Poem on Disagreement: Minding the Gap

Here’s a poem about disagreement in the wake of the current referendum about the difficult and emotive issue of the UK leaving the European Union. We all need grace more than ever to come together and work for a better future, despite our different perspectives.

Poem on Disagreement: Minding the Gap

We thought we could and would come together –

Individuals combining as a wave

Caressing our own movements to sooth these notions and nations

As unity overcame our fractured selves.

But wait.
No.

The votes are counted

And we are brought up short at the half-way mark, or thereabouts.

Shockgate.

We care

Enough anyway to  justify our own motives and dismiss those of others.

One country. One political system. One continent. One people.

Unity is unraveling

o N e

Looking inwards, we see the gap

There’s fighting

No grace.

As if this is a black and white issue, as if we can separate…

I’ll stay on your side and you stay on my side.

Stop.

Did I just say that or did I?

What’s meant to be there in the middle? None of us seem sure. Is it you missing or is it me? And why do you vilify me and justify you when we are actually us?

Unless we are not what we thought we were.

 

This hurts.

It’s uncomfortable between us now

Can’t we just talk about the weather again?

Get steristrips or glue to stick us back?

Don’t peer into the chasm now, you know we’ll be okay.

But I am minding the gap.

 

Surely there’s still hope. A&E still functioning fully – it is and I went this week.

The ophthamologist interrogated my eyes with blinding lights.

“What’s the problem here?” It’s personal and it’s political, I thought.

There’s a new disturbance in my vision that won’t go away. I can see what looks like a sun spot now, although it’s only recently appeared. Something’s changed over time at the back of the retina and it can’t be fixed.

Secretly

I think I’ve figured out what the problem really is :

It’s the way I see things being different from the way you see things.

Admit it, we’re the same. We are both filtering our viewpoints through our own understanding and imperfections.

The ophthamologist tells me my brain will become accustomed to this disturbance until I can no longer see the aberration…

Until I can no longer see my own failing

Only yours.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7: 1-5 (NIV)