The Difficulty of Listening.

Listening to pain is a difficult thing. It feels impotent. I just listened for a half hour or so, fighting constantly the need to give my opinion to a good friend suffering things I can't even begin to understand, unsure of what to do. I admit I failed a couple of times and chimed in with my thoughts, but I consider these unhelpful mistakes. My friend just needed an ear.

In the past three or so years, I've had more conversations like this than I would ever wish on anyone. I've seen men crying and raging like a teenage girl who got dumped while on her period. And most of the time all I can think to do is listen, which, I think, is really what is needed. People need a safe place. People need a bucket that they can vomit into, someone who can really ask "How are you?" and mean it.

So here are a few tips for listening

1) Like I said before, I'm tempted to speak up. When people divulge the pain of life, one can't think in terms of syllogisms and the details of "the right thing to do." There's a time for that, but if that comes at all, it is step number three or four, maybe eight. What people need is for you to shut up and nod.

2) Beverages and food. Every painful conversation should involved both liquids and solids, something light, something comforting. Winter time calls for a hot beverage of course. Coffee shops can be good, but are prone to interruption. A corner of a dining table and three or four cups of coffee go well together. For summer time experiences, a cold drink on a warm summer evening is, I think, the best time to open wounds. Also, having something to drink helps you keep your mouth shut.

3) Avoid sympathetic terms. You probably don't understand what the other person is going through. Having your boyfriend or girlfriend dump you, while significant to you, probably isn't the same as experiencing the pain of destroying your own marriage, being betrayed by family, or failing to the degree that your reputation is thoroughly wrecked. People know you care because you have been sitting on the porch listening to rehashing of the same story since 11:00pm, which was five hours ago. Understanding nods and eye contact are acceptable. No need to open your mouth and say something stupid like, I understand. Unless of course you went through the EXACT same thing and actually can.

I have several more tips, but most of them could be summarized with the following. Shut your mouth, and open your ears and heart.

Also, never say "Don't worry, it will be ok." Worst thing you could possibly say.

That is all.

For The Thing Itself.

I'm tired of doing things as a means to an end rather as an end in themselves.

Writing for example. There was a time when I wrote as a means to an end, mainly to get better at writing. It worked, I became a better writer. I'm glad that I forced myself to do that sort of thing, but I'm glad I don't do it quite as much anymore. It was miserable. It basically took the thing I wanted to love to do and taught me to hate it. I'm glad I survived that experience.

I suppose you could argue that sort of experience is a step in any proces, but I dare say it is a stage of immaturity. Marathon runners get up morning after morning, fighting the urge to sleep, but always glad to be alive and going once their feet hit the pavement. I don't understand runners (nor do accountants understand why I would ever be so keenly interested in improving my grammar).

Maturity does the thing for the thing itself, even if it is a means to an end. This post, this sentence, these words are the work in front of me and it brings me joy to arrange them on my screen this morning. Of course this world is still tainted, sometimes I have to fight for that joy, but most mornings, even in the frustrating times, it is there.

I'm going to take a turn now and point myself in the direction I originally intended. Last night my wife was talking about whether or not she took her faith seriously enough, or whether or not she did enough. If I can be honest for her, she has to fight the feeling about what she 'should' do, which is funny because without even realizing it she is drastically selfless. I fight these sorts of things as well. Certain things that Jesus said about caring for down and outs cut at my rather self centered existence. I find myself continually fighting what Brennan Manning talked about when he said "don't should on ourself."

Brennan Manning was one of those people who did the thing for the thing itself, to the point that he almost didn't seem aware of the service he was involved in, including work with the homeless and AIDS patients in New Orleans. It's a sign of his maturity (though he was certainly deficient in other areas). To him, loving was the means to the end and the end itself.

I want that.

Say Something

Communication is a tricky thing. I've been writing, giving sermons, and making music to various degrees for the last several years, and I've found that the most common theme in my communication is that it is typically misunderstood, sometimes because of poor communication on my part, but more often because language is a flawed institution formed by flawed beings. English for example is an amalgamation of French royalty, religious Latin, and the ramblings of whatever drunk Viking happened to occupy the British isles.

