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Archives For April 2012

Dangerous, Rebellious Hope (Part 3 of 3)

April 27, 2012 — 8 Comments

“Why do we have a winner? Hope. Hope. Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is a good thing. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.” —President Snow, “The Hunger Games” Movie

The Hope series (Cheap, Crappy Hope; Passive, Boring Hope) actually grew out of the idea for this third post—the idea of dangerous hope. I was sitting in a theater, watching The Hunger Games, watching the ruthless President Snow reflect on how “a little hope” keeps people subjugated  but too much hope brings the danger of rebellion. I started thinking about how so many great stories begin with (noun)hope, a hope that changes the protagonist, giving the character the courage to fight for freedom from tyranny and oppression. In the best stories, hope gives rise to a rebellion. In the best stories, hope is dangerous to the powers-that-be. And it occurred to me that in our most cherished stories, the rebellion is always fueled by one particular kind of flame: Love. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading about Narnia, or Mordor, or Hogwarts, or Panem, or the Dark Tower, or Jerusalem—love is always the final word in hope-full, transformational, redemptive rebellion…

You may have heard of The Hunger Games?

The story depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which a fragment of the population—the Capitol, led by President Snow—rules the rest of the population in twelve outlying districts. The Capitol appears to rule by brute force, but President Snow understands the true secret of the Capitol’s tenuous hold upon the districts: a delicate balance of hope. Each year, the balance of hope is maintained by staging the Hunger Games—a televised death-game in which two children from each district compete to survive, with only one coming home alive. This one child maintains the balance of hope, representing to the people the most meager hope of survival. Meanwhile, in the opulent Capitol, the people are anesthetized by the cheap hope of abundance and trends and entertainment. President Snow understands that the extremes of human experience—bare survival and gross prosperity—can be used to subjugate people and to maintain power.

You see, cheap-little hope keeps us oblivious to the possibility of big, brilliant hope, the kind that brings transformation and a hunger for freedom. So, numb the people with the pursuit of comfort and trinkets and thoughtless happiness. Give some of them drugs to make life more pleasurable, to help them escape the pain, to make the confusion of existence feel a bit more manageable. Give others philosophy and theology, so they can satisfy themselves with thinking about hope, rather than living it. Give them a little hope, yes, that is a good thing, a feeble spark by which to warm their souls, because the soul needs at least a little warmth. But keep it contained, because the flame of real hope is dangerous to the status quo.

When we are transformed by hope into a people who forsake the shackles of self-preservation for the freedom of a redemptive life, we give rise to a rebellion against a world hell-bent on keeping us preoccupied with survival, and competition, and wealth, and power. As it turns out, hope isn’t an escape from the dangers of living; hope creates dangerous living.

To live hopefully is to live heroically.

What does this act of heroism look like? How do we rebel against a world in which the very ingredients of rebellion—strength, power, wealth, influence, and violence—are the strings upon which we already dance? Has the game been rigged? Is any kind of authentic rebellion even possible?

Near the end of her first year, my daughter reminded me there is one other ingredient of rebellion, and it’s more powerful than all others combined.

We were sitting at the breakfast table. She had just thrown a bowl of oatmeal on the floor, not out of malice but, I think, simply to watch it splatter. Nevertheless, for the first time in her new life, I was angry at her. I picked her up, looked her in the eye, and I harshly communicated my anger. I tried to subjugate her with fear and shame. (I’m not proud of this.) And that’s when my precious little thing looked at me, and she staged a rebellion. She didn’t slap at my face, or start crying, or let out a rebel-scream. Instead, her eyes shimmered with tears, and she leaned into me. She slid her head underneath my chin, she gently squeezed the back of my neck, and she sighed softly.

My daughter leaned in with love.

She gently declined my game of power and selfishness and violent escalation.

Is this how daddies end up wrapped around little fingers? Is this how a world might end up wrapped around the little finger of a love-rebellion? Is this kind of love—the kind that is not about romance but about sacrifice and given-ness, not about warm feelings but about the dangerous life opened up to hardship and pain—the hot-flame of rebellion?

