Whenever you paint or draw or sculpt or write, or in any way offer up a vision of the world (yours or your art’s…yes, they can be separate!), you run the risk of angering or irritating multiple swaths of people.  I knew this when I wrote Eve.

I received my first ugly e-mail the other day (and by ugly I don’t mean someone who simply disagreed with me…I mean ugly as in mean-spirited), from someone I didn’t know, regarding the FAQs on my website (I’m assuming he hasn’t taken the time to read Eve yet, to see how the questions pan out in the story).  I thanked the writer for writing and wished him well, replying to none of the points he made.  This was all I could do, because the e-mail was written in a fit of rage (the words jumping off the page in something resembling projectile vomit–here, there, and everywhere).  If I had responded in a very rational and logical way, it still wouldn’t have solved anything.  In fact, it probably would have angered him more.

I’m okay with the anger.  I’m used to it; I grew up with it.  But I’ve worked very hard at rooting it out of my life…or perhaps what happened was that I dealt with the source of the anger, and in the talking and writing about it, it dissipated on its own.  That’s what forgiveness is, I suppose.

I’ve always been a firm advocate of free speech, but I don’t have to respond to unmitigated and rambling fury; there would be no sense in that.

This has always been a dilemma of mine.  You can’t have a conversation with someone who wants to Show You the Way and inform you how utterly stupid you are.  That’s a debate, which always has a winner and a loser.  There’s a place for debate, certainly, when you’ve signed on like Bill Maher and Ann Coulter have–to sling mud at each other and try to make the other look like a smaller person than he or she is–but I don’t want to debate about religion or Eve or anything, really, in my life.  I want a conversation, which requires just as much listening as talking.  And no snarkiness (as per my blog yesterday).

I just read a marvelous, succinct article on the value of conversation–“The Tenor of the Mind” by Stephen Mitchell.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

“As a teacher, I rarely concern myself with changing my students’ beliefs.  Instead, I work to help them form the habits of mind that make change possible….I separate conversation from debate in that I see conversation as a means of inquiry whereas debate tends toward a positional defense–much like an army guarding its territory….The debater seeks, above all, a defense so rigorous that he is impervious to challenge.  Conversation, though, requires that we be vulnerable.  The conversationalist asks to be questioned and probed….it is not fear of truth that makes me suspicious of combative debate; it’s fear of falsehood.  Teaching literature has shown me that the candlelight of conversation will ferret out falsehood better than the walls of a rigid defense will protect the truth….If we can hear these voices, let them challenge and sift our most cherished assumptions, if we can speak back, challenging and sifting theirs, we will have entered the realm of conversation.  With a bit of luck, we may discover a friend.”

Think of how wide our world would be if we listened, just listened, to the words of others.  Their lives–with all their joys and sorrows–have something to say to ours.

Listen.  Then ask open-ended questions like, “That’s interesting.  What led you to that belief?” or “How does that ‘look’ in your everyday life?” or “Do you ever feel a little ostracized thinking that?” or “Tell me how you came to that notion.”

I always know when I’m in the presence of someone trustworthy, who will take my thoughts and not dash them on the ground immediately, and it’s the best feeling in the world to be treated that way.

Happy Sunday to all of you, my dear readers!  It’s a gloomy day here–perfect for reading and munching and playing indoors…oh, yes, and listening to family and friends.

[Post image: Conversation by geoffrey63 at stock.xchng]