Criticism

Criticism was (during the time of Aristotle) a social conversation between people who all risked owning and sharing their ideas for the sake of building knowledge.  For criticism to be useful, you have to have some skin in the game. (Brene Brown, Rising Strong).

And one more:

Personal emotional attacks made by people not engaged in problem-solving have zero value in building or creating anything - they're only an attempt to tear down and invalidate what others are attempting build, with no meaningful contribution to replace what has been destroyed. (Brene Brown, Rising Strong).

How do you feel about criticism? No, I don't like it either. I don't like to give it, and I don't like to receive it. Yet, if you read these two quotes, it may be that we have a poor understanding - or a poor experience - with criticism.

Listen to some of these phrases about what criticism should be: "for the sake of building knowledge," "all risked owning and sharing," "have to have skin in the game."

And then here are some about what criticism should not be: "personal emotional attacks," "not-engaged in problem solving," "an attempt to tear down," "no meaningful contribution to replace what has been destroyed."

How do we love through our criticism? How do we transform the hurtful parts of criticism into something where both parties are vulnerable and both parties benefit? 

Reconciliation

Have you ever struggled with the idea of corporate reconciliation? Have you ever met someone who has? 

For example, last year at Annual Conference we, as a group, worked through understanding and reconciling with the treatment of Native Americans in our past. Have you ever met someone who has said or thought, "I haven't mistreated Native Americans? Why do I have to apologize and reconcile?"

I think there are several reasons for the confession of corporate and community sin, but as I was reading Rising Strong, I found another one.

Yesterday, I wrote about nostalgia. In the same chapter, Brown explores the idea of how our memories are often "rose-colored." We see things as we think they were. A person who was a child in the 50's might not remember the way African Americans were treated at the time in our country. Exposing that to them is painful to them. It threatens the wonderful memories they have of how life was then.

And yet, if we do not dig to discover the truth in our memories, or the truth of what we didn't know then, we are much less likely to work toward fixing the issues in the present. Stephanie Coontz explains in Brown's book that those who have never cross examined their fond memories of the 50's (memories that exclude the civil rights abuses at the time), "were the ones most hostile to the civil rights and women's movements, which they saw as destroying their harmonious world they remembered."  

Those who struggled through their memories became more adaptable to change. Think of that. Those who examined and reconciled with the abuses of the past were more able to adapt to the future and correct or prevent the same kinds of issues from happening again.

What implications does that have for life in the church? For life in society? For how we approach confession and forgiveness?

Death in Forgiveness

Forgiveness is difficult for all of us, I think. And yet, God calls us to forgive others. Remember in a previous post, when I talked about the darkness of the wilderness that happens before the promised land? That happens with forgiveness, I think. There is the difficulty that is like a wilderness before we reach forgiveness.

Why is that?

Brown (in Rising Strong) says, "In order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die. If you make a choice to forgive, you have to face into the pain. You simply have to hurt.... Forgiveness is so difficult because it involves death and grief."

That was an ah-ha moment for me as I read the chapter.

Grief is very difficult for us. It is a time of hurt and pain - a dark wilderness. To forgive someone, we have to choose to enter that wilderness. We have to experience the death of expectations, or of resentment, or of self-righteousness. We have to give up being "right." Any and all of that has to die in order for us to forgive.

Brown says, "Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the willingness to embrace grief in order to forgive. To be forgiven is to be loved."

Heartbreak

Yesterday I talked about expectations and disappointment. There is a particular kind of disappointment that Brown (Rising Strong) calls heartbreak. "Heartbreak comes from the loss of love or the perceived loss of love. My heart can be broken only by someone ... to whom I have given my heart."

The most obvious example of heartbreak is the loss experienced by the death of a loved one, but there are other kinds - the loss of love in a relationship, the hurt experienced after the action of a friend, the blameless loss experienced when a loved one moves away (or goes to college). We hurt - our heart hurts.

"To love with any level of intensity and honesty is to become vulnerable."

When I was dating Steve, Mom said, "I just don't want you to be hurt." I told her I knew I could be hurt, but I was willing to risk it anyway. And because I did, I have experienced the greatest joys of my life - my relationship with my husband, the gift of my children.

Do we avoid heartbreak by avoiding love? God has made us to love others, and it is that very love that makes us vulnerable to heartbreak. The only way to protect ourselves from heartbreak is to keep our hearts to ourselves, and to not love others. It's not an acceptable trade.

