You feel...because....

The first time I threw a plate during an argument with Steve I knew I would eventually need help with conflict resolution. The plate was Corelle and supposedly unbreakable but six months later I was still finding the odd porcelain shard as I swept up the floor, each splinter an opportunity to reflect anew upon what good my outburst accomplished. Now - after throwing several punches, a glass angel, a wooden engagement ring box, two pieces of rotten fruit and a container of yogurt - I am finally enrolled in Communication Skills Training! But will ten hours, three sessions, and one course help me to settle my conflicts more peacefully?

The premise of the course I'm taking is that effective and peaceful communication happens when we focus on the person we're trying to communicate with and their feelings. We practice doing this at the first afternoon workshop I attend: You feel...because.... It seems simple enough.

Fittingly, the next day is the beginning of five long days of conflict at home, the presenting issue being the laundry: it's not done, when it is done it doesn't get folded, and who's job is it to do the laundry anyways?!?!

It was only after loudly proclaiming that I would never - NEVER! - touch one dirty sock of Steve's ever again that I remembered that this month I was supposed to be looking for opportunities in the moment to orient myself toward peace, rather than taking the direct route to conflict.

Sitting in the kitchen after dinner one night an opportunity presented itself. Remembering my communication skills training I realized that a way forward might be to focus less on myself and my complaints and more on Steve and his feelings. I had a road map to peace; all I had to do was follow it. Stand up, make a left, walk five paces, take Steve's hands in your own, listen. I could even use that phrase: You feel...because.... "You feel frustrated because your shirts aren't clean when you need them to be." I could say that, I thought. Imagine it! But I couldn't get the words out. You feel..., you feel..., well what about what I feel? I wanted to yell (I may have yelled). Does anyone ever think about that?

A few days later I came across this quote: "Letting bad feelings fester toward another person is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." If conflict is ultimately destructive to ourselves, what do we need to do to move towards peace?

As luck would have it, prep work for a sermon I preached earlier this month required that I read over the gospel of John and it was there that I found some insight. I was struck by the fact that Jesus in John's gospel gives only one commandment to his followers; you won't find an account of the Sermon on the Mount in John's gospel, nor will you find a list of holy do's and don'ts to follow. Jesus instead offers one simple bit of encouragement near the end of the story: love one another. Just love one another. He goes on to say that no one has greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friend.

Perhaps our capacity for peace is related to our willingness to love even when loving others doesn't get us exactly what we want. Perhaps our capacity for peace is related to our ability to love more, to love so much that we'd let a part of ourselves "die" for someone else's benefit. It's been my experience that conflicts resolve peacefully when I just get past my own stubborn insistence upon being right; when I'm willing to put my own interpretations and experiences aside in order to hear the interpretation and experience of another.

Children are so good at doing this, aren't they? Kids don't hold grudges; at least my four and six-year-old don't (I'm not the mom of teenagers, yet!). When my kids and I have a disagreement about something or if I'm crabby and having a bad day they don't give me the cold shoulder. I'm always amazed at how quickly our squabbles are forgotten with the offer of a hug or a kiss. With my kids, the will to reconnect always trumps the will to be right. Perhaps then we can say that our capacity for peace is also related to our capacity to forgive.

I'm trying to remember that, when it comes right down to it, it's not magic words or a magic phrase that help us resolve our conflicts peacefully; it's the attitude and alignment of our hearts. Perhaps the best communication skills training we could ever receive is simply to learn to love more, and to learn to forgive, instead of learning how best to make ourselves heard.

Fighting Words

I spent the month of December with eyes and ears open, on the lookout for small opportunities to grow a little more peaceful. Could I use diplomacy instead of a high-pitched yell to work out the latest power struggle between Emma and Nicholas? Could I get my Christmas shopping and chores done and not recreate my resentment at having to do so back at home? Could I balance the kids' need for attention and engagement with my need to read my book by the fire (alone)? Let's just say peace deserves another month. And so I'm at it again this January, in pursuit of the Spirit through the pursuit of peace. Of all the fruits of the Spirit, I find peace the most difficult to internalize.

