Our policy choices flow from our politics, our politics flow from our values, and our values flow from our personal stories. If we're going to create a new politics in America and the world, we need to start at the level of story. We need to talk to each other -- and to 'the other,' the one we think is dead wrong. It's risky, but good hosts make such conversations so safe that people stumble past their fears into a kind of grace. Hosting conversations is not just inviting people over and putting out cookies. It's deeper -- actually, something like meditation.

But while meditation strives for one-pointedness, hosting goes for three-pointedness: It's focused on each speaker, the host's own responses, and the entire conversation. Meditation is private and quiet. Hosting is public and noisy. Meditation is cool. Hosting is hot. Rather than escaping 'the world,' hosting works with the rough grain of the world, creating coherence in our multitasking 21st-century minds.

A host gathers people to make meaning together, setting the stage with a welcoming spirit, a few ground rules for safe speaking, and a juicy topic (see www.letstalkamerica.org). A host is free to listen like a lover and speak like a sage. A host can act like a fool and ask the unaskable, like 'We all agree, but what if we're wrong? What if the opposite were true?' A host wonders. As in awe. As in 'it's a wonderful life.'

The first mind of hosting is listening to what each person says with absolute attention and utter fascination. It's like wading into the worldview and life experience of another without any need to change them. If a host wants to dive deeper, she's free to say 'Tell me more about that' or 'How did you come to that point of view?' Mind you, she's not facilitating or helping. She's contemplating a work of art called a human being.