Expectations and Disappointments

If you've ever been on an Emmaus Walk, you've heard the phrase, "Don't anticipate." The pilgrim on an Emmaus Walk is asked to trust the process - don't judge it until it's over - don't worry about what will happen next. Just experience it.

I was a table leader on a walk, and one of the pilgrims at my table felt as if she had thoroughly prepared herself for the walk. She had prayed - she had fasted from all media. She had given herself over to this event. But as it began to unfold, it wasn't living up to her expectations. She was disappointed, and she wanted to leave. The walk leaders convinced her to stay at least through lunch. As it happened, God worked through her Emmaus experience during the worship service prior to lunch, and all was well.

How do expectations and disappointment mesh? Brown says in Rising Strong, "Disappointment is unmet expectations, and the more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment."

Does that mean we should never get excited about anything? I remember as a child that I would muffle my excitement about a coming event, just in case it didn't happen. I think that dampening of anticipation is a way we protect ourselves from disappointment.

But what happens to the joy? To the pleasure we feel in looking forward to something? Are we willing to trade away the joy in order to protect ourselves from potential loss?

Brown says it is important to reality-check our expectations. Are we expecting the perfect holiday celebration? Is perfect possible? Are we expecting a relaxing vacation with three kids? Is that realistic? Once we reality check our expectations, then we can find the joy in the excitement of what is realistic, and open ourselves up to the surprise of what we didn't expect, but will discover to be wonderful.

This year we gave up the expectation of a week long vacation at the beach. Steve started a new job in the spring, and new jobs bring opportunities to accumulate vacation days rather than a store of them. Instead, we decided to plan short, week-end getaways. The first was over Memorial Day, and we spent three days traveling throughout our state, seeing things we've always said we should see, but never have (or haven't seen together). The only expectation was a weekend away together, and it was wonderful. There were stories, surprises, relaxing meals, drive time to talk ... It was fantastic, but the joy would have been missing if I had kept my original expectations for the summer.

Bottle of Cold Water

The other evening, Steve was out of town, and I had a meeting at church. I parked at church and walked downtown to grab some dinner. If I'm eating alone, I often read, as I was that evening. I read a chapter out of Brene Brown's book, Rising Strong. This is what I read:

When you look away from a homeless person, you diminish their humanity and your own. (Quote from Father Murray Powell)

In the chapter, Brown struggles with her reaction to people in need - how she looks away from them instead of connecting with them. I was feeling the guilt of looking away as I read it. As I walked to dinner, a man had asked me for a quarter, and I had told him no.

After dinner, I was walking back to church. I walked by the yogurt store, and stopped, thinking a bottle of water would be great during the meeting, so I turned around and bought one, and dropped it down into my bag.

As I approached church, I saw a woman was sitting on our church steps. I started to go in, and she asked me for - you guessed it - a bottle of water.  No one has ever asked me for a bottle of water.

Do you think God was involved? I do.  I got a second chance to see someone who needed help and to respond. I was able to give a cold, unopened bottle of water to a thirsty woman. I drink water, but I rarely walk around town with an unopened bottle in my bag. And yet, God knew this woman needed water, and God knew I needed to give it to her.  Two humans, needing God. 

Doing their best?

And here is a disturbing question from Brene Brown's book, Rising Strong: "Do you really believe - in your heart - that people are doing the best they can?" 

The author was confronted with this question of herself, so she decided to ask it of others as well. There were those who answered yes - that they believe that others are doing the best that they can. They often felt naive saying it, but they "couldn't give up" on the idea that people are doing the best that they can. Others, who responded with a resounding "NO!" often sited the idea that they knew that they were not doing the best that they could, so they assumed that others were not, as well. They judged themselves harshly, and so they judged others harshly, too. Those who answered "no" often struggled with perfectionism. Those who answered "yes" were often people who were willing to be vulnerable and who believed in their self-worth.

And then the last person she asked, her husband, said something that struck me as truth:

"I don't know. I really don't. All i know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best.  it keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be."

Do you believe that people are doing the best that they can? I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that when I think about those people who I believe are not doing the best they can, I focus on their failings. I see them with eyes that judge. My life is probably happier and more joyful when I choose to believe that people are doing their best.

I wonder if that is part of what God means when God tells us to love each other.

