Posts Tagged ‘randy hasper’

Mousing About In Our Own Shredded Nests

Posted: January 3, 2017 in memory
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“I process my pain alone; you process your pain with other people. We’re different,” he said. “I’m an introvert and you are an extrovert. You like to talk to other people. I don’t.”

He said it so plainly that I was a bit taken back. I had never distinguished our differences in precisely this way, but it was a fair point, and it got me thinking. It’s interesting, but many of us — even within the same family — have processing preferences.

Some of us process life within ourselves; some of us do so with others, out loud — mostly.

Is one way better?

I think not. We need both ways — musing and effusing — to see our lives clearly.

I’ve recently been thinking about the family I grew up in. On my own, I remember many defining moments, I have given them symbolic value, created a family narrative, told it to others. I have processed my life in public, and out loud. For me it is fun, helpful, meaningful.

When I tell about growing up I tell the chased-by-the-billy-goat story, the I-shot-my-brother story, the we-ate-Moosehead story, the very-tragic-baseball-game story, the newspaper-in-the-pants story, the my-brother-taught-me-to-hide-my-shirt-under-the-bed story, the we-were-so-poor-we-all-ate-one-Dilly-bar story.

I have written them, I have embellished them, they have become myth, they make people laugh. My mom has always said about me, “You were a funny boy.” I was. I have always survived, though story, and humor. I am a narrator.

In the mornings, I used to tell my family my dreams. They would laugh at me. “You can’t have dreamed all that.” The dreams were too elaborate, but the family was wrong. I did dream all that — and more. I held back, so as not to astonish them. I was Joseph — kind of, or not. Even my subconscious mind was in the business of embellishment. It still is. The truth is always better — out of the bag, and slightly expanded.

My brothers have different stories, different memories, they have crafted a different family narrative. Perhaps they are more private about it all. They are. It is almost as if we grew up in different families — and in a way we did. We matured in different seasons of family life. We had different experiences of our parents. We had different personalities. It helps me to hear their stories. They don’t subtract from my story; they add to it.

So when it comes to processing life, to processing our families I believe that we need both — privacy and publicity, our stories and theirs. It is very helpful to ask other family members what they remembered. It fills in some of the gaps. Memory is malleable. Memory is unreliable. We need the heuristic of the other. We keep rewriting the story. We all do, even if only in our own minds.

We need our own below-the-surface processing, our own underground burrowing, our own ratting and mousing about in our own shredded nests. We each need to validate our own hunt, chew on our own kill, commune at night with own tortured souls, craft our own family myths, elaborate our own familial veracities, embroider our own sun-and-moon-and-eleven-star dreams. This is how we discover who were really are and what we really feel.

But we also need the other’s stories, their perspectives, their memories. If we don’t get these we may remain stay stuck with an incomplete hagiography — or in iconoclasty.

I command thee, my gentle readers: Go process, alone, and together.

This creates agency.

This is how we thrive.

Disruption And The Talking Cure

Posted: December 30, 2016 in difficulty
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I ran across a fascinating question lately regarding how I view my life, and perhaps how you view yours.

How has disruption shaped us, you and me, during the various stages of our lives?

When I was in my very formative years, my family experienced significant disruption.

We were in fact, living during this time as a dislocated family, transplanted from Los Angles, California in 1957, to rural Missouri for my dad’s work. He took a job overseeing a Christian campground in the Lake of the Ozarks. We moved when I was five.

From the start, and always, we were outsiders in the Midwest. We were Californians, people from somewhere else, and there was always a sense of not belonging. My parents tried to join a local church. They were denied membership because they had been baptized in another denomination. They refused to be re-baptized. We attended. We were not in the circle.

I lived in Missouri from first grade through high-school, and I adapted, I fit in, but early on, my mom hated the experience. She was removed from her new house in Torrance, California and plopped down in a series of cold, small camp cabins, raising three boys in a foreign culture on little money while my dad immersed himself in his work. In the first few cabins we lived in, we didn’t even have indoor bathrooms. We went outside, we tramped through the snow, to outhouses. It was grim.

My mom made it work. She was tough. She was a very attentive and affectionate mother to us three boys, but the dislocation from her California city life to a rural campground was a bitter pill for her to swallow. In some ways she never recovered, and the painful legacy of those years, the forced march in foreign territory, influenced her perspective for years afterwards.

Our early years in Missouri were quite stable, my parents eventually built a home there, but in 1962 my older brother was sent away by my parents to attend better schools in other parts of the country, and he was gone from our family for two and one-half years. My dad and mom thought the small, rural schools in our community wouldn’t provide a good enough education. Again, as with church, so with education — it wasn’t our community.

Then in the mid-to-late sixties things began to unravel. My dad developed a serious back issue. He was in significant pain. I remember him sleeping in a chair at night with a board across the arms to rest his head on. Finally, he could take it no more and he underwent surgery. As a result of this, he simply couldn’t do the physical work that was a part of his job, repairing and building up the campground. Through the late sixties, struggling with his changing physical ability, he went through — in his own words — a “mid-life crisis.” He would have to change jobs. During this time I can remember him working hard during the week and sleeping through the weekends. I know now that he had anxiety and depression, about money, and he suffered significant uncertainty about his future identity.

