One Perspective on Community Consensus

By David

I first encountered consensus when I came to Cobb Hill several years ago. Coming from a background of teaching religious studies, I knew that the Quakers practiced consensus as a way of overcoming ego and seeking collective harmony. In Christianity, consensus is often linked to the belief that human beings are members of one spiritual body and are called to discern the will of God together rather than pursue individual power alone. In Buddhism, consensus is connected to interdependence and the reduction of attachment to the self. In all cases, consensus is intended as more than a political tool: rather, it is a moral and spiritual practice that seeks to transform the community as well as the individual. That is what I knew from my teaching but I had never experienced it in practice.

What I have learned is that consensus is not the silence after argument, nor the weak surrender of one voice to another. Rather it begins in listening to the voices of others. One speaks like thunder. One speaks like rain on leaves. One cannot yet speak at all. Still, the circle waits. In this process not every difference disappears, not every wound is healed. Sometimes the process does not work at all. Or it may take several meetings. Yet, more often than not, people begin to loosen their grip on being right. Slowly, beneath opinion and fear, people speak more gently, the self loosens its armor and listens. And when consensus finally appears, it does not arrive as a shout of victory. It arrives softly: a shared breath, a gentler gaze, a feeling that the walls between lives have become thinner. For a moment, no one stands above another. No one is forgotten. And in that fragile human harmony, the sacred becomes visible.