In our civity work, we have discovered the power of “both-and” stories. Both-and stories portray people as multi-faceted, as not simply one thing or another. By introducing complexity or even …
Category Archives: Blog
Civity and Welcoming America Announce New “Seeding Civity” Partnership
Civity and Welcoming America are pleased to announce a new partnership to offer training and coaching assistance to selected communities interested in deepening work to foster connections across difference. Welcoming …
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The Journey from Head to Heart
At Civity we talk about the power of relationships to make it possible for different people to “see” others and care about their well-being. Relationships – especially relationships between people …
Empathy and Infinity
Civity relationships are relationships of respect and empathy. Respect has always seemed straightforward to me. The root of the word – the Latin “spec” – means “to see”: To respect …
Reaching for Civity
Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s On Being, struggles with the word “civility.” In a recent Living the Questions segment, Tippett names the danger of using “civility” as a “passive-aggressive weapon” …
Civity Iceland: “Thingvellir” or the “Assembly Field”
Who would have thought that I would find reverberations of civity while sightseeing in Iceland? Last month,I attended a conference in Reykjavik and then had the opportunity to spend a …
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The Race Story and the Civity Story
Stories matter. Stories do work – they guide what we do. If our stories discount or degrade Others, then our actions exploit and marginalize. If our stories acknowledge the human …
It’s the Relationships! #WeaveThePeople
Photo Courtesy: Lena Yarinkura My Civity co-founder Malka Kopell and I had the opportunity last week to be part of the #WeaveThePpl gathering in Washington, DC. We joined with people …
Weaving a Civity Cloth
New York Times columnist David Brooks brings a compelling voice to the conversation about how Americans should be with each other. He has been bearing witness to the pain of …
Listening to Understand the “Who” as Well as the “What”
Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, recently asserted the value of “listening with empathy” in the nation’s current political and social climate of “polarization” and “tribalism.” It is essential, …
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