Here is a scene playing out on campuses across the country. A student asks a machine to write her paper. Her professor asks a machine to grade it. The paper is submitted, assessed, and returned, and no human being has learned anything.

We like to say artificial intelligence is disrupting education. I think it is doing something more useful. It is exposing a form of education that had already become a transaction, and in too many places, a farce.

So what does it look like to be human in the age of the machine? Today I want to show you what one university built, let you hear from the professor who built it, and give you a free first-year curriculum any campus can use to build it too.

What education is for

Our word "education" comes from the Latin educere, "to bring out, lead forth." The Greeks called it paideia. The Romans called it humanitas, the root of our word "humanities." Its aim was never information. It was formation: freeing us from our baser nature and bringing forth what is best and noble in us.

"In liberating us from our ignoble instincts, liberal arts enable us to become more fully human, and more humane." — The Soul of Civility, p. 313

The university was meant to be the home of that formation. The word comes from the Latin universitas: a whole, a corporate body. The first universities were communities of masters and students, intellectual companions learning and building together.

A machine can produce a paper. It cannot become more humane. That part is still ours.

The gift of being human

Today I tried to explain artificial intelligence to my son, Percy. I told him it's smart, but it isn't human intelligence. It's something different.

Here is how I'd put it to you. Artificial intelligence is a system trained on an enormous library of human words and images. It learns the patterns in what we have written and predicts what is likely to come next. It can be astonishingly useful. But it is pattern without a person behind it. It does not wonder or love. It cannot choose to forgive. It will never sit across the table from someone it disagrees with and decide to see them again.

The ancients described a ladder of being. A rock simply exists. A plant lives and grows. An animal senses, moves, and desires. A human being does all of this and more: we reason, we love, we choose, and we ask why we are here. The Hebrew scriptures put it most beautifully: we are made in the image of God, the imago Dei. There is a spark of the divine in every person. We are not rocks or plants, not animals, and not computers. That spark is the root of the dignity at the heart of my book. Every person you meet is “a miracle of life, a person with irreducible dignity and worth.”

This is why the humanities exist. When Cicero wrote of humanitas, he meant the cultivation of what is most fully human in us, our reason and our fellow-feeling. The Renaissance humanists revived that study, the studia humanitatis, because they believed a person must be formed, not merely informed. As I write in the book, “Being human means being fit for life with others, which requires that we cultivate our humaneness.”

A machine can imitate our words. It cannot receive the gift of being human, and it cannot give it. That gift is ours, in ourselves and in one another. In an age of brilliant machines, the answer is not to compete with them on their terms. It is to double down on what makes us human, and to help our students do the same.

What St. Ambrose built

Last month, I told you about a professor at St. Ambrose University who wrote to invite me to speak. Buried in his note was something more interesting: he hoped to make The Soul of Civility the lynchpin of a new core course on civil discourse.

This fall, Dr. Joseph Hebert is teaching that course, Civil Discourse & Civil Society. The whole semester turns on one question: How does engagement in civil discourse help me grow as a person and member of my community? A few things about his design that any educator can borrow:

• It starts with definitions. Students learn to distinguish civility from politeness, flattery, or evasiveness.

• The book sits beside the classics. Students read The Soul of Civility alongside Federalist Nos. 10 and 51, Tocqueville, and Robert Putnam.

• Much of it happens out loud. The class chooses one public issue with a range of reasonable views. Five practice deliberations build to a public deliberation in December, where the goal is mutual understanding, not victory.

Then Joseph went further. He became a Civic Renaissance Ambassador and gathered a cohort of colleagues and community members to carry these ideas across the university. In September, I joined them for lunch, a public lecture, and a panel of people already putting the book into practice. That is a universitas: a whole community, learning together.

At the top of this post is my full conversation with Joseph: how he built the course, what he asks of his students, and what he is seeing in the room. If you teach or lead a campus, I hope you'll listen.

A free first-year curriculum for any campus

Since that visit, professors, deans, and parents have asked me the same question: Could we do this here?

So I built a first-year curriculum on The Soul of Civility, for a first-year seminar or orientation, and I'm giving it away. Take it, adapt it, and teach it.

It is built for the age of the machine, and it forms the whole person: head, heart, and hands. Every grade is earned out loud, in the room, through the oldest tools of teaching: Socratic seminar, disputation, recitation, role-play, and the oral exam. Students mark up their own copy of the book and keep a handwritten commonplace book. Nothing can be handed off to AI. And it's fun. A few things students do:

• Play the villain. A student defends Gilgamesh, or a polished con artist, in character while the class questions them. Then the class unbundles them: what good was buried in there?

• Put Thomas Jefferson on trial, with Edward Coles as a witness. Hero or villain? The verdict is almost always both.

• Practice unoffendability. For one week, students answer every slight with kindness, the way my Grandma Margaret did, and report what changed.

• Teach it forward. Students read stories from my children's collection, Heroes and Villains, to local schoolchildren.

• Host a porch. For the final project, students host a gathering on their floor for people who wouldn't otherwise sit together. A dorm room counts as a porch.

The curriculum rests on three companions, one for each part of the person. The book is for the head. The Soul of Civility Commonplace Book is for the heart: students copy by hand the passages that move them and carry them into seminar. And The Soul of Civility Workbook is for the hands, with a practice for every chapter. The book is all you need to begin. The commonplace book and workbook are coming soon, and the three together will serve workplaces, congregations, and reading groups, too.

Why practices instead of papers? Because, as I write in the education chapter:

"Educators can be tempted to focus on politeness at the expense of civility. It's easy to have the rules on posters on the wall, and to have students memorize lists of dos and don'ts." — The Soul of Civility, p. 325

Rules can't form a disposition. Habits can, and habits are formed in community, face to face.

Get the free first-year curriculum here: alexandraohudson.com/higher-education.

Let's build it together

I would love to partner with you to bring this to your campus.

• If you're a dean or lead first-year programs, let's build it into your orientation or first-year experience together. I can visit, train your instructors, help you form a Civic Renaissance Ambassador cohort, and create a custom edition for your incoming class.

• If you're a professor, take the curriculum and teach it, in full or one week at a time, and tell me what you build. I'd love to come alongside you.

• If you're a parent of a college student, or a student yourself, forward this to a dean or professor on your campus. There's a ready-to-send note at the end of the curriculum.

Just reply to this email, and let's start building. Class sets of the book are at alexandraohudson.com/order.

Will you porch with us?

If you're reading The Soul of Civility in your classroom, your congregation, your book club, or your living room, join the Porching Challenge. Choose your place. Invite your people. Decide who hosts next. (For students, hosting a porch is the final project in the curriculum.)

Nearly 40 porchers across nine states, Canada, and Australia have already said yes. See them on the Porching Map, and I'll connect you with porchers in your community.

Ready to get started? Join the Porching Challenge here. It’s free: the toolkit gifts you the introduction and first two chapters for your first three gatherings, plus guides and invitation scripts. Let’s porch.

"Because civility can be learned, it is open to anyone." — The Soul of Civility, p. 311

With gratitude,

Lexi

Hi, everyone. Happy Friday!

It’s been a whirlwind. I’ve been in five cities in the last ten days, and when I finally arrived home Sunday night, I promptly got sick. I’ve spent much of this week under the weather, but I’m coming up for air just in time for a weekend I’ve been looking forward to for months.

The Front Porch Republic conference is here in Indianapolis! It’s not too late for you to join us. Would you like to “porch” with us this weekend? :)

Register and porch with us now!

The conference opens tonight, and tomorrow I’ll be speaking with Indianapolis’ own porcher-in-chief, Joanna Taft, about the art of being neighbors. Then, in a beautiful act of historical serendipity, we’re hosting the conference’s closing reception at our home, on our front porch, of course.

And the timing could not be more fitting, because tomorrow, October 10, marks the third anniversary of the publication of The Soul of Civility.

Three years! I can hardly believe it. Thank you to each of you for being here and for making this book what it has become: the catalyst for a movement for people to heal our broken world—starting with themselves.

This is precicely what the porch represents.

I’m excited to share some things we’re planning this month to celebrate, and especially to help you put the ideas of The Soul of Civility into practice, because that’s what I’ve been hearing from readers almost since the day the book came out.

How do we live this? How do we embody these ideas? How do we take civility, grounded in respect for the dignity of every human being, and make it part of the culture of our homes, workplaces, universities, and communities?

Three years later, those questions have taken me across the country, partnering with leaders and citizens who are asking not merely how to talk about civility, but how to build communities in which people can flourish across difference.

And I want to tell you one story from the last few weeks that has given me tremendous hope.

Palmer Lake, Colorado: A community choosing repair over division

You may have heard of Palmer Lake, Colorado, a small town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains that became a national poster child for division.

The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other national outlets descended on this little community to document how a proposed Buc-ee’s travel center had torn neighbors apart. The controversy consumed the town, divided friendships, poisoned public meetings, and left people who had once been neighbors seeing one another as enemies.

And here is one of the things that fascinated me about Palmer Lake: the intensity of the controversy revealed just how much people loved their community.

People cared passionately about the place they called home. They cared about its character, its beauty, its future. But somewhere along the way, that love of place had become entangled with anger and contempt for their neighbors. A single controversy had become so consuming that it threatened the very relationships and community people were fighting to protect.

What if we could take that same fierce love of place, that same energy and conviction, and channel it toward building something together?

Earlier this year, two of my favorite human beings, Lori and Lisa of Reclaiming Civility in Colorado Springs, gifted Palmer Lake’s mayor a copy of The Soul of Civility. He read it, and when I was in Colorado Springs in April, he approached me with a question.

Could I help his community?

I told him I couldn’t fix his Buc-ee’s problem. I couldn’t make everyone agree about the development, and I certainly wasn’t going to adjudicate who had been right or wrong.

But perhaps we could do something more important. We could bring people together to imagine a flourishing future for Palmer Lake, to repair relationships, rebuild trust, and develop the civic muscle that would prepare the community for the next disagreement.

Because there would be another disagreement. Buc-ee’s wasn’t the first controversy in Palmer Lake’s history, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

The question wasn’t whether people would disagree again, but whether the next disagreement would bring out the worst in them. Could they learn to disagree in ways that brought out their best, honoring thier human dignity and that of others?

So in June, we convened 25 public leaders from across the Pikes Peak region, including mayors and representatives of three city councils, for a retreat. We gathered, dreamed, feasted, rested, and began asking what kind of community they wanted to build together.

And something wonderful began to happen.

A longtime Palmer Lake resident, Rebecca Albright, who had lived in the community for three decades, had independently been reading *The Soul of Civility* with members of her church. She had been imagining how the book might become part of a community-wide reading and healing initiative, and she stepped forward to help lead it.

I love this part of the story because it reminds us that the seeds of renewal are often already present in a community. There are people who are longing for something better, who love their neighbors, who want to contribute, but who need an invitation, a shared vision, and a way to begin.

Rebecca and I partnered, and last week, about 40 people gathered in Palmer Lake to begin writing the next chapter of their community’s story.

And NBC News came to document it.

Their national team joined us to tell a story that is too often overlooked. We hear plenty about communities being torn apart. We hear far less about what happens afterward, when the cameras leave, the headlines fade, and the people who have been fighting still have to live together.

What does repair look like? Who takes responsibility for it? And can a community become stronger on the other side of a painful chapter?

## The art of repairing what has been broken

I brought something special with me to Palmer Lake: a piece of Japanese pottery that I had repaired in Japan using the ancient art of *kintsugi*.

Kintsugi is the art of taking broken pottery, piecing it back together, and gilding the cracks with gold. Rather than hiding the places where the vessel was broken, the repair becomes part of its beauty and its history.

I’ve loved this image for years, and standing before the people of Palmer Lake, it seemed an especially fitting metaphor for what their community could become.

Their division was real. Their wounds were real. The friendships damaged, the trust lost, the things said and done in anger could not simply be wished away.

But their brokenness did not have to define them.

The painful chapter could become part of a larger story, one in which the community learned something about itself, acknowledged what had happened, and began putting the pieces back together. The scars would remain, but perhaps they could become evidence not only of what had been broken, but of what people had chosen to repair.

And that is what we began doing together.

What I found particularly moving was that there were people in the room who had been staunch supporters of Buc-ee’s, and others who had been fierce opponents. We didn’t ask anyone to change their position. In fact, we didn’t spend our evening relitigating the Buc-ee’s controversy at all.

We had gathered to ask a different question: What do we want to build together now?

This is one of the most important distinctions between civility and politeness.

Politeness might ask people to avoid the controversial subject, to suppress their disagreements, to smile and pretend everything is fine. Civility asks something more demanding of us. It asks us to recognize the humanity of people with whom we disagree, to respect their dignity even when we think they’re wrong, and to remain in relationship with them across those differences.

Agreement is not the goal. Flourishing across difference is.

And there was another insight from Palmer Lake that I don’t want us to miss: the controversy itself had reached a turning point, but the relationships it damaged had not simply repaired themselves.

Winning a political battle is not the same thing as rebuilding a community. The end of a controversy does not necessarily mean the end of division.

If anything, that is when the real challenge begins.

How do we keep one disagreement from becoming the defining feature of our relationships? How do we resist the temptation to reduce our neighbors to their positions on a single issue, rather than seeing them in the fullness and complexity of who they are? How do we cultivate the habits of self-government that allow us to disagree without destroying the relationships and institutions we share?

I think of democracy as a muscle. If we neglect it, it weakens. If we exercise it, through the ordinary practices of listening, speaking honestly, exercising restraint, extending hospitality, and taking responsibility for our communities, it grows stronger.

And the time to strengthen that muscle is not only when a crisis arrives. It is in the months and years between controversies, in the ordinary rhythms of life together.

That’s part of what makes Palmer Lake so hopeful to me.

Instead of waiting for the next fight, citizens and leaders are beginning to build something together. They have launched a community read of *The Soul of Civility*, and residents are stepping forward to help imagine what comes next.

The initiative belongs to them. It is being shaped and led by the people who call Palmer Lake home, because no visiting author or outside expert can create a flourishing community on their behalf.

And this is just the beginning. We haven’t repaired every relationship or transformed the culture overnight. But people who had been divided are gathering around a shared vision for their future, and that is a beginning worth celebrating.

I’m grateful that NBC’s local affiliate and national team took the time to tell this fuller story, documenting the years of division but also the citizens who are now choosing to repair, rebuild, and imagine something better. I’ll share their coverage with you below.

Three years of The Soul of Civility, and what we are building next

As I reflect on the last three years, I find myself returning to the question that has animated so many of my conversations with readers.

How do we take these ideas off the page and put them into practice?

Palmer Lake is one answer. So are the remarkable things unfolding in other communities I’ve visited over the last several weeks, stories I can’t wait to share with you.

What began as a book has become an invitation for people to think differently about their responsibilities to one another, and then to act on those responsibilities in their own homes, neighborhoods, institutions, and communities.

And that’s why I’m especially excited about what we’re planning for this anniversary month.

I want to help more of you gather people around your tables, on your porches, in your workplaces, churches, classrooms, and communities, to read *The Soul of Civility* together and begin asking what you might build where you are.

Because if there’s one thing these last three years have taught me, it’s that there are people everywhere who are hungry for something better. People who are tired of being told that their neighbors are their enemies. People who want to stand for their convictions without surrendering their humanity. People who love their communities and want to see them flourish.

And I want to help bring those people together.

So stay tuned. There will be more stories, more invitations, and some special anniversary celebrations in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy a weekend of porching here in Indianapolis, surrounded by friends old and new, celebrating the third birthday of The Soul of Civility in the most fitting way I can imagine: opening our home, gathering around a table, and enjoying the company of our neighbors.

Thank you for being part of these first three years. I’m so grateful you’re here, and even more excited about what we might build together in the years to come.

With gratitude,

Lexi

P.S. Here’s the NBC News coverage of Palmer Lake, including the community’s painful history and the hopeful new chapter its citizens are beginning to write.

NBC TV Report Tri-Lakes civility meeting aims to heal community divisions fueled by contentious Buc-ee’s debate

Some lines from the NBC exclusive:

THE PROBLEM:

• PALMER LAKE, Colo. — To the stranger laying eyes on the welcome sign to this bedroom community of roughly 2,500 in the foothills of the Rockies, its message might have seemed too good to be true: “Almost Heaven,” it reads. For a long time, Palmer Lake and its residents had tried to make good on it, selling the town’s picturesque setting and tight-knit feel. Mountain views, hiking and plenty of potlucks. The annual .5K run whose participants receive a donut at

  the halfway point of 273 yards. A 404-foot-tall mountainside star composed of 40-watt light bulbs lit for holidays and in memory of residents who passed away. Mom-and-pop shops lining downtown. Not a single stoplight. Locals likened it to Mayberry.