In 1965, my older brother came home, and he finished school in our community. He had become unbearably homesick. The education he had received at California and New York schools had been great, but homesickness did him in. He finished his junior and senior years in our local community schools. In 1968 he got married to an amazingly fun, intelligent and cool local girl and they had a baby. Getting out —it hadn’t worked for him.

Who were we? Where did we fit?

For years after this, I wondered why my parent didn’t send me away to school. School was my thing. It was where I thrived. For years, I thought that they preferred my older brother in this choice. Now I know they simply gave up, on getting us out. My plight would have been the same as my brother’s. I needed home too, I need a safe place, I needed my family.

Shortly after my brother married, we found out that my mom had cancer. This was an unsettling shock to us all. Would we lose her? What would happen if we did? She went through a psychologically and physically painful treatment process. She had a very painful surgery. I remember sitting by her bed in her dark bedroom, wondering if she would die. She didn’t, but it was only later in life that I learned from her how much mental pain she suffered over this in the many years that followed.

In the summer of 1969, I moved away from home to work, to earn money for college, and then in the fall I moved into a dorm in Springfield, Missouri and begin studying at the University there.

Finally, in 1970, my father could take it no more, and offered a job at a church in San Diego, he finally left his job at the campground and my dad, mom, and younger brother moved from the midwestern United States back to California, our home state. We went home. It was heartbreaking for my dad. He lost the job he loved the most. It was relief, a homecoming, a restoration, for my mom.

In early 1971, I followed them. They had gone home. I wanted to go too. Even though California was a foreign place to me, I too wanted out of the Midwest. I wanted more. I inherited that from my mom, and from my first year at college. I wanted a bigger world. And I wanted my family. I think most of all, I wanted my family. I got it, somewhat, in California, because eventually both my brothers and their families relocated to there.

What had happened to us? In relatively short time frame, from 1962 to 1971, we experienced major disruption — illness, stress, anxiety, failure, relocation. We experienced the unknown; we experienced life in extremis.

The social backdrop for all this played an important role too. In the United States, during these years, a counter-culture revolution took place. I lived through this and became a part of this, this time when long‐held values and norms of behavior broke down, particularly among my generation. We — the youth of the 1960’s and the 1970’s — became experimental with music, politics, philosophy, drugs, religion, politics and lifestyle. We became political activists. We took on the establishment. We became a driving force behind both civil rights and antiwar movements. We increased the power and expanded the voice of the young.

I was a part of this. In my first year in college, 1969-70, I wore a torn white protest arm band — with a blue dove on it. It was an antiwar statement. I wrote a freshman paper on the war-ravaged children of Vietnam. I immersed myself in the new radical protest music. I eventually, from 1975 to 1978, lived in a church commune, I almost completely abandoned a materialistic lifestyle, I pursued as much education as I could get and opened my mind to new ideas and beliefs. I became a teacher — of literature and history — at the high school and college levels.

Looking back now, I can see from the advantage of time, that in my family, and in my world, there was a huge amount of change and disruption, during some very crucial years of my life.

How did this affect me?

For years I have never processed this adequately, I haven’t looked closely at the disruption — the events, the chronology of these events, the spacing of these events — the elongation and compaction of my experience — the experiences of my other family members, the social movements of my time. These, collectively, affected me during my adolescence and early adult years. Until recently, I hadn’t taken into account, just how much disruption took place in our lives during those years. But lately, through some questions my wife and my brother have asked me, I have begun to put it together

So much change — during the formative years when I was developing my early sense of self — left me a bit on my own to try to figure out my life, my identity, my relationships and my core beliefs. There was a high dosage of instability. My parent’s stay in the San Diego area was short. Only two year after moving there, they moved on to the Los Angles area, leaving me alone again — in San Diego. I suffered. I was a dislocated person.

As a result of all this transition, I had several years of insecurity, of uncertainty, of lostness, of alienation and of loneliness. I lost social and relational confidence. One thing was missing, someone to talk to, to completely and honestly open up to, about my emotions, about our family losses, about my philosophical questions, about how to handle pain, about how to process life, about what to believe. I simply didn’t know — on my own— what to do with the changes in myself, in my family and in my world.

Certainly I got some help at the universities I attended. There I developed a better understanding of history, literature, psychology, sociology, science, philosophy and politics, at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In these places of learning, I greatly expanded my knowledge and experience of a bigger world, and I explored new and exciting concepts with my teachers. I came to understand social change, how it is initiated and how it morphs into mainstream culture over time, and I morphed with it.

Certainly, I also processed life during this time with my family, with my father in particular, as I questioned Christianity — the narrow, legalistic Christianity I was brought up with in the midwest. My dad defended his faith with a relational, authentic and personal experience. This helped me. And I processed my faith more when I returned to church in the mid-seventies, to a different, more radical, open, emotional, inclusive church — one I discovered with the help of my father.

