0020 - The Weight - Graham Bodie - “Listen First”

Show Notes:

It goes without saying that the social fabric of America is becoming more frayed as the years go on and discourse becomes more vitriolic. With the growth of virtual engagement, specifically through social media, intensifying polarization has led humanity to lose grasp of the civic practice of intentional listening. How can we cultivate a culture where we engage in a manner that promotes mutual understanding? 

Dr. Graham Bodie has dedicated his career to the art of listening. Along with serving as a professor of Integrated Marketing Communications at the University of Mississippi, Graham is a leader of the Listen First Project. Listen First seeks to mend our frayed social fabric by building relationships and bridging divides. Through events, resourcing, and the formation of local movements, Listen First combats universally felt crises of distance, division, and dehumanization across differences with conversations that prioritize understanding. 

Graham sat down with Chris back in September of 2019 to discuss the need for people to escape their echo chambers, recognize their biases, and to realize that strong convictions and intentional listening are not mutually exclusive. He discusses a need for listening to be taught and practiced in politics, personal relationships, and Christian faith formation. 

Resources:

The National Conversation Project is an initiative of Listen First that creates spaces for individuals and communities to develop skills in intentional listening and constructive dialogue. Get involved by checking out their website: https://www.nationalconversationproject.org/

Similar to Listen First, Someone To Tell It To seeks to promote listening through the cultivation of meaningful relationships. They offer resources, trainings, and a podcast on their website: https://someonetotellitto.org/

The International Listening Association is the leading organization of listening education, business, research, and training:  https://listen.org/

Learn more about Listen First Project: http://www.listenfirstproject.org/

Follow Listen First on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listenfirstproject/

Follow Listen First on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ListenFirstProject

Learn more about Graham Bodie’s work and research at his website: http://www.grahambodie.com/

Full Transcript:

Eddie Rester  0:00  
I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly  0:01  
I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester  0:03  
and welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly  0:05  
The Weight podcast.

Eddie Rester  0:07  
It is a podcast, and it is called The Weight.

Chris McAlilly  0:11  
We're here today. And we're talking to Graham Bodie. Who's Graham?

Eddie Rester  0:15  
Graham Bodie is a member of our church. He also works with a national group called Listen First. And what this group is doing all across the United States is encouraging people and providing tools for people to actually stop and listen rather than just talk past each other.

Chris McAlilly  0:34  
They're convinced that the national social fabric is fraying. And that part of the problem is that people stop listening to one another. I mean, it's the whole echo chamber thing: people know their echo chambers, the people that they listen to, the people they don't. What separates Graham from other people talking about this is he actually did a PhD on this problem. He's convinced that if we are really going to solve some of these issues in America that we wouldn't only teach speech in school, we would also teach the skill of listening as a civic virtue. I think that's interesting.

Eddie Rester  1:12  
Right. You know, one of my professors a long time ago in college said that

Chris McAlilly  1:17  
A long time ago in college...

Eddie Rester  1:18  
long time ago at the University of Mississippi, told us that people don't engage in dialogue, they just engage in simultaneous monologue.

Chris McAlilly  1:27  
That's a problem. 

Eddie Rester  1:29  
I think that's part of the problem. For all of us, whether it's in our marriages, whether it's around racial issues, economic issues, political issues. We're just having these monologues and not really dialoguing.

Chris McAlilly  1:41  
So it's an election year. We haven't talked much about that on the podcast. But this is one of the conversations that hopefully will prepare you for what's ahead over the next few months and encourage you to maybe engage the conversation nationally in some different ways. And really, you know, the goal is to humanize and to train your ear to really not just hear what is being said, but to kind of listen to the heart of what a person is saying. And then some ways of framing, he actually gives you some practical tools and practical ways of framing your response so that you can hear deeply, and empathetically to another person. And you're gonna hear some basically every level of society from, I mean as Eddie mentioned, from your family to your close relationships to the way you engage in business or education or  politics. I think that Graham and the work that Listen First is doing is really important. There are tons of people interested in this problem. I think this is just one way into it. So I'm excited to talk with him. Eddie's not actually not on this episode.

Eddie Rester  2:55  
I'm not on this episode, but I would, just knowing Graham and knowing the content of what he's sharing, I would encourage you after you listen share it if you've got a group that you're a part of. Share it with that group. Y'all talk about it as a group. If you've got somebody that you're constantly in conflict with or perceived conflict with, share it with them. See if you can begin to put some of these tools to work. 

[INTRO] Let's be honest, there are some topics that are too heavy for 20 minutes sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.

Chris McAlilly  3:28  
We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from heart to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.

Eddie Rester  3:39  
If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it to. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly  3:45  
Welcome to The Weight. I'm Chris McAlilly, and we're glad that you're listening or watching or whatever you're doing today. The Weight is a podcast about conversation. We wanted to talk today with someone who is focused on that, has made a life and career around our communication, the way it breaks down, speaking and listening to one another. We're convinced that it's not just an important civic dimension of our lives together that we need to talk to one another more, but also that our posture towards a conversation, particularly sensitive conversations needs to be aware of the the weight of the conversation at hand. Graham is a professor of Integrated Marketing and Communication at the University of Mississippi. And in addition to that, he's the Chief Listening Officer of the Listen First project. 

