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Reflections on the Wheaton College Meeting

Ned L. Gaylin

For over a month I have been trying to articulate the profound good feelings I experienced at the conclusion our Wheaton College meeting. Focal to my difficulty is my ambivalence and confusion regarding the purpose and process of community meetings. I understand somewhat better the dynamics within the small groups: the effort to achieve understanding and intimacy. These small group efforts, to my amazement and delight, are more often than not quite successful.

The dynamics of the community puzzle me because by definition I see community meetings as a public forums. As such I view them as a place of civil interchange and governed by decorum rather than a place of intimacy. Furthermore, the sheer size of the community makes me wary. There lurks for me always, the danger of group tyranny and the blood thirst of the mob. From past experience I am watchful for impending disaster. The disaster I fear is the severe and irreparable wounding of another human being.

With and without intent I have done my share of hurting others. The consequent guilt which I suffer afterwards is often extraordinary and debilitating. Thus, not altruism but, rather, enlightened self interest makes me anxious to avoid a mob scene in which I may find myself complicit. The culpability I fear may be by the sin of commission, but for me is more often by that of omission--of failing to act effectively to deter hurt.

It is not conflict which frightens me. Conflict is indigenous to the human condition. It is how we deal with interpersonal conflict that makes the difference in all of our relationships from the most intimate to the most public. For me that was the lesson I learned at the community meetings at Wheaton: to express concerns replete with differences, deal with the conflict generated in such expressions and do so in a manner engendering a sense of safety, trust, respect, and caring for one another. The process is about balancing open expression with civil constraint. It is this dynamic tension between freedom and responsibility that defines who we, as human beings, are. There were blunders, and scrapes, but, by and large, I believe we managed to pull it off at Wheaton College. I came away feeling proud and privileged to be a member of a community for which the struggle is so meaningful and important.

A post script to the experience was that I realize how much easier it is for me to express negative feelings than positive ones. The negative are sharper and clearer in both my heart and my mind. Good feelings affect me quite differently: they permeate my being more extensively and seem more vague--more difficult to express. They are on balance, however, more warming and sustaining.

Ned L. Gaylin

30 Jun 98