But what I didn’t get, and needed, during some of my most formative years, was someone who was able to draw out my feelings, to process my pain, to help me develop my emotional and relational IQ, to understand how the events in our family were effecting me and us, our family identity, our shared history.

It would have been helpful back then to have had someone — a therapist, a parent, a sibling, a friend, anyone — ask me, “How is your family processing the pain they are experiencing? How are you processing this pain? Is what you are doing, to cope, working for you? Is it healthy? What are you feeling about your mom’s cancer? What do you think your dad is going through right now in his career? What do you think your brothers are feeling? What losses are all of you experiencing?”

It would have been helpful to have someone say, about my loneliness, my feelings of uncertainty, “The feelings you are having are normal. You are feeling alone because you are more alone than when you were younger. You are uncertain because you are questioning the beliefs you were raised with. Your whole generation is questioning these beliefs. This is okay, this is normal. You will work it through. You are afraid because you fear you may lose your mom. You are more alone now because your father is in crisis. He is anxious and afraid he won’t find a new job. Your dad is hurting. Your mom is hurting. They are experiencing loss and dislocation. This is not your fault, but it is hard for them to be there for you right now.”

In transition, during seasons of disruption, we are often deprived of needed emotional resources. In times of trouble, emotive issues are often not the focus of the family. Experiencing disruption, most families do not have the awareness, the knowledge, the time or even the money to get the emotional and relational support they need, particularly in the past. During the late sixties and early seventies, my parents were barely able to manage their own emotions; they certainly didn’t know how to talk about these; they didn’t even have the language to do this, and understandably they weren’t equipped to help me process mine. They were experiencing depression, anxiety, fear and uncertainty. They didn’t know what to do.

But what could they do? How could they know what to do? They were caught in health issues beyond their control. They were swept along by life. They too were caught in a changing 
American culture. They were not equipped to process all they were experiencing. They came from parents who pretty much shut up and put up. From what I can tell from stories my parents have told me, my grand parents handled psychological pain by working more, and by talking less, by being stoic, and by being strong. This a good model for survival, its a good modeling of toughness in a tough world. It does not, however, lead to the self-understanding necessary for good emotional and relational health.

So what happened, how did my family come through this?

It’s fascinating how things turned out. We came through it pretty well. My parents stayed married — no easy feat, and retired well. My brothers and I all graduated from college. We found good spouses, had children, accumulated wealth, developed good friends, developed careers. And yet these events too were disruptions, these success, and with each one, we were again faced with change, transition, pain, process and recovery.

What to do?

What got me through it all — particularly on an emotional and personal level — was that eventually, I found places to talk, to process, to understand, to recover, to develop emotional understanding, authenticity and psychological congruency.

I found this at church, where my Christian community accepted me, valued me, and gave me places too develop and define.

And I found this in my wife — my very intelligent and very emotionally rich wife — and to her I give most of the credit for my recovery. She literally — over time — erased my loneliness and my relational awkwardness through her deep connection with me. Through her candor, her authenticity, her own emotional freedom, her willingness to be who she was and feel what she felt — I healed. She was much more open than anyone I grew up with. With her, no emotion was or is alien, taboo, hidden, unacceptable, inexpressible. She opened me back up, to process pain, to talk about emotions and thus to understand disruption and what it does to us.

And I also found great help in my therapists, the many counselors and doctors I have gone to through the years who have taught me how to take off the masks, how to process pain, how to identify my emotions, how to be congruent, how to reveal to people on the outside what is going on with me on the inside, how to talk about feelings, how to grieve and how to celebrate too.

Through talk therapy, through education — and through more disruption, for example, the learning and developmental disabilities of my oldest daughter, my own medical issues, my significant career change from teacher to pastor, my painful transition from pastor of one church to pastor of another — I have over a long period of time become more human, more accepting of differences, more understanding of emotions, less likely to be critical, more likely to ask questions, more able to accept differences, more able to understand the pain of others and my own too.

Disruption, pain, dislocation, transition — it’s normal, and we can learn from it, and we can get through it — and grow and mature in it — if we can understand it, and understand what it does to us and to the loved ones we carry along with us, and particularly if we can talk about it.

Increasingly I am making friends with reality, with disruption — with failure and success.

I am becoming more than ever, an advocate for emotional honesty, for personal openness, for relational authenticity, for psychological congruency, for the talking cure.

Is life hard?

Have we succeeded?

Have we been knocked for a loop?

Are we making a come back?

Let’s talk.

Warming Up The Place

Posted: December 27, 2016 in relationships
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The room was full of people, the candles glowed in most every hand. The place was baked in yellow candle light, it was relationally warm, it was psycho-cozy, and I only wanted to stay in that moment — the Christmas Eve service at the REFINERY Church, at the end of a good year, surrounded by people who love me — a long time.

