Bridge Building

Bridge Building
 
 

Bridge Building

A desire for greater unity in our nation is on many of our minds these days. I have zero experience in the politics of healing a divided country, but I do have decades of experience helping fractured couples and families come together. I am guessing that some of the principles work for both. 

Healing requires a commitment to building bridges instead of burning them. It requires humility, perseverance, flexibility, dedication, and both emotional and spiritual maturity. Such maturity is what allows a person to acknowledge when they have been wrong or have acted in ways that are hurtful and destructive. This kind of bridge-building is not some naive pretending that real differences do not exist. Instead, it is based on grounding ourselves in the deeper common visions, desires, and values that unite us while acknowledging that tensions and differences still exist.  

At the presidential inauguration ceremony this week, many of us were introduced to Amanda Gorman, a twenty-two-year-old poet who is clearly wise way beyond her years. Because I so often use the image of building bridges in my work, my ears perked up when I heard these powerful lines from her poem:

Scripture tells us to envision

that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

And no one shall make them afraid

If we're to live up to our own time

Then victory won't lie in the blade

But in all the bridges we've made

 

I close now with a more extensive excerpt from her poem “The Hill We Climb.” There is much wisdom here to guide us in the bridge-building work of healing whatever divisions we find in our lives, whether with friends or family, neighbors, or in our larger communities.  

 

And yes we are far from polished

far from pristine

but that doesn't mean we are

striving to form a union that is perfect

We are striving to forge a union with purpose

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and

conditions of man

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

but what stands before us

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,

we must first put our differences aside

We lay down our arms

so we can reach out our arms

to one another

We seek harm to none and harmony for all

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

That we'll forever be tied together, victorious

Not because we will never again know defeat

but because we will never again sow division

Scripture tells us to envision

that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

And no one shall make them afraid

If we're to live up to our own time

Then victory won't lie in the blade

But in all the bridges we've made

That is the promise to glade

The hill we climb

If only we dare it.

From “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman.



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