A Holy Season of Solidarity
A Holy Season of Solidarity I was out hiking today with my spouse and our dog. I realized I needed to write an email to all of you. Dehumanization leads to violence. It is a process of associating a group of people with a threat to what people value. In the last few days major…
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A Beautiful, Complicated Story
Saturday night my spouse and I were invited to the first of its kind gathering in Anacortes. The occasion was ancient: the Persian New Year Nowruz. It originated in the Zoroastrian tradition but is practiced my many traditions today. The couple who organized the gathering are Zoroastrian, although they grew up Muslim. They are the…
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Dehumanization Du Jour
I have learned a lot about how dehumanization works in the last 8 years. One of the most heart piercing lessons for me is that dehumanization is not only suggesting people to be targets of violence to those already prone to violence. It does that. But not only that. Dehumanization is a process in which…
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It Felt like Discrimination, so I Started a Conversation
My family loves visiting the Marina in our town in south King County, WA. We live a mile away from the closest marina and go probably every other day just to get fresh air, connect with wildlife, and sip tea or coffee from one of the shore-side cafes. Last month, we went by the Marina…
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Strategies for Inclusion
Our goal with Let’s Go Together is to draw us out of our separated silos and begin to know one another, work for the common good, and respect each other in public. But there are many obstacles that keep us from seeing each other. We are not simply separated in silos, we human beings also…
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We All Hold Wisdom
This last week I did a presentation to the Mount Vernon, WA Rotary Club about Let’s Go Together. I began the presentation with a question: How many of you are concerned about the divisiveness within our community? Every hand went up. We discussed some of the many things that are dividing us: Loneliness Technology driven…
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Who Sets the Tone
Yesterday I spoke to some pastors about Let’s Go Together. We invited their community to participate and to connect us to a leader or two that could take part in the LGT Planning Team. Like almost all leaders, they were very concerned about the loss of trust in each other, and the heated divisions in…
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Right Place and Right Time
Last week I joined the president of the PTU Board, Gregg Davidson, to talk with a non-profit leader in Skagit County. We made a proposal to him about our Let’s Go Together public partnership. We discussed the polarization that is happening in our culture and the sense of hopelessness people feel about it. Gregg and…
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Power of a Name
On Saturday I had the honor of attending a naming ceremony for two elders in the Upper Skagit Tribe. The family had not had a naming ceremony for many decades. In this type of ceremony, the eldest woman in the family chooses names from that family’s history and ancestors and gives the name to one…
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