I led a workshop at CMC's conference this year on communication. To jump start our discussion I posed the question, "Who knows what the word Hosannah means?" I was specifically thinking of the song Hosannah by Hillsong, that uses the phrase "Hosannah in the Highest" in the chorus. I've probably sang this song several dozen times at my church, but only have a vague notion of what Hosannah meant. I thought it had something to do with God saving us, but the phrase "in the Highest" threw me off. So after fifteen or so seconds of silence the pastor in the room piped up and said he thought it had something to do with God saving us, but even he seemed unsure.

There are verses in the Bible that talk about words. There are verses that say not to use idol words, or have worthless conversation. I used to think these verses were talking about those four letter words that I used to roll around my mouth on the tractor because that seemed so foreign with their harsh germanic inflections and sharp syllables. I would say them until they were sounds devoid of meaning I don't know maybe God was talking about four letter words, but I think more than that God is looking for his people to be people who say things that mean things and bring life. I think he was talking about communicating life when we speak. And while Christian's are good about avoiding sins of commission we run rampant through fields of meaningless communication.

I don't think it's a Christian problem, I think it's a human problem. In North America we know how to say a whole lot without saying anything at all. Maybe this sounds a little too much like "The good ol days" but watch a Mike Myers comedy like Wayne's World and compare it to something more recently by Will Ferrel. I'm not saying either are the epitome of intellectual excellence, but watching Wayne's world might require me actually knowing something about economic or political conditions, and jokes sound like they were thought out rather than just being an impromptu session of Ferrel screaming random barely incoherent phrases. I fear for the intelligence of this generation.

I believe we have a responsibility to communicate life, which is really so much more than saying Hosanna or Jesus saves. I'm sorry but words lose meaning, language changes, and what you think is so clear to the world might not sound much different than me talking to you about the importance of understanding tapered versus analog contours when selecting potentiometers, or even the debate about whether or not guitars should just be true bypass with a push-pull cutoff switch. That all actually did really mean something specific and real by the way. While that all makes perfect sense to me, clear as day, it means nothing to you, and to get you to the point of understanding what I am talking about might take a while. How much more difficult is describing relationship, let alone relationship with God. I think it takes a lot of work and creativity, otherwise Jesus wouldn't have told so many stories (which are by the way still looked at, even by the secular world, as an amazing example of communication skills).

I'll leave you with some words from a skeptic who taught me about meaning what I say and saying it well.

Our Bog Is Dood

By Stevie Smith

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,

They lisped n accents mild,

But when I asked them to explain

They grew a little wild.

How do you know your Bog is dood

My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so

That is enough, they cried,

And straight within each infant eye

Stood up the flame of pride,

And if you do not think it so

You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,

What is dood, suppose Bog is?

Just what we think, the answer came,

Just what we think it is.

They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours

And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again

They had forgotten me

Each one upon the other glared

In pride and misery

For what was dood, and what their Bog

They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,

And sweeter not to see,

And sweetest of all to walk alone

Beside the encroaching sea,

The sea that soon should drown them all,

That never yet drowned me.

Resolving to Fail

I'm doing something this year that I have thought about doing for a while now. I'm not going to tell you exactly what it is. I've found that if I express my larger goals too quickly I get this sense of satisfaction as if I've already done the thing. So for now I'll be keeping my mouth shut so I don't let out the motivation.

I can tell you that what I'm trying to do is one of the more extensive, long term, projects I've undertaken. It feels like the first time I drove across the country alone. At first it was a fairly exciting venture, around Boise things got boring enough that I had time to actually consider what I was doing. It took me until somewhere in Wyoming before I finally settled down and thought I might make it. Right now I'm somewhere in Boise and a lot of details are settling in. I'm terrified. At times like this it is a lot easier to think about all the things I'm doing wrong, all the things that I don't know. It's a bit overwhelming, so I'm shifting my goals.

My goal is to fail at my project.

I'm not giving up, all those details are still sitting there, I've just given myself permission to fail. The whole reason I set out on this journey in the first place is because I want to get better at something, and the best way to do that is repetition. So really the only unacceptable failure is giving up.

Ok, let's get to it.

