“How can I be me without making it difficult for you to be you?” This question gets at the fundamental challenge of being in society together. We live in a contentious political world, and it’s difficult to talk about our deepest values and beliefs in safe, civil, and respectful ways. In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that nearly six in ten Americans felt that political conversations with those you disagree with are generally stressful and frustrating, as opposed to being interesting and informative. If we avoid such conversations, we lose opportunities to form a community with others that reflects our best selves. How can we learn to share our values in ways that bring us together rather than push us further apart?

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Facilitator Lowell Greathouse is a retired United Methodist minister who served congregations in rural, suburban, and urban settings in Oregon, Idaho, and England from 1986 to 2019. In addition, he worked with community-based programs at Catholic Social Services in San Francisco, Community Action in Washington County, and United Way of the Columbia-Willamette. Lowell was born in Oregon and has family roots in the state that date back to the 1890s. He has been engaged in a variety of cross-cultural settings, including at the Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development (CCIDD) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and is the author of the book Rediscovering the Spirit: From Political Brokenness to Spiritual Wholeness (Wipf and Stock, 2020).