Rumbling with the Bible

I want to take Brene Brown's concept of rumbling with the stories we tell ourselves (in Rising Strong) one step further. A couple of years ago, a pastor was teaching a Bible Toolbox class at church. One of the techniques was to look for the gaps in Bible stories. What is it we do not know when we read the story? What facts are left out? 

To take that even further, what about bible study? What "stories do we make up" about what we read, and what does that tell us about who WE are rather than what the original meaning was? What is God telling us about what the story means to us when we realize what we have used to fill in the gaps of the story?

Someone was teaching Sunday school a few weeks ago. He said (and he was quoting the resource he was using) that Mary's parents sent her away to visit her cousin Elizabeth because they were ashamed of her, and needed to get her away from their community. He said it as if it were a fact, but the Bible doesn't say that. I think that the writer of the resource assumed that because that would have been something that might have happened in his community in the past. We lay our experiences on the story.

When the rich man walks away, sad, after Jesus tells him to sell all he has and follow him, we assume he didn't do it. In fact, we state it as a fact that he walked away, leaving Jesus behind. It doesn't say that.

There are lots of examples of those kinds of gaps that we fill in with our own preconceptions and with what we have been taught, assuming it to be truth. 

We need to struggle with our interpretation of gaps. We need to find them, and examine them, and discover what it is about ourselves that leads us to fill in the gaps, JUST THAT WAY. That can tell us about ourselves.

More than that, I think looking at what we add to the stories can be a way we discover what God is trying to tell us through the stories. It can be a type of Bible study to open our minds to the gaps in the story and discover how we fill them in, and what God is telling us about the assumptions we make. We can learn more about ourselves, and more about God by rumbling with these stories.

Rumbling with the Body of Christ

Yesterday I talked about a concept from the book Rising Strong - rumbling. This is the struggle we intentional make to understand the stories we tell ourselves - the ways we fill in the gaps of what we do not so, so much so that it has the danger of becoming our truths.

What stories do we make up in our lives together as the body of Christ? Do you see conflicts in church? A story - years (and years ago - why do so many of my stories start that way?), I came to church on a Saturday to help with Mrs. Clause's Tea Room - a fundraiser that the United Methodist Women were doing at the time. They had asked for volunteers to help in the kitchen, so I showed up. When I walked into the kitchen, one of the United Methodist Women, who did not know me, and therefore thought I was a "shopper" for the tea room from outside the church, said, "No one is supposed to be back here."

In my mind, she was rude. I am at heart an introvert, and it took a lot for me to show up to help, and truthfully, she hurt my feelings. She probably didn't say it in a rude one (although in my mind, I still say she did.). In the years since, she has become the example to me of what inhospitality means. Poor woman, to be beaten up by me in my mind to such a degree.

What was the real story? I'll never know, but I need to remember that I DON'T know the entire story. What I make up in my mind is not the truth.  Are we willing to struggle with the stories we're making up to see if they reflect more about who WE are than who someone else is? And if we do that, can we develop a more forgiving nature, and a stronger church?

Rumbling with our stories

I am still working my way through the book Rising Strong - although I haven't made much progress lately.  Just one chapter. That's what happens when you find a novel that distracts you!  Anyway...

Have you ever noticed that we build stories around what we observe - what we experience? We are by nature storytellers, and when there are gaps in what we know, we fill them in. We build the rest of the story.

For example, say that you have an appointment with someone, and that person is running late - very late - and you decide that the other person doesn't respect you. You are low down on her list of priorities, and so you get angry with her. You build the story in your mind - maybe based on your own insecurities - and for some of us, this story becomes truth. There can be no other explanation. "If I were important enough in her life, she would be on time." The real truth is she had a flat tire, and she was dealing with that, and she forgot the appointment - not out of any disrespect, but just because life was too big at that moment.

We tell ourselves stories to fill in the gap.  The trick is to realize that, and to begin to try to understand the stories we tell. In that understanding comes truth about not only the world around us, but also truth about who we are. We come to understand ourselves better and to have a better understanding of the world around us. Brene Brown calls this struggle rumbling.

Curiosity and Whole-heartedness

There is a profound relationship - a love affair, really - between curiosity and wholeheartedness. How do we come to those aha moments if we're not wiling to explore and ask questions?.... (Brene Brown in Rising Strong)

Do you ever have those? The aha moment? In my spiritual walk, the aha moment is that moment when I see something new - something I've never seen before or something I've never known before.  Aha moments feel like steps forward - movements toward truth - movements toward a deeper understanding of the nature of God or of my purpose as a child of God. I love aha moments. They make Bible study seem effective and worth while.