Fundamentals

I spend a lot of my time trying to streamline my life. I try to shortcut the process of whatever I am trying to do at the moment. With my writing for example, it's easy for me to spend a couple of hours watching videos, or reading books about writing, even studying sentence structure and word choice of my favorite authors. These things are good. They teach me things about what I love to do. The problem is that they are full of motivating promise without any actual results. Unless I sit down and write, a lot, I'm never going to get anywhere.

Part of the problem is my fear of imperfection and difficulty. It is one thing to think about a great concept to write about, or even a couple of quippy sentences that cut like a razor, but to actually sit and piece something together usually involves several revisions, at least two cups of coffee, and an ongoing battle with my self-confidence. Just like the best stories, the best examples of writing are typically born out of a painstaking process of frustration and continual failure, until you wake up one morning and have a vague notion that it might have been worth it.

Maturity is the same sort of animal. Growth is slogging journey through pain and failure, every so often interrupted by a glimpse of accomplishment overshadowed by what it took to get there. It's easy to fight this sort of process. We would much rather cross the desert by setting land speed records than walking. But, it is the day in day out that has made me the person I am today, and the same slogging that will make me into the kind of person I want to be.

Jesus modeled the same sort of process. It is strange to think of God incarnate preparing for something, yet he understood the rhythms of life enough to wait 30 years before starting the biggest portions of his ministry. There were a million steps taken before he turned his face to Jerusalem. As I read through stories about Jesus, where he went, and what he said, I see a patience with his process of living and teaching. One of the things I see clearly in Jesus life is that he was not paranoid about progress and efficiency. He was focused on the long term.

So this morning as I set pen to paper I attempt to do so with patience and purpose. I think Jesus prefers it that way.

When Perfect Meets Imperfect

Language is imperfect. Words are nuanced depending on the experiences attached to a word.

For example: Cat.

The picture you have in your mind probably varies based on whether you love circuses and think of a Lion, or are picturing a little kitty of your childhood.

This is a very small example, but when we get down to it, it is very hard to communicate precisely when using the human language. Which is why I find it remarkable that God tried to communicate with us at all, knowing that his message would be misread, misheard, misrepresented, and misunderstood through the ages in so many ways, which is a good reason for us to be humble about any theological conclusions we reach. Galileo was after all declared a heretic for believing that the universe revolved around the Earth. According to the church he opposed the obvious scriptures like Psalm 93:1 that says "...the earth is established, it shall never be moved..."

Language is just another way that God used the imperfect to do something about the mess we caused, and it is humbling. Studying language makes me realize that while God's truth is perfect and absolute, the language of the people he communicates to, as well as the people themselves are not, and yet He still does it and makes beautiful things.

The Joys of Squirrel for Breakfast

I stand by the right to publish incomplete snippets. The point of this blog is to build a unity. Basically, if there is a unity in my life, it will become apparent what that unity is. No post is a complete thought, theology, worldview, or poem within itself, it must be taken within the context of the entirety of this blog, considerations of who I am in public as well as who I am in extreme situations like when I am forced to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to help my wife jump start her car in 20 degree weather. I recognize my right as a flawed human being to do the following: 1) be wrong, 2) change my mind, 3) be inconsistent, 4) have improper grammar and spelling conventions. You are just as flawed, wrong, capricious, and prone to theological alteration as I am... so get over it.

Silence is a valuable commodity. Thoreau wanted it badly enough that he moved into the woods and built himself a little cabin. There is a small wood near my school that I walk by between classes. I often mentally dig through my backpack to see if I have enough supplies to survive for a week or two. The small cup of unheated gourmet soup made for me by my wife is probably too meagre a serving for that long. I don't have a knife with me, or matches for that matter. Even if I did have ample supplies I'm sure that someone would suspect a vagrant when they saw smoke rising from the trees, carrying with it the smell of sizzling squirrel bacon.

Some day I hope to have a very small cabin in an old growth forest, with a pot belly stove and lots of books and paper and pens and a guitar. I think there is something beautiful about a bit of isolation and silence, it makes you realize that a life without computers, cell phones, amplified instruments, cars, to the minute deadlines, and higher education, isn't as terrible as we've made it out to be. I'm not trying to be earthy or nostalgic. I just think I would love living isolated in the woods for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month out of each year, even if just to remind myself that the world doesn't end if I'm not a part of it. I think everyone should be forced to realize that at least once a year.