Only the weekend before this, I had been in another similar space, a church in Pasadena, at my brother’s last service of his career, where the love was similarly palpable, a veritable stratosphere of appreciation and care for him as the pastor. I didn’t want that to end either, but it was the end, he was leaving and yet it was warm, and also cold, like the the days and  nights in the fall.

Life — it’s together, and then apart, and then together again, warm and then cold, and I like both. I better like both because this is reality and there is no other. We are close, those moments pass, we are alone again, and then we move back close.

Yesterday, when I came downstairs, I found my iPhone singing, and I was happy. It was my friend Tony, in Maine, Face-timing me.

Cool! And then it was warm.

I  answered, I wanted to connect with Maine, and I wanted to connect with Japan too, and Hawaii, New York, Florida, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois and everywhere else my transplanted people live, my migrating friends, my military family, those Navy and Army folks and nonmilitaries who became my family at church, then moved away.

So Tony and Melissa and I chatted up the Maine snow, the California sun, the family cats and our mental states while I could see via Facetime that one of their kids was running around — just out of his bath — naked.

Life, meaning, health, sanity, good, God — it’ s in the connectedness, in community, the movement from being alone and then being with people again.There is no good life outside of this movement. There is no mental health outside of relationships, the moments of togetherness, and the moments of recovery after being together — the musings and processings alone, and then the mixing, learning and loving together.

We live move and have our best being within the the communal dance, in and out, close then far and close again.

I love my people, my brother, my family, my church friends, and my extended military family too, my Tony’s and my Nate’s, my Jen’s, my Megan’s, my Melissa’s and all the others I know.

And there it is, the best life, a bondedness, a befriendedness, an emotionally naked and unashamed witness.

We need to be alone sometimes, but we are best, always and forever befamilied.

Chipped-Plate Humanity

Posted: December 23, 2016 in relationships
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It’s interesting, people’s reactions, their choices. Sometimes I wish I could manage them. Sometimes it would be nice to just manage my own.

Neither of those work — much. I’ve got the anti-Midas touch.

We are all inextricably connected  — all befriended, enemied, spoused, familied, churched, vocationed, ganged, communitied, nationed, planeted, universed.

There is no my way, only our many ways all waying along with each other down a wayward road. We live roped together, stringed, tangled — like fishing line. Life is a snarled mess of togetherness.

We show up, they don’t. We are late, they are early. They say thank you, they don’t. They get offended, we don’t — or we do. We like, we love; we hit, we shove. The immediate and particular status, motive, inclination, sincerity, immorality and civility of the heart  — it’s a mystery. We lack social acutance.

What to do?

I’m abulic; I’m not.

“Help!”

Do I pick at people, or shut up mostly?

Do I chill, chomp, churn, chuff or chew?

Do I get over it, look over it, look under it, or blow it up with an IED, an Incendiary Emotional Device — twice?

Lately I’m tying to shut up more. It’s not working totally, but accepting imperfection, allowing for error, being good with less-than-what-I-want — in others, in myself — it has a kind of cracked beauty to it, a dented loveliness, a rusted sheen.  It’s ameliorative.

It’s a bit like God — robust graciousness.

Forget the akrasia. Forget harsh judgment. Staying calm, nobody getting dinged up much more than they already are — that is kind of working for me lately.

Being good with a bent-fork, cracked-mug, chipped-plate humanity — it’s easier on me than the alternative.

And the other people in my life — they are liking it just fine too.

The News: It’s Booze

Posted: December 17, 2016 in truth
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What passes through our eyes and into our heads, this is what we have to think with, and this is also — at least in part — what comes out of us.

In November, I read that Black Friday would have some good sales. It did, so I bought a iPad for my daughter. They fished; I bit.

What I read controls my behavior. If I read that life is a shopping cart, I shop.

This is how it works for most of us. We put limited information in our heads, we think in a limited way. We put in biased information; we think biased thoughts.

Consider the news. The news is booze. We are mostly just high on it — or low.

The American news media told us Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 Presidential election. They were wrong.

They predicted that American housing prices would continue to rise in 2006. Wrong again.

We feast ourselves regularly on blind print.

As I consider this, I think one of the main problems here  is that there is a myopic dipping, again and again into small, single-focused, partisan bubbles of information.  This is the thing. American news is so provincial, so narrow, so limited. It ignores so much of life in the rest of the world.

The local news feeds us local stuff — local fires, local robberies and local wrecks. It’s micro-woes and micro-climates in a world full of huge weather systems, of massive accomplishments and massive disasters. The local news is life, it’s important, but it’s a small feeding trough.

The national news is no better, because it feeds us from an only slightly larger bowl, a standard, tried-and-not-so-true menu — Washington, Wall Street, and Walmart. It’s our government, our economy, our business,  as if it was the only one in the world.

Provincial news, nationalistic news, incomplete news, inaccurate news, fake news, biased news — news based on our previous viewing habits — sensationalized news, ad driven news, we get a ton of that.  It’s half the story, not the story, the government’s story. News wise, we get had, all the time, in our brains.

