Dispute Settlement Counsel

My wife and I just returned from a vacation visiting our National Parks in Utah and Arizona – Zion, Bryce, Arches, Natural Bridges and the North Rim and South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was an incredible, humbling trip.

One reason for going to Utah was to visit Arches National Park and see in person the arches that inspired us to use them in our promotion materials.  Let’s take a few minutes to consider these magnificent Arches, and in particular, Delicate Arch and Broken Arch.

One thing that our National Parks do right away is to make us realize how small and insignificant we are compared to the wonders of nature and God’s majestic creation.  We think in terms of weeks, months, years and a lifetime.  But out in the National Parks, the measure of time is thousands and millions of years.  There are over 2,000 arches in Arches Park, all naturally made over millions of years from the elements – wind, gravity and erosion, out of various types of stone – largely sandstone.  When you stand beneath Delicate Arch or the equally impressive Landscape Arch, you get a sense of the scale we’re talking about.  Words and pictures do little to describe what can only be experienced to get a fuller comprehension of these formations of terra cotta stone.

Broken Arch, located at South Devils Garden, Arches National Park, Utah

There are lessons in the National Parks that are applicable to all phases of our lives.  Our careers, our personal lives, our perspectives, our sense of purpose and of accomplishment can all be measured in part against the backdrop of the silent but powerful lessons that these rock formations and canyons offer us.  A Park Ranger giving a tour along the South Rim told us that one early visitor to the Grand Canyon stated that it was “utterly useless”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  But like so many things, the extent of the usefulness of these quiet, majestic teachers rests in the ability of each of us to be still, listen, observe, immerse ourselves into our surroundings and learn.

I needed to go to Delicate Arch and Broken Arch to better understand their power, and came away more inspired by them.  Their names – “delicate” and “broken” – are symbolically appropriate for dispute resolution, and they also reflect a bold contradiction.  While these arches could succumb to the impact of forces beyond their control and collapse at any time, they are anything but delicate or broken.  A crack in Broken Arch gives it an appearance of being broken, but a closer look reveals that it is joined and strong.  Delicate Arch stands openly at the edge of a rather precarious rim, fully exposed to the elements and fully transparent, but the closer you get to it, the more powerful and sturdy it is.

Delicate Arch - located at Winter Camp Wash, Arches National Park, Utah

These rocks send us messages about the way we approach our disputes and how we try to resolve them – messages about the power of transparency, about the inherent strength of the arch formation, the importance of creating connection and in the notion that the more engaged we are in the pursuit of something, the more successful and lasting the result will be.  The Arches, like the Natural Bridges, reinforce a centering concept that conflict resolution advocates have chosen to embrace:  The choice of working toward connection, rather than separation.  To get to “yes”, and beyond that to achieve deeper resolution, connection is vital.

Like non-adversarial dispute resolution itself, I didn’t truly appreciate the power of these natural wonders until I understood them better.  They initially spoke to me, inspiring enough to choose them as the way I want to approach resolving disputes and the images I wanted to reflect our approach to dispute resolution.  But until I saw them up close and listened to their silent strength, I didn’t fully realize their magnitude or staying power.

The same phenomenon occurred when I got my first taste of processes like Collaborative Practice and mediation.  At first they are attractive, inspiring, and make so much sense.  But it isn’t until we make a conscious commitment to engage more deeply and internalize these approaches that we realize the depth of their power as well as the scope of the mission in which we are immersed.

Now that I have gone deeper and internalized the processes I work with, the power of the patient but steady transformation of how conflicts are resolved is even clearer.  That realization was powerfully reinforced by the quiet stability and perseverance of the arches and canyons of our National Parks.  Their lesson:  Stay with that which you pursue and that which you want to resolve long enough to get deeply immersed and grounded in it.  Then you’ll grasp it more fully.