According to the quote above, we can't have an aha moment without exploration and questions - without curiosity. The problem is, if we think we are right - if we think we have everything completely figured out, we won't have curiosity. We won't question or explore. We won't have aha moments, and we won't move any closer to a better understanding of God.

Have you ever considered that certainty can impede spiritual growth? 

Reckoning

In navigation, the term reckoning, as in dead reckoning, is the process of calculating where you are. To do that, you have to know where you've been and what factors influenced how you got to where you now (speed, course, wind, etc.). Without reckoning, you can't chart a future course.  Brene Brown, Rising Strong

Sometimes I think organizations get stuck. They get stuck where they are, unable to move forward, unable to solve problems. I believe this situation can be attributed (for some groups) to two things: they don't know why they are where they are, and they can't articulate a goal for the future.

In churches, we might sit in a meeting and bemoan our problems, and talk about the glorious past, when we had to put chairs in the aisles. If we try to consider why we are where we are now, we talk about population dropping in the community and how we don't do things like we used to do them. If we try to create a picture of where we want to go, it might range from going back to where we were or just not dying.

Frankly, neither one of the visions of a church is very exciting to me. We can't go back to what we were, and we can't convince people that a church that is "just trying not to die" is going to have a life-changing impact on their lives.

So what can we do? I think we have to enter that dark place of analyzing why we are where we are now. We don't want to do it, but there is no way to know where we are unless we do a reckoning - a calculation of the factors that influenced where we are now and how we got there.

And then we have to create a God-inspired vision of what the church will be. Where is God leading us? What is our call as a body of Christ? I think the last thing Christ would have stated as his vision for his life on earth would be, "I just don't want to die." 

Integration of our Stories

"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do."  

"The Latin root of the word integrate is integrare, which means 'to make whole.'... Participants spoke about the importance of feeling genuine, authentic and whole rather than always compartmentalizing their lives or hiding parts of themselves for editing their stories."

As I was reading Chapter Three of Brene Brown's book, Rising Strong, I encountered these two quotes. Isn't it interesting that sometimes your mind (or maybe God) lines up what has your focus with what is in the back of your mind? First, there is the idea that integrating our stories into our lives instead of ignoring them leads to wholeness. That idea collided with thoughts from the General Conference.

Rule 44 was proposed and failed to be adopted by the General Conference. It would have created a means by which controversial legislation would be considered in a small group setting:

The Commission on General Conference recommended Rule 44 at the request of the 2012 General Conference, which sought an alternative process to Robert’s Rules of Order for dealing with particularly complicated and contentious legislation.

The commission’s aim was to use small groups to give all delegates a chance to weigh in on selected petitions. (a quote from this source)

As I think about the proposed small groups, I imagine that in them there would have been the telling of stories. There would have been shared experiences. Instead, the General Conference did not do that.

I imagine the integration of our stories into the decision process (one of the parts of Wesley's quadrilateral) would have led to more wholeness and less division - at least I hope it would have. But we will never know.

Anticipating Pain

Leonard Cohen writes, in the song Hallelujah:

Maybe there's a God aboveBut all I've ever learned from loveWas how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

What is our first response to anticipated pain? Have you ever had a backache that resulted in more pain because of the way you were walking to protect yourself from the back pain? Have you ever dropped eye medication on your eye lid instead of into your eye because you blinked in anticipation of the drop? 

How do we react when we believe someone has the power and the intent to hurt us? Do we strike out first - "shooting at someone who might outdraw us?" 

How do anticipated responses such as that alter our relationships? Prevent the development of relationships? 

As we read the Bible, we see a different kind of reaction. Jesus knew what was coming, and what did he do? He walked into the garden. It was an incredible vulnerability, and yet it paved the way for love.

I'm not advocating that everyone walk into a garden and submit to execution, but are we willing to speak and risk rejection? Truthfully, I often avoid situations that might lead to rejection, but is that really the way to go?

Day Two

In the book Rising Strong, Brene Brown talks about a certification program for those who want to facilitate her work called the Daring Way.  Day Two of the Daring Way is difficult. It is the middle space for the process, and during day two, you are in the dark - the door has closed behind you, and yet you are not yet close enough to the door to which you are heading to see the light. If you want to make it to the goal, you can't skip Day Two.

Day Two is the point of no return, it is the point at which the die is cast.  You are in the dark and there is no turning back.

