Healing the Heart of Democracy Part 1: The Problem

Hello friends—

A happy Tuesday to you.

Today I’d like to begin a series of posts on Parker Palmer’s wonderful book Healing the Heart of Democracy—a warm, wise, and winsome treatise on what we might do to begin to heal our very sick and wounded society here in the U.S.

No one I know thinks that we are in a good place as a people. We all think that something is wrong. We do not tend to agree on what that is.

In my experience, conversations about what is wrong tend to be superficially relegated to what happens on the surface of our life together—whether we should vote for this or that candidate, or support this or that policy.

Not wrong. But not deep enough. Whether we choose this or that candidate or support this or that policy may or may not move the needle on social health. We need to look beyond the surface. Which is what Palmer intends to help us do. “The human heart is the first home of democracy” writes Palmer (quoting Terry Tempest Williams; xix), and until we address the heart, questions of candidates and policies will avail us little. 

For Palmer, there are “Five Democratic Habits of the Heart” that are crucial to our social health, and they are these (xxii-xxiii):

1. An understanding that we are all in this together.

2. An appreciation of the value of “otherness.”

3. The ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.

4. A sense of personal voice and agency.

5. An ability to create community.

Obviously, none of those things are strictly identifiable with candidates or policies (though some candidates/policies are more or less congenial to them than others). They are about culture. And cultures take time.

Time to develop.
Time to become sick.
Time to heal. 

If that is the case, then it will take a willingness to do the work over the long haul to move towards health. Which means we are going to have to face to up at least two objections that will absolutely undermine the effort:

Objection #1—There aren’t enough of us to bring about change. This has probably always been felt by citizens of our democracy, but I think it is more keenly felt now when the algorithm in its endless babbling imbecility continues to promote the loudest and most polarizing voices among us. Suddenly the impression becomes ubiquitous: everyone hates everyone; everyone is shouting at everyone; no one can get along; we are doomed.

But that’s not true. It never has been. It’s not now. Yes, you and I run into some pretty impassioned voices—voices that refuse to play nice and often border on the wildly irrational, even violent. But those are not most people. Most of us want to make this work. Palmer points out that “of the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, only thirty-nine signed the final document. The remaining 30 percent disagreed so deeply with one part or another of the Constitution that they took a pass on posterity” (xxii). 

Now that is quite a thought. It only took 70% of the group to lay the framework for the society we enjoy today. Maybe we don’t need everyone in agreement to make the game work. Maybe we just need a simple majority willing to play by the rules (a majority that also has the courage to say to those who would wreck the game: we’re not surrendering the game to you—more on that later).

This is an encouragement against despair and is meant as such. There are enough of us to begin to heal the wounds of our society. Let’s get on with it. 

Objection #2 —The issues are too urgent. This is the one I hear the most. Now as a lifelong member of the evangelical tribe—so often dominated by apocalyptic thinking and rhetoric—I’ve been hearing it ever since I can remember. “This is the most important election of our lifetime” we’d hear every four years from the talking heads, and then repeat without thinking. The sentiment was that if America made the wrong decision, the end of the world was just around the corner. (And yet, we wanted the end of the world, since that would mean the rapture/escape of the faithful to heaven—I’ve never been able to square up those two thoughts. But I digress…)

Still, I think I’m hearing it more now than I ever have. And who knows? Maybe this is the most important election of our lifetime (although, let it be understood: I don’t have the coming election primarily in view with these posts). But—thought experiment, stay with me now—say on the off chance we survive it (my tongue is firmly in cheek here). What then? We’ll still have in front of us the serious task of building a coherent and long-lasting society. And whether we do that or not depends largely on whether we are willing to do the deep inner work required.

An “inner work” is exactly what it is, for not only do the “Five Democratic Habits of the Heart” require a great deal of time, they also require a great deal of courage—the courage to go within and there, in the hidden places of the heart, where dwelleth both light and darkness, do serious business with all that keeps us from practicing them. 

If we do that, what we’re going to learn—and learn quickly—is that the problem with our democracy is not “out there” with “them.” The problem is “in here” with “us.” And that will break our hearts. For Palmer, heartbreak is a good place to begin to heal our society:

There are some human experiences that only the heart can comprehend and only heart-talk can convey…When all our talk about politics is either technical or strategic, to say nothing of partisan and polarizing, we loosen or sever the human connections on which empathy, accountability, and democracy itself depend. If we cannot talk about politics in the language of the heart—if we cannot be publicly heartbroken, for example, that the wealthiest nation on earth is unable to summon the political will to end childhood hunger at home—how can we create a politics worthy of the human spirit, one that has a chance to serve the common good? (pp. 6-7)

Indeed.

Failing to do this—to own our heartbreak in public—we’ll inevitably make a destructive turn. “Rage is simply one of the masks that heartbreak wears” says Palmer, in one of his more insightful turns of phrase (pp. 5-6). When we do not metabolize our grief in healthy ways, it becomes toxic, its ill-effects legion. 

Reading these opening chapters of Palmer, I thought immediately about the stress that the Bible places upon the heart. “Guard your heart with all diligence” counsels the wise writer of Proverbs, “for from it flows the issues of life” (Pr. 4:23). Likewise, however much the prophets of ancient Israel railed against this or that corrupt individual or practice, they almost always located the people’s salvation in a renewal of the heart. The promise of the New Covenant is that there would finally be a people with “new hearts” – a people who lived and loved from a right spirit, the good will of God engraven upon their deepest motivations and desires. 

But even more, Palmer’s notion of the “politics of the brokenhearted” made me think about the emphasis the early monks placed upon tears—tears being a sign of what they called “compunction”; that is, a feeling of remorse that comes from a sense of moral and spiritual responsibility. Tears were a sign that God had finally gotten ahold of the center of a person, that the hard shell of the heart had been pierced with love, which is why one monk said simply “Tears are the promised land.”

I think that monk spoke better than he knew, for the Promised Land of biblical memory (and hope!) is never for the isolated individual, but for a people, a community. How often in your experience have you been in conflict with a friend or loved one and, after summoning the courage to speak not your rage but your heartbreak, found tenderness, empathy, and understanding stealing in between you?  

That’s exactly what Palmer is saying our society needs—individuals willing to speak their hearts in public; communities where our hearts can be heard and received. 

For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive…the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation (p. 10).

Well said, Parker. 

Next week: some thoughts on “Democracy’s Ecosystem” before we begin to unpack the Five Habits.

Thanks for reading and following.

A