I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
Most USA schools are back in full swing…… at least around here they are:
Hats off……
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love the world and its peoples and whose zeal for both results in empoweing students of all ages.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love their subjects and sports and whose passion for their work opens vast vistas of opportunities for their students.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who are as tough as nails over matters of integrity but are easy sells when it comes to listening and attempting to understand students and their home-lives, peer, and social struggles.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who know their students well enough to be able to anticipate and address problems before unnecessary escalation.
Hats off to school administrators who have the courage to support teachers and coaches in the face of often difficult parents and who have the courage to listen to all parties before they act.
Hats off to school administrators who aspire to serve rather than be served, who understand the power of humility, and who see their essential role as empowering coaches and teachers and students to get the very best from each other.
Hats off to parents of students who seek to respect and learn from their children’s school teachers and coaches and administrators rather than demand rights or seek to chastise or correct.
Hats off to Librarians, Musicians, Counselors, School Security Teams….. and all who work daily to keep our students motivated, kind, and safe.
Andrea Neal, Jay Sherrill and so many others who regarded Thulani and Nate as their own.
Dad owned the tearoom near the top of Blackburn Road next to the Dutch Reformed Church up the road from Park Hill Soccer Club.
You may or not have known him by name but you may have been a woman in need of milk for her baby. He would have given it to you “under the counter” as if defying the boss which, of course, was himself. When you tried to pay he may have whispered “take the milk, my dear. No baby should go without food. Keep your money for something else the baby needs.”
Or, you may have wandered into the shop and said you had no place to stay for a while and he may have said “we have plenty of room here” and given you a bed for a week, a month, even longer.
Perhaps you knew him because you faced addiction to alcohol and he was your Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and he said “just for today” to you and told you he’d decided he’d no longer drink “just for today” until his pledge spanned decades of sobriety.
Did you know my dad?
You may not have known him by name but perhaps you went to his tearoom where he served bread, milk, kindness and good humor and wrapped the goods with the feeling that you were known, you belonged, you were important.
As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
I shall strive to speak and teach as one who has indeed much to learn.
In every classroom we are all learners.
I shall strive to listen to people in the class (and out of it) as if I were listening to the mountains.
Mountains reveal their real beauty to the dedicated observer, beauty that’s easily missed by those who offer casual hurried glances or who are themselves caught up in how they look or are dressed or what the student may think of them.
Can there be a greater privilege than jetting to Penang to teach Family Systems?
Real leaders, authentic leaders, as opposed to those who are in it for the illusion of power, love of money or the mirage of status will face multiple paradoxes and do so constantly.
Yes – daily.
It comes with the role – the “role” and not position. Leading is what leaders do.
It’s a function.
I have known “leaders” whose names are boldly declared on a suite’s entry – or the headmaster’s office, or the pastor’s study – but the leader is an under-appreciated someone somewhere whose name is upon nothing, and definitely not on a fat cheque.
Leaders lead, but must also follow.
It’s an art.
Leaders go first, but must also hold back, and know when to go last.
It’s a dance.
Leaders know that leaders are servers, first.
Leaders try to understand those whom they lead, yet cannot let their desire to understand, desire for empathy, derail decisions that are best for the whole, the calling, the gravitas, the goodness of the organization they lead.
Real leaders are aware that if they cannot lead themselves, monitor themselves, hold-onto themselves, they can lead anyone anywhere worth going.
Leaders are self-aware, self-assured, not selfish or self-less.
It’s an inner-tango, often the limbo, seldom a waltz.
And, here’s the kicker – it’s a solitary dance no matter what the music.
Not everything is proceeding as you’d prefer. You notice you are starting to avoid and resent some members of your team and some people in your organization. You’d rather not pick a fight so you’re managing your day (week, month) around who you do not want to encounter. You notice, on occasion, there’s a dictatorial edge lurking just under your calm exterior and you hope it is not going to take you by surprise.
Find a leadership coach.
You find yourself taking sides on issues and recruiting those who are on yours. While you know that surrounding yourself with YES men and women is probably not good for your organization it feels good. You know that the people who hold counter opinions are good for you and for you and for your organization, you’d like them to ease off a little.
Please, find a leadership coach.