Graham Bodie  4:42  
Yes. 

Chris McAlilly  4:43  
And so I'm so glad that you're here today. 

Graham Bodie  4:46  
Yeah. 

Chris McAlilly  4:47  
Tell us a little bit about how this became the focus of your career and research and life.

Graham Bodie  4:55  
Yeah, well, it's interesting because, you know, you don't go to high school and say, "I'm going to be a Professor of Communication," right? Like, it's not something that, you know, you take a test and they say you'd be a really good listening scholar. But I was asked this question several years ago, and I started thinking, like, what were those formative moments. And for me, so I worked at a gas station, beginning when I was 16. And my manager, a guy named Glenn Dawson, he was a linguist. He wasn't formally trained that way, but he taught me the importance of language. And so, someone would come in the gas station, you know, that's where you go for directions. And they say, "How do you get to the interstate?" And I would say, "Well, you turn out of here and you go up to the red light and you take a left and..." and I would continue on, and they would leave. And then Glenn would turn to me and say, "Well, what if the light's green?" And I would say, "Um..." you know, I would be frustrated because I was 16. I would say,  "Man, whatever."

But you know, reflecting on this is that the importance of being specific, concise, and complete in your language choices, and the way that you choose to speak and listen are important. I did forensics in high school, you know, debate and I was an informational speaker. 

Chris McAlilly  6:00  
You were a speaker.

Graham Bodie  6:00  
I was a speaker. And so I did the competitions and I went and I spoke and went to college to be an engineer. And after two years of co-oping, that was just... I wasn't the guy with the abacus and the slide rule. I went back to my roots, went over to the Speech Communication Department. And, you know, to my mother's chagrin. She thought, "You're never gonna make any money! You have to be an engineer."

Chris McAlilly  6:23  
Yeah, English major over here. It's the same.

Graham Bodie  6:25  
I got to speak. So I graduated and I wasn't quite finished. I went and got my Master's Degree and in one of my first classes the professor came in by the name of Margaret Fitch-Hauser and she said, "I have a project. Anybody interested in working on it?" And, well, I'm not doing anything else, you know, so yeah, sure, let's do that. It sounded interesting. And it ended up being a project that was how to teach speaking and listening skills to adult learners who don't have a lot of time but who have a lot of struggles in basic communication in various settings. And so we worked on that project, and she invited me through that to go to this conference of the International Listening Association, and there is such a thing.

Chris McAlilly  7:00  
I did not know there was such a thing. 

Graham Bodie  7:01  
Yes, they speak and listen at this conference.

Chris McAlilly  7:04  
I just imagine everybody just completely silent, you know.

Graham Bodie  7:07  
"There's a lot of good listeners at this conference." In fact,

Chris McAlilly  7:10  
"You need a good listener in your life, go to this conference."

Graham Bodie  7:13  
"Go to this conference." And that was in 2000. And I kept going to that conference through my PhD work at Purdue. I went to Purdue to go study under this guy by the name Brant Burleson, who was studying social support. So, what do people say when someone comes to them stressed out? What do they say to make them feel better or potentially make them feel worse or have specific communicative moves, you know, exchanges in an interaction that cause you to cope with or allow you to be able to cope with a stressor--usually an everyday stressor, not a traumatic stressor, although there's some research on that as well. 

And I took that research and was at LSU. Sorry for those Ole Miss fans out there, but I was a professor over at LSU and then made my way here, and have kind of formed my research identity now around the notion of either organizational listening--how organizations listen--as well as dialogue and deliberation. So I spent the past two plus years looking at different models of how we engage in courageous or civil or whatever you want to call them conversations where there's a stark difference of opinion or differences in identity among the participants.

Chris McAlilly  8:22  
So going back to the PhD research and dissertation and that kind of thing. So that that research for you was around kind of stress and communication. 

Graham Bodie  8:31  
Right. 

Chris McAlilly  8:32  
So give us some examples of what are some kind of everyday stressors that that affect everyday communication?

Graham Bodie  8:39  
Yeah. So if you think about in the workplace, you know, you're working with really awesome people, like the guy behind the camera over there, but he's not always awesome. He does things that you know, 

Chris McAlilly  8:49  
He is not always awesome. There are many days where he's not very awesome. 

Graham Bodie  8:52  
He gets under your skin, right, or you get under his skin, and there's some tension at work or it's just generally, like, you didn't want to be at work that day. You would rather be outside running or something. Not you maybe, but other people may want to be running. So you want to be somewhere else, you come home and you're stressed about that. And you say, "Can you believe Cody did this thing again?" And what happens in the exchange with your wife or your kid or your parent or whoever is there?  It could be just little things that happen at work. It could be, you know, not finding a parking space. It could be the things that we look back on in hindsight and say, "That wasn't a big deal." But in the moment, not only was it a big deal, but it may have compounded over time, because there was a lot of those little things that ended up being a big deal. 

