By Stephanie Salter
TERRE HAUTE — 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.
