"Speaking Your Peace"
Susan Skye
Sunday, September 7th, 2003

Feeling nervous right now, not because I’m standing in front of a large group of people (though that’s intimidating enough) but because what I want to talk with you about is so precious to me that I’m scared not to do it justice in the short time I have today.

The poet Rumi said: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Nonviolent Communication, the work I do, is basically summed up in that phrase.

I know that many of you are passionate in your desire to contribute to peace and bring about the kinds of social change on our planet that add to the wellbeing of all of us.

When I think about peace and harmony – notice how even we, who value peace ourselves often have a hard time in our relationships – with kids, our partners, co-workers, even with our own parents.

Recall visits to my mother – I would want so much to have a good visit, not to fight. I’d be there two days and bam, all the old feelings would come up and we’d fight; then I’d go away feeling down and discouraged, thinking I should have done better.

Wanted to find a way to connect with people and still stay true to my values.

Something was missing – a language of compassion, that comes from the heart. A language that allows us to speak from honestly and listen with empathy. A language that fosters connection with what is most important to each of us right now, in this moment.

So using this process, how do we connect? Not by going into our heads and arguing, not by defending, not by blaming and accusing. We connect by listening to what is alive in the other person underneath the words or actions we don’t like.

Two simple questions – what is the person feeling, and what are the deep underlying needs that create these feelings? I’d like to do a little demo. First I will do it the way we are programmed to communicate w one another when we have difficulties.

Imagine your partner – (married or work) says this to you “You are so selfish. You only care about yourself!”

You respond: “What are you talking about. Look how much I do for you!” Guess where this leads.

Nowith NVC: “You are so selfish. You only care about yourself!”

“I guess your feeling really frustrated and want some reassurance that I consider your needs as important as my own.”

Nonviolent Communication offers us the tools to translate our spiritual vision in practical ways - both in situations of conflict and in everyday life. Gives the hands and feet to our spiritual goals. Allows us to connect from the heart with people’s needs and let solutions to problems and conflict flow from that connection.

When a person learns this very different way of listening and speaking. we fulfill Ghandi’s request for us to “be the change we seek in the world.”

We begin to deeply understand that all acts of emotional and physical violence are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

I worry that if we come from right/wrong energy in trying to bring about social change that disconnects and alienates us from others, we are contributing to the problem rather than the solution.

If we see people who represent opposing social and political views as enemies, and label them, we bring in that energy of wrongdoing that Rumi spoke of and the result is what?? – disconnection and alienation.

Enemy images – any words that are static. Put people in a box. Words like greedy, jerk, capitalist, irresponsible. Part of the great gift of this process is a challenge to us to become conscious of the words we are using – to translate words that carry the right/wrong energy; thus we remove judgement. Without a change in our language we cannot live the change we seek to bring.

In this week’s scriptures, James asks us to see if we have become “judges with evil thoughts”. Evil is the word “live” spelled backward. By stepping outside the paradigm of right and wrong, by learning to hear and to speak what is living in ourselves and others we contribute to life rather than pain and alienation.

So that is the world I would like to live in and I invite those of you who feel drawn to play in the field beyond right and wrong to join us next weekend here at St. Joans when I will be offering a training in the basics of NVC.

Training next weekend, Sat 13th from 10 am – 4:30 pm. Sun 14th from 2 – 5 pm

• Walter Wink. The Powers That Be.
• Etti Hillesum. An Interrupted Life.
• Marshall Rosenberg. Nonviolent Communication.