DH 1 Trusting Relationships

DYNAMICS FOR HOPE 1 DH 1: TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS NURTURING HOPE TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE NURTURE HOPE: CREATING MORE OPEN SOCIETIES. “People can build things; they can be engineers not just reacting to events as bricoleurs” xviii. Engineers understand the dynamics in structures and how they can be best used to withstand winds, storms and all manner of threats and challenges. Tolerance in engineering is not a principle, but a necessary ability to bend to external forces and still stay upright. Often we get caught up making decisions ‘on the move’, doing what is easiest, relying on established ways of doing things. Yet what we find is that the times have changed, and doing things ‘as we have always done them’ shuts out someone, or reduces our possibilities of living together. Some old ways no longer work, yet we are often uneasy about what comes next.

When established paths take us into dilemmas, the critical task is to find ways to face our dilemmas in safety together, and make new choices. To develop clear thinking in the midst of daily living can sometimes seem like a luxury, especially if we are in survival mode, rivalling. Under pressure, we often find ourselves caught up in responding to circumstances and the dynamics of ‘making do’. We either continually repeat learned habits of coping that keep things ‘safe’ but take us nowhere new, or simply react from fear and make things worse. These resources start from the base that each of us can take steps to ‘change the atmosphere’. By seeking, finding and making relational spaces with one another where we can stop rivalling, new things start to happen around us because we are no longer dominated by our rivalries and/or the partisan pressures around us. For this to have a chance, we think it is important that: • We work patiently to open up broken relationships, opening spaces where the motivation of all is renewed; • Being together, outside rivalry, we each experience that we are part of a wider, interdependent community in which our weaknesses do not threaten us, but become a vehicle to work in support of one another; • We find words and stories to speak about our lives and the new ways we hope to be with others. We contribute to making a vision concrete and real for everyone by participating in relationships and working structures that model hope and allow us to create hope elsewhere. In such ways we become: • people who act, not just people who react; • people who wish to make lasting change, not just people who respond; • people who work for right relationships that address questions of justice and exclusion

DH 1: TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS NURTURE HOPE

Summary

Most relationships bring duties, obligations and expectations. Study demands, school and college demands, family, friendship and work relationships all have demands that need honoured. Freedom means that we accept the duties and obligations when we say yes to the relationship. Open and trusting relationships allow us to make changes and exercise choices. Open and empowering learning spaces and workplaces often welcome student, employee or colleague participation and initiative. Listening to your own experience, and that of others: What elements of the current relationships and structures you are part of: do you value? can you make a change in? Listening to others, what possibilities, if any, do you now see that you might seek support from?