Recently I came across a book called Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life.
Actually, to be honest, parts of the book were required reading in a treatment program I was in a few years ago. And I didn't really warm to it.
The cover of the book put me off right from the start. With its scripty print and daisy picture, it didn't appear to have the gravitas that I wanted my reading to have at that point. And once inside, the content was so different from what I was used to: it was all about relationship, ways of conversing and expressing feelings, and all that kind of stuff!
Some others in the program, however, talked about it as the best and most helpful book they had ever read. They said they couldn't think of a person they wouldn't recommend it to, and who wouldn't be able to benefit from it. So I stuck with it as best I could.
I mention all this because at a funeral I was leading recently, I found myself feeling frustrated and a little disturbed. There was a TV screen at the front of the chapel, on the other side from the lectern where I was standing, and all through the service a slide presentation of pictures of the deceased was running, so that as I was talking and offering my lovingly prepared meditation, a fair number of the gathered family and friends would regularly be looking over at the screen to watch the slides instead of looking at me.
It's disconcerting to talk to people looking in a different direction and at something else, so after the service I waited for the people to clear and planned to talk to the funeral director about it.
My first and instinctive reponse was to say something like, "Do you always have the slides running through the service?" -- a veiled (or not-so-veiled) way, really, of expressing my judgement that this was a mistake on their part, and that he had better defend or explain himself.
But as I waited, and began to think about what I would say, I had time to remember some of the lessons about violent and non-violent communication. I realized that what I was thinking was pretty clearly a kind of violent communication (aggressive, judgemental you-statements that put the other on the defensive).
Non-violent communication, on the other hand, is a matter of I-statements that simply disclose your own feelings and needs, allow the other person to know at least that much of your heart, and thus invite the other to respond to you equally openly and lovingly. So ... after thinking about it (and it does take a little bit of mindful self-examination to be able to do this), when the two of us finally had a chance to talk privately, what I said was, "Something I had to get used to in the service, was how some of the people were looking at the slides on the screen through the service. I found it a little disconcerting." And then I shut up. (OK, not a fantastic disclosure of feelings ... but it's a start, so give me a break!)
Anyway, what the funeral director then said back to me was something I was not expecting at all. He said that yeah, they have talked about that, too, at the funeral home. The problem is they don't have the technology yet to turn that TV screen off, or set it to a chosen still side at the moment they would need to, without being unduly intrusive and awkward right at the beginning of the service. They are aware it may be a problem, though, so they are trying to figure something out.
And what came of that was a nice, open conversation between us about possibilities, limits, and helpful thoughts in the matter.
The book works! There really is a difference between violent and non-violent communication, and when I have the time to slow down my learned, all-too-easy responses to situations and actions that make me feel something negative, and do a little mindful self-examination of what I am really feeling and needing, even I can be a little better at more simply disclosing what I am feeling and needing, and inviting the other to share a more loving, less offensive/defensive interaction.
Who'd have thunk it?
I may have to read that book!
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