It's the struggle.  It's the hard work between where we start and where we are going. Nobody wants to be in the dark in-between. The Israelites were in Day Two after they left Egypt and before the reached the Promised Land.  Most of them wanted to turn back - in fact, we often talk in churches about the Back to Egypt committee. Day Two is the wilderness.

The wilderness is the place where our only hope of change comes from the anticipation of where we think we are going. 

In your life, what is your promised land? Are you so afraid of the wilderness that you won't risk it, even with the hope of the promised land? In your church, what is your promised land? Will you risk the dark times, that you can't avoid, to get there?

What promised land is God calling us to reach, even knowing that we have to cross through the wilderness to reach it? Will you trust God enough to hold your hand in the dark while you struggle?

Failure

Pipestem River

Brene Brown, in her book, Rising Strong, is speaking of her guiding principals - the basic tenets about being brave.  This first one is:

"If we are brave enough often enough, we will fail; this is the physics of vulnerability. When we commit to showing up and risking falling, we are actually committing to falling.  Daring is not saying, "I'm willing to risk failure." Daring is saying, "I know I will eventually fail and I'm still all in."

This is true in life, but I want to talk today about how it is true in the Body of Christ - in the work we call "church." I think in our church we are afraid.  We are afraid that not enough people are coming. We are afraid because we don't know what to do about it. We are so afraid, and so tired of the fear, that we do nothing. 

Do we fail to try because we are afraid of failure? Maybe sometimes. Is it freeing to realize that stepping out, and trying something, guarantees failure? Can we move forward with ideas if we give ourselves the permission to fail - not even that, but the expectation of failure?

1. Do we not ask someone to do something because we know they will say, "no"? Ask anyway. Knowing they will say "no," ask anyway. 
2. Do we fail to try an idea because someone says, "We've done that before, and it didn't work." Knowing that you will fail, the fact that it didn't work before is no excuse. Do it anyway - as long as God is leading and you are following, do it anyway. Or, if that doesn't seem like where God is calling you to go, then:
3. Do we fail to try something because someone says, "We've never done that before; it won't work." If you know you will fail, do it anyway.

The corollary to not trying is doing nothing. Do nothing will lead to nothing. Doing nothing is a failure. So try something instead. It's OK to fail - you are guaranteed to fail. At least fail at doing something instead of doing nothing.

Wired for Stories

River above Sandstone Falls, near Hinton

Have you ever wondered about the power of stories? If you read this blog, you know I'm reading Brene Browns' book, Rising Strong. She says we are wired for story. This quote really caught me, and I think it has implications for our lives together in faith:

Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that hearing a story--a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end--causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the uniquely human abilities to connect, empathize, and make meaning. Story is literally n our DNA.

1. Have you ever head the question, "Why did Jesus teach in parables?" There is your answer, in this quote. Because we are created to respond to story. Being our creator, Jesus would have understood that. It wasn't only those who were listening to him then who will respond. We respond, too. Each in a different way.
2. This quote speaks to the work of those who preach. Tell stories that engage your listeners - God has wired his children to respond. What message is God leading you to tell? What stories can you use to get the message across?
3. Listen to people's stories. In them, you will find God calling to who you are. 

Stories - it is the reason we know that relationships are important.  In them, we hear the stories.

Vulnerability

A quote from Brene Brown:  Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.

Have you ever thought of that? I think we most often consider vulnerability as something that is thrust upon us.  We are vulnerable because we are defenseless, we are victims, we are not strong enough or not smart enough, so we are vulnerable.  We are vulnerable to frightening outcomes, like loss or pain or defeat.

Have you ever considered that vulnerability is something that we choose? We choose to be vulnerable when we give up control.  We choose to embrace vulnerability when we step forward even though we know we do not have control of the situation, and never did.

Think of times when you were vulnerable by choice. Having children makes us vulnerable to their pain, their loss, their hurt. Being married - loving someone that much - makes us vulnerable to pain. Stepping out of our own plans and saying yes to God makes us vulnerable. When I accepted the position I now hold a The Foundation, I stepped into something entirely new. I was very vulnerable to failure. Eight years later (today), I know more, I'm better at what I do than I was when I started, and I pray my work is fruitful. I never would have been able to say that if I hadn't said yes, first.

Our role model is Christ. He was incarnated as human, and allowed the vulnerability of crucifixion.

Vulnerability can be a choice. It is the courage to show up.