By Stephanie Salter
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE
January 19, 2008 07:49 pm
—
A few weeks ago I wrote about the need for all of us in the divided United States of America to try to find some common ground with people we dislike.
Instead of reflexively condemning a rude stranger, store clerk, neighbor’s teenager or person upon whom we’ve slapped a negative label based simply on his or her “politics,” I suggested we attempt to break that knee-jerk response with a momentary search for commonality.
Focusing on Terre Haute’s recent political turmoil and angry divisions, I wondered if the city could adopt a second motto (in practice if not on billboards) to go with “A Level Above.” Something like “Seeking common ground.”
Then I asked readers to write, e-mail or phone with ideas about how to find common ground, and I promised to share those ideas after the new year.
I’d love to report that the response was overwhelming, but that would be a lie. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s always easier to get folks to react to a negative. (If I want lots of mail, I need only write about the Second Amendment.)
But a promise is a promise. Besides, even if only a handful of people responded, their messages were thoughtful and of quality. And you never know — a little seed here, a little seed there, someday we might see a nice garden (see related story).
One of the most thorough responses — and the one I’m featuring today — came from Joe Biggs, a Terre Haute man I haven’t met, but who I feel I now know.
Joe said he’d been “distressed and dismayed” by the divisive behavior he’d witnessed from community leaders and ordinary citizens over the local election season. Then he rightly took me to task for using terms such as “idiot” and “dummy” in my appeal for common ground suggestions. (What was I thinking?)
As he reminded me, “derogatory and demeaning words” like those I used “serve only to anger and distance those who disagree with your important, much-needed, and well-meaning intentions to bring this community together on common ground.”
Instead, said Joe, my columns and other Tribune-Star essays “can and should set a positive example” of something he learned from his father.
Pastor of a Presbyterian church, Joe’s dad tended a flock that “had its fair share of disagreement” among members. “However, rather than resent or resist such disagreement, my father welcomed it as part of the healthy dynamics of any organized group,” Joe wrote.
There was one caveat: His father’s credo for the congregation was “Agree to Disagree, In Love.”
If the members of our own community decided to adopt such an approach, we would have to practice what Buddhists call “right speech,” and what Joe Biggs calls “a drastic change in the way in which we speak and refer to one another.” It would mean dispensing of “narcissistic” and “diatribe-laden” statements that only continue “to ‘stir the pot’ of anger, bitterness and discontent among Terre Haute’s citizens …”
Joe suggested we pay attention to wisdom imparted over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders of all faith traditions.
“Those directives cite forgiveness, peace making and love of neighbor as the prerequisites for the common ground of agreeing to disagree,” he wrote. “The words [spoken or written], the state of mind, and the personal conduct with which individuals enter into dialogue about differences are essential elements of change in the quest for reconciliation.”
And words, as we all know, can lead to action.
“To ‘Agree to Disagree, In Love’ is much more than just a credo; it is a way of relating toward others,” Joe said, “even others with whom we have the starkest of differences.”
Despite all the rancor of the mayoral election, recount and Hatch Act challenge, Joe Biggs said he believes the city can and will begin to heal itself — if many of us accept the challenge.
“I will know that Terre Haute has found this common ground,” he wrote, “when I see the most disparate of political, community and media leaders standing together, hand-in-hand, agreeing to disagree, in love.”
We could hold such a gathering in Hulman Center. Who wants to go first?
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.
My call for ways to foster common ground in Terre Haute was answered by a small but choice group of citizens. Some highlights:
Jim Moles, who has lived in the city his whole life — except for a military stint — said we need to focus on our common “residency.”
“It bothers me most the amount of venom that has been spread around, and the amount of folks that live here who seem to root against our city,” he wrote, and offered examples of letters to the editor that attack attempts at bettering the town or that make fun of well-known flaws, such as the odors of the south end.
“We are all citizens of this place and need to do all we can to advance Terre Haute as a good place to live and work,” Jim said. “Very few of us would attend a sporting event and root for part of a team, but that’s exactly what we do when we are only happy for things done by ‘our side.’”
Tribune-Star historical contributor Dorothy Jerse sent several reports after the topic of common ground was discussed among her friends. “Respect” seemed to be the concept to which they always returned.
The women discussed the decline of mutual respect that is shown among young people in private and public, acknowledging that “respect is learned at home — by teachings but more by example.” When kids can’t find it at home, that places “the challenge, as always, on the schools and churches.”
Dorothy’s group shared examples of disrespect shown by children as young as kindergartners but also noted positive signs such as the Lost Creek Elementary School’s ubiquitous motto, “ROAR,” which stands for “Remind Others About Respect.”
The best “little idea” Dorothy said she could think of “is THANK YOU … to the restaurant server, to the person who holds open the door, to the doctor just seen, etc.,” and likewise from those people back to their customers, clients and patients. “I would like to make Terre Haute a ‘THANK YOU TOWN.’”
Char Minnette offered this one-line reminder of something we all have in common: “We’re all trying to keep our heads above water and our feet under us.”
Joe Weber also shared a sage philosophy: “Tolerance is a good wastebasket for annoyances … Should any of us leave annoyances in the pathway of others, we have only the hope that their wastebasket is not full.”
A lifelong nature lover, Joe suggested we practice tolerance on our seasonal visitors, the crows, and use them to develop empathy in ourselves and our children. He wrote:
“There in the trees you will see them; head to wind, shoulder by shoulder, sleet covered, mother by child, enduring nature’s fury with only the promise of dawn’s new day to see them through.”
Like Joe Biggs, Glory Compton gave me a deserved dressing down for using words such as “idiot” in a column about common ground. She wrote:
“Common ground … that’s about all we’ve got. We’re all a part of this system whether we’ve bought into it or not. We’re earth, air, water, etc. … Sometimes, think if we just didn’t have to talk (not to mention to write), we’d be a lot better off. Idiots are people, too, and if you didn’t have us, you wouldn’t have readers. So count your lucky stars and hug an idiot today!”
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
Tribune-Star columnist Stephanie Salter.