, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”

And a 2018/19 study called Beyond Conflict Polarization Index found that Americans incorrectly believe that members of the other political party dehumanize, dislike and disagree with them more than twice as much as they actually do.

A posture of discovery means that we’re willing to have something shaken up in the way we see the world. She goes on to talk about an exercise from our curriculum about learning to see what’s below the surface of our own perspectives, and those of others — our stories.

Hear more as Kathleen delves into Rumi’s story of men in a dark room trying to describe an elephant, about our the impact of our own stories, and about learning to see what lurks below our perspectives and of others we interact with. The images she describes are from our Peaceful Practices Curriculum, Session 3.