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It is generally accepted that a divorce mediator is a neutral third party. In other words, unlike a divorce lawyer, whose avowed function is to be an advocate for one of the parties, a divorce mediator is an advocate for neither. His job is not to advance the interests of one of them, certainly not at the expense of the other. Rather, it is to help them both.
Nevertheless, mediators are increasingly asking themselves, and being urged to ask themselves, questions that call that stance of neutrality into question. Is it really as important as we have assumed? More to the point, are there not other concerns, and other values, that are more important?
It will be my intention to examine some of those questions, one briefly and the other at greater length. More to the point, it will be to question those questions. Given the time allotted to me, it will not be possible to do that in the depth I would like. But they are important questions, and they deserve far more thought than we have given them. My
modest hope is that what I will say will encourage us to do that.

I

The first question is the one most commonly asked. That is whether there are not other obligations, and other values, more important, that should take precedence over our commitment to neutrality. More specifically, it is to ask whether we do not have a superior obligation to assure that the agreement that the parties are left with is fair.

It is an understandable question. Nevertheless, to accept the obligation that the question implicitly assumes inevitably changes our role. Rather than being an advocate for neither of the parties, like a divorce lawyer, it requires us to become an advocate for one of them. But it does more. Since they will each have very different opinions as to what is fair or unfair, it just as inevitably makes us the judge of those differences of opinion. Worst still, it encourages us to commit the sin of believing that we are the appropriate authority in such matters - that we know what is fair or unfair in the world, and in other people's lives.
But shouldn't the parties be left with a fair agreement, and isn't it a divorce mediator's obligation to see to it that they are? Whether this is true or not, those questions cause us to buy into far more than we realize. Ironically, the first thing that they cause us to buy into are the assumptions, and with it the mythology, that underlie adversarial divorce proceedings. That is the mythology that would have the parties believe that the world of their divorce is somehow different than the world of their marriage. Their marriage may not have been fair, but their divorce should be. Unfortunately, their marriage and their divorce do not take place in different worlds, as divorce lawyers would have them believe. They take place in the same world. We therefore do them no favor by encouraging them to expect more of one than they had the right to expect of the other. We just commit the error of divorce lawyers, which is to give them false levels of expectation that will then be followed by equivalent levels of disappointment. After all, if we could make of their husband or wife in their divorce the person that he or she never was in their marriage, we could save their marriage. But we are not going to be able to do that.

There is another problem, as well. Divorce lawyers, on the basis of nothing more than the fact that they have gone to law school, commit the error of believing that they are experts in what is fair and unfair in the world and in other people's lives. But that does not mean that divorce mediators should be guilty of the same sin. We have not led other people's lives. It is therefore inappropriate for us to make moral judgments in them. It is certainly inappropriate for us to set ourselves up as experts in such matters.
Is this to say that the issue of whether the agreement concluded by the parties is fair will never arise in the course of a mediation? Of course it will. It is just to say that this is a question that the mediator should leave to the parties to answer, not one that he should answer for them. He should content himself in asking a different, though admittedly related, question. That is whether the agreement they have concluded is one that he is willing to associate himself with. Asking that question will not require him to abandon his role as a neutral to become the advocate for one of them. Nor will it leave him guilty of pretending to possess an expertise that he does not have. Perhaps most important, it will discourage him from making decisions that are properly for the parties, and not for him, to make.

II

I appreciate that I have raised more questions here than I have answered. For example, I have not indicated when a divorce mediator should be willing or unwilling to associate himself with the agreement that the parties have concluded. Nevertheless, I want to save time to address the issue that most concerns me. That is the far more subtle assault that is being made on a divorce mediator's neutrality.

Increasingly, mediators are being urged to ask other questions about their role that necessarily impinge on the idea of their neutrality. Unlike the question that I posed earlier, however, which asks us to consider whether we do not have an obligation superior to our obligation as neutrals, these questions do not call a mediator's role into question directly. As a result, we do not see that the principle of neutrality is the necessary victim in the process.
The questions that I am referring to are the ones that ask us to examine how, in our work, we can not only be agents who act to resolve the conflict between the parties, but agents who can act to bring harmony between them as well. More directly they are the questions that ask us to consider the impact that our work can have on society, that ask us to examine the contribution that our work can make to community, and that asks us to assess our willingness to face the deep divisions in the world, and to find ways to bridge them. Finally, they are the questions that would have us consider the values that we bring to our work, and to be more conscious of them.
What is wrong with any of these questions? More to the point, why should we not use our efforts to employ what is best in us and to address the issues that most concern us? Unfortunately, as innocent as these questions may appear, there is a great deal wrong with them, grievously wrong with them. It is just that the blinding quality of the abstractions employed to enlist our support on their behalf prevent us from seeing it.

