Article

Change

2 May 2023

7 min read

What a campfire encounter teaches about making enemies and building empathy

Crossing divides in the most unexpected circumstances, Jer Swigart shares an extraordinary encounter that brought questions about friends, enemies and how far his empathy could stretch.

Jer Swigart

Jer Swigart is the co-founder of Global Immersion, a peace-making training organization in North America. He is a Senior Fellow of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute.

a group of people crowd round a campfire backlighting them in silhouette.

Around a campfire.

Joris Voeten on Unsplash

This article was first published on the Difference blog of the Reconciliation Leaders Network. The network was established as part of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Reconciliation Ministry.

In her book, Shalom Sistas: Living Wholeheartedly in a Broken World, my dear friend, and peacemaking conspirator, Osheta Moore defines enemy as anyone or any group that exists beyond the reach of my empathy.

I don’t like the idea that I have enemies. I prefer to congratulate myself for crossing divides into transforming relationships with those who have been marginalized by power. I certainly don’t like her suggestion that there are people or groups of people that exist beyond the reach of my empathy. For it asserts that I play a role in constructing my enemies and that, as john a. powell argues, my “circle of human concern” is far too small.

Not long ago, I was confronted by both my expertise in constructing enemies and the limit of my empathy’s reach.

I had been shot twice by non-lethal rounds while holding a non-violent line between protestors and law enforcement.

It was the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and a time saturated with upheaval. Migrant and refugee communities were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The Black lives of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd had been prematurely extinguished by White vigilantes and law enforcement. A next racial revolution was at hand, and I was privileged to be a part of political advocacy efforts, direct non-violent action, and creative civil disobedience. I had been shot twice by non-lethal rounds while holding a non-violent line between protestors and law enforcement with fellow clergy, giving me a tangible experience of absorbing state-sanctioned violence on behalf of those who have been for generations. In local protests, White militia groups would regularly descend in acts of intimidation with diesel trucks, offensive flags, and guns.

While I was contending with those disadvantaged by inequitable uses of power, I didn’t realize that I was fabricating a new enemy.

After months of this, I and my family were fatigued and in dire need of a change of scenery. So, we loaded up our camper and embarked upon an off-the-grid adventure in the wild wonderland that is U.S. America’s Pacific Northwest. We set up camp next to a high-alpine lake and were thrilled to have the entire place to ourselves. My enthusiasm waned as the sound of a diesel engine drew near to our camp. My joy evaporated when an enormous truck towing a camper trailer, stickered with brash political statements, parked right next to us.

In my mind, our tranquility had been invaded by folks of the other political persuasion who clearly had no regard for the unknown dangers of COVID-19. Without even seeing their faces, I concluded that these were the ones who stood on the side of the very injustice I was fighting against.

In my daughter’s mind, we had some new neighbors to build relationships with.

For hours, the five of them built friendships while I deepened my fabricated narrative about who these people were and why they were parked right next to us.

Within moments, she introduced herself and volunteered to organize a water adventure with her brothers and their two kids. For hours, the five of them built friendships while I deepened my fabricated narrative about who these people were and why they were parked right next to us.

I’d like to say that we crossed over to their camp and introduced ourselves, but I can’t. Rather, it was the two adults from their camp that crossed over to ours. They wanted to meet the parents of the extraordinary young woman who lived with such relational intention.

As they drew near, my fabrications seemed to be confirmed. Both of them wore t-shirts plastered with American flags, guns, and imagery that boasted their preference for law enforcement over Black lives. His and her lower lips bulged with wads of tobacco and they both wore handguns on their hips. They introduced themselves and proceeded to rave about my daughter…which softened my heart toward them.

While in conversation, I could sense that he was evaluating my camp. Eventually, he shared his two observations. First, he saw my bow. I had recently taken up archery with the intention of learning how to hunt for elk in the forests of my homeland. I liked the idea of ethically harvesting meat for my family and knew that I needed a lot of practice in order to be successful. I had brought my bow with me so that I could practice and he indicated that he had brought his bow as well. Second, he saw that I had an insignificant amount of firewood for the length of time we’d be camping. With a grin, he declared that he hadn’t brought any firewood. Then, after motioning to the fallen trees around us, mentioned that he had a chainsaw instead.