To some extent, you are what you read. We buy what is put in front of us.Many Americans feed daily on a limited, Americanized, party-line, sound-bite version of the news. If we have a political bias, and most of us do, we limit ourselves to one or two news channel — the ones that share our bias. If we are conservative, we may get all our news from Fox News. If we are liberal from MSNBC/NBC. If we stick to these, we may show that we don’t want a report on reality; we simply  want to hear someone repeat what we already believe. It’s the post-truth thing — in us.

I am tired of it. Particularly as a Christian thinker. It’s not responsible. I don’t think God wants our minds controlled by incomplete, inaccurate sources. I think God wants us to be wise, unbiased, fair, knowledgeable. I believe he wants us to know people  — all the people of the world — to know their issues, to care for them, and to pray for people all over the world.

We can’t do that by only consuming only a standard, limited, local, American diet of news.

As a result, I have recently attempted to internationalize my input, read more widely, exposed myself to different sources, connect with the wider world, to care for the whole world, to see life though their eyes.

I’ve been reading from some of the following online sources. They aren’t unbiased, they too have limits, sometimes they too are selling a point of view, but by exposing my mind to different perspectives, to the news from different parts of the world, I am better able to understand competing mindsets, to see biases, to think with a broader base of information, to know a broader world.

I encourage us all to do the same, especially Christians, because we have a history of getting stuck in narrow perspectives. Because of the internet, we don’t have to be ignorant, we don’t have to limit our input to a few sources, we don’t have to get cramped into small, provincial, egocentric points of view.

I encourage you, my friends, read widely; consider your whole world. Here are some possible sources. You can find more sources like these by researching.

The Center for Public Integrity https://www.publicintegrity.org

The Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com

The Russian Times https://www.rt.com

The Asian Times http://www.atimes.com

The British Broadcasting Corporation http://www.bbc.com/news

The Latin American Post  http://www.latinamericanpost.com

Aljazerra – Middle East News http://www.aljazeera.com

It’s been said that no news is good news. With that, we might avoid the news altogether.

But no news isn’t good news; no news is terrifying, because no news leaves us ignorant, and completely unaware of all the amazing people on our planet, and all the amazing and horrible things they are living through.

We are at our best when we are truth mongers — always after what is ampliative, honest, accurate and complete.

Safe Christianity

Posted: December 11, 2016 in church, the body
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My daughters love to be told their birth stories.

l start with, “When your mom and I got to the hospital, my eyes were already dilated to ten.”

I proceed, “I immediately asked for an epidural, at the base of my skull.”

I go on, “When you were born you weighed 11 pounds.” That was my daughter Laurel, who is now on the petite side.

I finish with something like, “You were a good baby, and you loved mashed-up squash.”

Such stories, such memories, these are the things in life that bring us together.

Birds of a familial feather — they  flock together.

The Christmas narrative bears this out. There we see that Jesus is essentially and proverbially communal. Jesus draws people together. The vivid facts of his birth narrative reveal this.

A census caused families — David’s family — to gather, by household, in Bethlehem.

When these related people were together a baby was born, the baby Jesus.

The baby drew angels, who showed up to praise God and announce the baby to some local shepherds, perhaps herding temple sheep.

The shepherds visited the baby Jesus.

We have a convergence. Everyone — in the loop on this — gets together, around Jesus.

Last week I went into the basement of my church following my nose. I smelled Christmas tamales. Sure enough, in the large kitchen below us — spiced tomato sauce, onions, pork, corn dough, corn husks. And people, a bunch of people, talking and cooking. Tamales create community.

The baby Jesus was a delicious little tamale. He drew people, like magic, to himself. The good news, the sign, the cause of great joy — it was Jesus, a divine food, the bread of life, drawing both earthly and heavenly forces together.

Caesar Augustus issued a degree, that the Jews gathered, but God issued a decree and the whole world gathered.

Joseph, Mary, Jesus, angels, shepherds, the members of the house of David all gather at the birth, later Simeon and Anna visit Jesus, then the wise men, then the 12 disciples, then the crowds of followers, then after Jesus death the nations, at Pentecost many different kinds of people, then the church, then all the earth, billions of people.

I grew up with snow. We made snowmen. We started with a small snowball, and rolled it until it took all my brothers to keep it going, and it got so big we couldn’t roll it any more.

Jesus was a snowball becoming a giant snowman. The snowball of Jesus just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Jesus is a rolling-up, he is a shoveling-up, of individuals, into something that gets bigger and bigger and includes more and more diversity the bigger it gets.

What God is doing is uniting people.

God is bringing people together. God is making a people salad. God is making tamales, God is letting down a sheet for all the nations, mixing in a bunch of different people into one meal. God’s great ultimate purpose — it’s oneness.

Ep 1:8-10

With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

God’s grand goal, Jesus’s birth, Christmas, is to create unity, to create a large, universal family. What does this mean for us?

When we are moving with the movement of God, we are moving toward more community, toward connection, toward togetherness with people.

When we come to church, we are entering the divine purpose to make us one. Community is good, it is not to be feared, it heals us from fear, from loneliness, from hurt.

