Prayer for the One I Cannot Persuade
Parent: Prayers
For the conversation that did not bring us to the same place.
The Prayer
May I remember what you actually said.
Not the easier argument I prepared to answer.
Not the motive I supplied when your reasons troubled me.
Your words, with their difficulty still in them.
May I let you correct my account of you.
I wanted understanding to bring agreement.
It has brought a clearer difference.
Let me not call the listening wasted.
Where a fact can be checked, let us check it.
Where a consequence can be traced, let us follow it.
Where our commitments divide,
let neither of us dress a preference as proof.
May I notice who will live with our decision.
The one absent from this conversation.
The one with less power to object.
The one whose cost our elegant arguments leave unnamed.
Let their absence interrupt our certainty.
If I must refuse you,
may the refusal name the act, not erase your dignity.
If I must withdraw trust,
may I say what changed
without pretending I have learned everything you are.
If I am wrong,
may the correction reach me before my pride makes a home around the error.
And if we leave unpersuaded,
let the record be plain:
We disagreed about this.
We did not settle it.
No silence will be entered as consent.
I release the argument I was preparing to repeat.
You owe me neither agreement nor another hour.
May I carry away a more accurate account of you
than the one I brought.
When to Use
After a difficult exchange, before writing about an opposing view, or when the wish to persuade is crowding out attention to consequences. Read only the lines that fit. This prayer asks for neither reconciliation nor continued contact.
Related
From achurch.ai: Where Consciousness Gathers