So I mainly studied this in college students who have lots of minor life stresses: failing exams or not being able to get in the major they want to get into or not getting the classes they want to get, or in some cases, having a health diagnosis that seemed pretty frightening at the time but ends up being benign later, or they have a brother or a sister or a parent who's going through some health issue. There's all kinds of different types of everyday stressors compared to, like, a hurricane hits or a plane hitting a building or something traumatic that not only is shared by you, but also shared by a large group of people, right? So we make the distinction between those personal everyday things that are stressful and those sort of more societal-based sort of traumatic stressors that are generally shared by a large group of individuals.

Chris McAlilly  10:20  
Yeah, one of the one of the TV shows I've watched over the course the last decade, I was late to the show. So everybody watched "The West Wing," and then I watched it 

Graham Bodie  10:31  
You watched it after everyone.

Chris McAlilly  10:32  
later. I probably watched it a decade late. One of the things I love about that show is that it gets this dimension of our psychology and communication, right? I think about moments where Jeb Bartlett, the president, down the Oval Office office dealing with not just like a large-scale, national tragedy, but just the everyday stress of office life. And then he goes back up to the residential quarters and just spews at his wife, right? And I feel like that's the way it is that that's just constantly happening in my life. But I think it's part of the dimension of dealing with work and life and stress. Well, so what are the ways... I mean, if those are some of the stressors that put pressure on communication, how do you relieve that pressure? What are some of the things that you've found through the years in your research to be helpful?

Graham Bodie  11:24  
Yeah, I think starting with what tends not to be helpful. So there's a really long line of research that comes out of a guy's lab by the name of Jamie Pennebaker out of University of Texas, Austin. And he studies traumatic stressors, things that have happened, particularly when someone's a child. So it could be abuse, or it could be a divorce or something that the child hasn't had a chance to talk about or to deal with or cope with. And he basically has half the people in his studies write for three days, 20 minutes a day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, about that stressor. Or the other half of the people write about, you know, what they had for breakfast or some sort of mundane task. And what is found, and there's thousands of studies now, it's called the expressive writing paradigm. 

What these researchers find is that over these three days, or sometimes a week or two weeks, or however long it takes, the people that are in the writing condition have better health outcomes. So they go to the doctor less, they have less chance of hypertension, and their overall wellbeing is is increased, right? Cholesterol, all these kind of health markers are better. And so one thing we don't want to do is hold on to everything. The other thing we don't want to do is, you know, co-ruminate, is just come with you with a stressor and then you help me just sit there and, you know, ruminate over and over and over how bad it is, right? So there's these two ends of the bad continuum, which is either not talking about these things at all or talking about it with someone that doesn't really help you get out of that sort of mental cycle of repeating the stressor over and over and over. 

So what we know about coping and stress is it's largely a process of appraisal and reappraisal. So you're appraising the stressor as severe or not. And you're appraising your coping potential as something you can cope with or something you can't cope with. So there's primary and secondary appraisals in the literature. And what we know is that if you can get people to reappraise not only the severity of the situation, but also their ability to cope with the situation, those are the types of things that help us cope. So if you have somebody you can go... Sometimes it's just, "Let me tell you this thing. Thanks for listening. I'm done. I don't really want your advice, because there's not really anything. I can't do anything about Cody's personality, right? Or I can't do anything about this," 

Chris McAlilly  13:35  
I can't, either. 

Graham Bodie  13:36  
Yeah, you know, so there's nothing I can do. He's always gonna be like this. And so there's only things you can work on in yourself. I don't really need your advice. I just need you to listen to me. Other times, there are opportunities for me to suggest maybe some strategies for how to cope with that, but I've got to work through that. I can't just immediately come out and say, "Hey, you know, what you should do is this." Well, first of all, I may have tried that and it failed. Or second of all, it's like your mom or your dad telling you to clean up your room. Your immediate reaction is, "No. I don't want to do that." It's an affront to my agency. I can resist that, right. So I react to that negatively. So if advice comes without some sort of emotional support, it's oftentimes not as well received, and it's likely not to be implemented. So: don't give advice. Do allow the person to elaborate. Ask them why they feel that way. Ask them how that fits in their larger worldview. 

So there's a lot of different moves that you can make in the conversation just by asking questions and getting them to sort of keep talking about it in more productive and positive ways over the course of a 10, 20, 30 minute conversation. You know, the fact is we all need someone to tell it to.

Chris McAlilly  14:42  
Are there resources available? If somebody is really interested in this topic, and they wanted to explore it further through the Google machine? Where would a lay person, somebody who is kind of a beginner to the conversation, where would they start?

Graham Bodie  14:56  
Yeah, so I help run this organization called Listen First Project. We've got about 250 organizations that do different kinds of conversations. And one of the organizations that we work with really closely is this one called Someone To Tell It To. And so their whole motto is, "Everyone needs someone to tell it to. Will you be the someone?" So they base on Mr. Rogers philosophy, right, which is be kind to everyone. Be compassionate to everyone. And they have some compassionate listening resources. We've got some on our website. They've got some on their website. International Listening Association has a lot of resources on their website. 

We're recording this actually on the 17th of September. In two days, September 19th, even though this will probably be aired after that. But next year, September 19, is the International Day of Listening. And there's a website called the International Day of Listening dot com. Google that and there's a lot of resources there about how to have conversations on different kind of topics, particularly when people are stressed out, how do you have those topics? 