We may think, “I’m hurt. I need to stay away.”

Not so, “I’m hurt, so I need people.”

I need you, and you need me.

But we need each other to be a certain way, to be sensitive, to be safe, to not harm, to not dominate, to not offend, to not judge, to get along.

Romans 12:16-18

Be sensitive to each other’s needs – don’t think yourselves better than others, but make humble people your friends. Don’t be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but try to do what everyone regards as good. If possible, and to the extent that it depends on you, live in peace with all people.

How do we do this? How do we live at peace, stay humble, refuse to do evil to each other?

To do this we must determine in ourselves to treat each person with respect, to be interested in each person, especially to be sensitive to each other when we are wounded or weak.

How?

By listening to each other, by not giving too much advice, by just sitting with each other’s pain.

On Tuesday this week I was a little lonely at work. My staff didn’t come in. Then along came two friends. We sat together up in one of the rooms, and talked, shared difficulties, laughed, and let each other be imperfect, human, raw.

We talked about loss, without giving advice. We were at peace with each other’s not-perfect. We sat with each other’s difficulty, laughed about it, tried to make just a little sense of it.

This is community, this is our togetherness, not to come and act spiritual and perfect but to let our messy hair down, and to be okay with the messy journey.

In efforts to create community around the essential Jesus, we must be careful to be sensitive to each other’s need at the moment.

I’ll be specific. If someone is single, let’s not say stuff about them getting married.

The church is not a collection of married people, or people on their way to get married; it is a collection of everybody, single, married, single again, married again, married but wish they weren’t.

If someone is divorced, let’s not treat them like they are damaged goods. Who hasn’t had broken relationships, who hasn’t had people we loved turn on them?

The church is a collection of people on a journey, not people who have arrived at some traditionally approved or preferred place.

We recently decorated the house for Christmas. Before we started, it looked pretty, during the process, it  became a mess. All the usual decor got piled on the dining room table, all the boxes from the garage on the floor; the cats climbed the tree.

The process got ugly, but when the guests come this week for a Christmas dinner, the house will be perfect — well almost.

Well, not quite.

When my wife and I host groups, we always leave the bathrooms uncleaned. This is so that when the early quests arrive and say, “Can we do anything to help?”  we can include them in the family, and we can say, “Yeah, you can clean the bathrooms, and if you want there is a little laundry.”

On the way to the final Christmas meal, that great Christian celebration that will occur at the end of all time, God allows for mess.

Consider the age factor. That can be messy.

If someone is older, or young, or in the middle, at church, and they are unfinished, undecorated, we yet need to acknowledge them and let’s live out the truth that every age is of value to God and us.

Or consider sexual status, a hot button topic in the church.

If someone is gay, we must not assume that they aren’t seeking, knowing and loving God. They may seek and love God as much or more than we do.

Our job is to be sensitive, to watch our mouths, to not offend and hinder someone’s journey toward God with our judgments.

Christmas is for everyone who will receive it, no matter what they are dealing with; Christ came, he loves us, and when we believe in him, he forgives us and saves us, no matter our issue.

At church, let’s be sensitive to relational status.

If someone is alone, at church, then we must treat them like they are as important as someone who is there with a family. Everyone has family, even if not present.

Every family has value, broken ones, split ones, hurt ones, little ones. And every person has a family, even if they aren’t at church with them.

Our goal as Christians is not to make everyone into the kind of person that makes us feel comfortable, but to learn to be more comfortable with every person.

Let people be what and who they are in their stage of life. They are all in movement, all changing, but it is God’s work to refine them, to improve them, to make them moral, not ours.

We are not saying that everything is okay, that there is no sin, that there is no evil, that we have no morals or standards. We Christians do.

Someone told me recently they had never been taught how to protect themselves from evil at church.

That’s old church, and that’s not good.

Christians need boundaries. I have written this before, I will write it again, “Do not let people abuse you, sexually harass you, discriminate against you or dominate you.”

Those things are evil.

Don’t allow this any kind of abuse at home, work or church. Report abuse. Stand up to bullies. Call out racism and sexism and ageism.

But all that being said, we are still to follow Romans 1:18 and to “If possible, and to the extent that it depends on [us] … live in peace with all people.”

God is working to clean up the house, for Christmas, to create safe, good, moral, appropriate community.

Our primary job is to join God in rolling out His beautiful, growing communal snowball.

Christmas, it’s a togetherness.

The essential Jesus, he is, was and always will be, an essential, safe, sensitive, appropriate togetherness.

Comebacks

Posted: December 5, 2016 in difficulty, relationships
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We have all had those moments, when someone said something to us and it just froze us, it was so off-the-freakin-charts insensitive.

I told someone one time that my daughter had epilepsy.

She look at me and responded with all sincerity.

“My Saint Bernard had epilepsy. He had a seizure one time and died of it.”

People say stuff. They aren’t thinking — clearly.

They tell us if we are single that one day we can hope to be married, if we lost a family member that they lost one too and they are better now. If our pet dies, well, we can get another one, if we have lost money “it is only money.”

