One of my colleagues at the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction, the Rev. Kelly Murphy Mason, has been called to foster dialogue between the conflicting and polarized people and factions in our country. Rev. Mason recently contributed an article to Georgetown University's Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs called “Us Without Them.”
In this article, she shares some of her experiences from a recent conference she organized called “The Mission of the Church in a Polarized World: Finding Space Across Divides.”
This is an important topic for those of us who want the church to play a role in the public sphere and ease tensions between warring groups. To quote from her article:
Before we can block out the echo chambers of others, we must first block out our own. In the Gospels, Jesus teaches his disciples, “First remove the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your neighbor's eye.” Thankfully, spiritual disciplines and liturgical elements in various Christian traditions can help us understand more clearly the role we play in othering our enemies.
For more on this subject, read Us in the Absence of a Them by Kelly Murphy Mason.
Rev. Kelly Murphy Mason is a spiritual director, educator, psychotherapist, and author, and serves as the Community Minister for Spiritual Direction at Arlington Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. She also teaches in the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction's Apprenticeship Program and serves as a book reviewer for Spiritual Directors International's quarterly magazine, Presence. In 2022, she convened and currently co-chairs the Spirituality & Flourishing Interest Group within the Harvard Flourishing Network. She has blogged at TheReverendDr.com about what heals our souls for over a decade.
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