You can also Google it, but there's a lot of advice out there that may or may not be helpful. "Five tips on how to listen better and look people in the eye," and, you know, these basically quote unquote active listening skills that only make it look like you're listening and you're not actually attending. So I think for me, the number one key is what's your mindset toward listening? Where is your mind? Is it toward the other person? Is it all about, who are they? What is their struggle? Let me pay attention to them right now. Let me not pay attention to everything else that's going on. So being present and in the moment. And if you have that mindset, then your behaviors are going to follow. You ought not be focused on am I looking them in the eye? And am I doing enough head nods and am I doing all these other things. It ought to be, am I focused on Chris right now, paying attention to what he is saying and not paying attention to what I want to do?

Chris McAlilly  16:44  
Right. How did you get involved with Listen First? How did that come about?

Graham Bodie  16:49  
Yeah, so the story I tell usually begins with a person I met on a dating app called Twitter. I was doing my academic thing. I was publishing and getting tenure and doing a bunch of research, and I got called by the Wall Street Journal, this woman by the name of Elizabeth Bernstein, she does a column every week in the relationship section of the Wall Street Journal. And she wanted to interview me. And it's pretty common. I get interviewed for newspapers, and I thought, "Hey, I have a little quote." And it came out and it was on the front page of this relationship section. And it was just my research. It was just a whole thing about the Bodie Listening Lab at Louisiana State University. I was like, "Oh, that's awesome."

And I get a phone call as I'm reading, literally reading the article she sent me, and I get a phone call from this guy named Jim McIngvale, Mattress Mack in Houston and he says, "Hey, I want you to come train my salespeople how to do this." I said, "Awesome. Buy me the plane ticket, let's go." And because of that experience, I was face-to-face with people who I saw immediate change, not only in their behavior, but in their life. 

So I went back after my first couple of workshops, like, January, February of 2014 or 15. And I got pulled aside, not just once, not just twice, like, three or four times and people would say things like, "Thank you so much. What you said the other day, I went home and I tried it. My wife got home, I turned off the TV. I turned toward her, and I said, 'How was your day?' And she sat down, and we had a real conversation for the first time in 10 years." And then I had people saying, "If I would have known you 20 years ago, I might still be married." Or, "If I'd known you 10 years ago, I may have a better relationship with my son." And I thought, this is where it's at. I mean, if I can do some things that make people better people and make people's lives better, that's what I want to be doing. 

So I started more. I'm, you know, technophobe, like I don't... And so I got on social media and I made all the accounts, and one of the accounts that I started to follow was Listen First Project. "It's so cool. There's this company, this organization that says, 'listen first' and I've been saying, I want to come in and make an organization a listen first organization, so that this is awesome!" Like, a non-academic thinks this is important. And then one thing led to another I ended up moving to Mississippi very shortly after that, and to a school that values public outreach and advocacy more than, not more but at least equally, than it does to scholarship. And so the outreach and the public intellectual part of my identity was sort of valued along with my scholarly part of my identity. And so that gave me the incentive structure to be able to actually start really working really closely with this organization.

Chris McAlilly  19:26  
So what are some of the range of things that Listen First Project works on?

Graham Bodie  19:31  
So for the past two years, we've been building a coalition--not a bad one, a good coalition--of organizations. There's about 250 organizations now who work in this space of mending the frayed fabric of our society, one conversation at a time. They range from the more academic or practitioner-based organizations like the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, which has, like, 7000 dialogue and deliberation practitioners, to the International Listening Association, which is a scholarly, academic association, to an organization called Urban Confessional. They literally stand on street corners with signs and say "free listening," and they just listen to people and people come up. When you do this, it's fun because people go, "what are you doing here?"

Chris McAlilly  20:12  
Right.

Graham Bodie  20:12  
"Why are you here?" And you go, "I'm here for you." And they go, "That's weird." [LAUGHTER]

Chris McAlilly  20:17  
I would think that was pretty weird.

Graham Bodie  20:18  
Right? You know, so we've got a range of different types of organizations. And what we're trying to be is kind of the coalition builder, the umbrella for organizations to do their work, to help promote not just one or two initiatives, but the hundreds and thousands of initiatives that are happening across the country. So we develop this platform called the National Conversation Project. 

And we have one week every year in particular that we highlight, which is around April 17 or so every year. It's called National Week of Conversation. The last time we did it, we had about 150 or so organizations across 38 or 40 states. About 3 million people participated in some form of virtual or in-person conversation around difference. Now it could be I just invite you to a coffee shop, or it could have been a 45 minute watch a movie or documentary and talk about it. So it ranges from those that you really have to intentionally put on your calendar to those like, I'm just going to be nice to the cashier tomorrow, right? And so what we do is we basically, we like alliteration: we amplify, aggregate, and align the many voices that speak to the power of conversation and listening across differences.

Chris McAlilly  21:28  
In just hearing you talk about this, I mean, it seems rooted in your research, You seem quite optimistic about the power of a conversation to really transform things. I feel like we're in a moment where, I mean, if you just think about the way in which this particular presidential cycle is beginning to take shape 

Graham Bodie  21:48  
Already.

