Charleston writes, “The prophecy of this book is stronger than darkness because darkness is already part of it.” And, in a related vein, he says, “Darkness can have no dominion over the tribe of the human beings. It can never be the last word, because darkness is always our beginning. We enter it only to be reborn again in the next cycle of our emergence.” The cyclical nature of this process makes me think of a dance, rather than a ladder. What would the choreography be, I wonder. Maybe this: Step 1: Acknowledge the darkness. Step 2: Have faith in the light. Step 3: Have faith in yourself. Step 4: Have faith in others. Step 5: Catch a vision. Step 6: Take action.

There’s a lot that I love in this chapter. I’m especially drawn to the following quotations: “We must give one another hope by giving permission to speak of our visions… We have all had spiritual visions. We have all glimpsed what we think is wondrous, beautiful, and holy.” “[W]e must be transparent in our own faith, willing to take the risk of telling others what the Spirit has shown us through a lifetime of our experience.” “If we seek to bring light into darkness, then we must rely on the wisdom of us all. We listen to one another. We are patient with one another. We spend time with one another. Eventually, we trust one another because we see ourselves in one another.” For me, this group has been that. Thank you for giving me permission to speak of my visions.

Charleston writes that “[t]he seventh rung on the ladder to the light is renewal, which requires an exchange… an exchange between the people… an exchange between [the people] and the Spirit…” He notes that his book is an example of this exchange, as invites us to set down our own cultural assumptions and consider a different way of being. Renewal is about our willingness to change in response to what we learn from others. For Charleston, “[d]iversity makes exchange possible,” where “diversity” means “every person’s right to be who they are and believe how they wish.” That, of course, is where I still stumble, but I’m clearer now than I was before about the stone that trips me up. Do we really want to tolerate all beliefs – even those that undermine mutual respect and even those that work against the pursuit of truth? I’m reminded of what Charleston says in Chapter 4: “[Holding diversity in equilibrium] is not easy. It requires our commitment and our willingness to learn. A diverse community is a constant learning experience. It is a school of awareness, a center of intellectual exchange.”

In this chapter, Charleston discusses the important role that truth plays in our political systems. If political systems are fueled by the quest for power rather than the search for the truth, they’ll be unable to direct and support the collective action necessary to combat pressing problems like climate change. In fact, they might even serve to obscure or deny the existence of those problems. In order to work together to fix any situation, people need to share an understanding both of the problem and of the best way to fix it, and unless that understanding is more or less true, the collective work will be ineffective. Unfortunately, polarizing politics and culture wars have eroded our ability to share a set of trusted information sources and so undermined our ability to appeal to a common set of facts. Everyone, I suppose, agrees that truth is important. What we don’t always agree about is where the truth can be found or what the truth is. That’s the curse of truth decay: https://www.rand.org/research/projects/truth-decay.html . But there might be ways to counter it. Engaging in “pro-truth” work could be an exciting project!

Charleston notes that this is the rung where we put to work the insights that we’ve gained so far, and he focuses on how to do this in the context of spiritual systems. Key to this, for Charleston, is the concept and practice of “disorganized religion,” a spiritual community that allows its members to hold their own beliefs, expecting them only to participate in the communal celebrations and work together toward a shared hope. He writes, “Celebrating what we hope for together is better than fighting over what we believe separately.” And it's hard to disagree with that insofar as celebrating is better than fighting quite generally. But I’m still confused about what’s confused me so far. “Organized religion,” Charleston writes, “has told us that we must first agree before we can cooperate. And because these religions have competing truth claims, the chances for agreement are small. Actions grind to a halt.” This helps to crystalize my confusion a bit, because although I agree with Charleston that we don’t need to agree about everything to cooperate about anything, it seems to me that we do need to agree about some things to cooperate about anything. At the very least, we must agree about the goals worth pursuing and about the best means to achieve them. Charleston acknowledges this when he writes, “If we want to overcome the darkness between people of faith, we must be intentional about helping them recognize that they have more in common that what they imagine separates them.” It’s important, he notes, that something is held to be in common. And he encourages intentional, informal, interfaith gatherings as a way to experience this commonality. Such interfaith gatherings seem like a good idea, but I must confess that I feel some resistance to them. I recently left the Catholic Church because of its position on women’s ordination and everything that position says about the nature, role, and capacity of people like me. Obviously, not all Catholics accept this doctrine, but if I’m in conversation with any particular Catholic, I don’t know they don’t. It’s possible that the person I’m chatting with thinks that I’m less able than a man to represent Christ, or that I have “complementary” gifts despite my own self-understanding, and that possibility hurts. I find it silencing. If I were gay, or transgender, I’d have additional concerns about being accepted or taken seriously. It seems to me that it might be easier to accept the positions of people who disagree with us about “external” matters, like the Trinity, than it is to accept the positions of people who disagree with us about our very selves. So as supportive as I am of interfaith conversations, I’m wondering if we need to bear that distinction in mind.

