Don’t Cut the Ends Off the Ham

(This post was originally published in the Holland Sentinel, on September 19, 2018)

There once was a newly married woman who decided to carry on the longstanding family tradition of baking a ham for Easter. She picked over the hams in the store in order to select the most perfectly plump one. Before spicing it up with brown sugar, cinnamon and cloves, she cut the ends off the ham and placed it in the pan.

Puzzled, her husband asked her, “Honey, why are you cutting the perfectly edible ends off the ham?”

“Oh,” she said, “because that’s the best and most proper way to prepare a ham. My mom always does it that way.”

“But I wonder why she does it that way?” He asked. His wife was uncertain. Now she was beginning to wonder, too. And so she called her mother.

After exchanging a few pleasantries over the phone, she got around to asking her mother about the ham. “Mom,” she asked, “why do we always cut the perfectly edible ends off the ham before baking it?”

“Oh,” she said, “because that’s the best and most proper way to prepare a ham. My mom always did it that way.”

“But I wonder why we do it that way,” she wondered. Unsatisfied, she decided to dig a little deeper and call her grandma.

After exchanging a few pleasantries over the phone, she got around to asking her grandma about the ham. “Grandma,” she asked, “why do we always cut the perfectly edible ends off our ham before baking it?”

Grandma was puzzled. “Cut the ends off the ham?! You should never cut off the perfectly edible ends of your ham, unless, of course, your pot is too small to fit the whole ham in it, as mine is.”

It’s healthy for the things we assume to be regularly prodded, challenged, investigated, tested and questioned. Dialoguing with people who hold different views is a great way to help us clarify our own way of doing and seeing things. It can help us realize what we may have wrongly assumed based on our own limited view of things. Similarly, it can affirm some of the things we have rightly believed to be true.

When we hunker down, cloistered in small circles of people who see the world just as we do, the human tendency is to form assumptions about our way of doing things. In particular, we become quick to assume our way is the best and most proper way. At the same time, we often lean into making false assumptions about realities we are far removed from and in truth, don’t understand. Forming such assumptions based on limited knowledge can lead to a pattern of being quick to dismiss the voices that challenge us. Rather, we should pay attention to those voices and allow them to penetrate us with the thrust of their questions, disagreements and criticisms. We should journey with those questions as they peel back the layers of why we understand the world the way we do. In doing so we might avoid tossing out valuable insights and instruction.

It often takes someone coming from outside our circles to poke the sleeping giant of our collective assumptions and to lead us to ask important questions about why we see and understand the world as we do. Our tendency is often to resort to defensiveness and dismissiveness in the midst of being questioned. Our ego gets in the way. Inviting examination definitely requires a measure of humility.

But if we are indeed after the truth of the matter and how that truth and a more expansive knowledge of reality can lead to more expansive human flourishing, we should humbly embrace the important practice of allowing our assumptions to be tested.

We’re in the midst of another election cycle, and I urge you to test your long-held political assumptions. When we shake things up and dig deeper into those assumptions, in community with those who bring a variety of perspectives, the truths usually rises to the surface. Rather than jump to dismiss the ideas that fall under partisan labels outside your own simply because they fall under partisan labels not your own, humbly lend your ear to them. Dialogue with them. Allow yourself to be examined, prodded, questioned. You have nothing to lose, after all, in doing so. And it may even be that you, and the world, have an abundant measure of goodness to gain.

Entering the Hard Conversations

(This post was originally published in the Holland Sentinel, on August 23, 2018)

Most of us have been here. A fat turkey is steaming hot on the table, flanked by cranberries and mashed potatoes on the side. Somewhere around the table the green beans topped with onions are making the rounds again. Thanksgiving conversation is light and airy.

And then … someone brings up politics. The room goes silent. Awkward expressions. And a quick changing of the topic. But why? Why is it so difficult for us to talk about politics? Why do we generally only like to have these conversations in echo chambers of people who already share our opinions and perspectives?

Politics is the means by which we decide how we will live together in a community. This is pretty important stuff, and I wonder what it says about us that we can’t sit down and engage in civil discussions on issues that impact our lives and the lives of those in our community and world in very real ways.

Another election season is upon us. Political ads crafted by clever strategists are beginning to flood the TV airwaves and get stuffed into our mailboxes. I want to encourage you to dive into those hard and uncomfortable conversations, because looking around, I’d say there’s some stuff we need to be talking about. Perhaps our current landscape has in part been sculpted by our polite refrain from discussing things that matter across the divides.

We humans seem to have a hard time swallowing our pride, and I wonder if this tendency is in part to blame. It’s almost as if being wrong about something or changing our direction is a sign of weakness, when in fact, learning something new and adjusting our position accordingly, shows wisdom and understanding. It takes moral courage to come face to face with reality, see where we have been wrong, be willing to admit it to ourselves and move in a new direction.

While many resign to be persuaded by a veneer of warm fuzzy campaign messaging designed to make us forget about actual policies and their implications on actual humans, others are doing the hard work of having hard conversations, asking tough questions, researching the implications of policy and getting in the neighborhoods to see how life is going for people. In my experience, it tends to be the former who would rather not engage in serious political discussion, while the latter often has a desire to peel back the layers and get into the meat of what is real and what is right.