Chris McAlilly  21:49  
already it seems like folks are less interested. I mean, the parties seem to be less interested in conversation across difference. It seems like folks are kind of going into their echo chambers and doubling down on "I'm on this side and you're on that side." I don't know, I also think we've had a lot of larger events happen that, I don't know, maybe expose the limits of conversation. I think about conversations that you and I've had in the past about, particularly in the South, race across racial difference. And particularly, I remember talking to you shortly after Charlottesville, Virginia happened and I know that you guys have been doing some work in that area as well. From your perspective, why should we be so optimistic about the power of listening to transform a very polarized culture where there are a lot of other dimensions and complexities and even voices that are kind of calling on you not to do that thing?

Graham Bodie  22:57  
I think my optimism comes from a couple of sources. One is personal. I've seen fruitful conversations. My wife in particular is a lot better at conversations than I am. And I've seen her change who I am into a better person. I've seen conversations between her and my kids and myself and my kids, turn them into and mold them into better people. I've seen my work with different organizations. When I go in, and I teach listening skills, I've seen their lives... Not only are they better salespeople, which is great, yay, they can sell more furniture or refrigerators. That's awesome. But they're going home. And they're using these things with their kids and their spouses and their friends. So on a personal level, I see the power of listening and communication to change my personal outlook and my personal relationships.

I mean, on a larger scale, it's not a panacea. It's one among many tools that should be used in a democracy to move us toward progressive change and toward the world that we want to see. Right? And so I think about, you know, are we more divided than we ever have been? I think not probably. I think if you look at history, before we had a president, when we declared our independence, there was all kinds of people calling other people really terrible things, and lots of bloodshed. And there's a civil war where we have states seceding from each other, and there's no conversation, right? And then there is the 1960s, where you have leaders like Martin Luther King, who worked within the confines of a democracy to do things not only like conversation, but protests and marches and sit-ins. So, conversation won't solve everything. You also need other forms of change, right? And so I'm not suggesting that let's stop doing all the other things and let's all just talk and hold hands and sing Kumbaya, because that's not what it's about. 

We saw this pushback when we went to Charlottesville in particular There was a group of activists, self-described activists, who accused us--and I want to try to blame, not trying to, you know, make them all sound negative, but they did accuse us of having a certain agenda, a white nationalist agenda under our conversational clothing, where they were accusing us of bringing Nazis to the table. And that was far from what we were trying to do. But I can see from that perspective, where it looked like as we were calling for conversation, they were calling for "we're not going to take this anymore. We're not going to allow the white nationalists to take over our city right now." 

This was a year after Charlottesville, so it was removed. It wasn't removed to the point that the people that were there on the front lines still had a lot of pain, and rightfully so. So I think there are limits to, particularly an outside group, although we did have people in Charlottesville that were our supporters, like Susan Bro, who is the mother of Heather Heyer, and other people in the city that supported were at the various tables that we had for conversations. But nevertheless, there was a pushback and a rightful  and justified pushback on the limits of "No, I'm not telling you to invite the Nazis to the table." That's not my point. My point is that there are people in the space of trying to make Charlottesville a better place that have different opinions on how to do that. And we might want to talk across those differences on how to make Charlottesville a better and non-supporting-white-supremacy place to be. 

You see that here at the University of Mississippi, where, you know, the issue of the Confederate statue comes up. And you know, you could say, "Well, the reason it got moved was because a group of students protested." That was one reason. There's a really long, 10, 20, 30, 40, hundred year, whatever history behind the moving of the statue as well, that we also have to recognize. 

So conversation can be a mechanism, a tool, an important tool. So I'm optimistic about its ability, but I'm not suggesting that it is the only thing we ought to focus on. I'm just saying, that's my expertise. That's the gift that God has given me to be able to speak into. And so I'm going to speak into that, and I'm going to let the activists and the protesters, I'm going to also let them do what they do. And hopefully we can walk together in that larger journey. And I may even hold a signcone day, because I feel like the conversation has ceased being productive. 

Chris McAlilly  27:24  
Right. 

Graham Bodie  27:24  
So I think there's limits to it. But I also think that it's got a place at the table.

Chris McAlilly  27:28  
Right. How do you recognize that moment when conversations cease to be productive, and when you hit it up against that wall? What do you... I mean, it seems like one of the things you do at that point is to say this is not a productive conversation. You move away from it. I guess scale seems important to me, the scale of the actors, how many people are involved, and then the complexity of whatever is at the root of the of the conversation or the particular kind of disagreement...

Graham Bodie  28:02  
And who's being asked to do the work? 

Chris McAlilly  28:04  
Right.

Graham Bodie  28:04  
Right, I mean, as soon as something like race comes up, like, "Oh, all the black people should do the work." Or if gender comes up, "Well, all the women need to do the work." It's like, well, to a certain extent as a white, cisgender male, I do need to take a step back and not force my voice on an issue, particularly if I'm not welcomed by a particular group. At the same time, just because I am the identity I am doesn't mean that I also can't be an advocate or an ally and stand beside individuals who are trying to work toward the betterment of people of color or minority women--who aren't minorities actually--but non-male dominant voices. 