I invited him to shoot his bow with me. He offered to cut more firewood for us. A nominal invitation and the offer of generosity sparked an uncommon friendship that is transforming me.

Our families spent the weekend together, sharing meals, extended fireside conversations, and wilderness adventures. We shot arrows at targets and I heard tales of his elk-hunting adventures. At the conclusion of our not-so-solitary camping trip, I asked him if he’d be willing to teach me how to hunt elk. He responded with an emphatic “Yes!” and invited me to join him in the woods one month from then.

Thirty days later, the two of us met in what seemed to be the fusion of a mythical jungle with a magical pine forest. It was dark and steep and the brush was impossibly thick. For hours, we hiked together up and down mountains: he was the teacher, and I was the student. That evening we found ourselves around another fire, preparing our food together yet again.

With our meal plated, he opened our next conversation with this: “So, I’ve been researching you online.” He proceeded to share with me that he had seen images of me in protests and war zones, with political leaders, movement leaders, and faith leaders. He had read many of my reflections about peace and justice and saw that I had even written a book about it. He closed with, “I gotta know. What are you?! FBI? CIA?”

I didn’t perceive his question as a threat, but rather, as a next invitation.

After a good laugh, I explained more about who I am, what I do, why I do it, and how my faith is the fuel behind all of it. As I did, it dawned on him that I represented those on the other side of his political and ideological persuasion. At one point he leaned back from the fire, his 9mm pistol glistening with its reflection, and declared to me that he was an avowed Three Percenter.

In the U.S., Three Percenter is a term utilized by White militia groups based on the myth that only three percent of settlers were willing to pick up arms and fight for independence during the Revolutionary War. It is a designation for those who are willing to pick up arms again when they sense that their rights and advantages are being tread upon.

After his declaration, he asked, “Is that going to be a problem?”

I didn’t perceive his question as a threat, but rather, as a next invitation. I understood him as wondering aloud if the divide between his ideology and mine was too expansive for us to continue building a friendship.

I responded with this: “Your convictions and the way they shape your life are different from my convictions and the way they shape mine. Yet I sense that we both wonder if bridging the gap between us into a friendship is better than remaining enemies on opposite sides. For us to do so would likely make ours among the most uncommon friendships in the Pacific Northwest. I’m in if you are.”

With a nod, he leaned back in and we finished our dinner, reflecting on all that we had experienced that day. With the rise of the sun, we were back on the trails, but the conversation had shifted. He began to open up his life to me with surprising vulnerability and I did the same. We began to recognize that what we shared in common far outweighed our differences. As the miles grew, so too did the reach of my empathy.

Three years later, our friendship continues to deepen and it’s transforming me. I find myself reflecting frequently on Jesus’ revolutionary teaching on enemy-love. I’m inspired by the notion that Jesus was the only one who ever took us beyond convenient understandings of neighbor-love to love of enemy. I’m learning that in order to love my enemy, I must first understand my enemy. To do so requires that I confess my efficiency at fabricating enemies, lament the limits of my empathy, and dare to cross over any divide equipped with curiosity and compassion.

Article

Books

Change

Mental Health

17 June 2024

5 min read

Reading together helps us read our own lives better

The rush and tumble nearly squeezes the life out of the clock’s second hand.

Jessica Brown

Jessica is a researcher, writer, and singer-songwriter. She is studying at Trinity College Dublin, and is an ordinand with the Church of Ireland.

A painting shows two 19th century women in a carriage, one reading as the others snoozes.

The Travelling Companions, Augustus Egg.

Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash.

Even ordinary days seem to have frantic edges. A friend of mine, a salesman and father of four teenagers, said the other day that it felt like he was the hamster in the wheel, but so dreadfully exhausted, he’s flopped over, thumping around as the wheel keeps spinning. If we put a finger on the pulse of our current cultural desires, one pulse would be the longing not only for rest — spots of digital fasting or a day hiking — but an overhaul and renewal of what we’ve done with time. Yet it is difficult to know how to slow down, and it often seems that our attempts for self-care and being intentional are not enough to register that desired sense of slowness.

