Dear friends,

Every day I wake up thinking, this is it, we’ve bottomed out as a nation. Today we will say enough, and claw our way back to civility. Today we will begin to glue our fault lines back together and find a way forward. Alas…

Perhaps it has always been this way. Roving bands of Sons of Liberty used to tar and feather British loyalists, burn them out of their homes, kidnap them and put them on ships back to England. Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. And eleven states seceded from the United States during our Civl War. Mob violence, political assassinations, and the potential breakdown our country has always been with us. It’s still happening today.

Make it stop friends. The rapture didn’t come. The apocalypse hasn’t happened. Nuclear annihilation is still in check. I need people to stop acting like we live in a dystopian universe and instead live in the universe we have been given. I truly believe we are better than this current reality.

The only way through is together and the only way to be together is to LISTEN.

*Active listening is consciously giving your undivided attention to someone (or something) with intentional focus not only on the words, but body language, visual cues, tone, and message. *Passive listening is the exact opposite. We hear words, but do not engage, and miss the message.

Which one do you do?

If you can’t (or won’t) listen. Write each other letters. Remember the Anti-Federalist and Federalist Papers? Our founding fathers published essays to each other when advocating for their version of the Constitution. You too can read and write about your differences with others!

However you choose to receive (or repost) information, seriously evaluate where it comes from—digital, audio, video, print, person—all of it. This is perhaps the most important part of all.

There is an enormous difference between an association of like-minded individuals and an echo chamber. Deconstruct those scrolling algorithms. Get out of your self-imposed silo.

We come together as a country with like-minded ideas such as democracy, rule of law, and freedom of speech, but we have a thousand different thoughts about what these ideas mean and even more differences about how to execute said ideas. We are not all saying the same thing, but we’re all saying something. And it ALL matters. My rights end where your rights begin and your rights end where my rights begin. It’s a high minded restating the golden rule folks.

Below is a picture of our beloved Phi-Eu debate space from Davidson (google it). I added a link to a Youtube video from 2024 explaining about it.

https://youtu.be/mIm1PGY3rdU?si=rkJK8-giYhaa0p_X

Thank you for giving me voice my friends. I hope to hear from you soon. Love y’all so big.

Marla