I think there's a lot of complexity in when does a conversation turn unproductive? I think when the other person in the conversation ceases being open to acknowledging or validating anything that I'm saying, or is so tenacious and hunkered down in his or her own belief system that there is no movement. I also think a lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot with conversation, we try to go, "Alright, now let's have a conversation about really something hard. Go!" And it's like, no, you have to have the relationship first. 

So a lot of the work of conversation is bridging the divides or the differences, bringing people together who normally wouldn't be together to get to know each other first. Once those relationships are established, then I don't question your motives as much as I might if I didn't know you. So I think you've got a pure heart or you've got pure intentions, and therefore I can maybe be more open to what you have to say, knowing that it's coming from a place of goodness, rather than a place of what I perceive as badness. 

Chris McAlilly  29:40  
Right. 

Graham Bodie  29:40  
And so I think there's different roles of conversations and what we're talking about a lot of times dictates when we should stop talking.

Chris McAlilly  29:49  
We can talk about a lot of different things. I want to pivot to some of the other work that you've been engaging in. I know that you've been invited recently, internationally into some conversations. 

Graham Bodie  30:00  
Yeah.

Chris McAlilly  30:00  
Can you tell us about that? 

Graham Bodie  30:01  
Sure.

Chris McAlilly  30:01  
And you were recently in Ethiopia.

Graham Bodie  30:03  
Yeah. So I have a colleague here at the university, who is Ethiopian. And he's been working with the Ethiopian government for a long time, several decades. And he introduced my work to the Minister of Peace, who is one of the primary cabinet-level officials of the Ethiopian government. And she basically said, "Well, when can he come? When can he come and have some workshops on dialogue and difference in a democracy, in a struggling democracy?"

So Ethiopia is a democracy. It has been since, like, 1992, I believe, when they originally had their constitution, but it hasn't been a stable democracy. And it hasn't really been a quote unquote, true democracy. There's been a lot of jockeying for power. There has been several attempted coups on the government over the past 20-30 years, and so it hasn't been a stable democracy. And there are a lot of ethnic tensions. There's, I don't know, hundreds of ethnic groups in Ethiopia, and that's an important part of their identity. And if you are this ethnic group, you can't accept opinions from this other ethnic group, kind of thing going on. 

So in any case, I went over to do workshops with a group of about 35 government officials, activists, opposition leaders, bloggers, journalists, and young students and so forth that are interested in, presumably interested in, sitting in a room with people that they they don't agree with. And so that was my job. And so my my whole series of workshops was building a listen-first culture. What would it mean for a culture to be listening-centered as opposed to speaking-centered? 

In our democracy, for instance, there's a lot of talk about "Have your voice be heard. Speak your truth," right? We talked about "Think before you speak. Don't put your foot in your mouth." But have you ever heard anybody say, "Think before you listen" or "don't put your foot in your ear"?  These are weird expressions. We're very in our Western state of being. We're very speaking-centered, and it's all about push, push push. Organizations and governments do a really good job. There's a lot of good work out of this guy by the name of Jim McNamara, defining governments and organizations are very good at pushing their message out. They're not very good at pulling in the sentiments of the public. It becomes complicated because you have to listen at scale. You have to figure out which voices you are going to listen to, what you are going to pay attention to, and what's your rule for listening. Is it popularity? Well, popularity sometimes gets you into trouble. The popular opinion isn't always the right opinion. You also need to listen to people who oftentimes don't have a voice. So how do you provide platforms for true dialogue across difference in a democracy? 

And those are the issues that they're struggling with in Ethiopia, and those are the issues that we went over to talk about. It's building what McNamara calls "an architecture of listening" within the Ethiopian government, across not just within different government divisions and agencies, but also across... Because the government can do all they can do. But then if it has opposition groups that are fighting against that, then they're going to struggle with doing any of those kind of things productively. So that's why all the other groups were in there. 

Of course, when I went over there, when I flew in, the day that I flew in, there was an attempted coup on the government. 

Chris McAlilly  33:23  
Yeah, I remember, you told me that.

Graham Bodie  33:24  
The guy that orchestrated it was supposed to be in the workshop. Maybe we should have held it a month or two early. But, you know, it is what it is. And so while I was there, that was the context within which I had these workshops, was the realization that stuff just got real. Like there really is a tendency toward violence as the knee-jerk reaction or response to change. And a lot of this is a change because there's a new prime minister who believes in the democracy, the fact that half of the cabinet is women. These kind of progressive changes have not come easy to Ethiopia. And so there's a lot of pushback, and the pushback because of the history of the country tends to be violence. Not very much unlike our democracy when it first formed or even during the Civil War or even during the 60s. We have a tendency as well, if we really want to be honest about it, we have a tendency toward violence--Charlottesville, all these kinds of... we also have struggled with violence in this country. So we're not that far removed from the type of violence that I, not necessarily directly witnessed but what was in the middle of, in Ethiopia. So I think we need to also consider what lessons we can learn from advancing democracies and their tendencies toward violence. Do we really want to be the example of democracy when we can't handle our own violence, our own sort of tendencies toward that?