In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is a threat to the balance of crummy hope. She threatens to give the people a burning hope, not because she’s a survivor (although she is), and not because she is immune to the seduction of opulence. She is a threat because she loves. Not romantically, but sacrificially. She loves her sister enough to take her place in the Games. She has an abiding gratitude for the sacrifice of her companions, which cracks open a sacrificial love for them, as well. And she loves freedom enough to defy the Capitol through her own death and destruction. President Snow has stumbled upon a young girl whose character has been transformed in such a way that she is free of the Capitol’s system of oppressive hope, and her freedom gives her the power to love.

Don’t we live in a kind of Hunger Games? Isn’t the world organized around a competition for survival and wealth? Might we become a people so transformed by hope that we forsake the oppressive hope of meager survival or abundant wealth for the rebellion of a sacrificial kind of love? When the angry man in the car next to us has spittle flying and middle fingers waving, might we lean in with love—a gentle smile and a slowing down and a yielding to him? When the cashier in the checkout lane is treating us like trash, might we lean in with love—wondering about her story, expressing our appreciation for her life and her service? When our children are ready for a showdown about the broccoli, might we lean in with love—giving them a choice and aching with them when they don’t get dessert? When our spouses are ready to duel about upright toilet seats or how to celebrate the holidays or who is contributing more to the relationship, might we lean in with love—opening our ears and our hearts to the pain too deep to express? When we feel shame, and all of our doubts and insecurities are churned up and everything in us says to run and hide, might we lean in with love—entering into the vulnerability of our brokenness and finding connection there?

Lean in with love.

And fan the flames of rebellion against a world determined to keep you preoccupied with survival and prosperity. Lean in with love, knowing the danger of it, knowing you may not get any love in return, knowing the world will try to put down your rebellion with strength and power and violence. But lean in, knowing your hope has prepared your character for all of it, and knowing the freedom you have been seeking can be realized only in the arms of a sacrificial, self-forsaking, open-armed kind of rebel-blaze.

What’s Your Story: Have you ever leaned in with love, when you were tempted to do violence? Or has anyone every surprised you by leaning in with love? What did that act of rebellion look like? Please feel free to share your story, or any other thoughts, in the comments below. If you are reading this by e-mail or RSS feed, and you would like to comment on, or share, this post, click here to go to the blog. 

Note: If you would like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe by e-mail in the sidebar. You can also receive notification by joining me on Twitter or liking my page on Facebook. And, as always, thanks for reading. It’s a gift. 

Photo Credit: Photo taken from the following website, http://wallpapersa.blogspot.com/p/fire-wallpapers.html

In Family & Parenting, Intimacy & Vulnerability, Story & Narrative, Therapy & Personal Growth , , , , ,
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Passive, Boring Hope (Part 2 of 3)

April 20, 2012 — 7 Comments

Once we have awakened to the possibility of hope, we immediately encounter the first hurdle of the hopeful life—a hurdle over which we can stumble back into despair and hopelessness…and the hurdle is the nature of hope itself. Because hope has at least two expressions, and in one form it is passive and dull and it doesn’t change anything…

Hope is just wishful thinking, isn’t it?

We hope for a lot of things around my house. My oldest son hopes he can save enough money to buy a Nintendo DS before he’s too old to care. Meanwhile, he consistently succumbs to impulse in the checkout lane, and his piggy bank remains hungry for funds. My younger son hopes (inexplicably) that we will have “buttered pasta” for dinner. Every night. He’s disappointed at least six nights a week. My youngest one, the one with the bright eyes and soft curls and the color pink she calls “mine,” hopes her brothers will see her as an equal. Sometimes they almost do. And my wife hopes I will eventually be a little less introverted. Hope is just wishful thinking, right?

