Conflict is not the opposite of love. It is one of love’s most demanding — and most rewarding — classrooms.

Most of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that a peaceful life is a conflict-free life. That if we were spiritual enough, the friction would stop. And so when conflict arrives — in a marriage, a family, a friendship, a congregation — we carry a quiet shame about it, as though it were evidence that something has gone wrong.

It isn’t. Conflict is evidence that you are in relationship at all.

In this three-hour live workshop, we won’t talk about winning arguments. We won’t learn techniques for managing difficult people. Instead, we will practice — together, in real time.

You will spend real time being listened to by another person who is not allowed to fix you, advise you, or tell you about the time it happened to them. Just listened to.

And you will spend real time doing the listening.

That’s the workshop. If you leave having had one honest experience of being truly heard — and one honest experience of truly hearing someone else — it will have worked.

What we’ll explore:

•  Why conflict is normal, and what changes when you stop being ashamed of it

•  The question underneath every argument: “Who do I have to be, in order to need to be right?”

•  A guided practice for meeting your own reaction with self-compassion, instead of judgment

•  How to listen for what a person actually needs, beneath the words they’re using

•  The hardest and most freeing sentence in any disagreement: “Here is the part of this that’s mine.”

Includes: A digital copy of Living the 12 Principles of Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love by Rev. Tony Roebuck, plus a workshop handout.

Format: Live on Zoom. Small-group breakouts, guided reflection, and whole-group sharing. Two breaks.

Investment: $27 — includes the ebook and workshop handout.

If cost is a barrier, please write to me. Nobody is turned away.

Facilitator: Reverend Tony Roebuck is an ordained Unity minister, teacher, and spiritual counselor with decades of ministry experience, and the author of Living the 12 Principles of Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love.

This live workshop will not be recorded.