Last weekend it was my honor to speak for the Common Good Forum in Boulder, Colorado. This fall’s theme was Common Ground for the Common Good. I did the morning keynote, followed by a panel of four mayors moderated by KUNC reporter Rae Solomon, followed by an afternoon session with Nancy Norton, a Boulder comedian. The whole day was delightful, my kind of Saturday.

My keynote was based on the proposed title of my next book: When Their Enemy is You – Responding With an Open Mind, a Receptive Spirit, and a Curious Soul. I’ve been working on the talk for a few months, trying to get complicated information into a 40-minute talk that is understandable to all – not an easy task.

There is nothing I love more than taking complex information and making it understandable to a broad audience in as short a time as possible. When I see audience members have aha moments, I know I have succeeded.

Communication demands that the communicator and those to whom the information is communicated are both on the same wavelength. Greater discipline is required of the communicator than of the audience. Who is your audience? What is their level of education and knowledge about the subject? What is their level of interest?

To me, a talk has two goals. First, it must impart information the audience did not previously know. One attendee this past Saturday told me no less than three times, “I already knew all of that information, but I liked the talk.” Oh well, so much for having achieved the first goal.

My second goal is to provide insight. That is also one of my goals as a therapist. Good therapy involves insight, courage, and perseverance. The therapist can only provide insight. The client has to muster the other two.

When I am speaking, I want to take the audience’s knowledge and enhance it in such a way that a new piece of information allows them to connect the dots and have an aha moment. On Saturday I talked about four issues that are exacerbating the problem of our current cultural divide.

First, humans have a tendency to create enemies that do not exist. Second, we do not all work from the same moral standard. The oldest moral standard is that there is no greater moral good than to protect the integrity of the tribe. The second moral standard, also quite ancient, is that there is no greater moral good than to obey the teachings of the gods. This is the moral standard of all forms of fundamentalism.

The third moral standard is the youngest, only about 2,000 years old. It is the moral standard that there is no greater moral good than to protect the freedom of the individual. It is the moral standard of all of western Europe and the secular United States. Most of us work from the third moral standard.

After understanding our tendency to create enemies that do not exist and recognizing that we do not all work from the same moral standard, we come to the third issue I talked about last Saturday.

For the last 500 years we have lived in a left-brain heavy world, which is unfortunate because the right hemisphere is the primary hemisphere of the human brain. The left is its emissary. Yep, I know that is not enough information for you to grasp what I was talking about, but I hate it when a post goes over 1000 words. Sorry ’bout that.

The fourth issue about which I spoke was the myth that humans care more about the truth than they care about belonging. That is simply not true. We consistently care more about belonging than we care about the truth. It is the rare person who has enough ego strength to care more about the truth than they do about belonging.

I did manage to cover all four topics in less than 40 minutes, and then was joined by Stan Mitchell for another 30 minutes of Q&A. Stan is one of my favorite interviewers. It is always best to have an interviewer who is smarter and more knowledgeable than you. Unfortunately the lecture is not available to the public. If you were in attendance I can send the manuscript to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the book.

I will write about my observations about the mayors panel next week. Suffice it to say I believe mayors are the politicians most likely to have their feet planted firmly on the ground.

This week I’m preparing lectures for next Monday and Tuesday at Brite Divinity School on the campus of Texas Christian University. It’s a good thing I’m not lecturing at Texas A&M, since when it comes to issues of gender identity, as of today Texas A&M looks more like a bible college than a public university. How did that happen?  I send you back to the beginning of this post. We humans do tend to create enemies that don’t exist.

And so it goes.

It is difficult to maintain an interior life in the midst of today’s cultural upheaval and political uncertainty. We are hardly unique in history. In do understand how easy my life has been compared with so many who have come before. I have not known war within the boundaries of my nation. I have not known starvation or, in my decades as a white male, oppression. Only now am I gaining a tiny glimpse of what so many have known for so long.

In the midst of it all I am surprised that my approach to getting through these times does not differ much from how I have approached my entire life. I have always intuitively recognized that a good life includes someone to love, good work to do, and something to look forward to. Those three needs remain with us regardless of our circumstances.

I bring the three up with my clients all the time. Sometimes what they need to work through is deep and complicated, with elusive solutions. But sometimes what makes their life better is simple. It is always interesting how few people have ever heard of the ability of those three elements to create the alchemy of a well-lived life. We all need someone to love, good work to do, and something to look forward to.

In my case, someone to love is complicated. Well, come to think of it, it’s complicated for pretty much all of us. I love my children and grandchildren. That love is without conditions. I also love Cathy, my companion of almost 55 years. We currently live together, though we both recognize that is not ideal. It has been made recently necessary because of our financial realities, and we are both old and mature enough to make it work. We respect each other. Since we no longer consider ourselves married, we both have dated. Through it all, our devotion remains, though it is expressed quite differently than it was when we were married.

There are dear friends I love who I see often. Only one was with me pre-transition. The others have come into my life in the last dozen years and never knew Paul. One of  my biggest struggles has been the discontinuity between my previous life and my current life. Family has been there through the transition, but few others.

The second “necessity” is good work to do. I have always been a Renaissance person with varied interests. Currently I am in an elected position as mayor pro tem of Lyons, Colorado. I am considering running for mayor in the spring, but I will not make a decision about that until the end of January.

My doctorate is in pastoral counseling and I continue to serve as a counselor. I have had many wonderful clients over the years. They are delightful humans, one and all. I continue to keep my counseling practice fairly small, by design.

After serving as a speaker’s ambassador for TED and a coach for TEDxMileHigh, I discovered that I love coaching speakers, helping with content and delivery. It’s been my privilege to coach  NPR reporters, an Air Force general, politicians, attorneys, pastors, therapists, CEOs, and sundry other humans. Speaker’s coaching is a vibrant part of my current work.

I also continue to enjoy preaching. It looks like I’ll end up having preached about 20 Sundays this year. I preach regularly at Denver Community Church and The Village in Atlanta. This year I preached everywhere from the iconic Riverside Church in New York to Austin to San Francisco. A fair amount of my speaking has been at churches connected to either the Post Evangelical Collective, a vibrant group of progressive churches, or the Wild Goose Festival, one of my favorite events each summer. It’ll be my privilege to speaking five of the next six Sundays at Pine Street Church in Boulder. The church is located one block east of the intersection of Broadway and Pine in central Boulder. Services are at 10:00 each Sunday. I mention that because I’d love to see you there!

I also have a book proposal with my agent right now with the working title, “When Their Enemy is You – Responding with an Open Mind, a Receptive Spirit, and a Curious Soul.” I hope to have a contract and be working on the book by the first of the year.

I’ve been fortunate that I have always loved the work I do, which means that having good work and something to look forward to are one and the same for me. Over the next three months I’ll be preaching in Boulder, Denver, Brite Divinity School in Texas, Sarasota, Austin, and somewhere else I can’t remember right now. (I’m old. I forget things.)

On the fun side, I’ll be with my family in Florida over Christmas, in Kauai in early December, and on the beach in Southern California with my granddaughters during their February break. I like to get out of the cold in Colorado at least twice a month during the winter. Snow has outlived its usefulness to me.

Is it a tough time to be trans in America? I mean, what do you think? But you have to keep on living your life without fear. I try to be safe. I cut off the stalkers and trolls and inform the authorities when necessary, but thankfully, most threats are idle.

I’m headed off to a town board meeting now, fulfilling my role as mayor pro tem. Tomorrow I’ll put the finishing touches on my keynote on Saturday for the Common Good Forum in Boulder. Life is good, and also hard, so we take joy when we can.

And so it goes.