A video summary of the American portion of conferences that were held throughout the world by the Bahá'í Faith to explore how to promote unity and address the needs of their societies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poIylZPYW5U (video length 10:39)

#Bahai #Religion #MeaningfulConversation #CommunityDevelopment #SocialDiscourse

"The most effective thing you can do in communication with others is to listen; not to listen in order to format your argument, not to listen in order to come up with what I think is the incredibly passive aggressive system of nonviolent communication. It's to actually just listen. And then the second most important thing you do, which I learned from a young woman who had been an Evangelical Christian who went online and started trying to post to convince people to believe that Jesus was their personal Lord and savior, and she ended up marrying a non-christian, you know, agnostic guy. And she said how she got there was he asked her questions and he asked her enough questions— really asking her questions about her faith, not attacks, but you know, not do you really believe Jesus? You know, not that kind of a question, but can you give me an example of how Jesus is your personal Lord and savior? So a real question, and then that made her free to ask her own questions.

"So those are the two most valuable tools that I find almost never get used: actually really listening and actually being curious about what the other person has to say. I mean it does work to have a conversation and why is that enough? It's enough, because it's the only way that you will ever get anywhere else. You can't start persuading people until you're actually communicating, and if you're going in with the idea of persuading you're never going to communicate."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PJBoupZqWc (video length 5:04)

#Quaker #MeaningfulConversation