The conversation we’re not having

I grew up in a place where peo­ple didn’t always agree—but they still talked.

You could sit on a front porch with some­one who saw the world com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly than you did, and some­how, by the time the sun went down, you under­stood them a lit­tle bet­ter. Not because any­one changed their mind, but because they stayed long enough to listen.

That was part of it—staying.

Staying in the discomfort.

Staying in the conversation.

Staying with some­thing long enough to under­stand it before decid­ing what it meant.

After my last arti­cle was pub­lished, I spent some time read­ing through the comments.

I expect­ed dis­agree­ment. I expect­ed push­back. Conversations about faith, war, and gov­ern­ment usu­al­ly bring that out in peo­ple, and they should. Those are big, com­pli­cat­ed things.

But what I didn’t expect was how quick­ly the con­ver­sa­tion moved away from the sub­stance of what was written.

Instead of engag­ing with the ideas in the piece, much of the dis­cus­sion turned toward some­thing else entirely—bias, polit­i­cal par­ties, whether the plat­form leans one way or anoth­er, and assump­tions about who or what the arti­cle was meant to sup­port or oppose.

Somewhere along the way, the con­ver­sa­tion stopped being about the content—and start­ed being about identity.

The piece itself wasn’t writ­ten to defend a side.

It wasn’t writ­ten to ele­vate one polit­i­cal per­spec­tive over another.

It was writ­ten to exam­ine a pattern—to look at how lan­guage is being used, how imagery shapes under­stand­ing, and what it means when those things begin to blur lines that were once held more carefully.

That kind of reflec­tion requires some­thing from all of us.

Not agreement—but attention.

And that’s what felt missing.

Not agree­ment.

Not even civil­i­ty, at times.

But atten­tion to what was actu­al­ly being said.

We’ve grown so used to fil­ter­ing every­thing through the lens of “where does this fall” that we often skip the step where we ask, “what is this actu­al­ly saying?”

We assign it a side.

We decide what it must mean.

And then we respond to that ver­sion instead.

It’s faster. It’s easier.

But it leaves very lit­tle room for understanding.

What unfold­ed in those com­ments wasn’t just disagreement.

It was a kind of talk­ing past each oth­er that feels more com­mon now than not.

Concerns about fair­ness replaced engage­ment with ideas.

Frustration replaced curiosity.

Assumptions replaced interpretation.

And the orig­i­nal point—the one sit­ting there wait­ing to be examined—never real­ly got touched.

That’s the part that lingers with me.

Not that peo­ple disagreed.

But that we nev­er quite made it to the con­ver­sa­tion itself.

Because when we can’t stay with an idea long enough to exam­ine it—when every­thing gets rerout­ed into sides, motives, and assumptions—we lose some­thing important.

We lose the abil­i­ty to think together.

We lose the abil­i­ty to chal­lenge each oth­er in ways that sharp­en instead of divide.

We lose the kind of con­ver­sa­tion that doesn’t just prove a point—but expands it.

Back home, con­ver­sa­tions weren’t always easy.

But they were honest.

And they were root­ed in a will­ing­ness to hear what was actu­al­ly being said—even when it rubbed up against some­thing personal.

That didn’t mean peo­ple agreed.

It meant they under­stood what they were dis­agree­ing with.

These days, that feels like the piece that’s slipping.

Not our abil­i­ty to speak—but our will­ing­ness to lis­ten close­ly enough to know what’s being said before we respond.

My Great Gran used to say that if you didn’t take the time to tru­ly lis­ten, you’d end up argu­ing with some­thing that was nev­er said in the first place.

I think about that now.

Because maybe that’s where we are.

Not just divid­ed in what we believe—

but miss­ing each oth­er entire­ly in the conversation.