Your family is getting in your way and there are times you want to stay at work rather than go home. At the very same time, when you are home, you want to work from home to avoid some of the underlying conflicts you have to address at work. Nowhere feels completely comfortable right now.
Please, for everyone’s sake, find a leadership coach.
“Now what would Jesus do?” asked the woman glancing at her WWJD bracelet.
“Grape nuts,” replied the companion, as if he’d served Jesus breakfast that morning. I slipped away pondering how the will and the ways of the greatest political, religious and social reformer of all time got reduced to a formula for grocery shopping.
What Would Jesus Do is a great question to ask, but wearing it on a wrist somehow suggests that the answer is easily accessible. It suggests that if you and I will simply stop and think a little, having eyed the bracelet, we’ll get the answer. Then, as we act on our newfound knowledge, predicaments will be resolved, we will have better lives, and conditions in the world will improve all around for everybody.
Quite the contrary: Answering the question and doing what Jesus would do in any situation is neither easily established nor executed. Finding the answer itself would take a lot of work, like tunneling back though a couple of thousand years, researching culture, geography and weather conditions and the varying political and religious climates. Then we’d have to identify, and then decipher, metaphor, understand and interpret tone and intent, humor, and immerse ourselves in at least a few ancient languages. Besides all this, we’d need a working knowledge of the subcultures and the prejudices that existed within those subcultures. Then, with all this done, we might be able to decide what Jesus might think, might say, might do, given a few, but not all, situations we face.
The next challenge, once we’ve established the answer, would be to have the courage to do what Jesus would do. WWJD is not about “doing the right thing.” Jesus did not always do the “right” thing. If that were so, no cross would have awaited him. Doing the “right thing” would have endeared him to those who mattered and would not have required him to buck Rome and the Temple authority.
Essentially Jesus laid a platform for his followers to live differently, in ways that set both the religious establishment and Rome against Jesus and those who followed him – embracing Samaritans, making a Samaritan the hero of a parable, illustrates this. That alone was enough to put a target on his back. It doesn’t take too deep an analysis of the Gospels to see that he despised pretentiousness and empty religious “performance” and was particularly vocal wherever he found religious zeal devoid of inner transformation. Jesus despised abusive systems and was a particular critic of those who ripped others off. So now, where will you bank, shop, invest, give, worship? How will you vote? How will our practices change were we to take WWJD seriously?
I do not think Jesus cares what cereal you buy, what dress or suit you wear or how your hair is or is not cut or if you wear a hat to church or not. But. I do believe he cares about what kind of people you and I are and whether we love mercy, humility, truth and justice. I believe he cares that we challenge systems where these qualities are absent. I do think Jesus cares about what motivates you and me. I do think he cares about how we treat the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. When we (you and I) elevate the rich and show contempt for the poor we get his goat.
It is apparently forgotten that Jesus was hardly a nice guy. Today he’d be a threat to our political order and might not be able to find a church he’d attend, let alone one that would permit him to preach! Consequently, doing what Jesus would do could significantly reduce our popularity rating.
The real question, by the way, is not “What Would Jesus Do” but rather what will you, what will I do, in response to what he has done?
It’s not grape nuts or cheerios, but love, mercy, humility and justice that may bring us, yes, you and me, all a little closer to reflecting who and what Jesus was and is. But be careful, you might shed the WWJD bracelet and exchange it for a cross – and it won’t be hanging around your neck.
————
* When published in The Indianapolis Star, this column certainly got me some fans – and enemies. The morning it appeared my email was as hot! I was called brilliant, I was called stupid. One reader said that finally he’d read something by an intelligent Christian about a really stupid gimmick. Another said he’d be praying for my salvation even though he was convinced I was a lost cause.
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Unrelated image…. Meditating a moment in an Havana Art School
There are no blue-birds of happiness seeking nests.
It will not take us by surprise, arrive unannounced, and it won’t be ours because we read FaceBook memes or read anything inspirational or challenging anywhere, even the Bible.
And, no Podcast will do it – not even that.
Happiness has no victims. Happiness is an inside job, it is an internal state and it requires our willingness, our cooperation, and hard work.
Our happiness will be a direct result of what you and I do with our days.
Do we serve others?
Are we generous?
Do we accept and embrace and enjoy people who are different from us?
Do we look for beauty that is all around us and within everybody?