Let me raise the first objections. Without question, most of us have other concerns besides those that induced us to become divorce mediators. For example, we may be concerned about the effects of violence, depicted on television, upon impressionable children. We may also be concerned about the effects of secondary smoke and teenage pregnancy. We may even be concerned about the social, political and economic inequality that exists between the sexes, and the various races and nationalities, and its implication for the future of society. Nevertheless, we have no right to intrude any of those concerns in the work that we do as divorce mediators, as important as they may be.
We have no right to intrude them for the very simple reason that the couple did not agree to buy into them when they contracted for our services. Nor did we warn them that they would be. When they came to our door, they did not see a sign bearing the inscription "advocate for clean air," "advocate for safe sex," or even "advocate for equality." On the contrary, the inscription read "advocate for no special cause." In fact, that is why they came to us in the first place. Thus, for us now to intrude these concerns, as important as they may be, is to have misled them. Nor does it make any difference that we will defend our intrusion, as has become the fashion today, by invoking lofty abstractions, such as "empowerment" or "recognition." It is still to have induced the parties to employ our services under false pretenses. Our lofty abstractions do not change that. They just blind us from being able to see it.

I want to turn to an even more subtle expression of this assault on our neutrality. Before I do that, however, and by way of introduction, I would like to pose a question. You have received an invitation from friends to come to their home for dinner. Before you leave, you are asked the following question. What values will you bring with you when you go to their home? In all likelihood, you will not understand the question. In fact, if your interlocutor persists, you may even begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable. After all, we are not supposed to intrude our values in other people's lives. To be sure, if something offensive takes place, we may get up and leave. (In the context here, you may disassociate yourself from their agreement.) If the conduct is criminal in nature, we may even call the police. (Again, in the context here, you may conclude that mediation is inappropriate, and suggest to one of the parties that he or she consider seeking help from the law.) But those exceptions aside, you would probably keep your hands in your pocket and mind your own business. After all, you are but an invited guest. Nor have you been invited in to rearrange the furniture in other people's lives. Rather, you have been invited in for a very limited purpose. And you bind that as a signpost on your door so that you do not forget it.
That is not the question that we are being asked, however. Rather, we are being asked a different one. Moreover, it is one that subtly sidesteps the problem rather than addresses it. That question is, what values do we bring to our work?, or, as one recent program asked, "What are our visions for ourselves - our lives and our work?"

Look at the exchange that the invocation of these lofty abstractions has enacted. We have turned "their home" into "our work." Worse, by making their home our work, we have given ourselves license to enter where we have not been invited and have no right to be. We have given ourselves excuse to abandon our stance of neutrality and to take up a special cause. After all, while we may not have the right to intrude our values in their home (their lives), certainly we have a right to intrude them in our work. What is incredible is not that there are those who would try to persuade us to make this exchange. What is incredible is that we have gone along with it without seeing where it has brought us, and the price that we have paid as a consequence. Where it has brought us is to have given us license to intrude with our own private agendas in other people's lives. And the price that we have paid is our stance of neutrality, which has been the casualty in the process.

III

When I became a divorce mediator, it was not with the illusion that I would be able to solve all of the problems in the world. I did not even believe that I would be able to solve all of the problems of those who came to me at this critical point in their lives. Far more modestly, it was in the hope that I could still be of some limited value even if I were not able to do that. I understood the terrible tragedy that a couple's divorce represented. Moreover, as someone who had worked in the adversarial world of divorce, I was painfully aware of how, all too often, the effect those proceedings were to take on what was already a tragedy in their lives and make it into a nightmare. In becoming a divorce mediator, therefore, it was sufficient if I could help divorcing couples avoid this. As I reminded myself, "It is not always given to us to help people as we would like. Sometimes we must content ourselves by helping them as we can."
To help them as I could meant to help them bring some closure to the very difficult feelings that they were experiencing, feeling that were the necessary by-product of their failed marriage. It was these feelings - feelings of hurt, disappointment and, at times, even a sense of betrayal - that were causing them to look back to the past rather than to the future. To help them effectuate that necessary closure, however, meant to help them conclude an agreement, as that agreement was the necessary precondition to that healing process.

Helping the two of them conclude an agreement was thus very important to me. In fact, it became an end in itself. To be sure, those who urge us to intrude our own values in other people's lives do not understand this. Worse, to advance their own private agendas, they have even taken to minimizing the importance of that agreement by referring to it as a mere "satisfaction story" and by insisting that it is not the most important story that people can tell themselves. But they are wrong.
I do not pretend that being a divorce mediator will address the great divisions that we witness all about us and bring peace to the world. But then, I never became a divorce mediator believing it would. I only know that the people who come to me are at a point of great crisis in their lives, and that if I do not minister to their needs that crisis will not only remain unresolved, but that it will also get worse. If I am not careful, they may end up in the adversarial world of divorce.
That is why I will not allow myself to be persuaded, in the name of these lofty abstractions, to forget why it was that I became a mediator, or what those who come to me expect and so desperately need. That is why I will not forego my role as a neutral third party, as it is essential if I am going to help people as I can. And that is why I will not be enticed by lofty abstractions.

To be sure, lofty abstractions, like pretty pictures in the sky, are wonderful. But that is all that they are, just pretty pictures. I must therefore not allow them to distract me from the real world of my experience, or the important work at hand. For it is here, and not in the world of our abstractions that we live our lives, embrace our achievements and suffer our losses. And it is here that people need our help. We must not allow the questions that are being posed to us to cause us to forget that. If we do, we will end up being of no help to anyone, save perhaps ourselves.