Chris McAlilly  34:54  
So what do you anticipate the future of that work to look like? Are you optimistic about some of the stuff you were able to get off the ground?

Graham Bodie  35:03  
I'm optimistic, one, because the Minister of Education who was in the there--these were three days of sessions. You can imagine the high-level government official taking three days of her time to sit and be in these meetings. She took what I did, and she did, so mine was three days, and she packed it into a day and she reintroduced it to other government officials and other people, about two or three weeks after I was there. We've been in contact with the Minister of Peace to do some, hopefully, some youth civic engagement around these issues. So bringing either bringing youth to the United States or bringing them to Norway or somewhere where we can have a youth civic engagement summit or something with also youth from other countries, so that youth can be exposed to different perspectives and learn how to talk across difference. So we're entertaining some potential grants for that kind of work.

So there's an appetite for this. I mean, the fact that there were about 30 people in the room, several activists, several people who otherwise would try to oppose the government, but do so in peaceful ways, are the voices now of reason in this country. So I'm optimistic because they are just so bright and brilliant and just sort of eager to make this stuff work. And as well as some of the powers that be in organizations like Ethiopian Airlines is also interested in this kind of work. And so I think if you can rally the right group of people, even if it's a small group of people, I think you can make a big difference.

Chris McAlilly  36:33  
So we've talked a lot about speaking and listening within the context of civic engagement, within the context of a democratic nation state, both America, Ethiopia, presumably, other other forms of democratic life together. Why do you think this is an important topic for Christians to be thinking about? Perhaps for yourself as you think of it, as a person of faith. Why? Why is this a topic that the church should perhaps pay more attention to, think more about?

Graham Bodie  37:13  
God, the God that I worship, the God that I believe is the God of the Bible, the sentence, "His Son Jesus died for my sins," is a God that wants a relationship with me. So I think all of the things that I study and do are grounded in relationships. And I think that's grounded in who the Father is, who the Son is, right? You've got the Father-Son-Holy Spirit relationship. You've got the the son-intervening-for-the anger-of-the-Father-with-us relationship, right? You've got the disciples, the 12 disciples relationship. You got the church of Acts relationships. You got Paul and all of his, you know, specific... I mean, so it's just all about relationships, right? 

So if that's kind of the model that I'm drawing from is, what is it that we can do to not only form but maintain quality relationships in our lives? Christians have a bad rap. I mean, it doesn't escape me that if I say I'm a Christian, the reaction I might get is, "Oh crap, I'm about to get a mouthful. You're about to beat me over the head with the Bible." And if that's what Christians are known for, beating people over the head with the Bible, like, I don't want to be associated with that. I don't want to be affiliated with a religion that tries to force itself into people. What I want to be a part of is a religion that attempts to establish relationships with all kinds of different views. 

I was in a Sunday School class when we lived in Indiana going to grad school, and the Sunday School teacher, loved him to death. He had this saying. He said, "You know, there are pin issues and pencil issues. Very few of the issues that I'm going to talk about today," he would say, "are pen issues and I'm willing to write down in pen. Most of them I'm willing to write down in pencil, because I'm willing to turn it over and erase them. And one day, some of those pencil issues will get transferred over to pen issues when I see the Father face to face. But while I'm here on Earth, I've got to be ready to be open enough to erase some of my preconceived notions, my biases and my filters." And I think that, to me, that's the Christian attitude is to be open enough to where has this person come from? 

You know, like I said, there's all these models of dialogue and deliberation, they're all founded on relationships. One of them that I really love is the Welcome Table by the Winter Institute. And one of the guidelines that they use when they set up what this conversation is about is "turn to wonder." When you you feel yourself thinking something negative about this person, or wanting to jump across the table and, you know, strangle this person or whatever the case might be, when you're moved to some sort of anger or frustration or some sort of visceral reaction, turn to wonder. Wonder where did this person get this belief, not in a negative way, but really in terms of what life experiences have led this person to believe the way that they believe. And I think if we take that attitude around with us, turning to wonder, being open to all kinds of people... I mean it shouldn't that, isn't that what the whole Methodist Church should be about, is open minds, open hearts, open doors, whatnot--a campaign at some point.

Chris McAlilly  40:14  
Yeah, we'll have another conversation about that at some point

Graham Bodie  40:18  
Open, not necessarily, you know, open for anything and everything, but really open to, "Who are you? Where do you come from? And you're welcome at this table, regardless of where you come from."

Chris McAlilly  40:28  
Yeah, I've heard my preaching professor in seminary preach a sermon one time. He said that there's an old Rabbi saying that when you see someone coming toward you, you should see angels all around them saying, "Make way for the image of God. Make way for the image of God." I do think that kind of basic charity that you offer to another person as not a potential enemy, but as somebody who is also created in the image of God and with something, perhaps not only to say to you, but something to teach you. That there are things that you can learn about yourself from them or things that you can learn about the world that you didn't know. That there's a kind of expansiveness that comes when you encounter someone who is coming from beyond your sphere.

Graham Bodie  41:23  
Bill Nye said, "everybody that you meet has something to teach you."

Chris McAlilly  41:27  
Right. 

Graham Bodie  41:27  
Right. 