[If you think there is no beauty around you and there is no beauty in all people, well, you’ve already unearthed a major happiness blockage.]
Answering these questions with our lives will hold a few of many codes to unlock happiness and let it into our lives. And, this is a big one, our levels of happiness are never, not ever, up to others, no matter how much we may love or not love others. Happiness is not something another can provide for you at least for enduring lengths of time. Neither you nor I will be happier, or less happy, based on who or what we love or who or what we reject.
While I concede having money does make life just a little easier, our happiness levels are totally unrelated to money.
Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are clearly some of the most unhappy people.
Jesus of Nazareth said what comes out of people’s mouths reveals the state of people’s hearts or inner-beings.
Is there a millionaire or billionaire you’ve heard on TV with whom you’d want to share your daily life?
Happiness requires action and appears to play hard-to-get with those who persistently whine, “I just want to be happy.” It appears to play hard-to-get with complainers and those who seem entitled. Happiness and Laziness are not buddies. Laziness repels of Happiness. Happiness and Blamingness – I just made a new word – are not friends and, as far as I can tell, cannot co-exist in the same brain.
Finding a useful cause, a cause larger than oneself, and engaging in it with others who have the same or similar causes, and offering it zeal will quite often spark some thrill-for-life aka happiness.
While you and I are influenced even a tidbit by what others think of us (or what we think others think of us) we dead-bolt access to happinesses.
How and what we think and say of others is far more important than concerning ourselves with what “they” think and say of us.
I saw Santa at the Children’s Museum with a feather of a child pleading her case. They were locked in discussion, a confessional of sorts, as she entered into detail of her every Christmas wish. Hands, eyes, and all of her face enticed Santa closer lest he miss a detail living so clearly in her head.
“Oh, you want, oh, I see it. Why yes, of course. Perfectly,” Santa said, his voice tapering off into her ear, “I will see what I can do about that.”
Then she nestled into his side, her shoulders comfortably enveloped by his plush red suit as if to declare her mission accomplished. He was a perfect depiction of everything I imagined him to be and the sight easily immersed me in the voices and music of my own Christmases past.
Santa came all year round to our home. I’d look through the window in April or mid-August and Santa would be strolling up the driveway on his return from visits to every home on the street. He’d be wearing dad’s shoes and one of his ties underneath the tatty red coat, but I knew better than to expose his identity. I wanted to believe in Santa and he in turn needed me to believe. Such faith had rewards. I knew better than to dash my own hopes. I wasn’t ready to lose my trust in Santa for anyone and certainly not by my own hand.
He couldn’t resist visits to the whole neighborhood and would drop in from time to time and inspire children toward good behavior, perfect obedience at school, and remind them to count their blessings one by one. At every appearance in our home we’d sing “The Little Boy that Santa Clause Forgot” and we’d all have to cry. He insisted on it.
The lines “he didn’t have a daddy” and “went home to play with last year’s broken toys” really got us going.
It was clear he sang to all the children of the world who’d had to skip childhood and who had known poverty; children who’s fathers had gone to war or whose fathers or mothers had fled their families.
Donning the suit, surprising the children, was our Santa’s way of making the world right.
His visits created intrigue in the neighborhood, and to every child he repeated the promise that this Christmas, no child on this street would be forgotten. As far as I could tell none ever was.
The last Christmas we had together was in August of 1994. We were riding in a car and in the curves of Bluff Road when spontaneously he began to sing, “Christmas comes but once a year.”
The car became a holy place as I heard once more of the boy who “wrote a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum and it broke his little heart to find Santa hadn’t come.”
The tears we both shed required no encouragement for we both somehow knew this would be the last time he’d sing this nostalgic hymn.
Now this old song is top of my list of Christmas songs.
The melody emerges randomly in my awareness, most particularly when faced with children who are in need. I have had to silence it at all times of the year.
It was the little girl’s confidence, Santa’s grace, and the loving parents looking from the side that caught my attention last week. She touched his flowing beard and told him her every Christmas dream and I found myself listing my own requests with childlike zeal.
It gave me renewed hope that you and I, the real Santas of the world, could deliver a more hopeful tomorrow for “those little girls and boys that Santa Claus forgot.”
(First published, December 9, 2000, Indianapolis Star) ———— Our home this evening….
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