• Over the last two years, residents in Palmer Lake have dealt with their own underbelly. Plans to bring in a Buc-ee’s — the popular gas station chain known for its massive convenience stores where customers can find pristine restrooms and peruse aisles of books, snacks and gear stamped with its beaver mascot — have ripped the town apart, propelling it and its feud onto a national stage.

• Middle fingers have been flipped, friends have stopped speaking, and accusations of vandalism, harassment and death threats have abounded. At one of the lowest points, the mayor, who blasted Buc-ee’s critics in text messages, resigned in scandal. Voters recalled two trustees, while three others left their seats — one on the advice of his cardiologist. Two town lawyers quit. And residents who opposed

  the project partnered with a Colorado Springs watchdog group, Integrity Matters, to sue the town, alleging their First Amendment rights had been violated.

  “It was just so incredibly ugly, and nobody won,” said Shana Ball, one of the recalled trustees who thought Buc-ee’s could benefit the town

• What has transpired in Palmer Lake underscores how fractured America’s civil discourse has become

  and how fragile bonds between neighbors can be amid conflict. Desperate to move forward, the interim

  mayor and a group of residents have even asked a civility expert to help, holding a session last week

  where people aired their grievances and were asked to center one another’s humanity — which the

  expert said appeared to have been lost along the way.

THE SOLUTION:

• Roughly 30 people, most of them Palmer Lake residents, filed into a meeting hall last week in the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce to work on mending divisions. Volunteers scooped out gluten-free ice cream. Wildflower seeds were placed throughout the room as a reminder to sow kindness. Becky Albright, a clinical social worker who has lived in Palmer Lake for 33 years, had once suggested

  to Havenar that the community read a book called “The Soul of Civility,” which she’d been introduced to at church. Stern, the interim mayor, and Albright later invited the book’s author, Alexandra Hudson, to host civility workshops.

  

  “We’re fun, we have beautiful spaces, we have great traditions — and we’re getting known for negativity,” said Albright, who is running for a trustee position and said she had quietly opposed Buc-ee’s. Author Alexandra Hudson works with communities and leaders facing heated debates over hot-button issues.Rachel Woolf for NBC News Before the event, Hudson signed copies of her book at a shop across the street. Asked how tensions in Palmer Lake compared with those in other communities, Hudson avoided ranking the town but

  acknowledged getting pushback. “Certainly got more hate mail here than anywhere,” she said. She added that she also had “been accused of being in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s.” She said she saw a familiar trend in Palmer Lake: people equating a conflict as the most important thing in their lives.

• During her lecture, Hudson told the audience that the town could have a new chapter. “It’s unfortunate that this community has become a poster child for our country’s national division,” she said. The crisis, she said, is about not disagreement but dehumanization. “We are always going to disagree. Say that with me,” she told the crowd, which repeated her words in

  unison. After Hudson spoke, people discussed what had gone wrong.Susan Miner, a former Palmer Lake trustee, mused that the discord was driven by out-of-towners meddling to help residents sue. Other participants made a suggestion that harked back to the old Palmer Lake: The town’s repair, they said, could start with moonlight hikes instead of isolation. Beyond the civility event, both sides have begun to reflect and — to Hudson’s point — see the nation’s

  divide in Palmer Lake.

Read the full of the NBC exclusive reported piece here or the PDF below:

Nbc Palmer Lake Civic Renaissance

9.37MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

More of The Soul of Civiltiy the News:

• For The Tennessean, and in advance of the Global Free Speech Summit where I moderated a panel on free speech and antisemitism with Nadine Strossen, I wrote about Uncivil vs. The Civiltiy Industrial complex, and why true civiltiy requires disagreement. Read it here.

• An honor to join Focus on the Family President Jim Daily for a conversation about civility grounded in imago dei and human dignity in an age of contempt. Listen here.

• In the Gazette of Colorado Springs, Rachel Stovall writes a lovely article about what we have built there over the last several years. Springs leaders emphasize civility’s importance.

  • She writes, “Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility, has built an entire national conversation around that distinction. Her book took her on a 50-city tour around the globe. In Carmel, Indiana, a question from a city councilman, ‘how do we actually embody these ideas in our community?’ morphed into a Civility Summit bringing together more than 100 civic leaders from 17 states and Canada.”

• An honor to join John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, on his platform “Our Civilizational Moment” for a wide ranging conversation about civility and power across human history. John is the best! Listen to the full conversation here.

Good morning! I am up early, about to catch a flight to Colorado Springs, and I’m going to tell you a story today about the time I got hate mail accusing me of being in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s.

What is Buc-ee’s, you ask? It is a massive gas station, a Texas export, beloved in Texas, and I would go so far as to say it has something of a cult following. This is what I’ve heard from ardent supporters, not just in Texas but around the country. People are really passionate about this gas station, which has its own merch line, its own lore, its own mascot.

I’ll tell you that story in just a minute, because that is where I’m going today, to Palmer Lake, Colorado, a small, beautiful mountainside town just outside Colorado Springs in the Pikes Peak region. But first, I want to tell you what happened last week in Iowa, because both of those engagements were the product of countless conversations, more than a year of work and partnership with these communities and institutions, and it was beautiful to finally see what all of that had become.

A wonderful problem in Urbandale, Iowa

I shared some of this story last week, including the wonderful problem we had: too many people wanted to come and talk about civilty, so we had to move to a venue that seated over 1000 people. Here is the background: The mayor of Urbandale, Bob Andeweg, showed up in Carmel, Indiana, last year when Carmel hosted a civility summit inspired by my work.

Watch the Carmel story here

In Carmel, more than 100 leaders from across politics, geography and vocation gathered around themes from my book: that civility is not politeness, that agreement is not the goal, but that recognizing the dignity and humanity of the other, and learning to flourish across difference, is.

Bob came up to me afterward and essentially said, I love this. I love what you built in Carmel. I want this in Urbandale.

And I loved hearing that, especially because Bob has been mayor for more than two decades, Urbandale is a beautiful community, and there was nothing in the way of some enormous civic catastrophe that forced him into this. He didn’t discover civility because his community was in crisis. He could probably have done nothing, sat on his hands and said, We’re doing fine, but that’s not who he is. He wanted Urbandale to be better, to be excellent.

So he started by giving my book to his City Council, and Urbandale chose The Soul of Civility as its community read. Last week, after a year of conversations and reading and planning, nearly 400 people came together for the Civility Dialogues, with so much interest that the event had to be moved to a larger venue, something Axios actually reported on before I arrived.

I joined Bob, members of the City Council, former superintendent Greg Robinson and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who also served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Obama and Biden, and we talked about the challenges to civility, but also about the opportunity for Urbandale to become a hub of renewal in Iowa.

Governor Vilsack has a striking history with political violence himself. His entrance into public life came after the mayor of his town was shot and killed during a city council meeting, leaving a vacancy that Vilsack was encouraged to fill, and he has been mindful of the threat of political violence ever since.

I loved what he said toward the end of our conversation. He didn’t really know anything about me or what we had been building over the past year, although of course he knew Bob and knew Urbandale, but after listening to the conversation he said that he loved what Urbandale was building and wanted to see it become a model for the rest of Iowa.

As Business Record Reported:

Vilsack urged Urbandale to make civility something Iowa is known for.

“I love this. It’s a great forum,” Vilsack said. “But what if Urbandale becomes the center of [civility] and Urbandale is so successful at it that communities around the state begin to adopt it. Instead of us trying to lure people to our state or keep people in our state by talking about tax breaks or all the things that we talk about, what if Iowa was the place that was known as the center of civility?”

Read about the Urbandale event

I love that vision because it is exactly what Bob and other leaders in Urbandale and I have been talking about for the past year. The goal was never to get nearly 400 people into an auditorium, and it wasn’t even to have *The Soul of Civility* as a community read. The goal was to widen the circle, to bring more and more voices into the conversation across Urbandale, and to have leaders throughout the community embody flourishing across difference as a way of life.

I told everyone that evening that this is their project now. It isn’t my project, and it isn’t even Bob’s project. It is part of their duty of citizenship to show up, to recognize the dignity and humanity of the other, day in and day out.

The next day, St. Ambrose

The next morning, I went to Davenport, Iowa, to St. Ambrose University, where a professor named Joseph Hebert had reached out to me last year and invited me to speak. I said, How about this? How about we build an era of multidimensional human flourishing on your campus?

And he said yes.

Joseph recruited a Civic Renaissance Ambassador cohort of about 30 people from the campus and surrounding community. He taught *The Soul of Civility* last semester, and now he has built an entire course on civil discourse, with my book as a central text, that is part of the core curriculum at St. Ambrose. If anyone is interested in that syllabus, write to me and I’ll be happy to share it with you, because I just love that. And now they are developing a certification program in civility for students and people across the university.

One story from my time there I will never forget. A philosophy professor told us that she teaches a course on human conflict, and she couldn’t get her students to talk, couldn’t get them to share what they actually thought, until finally one brave student explained why. She didn’t want to know what her fellow students believed, because once she knew, she couldn’t unknow it, and if they held certain views she found contemptible, she worried she wouldn’t be able to remain friends with them.

I thought that was such a powerful reflection of this chilling effect happening in workplaces and universities across the country, where people are afraid to voice their opinions, afraid to share deeply held ideas about who they are and what they believe, because they fear reprisal or social repercussions.

We talk a great deal about free speech in terms of laws and policies, and rightly so, but there is also a culture that has to exist underneath free speech. You can formally possess the right to speak and still live in a community where no one is willing to exercise it, which is something I’ll be thinking about later this week when I head to Nashville for the Global Free Speech Summit.

But first, Buc-ee’s.

“Are you in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s?”

Palmer Lake is this beautiful mountainside town of about 2,500 people, 15 or so minutes outside Colorado Springs, and for the past few years it has been in national headlines over a proposed Buc-ee’s.

I first learned about what was happening there through Lori Jarvis and Lisa Brandt, two wonderful women in Colorado Springs who reached out to me a few months after *The Soul of Civility* came out and eventually founded Reclaiming Civility. They brought me to Colorado Springs this spring, and while I was there I met the mayor of Palmer Lake, who told me that Lori and Lisa had given him my book, he had read it and loved it, and then he asked me: Can you help us?

I laughed and told him that I didn’t think I could solve his Buc-ee’s problem, but I would love to partner with him and other people in the community to think about what kind of future could transcend this particular division, because the thing that struck me immediately was that whether people were against Buc-ee’s being developed or for it, they were arguing from what they understood to be love of their community.

The people who didn’t want Buc-ee’s worried about the environment, traffic, development, and what an enormous fluorescent gas station would do to the character of this tiny mountainside town. The people who wanted it worried about the tax base, roads, schools, public services and the long-term financial health of a community that has struggled to pay its bills.

They disagreed, in other words, about what love of Palmer Lake required.

And the disagreement got vicious, with slashed tires, recalls, resignations, lawsuits, restraining orders, public firings and scandals, just thing after thing that this poor town has endured over the past few years. Eventually *The Washington Post* and *The Wall Street Journal* and others arrived and reported on how this tiny town was tearing itself apart, making Palmer Lake something of a national case study in the decline of civility in America, which of course only added insult to injury because no community wants to become a poster child for division and instability.

So when the mayor asked me if I could help, I said: Let’s keep talking.

I happened to be going to Aspen in June, and a few weeks beforehand I reached out and said, I know this is last minute, but I’m going to be in Colorado, so what if we put together a leadership retreat, invite people from Palmer Lake and across the Pikes Peak region, and start thinking together about what comes next?

Within a few weeks, about 25 leaders from across the region gathered in Palmer Lake, with neighboring communities and local foundations helping support the gathering. We talked and ate and rested and asked people what they loved about their communities, what had been lost, and what they wanted to build.

And somewhere in the process, I started getting hate mail.

I’m not someone who gets a ton of hate mail, but people were skeptical. Some were angry that they hadn’t been invited or hadn’t had enough notice, some didn’t like who was involved, and because the mayor had been vocal about his view on Buc-ee’s, some people saw my willingness to work with him as evidence that I must somehow be on his side.

So I started getting notes: Who is paying for this? Why are you in my community? Why are you working with this mayor? Are you in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s? I don’t need your book. We don’t need civility here.

People wanted me to pick a side. They wanted me to litigate what had happened, decide who had behaved badly, who had been uncivil, who was right about Buc-ee’s and who was wrong.

And I wasn’t going to do that, because that isn’t my role. I don’t come into a community to arbitrate every past grievance or tell people whose anger is justified. I want to partner with leaders, institutions and communities who want to build, and ask what they can build now, what kind of community they want to be when this particular fight is over.

So I wrote back to people who were angry with me and told them I hoped they would come. I wanted to meet them in person. It was an earnest invitation, because if this was going to mean anything, we needed those voices in the room, too.

The part I couldn’t have planned

A few months ago, after our June retreat, the mayor’s wife was telling some fellow citizens about what had happened, including a woman named Becky Albright, a lonngtime Palmer Lake Resident. When she mentioned that I had just been in town and had written The Soul of Civility, Becky said: You’re joking. I know that book!

A year earlier, Becky had encountered The Soul of Civility, had it recommended to her in several different places, read it with people at her church, and thought: This is what our community needs.

She had actually put together an entire proposal and taken it to the mayors of Palmer Lake and neighboring Monument, asking whether they could use the book as a launchpad for healing in these two deeply interconnected communities. At the time, the political will wasn’t there, the idea was put on hold, and things got worse.

And then, a year later, entirely independently of anything Becky had tried to do, I showed up in Palmer Lake.

I love that.

I love that she had found the book, read it with her church, looked around at what was happening in her own community and tried to do something with it, and then a year later discovered that somehow the author of this same book had wandered into Palmer Lake without either of us having any idea that the other existed.

Becky has now spent the past few months leading an initiative to bring Palmer Lake and Monument together, and tonight I’ll be back. I’ll do a book signing at Covered Treasures, a wonderful local bookstore, and then we’ll head across the street to the Chamber of Commerce in Monument, where I’ll give a few framing remarks before we get to work.

We’re going to sit around tables together and ask some hard questions about why people live there, what they love about this place, what problems they see, what has been lost, what their communities need and what they could actually build together. Tonight also launches a Palmer Lake and Monument community read of *The Soul of Civility* that will continue through Christmas.

And maybe some of the Buc-ee’s haters will be there, maybe even some of the people who thought I was in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s, and I hope they come. I’ll gladly tell them that I’m not, and I’ll gladly invite them into the conversation with us, because we need all of those voices there.

Tomorrow, Colorado Springs

Tomorrow I’ll be in Colorado Springs with Lori and Lisa and Reclaiming Civility for something they have been working toward for years, their own version of the Carmel Civility Summit that helped inspire all of this in the first place.

They are gathering leaders from across the Pikes Peak region for a full-day civility summit, culminating in a civility pledge for public leaders. Colorado Springs has had its own divisions in recent years, within the City Council and between the council and the mayor, and yet Lori and Lisa have managed to bring people across those divisions together around civility, with both the mayor and City Council supporting a proclamation around the initiative last week.

I find that incredible, not because the disagreements have disappeared, because they haven’t and they shouldn’t have to, but because that has never been my argument about civility in the first place. The question is what we do with one another when the disagreement remains.

From Colorado I head to Nashville this weekend for the Global Free Speech Summit, where I’ll be talking about free speech, antisemitism and campus culture, and thinking again about that student at St. Ambrose who was afraid to discover what her classmates believed. The weekend after that, I’ll be speaking at the Front Porch Republic conference, and later in October I’ll be at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church back home in Indianapolis.

Things are happening very fast right now, and I don’t always have time to keep you all up to date on them as they happen, but looking back at Iowa last week and ahead to Colorado this week, I keep thinking about how different all of these communities are and how differently these ideas have found their way into them.

Bob found his way to Carmel, took the ideas home to Urbandale, and a year later nearly 400 people were sitting in an auditorium talking about what kind of community they wanted to be. Joseph read the book and built a course, a cohort and now a certification program at St. Ambrose. Becky found the book entirely on her own, read it with her church, tried to bring it to Palmer Lake, and then, a year later, discovered that I had somehow shown up there anyway. Lori and Lisa read it, reached out to me, and have spent years building Reclaiming Civility in Colorado Springs.

I could never have planned all of that, and increasingly, that is what I love most about this season: watching these ideas leave the pages of a book and become something that belongs to other people, who take them into their own cities and universities and churches and institutions and make something with them that I could never have made myself.

So wish me luck, and come say hi at any of these stops along the way. And if you happen to be in Palmer Lake tonight, especially if you think I’m in the pocket of Big Buc-ee’s, please come. I’d love to meet you.

