This video is a part of the Healing the Heart of Democracy Discussion Guide and can be found with more videos and resources in our “Healing the Heart of Democracy Hub.” You can explore the hub, download the guide, and find all of the videos along with additional resources here.
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In American-style democracy, the incessant conflicts of political life are meant to be contained within a dialectic of give-and-take, generating and even necessitating collaboration and inventiveness. These principles create a political system that can and does try our souls. It frustrates, maddens, exhausts, and appalls us when big problems go unsolved because we cannot muster enough agreement to solve them or when problems we thought we had put to rest are called back into play. . . .
A political system that allows us to keep working on collective solutions to vexing problems but refuses to take any question off the table permanently calls forth creative capacities that lie dormant under autocratic rule. If we are willing and able to hold the tensions that American democracy deliberately creates, the system itself will help us develop the habits of heart required for the health of the body politic. (75–77)
Q. If you have neighbors, friends, a partner or a spouse, if you have helped raise a child—especially a teenager!—then you have been challenged to hold tension creatively. Tell a story from these or any other parts of your life (e.g., workplace or religious community) when your capacity for tension-holding made a difference. What helped you hold that tension in a way that opened things up rather than shutting things down? If you have been able to hold tension creatively in your private life, have you been able to extend that to your public life? If not, what makes it difficult to use that capacity when dealing with political differences?