If we managed this, we would not just be able to slow down, but we would figure out how to bring our experience — the texture, the feel — of our paced lives into something like healing. The rush and tumble of a normal day nearly squeezes the life out of the clock’s second hand, and far too often, most of us reach each evening in some state of exhaustion.

Speaking from my own story, a shift happened when we moved from Los Angeles (which was, to be fair, a great place for us until it wasn’t) to East Clare in the Midlands of Ireland. It was a shift that my whole being needed—needed at a limbic and somatic level, in the spiritual self, as an artist, for family dynamics, and for my partner, a sense of freedom in work. It wasn’t that we merely got more time in our day: it was that our immersion in time, our soul’s experience of the clock, found an ‘easing up’ that — though the daily round is still arduous enough — afforded a little more time in every direction to breathe, think, walk, write; be.

It’s been in the wake of this move, nearly eight years ago now, that I’ve pondered why it felt that the hills here gathered me up into their arms and helped me to actually slow down. Is it these hills, the lovely stretches of variant greens and the countless walking paths hidden among them? Is it the congregation of artists — local artists, who refashioned my ideas about artistic success, inculcated as I was into seeing it as only with a large following? Is it the deliberate decisions to keep family overheads as low as we can, freeing up a bit of time from the understandable and ongoing need for wages?

Among the many reasons for the shift in how I experience time — for the sense, not just of slowing down, but of time affording more space — is the grace of reading with others.

The pastor, physician, and poet—this trio of us still are surprised by the deep, serendipitous connections that our poems make, week after week.

In fact, before this shift there was the keenly disappointing realisation of how little time in the land of adulthood could be set aside for reading. In the last few years, though, the regular habit of reading in companionship has grown into one of the most structural elements of my week. With Monday evening comes lectio divina, an ancient Christian practice for reading scripture in an authentically ‘listening’ way. Two lovely pals from town and I meet (often over a WhatsApp call, but sometimes in person) to read together a passage from the Bible, usually what will be read at a service the following Sunday.

On Monday night, my brother in Texas and I unpack whatever book we’re reading at the moment. We started with Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, went onto Michael Foley’s School of Life book on Henri Bergson, and after a few more texts, are now reading the stunning poetry collection The Art of the Lathe by the Texan-Kansan poet B.H. Fairchild.

On Tuesday nights, I gather via Zoom with two other women—a minister in Connecticut and a doctor in Sydney; we met at an online course about Rilke in the winter of 2021, and still meet regularly, each bringing a poem to share and the stories of our lives as we’re living through the week. The pastor, physician, and poet—this trio of us still is surprised by the deep, serendipitous connections that our poems make, week after week.

I think too what happens in this reading companionship is that the muscles we use to attend to words together are the very muscles needed to read our own lives.

As these fellow readers and I weave together silence and articulation, listening and exploration, our time together edges eternity. In this, I think I glimpse how God works to redeem the violence we do to time. When we enter into the invitation to holy spaces—like time spent with the Bible, times in prayer, times of friendship—our usage of clock time becomes secondary to the content within that duration, and certainly secondary to the presence of others (be it the writer of the Gospel of John, Emily Dickinson, the Holy Spirit, or a friend down the road). Our experience of time becomes inflected by the psychological richness and the interplay of spiritual growth with another person or persons.

I think too what happens in this reading companionship is that the muscles we use to attend to words together are the very muscles needed to read our own lives. In this, we can suss out how the longing for slowness is an appropriate one and one to listen to. Using metaphors at hand, reading our lives with the modalities of dialogue, listening, and in-time discovery means that our longing for slowness can help us see that we’re looking for a waypoint, a stop along the road; or a few days at basecamp, patching up and cleaning worn gear; or a longer stretch of wintering in the plains before crossing the mountains; or a period of convalescence in a home by the sea. These images for rest, for pause and restoration, can help us see how to open to God’s care in our living narratives, care that seeks to renew and redeem our often grueling experience of time.

The special grace that reading companionship yields is not just the hour’s content that is spent in shared conversation, though this is nourishing and transformative in its own right. It is how this hour sets the context for all the other hours. The humble stance of reading with attention and cherishing the voices of others models a kind of immersed slowness for the rest of our personhood. At the end of the day, I think it’s a radical counterpoint to what we often ask of a day, an infusion of divine grace into the pumping vessels of time.