Thank you for being part of the Civic Renaissance Community!

I write with two invitations and two stories. We have a wonderful problem in Iowa: too many people want to come talk about civility.

Next Tuesday, I’m headed to Urbandale, Iowa, for an experiment a year in the making. After that, I head to St. Ambrose University. I hope you can join me for both.

In Urbandale, were originally supposed to gather at the local library, in a room that holds fewer than 100 people. But the RSVPs kept coming, so many that the city has now moved us to Urbandale High School’s Performing Arts Center, which can hold up to 1,000.

Axios picked up the story this week. Apparently, in an age when we are regularly told that Americans have lost interest in one another except as objects of outrage, hundreds of Iowans wanting to spend an evening talking about how to live together is news.

I think it is, too.

The story

My favorite part is the story of how we got here.

Next month marks three years since The Soul of Civility came into the world. Almost immediately after it did, something happened that I had hoped for but could not have planned: leaders began reaching out to me with a wonderfully practical question. We lovedf you book, they told me. But how do we embody them?

One of the communities that decided to find out was Carmel, Indiana.

Carmel had endured its own seasons of division. Elections had become ugly. School board and city council fights had become increasingly bitter. And some local leaders decided they did not simply want to lament the state of things. They wanted to build something better.

So they invited me to the Carmel library to talk about The Soul of Civility. We thought a few dozen people might come.

Over than 300 showed up.

The hunger was palpable, and what began as an evening at the library grew into something much larger. Local citizens built Project Civility, a nonprofit devoted to carrying the effort forward. Then, last September, we partnered to convene the first Carmel Civility Summit, bringing together more than 100 mayors, city councilors, members of Congress, community leaders, and others from 17 states and Canada to explore what it looks like to build communities capable of flourishing across difference.

One of the people who came was Bob Andeweg, the longtime mayor of Urbandale, Iowa.

Bob saw what was happening in Carmel and told me that he wanted to do something like it in his own community.

Let’s get to work, I told him.

Not long after the summit, Bob and I got on the phone. He had a magnificent and characteristically mayoral vision: he wanted to build a civility initiative across the entire greater Des Moines region.

I loved it. But I asked him a question that has become increasingly important to me as I have traveled around the country talking with people who are discouraged about the state of our common life: What can you actually control right now?

Urbandale, Bob said.

So we started with Urbandale.

Urbandale was not a community in crisis. Bob has led the city for 25 years, and the community has spent decades investing in character and civic culture. Yet Bob did not want to wait until relationships had fractured, a controversy had exploded, or neighbors had stopped speaking to one another before deciding that the habits that sustain life together were worth cultivating.

He wanted to build before the crisis came.

Over the past year, that is what Urbandale has been doing. Bob started by gifting The Soul of Civility to his City Council. Then, the book became a community read. The city built a Civility Series around it. People have read together, gathered together, and practiced having the sorts of conversations that become much harder once we are already angry with one another.

And now, a year after Bob came to Carmel and wondered whether something similar might be possible in Iowa, I get to go see what Urbandale has built.

On Tuesday, September 22, I’ll join former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Mayor Andeweg, and other Iowa leaders for Urbandale’s Civility Dialogues.

We thought we needed a room for fewer than 100 people.

Now we have a room for 1,000.

There is something here that I think we miss when we tell the story of America primarily through its ugliest moments.

We pay enormous attention to civic breakdown, and understandably so. We see the school board meeting that descends into shouting, the city council meeting where neighbors treat one another as enemies, the political fight that fractures a community. Those stories are real, and I have spent the past three years visiting communities living through them.

St. Ambrose

Last year, a professor at St. Ambrose University reached out and asked me to come speak.

But buried in his note was something much more interesting.

He told me he was teaching *The Soul of Civility* in an upper-level seminar on Public Discourse, and that he hoped to make the book a lynchpin of a new introductory core course on civil discourse.

So instead of simply saying yes to another lecture, I asked a different question: What if we built something together?

St. Ambrose had been wrestling with something I hear about on campuses across the country: the chilling effects that arise when people become afraid of saying what they actually think. Fear of reprisal. Suspicion of one another. The quiet calculation before speaking: What will happen to me if I say this?

A lecture might name that problem. It would not, by itself, change the culture that produced it.

So we began talking about something larger.

I shared what we were experimenting with at Cornell, where faculty were reading *The Soul of Civility* together and thinking about how its ideas might shape the culture of their institution. We talked about bringing together faculty, students, student life, and people already stewarding programs and communities at St. Ambrose. Not creating another committee for the sake of creating a committee, but equipping people who already shape the life of the university to bring these ideas into the places they lead.

And then something wonderful happened.

I invited the professor who first contacted me to become a Civic Renaissance Ambassador. He, in turn, began assembling his own Civic Renaissance Ambassador cohort at St. Ambrose, a group committed not simply to talking about civility, but to helping build and sustain a culture capable of flourishing across difference.

Over the past year, people across the university, and even in the broader Davenport community, have been reading the book and asking what these ideas might look like in practice.

Next week, I finally get to join them in person.

We will gather first for lunch, then for a public lecture, followed by a panel of practitioners from across the university sharing what they are actually doing to put The Soul of Civility into practice and bring its ideas to life.

That last part matters enormously to me.

Because the interesting question is no longer simply: Can we persuade people that civility matters?

It is: What happens when people begin building institutions around it?

A professor puts a book into a course. Colleagues begin reading together. Students enter the conversation. People already leading programs begin experimenting with the ideas. A cohort forms. The surrounding community joins in. And eventually the author showing up to give a lecture becomes only one small part of a much larger story.

That is what I want Civic Renaissance to help make possible.

And next week is not the culmination of what we are building at St. Ambrose. It is the beginning.

I cannot wait to see what we create together.

If you’re in the Quad Cities, join us!

The national story

Exciting things are afoot in Iowa. But another story is unfolding alongside that one, and I have had the extraordinary privilege of watching it happen.

People are building.

Mayors are calling other mayors. Citizens are starting organizations. Libraries are filling rooms. Communities are reading books together. Leaders are looking at what worked somewhere else, bringing it home, adapting it, and trying again.

And perhaps most importantly, they are beginning to reject the paralyzing question that so often accompanies our anxiety about the country: How are we ever going to fix America?

I don’t know.

But I know what happened when Bob and I asked a smaller question: What can you build, right here, with what is within your reach?

A year ago, Bob came to Carmel and saw what one community was building. He took an idea home to Iowa, and now hundreds of people want to be part of it.

That is how culture changes. Not all at once, and not because somebody somewhere finally fixes everything for us, but because human beings decide to cultivate the places and relationships actually entrusted to them, and then somebody else sees what they have built and thinks: We could do that, too.

There is a civic renaissance happening in Iowa.

And, gracious reader, I increasingly think it is happening all over the country.

If you are anywhere near Des Moines, I would love for you to come see it for yourself on Tuesday night. Bring a friend, bring someone with whom you disagree, or send this along to an Iowan who ought to be in the room.

Tuesday, September 22, 6 p.m.

Urbandale High School Performing Arts Center

The event is free, but registration is required. I hope to see you there!

Read the Axios piece here.

Join us in Urbandale by registering below!

Join is in St. Ambrose here!

In this edition of Civic Renaissance:

• Embody the Florentine Renaissance with me: I am exploring a small Civic Renaissance journey to Florence this November. Write to me if you’re interested in joining us.

• Join us at the Cassiciacum: Our next Civic Renaissance Retreat—a feast for mind, body and spirit where I gather leaders across politics, geography and vocation to embody the renaissance and flourishing we’re trying to build, and then leaving comissioned to build it— is August 21–22 in Indianapolis, and we are nearly at capacity. Write to me if you’re interested in joining us.

• How to handle haters: What a neighborhood controversy, an angry contractor, and 300 Arizona city managers have taught me about criticism, leadership, and the decision to keep building.

Hi, everyone!

I hope you have had a wonderful summer.

I have spent several lovely weeks as offline as possible. After a keynote in London, I traveled through France and Italy with my family, ending in Florence. Then I came home and became very sick, which set me back several weeks. I am only now beginning to find my footing again, with just a few weeks of summer left.

But I returned with an idea.

Walk the Florentine Renaissance with me

I am considering hosting a Civic Renaissance journey to Florence this November, perhaps for a week or ten days.

We would walk in the footsteps of Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, the Medici family, and the remarkable patrons, artists, writers, statesmen, and thinkers who built the Florentine Renaissance.

The civic humanists of Florence returned to the wisdom of the ancient world to meet the needs of their own time. They did not study history as an escape from the present. They studied it to become wiser citizens, leaders, creators, and human beings.

I want us to do the same.

Each day, we might inhabit a different part of the city and encounter the lives and legacies of the people who made Florence what it became. We would explore the ecosystem that allowed Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, and so many others to flourish.

And we would not rush.

One of the gifts of Italy is il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. It is related, in spirit, to the ancient Greek idea of scholē, leisure released from immediate necessity and available for conversation, study, contemplation, creation, and self-cultivation. Our word *school* ultimately comes from this Greek root.

I want the trip to contain that kind of spaciousness. We would do less, but inhabit more. We would sit, converse, read, walk, eat, rest, and let the city teach us.

If this sounds wonderful to you, reply to this email with Renaissance Tour in the subject line. I am curious how many of you might want to come. I hope to host an informational session in the next few weeks.

The next Civic Renaissance Retreat

Speaking of scholē, our next Civic Renaissance Retreat will take place August 21–22 at the Cassiciacum, our home in Indianapolis.

We are almost at capacity, but I may have room for a few more people who feel a particular desire to join us.

These retreats convene leaders from across politics, geography, and vocation. Together, we consider the kind of world we want to build, the conditions that allow human beings and communities to flourish, and what each of us is prepared to create when we return home.

I think of them as feasts for mind, body, and spirit.

Our April retreat gathered 50 leaders from across the United States and Canada, including Mitch Daniels and Daryl Davis. It was so hopeful and joy-filled that people immediately began asking when we would do it again.

These gatherings embody the multidimensional human flourishing we hope to cultivate elsewhere. We eat, think, rest, argue, laugh, and build friendships across real differences. Then we leave commissioned to create something in our own institutions and communities.

If you hoped to attend the last retreat and could not, reply with Civic Renaissance Retreat in the subject line. Tell me a little about why you would like to come, and I will let you know whether space remains.

Now, to the haters.

When people are determined to misunderstand us

Last week, I spoke to nearly 300 city managers in Arizona.

City managers are essentially the CEOs of communities. Mayors and city councils are elected, but city managers are career public servants and subject-matter experts responsible for the actual administration of a city.

Again and again, I heard some version of the same question:

What do we do about the one citizen, council member, critic, or online antagonist who seems impossible to please? The person who attacks every decision, assumes the worst, and appears far more interested in destroying than building?

I have been thinking about that question because I recently had my own small encounter with a public pile-on.

Earlier this summer, I agreed to host a neighborhood listening session with a mayoral candidate.

I was less interested in staging a campaign event than in gathering my neighbors. I wanted us to meet one another, talk about what we hoped for our community, and allow a potential mayor to hear directly from the people he hoped to serve.

This is increasingly what I do across the country. I am an author and speaker, but I have also discovered that I am a civic architect. I help local leaders gather people, recover a shared vision, and create practical ways of strengthening their communities.

I wanted to begin doing more of that in my own neighborhood.

So I made a little poster inviting people to a conversation about building a Civic Renaissance in Indianapolis. Then I posted it online.

That was my miscalculation.

People who opposed the candidate recast the gathering as a partisan campaign event. Someone screenshotted the invitation and posted it elsewhere. Strangers began searching through my history for evidence that I was secretly a political operative.

They found organizations I had addressed and treated a speaking engagement as proof of ideological allegiance.

But I speak to people across political parties, institutions, and vocations. I have traveled to 160 cities in six countries. I go where I am invited and where people are hungry to learn how to flourish across difference.

That did not matter.

In a pile-on, complexity becomes inconvenient. People need a villain simple enough to fit inside a comment.

Then a former contractor appeared in the discussion and accused me of failing to pay him.

I had paid him approximately $50,000. His work had also required costly repairs and correction by other people. I had invoices, photographs, text messages, and receipts.

I wanted to post all of it.

I wanted to explain the event. I wanted to list the ideologically diverse institutions where I have spoken. I wanted to correct every falsehood and expose every contradiction.

I also wanted to cancel the gathering.

These were people in my own community. Some of them knew where I lived. I felt attacked, misrepresented, and a little afraid. I wondered whether I had made a serious mistake by opening my home and attempting to serve my neighborhood.

We held the event anyway.

About 50 people came. Some were neighbors I had not spoken with in years. Others had seen the invitation online and arrived because they were hungry for precisely the kind of conversation we were offering.

It was hopeful, warm, substantive, and alive.

People met one another. They shared ideas. They spoke honestly about what they wanted for our community. A public leader listened to them.

I left grateful that I had not allowed the ugliest reaction to the invitation to determine whether the invitation had been worthwhile.

That experience clarified several things for me.

A pile-on is not a referendum

When hundreds of comments appear beneath a post, they can create the sensation that the public has rendered a verdict.

Usually, it has not.

A comment section is a self-selected group responding to a particular framing of an event. The people who are content, curious, busy, generous, or waiting for more information are less likely to participate. Anger recruits participation more efficiently than proportion.

Volume is not consensus.

A few dozen people repeating the same accusation can still represent a tiny and unusually activated fraction of the relevant community.

This does not mean criticism is false. It means we should examine the substance of criticism without allowing its volume to impersonate authority.

Your critics may be helping your people find you

The public invitation exposed me to people who wanted to distort what I was doing.

It also reached people I otherwise would never have met.

That is the duality of visibility.

The same open door that allows contempt to enter also allows friendship, discovery, and unexpected possibility to enter. We cannot make ourselves available only to the right people. Public life does not permit that level of control.

Sometimes criticism becomes a sorting mechanism. It clarifies who is interested in understanding, who is committed to misunderstanding, and who has been quietly waiting for someone to set a table.

The people criticizing the gathering were not its only audience. They were simply the loudest audience for a few hours.

The more important audience walked through my door.

The desire to answer immediately is usually about pain, not strategy

When someone lies about us, speed feels like strength.

It often is not.

The first draft of a defense is usually written by the wounded nervous system. It wants relief, vindication, and the restoration of control. But the internet rarely provides any of those things.

A rapid response can enlarge a controversy, introduce it to people who would never have seen it, and bind our reputation to the accusation we hoped to escape.

There are times when a public correction is necessary, especially when a falsehood threatens another person, an institution, a livelihood, or public safety. Silence is not a universal rule.

But the question should be strategic:

Will responding materially protect something important, or will it simply provide another round of entertainment?

Those are different goals.

Keep the receipts, but do not assume you must publish them

Restraint does not require helplessness.

I kept the records involving the contractor. I preserved the invoices, messages, photographs, and evidence. If the allegation ever entered a setting where it could cause material harm, I would be able to answer it.

But possessing a defense and deploying it are two different decisions.

This is one of the most useful disciplines in public life: prepare the response you may need, then decide whether anyone needs to see it.

The existence of evidence can give us the confidence not to perform our innocence for strangers.

## Some criticism should change us

There is a flattering version of advice about haters that says criticism proves we are important, brave, or successful.

Sometimes criticism proves that we communicated badly, exercised poor judgment, hurt someone, or failed to see what another person could plainly see.

The point is not to ignore critics. The point is to refuse to surrender discernment to them.

I try to ask:

Is this true?

Is any part of it true?

Is this coming from someone with knowledge, standing, or goodwill?

Is there a repair I should make, even if the accusation itself is unfair?

In this case, I could see that I had posted a neighborhood invitation in a forum much larger and more politically charged than the gathering required. That was useful information. I can make better decisions about context and distribution next time.

I did not conclude that convening my neighbors was wrong.

Maturity requires enough humility to learn from criticism and enough steadiness not to be remade by every critic.

Do not make your hater the central character in your story

This may be the most counterintuitive lesson.

Criticism makes the critic feel enormous. We begin organizing our decisions, writing, conversations, and imagination around the person who attacked us.

They become the invisible reader of everything we write.

That gives them far more power than their original criticism possessed.

The answer is to return our attention to the people we intended to serve.

Who came to the gathering?

What did they need?

What became possible because we continued?

What should we build next?

Attention is one of the primary currencies of leadership. We should be careful about spending most of it on people who have no intention of joining us in creating anything.

Let your life become your argument

I thought of Albert Schweitzer.

Schweitzer was an Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician who established a hospital at Lambaréné, in present-day Gabon. The hospital became his life’s defining undertaking.

His legacy is complicated, as nearly every serious historical legacy is. His writing about Africa sometimes reflected the paternalism of his era, and later scholars have raised substantial criticisms of his conduct and assumptions. We should not flatten him into a saint.

