Last spring four friends and I met on Zoom to talk about our 50 year college reunion. We graduated in 1971 from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Because most of us would not be able to attend the official event scheduled for this October, we decided to create our own celebration. We built a list, picked a weekend date, developed an itinerary, and sent out invitations. We called it an Old Friends Reunion. And it took place last weekend.
That’s the planning group on the right. As one of my mates said, “that’s the first time Gardner has ever been in the back row.” Tall Barrie knows me too well having heard too many times the story about how the only reason I made the Sacred Heart Grade School choir was they needed another short guy to fill out the first row. Friends know our vulnerabilities. What trips our triggers. That’s why my planning pals and I went back and forth on one or two nights. We eventually chose two and then added a third, a Thursday night for the planners and their partners.
That’s our group on Friday night. The last time this bunch was together America was divided, by everything it is divided by today: politics, war, race, gender, culture, religion, environment, and sexual orientation. Nothing has changed and, of course, everything has changed.
All summer I worried that America’s hostile political climate, with COVID and masks and vaccinations a propellant, would intrude upon our gathering. I thought “three nights for some, two nights for others, that’s trouble.” On the second night, Jerry said to me “you were uptight last night.” “Yeah,” I said, “I had all these fears about how our differences would come to the surface.” This little back and forth between Jerry and me came in the middle of a quiet and intense conversation about how we were as far apart in politics as it is possible to be.
And then it hit me. Two or three nights gave us all the time and space we needed to get comfortable with each other. Longer was better than shorter. Communication expert David Murray puts it this way, about communication in large doses:
With a little more time to move around in, we’re less noisy and opinionated, more reflective, more relaxed, more honest. And better listeners.
From An Effort to Understand, p. 207
On Saturday night, in the middle of a conversation about religion with Jerry and spouse Mary, my partner Rebecca said “you know, I hold all of my religious beliefs loosely. I do that because there is so much we don’t know. We are so small and the world is so large.”
“Holding our beliefs loosely,” Rebecca’s right. That’s how we maneuver through our genuine disagreements. It’s a path toward being “less noisy, more reflective, and honest.”
That’s what I learned from our old friends’ reunion.
Hold my beliefs loosely
And my friends tightly
And when we hold friends tightly, what happened in Davenport, Iowa last weekend, does not stay in Davenport.
