Better Angels

If there was ever a time to listen to one another, it is now.

The United States has just come through a tough political season and the whole world has been watching. The rancor and division that has made this season so tough has caused pain and heartbreak on all sides of the issues. War and terrorism, abortion and reproductive health, immigration and the economy, inflation and climate change, equality and respect for all people have been extremely contentious issues, not only in this recent season, but for so many seasons before it. The human condition has always been one of disconnection, disagreement, and division leading to struggle, fear, and discord. 

To overcome the discord, Someone To Tell It To holds the values of kindness, empathy, compassion, generosity, grace, caring, and service to one another as the best ways to transform lives, hearts, and minds - and to alleviate the discord. 

All those values begin with listening.

Listening to one another’s struggles, fears, hurts, insecurities, and uncertainties. And  … also listening to one another’s joys, needs, loves, hopes, and dreams. 

It’s incredible what we learn when we do.

We may learn what we differ on, yes. But surprisingly, we may learn even more about what we hold in common with one another. And that’s where we can start to learn to understand better, forgive more easily, and take perspectives more seriously. 

While we may never understand some things and some people we know, we can grow in understanding. And when we grow we can begin to respect one another’s experiences and maybe see them in a whole new light that leads us to greater kindness, empathy, compassion, generosity, grace, caring, and service to one another. 

We are all in this world and this life together. We are interconnected and we need one another's best to help enable this world and the life we share to be so much more beautiful and loving than it is today.

We know it’s not always easy to listen, to respect, and to understand. Admittedly, it’s frustratingly hard work at times. Often it feels impossible. Sometimes, some fractures never heal. But it is work worth doing for those fractures that do heal. For the result can be more wonderful and healing than we can even imagine. We’ve seen it to be true. We know it to be real. 

We all need to grieve and to feel whatever our feelings are in times such as these, no matter where we stand or how we vote.  We need safe spaces to work through our feelings and our grief, in hope that healing and better days will come. Without that space where listening resides, without that sharing, healing can rarely come. 

Listening to one another’s feelings and grief, helping one another to work it out, can absolutely help. 

We encourage us all to try, to listen, so that in these tough seasons, maybe just maybe, the seasons to come will be brighter with hope, warmer in spirit, and more abundantly peaceful than any season before.

In his first inaugural address, in March 1861, as the United States teetered on the brink of a terrible Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, invoked the phrase, “The better angels of our nature”, as he desperately attempted to avoid that war. The war was not avoided, and the Union was tragically rendered apart. Lincoln gave his all to save it, ultimately giving his life, because he sought his own and the nation’s better angels to keep the nation from dissolving forever. 

Ultimately, the better angels of our natures prevailed and the war ended. The nation was reunited. But the work of striving to keep it united and to keep striving to be a more perfect union, by harnessing our better angels, must never stop, must never end, must never be forgotten. 

Those angels - kindness, empathy, compassion, generosity, grace, caring, and service to one another - are the only angels that will bring us unity and peace in the end. 

May those angels ultimately prevail.

Photo by Kevin Wright on Unsplash