Dignity, Difference, and Self-Giving Love, with Tim Shriver

Tim Shriver has spent a lifetime learning to see the people the rest of us are socialized to look past. The chairman of Special Olympics, co-creator of the Dignity Index, and son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, he argues that what's tearing America apart isn't how much we differ, but how we treat one another when we do.

"We're not being torn apart by difference. We're being torn apart by the way we treat each other when we differ."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Shriver reflects on the teachers who shaped him—students and athletes who taught him a different way of seeing. They discuss the Dignity Index, contempt, toxic empathy that gives way to excusing harm, the role of "self-purification" in Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent campaigns, his Catholic faith, and embracing the Eucharist as self-giving love.

Episode Highlights

"We're not being torn apart by difference. We're being torn apart by the way we treat each other when we differ."

"Empathy is knowing and understanding. Dignity is valuing and seeing."

"You will have a superpower if you fight for your principles with all the passion you've got and add one principle: treat the other human being with dignity at the same time."

"They're not crying because they're sad for the athlete. They're crying because something is coming out of them."

"Concretely, you may hold, you may touch, you may drink of the face of God."

About Tim Shriver

Timothy Shriver has chaired Special Olympics International since 1996, growing the movement to over four million athletes worldwide. The third child of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, he taught for years in New Haven public schools and helped launch the field of social and emotional learning, co-founding and chairing CASEL. In 2018 he founded UNITE to bridge America's political divides and co-created the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale from contempt to respect. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, and holds degrees from Yale and Catholic University and a doctorate from the University of Connecticut.

Helpful links and Resources

Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, by Tim Shriver https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374535827/fullyalive/

The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening, edited by Tim Shriver https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671260/the-call-to-unite-by-edited-by-tim-shriver-and-tom-rosshirt/

The Dignity Index: https://www.dignity.us

Special Olympics: https://www.specialolympics.org

"Letter from Birmingham Jail": https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/letter-birmingham-jail

Show Notes

• Living and teaching in New Haven, Connecticut; learning to see dignity
• Born 1959; family moves to D.C. after JFK's 1960 election
• Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps, and a faith that demanded more
• Living "eye to eye" in the village
• Aunt Rosemary and the camp that became Special Olympics
• "An unapologetic conviction that if we worked together, we could change the world."
• Choosing teaching over law; a hunger to go deep, not fast
• The high school visit that changed everything
• The student who dreamed of waking without braces
• "They cussed me out... but somehow they also love me"
• "There is some moment in our lives where being broken leads to freedom."
• Learning how to see; the blind man and "what do you want?"
• "They're crying because something is coming out of them."
• A culture that applauds cutting people off
• The Dignity Index: contempt to "I love you no matter what"; https://www.dignity.us
• Gov. Spencer Cox and leading without demonizing
• Toxic empathy
• Empathy is not excusing
• The superpower of human dignity
• Fighting for your principles and add one: dignity
• Thomas Merton's "pure glory of God in us"
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s "self-purification" as a component of non-violent resistance (see "Letter from a Birmingham Jail")
• The Eucharist: "You may hold, you may touch, you may drink of the face of God"

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