WHAT STORY ARE WE TELLING?
Eight years ago The Porch vision emerged to consolidate some of the work and dreams embodied by a handful of artists, peacemakers, and community convenors. We were rooted in deep concern for the common good, serious engagement with the most distressing things and the most imaginative ways to transcend them. We were formed in experiences that showed us beauty is not an optional or privileged extra, but a necessary component of life - especially life under pressure.
Some circumstances have changed since we published that vision, but the core of the vision is the same: The Porch reduces violence, expands creativity, and makes a better world through a slow conversation about beautiful, and difficult things, nurturing communities who learn and share a better story. And while some circumstances have become more troubling, we’re more than ever convinced that the stories we tell shape how we experience life.
When we tell a broken story, we make a broken life.
The culture many of us have been born into narrates a number of such broken stories. Some of the elements of these broken stories include:
❖ We are born into darkness, and have to fight our way out of it.
❖ Winning is everything. Get as much as you can, keep as much as you can, and give some away for the sake of your conscience.
❖ The past is a list of honorable military victories in which ultimate force was used to overthrow ultimate evil.
❖ There's nothing most of us can do to change things.
❖ People engaged in peacemaking are either naive and unrealistic, or so heroic and unusual that their actions can't be emulated. The expression of anger is antithetical to peacemaking.
❖ Religion and politics are about moral purity, community boundaries, and being right.
❖ Violence brings order out of chaos, and can literally redeem things.
❖ This is one of the worst times in history to be alive.
These broken stories are widely believed, but they are not true. Sometimes the most valuable gifts come from allowing another perspective to tell a new story; and wisdom tells us about better stories than those dominant in our culture:
The foundational stories of Western culture are rooted in the notion that we define ourselves, and resolve conflicts through scapegoating the other. Walter Wink and Rene Girard, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and millions of others have illuminated the path of how to nonviolently subvert and transform that myth, inviting human beings to consider the possibilities of tactics that result in beloved community. It's hard work, it takes courage, but it's also fun.
We need to know where we have come from. If we are to understand where we are, then listening to the voices of indigenous and immigrant people is vital. Our lives are confused without the practice of initiation into mature adulthood, the experience of people in community bearing each other's burdens, and respect for the circle of life.
Spirituality is our lived relationship with mystery. Religion at its best knows how to lament wounds, educate for life, celebrate the good, and inspire change. It can help us nurture communities in which we discover how to live from the inside out, rather than for external reward; in which we encourage each other to more whole lives; and from which we can serve not sectarian or party interest, but the common good.
Talking with our opponents is both less lethal and more effective at establishing peaceable arrangements than the use of force. This is as true for nations at war as it is for individuals who merely don't agree with each other.
And somebody always has to go first .
Violence does not redeem anything; in fact it more likely creates further destabilization and long term need. Two wrongs have never made a right, and the 'just war' theory has more often been used as an excuse rather than actually practiced5.
While monumental strife is evident in some parts of the world, we may actually be living in one of the most peaceable times for the average human, and for those of us not suffering from imminent threat there is more opportunity, information, and resources available to facilitate our participation in protecting the vulnerable. Our cultural myopia makes us afraid for danger lurking everywhere; but the expanding circle of empathy sensitizes us to pain we might otherwise ignore (and in the past may actually have been complicit in).
Rates of violence are likely linked to social inequality and lack of community bonds. Nonviolent revolutions and peace processes alike have created more whole societies and resolved profound conflicts through bringing enemies to the table, addressing legitimate needs, sharing power, and making amends for past injustices. Bombing instead of talking to our enemies is the worst strategy for making peace.
The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better1. Showering the people we hate with love is not just a nice bit of poetry. It's one of the things that will save humanity. And neither “liberals” nor “conservatives” need to violate their conscience to do it. People responsible for violence and other violations can be held to account in way that restores dignity to survivors without dehumanizing those responsible; policing, protective, and legal remedies based on restorative justice principles can be good for everyone.
It seems easier to say these things from a desk in a quiet neighborhood, surrounded by the trappings of middle class life. I am not unaware of the pitfalls of speaking from this place. But the duty of privilege is absolute integrity2, and I also speak from the experience of surviving violence in northern Ireland, and participating in a peace process that has proven the value of talking to enemies instead of killing them.
As a survivor of violence, what I have come to believe that what I need is simple:
I need a close circle of about half a dozen people, each of whom is emotionally mature in ways that the rest of us isn't, to support, nurture, celebrate, learn from, mourn with, and dance.
I need initiation by elders, and continued mentoring into balancing the kaleidoscopic parts of my being: the decider, the artist, the lover, and the peaceful warrior.
I need to discern a sense of purpose grounded in authentic discernment of the truer and more helpful story, opening to serving the common (and perhaps cosmic) good.
I need to devote my attention to beauty more often than that which dehumanizes. For beauty, like violence, replicates itself. If you knew you had a choice - and you often do - which would you choose? Would you like to join me?
We have the opportunity to help nurture a community of everyday storytellers to heal ourselves and the world through telling a better story about both. This is not sentimental, nor passive; nor does it sugarcoat the sorrow in the world and the challenges we face. I'm dreaming of Porch community captivated by the idea that there is a better story, that love and beauty and joy and peace are best stirred in the slow cooker rather than the microwave, and that each of us can reduce violence in the world right now, partly by reimagining the story we choose to tell, and live.
Join us for the in-person Porch Gathering, March 13th-15th, 2025, near Asheville, NC. Details at www.theporchgathering.com