But one part of his example continues to arrest me.

He criticized European claims to civilization that coexisted with cruelty, exploitation, and indifference to human life. His answer was his philosophy of reverence for life, joined to concrete service.

He did not possess the power to reorder governments or end colonialism by decree. He could decide what his own life would contribute.

So he built Lambaréné.

There is a phrase associated with his example: each person can have a Lambaréné of his or her own. The exact textual source is uncertain, so I use it as a summary of the lesson rather than as a verified quotation.

Each of us has some place where conviction can take material form.

A classroom. A company. A courtroom. A city office. A kitchen table. A hospital. A neighborhood gathering. A retreat. A friendship across a division everyone else has accepted as permanent.

Online criticism feels powerful because it is immediate and visible.

Building is slower. Its results are not always legible to strangers. It asks more of us than language does.

But building is power.

Fifty people sitting together and considering what they could create in their own community mattered more than hundreds of comments made by people who were never going to attend.

The event was the answer.

The goal is not to defeat the hater

The goal is to remain free enough to continue.

Free enough to examine criticism honestly.

Free enough to apologize when we are wrong.

Free enough to remain silent when a response would only feed the spectacle.

Free enough to protect ourselves without becoming consumed by self-defense.

Free enough to keep setting tables.

Free enough to build our own Lambaréné.

That is what I hope Civic Renaissance will become: a community of co-creators who do more than consume ideas.

I want you to read *The Soul of Civility*. I want its ideas to inspire you. But I also want those ideas to change how you live, lead, host, speak, listen, and build.

Your critics may continue talking.

Let them remind you to examine yourself. Let them teach you where greater precision or wisdom is needed. Then return to the people you are called to serve.

Let your life be your argument.

I would love to hear from you. When have you been misunderstood or publicly criticized? What helped you discern whether to answer, repair, ignore, or keep building?

Reply to this email and tell me your story.

Warmly,

Lexi

What did spending three days with 300 city managers teach me about how to live, lead, or think differently?

Last week, I had the privilege of spending three days in Tucson with more than 300 city managers from across Arizona with the Arizona City/County Management Association (ACMA).

City managers are the unsung heroes of local government, the chief executives responsible for the day-to-day leadership of America’s cities and towns.

You might expect our conversations to revolve around budgets, infrastructure, housing, and economic development.

Those topics certainly came up.

What surprised me was how often the conversation returned to relationships and social trust, or more often, the absence of it.

A journalist determined to create conflict.

A colleague who made collaboration nearly impossible.

An elected official who seemed more interested in winning than solving problems.

A citizen who consistently made civic life more difficult.

These stories are familiar to anyone in leadership.

My challenge to these leaders was simple.

Don’t spend your energy trying to change other people.

You cannot make another person more charitable, more reasonable, more curious, or more willing to listen.

You can, however, govern yourself.

You can choose to become the kind of leader who listens first, assumes good faith before bad motives, extends respect before it is reciprocated, and responds with steadiness instead of contempt.

Strong leaders also understand something else.

They don’t wait until there is a problem to begin building trust. They don’t wait until a public meeting erupts to start listening. They don’t wait until controversy arrives to get to know the people with whom they’ll eventually disagree.

They know that once a crisis arrives, they are drawing on a reservoir of trust they have spent years cultivating.

Years ago, while writing The Soul of Civility, I discovered that civility is not merely politeness. It is the disposition of the heart to recognize every person as our equal in dignity and therefore worthy of respect. From that disposition flow the habits of citizenship that enable people with genuine differences to deliberate honestly, solve problems together, and pursue a shared future without demanding uniformity.

Listening to these leaders in Tucson, I was struck by how often that principle surfaced in practice.

A Civic Renaissance does not begin after trust has collapsed.

It begins years earlier, when leaders cultivate friendships across differences, strengthen local institutions, create opportunities for neighbors to know one another, and invest in the civic culture of their communities before division takes root.

Whether you are raising children, leading a business, serving your neighborhood, or managing a city, the principle is the same.

The relationships you build before a crisis will often determine what is possible when the crisis arrives.

Join the Civic Renaissance

One of the greatest privileges of my life is watching something beautiful happen in communities across North America.

Leaders are no longer asking me to come give a speech and move on.

They’re asking a much better question:

How do we become the kind of community where people can flourish across difference?

That question is bringing together mayors and city councils, university presidents and students, pastors and congregants, business leaders and neighbors. They come from different political parties, different faith traditions, different professions, and different generations. They don’t gather because they agree about everything.

They gather because they believe their communities are worth building together.

That’s what Civic Renaissance is.

It’s not a program.

It’s not a conference.

It’s a growing community of leaders committed to cultivating the habits, relationships, and institutions that make human flourishing possible.

The Soul of Civility provides a shared language. But books alone don’t change cultures. People do.

When a city chooses to read together, when a university commits to forming students who can disagree with humility and conviction, when pastors, public officials, business leaders, and citizens begin imagining a healthier future together, something remarkable happens.

Ideas become habits.

Habits become culture.

Culture begins to change.

This September, I’ll have the joy of returning to three communities that are continuing that journey.

In Urbandale, Iowa, local leaders will gather again to deepen the culture they began building through a community-wide reading of The Soul of Civility.

At St. Ambrose University, I’ll spend time with a flourishing Civic Renaissance Ambassador community that is helping these ideas take root across campus through reading groups, conversations, and leadership.

And in Colorado Springs, I’ll return to continue partnering with public leaders after an earlier Civic Renaissance Leadership Retreat, this time convening more than 100 civic leaders committed to strengthening their capacity to flourish across difference.

What encourages me most isn’t that these communities invited me once.

It’s that they’re choosing to keep building after reading my book and beyond my visit.

That’s the vision.

Not a memorable one-off event.

Not another initiative that fades away.

A culture that becomes more generous, more courageous, more trusting, and more capable of living with deep differences without losing our shared humanity.

If that vision resonates with you, I’d love for you to be part of it.

Whether you’re a mayor, educator, pastor, business leader, student, philanthropist, or simply someone who loves your community, there’s a place for you in Civic Renaissance.

The future of our communities won’t be shaped by people waiting for someone else to fix them.

It will be shaped by ordinary leaders who decide to become architects of a healthier common life.

I’d be honored to build alongside you.

Earlier this June, nestled in a magnificent, tranquil setting at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, something remarkable happened in the Colorado Springs region.

Leaders from three neighboring communities gathered for a Civic Renaissance Leadership Retreat. They came to step back from the urgent demands of daily life and public leadership. They came to reflect, to dream, to build relationships, and to imagine what a flourishing future might look like for the region they call home.

That kind of space is increasingly rare.

Most leaders spend their days reacting to problems, responding to crises, and navigating conflict. Yet renewal requires something different. It requires time to think. Time to listen. Time to cultivate friendship. Time to ask not merely what must be managed, but what might be built.

The setting itself was part of the argument.

Surrounded by mountains, gathered around beautiful tables, and nourished by extraordinary meals prepared by a Greek chef, participants experienced a vision of abundance. Beauty matters. Hospitality matters. Shared meals matter. They remind us that a richer, more human way of life is possible, and that communities can be shaped by something greater than scarcity, cynicism, and conflict.

That lesson felt especially significant in this region.

In recent years, Palmer Lake became the epicenter of a controversy surrounding a proposed Buc-ee’s development. The debate drew national attention, generated headlines in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and exposed painful divisions within the community.

Buc-ee’s broke a small Colorado town

WSJ - How a rest stop divided

But the leaders who chosed to gather with us at the retreat understood something important: the past is not prologue.

Rather than allowing division to define their future, they chose renewal.

That is why it was so meaningful that the retreat was hosted in Palmer Lake itself. Together, local leaders chose to tell a different story. Not a story of polarization and conflict, but of friendship, trust, imagination, and a shared commitment to building something better.

Over meals, conversations, walks, and strategic planning sessions, participants explored what it would take to cultivate flourishing communities and create the conditions for people to thrive across differences. They left with new friendships, renewed hope, and practical plans for what comes next.

This video captures a glimpse of that work.

Thank you to the leaders in Colorado

Thank you to Andrew Gunning, Lisa Brandt, Lori Leander, Nancy Henjum, Kimberly Gold, Dennis Stern, Mitch LaKind, and so many others who chose to invest in a better future for their region.

You remind us that renewal is possible.

You remind us that we have more power than we realize.

Each of us has the ability to help shape the story of the places we call home. We can step back. We can gather others. We can cultivate beauty, friendship, trust, and purpose. We can choose to build.

Today, I am honored to share your story with 4,500 leaders at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference in London during my session on The Soul of Civility.

If you’re at ARC, come by the Civic Renaissane booth and receive a gifted packet of wildflower seeds to help remind us that we each have a role

You can’t miss us. We’re the only booth with fresh peonies and olive branches—naturally!

I hope this story of Colorado Springs inspires others as much as it inspired me.

This is what a Civic Renaissance looks like.

This morning, I was frustrated at my children for having cavities.

Four minutes later, I hit a stopped trailer with my car.

So this is an essay about grace.

There is so much I want to share with you from the last few weeks. I want to tell you about my weekend at the Aspen Institute’s Executive Seminar, where we read Plato and Aristotle and Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and other timeless texts, some I had read before and needed to read again, and some I had never encountered.

I also want to tell you about the leadership retreat I hosted in Palmer Lake, Colorado, a very small and beautiful community that has been divided for years over a proposed Buc-ee’s. We gathered 25 leaders from across the Pikes Peak region, including several mayors and leaders from half a dozen communities, to ask: How do we rebuild after years of division? How do we begin again after civic trust has been damaged?

I want to tell you all of that. And I will.

But today, let’s talk about grace—something I think we could all use a bit more of right now.

Grace

This morning, I got my kids up early for a dentist appointment. We rushed out the door, crumbs from half eaten croissant in our wake. My daughter was still in her pajamas. Everyone was tired.

And then the appointment did not go well.

There were cavities.

Again.

Last summer, my son had a mouthful of cavities, which meant extractions and crowns and thousands of dollars and a lot of suffering for my poor little six-year-old. So when I heard there were more cavities today, I felt my frustration rising.

I was mad at all the times that they had sneaked candy and sweets without permission. Mad that they had not brushed their teeth well. Mad that they would not even keep their mouths open long enough for the dentist to do a full exam.

Not my proudest mothering moment.

We loaded into the car, and I called my husband and had him on speakerphone to the car as I recounted to him what had happened. As I was talking, I could hear myself being pretty graceless toward my children.

And then, minutes later, I hit a stopped trailer in front of me.

Thankfully, everyone was okay. But I felt sick.

We pulled over. We exchanged information. I checked on the kids. And then I felt something else too: profoundly, painfully humbled.

I pulled my children aside and told them the truth.

Mama was being graceless with you. I was angry about your mistakes, about the cavities, about the brushing, about the dentist appointment. And then, almost immediately after being so graceless with you, Mama made a mistake too.

And now Mama needs grace.

Will you forgive me?

Graceful origins

One of the things I love about the etymology of words is that word origins often remember truths we have forgotten. Take the word grace.

Today, many of us think of grace primarily as a theological concept: God’s unearned favor toward us. And rightly so. But long before Christian theologians wrote about grace, the ancient world was already wrestling with the idea.

Our English word grace comes from the Latin gratia, which meant favor, goodwill, kindness, gratitude, beauty, and gift. From the same root we get gratitude, grateful, gratify, and even gratis, something given freely.

The Romans even personified grace. They called them the Gratiae, the Three Graces.

The Three Graces

In Greek mythology, The Three Graces, or Charites, are three goddesses in Greco-Roman art that represent the act of giving, receiving, and returning gifts:

• The generous giver: One of the three graces represents the giver of grace.

• The recipient: The recipient of grace is represented by another of the three graces.

• The recipient extending grace: The last of the three graces represents the recipient extending grace

The Three Graces personify virtues associated with grace. Their names are:

• Aglaea, meaning Splendor or Beauty

• Euphrosyne, meaning Joy or Mirth

• Thalia, meaning Blooming or Abundance

There is a beautiful, virtuous cycle with grace.

It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

The Roman philosopher Seneca discusses this in his work called On Benefits (De Beneficiis). He writes about the Graces as embodying the proper circulation of benefits and gifts within society. In his interpretation, one Grace gives, another receives, and the third returns the gift. The image becomes a visual lesson about generosity, gratitude, and reciprocity.

Seneca writes, “One bestows a benefit, another receives it, a third returns it.”

Renaissance artists and thinkers loved this reading because it transformed the Graces from decorative mythological figures into a meditation on the social fabric itself. Gifts are not meant to stop with the recipient. Grace is received and then passed on.

What’s especially interesting in Primavera is that Botticelli places the Three Graces immediately beside Venus. If Venus governs love rightly understood, then the Graces show what love looks like in practice: generosity, receptivity, and reciprocity.

For someone interested in hospitality, civility, and civic friendship, there is a rich connection here.

The Graces suggest that healthy communities depend on a continual circulation of gifts:

• Host and guest

• Teacher and student

• Neighbor and neighbor

• Citizen and community

One person gives. Another receives. The recipient then becomes a giver in turn.

Grace is not a possession. It is a movement, a lifestyle. And it makes our world go round.

The Renaissance scholar Leon Battista Alberti and others saw the Graces’ joined hands and circular dance as symbolizing that benefits should keep moving through society rather than becoming trapped by selfishness or pride.

That is remarkably close to your own language around hospitality and porching. The porch works because hospitality does not end with the host. Ideally, the guest becomes a future host. The recipient of welcome extends welcome.

The same is true of grace.

Whiplash

The whiplash (pun intended) of being graceless with my kids—and then being so in need of grace myself immediately after—caused me to remeber soemthing that the pastor and theologian that Tim Keller once said: “The unforgiving heart is the unforgiven heart.”

I take that to mean that when we forget how much mercy we ourselves have received, we become stingy with it toward others. We forget our own shortcomings. We forget the moments when we needed patience instead of judgment, help instead of condemnation, a second chance instead of someone keeping score.

Which is why Keller’s insight and Botticelli’s Graces fit together so well. If the unforgiving heart is the unforgiven heart, then perhaps the gracious heart is the one that remembers it has received grace and therefore passes it on.

I was stingy this morning.

And then I needed the very thing I had just failed to give.

That is the thing about grace. We tend to remember it best when we need it.

Not because mistakes do not matter; of course they do. Cavities matter. Car accidents matter. Our choices have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are expensive, painful, embarrassing, or inconvenient. But grace lets us tell the truth about the mistake without making the mistake the whole story.

That is what I want my children to learn.

And, if I’m being honest, what I still need to learn too.

So that is my word for today, mostly to myself: be quicker, more fluent, with grace.

Who needs grace from you today?

And maybe before answering that, it is worth remembering a time when you needed grace, and someone gave it to you.

Wishing you a grace-filled week!

In the news

• Thanks to the Aspen Times for the gracious interview on Flourishing Across Difference. Here is an excerpt you might enjoy:

Bryan: If the problem is deeper than politics or technology, where does the solution begin?

Alexandra: Hyper locally. Hyper individually.

I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet. Culture is built through millions of tiny decisions and interactions. My grandmother understood the importance of ordinary human encounters: Knowing your neighbor’s name, looking your grocery clerk in the eye, taking genuine interest in another person’s culture or experience.

Bryan: She sounds like a wise woman, what else did she leave you with?

Alexandra: That one gracious life can echo across generations. We hear a lot about cycles of trauma and cruelty, but we don’t talk enough about the opposite — that goodness compounds too. I call it “the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul.”

My grandmother treated every person she encountered as sacred. That shaped my mother. It shaped me. It now shapes my children. We underestimate how much power ordinary decency carries, the potential for it to echo through generations.

Bryan: You’ve started turning these ideas into actual civic gatherings and initiatives around the country. What have you learned from that process?

Alexandra: That people are starving for this. A few weeks ago, we hosted 50 leaders from across politics, media, education and public life in our home in Indianapolis. We brought together people who would likely never otherwise share a room together.

The purpose wasn’t agreement. It was flourishing across difference. That phrase is really important to me. The goal is not ideological uniformity. The goal is building a society where disagreement brings out the best in us rather than the worst.

I was thrilled when Town & Country me to comment on a question they had been reflecting on: the meanness growing at all levels of American life.

In Town & Country’s new reported piece on why America seems to have become so mean, I got to share why “unoffendability”—the super power of the 21st century— offers a third way between the two extremes that define modern life: cruel hostility and suffocating politeness.

Why we are trapped between hostility and politeness

One of the tensions of modern life that I explore in The Soul of Civility, and in my recent interview with Town & Country, is that many people feel trapped between two extremes: hostility on one side, and suffocating politeness on the other.

