Back in another time and place when I was part of a ministry team in Cranhill in Glasgow, along with many other Priority Area teams, we needed help. The communication in and between our team was fractious and difficult. We were not getting along well and we were not performing well. Christian love – agape- was worn thin and hanging by a thread.
This is not unusual in teams, and particularly in teams where one member is an employee line managed by the other and that other, a post holder and not an employee, seems to operate very differently from established employment practice.
By serendipity, Verene Nicolas[1] a longtime practitioner and trainer in NVC lives in Glasgow and she came alongside us and helped us. NVC (non violent communication) was developed in the US by Marshall Rosenberg. For Rosenberg, a Jew, NVC is spiritual but not religious and thus open to all faiths and none.
The principles of NVC, sometimes also known as collaborative communication, are that all communication is driven by a person’s needs, and that we often attempt to have our needs met at the expense of another’s. Even if not physical, this is often violent. That is how we have learned to survive: fight or flight.
Rosenberg and other NVC practitioners invite us to pause before reacting and choose our response.
NVC began focusing on interpersonal relationships against the background of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, but practitioners and trainers have begun to take seriously the various lenses through which we understand the world, principally patriarchy and also colonialism. They call this the systemic lens, and NVC is evolving into NGL (Non Violent Global Liberation)
A community of love and communion seems very far from our experience around the world and here in Israel-Palestine today. But here, as around the world, there are people who are practicing the skills of compassionate communication: observing the interaction, naming the feelings, understanding underlying needs and making requests of self and others.
These are the skills the ministry teams in Priority Areas in Scotland practiced over time with Verene’s patient and gentle help. These are the skills the world needs not only at individual and family levels but at systemic levels to overcome patterns of domination and exploitation which rob others of their freedom and undermine the humanity of all.
For the past six weeks I have been refreshing my NVC practice in an online global community. Although an extensive network, it is still a very small and counter cultural movement. One of the people I most admire here in Israel-Palestine is Nadia Giol. Nadia manages the visitors’ centre at Sindyanna in Cana, but she is also a qualified NVC trainer. She is uniquely placed to work in this context because she is fluent in Arabic and Hebrew (as well as Spanish and English and no doubt other tongues). Recently Nadia shared how difficult it is for Palestinian Israelis (Arab Israelis) to build trust with Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories. But she perseveres.
It was Margaret Mead who said, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Nadia and her colleagues at Sindyanna, and the many other NGOs working for peace with justice for all, and the worldwide NGL prove that.
Stepping out of the boat... 