If they offer to help with something, it is often on their terms, in a way that works for them, mostly advice — or veiled criticism.

A young single mom with young children told me recently that people have said to her, “You are a beautiful woman, you can easily get a man again.”

But would you want one?

It is just assumed that you would, because this is the patriarchal mindset that dominates everyday family-style clishmaclaver.

Helping often seems to be all about the helper, and the world view they are comfortable with.

People aren’t okay with our losses because it makes them insecure about their lives — that they could lose too — and so when they encounter our difficulties they want us to “get well,” to get back to social normal, for their sake, so they can continue basking in the blissful myth that all is well with the world — always or at least eventually.

It is not. God doesn’t fix everything, neither does money, nor does time, nor does “a man.”

What to do?

We can get cynical. We can get comical. We can get snarky. We can get quiet. All these work, and we will need this whole arsenal of response to survive — them, our saviors, our little helpers.

That being said, it occurs to me that no pleasure is greater than a comeback — that’s not later.

Someone I don’t know told me a while back that I was going to hell for not giving them money when they asked.

The next time I get that I think I’ll just agree with them. I have often thought the same thing myself. But I don’t think the main thing against me will be stinginess with users. God knows there is worse than that.

Of late I am of a mind to simply agree with those who think poorly of me. They don’t know the half of it. If we had time, I could give them a truck load of my failings, but it might just upset them more — poor things.

People are just full of judgment, and advice. When I was going through a particularly hard stretch I got this trite and untrue message from overly-Christianized people, “Everything happens for a reason.”

Yeah, it does. A lot happens because some people are jerks! People do bad stuff, and there are no good reasons lurking in the background behind all their mess making. God didn’t do it, the harmful stuff, a person did, and that isn’t easy to live with.

People want to nullify that, the legitimacy of hurt, taking responsibility for evil, and they want to powder away all negative responses. “Don’t get bitter,” they advise sagely.

“Bitter, of course we get bitter! And do you know what, I’m sure God is bitter too, in his own righteous way, because he didn’t want this stuff to happen to us,  and you would have a bitter taste in your mouth if this kind of thing happened to you!”

When we eat bitter fruit, we taste a bitter taste, and that isn’t a sin or a failure or a choice. It’s a bitter reality.

Now I’m getting worked up and so you can all see clearly,  “Wow, he’s a piece of work.”

Yup, you have no idea.

Heavy Elements

Posted: December 4, 2016 in healing, helping
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Life can get heavy — relationally and physically.

“Without further adieu, let’s give it up for some new elements, very heavy, recently discovered and added to the periodic table, numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 — nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson!“

These are — as you can see — mostly named after the places they were discovered, and furthermore and interestingly enough, they are superheavy and super-unstable. They decay almost instantly, like some relationships, and for now anyway, they have absolutely no value.

In the last few weeks, I’ve discovered some more heavy elements, in people’s reactions to me — weighty emotions, unstable relational stuff.

Someone expressed jealousy over my social circle, and then they got snarky with me for having so many friends. Somebody else wanted to team up on a project, then they didn’t, if they couldn’t run it. Somebody wanted me to give them money — after they told me all the crazy things that had just happened to them — but I think most of those things didn’t happen.

Niffle-naffled; I’m baffled. What do you do?

In each of these cases, there was stuff going on that didn’t have anything to do with me.

Funky relational stuff — what do we do with it? What do we do with it if it is rooted in the other person’s past and has absolutely nothing to do with us?

It happens. Unstable responses to what we say, decide and do — it happens. Sometimes we ourselves put our stuff on others. I’ve done this. I’ve made something someone else fault when the problem was really in me. Such things are part of the universal periodic table of emotional and relational heavy elements. We create problems for others that are our own; we try to solve issues that aren’t ours.

If we have been socialized to be overly polite, (many introverted or shy young people suffer from this) we may get triggered and apologize for stirring someone up when we didn’t. If we have been overly and dysfunctionally Christianized we may rush to the moral imperative “love your neighbor as yourself” and get busy loving, in other words owning a problem that isn’t ours.

Ah, so painful!

No dysfunctional, unnecessary apologizing, and no misguided Christianized enabling will help.

Owning other people’s stuff is not good for us or them, not good relationally and not good for maintaining healthy psyches.

People’s reactions, those deeply rooted in the issues that arise from their families of origin, or reactions deeply rooted in their previous hurts, these are not ours to adopt. They are unstable; they complicate our relationships unnecessarily; they decay relationships.

We can’t own what isn’t ours. We can’t fix what isn’t ours. We can be gentle with everyone. We can refuse to judge others; we can overlook their craziness, but we can’t take their issues into our souls. Even if we are therapists or pastors, we aren’t wise to try to own what belongs to someone else.

Those who are painfully triggered by their past can examine their emotions — we may be able to help them do that if they ask — and they may heal from them if they can own them, but as far as us taking responsibility for what isn’t ours — it does no good.