Both cruelty and fake niceness can become dehumanizing. One attacks people openly. The other papers over difference or manipulates people into agreement while avoiding honesty, respect, truth, and genuine engagement.

Our culture increasingly teaches people to interpret discomfort, disagreement, awkwardness, and offense as existential threats.

What can we do?

First, we can and must choose civility, which I define as:

1. The art of human flourishing.

2. The bare minimum of respect we are owed, and owe to others, by virtue of our shared humanity.

3. More than mere politeness, civility demands that we respect others enough to tell hard truths, and respect ourselves enough to speak our mind and set boundaries.

4. Not how we treat those we like, those we agree with, and those who can do things for us in return, but how we treat the other, the stranger, the person we don’t like, the person we disagree with, the person we may never see again, and the person who can never repay us.

Second, we can choose to be unoffendable, the superpower of the 21st century.

Unoffendability

Unoffendability means reclaiming the power we each have to choose how we respond to another person’s meanness.

We cannot control others. We cannot control what they say, how they behave, whether they understand us fairly, or whether they treat us with the dignity we deserve. But we can control ourselves. We can decide what we will do with our hurt, our anger, our embarrassment, and our desire to retaliate.

Unoffendability is not weakness. It is not passivity. It is not pretending that cruelty does not hurt or that injustice does not matter. Far from it. Unoffendability is refusing to surrender our agency to the person who provokes us. It is choosing ownership over our emotions and responses instead of letting another person’s failure determine who we become in that moment.

When we are misunderstood, provoked, criticized, or dismissed, we do not have to collapse into cruelty or fragility. We can maintain perspective, humor, proportion, and self-command. We can tell the truth without contempt. We can defend ourselves without becoming small. We can refuse to let another person’s meanness make us mean.

The relationship between civility and unoffendability is this: both require a secure sense of our own worth and dignity as human beings. When we know our worth to the marrow, we do not have to yell, scream, posture, dominate, or humiliate others to prove our significance. We do not need constant validation, nor do we collapse every time we are criticized, misunderstood, or slighted.

Civility is the outward expression of that security; treating others with respect because we are grounded enough not to see every disagreement as a threat. Unoffendability is the inward posture that makes civility possible; the refusal to surrender our peace, self-command, or humanity every time another person behaves badly.

As I told Town & Country:

“Unoffendability is the superpower of the 21st century.”

Questions for you to consider:

• Where were you unoffendable recently?

• Where, looking back, did you miss an opportunity to be unoffendable and want to do better next time?

I’d love to hear from you.

Each of us has far more power to be part of the solution than we realize.

Let’s choose to be part of the solution.

Thanks for being here.

Looking ahead:

• May 14: ICMA Local Government Reimagined Conference: Democracy and the Public Trust, Philadelphia, PA

• May 19: Social Trust Summit. Chicago, IL

• May 21: Central Iowa Business Conference, Altoona, IA

• June 22-25: ARC Conference, London, UK: I’ll be speaking at the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship Conference this year, adding my voice to the global dialogue on rebuilding the habits of a healthy society. I hope to see you there!

In the news:

• C-SPAN Washington Journal: Lexi Hudson Discusses Civility in American Politics

  Alexandra Hudson discusses efforts to promote civility in American politics considering heated political rhetoric and its potential ties to acts of political violence.

• Art Life Faith Podcast: The Soul of Civility with Alexandra Hudson

  Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. In this episode I had the privilege of having a conversation with Alexandra Hudson, or Lexi, the author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.” A number of weeks ago, she was passing through Tokyo on vacation with her family when she was gracious enough to sit down with me and talk about the various themes in her book and then lead an Art Life Faith event right afterward.

• Fox 21 News: Reclaiming Civility: Cultivating connection and respect in Colorado Springs

• Fox 59: 11th annual Fairbanks Symposium- Watch here

  A media interview about The Civic Renaissance Tour Launch in Indianapolis

• A podcast interview with Michael Lee of the University of Charleston, When We Disagree Podcast: The Soul of Civility, Tested

  What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

• Review of The Soul of Civility in Indiana Capital Chronicle: With all due respect

  Hudson is not alone in her pursuit for civility. A recent surveyshared by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Center on Civility and Democracy reported that 72% of Americans want to see more civility in our nation’s politics. The same survey found that Americans are divided on their outlook for our nation’s future, split nearly in half over whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to come together.

• Review of The Soul of civility in Bitterroot Star: Disagree better

  Our community is full of independent people who don’t like being told what to think. That’s a strength. But independence only works if we can argue honestly without tearing each other apart in the process. This book doesn’t offer a program or a slogan. It offers a reminder of the habits that make self-government possible.

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

The Freedom of Limits

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

Gracious reader,

This past weekend, we gathered 50 leaders for the inaugural Civic Renaissance Retreat, a feast for mind, body, and spirit.

It was an invitation-only retreat for leaders across politics, geography, and vocation who are dissatisfied with the status quo and want to build something new.

Former governors, state representatives, journalists from The Free Press and The Atlantic, educators, school board leaders, superintendents, and practitioners joined us because they care about building an era of multidimensional human flourishing across difference, starting with ourselves.

That was the whole invitation of the weekend.

There were no preconditions and no litmus tests other than this: you cared about building something better, something that does not yet exist.

Why We Gathered

In our divided age, we vacillate between two extremes: hostility and politeness.

Hostility sees others as pawns to be steamrolled, silenced, and forced into agreement.

Politeness sees others as pawns to be managed, smoothed over, and kept comfortable rather than engaged honestly.

Both reflect something deeper: a crisis of dehumanization.

We are not seeing ourselves or one another clearly, as human beings with inherent dignity and worth.

This retreat was an answer to that crisis.

We did not gather to reduce division.

We gathered to flourish across difference.

What We Did

We began by embodying the world we want to build.

We embodied flourishing across difference, abundance, conversation, rest, and the possibility of seeing one another in the fullness of who we are.

I called the Civic Renaissance Retreat a feast for mind, body, and spirit because we are trying to recover a full sense of what it means to be human—mind, body, and spirit.

There was incredible food. Each feast, prepared by Chef Brandon and Chef Conor, carried us into a different golden age, from Ancient Greece at the opening reception to the French Enlightenment the next day, then Florence for Saturday lunch, and finally a Spanish golden age with a closing paella celebration. We had beautiful, intentional, curated meals and gatherings. We had time to rest. We had time to think. We had time to connect.

It was not only a space for reflection and renewal, but a living expression of joy, laughter, games, singing, karaoke, and toasts, a reminder that this work is meant to be embodied and shared together.

It was an unconference as well, with space for spontaneous conversation, because often the best part of a conference is the conversation over lunch, in the hallway, or in the quiet moments between sessions.

We wanted to structure an entire retreat around those moments.

Because we believe in the power of people getting in a room together and building.

What We Saw

One of the most powerful moments of the weekend was our evening with Daryl Davis.

Daryl is an African American jazz musician and a wonderful friend who has spent decades seeking out and befriending members of hate groups.

His whole premise is simple: how can they hate me if they do not even know me?

He told us about people who originally hated him, who denied his right to exist, and who, through friendship and curiosity, changed.

More than 200 members of these groups have given him their robes, flags, and memorabilia as a sign that they were leaving those views behind.

But not every story ends that way.

There are people Daryl has befriended who still hold hateful, dehumanizing views, and yet they remain in relationship.

Daryl said, I think you are wrong, and I am going to tell you I think you are wrong, but I am still going to see you in the fullness of who you are as a human being.

That is unbundling people.

It is seeing one part of someone in light of the whole of who they are.

We live in a strange era of perfectionism, litmus tests, and orthodoxies. We think that because we know one thing about someone, we know everything about them.

Daryl challenges us to reconsider that.

The goal of this work is not agreement.

We are going to disagree.

The question is whether we can maintain the humanity of one another through disagreement.

What We Learned

The next morning, we were joined by Mitch Daniels.

We asked how each of us can bring out the best in others at a time when many leaders bring out the worst.

One participant said something that stayed with me: our task is to relearn democracy.

In a democracy, the citizen is prior to the state.

We have more power than we realize to be part of the solution, not just by holding leaders accountable, but by getting to work ourselves.

We are building a renaissance starting with ourselves.

What Became Possible

In one session on education, something else took shape.

A homeschooling leader, a public school superintendent, and a school board vice president sat at the same table.

Different worlds. Different assumptions.

And yet, they found real agreement.

Education is about cultivating our humanity. It is about unlocking human potential. It is about ordering our passions, bringing forth what is most noble in us, and relegating the ignoble to its proper place.

It is about lifelong learning.

It is about forming human beings who know their own minds, who can serve others, and who can flourish.

And then the group agreed on something else.

No system is perfect.

Public, private, charter, homeschool. Each can be beautiful, and each can fail, because each is made of human beings.

We have to take this case by case, family by family, child by child.

There are no broad brushes here.

As Blaise Pascal suggested, the human condition is defined by both greatness and wretchedness.

That recognition made the conversation honest.

What We Are Building

This retreat was a glimpse of the world we are trying to build: a world of multidimensional flourishing across difference.

We are building it by gathering people who would not otherwise be in the same room.

We are building it by creating spaces where people can rest, think, speak honestly, and see one another clearly.

We are building it by refusing the two failures of our age: hostility, which steamrolls others, and politeness, which manages difference without engaging it.

We are building it by practicing civility instead.

Civility is not politeness. Politeness is technique. Civility is an inner disposition rooted in recognizing the inherent dignity of others.

This means we can disagree without dehumanizing. We can name what is wrong without reducing a person to one thing. We can build trust across difference without pretending difference does not exist.

We are building it in schools, where children are formed as full human beings, not merely prepared to be cogs in a machine.

We are building it in communities, where neighbors, mayors, educators, parents, journalists, and civic leaders can sit at the same table and ask what kind of world they want to leave behind.

We are building it in our own lives, by beginning with ourselves.

That is the work of Civic Renaissance.

What Comes Next

If you joined us for the retreat, share in the comments what you most enjoyed. If this sounds like something you want to be part of in the future, please reach out.

We began the weekend by embodying the world we want to build.

We gathered to embody a world of multidimensional flourishing across difference.

Then we left commissioned to build it.

That is the project.

A renaissance—starting with each of us.

In the news:

• Art Life Faith Podcast: The Soul of Civility with Alexandra Hudson

  Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. In this episode I had the privilege of having a conversation with Alexandra Hudson, or Lexi, the author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.” A number of weeks ago, she was passing through Tokyo on vacation with her family when she was gracious enough to sit down with me and talk about the various themes in her book and then lead an Art Life Faith event right afterward.

• Fox 21 News: Reclaiming Civility: Cultivating connection and respect in Colorado Springs

• Fox 59: 11th annual Fairbanks Symposium- Watch here

  A media interview about The Civic Renaissance Tour Launch in Indianapolis

• A podcast interview with Michael Lee of the University of Charleston, When We Disagree Podcast: The Soul of Civility, Tested

  What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

• Review of The Soul of Civility in Indiana Capital Chronicle: With all due respect

  Hudson is not alone in her pursuit for civility. A recent surveyshared by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Center on Civility and Democracy reported that 72% of Americans want to see more civility in our nation’s politics. The same survey found that Americans are divided on their outlook for our nation’s future, split nearly in half over whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to come together.

• Review of The Soul of civility in Bitterroot Star: Disagree better

  Our community is full of independent people who don’t like being told what to think. That’s a strength. But independence only works if we can argue honestly without tearing each other apart in the process. This book doesn’t offer a program or a slogan. It offers a reminder of the habits that make self-government possible.

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

The Freedom of Limits

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

Japan is often held up as a model of social order and harmony. After two weeks there with my family, I understood why almost immediately.

When I first arrived, I loved nearly everything I saw. The streets were spotless despite a virtual absence of public trash cans. The trains were quiet, orderly, and astonishingly calm. Public life felt light because everyone seemed to carry their own weight. People were restrained, attentive, careful not to impose. It was not merely efficient. It was beautiful. It felt like living inside a society where people take responsibility for the shared world.

And then, after a little more time, after conversations with locals, after getting beneath the surface, I began to see some tradeoffs—ones that did not make me admire Japan less, but helped me understand it better. It also gave me a sharper way to think about one of the central arguments of my book, The Soul of Civility: civility and politeness are not the same thing.

Japan was, in that sense, the perfect place to test the theory.

Obedience to the Unenforcable

In an impromptu speech he gave at the Authors’ Club in London, later published in The Atlantic in 1924 as Law and Manners, Lord Moulton’s coined an important phrase that accurately describes Japan: the obedience to the unenforceable.

He used this term to described the vast sphere of life governed not by law, but by voluntary self-restraint. Obedience to the unenforceable is the quiet discipline of governing ourselves where no law can compel us, choosing restraint, honesty, and consideration even when no one is watching.

Japan is a supremely self-governing society, and one of the first examples of this that you notice in Japan is that there are almost no public trash cans. You buy something, finish it, and carry the wrapper with you until you get back to your hotel or find a place that will take it. And yet there is almost no public litter. The result is not just clean streets. It is a whole moral atmosphere. You become more aware of your own conduct. You are less casual with your waste, less entitled about your convenience, less inclined to assume that someone else will absorb the cost of your poor conduct.

That pattern repeated itself everywhere.

We took train rides all over Japan, including on the Shinkansen, and the whole system seemed to run on the assumption that of course you had paid. There were conductors and turnstiles, but the atmosphere was not one of suspicion. No one asked to see my ticket. Not once. The system did not seem braced against the expectation that people would cheat if given the chance.

One experience in particular stayed with me. Children six and under ride free, so on one leg of the trip we had not bought train tickets for our kids. But then it was so crowded that we decided to buy them tickets anyway so they would have seats and not be piled on top of us. As we went through, a woman came over, asked how old our children were, and then insisted on refunding us because they were eligible to ride free.

You can hardly imagine that happening at an American train station. There was no shrug, no well, you should have checked, no better luck next time. She corrected the overpayment because it was not right for us to pay what we did not owe.

That struck me as more than mere niceness. It revealed a deeper social logic. Japan felt, to me, like an adult society. A mature society. A society in which the system is not constantly tensed against the expectation that people will grab, evade, vandalize, or impose. It called to mind Lord Moulton’s old phrase, the obedience to the unenforceable. The health of a free society depends on a vast zone of conduct that no law can adequately regulate. It depends on people choosing to act well when no one is forcing them to do so.

Japan made that visible.

What I saw there was a society that had cultivated habits of self-command to a remarkable degree. Public life was pleasant not because there was a policeman on every corner managing every microsocial interaction, but because people had internalized norms of restraint and regard for others. I hardly saw law enforcement at all. I heard maybe one siren the entire trip. The order did not seem to be imposed mainly from outside. It seemed to be upheld from within.

And then we landed in New York.

Culture Shock

On the way home, three flights were canceled in one day, and we ended up stranded in Manhattan overnight. The cultural whiplash was immediate. In Japan, for two weeks, no stranger had tried to chat with me on the street. In hospitality settings people were attentive and thoughtful, but ordinary public life seemed governed by a simple norm: do not inconvenience anyone, do not intrude, do not impose.

Then, within minutes of walking in New York, a man complimented my shoes, asked if I needed directions, and then, in the same breath, asked me to donate to support his music career via QR code.

It was almost too on the nose.

After Japan, I could suddenly see American public life with fresh eyes. I noticed the trash piled high on corners. I noticed police officers everywhere, and felt grateful for them. I noticed the friction, the noise, the sense that public space was not exactly shared so much as continually negotiated. The contrast was clarifying, not because Japan is perfect and America is not, but because Japan had sharpened my awareness of how much freedom depends on self-government.

That, in turn, brought me back to a point I make in The Soul of Civility. If we do not sufficiently govern ourselves, governments will always be tempted to do it for us.

Obedience to the unenforceable, tested

Not long ago, Western democracies experimented rather openly with this temptation. In New York, under Mayor Bloomberg, public officials tried to regulate a whole range of rude and antisocial behaviors that are annoying, yes, but very difficult to police without drifting into pettiness and overreach.

In Britain, Tony Blair’s Respect campaign was animated by a similar impulse. The instinct behind these efforts is understandable. No one enjoys being surrounded by boorishness. But the problem remains: manners cannot be sustainably outsourced to the state. A free society needs citizens who can moderate their conduct voluntarily. Otherwise every irritation becomes a policy problem, and every bad habit invites bureaucratic correction. I explore both of these case studies—and a third experiment in Paris around the same tim—in Chapter Four of The Soul of Civility.

So far, Japan seemed to confirm my thesis.

And then came the more interesting part.