According to Charleston, acceptance of diversity is central to community, and embracing individuality is central to the acceptance of diversity. “Entering spiritual community,” writes Charleston, “does not require us to give up anything we believe. It does not mean that we have to lose our own identity. We can still be Christian or Buddhist or Muslim. We can still be politically liberal or conservative. We can still practice our own traditions and values. It only means we have to accord that same right to others and we have to defend that right to ensure justice for all.” This because “[w]e are not different; we are the same. The light exposes these false divisions and helps us to recognize one another for what we are: brothers and sisters in the great tribe of human beings.” By creating such a community, we allow “[d]ifferent visions [to] be unified for the common good,” and enable a “variety of visions [to] reveal a single goal.” Don't get me wrong. I LOVE all of that, and I think it's right, but I'm still a little confused, and I want to get clear about my confusion not because I'm opposed to Charleston's vision, but because I find that vision so attractive. I think I have three big questions: 1) How can we simultaneously assert that we are not different and that we value diversity? Would this involve distinguishing between our true essence (which we share) and superficial differences (which can generate “false divisions”)? And, if we do that, do we risk understanding other people in a way that does violence to their self-understanding – by saying (for instance) “I know you’re conservative, but that isn’t who you really are?” or “I know you’re transgender, but that only a superficial part of you?” 2) Can everyone practice their own traditions and values while according that right to everyone else? What if Group A’s values are so incompatible with Group B’s values that allowing Group B to practice Group B’s values would force Group A to not practice Group A’s values? We see this dynamic playing out every day, I suspect. Charleston’s use of the concepts “oppression” and “bigotry” might point to this. Charleston sees community as a “unified reaction to oppression or bigotry.” But this unification can’t include everyone because it presumably can’t include the groups that that endorse practices that we consider oppressive or hold values that we consider bigoted – even though those groups probably don’t see themselves as oppressive or bigoted, and might, instead, see us that way. 3) A variety of visions can reveal a single goal, but can all visions reveal a single goal? If so, what is the goal that all visions reveal and is it sufficiently concrete to motivate collective action? (Is it something more concrete than, say, “Everyone should have a good life?” which is consistent with incompatible views of what a “good life” is?) If it’s not the case that all visions reveal a single goal, does this put limitations on the sort of diversity we can accept? Perhaps it’s questions like these that lead Charleston write, “Community is how we hold diversity in equilibrium. … Doing this is not easy. It requires our commitment and our willingness to learn. A diverse community is a constant learning experience. It is a school of awareness, a center of intellectual exchange.” And that, I think, is PROFOUNDLY right. To be honest, I usually find it impossible to raise questions like those I asked above, because I know that they can sound critical, or "too intellectual," or "too academic," or a hundred and one other bad things. But when Charleston says that intellectual exchange is needed, I feel like he wouldn't mind them.

Charleston writes, “Third on the ladder is the rung of hope, because hope is what emerges when you mix faith with blessing.” And for Charleston this is essentially social. This is the step where we identify a common light, all working together for the good of all. “As members of the tribe of the human beings,” writes Charleston, “we hope for good health, for a better life, and for a bright future for our children. Hope is generic.” That’s a beautiful image, but I’m not completely convinced that hope is shared at the level that would ground practical action. Presumably, for instance, everyone hopes for a day when no one is unhoused. But we might have such different understandings of the causes of homelessness, and we might place such varied weight on the values that we share, that our “practical hopes,” and the policies that embody them, intractably diverge. How can we pull together when what one person understands as “support,” another person sees as “enabling”? I have no idea how to answer that, but I suspect an adequate response will include acknowledging the complexity of hope in a way that allows us to recognize that people who don’t endorse our specific action-steps might share our broader vision. That won’t get us all on the same task forces, but it might help us to appreciate the goodwill of those who oppose changes that we’re working to enact.

In this chapter, I was struck by Charleston's point that in order to bring light to the world, we need to have faith in ourselves. We need to believe in the value of the gifts and insights that we have to share. Acknowledging that other voices have made us feel inadequate, Charleston imagines the Spirit saying to each of us, “Come out with me. Work with me. Create with me…. We need you. We need what only you have. We want to hear what you have discovered, what you know, what you think.” Earlier this week, a student commented on what the author of our textbook calls the "Introspection Myth," the incorrect assumption that we should have complete thoughts in our head before we express them. "Most of the time," our author asserts, "people work out what they think in the process of thinking it." My student found that observation helpful. I do too. And it reminds me of what Charleston says. If we hold space for each other, allow people the opportunity to share what they have, and value the sometimes tentative process of that sharing, people will see that what they have to offer is meaningful, important, and unique. But sometimes people can't see that before they share. They see it in the sharing.

In this chapter, I find myself agreeing with Charleston as he points to three different but complementary acts of faith: (1) faith that the light that exists, even if we can’t see it, (2) faith that the Spirit is climbing with us toward the light, and (3) faith in our own ability to help others as we climb, even if it seems to us that we’re only doing small things. I’m reminded of the many times that a smile from a barista or a friendly hello from a colleague helped me to feel less anxious and alone. I’ll try to be that little light to other people this week, perhaps by smiling, and listening, and seeming unhurried – by offering people space to be themselves. I’d love to know how you bring light.

We begin in darkness – a particular kind of discomfort or uncertainty that has the potential to nurture growth toward the light. The darkness that Charleston names is a crisis of confidence in institutions and systems that have always sustained us, but it strikes me that darkness comes in many forms, and that the darkness, the response it motivates, and the light it eventually brings can be individual or collective. A collective darkness of the sort that Charleston identifies can motivate a collective response and bring a collective light. Maybe an individual darkness can motivate an individual response, and maybe that individual response can bring light to multiple people. I’m reminded of the darkness that I experienced as a student. I was such an anxious kid that I didn’t perform well academically, and I clearly remember feeling less intelligent and competent than the other students. It was a miserable and formative time, but I’m glad I experienced it because I think it makes me a better teacher than I would have been otherwise. I understand that people can’t think well when they feel bad, and this understanding helps me to be at least somewhat attuned to the affective dimension of the classroom. Having groped my way through that particular kind of darkness, I enjoy trying to bring that particular kind of light. I would love to know what darkness you’ve confronted or what light you’ve learned to bring.