Without further adieu, let’s give it up for the discovery of emotional boundaries. Healthy barriers work really well in avoiding harm from other people’s super-heavy emotional elements!

Little Things Make Us Sane

Posted: December 1, 2016 in difficulty, relationships
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Little things make us sane — a delicious pastry with coffee, a flowering vine on a trellis, a hug, a cat on our lap, the sound of small round pebbles rolling in a wave on a beach.

Little things also drive us crazy — a wood splinter in our finger, dropping a plate in the kitchen, an unanswered text, a sarcastic comment or unwanted behavior by a friend or family member.

It’s funny how much little stuff can make or break social equanimity, especially in our close relationships.

Someone makes a comment. It has a slight edge to it — we flinch. “What did they mean?”

We make a mistake, suffer an omission, toss off a negative comment, fail to do what was asked.

“Will they like us anymore?”

“Are we still okay with them?”

They fail us, in these same ways, or so we think.

Are we still okay with them?

It comes down to this: self-management, the management of emotion, the management of response, the management of behavior,  the management of our hearts, the management of each of our precious relationships — to wisdom.

Responding to small irritations is always a decision, a judgment — just let it go, shed it, process it by yourself (“It doesn’t mean anything. It is an isolated incident.”), or the other route — bring it up, talk about it, find out what is really going on, work it through with them or with someone we trust, “Hey, what’s really going on here?”

There is no formula, but a few things might help.

We need to ground our emotions in reality. Often the problem, our anxiety, our irritation is in us, in our own pickiness, our own insecurity, our family of origin issues, our friendship of origin issues. Our emotion is rising out of our previous conflicts and tensions with others. If this is the case we must identify the real source of our emotion.

If the emotion is coming from a past harmful or toxic relationship, we must be careful not to let that emotion contaminate our new relationships. What ruined one friendship must not be allow to ruin another. Toxicity from one relationship doesn’t belong in another. It has no right, no place there. The people who have hurt us in the past, how we responded, does not belong in our new, healthy relationships. We must bar the door.

But if the current irritation is the result of a persistent abrasive behavior that currently exists in us, or in our current friends, in or colleagues and is beginning to build up, to cause resentment, to fester, then we must bring it up, to the surface, with ourself, with others, and apply the talking cure to heal it. If someone is letting us down, failing us, hurting us repeatedly, we must be brave and bring this up to them.

This helps, this kind of analysis. We do well when we ask the question: “Where are these feelings coming from?” And, “What is reality here?”

We must identify relational and emotional reality, ground our emotions and our responses in reality, and proceed from there.

The proper handling of little things, our emotions, our specific behaviors, other’s emotions and behaviors, this is essential to maintaining mental health and good relationships.

Get this right, and we will remain sane, and connected — kind of, the best we can, okay for now.

I’m good with okay for now.

 

Success: It’s a Form of Humility

Posted: November 28, 2016 in success
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Failure is not the most humbling thing, usually — success is.

Not for everybody of course, but for all of us, if we are willing to look success in the eye — and not blink.

The other day I succeed in hiring a new staff member for my organization, a young woman with little experience but a beautifully inspiring persona that perfectly matches the work she will do. It was very humbling.

I knew how to do this by previously failing at doing this, and then succeeding at it a few times, which has made me super-aware that no matter how well you vet a potential hire, you don’t know them until you know them — over time — or you intuit them precisely and accurately, or you get lucky.

Most every success is born of some failure and includes within it some failure so it contains both success and failure. This helps with the humility thing.

Take me. I am a modestly successful writer. I have failed at this writing thing more than I have succeeded. I have written much more that has remained unpublished than has been published. I have written a few things well, and many things in a mediocre fashion. Interestingly, my best work is unplublished — except as it exists in blog form — written for a small following. I consider it successful just to have written it, even if it were read by no one.  My best writing is a personal success, not a public success, quite humble in impact and influence, but hugely satisfying to me.

Success, furthermore — when it is rightly considered — is also humbling because it is communal. We can’t take the credit alone. Each and everyone of our successes follows and builds on someone else’s previous success, on their nurture of us, on their input, their contribution, their support, often their collaboration with us.

I recently oversaw a rather large building project — a beautiful, interior garden courtyard. It was all others — their money, their expertise, their volunteerism, their passion, their aesthetic, their labor.

It is always like that.

I am a teacher. I know how to do the teacherly thing. Every teacher I have ever had — from first grade through graduate school — made me a teacher. All their input, modeling, nuturing and care — as well as that of my family and my many friends — this support made me a into a reasonably effective pedagogue.

Finally, much of our success — as previously noted — is luck, or chance or providence. It is not us, and we know it. Anyone who has made it will tell you that. To come on the scene at the right time, to be the right fit, to have an opportunity come our way — so much literally falls into our laps, or it doesn’t.

My current job — which I absolutely adore, mostly — and which has contained much success — was handed to me. I did nothing to get it. All God, I’d say, and a few other odd, painful and interesting circumstances.

Success — it’s a form of humility.

If we don’t know that, we know nothing of success.

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