The Civic Renaissance tour Launch in Japan

Prior to our trip, I was connected by a friend to a local Japanese organization called Community Arts Tokyo, who invited me to partner with them on an event. After recording a podcast, we gathered around a table with Japanese guests for dinner and conversation, and there I had the chance to explore more directly the distinction I have long argued for between civility and politeness.

Politeness is manners, etiquette, technique. It is external. It concerns forms, signals, presentation, the visible grammar of respectability.

Civility is something deeper. It is an inner disposition of the heart rooted in recognizing the inherent dignity of others. It is a way of seeing others as they really are, beings with dignity and equal moral worth, worthy of a bare minimum of respect simply by virtue of our shared personhood.

Those things often overlap. They are not, however, the same.

That difference became much sharper in Tokyo.

We spent the first part of the evening trying to define the distinction between civility and politeness itself. Was there a word in Japanese that captured merely the external performance of respect, detached from inward regard? We struggled to find one. I do not want to make too much of a linguistic point I cannot prove with confidence. But the exercise itself was revealing. The distinction felt harder to isolate, harder to pull apart neatly.

Then our hosts began describing some of the costs of living in such a highly ordered and deferential society.

Several said that when they first went to America, they felt they discovered themselves there for the first time. I found that remarkable. America, to them, represented not only disorder but freedom. Japan was beautiful, coherent, refined. It could also feel constraining. The social order was strong, but so were the pressures of conformity.

I asked how people express dissent in relationships and in workplaces. How do they disagree? How do they challenge authority? How do they repair after conflict?

What I heard was sobering.

In personal relationships, sometimes people simply stop speaking rather than work through a disagreement directly. Silence is easier, and more socially acceptable, than open conflict. In professional settings, critiquing a superior can be difficult. Managing up is hard. Honest disagreement does not move easily in a society that places such a high premium on deference and harmony.

That was the point at which the whole trip came into focus for me.

Japan had shown me, in extraordinary detail, what public life can look like when people exercise restraint, take responsibility, and refuse to make every private impulse everyone else’s problem. It had also shown me that outward harmony can coexist with inward compression. A society can be exceptionally well-mannered and still struggle with truth-telling. It can be orderly and courteous and still make dissent costly. It can smooth the surface of social life while leaving less room for candor, confrontation, and repair.

That is why the distinction between civility and politeness matters.

Politeness can make life more pleasant. It can reduce friction, produce order, and make shared spaces more livable. Anyone who has spent time in Japan can see that. But politeness alone does not solve the harder human problem. It does not tell us how to disagree honestly. It does not tell us how to challenge bad authority. It does not tell us how to remain in relationship when something true and difficult needs to be said.

A flourishing society needs restraint, yes. It also needs candor. It needs consideration for others, and it needs the courage to tell the truth without treating the other person as disposable. It needs forms that make daily life humane, and it needs an inner disposition strong enough to bear disagreement without dehumanization.

That, to me, is the lesson.

What I brought home from Japan was not a blueprint, but a sharper question. Can a society cultivate restraint, order, and responsibility in public life without drifting into conformity, deference, and silence? Japan shows what is gained when people govern themselves well. It also suggests what may be lost when harmony becomes too costly to disturb. America needs more discipline in public life, but not at the price of honesty. The challenge is to build a culture that can bear both.

But we should not confuse surface harmony with the whole of human flourishing. A society that cannot say hard things will pay for that silence somewhere. If truth has no honorable place to go, it does not vanish. It goes underground.

Beyond politeness and hostiltiy, toward civiltiy

I came home more persuaded than ever that we need both what Japan has cultivated so well—a shared sense of duty to neighbor. We need more responsibility, more restraint, more regard for the shared world. But collective consciencousness is not enough. We also need forms of honesty robust enough to survive discomfort, disagreement, and difference.

That is our task: to move beyond the two dehumanizing extremes between which we are stuck, American-style hostility shrouded in honesty and Japanese-style politeness. One treats the other person as an enemy to be crushed. The other can treat the person as a problem to be managed rather than someone to be truly known. Neither sees the person clearly. Civility, grounded in human dignity, offers a better way: telling the truth in a manner the other can hear, and grappling with difference directly out of respect rather than smoothing it over or turning it into war.

Japan did not make me want America to become Japanese. It made me want us to grow up a little. To not litter, certainly. But also to carry the heavier burden of freedom—to choose liberty, not license—which requires that we see others as they really are, treat them with the resepct thye are due and modulate our conduct accordinyly… ideally without needing the state to regulate every corner of our common life.

Good manners can keep a train quiet. They cannot, on their own, build a free people.

Discussion questions

1. What do we gain when a society cultivates restraint, order, and consideration for others, and what can be lost if those norms become too rigid?

2. Where, in our own communities, do we see a failure of what Lord Moulton called obedience to the unenforceable—the self-governance that makes democracy work?

3. How do you create a culture where people are considerate without becoming timid—honest but not hostile?

4. For further reading, see this amazing essay I read this morning explroing what Simone Weil’s A Poem of Force says about our crisis of dehumanizing hostiltiy. I absolutely loved it!!

Share your thoughts in the comments!

In the news:

• Fox 21 News: Reclaiming Civility: Cultivating connection and respect in Colorado Springs

• A media interview about The Civic Renaissance Launch in Indianapolis last week - Fox 59: 11th annual Fairbanks Symposium- Watch here

• A podcast interview with Michael Lee of the University of Charleston, When We Disagree Podcast: The Soul of Civility, Tested

  What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

• Review of The Soul of Civility in Indiana Capital Chronicle: With all due respect

  Hudson is not alone in her pursuit for civility. A recent surveyshared by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Center on Civility and Democracy reported that 72% of Americans want to see more civility in our nation’s politics. The same survey found that Americans are divided on their outlook for our nation’s future, split nearly in half over whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to come together.

• Review of The Soul of civility in Bitterroot Star: Disagree better

  Our community is full of independent people who don’t like being told what to think. That’s a strength. But independence only works if we can argue honestly without tearing each other apart in the process. This book doesn’t offer a program or a slogan. It offers a reminder of the habits that make self-government possible.

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

Paideia, Humanitas, Civility and Education

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

I’m looking forward to seeing you at our monthly meeting tonight at 7:30 Eastern. You can access the meeting here.

I’m excited to share a few updates with you, including what we learned from testing the distinction between civility and politeness during our Civic Renaissance tour in Japan, reflections from …

Read more

Subscribe now

Gracious reader,

Over the past several weeks, the Civic Renaissance Tour has taken shape in a way that clarifies both the need and the opportunity in front of us.

In Colorado Springs, I saw something that is becoming a pattern across the country, one that gives me hope for the future of our country and our world. The Soul of Civility in Action, a Civic Renaissance Playbook, is no longer theoretical.

Across the country, communities are beginning to move through four phases— Discover, Ignite, Embody, Celebrate—that position them to be hubs of renewal.

Last week in Colorado Springs, I watched this process take root in real time.

Discover

A few years ago, two local leaders, Lori Leander and Lisa Brandt, encountered The Soul of Civility. They did not treat it as an interesting set of ideas. They treated it as a starting point. They began placing the book into the hands of mayors, council members, and civic leaders across their region, not as a gesture, but as an invitation to build something shared.

That is where this work always begins.

A community must first develop a shared language. Not politeness as surface technique, but civility as an inner disposition, a way of seeing others as they are, human beings with dignity, equal moral worth, and claims on our respect. Without that foundation, nothing durable can be built.

Ignite

From that foundation, Colorado Springs moved into what I call the Ignite phase.

Over two days, we convened leaders across the region. The mayor, members of city council, school leaders, philanthropists, and institutional heads gathered in the same room. We partnered with Braver Angels, and I was in dialogue with Maury Giles.

What emerged was not theoretical.

The region is facing real strain. A recent controversy over a proposed Buc-ee’s development revealed something deeper than a zoning dispute. It exposed a breakdown in how disagreement is carried. Residents, leaders, and stakeholders were not merely divided. They were wounded by the way conflict unfolded.

This is not unique to Colorado Springs.

How to flourish through disagreement

Across the country, the issue is not whether disagreement exists. It is whether we know how to carry it without dehumanizing one another, and whether we know how to repair relationships afterward.

Those two variables—how we engage conflict and whether we reconcile after it—determine whether difference strengthens a community or fractures it.

In Colorado Springs, leaders named the problem clearly. Then they asked the right question:

What would it look like to build a city where difference becomes a source of strength rather than strain?

That question moved us into action.

The following day, we convened a leaders’ roundtable with roughly forty decision-makers across sectors. This was not a discussion for its own sake. It was a working session. The goal was to leave with direction, ownership, and a path forward.

Embody

From that session, an Embody phase has now begun. Leaders are taking responsibility for carrying this work into schools, workplaces, civic institutions, and local networks. They are identifying who else must be at the table and what must be built next.

Parallel to this, philanthropy stepped in.

A few months ago, after I shared about the Colorado Springs Civic Renaissance launch, Will reached out to me independently. He leads a foundation in Colorado Springs and said he wanted to be part of what is being built there. He is now a Civic Renaissance Ambassador—a program I built to invite local leaders to be co-creators as we bring the ideal of flourishing across difference to life. This is how this work moves from conversation to capacity building locally.

Will then hosted a lunch at his foundation with regional philanthropic leaders. He gifted each of them a copy of The Soul of Civility in advance, and many arrived having read it and participated in the convening the day before.

The conversation centered on a question that history answers clearly:

What is the role of patronage in moments like this?

From Renaissance Florence to other periods of renewal, the answer is consistent. Cultural and civic transformation requires people who are willing to invest in the conditions that allow it to take root.

Colorado Springs is now moving in that direction.

Celebrate

This work is being built and positions the region clearly as a hub of renewal. I will be back in September in Colorado Springs to help consolidate and perpetuate this work.

But this is not a linear progression.

Discover, Ignite, Embody, Celebrate is not a sequence you complete. It is a cycle you return to, bringing new people and voices into the fold each time.

A community must continually rediscover its shared language, reignite its commitments, embody them in practice, and celebrate what is taking root.

This is what the Civic Renaissance Tour is designed to do. Not to host events, but to help communities move from language to structure, from insight to practice, from aspiration to something that can endure. This work helps communities move from shared language to durable civic architecture.

I serve as a civic architect: my book a canvas, myself a catalyst, empowering local leaders to decide what they want to build, and then to build it.

There is a place for you here

This work is already underway in multiple regions across the country. The pattern is becoming clearer. When leaders are given shared language, a structured convening, and a path to implementation, they begin building.

Share

If you are responsible for shaping a community or institution, and you can see the cost of division firsthand, whether in government, education, philanthropy, or civic life, and you are looking for a way to move beyond managing conflict toward building something stronger, I would welcome the conversation.

Later this month, we will gather a small group of leaders for a Civic Renaissance Retreat here in Indianapolis. This will be an invitation-only working convening, including Mitch Daniels and Daryl Davis, whose work offers a concrete example of what it means to engage difference without dehumanization.

The aim is to leave with work that will be carried forward, not ideas that stay in the room.

To bring together people who are ready not only to discuss these ideas, but to carry them into the institutions and communities they are responsible for shaping.

If that is the kind of work you are trying to do, there is a place for you in this.

Thank you for being here.

Warmly,

Lexi

Subscribe now

In the news:

• Fox 21 News: Reclaiming Civility: Cultivating connection and respect in Colorado Springs

• A media interview about The Civic Renaissance Launch in Indianapolis last week - Fox 59: 11th annual Fairbanks Symposium- Watch here

• A podcast interview with Michael Lee of the University of Charleston, When We Disagree Podcast: The Soul of Civility, Tested

  What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

• Review of The Soul of Civility in Indiana Capital Chronicle: With all due respect

  Hudson is not alone in her pursuit for civility. A recent surveyshared by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Center on Civility and Democracy reported that 72% of Americans want to see more civility in our nation’s politics. The same survey found that Americans are divided on their outlook for our nation’s future, split nearly in half over whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to come together.

• Review of The Soul of civility in Bitterroot Star: Disagree better

  Our community is full of independent people who don’t like being told what to think. That’s a strength. But independence only works if we can argue honestly without tearing each other apart in the process. This book doesn’t offer a program or a slogan. It offers a reminder of the habits that make self-government possible.

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

Paideia, Humanitas, Civility and Education

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

Civic Renaissance is no longer merely an idea, a publication, or an aspiration.

It is now a transformation that is well underway, taking root in real communities with real leaders who are choosing to build.

• In Shelbyville, IN, a divided community gathered and left with tools.

• In Texas, legislators are using The Soul of Civility to strengthen their institution.

• Last week in Indianapolis, 150 leaders filled a room with a single shared conviction: we cannot change our neighbors, but we can change ourselves, and that is where renewal begins.

• In 2026, we have the privilege of bringing The Civic Renaissance Tour to several dozen communities, countries, and institutions on the Civic Renaissance Tour, a place-based effort to come alongside local leaders and help them move from conversation to construction, bringing the ideas of The Soul of Civility off the page and into lived, institutional practice. Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Urbandale, California, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, London, Rome, and many others. In each place, there are Civic Renaissance Ambassadors who care about their cities and are committed to building durable civic architecture that helps their communities flourish across difference. I am grateful to come alongside them and support the work already underway.

Share

Over the past two and a half years, I traveled to 145 cities and five countries sharing the ideas in my book.

That was the season of discovery and observation. How are these ideas being used and brought to life? I watched and I listened.

Now, we are in the season of construction.

Across the country, people are asking the same question: now what? How do we move from reading about civility to building institutions shaped by it? How do we translate conviction into daily practice?

The Civic Renaissance Tour and Retreat are our answer.

The Civic Renaissance Retreat

On April 24 and 25, we will gather at my home in Indianapolis for two days devoted to civic architecture, not abstraction. You will not leave with inspiration alone. You will leave with a defined Embody plan, relationships with fellow builders, and a shared path forward. We will decide what this movement is, define what it can become, identify who must be at the table, and determine how it grows from here.

This will be serious work. It will also be joyful: A feast for mind, body, and spirit. We will cultivate space to think, space to plan, space to play, and space to remember that civic life can be ordered toward dignity rather than division.

Tomorrow, Sunday, March 1, at 5 p.m. Eastern, I am hosting a vision session—both for the retreat and for this movement. I will lay out the structure of the retreat and the outcomes we are building toward. Then I want to hear from you. What are you facing in your city or institution? What would make this gathering catalytic—one that you would be excited to join?

If you sense the division in our world, if it is palpable in your workplace, your school, your church, or your community, and you want to be part of the solution rather than another spectator to the problem, I invite you to gather with me and others who care just as much about rebuilding what feels fractured.

Voices of Experience: Learning from Mitch Daniels & Daryl Davis, Leaders Who Have Done the Work

At the retreat, we will be joined by world class statesman Mitch Daniels, whose leadership as governor of Indiana and president of Purdue University demonstrates how serious institutions can be guided with steadiness and long-term vision.

We will also be joined by Daryl Davis, who has spent decades engaging members of the Ku Klux Klan in conversation and has persuaded many to renounce hatred, offering a living example of what patient, principled engagement can accomplish.

If you already know that The Civic Renaissance retreat is a weekend retreat you want to be part of, claim your spot here. We are capping registration, and space is EXTREMELY limited. (Few scholarships available—write to me with your questions about this.)

Claim your spot here

Whether you’ve already registered or are still discerning, if you feel the fracture in our culture and refuse to step back from the work of repair, this is for you.

The link to register for tomorrow’s (Sunday) vision session is here.

The work has begun. It is making a difference.

Join us.

Warmly,

Lexi

Subscribe now

In the news:

• A media interview about The Civic Renaissance Launch in Indianapolis last week - Fox 59: 11th annual Fairbanks Symposium- Watch here

• A podcast interview with Michael Lee of the University of Charleston, When We Disagree Podcast: The Soul of Civility, Tested

  What does civility demand when justice is costly and deeply personal? Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, shares a raw story about how being scammed sparked both a lengthy legal battle and a profound disagreement with her husband over whether to fight or walk away. Through that conflict, Hudson wrestles with whether civility means politeness or principled confrontation, and what it costs our families when moral crusades take over our lives. The episode explores civility not as courteousness or softness, but as disciplined respect for human dignity even when the stakes are high and the gloves stay firmly on.

• Review of The Soul of Civility in Indiana Capital Chronicle: With all due respect

  Hudson is not alone in her pursuit for civility. A recent surveyshared by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s Center on Civility and Democracy reported that 72% of Americans want to see more civility in our nation’s politics. The same survey found that Americans are divided on their outlook for our nation’s future, split nearly in half over whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to come together.

