Moving From Advocacy to Inquiry

From Co-Director Terry Chadsey

Last week a friend offered this headline for the conflict work she is doing: "I try to move people from advocacy to inquiry." The phrase captures the deeply human task of negotiating our individuality with the demands of others—in relationships, in families, in workplaces, in neighborhoods and in communities.
 
In May 75 people gathered near Seattle to explore our experiences as citizens in a program called The Politics of the Brokenhearted: a reflective conference on habits of the heart and the future of American democracy. Led by Parker J. Palmer, and using his thought and experience as a starting place, we explored our stories and experiences of civic engagement and holding tensions across lines of difference. Over four days we applied Parker’s keen inquiry to the intersections between our private lives, the public spaces in which we encounter others and the political world.  I was struck again and again by the power of listening to such stories—my own as well as others.
 
I noticed how subtly my story slides from inquiry to advocacy for a particular point of view and leads to judgment and rejection of another perspective.
 
I was struck with how easily I can relegate my citizenship exclusively to the discrete external actions I take—voting, paying taxes, taking action in support of a particular agenda.
 
My life—and that of our democracy—is both more challenging and immeasurably enriched when I engage with others who better represent the full diversity of our communities by class, by race, by age, by culture, by political perspective. I now understand more deeply that my capacity for inquiry depends on the many little ways I engage in public life with those who are different.
 
The conference for me was an experience of moving yet again from comfort to discomfort, from what I know to what I don’t know, from advocacy to inquiry, away from that “place where we are right.”
 
The Place Where We Are Right
 
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.
 
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
 
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
 
                            —Yehuda Amichai
 

Join us in Boston for the second conference, October 21-24, 2010.

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Comments (1)

• Jul 06 2010 | Anne Howard  - inquiry
  Thank you for this, Terry. And congratulations on your new job! Today's email was a welcome reminder of the good work of the May conference. I consider my time there to have been life-changing, and it continues to be so. I have long been devoted to "public life," but it was only at the conference that I began to broaden my understanding of just what is "public," i.e. that it is more than "political." And I think you've identified a crucial aspect of renewing our public life as well as fostering civil public dialogue: deepening our capacity for inquiry by simply engaging one another in our diversity. thank you

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