I want to urge you to become informed throughout this election season. Dig beneath the shallow topsoil of popular sound bites and fluffy ads, which are intended to tug at your emotions, but often lack real substance beneath them.

Becoming informed these days is hard work. It requires seeking out balanced news sources and perspectives, relying on bipartisan independent fact-checkers, reading up on peer-reviewed data and becoming alert to on-the-ground realities. If we really care to build a community in which humanity can flourish, then this work is important.

I would even say that in a democratic society, this work is imperative. The responsibility falls on we the people. We decide the shape of the systems that decide how we live together. If we continually and thoughtlessly support politicians simply because they fall within the walls of a particular party that we have long identified with, spouting off the same old soundbites, we may well be unknowingly casting our vote in ways that are, in reality, detrimental to our society and its people.

The two major political parties are nearly unrecognizable from what they were even 20 years ago. But like that frog in a pot of boiling water, the change is so slow we often don’t see it until we suddenly find ourselves in hot water and a whole lot of trouble. Candidates pay big-money for carefully crafted campaign messaging that tells you what you want to hear — even if its disconnected from reality or their actual actions and intentions. We must become alert to what is really happening within the systems we support and who is benefiting and who is continually getting pushed down.

Becoming informed comes with a prerequisite of humility, a willingness to come face to face with the fact that the party we have long supported might have strayed from what it once was. It might be the case that we need to admit we were wrong, and that our prior assumptions and good intentions have actually been hurting people.

I want to encourage you to enter the hard conversations, and to do so respectfully. I believe we all enter the voting booth with good intentions, and that we’re seeking what is best for the world, regardless of how informed we actually are. But I urge you to dig beneath the topsoil to understand what you are actually voting for.

Take time to discuss what you’re learning, and be open to receiving what others, who have traditionally disagreed with you, are learning as well. Within your conversations do not discount the importance of the human story. Hear the realities of those who are struggling in ways you have never understood and who you have perhaps actively dismissed.

Let’s do this. Let’s pull our hearts, our minds and our experiences together in order to build a world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive

Give Me Eyes to See

(This post was originally published in the Holland Sentinel on June 20, 2018)

Do you ever stop to question where your political opinions actually come from? If you’re like most people, you generally like to assume that you have reached your political perspective objectively by way of research and a thoughtful assessment of experience, and that it is based on what is actually true and what is definitely best for the world. Statistically, however, most of us simply believe the first things we were told to be true. Where you happened to be born is the greatest determiner of your assumptions about the world.

In our home, we have a simple little prayer taped to the fridge. I routinely whisper it over my children and fervently utter it over myself. It’s become a simple daily reminder. “Give me eyes to see.”

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “He sees only what he wants to see.” Maybe you have said it under your breath, or maybe someone else has directed it at you. Perhaps you’ve thrown your hands in the air, bewildered at why a person just can’t see what is so clear and obviously true. The crazy thing is that this funny little phrase we say in these moments of frustration, is actually grounded in a psychological reality, commonly called confirmation bias.

Simply defined, confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.

We literally have eyes to see only the evidence that confirms what we believe to be true and what affirms our negative accusations of any opposing views. We see what we want to see. Evidence that does not support our views is blocked by our brains, which have a lazy tendency to absorb what fits nicely into our assumptions while rejecting the hard work of reexamining and altering our certainties.

Part of the problem with the current state of political gridlock in this country and the ever-deepening and widening canyon between Republicans and Democrats, is that our confirmation bias blocks us from hearing, seeing or absorbing the full realities of our world. We need to see and understand the whole picture in order to move forward in a way that is beneficial to the whole population. This is essential in a democratic society, and confirmation bias is a very real stumbling block to our getting there.

Unfortunately, the problem is magnified with our growing dependence on propaganda media outlets that continually and very deliberately confirm our biases (Fox News on the right, MSNBC on the left, as examples). Information that confirms our biases can be like a drug that gives us a high, gets us all worked up and craving more confirmation. The networks know this and many have chosen to play us for profit. This pours water and sunshine on our own sense of being right on every issue every single time, and pours fuel on the flame of dismissiveness toward the other whom we are just so certain is wrong on every issue every single time.

The most important step in getting beyond our confirmation bias is a simple and honest acknowledgment of the reality of confirmation bias within ourselves. This, if sincerely believed, will automatically invite humility into our perspective and an acknowledgement that as we consider every issue, our initial assumption might be wrong. As we do this we will begin to want to understand a fuller reality. We will want to know where we are wrong because an expanding deeper sense of wanting to achieve what is truly best for this world — beyond ourselves — will grow within us.

I am sometimes wrong. You are sometimes wrong. This is why it’s so important to try, with great intention, to understand the “other side” and to wade deep into the complexities, the gray areas and the sentiments we just don’t understand and can barely even bring ourselves to acknowledge. More often than not, a greater truth lies somewhere in the middle and it encompasses all our realities. If only we could open our eyes to see it.

This process of deconstructing our biases can at first seem scary. But it’s also true that within the process, you’ll find that your outlook will become more hopeful and that here in the middle space there is a meeting of humble hearts and creative minds that are giving shape to a new emergence of human flourishing. What the world needs now is more people brave enough and humble enough to be willing to break through the dry crust of their long-held assumptions and walk into that space with their eyes wide open.