So why synodality? Why now? What’s this all about? It’s very unusual for me to start with mentioning a book but I want to do it because thinking so much about synodality involves talk of processes, and changes and reform and I think that’s the very thing which synodality is not supposed to be, at least in Francis’s vision of it. It is a conversion of culture, of mindset, of a way of thinking, of a way of being, a way of operating. It’s a cultural conversion and as I was reading a book recently which had been recommended to me I found the connection between this book and synodality quite startling, even though it has nothing to do with the Synod. It’s by a writer who writes for The New York Times called David Brooks. He’s Jewish who’s been on a big journey in the last few years where he’s been exploring Catholicism. He’s been on a kind of moral journey. He’s a beautiful writer, and the book is called very simply ‘How to Know a Person’ and the subtitle is ‘the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen’. You may think this is a strange topic for a book but he very quickly shows you how key and important this is. It is a quest to understand and acquire the skills and the mindsets that are needed to have a compassionate understanding of, and empathy with, other people, the people around us, because he’s aware in himself, but more especially in the society in which we now live, that this is what is most threatened. He calls it a creeping dehumanization.
It’s becoming harder and harder to relate to each other in the way we get treated by the market, by the state. All the forces within our organizations, the pressures of time and technology, are making the ordinary interaction harder. I don’t want to give a whole talk on this, but he says, and he argues it brilliantly, that we are living in the middle of a sort of vast emotional, relational and spiritual crisis and there’s evidence for it in loneliness and anxiety and depression and suicide, the breakdown of civility in our political discourse, polarization. I don’t need to go into it. I think you all understand that, and I think if you picked up his book, and I recommend it, you will see very quickly what he means. There is a crisis we’re going through. By his subtitle, the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen, he makes clear that by ‘seeing’ he means being recognized, being known, being heard. These are some of the most important things we can do for each other to enable each other to be seen and recognized and heard. Here’s the headline: we don’t learn these skills at school. And here’s the other headline: we don’t learn them in church. We don’t learn how to see others, make them feel respected, valued and safe.
Source: ICN
Caution: It’s a long read, but absolutely fascinating!!!!
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