This video is a part of the Healing the Heart of Democracy Discussion Guide and can be found with more videos and resources in our “Healing the Heart of Democracy Hub.” You can explore the hub, download the guide, and find all of the videos along with additional resources here.
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Despite our sharp disagreements on the nature of the American dream, many of us on the left, on the right, and in the center have at least this much in common: a shared experience of heartbreak about the condition of our culture, our society, our body politic. That shared heartbreak can build a footbridge of mutual understanding on which we can walk toward each other. (59)
Q. What are your primary concerns about how our democracy is functioning? Do you think it’s possible for people who disagree with each other politically to come together around shared concerns for democracy itself?
Within us is a yearning for something better than divisiveness, toxicity, passivity, powerlessness, and selling our democratic inheritance to the highest bidder. Within us is the courage to pursue that yearning, to hold life’s tensions consciously, faithfully, and well, until they break us open. The broken-open heart is a source of power as well as compassion—the power to bring down whatever diminishes us and raise up whatever serves us well. We can access and deploy that power by doing what every great social movement has done: put time, skill, and energy into the education and mobilization of the powers of the heart. As history consistently demonstrates, heart talk can yield actions just as practical as those driven by conventional forms of power. (23–24)
Q. Does the phrase “the politics of the brokenhearted” resonate with your own experience? What stories come to your mind and heart? What is the “something better” you are yearning for in our common life?
