Long before we met, Jim Henderson and I were learning — and trying to help others learn — to cross the the difference divide.
In the 90s, EdgeTV was part of that for me … as was Raising Adults … and a lot of behind-the-scenes work that you may or may not know I had anything to do with.
Jim Henderson’s work on mapping a way across the difference divide includes Jim & Casper Go to Church and, like me, a lot of behind-the-scenes work.
After I moved to Seattle, Jim + I got together on a feature-length documentary called No Joke — it’s the story of three people in Peoria, Illinois … a rabbi, an imam, and an honest-to-God evangelical preacher … who became fast friends (against all odds, really). That was 2016.
No Joke confirmed some things we’d been working on in parallel for a long time. We call what we’re doing 3Practices for Crossing the Difference Divide. In a nutshell, the 3Practices are:
I’ll be unusually interested in others
I’ll stay in the room with difference
I’ll stop comparing my best with your worst
We started gathering folks who have good reasons to disagree with each other into 3Practice Circles. To our delight, people who were used to fighting like cats and dogs started learning to listen. They were still cats and dogs … they just found greater clarity when they did less growling and hissing. We tinkered and refined the 3Practices and the rules that make 3Practice Circles work. We led Face-to-Face Circles around Seattle, with occasional excursions for 3Practice Fishbowl Circles at gatherings of business, civic, and religious leaders. That was 2017 and 2018.
We went public with an engagement initiated by the Office of the Chancellor of University of California, Merced (UC’s most diverse campus, we were told) … we trained 3Practice Circle Leaders in California’s Central Valley, initiated by the regional chapter of the American Leadership Forum … we wrote a book, 3Practices for Crossing the Difference Divide. That was 2019.
In 2020, a few weeks before things got crazy, we led our first online 3Practice Zoom Circle because we had a hunch our future might be as much online as in real life … after all, for better and worse, the internet is where a lot of ideological opponents encounter each other.
3Practice Zoom Circles tested well — just as well as Face-to-Face Circles and event-based Fishbowl Circles — which is a good thing because, for the time being, it's online or nothing for this sort of interaction. And when we come out the other side, we’ll have three ways to experience 3Practice Circles!
Before we entered the world of self-isolation and social distancing, we led two or three 3Practice Circles a month. Now we lead two or three 3Practice Zoom Circles a week.
But that’s not enough. People who have a little time on their hands in these stay-at-home days have been raising their hands to say they want to learn how to lead 3Practice Circles in their spheres of influence.
I hope maybe you or someone you know will think this sounds like what you’ve been wishing for: A way to serve the common good by helping neighbors reach across the fence to understand each other … they’ll still have fences — they’re not obliged to agree about everything — but maybe they can stop laying landmines and lobbing bombs at each other.
So, there’s my story. If you like the sound of it, take whatever action makes sense to you.
Drop me a note to ask me a question or let me know you’d like an invitation to a 3Practice Zoom Circle.
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