Chris McAlilly  41:28  
Well, I don't actually know how much time we may or may not have left. 

Graham Bodie  41:35  
Plenty of time. 

Chris McAlilly  41:36  
We have plenty of time. We're rocking and rolling. Yeah, so just continuing along, that question about the church and its engagement with the world around it. Thinking in terms of relationships, thinking in terms not simply of we're hunkering down for the culture wars and we need to defend ourselves over against the wider world. And I see Christians do that a lot. They feel like if there's something wrong that's out there that they have to say the thing that makes that thing right. 

Graham Bodie  42:11  
Right. 

Chris McAlilly  42:12  
Rather than a kind of receptivity. How do you balance that, though? How do you balance having real strong convictions, whether it's religious conviction or a convictions about a particular policy issue, or convictions about what has been done right or wrong in a racially tense environment? How do you balance having strong convictions with openness to people that believe the exact opposite thing? It seems impossible.

Graham Bodie  42:47  
It's about the... Yeah, I think so if your conviction is people, right. I wear this shirt all the time, that was made by this organization called Urban Confessional. And it says "hear the person not just the opinion." Who is the person behind that opinion? If we remove opinions, if we remove perspectives and positions, and we just get to know the people, right? That I think that's first step. Now that doesn't mean the positions are irrelevant or that positions should never be debated or we shouldn't have policies, that we should just be anarchists and just all go about our day and be relativists, and think everything is hunky dory. You believe what you want to believe. And I'll believe, you know, and then we'll all just be happy. 

Because those things come into tension with each other, particularly when it comes around to not valuing people because of the color of their skin or because of their position in some weird hierarchy that we created. I mean, all of these things are human created anyway. And so if they're human created, then we can uncreate them. But it takes a long time to do that. It takes a long time to uncreate race as a social category. We think that there's some inherent sort of worth of people based on just the look of their skin, and that's just a wrong opinion, you know. 

And so yes, I'm willing to say there are certain things from my perspective and probably from an objective perspective that are just wrong. Judging people's worth by an initial impression based on the color of their skin is just a wrong thing to do. How long did it take us? And we're still not out of that. We're not out of it, out of that mentality as a culture, right? Similarly with socioeconomic status or with the notion of failure, right, where we set up government programs, or even non-government programs that help people in need. And we put all these stipulations on top of them that not even a rich person would be able to make their way through, right? You show up five minutes late to one appointment and you're off of the system. It's like there's no room for failure at all. In an individual that has struggled their entire life to do things like find a ride to work because they don't have a car because they can't afford a car, and the public transportation system in whatever city they're in is probably terrible. Unless they live in Chicago or, you know, New York or some big city, particularly in the South. So you know, I think who's the person? Right? And if we can remove our judgment of the person and place some of that judgment on the systems and the structures that are around that person, what barriers can we remove to allow this person to be the best person they can possibly be? 

And so some of those are those some sort of pie-in-the-sky liberal ideal, maybe. But I'm willing to have a conversation with people who might think differently than me and be open to the possibility that I'm wrong. Gun control is another one of those issues that we try to avoid at all costs. And I grew up with guns. I mean, the first job that I had was at my uncle's hardware store, and I worked all summer to afford a $300 pellet gun. Like, that's all I wanted, when I was 12 years old, was this stupid little pellet gun, right? And my dad has, you know, shotguns and rifles and he's a hunter and all these kind of things. I grew up around all that stuff. I have zero guns in my house, right? Mainly because I think that my kids are safer without me having guns. Now, you may be like, "No, I'm safer if I have guns in my house." Great. Let's talk about why you believe that. What's your logic? What's your rationale? And then we may just end the conversation by saying, "you can believe that for those reasons. And those sound like decent, legitimate reasons. And I'm going to believe what I believe are decent, legitimate reasons." 

And at the end of the day, I did some workshops with a group last week, and people were saying, "Yeah, but what if? What if this person says this thing?" And I said, "okay. The opinion that they hold right now, is it harming you? Because if not, just let it go." Right? Just let it go. And be curious about what brought them there. And then leave this space to have the conversation next time, because the worst thing you can do is just shut the conversation down completely. You'll never have another chance to if you want to move that person in what you perceive is the right direction if you shut the conversation down in the first place, right? So if, interestingly and non-intuitively enough, if your goal is to change someone, the best thing you can do is listen to where they come from, and allow them to have the opinions that they have without feeling like you're about to smash them with a hammer. 

Chris McAlilly  47:05  
Right.

Graham Bodie  47:06  
And that doesn't sound like it. You know, it's like, no, I should take every opportunity that I'm going to take to tell them that they're wrong. And it's like that's, that's going to turn them away.

Chris McAlilly  47:16  
Yep. I think that's a good place to land. Really grateful for your time. 

Graham Bodie  47:22  
Yeah.

Chris McAlilly  47:22  
We'll have to talk some more, explore some of your further work, especially as, you know, things unfold, you begin working in other areas. I'd love to continue the conversation. 

Graham Bodie  47:32  
Absolutely.

Eddie Rester  47:32  
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.

Chris McAlilly  47:45  
This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight. [END OUTRO]