• Review of The Soul of civility in Bitterroot Star: Disagree better

  Our community is full of independent people who don’t like being told what to think. That’s a strength. But independence only works if we can argue honestly without tearing each other apart in the process. This book doesn’t offer a program or a slogan. It offers a reminder of the habits that make self-government possible.

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

Paideia, Humanitas, Civility and Education

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

This past week marked a visible milestone for Civic Renaissance.

In Texas, members of the state legislature invited their peers to read The Soul of Civility together. A member-led experiment, quiet but serious, is unfolding inside of one of our nation’s most polarized institutions. Leaders there are turning to my book to help them navigate our crisis of dehumanization. I will be back in Austin this week to continue that work.

In Shelbyville, Indiana, we launched the Civic Renaissance Tour: A church-led, community-wide effort to take these ideas off the page and into schools, churches, and civic life. On Thursday night, the room was full. On Friday morning, we sat around tables and built a plan. Superintendents, city council members, pastors, and local leaders asked the same question in different ways: what does this look like here?

All of that mattered. All of it was good.

And yet the moment that stayed with me most this week did not happen on a stage, or in a council chamber, or around a conference table.

It happened on the phone, with a car dealership service manager.

It was a personal victory that was more important to me than these great public ones.

The story.

Last year, my car was stolen from our driveway. We eventually got it back and took it to the dealership to be repaired. We paid for what we were told was a complete fix, with a two-year warranty. Months later, water started getting into the vehicle. Then the battery failed. The dealership refused to take responsibility.

I was angry. I felt wronged. I felt justified.

I left negative reviews. I was sharp on the phone. I replayed the situation in my head, again and again. It took up far more space in my interior life than it deserved. Eventually I thought, with some embarrassment, that I might need to sell the car simply because I could not bear to deal with this one person anymore.

That is when I realized how upside down things had become.

On Thursday morning, as I was packing to drive to Shelbyville to launch the Civic Renaissance Tour, a quiet but persistent thought surfaced. I cannot stand in front of a community and speak about flourishing across difference if I am not willing to practice it when it costs me something.

So I called the service manager of the dealership.

The conversation did not begin with the car. It began with Christmas, with getting sick over the holidays, with kids, with hosting. For twenty minutes we talked as human beings. The tension softened.

Then I said what I needed to say.

I told him I was sorry. I told him I had not shown up well in our previous conversations. I regretted being unkind. This was not who I want to be. I told him, a little awkwardly, that I had written a book about learning how to live well with others across difference, and that in this small but real disagreement, I had failed to live up to my own ideals.

He was gracious. He accepted my apology. We worked out a solution.

By the end, the car barely mattered—and I was ready to have him and his wife for dinner. Repair had led to a stronger friendship than I ever thought possible with my car dealership’s service manager.

I realized that this work matters: that the promise our differences can bring out the best in us, and that conflict can strengthen relationships, is true.

I lived it out firsthand.

What has stayed with me was the physical lightness that followed. The release of resentment and bitterness that had been weighing on me without my realizing it, draining my joy and my will for this work in ways I had not fully appreciated.

The sense of being back in proper alignment was electrifying.

I may have been right about the facts, but I was wrong about what mattered most. I had forgotten the person on the other side of the exchange.

This work is not about perfection. It cannot be. We are human beings, which means we will fall. All of us. We will lose our cool. We will say things we regret. We will forget to see the dignity of the person in front of us when we are tired, stressed, or convinced of our own righteousness.

The question is not whether we will fail. The question is whether we become fluent in repair.

Can we apologize without self-justification? Can we forgive without keeping score? Can we hold the personhood and dignity of the other in view when it would feel easier not to?

Private conduct matters. It always has.

Public initiatives, institutions, and movements rest on the habits we practice when no one is watching.

This work begins there, or it does not begin at all.

As I explore in my book, character is habit long continued, and integrity is what happens when all the parts of the self make sense together.

We cannot be publicly for a school, an institution, or a cause, and privately undermine it through how we live. Making mistakes does not mean we lack character. We will make mistakes. Character is revealed in what we do next. It is shown in our willingness to correct what we have done wrong, to repair what we have damaged, and to bring our private conduct back into alignment with our public commitments. That work is not incidental to who we are. It is who we are.

Share

Shelbyville: The Civic Renaissance Tour Begins

That theme echoed again in Shelbyville. The community is navigating a contentious local issue involving a proposed data center. The divide is not cleanly partisan. It is urban and rural. Neighbors who feel sold out by leaders they once trusted. On Thursday night we named the tension honestly. On Friday morning, we asked a different question: what power do we already have?

The answer surprised some people. More than we think.

Reading groups forming immediately. Schools engaging the children’s book. Churches hosting conversations. Leaders committing to live this not as a program but as a way of life. The book is a catalyst, not the end. I am a catalyst, not the solution. The goal is a durable, local culture that can outlast any one visit or initiative.

Texas State Legislature: The Civic Renaissance Tour Continues

Texas reflects the same truth. One book study is not enough. One lunch is not enough. Trust is built daily. Civic friendship is practiced daily. Democratic life is sustained not by grand gestures but by small, repeated acts of restraint, generosity, and repair. I’ll be there with legislators in Austin this week to explore this and hopefully build something there together.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this July, that reality feels especially urgent. Our public life is woven together, or unraveled, by these small threads.

So this is my invitation to you.

Think of one relationship where resentment has settled in. One conversation you have avoided. One apology you have delayed because you were certain you were right.

Reach out.

I cannot promise it will go perfectly. I can say, with confidence born of experience, that reconciliation brings a kind of freedom nothing else does. And that private victories like these are not distractions from the work. They are the work.

More soon from Texas, and The Civic Renaissance Tour, soon.

If you’d like your community to host a stop on the Civic Renaissance Tour this year, reach out. Join the Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program here.

Apply here!

I am grateful to be on this journey with you.

Warmly,

Lexi

Join me in Texas!

Houston friends, I’ll be speaking at the University of Houston Law Center on Tuesday, February 3rd. That evening, the Houston Alliance of Braver Angels is hosting a public conversation exploring the grassroots, member-led reading of my book, The Soul of Civility, currently underway in the Texas State Legislature.

The event is called The Leaders We Deserve, and it takes up a timeless chicken-and-the-egg question that democracies have wrestled with across history: what comes first, good leaders or good citizens?

Share

More pointedly, what responsibility do we have as citizens to shape the kind of leadership we want, to hold leaders to account, and to encourage seriousness, integrity, and sound judgment in public life?

If you’re in Houston, I’d love to see you there. If you’re not, please consider sharing this with friends who might want to join the conversation.

Join us!

Invitation: The Forgotten Virtue of Moderation

A live dialogue with Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams

In an age shaped by outrage, certainty, and faction, moderation has become suspect. Those who refuse to sort neatly into camps are often dismissed as weak, naïve, or uncommitted. And yet, across history, the thinkers who most enlarged human understanding were rarely loyal to a side. They were loyal to truth.

This evening is a live dialogue between Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams on the recovery of moderation as a serious intellectual posture, and on the examined life as its necessary foundation.

Join us!

Join me in Indianapolis!

Free registration here!

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

When does an intellectual failing become a moral one? Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, today I read to my children the story of Dr. King from a new collection of children’s stories I’m working on, Heroes and Villains: The Soul of Civility for Young Citizens—something I hope becomes a valuable home and classroom resource.

If you have young ones in your life, I’d love to invite you to share this video with them, or better yet, to read the story below aloud together. I wrote it around a core idea that was central to the work of Martin Luther King Jr.

1. Every single human being, without exception, is created with dignity and worth.

2. Because of that, we are all owed, and owe to others, a basic minimum of respect.

3. Segregation and cruelty do not only wound those who are excluded. They also deform those who exclude. Both are harmed. Both parties are dehumanized. As he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, written April 16, 1963, while imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama, “Segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, while it gives the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”

4. Civility, respect, graciousness, and kindness do not weaken us. They enlarge us. They elevate both the one who gives them and the one who receives them.

I’m still shaping this project, and I would genuinely welcome your feedback—both on this story and others. Please feel free to pass this along to a parent, educator, or administrator you care about, and if you’d like to offer feedback on more stories like this one, reach out to us at ahudsonassist@gmail.com

Share

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

I’m grateful to be able to honor the life and legacy of this intellectual giant, and hero of civility, with you.

—

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because everyone is made in the image of God.

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon “The Seeking God,” emphasizing that racial segregation is sinful because it devalues the imago dei—our divine reflection—in others, delivered in 1966

He who commits evil injures himself.

—Martin Luther King Jr, Strength to Love (1963)

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, and in a land very close to home, right here in our own country, there lived a boy named Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin grew up seeing two things at the same time.

He was taught, at home and at church, that every person is created in the image of God. That meant every person mattered, no matter what they looked like, where they came from, how much money they had, or what anyone else thought of them. It meant every person carried worth that could not be taken away. No rule, no sign, no opinion, and no law could erase it. And it meant something else, too. When people treated others as less than human, they were not only hurting the person in front of them. They were also forgetting something true about themselves, and harming their own hearts along the way.

And at the very same time, Martin saw a different lesson everywhere around him.

He saw signs and rules that treated some people as if they mattered less. He saw doors that were open to some and closed to others. He saw people told where they could sit, stand, drink, and learn, not because of what they did, but because of who they were.

This lesson had a name. It was called segregation.

Segregation taught people something false about the world. It taught some people that they were smaller than they were. It taught others that they were larger than they were.

Martin grew up holding both lessons in his mind at once.

The false one was loud and everywhere.
The true one was quieter, but deeper.

The more Martin saw people treated as less than human, the more tightly he held on to what he knew was true. That every person is a human being with equal dignity and worth, created in the image of God.

Martin’s world looked a little like ours. There were cars and buses, radios and electric lights, children walking to school and playing outside.

But his world also had rules and laws that asked people to forget the truth about what it means to be human: that every single one of us are equally valuable, beautiful, just the way we are.

When Martin was a boy, he went into a shoe store with his father. A clerk told them to move to the back so white customers could be helped first. They took a few steps.

Then Martin’s father stopped.

He did not shout. He did not argue. He decided they would leave instead.

They walked out together.

Martin felt embarrassed. But he also felt alert, as if a light had been turned on.

One person was taught, You do not belong.
Another was taught, Do not look too closely.
Both lessons were wrong.

Years later, in a city called Montgomery, a woman named Rosa Parks boarded a bus after a long day at work. She was told to give up her seat because she was Black.

She stayed seated.

She broke the law.

She was arrested.

Other passengers watched. Some felt relieved it was not them. Some stared out the window. Some pretended nothing was happening.

One person was taught, You do not belong.
Another was taught, Stay comfortable. Stay quiet.
Both lessons were wrong.

People decided they would no longer ride the buses. They walked instead. To work. To school. To the store. Day after day. This became the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Martin, still young and unsure, was asked to help lead it.

The boycott lasted more than a year. It was tiring and hard.

One night, Martin’s house was bombed. A crowd gathered outside, angry and ready to hurt someone back. Martin stood in front of them and asked them to go home peacefully.

He knew that answering harm with harm would not heal anyone. It would only spread the damage.

Not long after, Martin was arrested again, this time in a city called Birmingham. He was put in jail for marching.

While he was there, a group of pastors wrote to him. They were not shouting at him. They were polite. They told him he was moving too fast. They told him he was making people uncomfortable. They told him that staying quiet would be wiser and kinder, and that time would fix things on its own.

In other words, they asked him to stay quiet and stay comfortable.

Martin read their words while sitting in a small jail cell. He had little paper, so he wrote back on scraps and margins.

He refused.

He knew that silence would not help people see the truth. Silence would help them keep believing something false.

He believed every person is a human being with equal dignity and worth, created in the image of God. And he believed that segregation did not only hurt the person pushed aside. It also hurt the person doing the pushing, and the person watching and looking away.

One person was trained to feel smaller than they were.
Another was trained to feel bigger than they were.
Both were taught something untrue.
Both were harmed by it.

Martin believed loving people meant helping them see the world as it really is. Not yelling at them. Not hurting them. But refusing to pretend that a lie was harmless.

Before marches, Martin trained people. They practiced staying seated while being shouted at. They practiced keeping their hands still when shoved. They practiced dignity the way you practice music or a sport.

During the marches, some people were pushed, insulted, and arrested. Others watched from sidewalks or windows.

One person was taught, You must endure cruelty.
Another was taught, Do not look too closely.
Both lessons were wrong.

Martin believed cruelty does not stop with the person it lands on. It changes the person who gives it and the person who allows it. It bends everyone involved.

He also believed the opposite was true.

When people choose care instead of cruelty, even when it costs them, they help others stand upright. And they help themselves remain whole.

Martin Luther King Jr. spent his life trying to help people see clearly.

He believed segregation hurts both the segregated and the segregator.
He believed silence protects false pictures of the world.
And he believed that telling the truth about who people really are is one of the most loving things a person can do.

One person was taught, You do not belong.
Another was taught, Do not look too closely.
Both lessons were wrong.

And Martin believed we could learn something better.

Because every day, in small moments and large ones, we are shaping one another.
And how we treat people shapes who we become, together.

Segregation, Martin Luther King Jr. taught, hurts both the person who is pushed aside and the person who does the pushing. Incivility works the same way. It harms everyone involved. But when people choose civility, when they act with care and kindness toward one another, both the giver and the receiver are made better

Share

More on Martin Luther King Jr. from Civic Renaissance:

• MLKJ on the power of true civility

• What MLK teaches us about civility and the power of ideas to heal our divides

• What MLK teaches us about civility and the power of ideas to heal our divides

• What is your life's blueprint? Dr. King and the Great Conversation

• Why We Need Dr. King’s Wisdom This Inauguration Day

The Forgotten Virtue of Moderation

A live dialogue with Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams

In an age shaped by outrage, certainty, and faction, moderation has become suspect. Those who refuse to sort neatly into camps are often dismissed as weak, naïve, or uncommitted. And yet, across history, the thinkers who most enlarged human understanding were rarely loyal to a side. They were loyal to truth.

This evening is a live dialogue between Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Chatterton Williams on the recovery of moderation as a serious intellectual posture, and on the examined life as its necessary foundation.

Join us!

In the news

“Author launches national civic renaissance tour in Shelbyville,” The Shelbyville News

The Shelbyville effort is being led locally by Pastor Ralph Botte of First Christian Church of Shelbyville, who invited Hudson to help launch a community-wide initiative inspired by her book.

“When I read The Soul of Civility, it gave language to a problem I was seeing every day in Shelbyville,” Botte said. “People wanted to engage across differences without tearing relationships apart, but we didn’t have a shared framework for doing that. The book clarified what was missing: a way to practice civility that goes beyond surface politeness and is grounded in human dignity. That’s what led me to reach out to Alexandra. As we began sharing the book locally, people recognized themselves in it and wanted to take responsibility for living these ideas together.”

The Civic Renaissance Tour represents the next phase of Hudson’s work, building directly on the impact of The Soul of Civility. Since its release in 2023, the book has been taken up by community leaders, universities, and bipartisan legislative groups across the United States and abroad as a practical framework for engaging disagreement without dehumanization and for reclaiming responsibility at the local level. Rather than remaining a theoretical work, the book has repeatedly served as a catalyst for concrete civic initiatives. In an age marked by polarization and distrust, The Soul of Civility asks a central question: how can people flourish across difference?

Following the book’s publication, Hudson, often traveling with her husband and three small children, visited 136 cities across five countries. She spoke in venues ranging from local libraries and churches to Stanford University, Yale Law School, the Canadian Parliament, and the UK House of Lords. In city after city, the book sparked not only conversation, but sustained local action.

“The Civic Renaissance Tour grew out of listening,” Hudson said. “Everywhere I went, leaders were asking how to live these ideas together, not just talk about them. I realized my role was not to visit and lead every community, but to help local leaders build the capacity, relationships, and support they need to carry this work forward every day.”

The Shelbyville launch follows Hudson’s demonstrated framework for community renewal, a four-phase process that moves communities from shared understanding to sustained local practice. The effort begins with residents reading The Soul of Civility together, followed by Hudson’s visit for a public event and leaders’ roundtable. From there, local leaders across sectors will take responsibility for carrying the work forward in daily civic life, with the long-term goal of Shelbyville serving as a regional hub for civic renewal.

The Shelbyville engagement will begin with a community-wide public event on Thursday, January 29, at 7:00 p.m. at First Christian Church of Shelbyville. The following morning, Friday, January 30 at 9:00 a.m., Hudson and Botte will convene a leaders’ roundtable. During the roundtable, a select group of Shelbyville leaders will work together with Hudson to develop a practical action plan for implementing the book’s ideas and fostering long-term civic renewal in the community.

Join us in Shelbyville!

