In high school, I was part of a student group whose members bonded through trust exercises. The classic one has you fold your arms across your chest, close your eyes, and then fall backward into what you sure hope is a network of locked hands, ready to catch you. I hated that exercise then, but think of it now as a sign of my own shortcomings.
That memory rose like a wave in late July, when I attended the St. Joseph County Comprehensive Plan Summit, designed to spark conversations about the next 20 years of country growth and improvement. The keynote speaker, April Rinne, offered insights from her book Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. The most important of the superpowers, she said, is “starting with trust.” Sounds easy, but she pushed us, warning that unless we really trusted one another, we wouldn’t have conversations that would move our community forward.
Yikes … I felt the prickle of self-critique, because I had just returned from two strange days at the Indiana Statehouse, as a demonstrator and witness during the start of the Special Session. The outcome, as you know, was an almost total ban on abortion in Indiana, effective as of yesterday. In those two steamy days on the grounds and inside the ornate Statehouse rotunda, I had experiences that shook my trust, and also renewed it, to my surprise.
The first Monday of the special session, the ACLU organized a rally for supporters of abortion access. The mood was defiant, signs were sassy — one flower-crowned family held up a banner: “Three generations for choice.” Speakers quoted June Jordan and played girl-power rock anthems. I had dozens of smiling conversations on the grassy grounds, trusting that these were my people. I felt as safe among them as I could, considering the inky slashes of SWAT team rifles visible in a nearby tower.
When we finally streamed indoors, up the grand staircases, to chant before the heavily carved doors of the Senate chamber, I felt like part of a thrumming organism. I caught sight of a few counter-protesters, their faintly waving anti-abortion signs swallowed up in our sea. I ignored them.
We stayed overnight and before we hit the road back to South Bend, I walked over to the Statehouse to get a little more use out of my “Abortion is Health Care” sign. As soon as I hoisted it up and started circulating in the crowd, I realized my mistake. Tuesday’s rally was for opponents of abortion …and now I was unexpectedly a lone counter-protester. I recognized one of the people I’d ignored the day before, and looked away. I kept circulating, stoic behind my N95 mask, calculating the wisdom of persisting.
I was heckled and even hissed at. I was ignored by most. But then — to my surprise — I got drawn into a real conversation. It started badly, with a red-bearded and burly man shouting,“Hey - I wanna talk to you!” I stared past him. He dialed down his tone: “No, really — explain your sign to me.” Did I trust him? Nope. But I did have something to say, and so I waved him around a wide marble column to muffle the chants from the crowd. I asked him what he thought about the ten-year-old from Ohio, in the news just then, who’d been cared for by an Indiana physician. He blanched. “Oh, that poor girl. Yeah, that was a mercy.” Interesting. I asked him what he thought would lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies, and he said he wished Indiana had better sex ed. “And cheaper birth control! People are … life is… messy.” I stopped looking at his beard, he seemed to stop looking at my mask, and our eyes met. “Well,” I said, “I agree with you there.” I told him I was April from South Bend. “I’m Dave,” he said, “and you got a great place to camp up there — Potato Creek? Pretty place.” We talked about favorite walking trails, knuckle-bumped, and turned away, likely both shaking our heads.
In Pete Buttigieg’s latest book, Trust: America’s Best Chance, he says we’ll have to work to cultivate trust, not only for national health, but for interpersonal happiness, too. We have to start somewhere. I started with Dave. How about you?
Music: Beginners (Theme Suite) - Brian Reitzell, Dave Palmer, Roger Neill
