This is the third episode in a five-part special series for the upcoming election in the U.S. During this miniseries, we’re exploring something the 19th century French writer Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as habits of the heart — the spiritual work we have to do to live in a diverse, multicultural democracy.
Over each of these five episodes, we’re reflecting on a different one of those habits, with the help of another writer, Parker Palmer.
To my mind, this third habit we’re focusing on this week is the linchpin of them all. Palmer calls it, “An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.”
Tension: we usually think of it as a bad thing. If we’re feeling pain, we want to relieve the tension in our muscles or joints.
When things are tense in a meeting or a conversation, we may feel like we want to lower the temperature or break the ice. But the truth is, we need tension in order to live.
For instance: In a pretty amazing way, our bodies are calibrated to respond to the 14.7 pounds per square inch of pressure we experience from the weight of the earth’s atmosphere.
It’s one of the reasons astronauts have to wear spacesuits: If they didn’t, their bodies would push back on all that pressure and just break apart (gross, I know).
Our bodies are literally developed to hold tension in a way that gives us life — not too much, not too little.
Or think about a deadline at school or work: I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a deadline, it’s often hard for me to motivate myself to get the work done.
Yes, the deadline adds some tension — but it’s tension that helps to make things happen (including making this podcast, which I’m writing on a deadline!).
When you think about it, you may find that this idea of holding tension in a life-giving way is all over the place: In sports games, in theater and movies, in nature.
Too much tension and the thing can collapse on itself; too little, and it’s just not interesting, it doesn’t grow.
When it comes to human relationships, this kind of tension can particularly show up in our hearts.
Parker Palmer writes that, “Our lives are filled with contradictions… If we fail to hold them creatively, these contradictions will shut us down and take us out of the action.”
Right? Sometimes it’s just too much. Sometimes we feel like we have to check out — or lash out.
I have a relative whose political opinions are often pretty different from mine. We’re on a family WhatsApp group together. And sometimes this relative expresses their political views there.
When that happens, I find it’s a real struggle to hold the tension in a life-giving way.
I want to stay in a relationship with them, but both the content of what they’re saying and the way that they’re saying it are just really provocative — often intentionally so.
And in that moment, I feel challenged to either stay in the conversation or check out. It’s a hard tension to hold.
Here’s how Palmer goes on: “When we allow lifes’ tensions to expand our hearts, they can open us to new understandings of ourselves and our world, enhancing our lives and allowing us to enhance the lives of others.
We are imperfect and broken beings who inhabit an imperfect and broken world. The genius of the human heart lies in its capacity to use these tensions to generate insight, energy, and new life.”
Even though Parker Palmer is a Quaker, I think this is such a Jewish teaching! It makes me think of King Solomon, the third king of Israel.
Quick recap: Solomon is the son of King David. He assumes the throne after his father dies and after there’s a succession battle, so he’s understandably a little concerned when he becomes king.
As the Bible tells it at the beginning of the second Book of Kings, God comes to Solomon in a dream and tells him, “Solly, I’ve got you.
Ask for whatever you want and you got it: Riches, armies, power — you name it.” And Solomon does something really remarkable here: All he asks for is a lev shomeah, a listening heart. A listening heart — that’s it.
God is, like, blown away by this answer: “You could have had anything in the world, and this is what you want? Amazing, kid. You got it — and I’ll even throw in all the other stuff too.”
And the Bible goes on to describe Solomon as the wisest king who ever lived — he spoke every language, he knew everything there was to know, and he could make decisions that seemed impossible for other people to make.
I’m being a little cute with the storytelling here, but the point is actually a profoundly serious one.
I think the listening heart that King Solomon asks for is the same thing as the heart that Parker Palmer describes: a heart that can hold tension in life-giving ways, rather than life-crushing ones.
That lev shomeah, that listening heart, is the heart that can respond to tension by breaking open — rather than breaking apart.
Like anything else we want to improve at, building up the strength of our hearts requires exercise, practice.
In one way or another, all the practices we offer on Soulful Jewish Living are exercises in developing a listening heart.
So you should feel encouraged to use any of them. But here’s a short practice that can help when the tension is building.
Start with slowing down. If you’re walking, stop. If you’re sitting, put both feet on the ground and sit up a little straighter. And just try to let myoury body catch up with you. Be here.
If you’re in a place where you can do it, close my eyes. And take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it for a beat. And then exhale through your mouth.
With each breath, see if you can have an intention to let go of a bit of the tension you’re experiencing.
This isn’t to reduce the complexity of the actual issue in front of you — it’s to try to shed the excess tension that your own reactivity might be generating.
You’re trying to get clear on what exactly is the source of the tension. What, exactly, is the problem?
Keep breathing. You may find that a lot of the tension is actually in your own response, your own fear about something that’s not actually the issue you thought it was. Try to see if you can set that down.
And when you do that, now you can ask myself, “Now that I have a clearer view of the source of the tension, is there some opportunity in it?
Is there a way this tension can actually lead to something better? Maybe there’s an opening here for a different response. What might it feel like to respond in a way that gives life, rather than shuts it down?”
Keep breathing and try to feel into that a bit more.
And then you have a decision to make: To respond to the tension in that life-giving way, or in another way? And hopefully, because of this practice, your heart can break open, not apart.
In his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”
I think that tension is the tension of Solomon’s listening heart. And the amazing thing about democracy is that, unlike in Solomon’s time, it isn’t only the king who holds the power and the responsibility for making decisions — it’s all of us.
Every one of us holds that power and responsibility, so every one of us is on this journey: the journey of growing a listening heart, a lev shomeah.
Blessings for that journey. Know that I’m on it with you.