I couldn't have planned for a better location to begin my quest for peace. Personal growth opportunities abound where I've been for the past two weeks - in Edmonton, Alberta - visiting my family for the Christmas holidays. If peace is meeting your own needs without disrespecting the needs of others, where better to practice this than the old family home, surrounded by at least ten other people's pressing needs and expectations of what will make this Christmas memorable? Another discovery: we can't meet our needs if we don't have the tools to do so. No inner tools, no inner peace.

My cousins and I took Nicholas and Emma skating at Edmonton's Victoria Skating Oval the Sunday before Christmas. The Victoria Skating Oval is the size of a football field. There is no better place to skate, fast and furious (without running into anybody) than the Victoria Skating Oval, but neither of my kids can skate well. Last winter they got to the point where they could balance on the ice but when we arrived at the Victoria Oval it had been almost a year since they'd been on skates and we were back to square one. My cousins and I took turns skating with the kids, holding them up under their armpits. After about ten minutes Emma got her balance and could walk to one of us if we held out our arms and really encouraged her. Nicholas got to where he could take tiny steps without any help. This was fun for them for about a minute and then Nicholas wanted to know what he had to do to glide like everyone else at the skating rink.

I'm no skating instructor. I tried to remember my own skating lessons which were at least twenty-six years ago. Getting your feet into a "V" shape seemed to be important. Then I tried to think of the best way to explain the concept of pushing backward to glide forward to a five-year-old. Nicholas could not get his feet into a "V" shape and he didn't get my explanation of gliding. Things grew tense between us. He would get himself up and balanced and try to get his feet into a "V," fail, get angry, start scuffing his skates on the ice and fall.

Frustration eventually got the better of him and Nicholas had a full blown tantrum on the ice. Tears and spit and cold and snow. When he didn't lighten up, couldn't pick it up, couldn't try and try and try again I grew impatient. I could see so clearly that all this crying wasn't going to get him skating, in fact, it impeded his progress. It seemed so simple to me; stop crying, get up, try again. I can only comfort for so long before I lose all sympathy and get mean. The pen may be mightier than the sword but the words that come out of our mouth do more harm. I told him to get up because he was embarrassing me. No one else was crying. "You'll never get better if you don't practice."

Ironically I knew just how Nicholas felt. I know how discouraging it feels to realize just how much work it takes to be good at something and how overwhelming it can be trying to figure out how to get there. "You'll never get better if you don't practice," was what my piano teacher said to me. That's me sobbing in bed later that evening, my dad trying to comfort me by reading Rudyard Kipling's poem "If," me yelling at him to leave me alone, me quitting piano the next day. There's me kicking my sandcastle, in a huge fit because it doesn't look like the Taj Mahal. There's no calming me down. And there I am slamming the studio door on my ballet teacher at age fifteen. She'd asked me to show the class the latest dance she'd been teaching us. Even though I hadn't missed a class I still had no idea how do some of the steps, and couldn't remember what order they came in. I wanted to spit in her face for putting me on the spot (didn't she know that I had no clue what I was doing?). I never came back to class.

"I quit." "You'll never get better if you don't practice." Them's fighting words. The next time we went skating I brought along a couple of old chairs that were light enough to glide on ice but heavy enough to provide security and stability for a kid unsteady on his feet. I laced up Nicholas' and Emma's skates, walked them to the edge of the rink, put a chair in front of each of them and left them alone while I went back to put on my own skates. When I came back the chairs were out in the middle of the rink. Nicholas and Emma had used them initially but now they were out on their own. I couldn't believe it. The rink hadn't been cleared of snow, but there was a shovel sitting by the wooden gate that led onto the ice. Instead of clearing the snow altogether I used the shovel to make curved pathways for the kids to follow, snaky labyrinths, diagonal roadways. They skated the turns, stopped and started, glided down the long narrows. This time there was none of the agony that comes from seeing an end point without knowing how to get there. If anything the whole experience was...peaceful. And that peace didn't come because someone rescued us from us our frustrations. We were at peace because we now had the tools to get to where we wanted to go, and so off we went, skating.