Talking difference can be exhausting, it can wear you down and wear you out! Here I share some reflections that can help us to keep talking …….
‘Talking Difference’, these two words convey so much. At a deeply personal level I know I have spent much of my life doing just that – talking difference. Many others reading this will have had the same experience and in a myriad of different ways. Our lives are not all the same. It is our many uniqueness’s that make the world we inhabit rich beyond measure in its diversity and creativity. There is much to recognise and celebrate when we talk difference.
Talking difference is also for many a very specific experience. There are contexts of life that can make difference a day to day struggle. When a particular context values one way of being, identity or culture as preferable over another then such valuing can often and does render anything different as devalued, rejected, unacceptable, less than. When life is lived outside of the accepted and valued then, as well as being characterised by difference, such an experience of life is characterised by struggle. The struggle is often manifest in the struggle to have a voice. A voice that is often required to address assumption, denial and sometimes hatred.
I came out as gay when I was in my early teens. I’ve been coming out ever since. Having initially thought of it as a ‘one off’ thing to do, life soon taught me that the process is never ending. Like many, that difference is not the only difference that makes Br.Stephen Morris who he is. I sometimes also need to come out as being Irish, people are usually more shocked about that! These two aspects of my identity have required me to have a voice and often to struggle to have that voice heard. When talking difference is a daily experience because of who you are in the world it can be tiring, literally exhausting. It requires resilience.
If two ‘coming out’s’ were not enough. I have a third. I often need to come out as a Franciscan Brother, especially when my work does not permit me to wear my habit. Coming out as a consecrated Brother requires me to have faith and it requires me not to lose heart. We are all in some way engaged with the world and its many discouragements. So we are all required to have faith in something and not to lose heart. I’m not alone.
If you are concerned about the environment, equity, the welfare of refugees, social justice and those we work with, it is very easy to lose heart. Recognising the very real risk of losing heart poses the question; how do we not let ourselves spiral downwards into hopelessness? or, if we’re finding ourselves going downhill, how do we pull ourselves up?
Well, having faith helps but, faith alone will not change anything. Not losing heart requires action and thankfully that is something we can all do. The reason we may start to lose heart is that we allow ourselves to get hooked by our emotions. No matter who the target of our emotion is, it’s usually someone or some situation that hooks us. Once we get worked up we start to lose our effectiveness. We lose our skill to communicate and in so doing we lose our ability to do the one thing that is most often within our reach – to uplift ourselves and those we encounter. We can observe this process times over in the interview room, on the prison landing and of course in the many different areas of our own lives.
When we fall onto the hook of our emotions; anger, resentment, whatever, we disconnect, we start to go a little unconscious. So, the first step of not losing heart is to become aware of when this happens. Once we are hooked we lose our sense of everyone having the same vulnerability, of the shares human desire to know happiness and avoid pain. In this cut off state we can fail to recognise the basic goodness in people and within ourselves. Becoming more aware of when our emotions get in the way of connection, keeps us conscious and from that place we are more able to see and experience the wider picture which is seldom a complete reflection of our emotions.
When we are losing heart because of our own struggles in life, one of the best antidotes is to put things in a bigger context. I always find it a profound moment when, after listening to a service users account of their offence and often horrendously destructive behaviour, they stop and looking directly at me say “but I am good person”. I always experience that as a plea. A very human request of ‘now you have seen the worst me, please also see the best of me’. Seeing the wider picture, no matter what they have made me feel, is crucial if I, if we, if they, are not to lose heart.
Widening our perspective and becoming more conscious individually also has a positive effect on wider society. It can have a massive impact on our ability to embrace and value difference.
When we are continually faced with aggression, violence, greed, injustice, insensitivity to another’s pain the invitation is always to close down, to polarise and in that process lose heart. These experiences, can if allowed, take the ground from under us and if we’re not careful we too can find ourselves not caring, not connecting, losing faith in others and in ourselves. It is in these moments of vulnerability that the task is to remember how everything we do matters and that includes talking difference.
Talking difference from the vulnerable place of being fully conscious can help us stand tall and resilient without resorting to defensiveness, striking out, closing down or polarising. One less person doing that in the world is going to make a difference.
One more person taking a wider perspective and being willing to see beyond all that which would make us want to turn away, will make a difference. One more person having faith in our own and others basic goodness wont suddenly remove all that which would make us lose hope and neither will it suddenly make us certain.
Constant certainty in the work we do, with others and on ourselves is seldom, if ever, possible. But the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty. So, it’s absolutely ok not to feel certain when we talk difference. A lack of certainty does not stop you or me from, in faith, making important contributions to the world. If that means talking difference then there is every reason for us to start to practice not losing heart and …. to keep talking.
Br. Stephen Morris FCC