Hudson’s work with Shelbyville follows a demonstrated and repeatable pattern.

In Carmel, Indiana, City Councilor Jeff Worrell contacted Hudson after reading The Soul of Civility to explore how its ideas could be embedded locally. That effort culminated in the Carmel Civility Summit, which convened more than 100 mayors, city council members, commissioners, and civic leaders from 17 states and Canada. “The Soul of Civility was a roadmap that led me to invite Alexandra to speak and launch a civility effort in Carmel,” Worrell said. Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Hudson opened the summit with a fireside conversation on civility and leadership. “You’ve only begun to hear from this amazing young woman,” Daniels said.

In Zionsville, former Deputy Mayor Kate Swanson partnered with the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to integrate The Soul of Civility into the council’s core curriculum, grounding civic formation in a shared moral framework. The council then convened a public community discussion with Alexandra Hudson at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, drawing a standing-room-only audience and signaling broad public engagement across generations.

“Every person, and especially every young person, in America needs to read The Soul of Civility,” Swanson said.

In Muncie, The Soul of Civility was chosen as a citywide community read, anchoring a shared civic conversation across residents, institutions, and local leaders. State Rep. Elizabeth Rowray partnered with the Muncie Chamber of Commerce to invite Alexandra Hudson to keynote their Christmas banquet, where every attendee received a copy of the book as a call to carry the work into their own civic and professional lives.

Communities across Indiana, including Fishers, Valparaiso, South Bend, Evansville, New Albany, and Salem, are now implementing similar initiatives inspired by Hudson’s work.

Nationally, The Soul of Civility is informing freshman orientation programs at Ivy League universities and is being read in bipartisan book clubs within polarized state legislatures. The book has earned praise from leaders and public intellectuals across the political spectrum, including Francis Fukuyama and Jonathan Haidt.

The Civic Renaissance Tour formalizes this growing momentum by offering communities a structured pathway to move from shared ideas to sustained local practice. Additional tour stops include Colorado Springs, Colorado; Urbandale, Iowa; Sacramento, California; Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Toronto, Canada; and London, England, with more locations to be announced.

“My vision is to help unlock an era of human flourishing in our country,” Hudson, who lives in Indianapolis, said. “That work begins when people stop waiting for rescue and start taking responsibility for the communities they are shaping together. We each have way more power than we realize to be part of the solution.”

She continued, “Ralph, First Christian Church of Shelbyville, and the greater Shelbyville community are showing what that looks like in practice. I am honored to partner with the leaders of Shelbyville in this work.”

As the kickoff city of the Civic Renaissance initiative, Shelbyville is helping shape and refine a new model of community renewal rooted in Alexandra Hudson’s The Soul of Civility. The city is piloting the framework as it moves from idea to practice, generating lessons that other communities can adapt to their own contexts. By launching the Civic Renaissance Tour in Shelbyville, local leaders are contributing to an emerging national effort to strengthen civic life by investing in their own capacity to lead and flourish.

Join us in Shelbyville!

Become a Civic Renaissance Ambassador

To join the Civic Renaissance movement, or to bring the Civic Renaissance Tour to your community, apply to be a Civic Renaissance Ambassador!

Apply here!

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

It’s Time for a New Era of Christian Civility

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

Civic Renaissance has always been a space to reflect on timeless ideas: beauty, virtue, memory, and wisdom, to help us live more thoughtfully today. As Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” This space is meant to be both.

Upgrade your experience

Gracious reader,

Today I want to share a vulnerable story. (For some reason only 11 seconds of the video version of the story was recoded, but thankfully I recorded it on a voice memo as well for you to enjoy the full audio story).

Recently, I made a mistake that hurt and disappointed someone I admire and respect. There was no excuse. No ambiguity. I failed to do what I said I would do. Twice.

A Civic Renaissance ambassador, a generous supporter of my work, had organized a church-wide reading of my book. He told me it was the most well-attended Bible study his church had hosted in years. He asked whether I would join their group on Zoom to answer questions and discuss the ideas together. I said yes, gladly.

The first Sunday arrived. I went to church and left my phone at home. I missed the call.

I was mortified. I apologized, without reservation, and asked to reschedule. He was gracious.

We set a new date.

The second Sunday arrived. My husband made pancakes. We read an Advent devotional together. I was offline again, fully present with my family, honoring the Sabbath in the way I try to. Thirty minutes into the call, my husband was alerted that I had not joined.

I had missed it again.

What followed was not just embarrassment. It was the sharp awareness of a familiar human reflex: the urge to find someone or something else to blame and to self-justify. Why had no one reminded me? Why had the calendar failed? At least I was doing something noble in being present with my family… The list of excuses in my head went on.

I caught myself doing this and stopped. Even naming the tension between ideals, presence with family versus a commitment to others, was a form of rationalization. The truth was simpler and harder.

I forgot.

I failed.

Full stop.

This was painful not only because I disappointed someone else, but because I disappointed myself. I carry an identity as someone who shows up, who honors commitments, who is careful with the trust of others. Confronting my own fallibility, without deflection, was uncomfortable.

Blame is a default response. In the Genesis story, Adam blames Eve. Responsibility is passed along because it is hard to sit with our own shortcomings. As Blaise Pascal suggested, much of our discomfort comes from the inability to sit quietly with ourselves. When we do, we are confronted with who we actually are, not who we imagine ourselves to be.

Blaise Pascal writes in the Pensées (fragment commonly numbered 139 or 168, depending on the edition): “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Friday evening, we hosted a conversation on disillusionment for Civic Renaissance Subscribers called The Joy We Forgot. Junius Johnson, a Yale-trained scholar and storyteller, joined us. He made a simple point that has stayed with me: we are disillusioned by people and institutions when we expect too much of them.

I had expected too much of myself. And I have been disillusioned in life when I’ve expected too much from others. When we place our faith and hope in a relationship with another human being, we set ourselves up for disappointment: no imperfect human can carry that faith and expectation without stumbling.

We experience this everywhere. People are disillusioned by politics, by institutions, by leaders, by spouses, by parents. I have been disillusioned before. As a child, when I realized Santa Claus did not exist. Later, when I entered federal government expecting something like The West Wing and encountered something closer to cynicism and dysfunction. In both cases, the disappointment came from misplaced expectation.

When we place ultimate hope in fallible people or temporal structures, disappointment is inevitable.

Part of what made this recent failure so painful was the need for self-forgiveness. I expected myself to be more than I am. I expected perfection when perfection is not possible.

Working through that, without spiraling into shame, required grace.

Grace, once received, changes how we treat others. Tim Keller often observed, paraphrasing his teaching, that the unforgiving heart is the unforgiven heart.

Put another way, those who grasp how much they have been forgiven are more able to forgive. When we forget our own capacity to harm, resentment hardens. When we remember it, generosity becomes possible.

This is why the no-excuse apology matters.

A real apology does not explain itself. It does not justify. It does not reframe. It names the harm and stops. That kind of apology is rare, and it is costly. It requires relinquishing the comfort of self-protection.

It also makes repair possible.

Wabi Sabi parenting

This lesson matters in our homes as much as anywhere. My children do not need a perfect parent. They need a parent fluent in apology and forgiveness. When I lose my temper, the repair must be immediate and unqualified. Children learn how to live with others by watching how adults handle failure.

Repair strengthens relationships rather than weakening them. Wounds that are acknowledged and tended do not destroy trust. They can deepen it.

Erasmus of Rotterdam understood this. Paraphrasing Erasmus, he counseled people to readily ignore the faults of others, and avoid falling short ourselves.

We should be quick to overlook the faults of others, careful to avoid falling short ourselves, and slow to accuse. This runs directly against the grain of our culture, which trains us to scrutinize others while excusing ourselves.

Blame is seductive because it absolves us. Responsibility is harder, but it is the beginning of growth.

I want to be clear. We are going to be disappointed in life.

I will disappoint you. Others will disappoint you. No leader, institution, party, or cause is immune. Disillusionment is unavoidable unless our deepest hope rests in something that does not depend on human perfection. For me, that grounding comes from the Christian faith, which begins not with our striving but with Jesus Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection confront human failure honestly and offer grace not as an idea, but as a gift given to us.

Share

An invitation to no-excuse forgiveness

If there is someone you need to ask forgiveness from, do it plainly. If there is someone you need to forgive, consider the ways you have needed grace yourself. If you need to forgive yourself, remember that failure is part of being human, not the end of the story.

We are not defined by our worst moments. We are shaped by how we respond to them.

Heroes and Villains: Would you like to read my children’s book?

If you would like to read early drafts of the children’s stories I am writing, adaptations of figures like Gilgamesh, Augustine, Hannah Arendt, and Erasmus for families and classrooms, I would welcome your feedback. I am actively seeking responses from parents, teachers, and school leaders. Respond to me via this email, and share with me if you’re a parent, educator or administrator—or passionate about instilling civility and grace in the next generation—and I’d love your thoughts!

And if this reflection resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe to Civic Renaissance. This work exists to help us recover practices of responsibility, repair, and shared life that make flourishing possible, especially when we fall short.

Warmly,

Lexi

Subscribe now

In the News

• PBS: Author Alexandra Hudson explores the difference between politeness and civility: Steve Adubato welcomes Alexandra Hudson, author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,” to explore the difference between politeness and civility, and how embracing human dignity can bridge the divide in times of political tension.

• Indy Politics: Holiday Survival 101: How To Deal With “That One Relative”: The holidays are here, which means two things: calories don’t count, and every family has at least one relative who makes you question the Geneva Conventions.

  So with Thanksgiving and Christmas knocking, Abdul Hakim-Shabazz talked with Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility, to get some wisdom for those of us preparing to sit across from Crazy Aunt Agnes, Uncle Blah Blah, or That Cousin Who Thinks Facebook Is a Peer-Reviewed Journal.

• The Enneagram + Marriage Podcast with Christa Hardin: Culture Wars, The Family Table, and True Civility with Author and Storyteller Alexandra Hudson

Mentor in Residence Opportunity

We are seeking an extraordinary person to join our family and the Civic Renaissance team as a Mentor in Residence. This role is for someone who loves children, loves learning, and wants to help cultivate a rich atmosphere of curiosity, beauty, kindness, and intellectual life for three young children ages five, three, and one.

Our home is an atelier, a space of creativity, innovation, learning. It is a place of ideas, stories, nature, music, art, conversation, and unhurried discovery. We are building an educational model for our family that brings together nature exploration, early literacy and numeracy, storytelling, cultural formation, ample leisure and unstructured free time, and the joy of hands-on making. We hope to share this model with other families over time.

We are looking for a guide who brings presence, steadiness, imagination, and an instinct for wonder. You do not need classroom experience. We care about your character, your curiosity, your capacity to listen well, your intellectual interests, and the way you see children and human flourishing.

This is a national search, and we welcome candidates who are open to relocating to Indianapolis. Please share widely.

APPLY HERE!

Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:

Water & Fire: Restoring Our Home, Restoring Ourselves

Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!

Review on Amazon

Review on barnsandnoble.com

rejoices as it does so; the lowest animal can imagine the pain of

others. But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the

highest privilege of the highest animals, and among them it is ac-

cessible only to the choicest exemplars — thus a rare humanum:

so that there have been philosophers who have denied the exist-

ence of joying with.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human, (tr.) R. Hollingdale (New York:

the text as HH.), pg 228.

Share

Gracious reader,

Two German words illuminate a truth about the human condition, defined by Blaise Pascal as the greatness and wretchedness of man.

Schadenfreude comes from Schaden (harm) and Freude (joy). It names the reflex of delighting in another person’s misfortune. Mitfreude comes from mit (with) and Freude (joy). It names the experience of reveling in another’s success.

The contrast is simple yet profound.

Schadenfreude shrinks our soul and worldview. It’s zero-sum.

Mitfreude expands us. It sees life as a shared project where our good is another’s good, and where we are shaped by each other’s well-being.

“Joy with”

I experienced mitfreude recently in a way that moved me. My friend Rachel wrote a lovely essay about how trick or treating can strengthen the shared fabric of a neighborhood. She asked for my feedback on the draft. I made a few editorial suggestions and directed her to my editor at the Wall Street Journal. When her heart warming piece was accepted, I felt genuine gladness.

It was not pride in myself. It was the joy of seeing her important ideas reach a wider audience and the joy of having played a small part in helping it happen.

Here is the link to her essay so you can read it as well.

“Joy harm”

By contrast, I’m reminded how I felt the other day when after a contractor submitted me error-filled AI slop for a project I’d hired them for.

I was—shall we say—less than gracious.

It felt like a double betrayal and insult: first was the poor work product, second that they thoguht I wouldn’t notice that a computer had written the work instead of a human being.

Yes, I spoke truth about shoddy work I’d paid them for. But I didn’t do it in love. And the contraditciotn in my values hurt them, but also hurt me. I felt ugly and shame-filled inside. It wasn’t shaddenfreud per se, but it was instane where my words likely hurt another person—and as a result, I was hurt, too. I felt ugly inside.

Helping others helps ourselves

The world tells us to be rivals. We absorb the idea that someone else’s success diminishes us, or that helping another person advance is somehow a loss. That narrative misunderstands how interconnected we are. When others are bettered, we are often bettered as well. When others are harmed, we are often pulled downward with them. Incivility illustrates that pattern. It diminishes both giver and receiver. Civility illustrates the opposite pattern. It raises both.

Mitfreude grows that upward spiral, that virtuous cycle. It cultivates the kind of relational ecosystem in which trust, admiration, and cooperation can take root. It is not sentimental. It is a practical posture that invites more flourishing than any zero sum framework can offer.

Below are three simple ways to practice it this week.

Three ways to practice Mitfreude now.

1. At home: praise without comparison

When someone in your family succeeds, however small the success, name it and enjoy it with them. Do not compare it to anyone else’s progress. This signals safety and dissolves rivalries that often begin in childhood.

2. At work: champion another person’s contribution

Choose one colleague whose idea, insight, or work improved yours. Send a short note saying so, or mention it in a meeting. This builds an environment where people feel free to create rather than fear scarcity.

3. In daily life: look for occasions to assist someone else’s success

Recommend a neighbor’s business, introduce someone to a helpful contact, or highlight an artist you admire. Leave a positive review. When you play even a small role in advancing another person’s good, it generates a lift that echoes outward.

Mitfreude is a counterweight to the contraction that defines so much of modern life. It reinforces the insight at the heart of civility, the one at the core of your work. How we treat others shapes who we become.

When we choose to delight in one another’s joy, we enlarge ourselves, and make more joy possible.

Share

I write with a few exciting updates and announcements.

First, I’m extending the Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program deadline until Friday. This program is something I created to get to know you—and to support those of you who want to do more with the ideas of my book and of Civic Renaissance: healing our present through the wisdom of the past, and through healing ourselves.

Your participation can take many forms. You might start a book club (I have resources to help you host one), or even organize a Civility Summit in your community. Whatever your vision, I’d love to help you bring it to life.

Become a Civic Renaissance Ambassador!

Second, while on retreat in the forest—completely off the grid this weekend—I wrote the first three chapters of my children’s book! I’ve wanted to render The Soul of Civility into content for my children for years. I’ve also heard from so many in the education field that you want this for your school districts, for your classrooms.

My kids loved hearing the first story last night and are already eager for more. I’d love to know what you think of this chapter.

If you enjoy it, I’ll share the next set of stories soon.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’re a teacher or educator and would be interested in helping us build the curriculum—or using it in your classroom—please reply to this email.

As always, if you appreciate the work of Civic Renaissance to bring more civility and grace in our world, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Thank you for being part of the Civic Renaissance community!

With gratitude,

Alexandra

Heroes of Civility

The Soul of Civility for Young Citizens

By Alexandra Hudson

Chapter One

Gilgamesh and Enkidu

How friendship makes us better—and how unkindness hurts everyone

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away—different from ours in some ways, but in other ways just the same—there was a king named Gilgamesh.

King Gilgamesh was part man, part god, and he ruled over all the people of Uruk, the first city in the whole world.

Gilgamesh was a tyrant. That means he was not a good king. Instead of serving and loving the way a good king should, this king, Gilgamesh, took whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, from whomever he wanted.

Read more

Two quick notes:

• The Civic Renaissance Retreat will be April 24–25, 2026, not 2025 (as my earlier message said).

• The form for the Civic Renaissance Ambassador Program is available here.

The deadline for this first ambassador cohort is this week.

Thank you for your grace, friendship, and for being pa…

Read more

That meeting sparked a friendship and a pivotal moment in my writing project. When I told Tyler I was considering writing a book, he offered this advice: “Don’t write a book unless you have a disease and writing it is the cure.” It perfectly captured the state of my soul at the time — and encouraged me to keep writing.

Upgrade your experience

Read more