Ironically, when hope is a verb, it’s pretty impotent—it doesn’t change anything. The dictionary defines (verb)hope in this way: “To look forward to with reasonable desire or confidence.” (Verb)hope is all about waiting, anticipating, and being “reasonably confident” we will attain the object of our desire. As it turns out, (verb)hope is a pretty passive phenomenon. We hope the next chapter will bring something new and different, but the next chapter is not going to write itself. Portable video games don’t get purchased until we first master our desire for trinkets. Or we insist on hoping for things that simply aren’t going to be a part of our story—we can tantrum for nightly pasta until we are breathless, but it’s not going to happen. Yet, we write our stories with this kind of  hope, and before long the hope we have so recently discovered becomes a huge disappointment.

But hope is not only a verb.

Hope is also a noun. And (noun)hope can transform everything. When hope is a noun, when it is an experience that possesses us and defines us, it is devastatingly powerful. The dictionary defines (noun)hope as “the feeling that what is wanted can be had and that events will turn out for the best.” [Italics not mine—when the dictionary starts emphasizing words, you know they’re important.] Whereas (verb)hope focuses us on the future, waiting for a desired outcome, (noun)hope becomes transformational right here and now—it’s as if hope reaches backward from the future and begins to transform the present.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Somehow, (noun)hope reaches even further, into our past, assuring us the events that happened there don’t have to remain meaningless, showing us how those broken chapters will become an integral part of the beautiful, redemptive story we are telling with our lives. When it becomes more than just a way of anticipating the future, when it becomes something we possess and it begins to define us as people, hope becomes unhinged from time and starts to change everything: our expectations for the future, the way we relate to the present, and the way we understand the past. It changes all things, because it changes the only thing present in every scene of our story—(noun)hope changes us.

We have a seventy-year-old maple tree in our front yard. It towers over our house, hugging the front of the house and wrapping itself around the side, as well. In the spring, I sit in my reading chair in the upstairs dormer, which is engulfed by the tree, and I feel like I’m in a treehouse with green-life erupting all around me. In the summer, it shades our house from the scalding Midwest sun during the sultriest hours of the day. In the fall, it explodes into oranges and reds, and people stop and stare, and when my kids tell me to hug it and kiss it I’m glad for the excuse. In the winter, it stands sentinel, its dancing shadow making the rare winter sun shimmer on our living room floor, reminding us of life just beneath the surface of winter. I LOVE that tree.

But last spring it bloomed with a bare canopy and holes in the leaves and sickly-looking seedlings. I panicked. (Welcome to my neurosis.) I pounded fertilizer stakes around the drip line, I watered it with Miracle-Gro, and I called in the tree guys. I wanted to scream as the professional looked at it and nonchalantly described the four different bacteria it picked up in the cold-wet spring. And then he told me I would just have to hope it would come back healthy next year. Just hope. Passive, tedious, anxiety-provoking hope.

As the fall approached, and the tree’s pathetic, shriveled leaves began falling to the ground while the school supplies were still smelling fresh and all the other trees were still green, something hit me hard. I realized how much I live my life with (verb)hope. I realized how much energy I invest in hoping life’s myriad outcomes will break my way, while I fret and worry. And of course, this was bigger than the tree. I felt sick about the way I was living my entire story, and I ached to make my hope a noun, something I could embody and be filled by, making me hope-full.

I ached to rewrite the character I was playing in my own story. I wanted that character to change. To trust that he would be okay, regardless of which trees fell, or which basements flooded, or how much the healthcare company slashed his psychotherapy fees, or which child got sick, or who was misunderstanding his heart. I wanted to be the author of a character who didn’t spend his time hoping the future would deliver him from pain and trial and conflict, but a character who could drink down the cup of life to the dregs, entering into all the mess with hopefulness and peace. A character whose hope gave him the strength to enter into the confusion of life and the perseverance to stay there, rather than sitting idly in the waiting room of (verb)hope and yearning for an escape from life’s trials.

I wanted to have the courage I was witnessing every day on the other side of the therapy office. Because my clients teach me about hope, as well. They have taught me that, as hope becomes the pen of our character arc, we discover the earliest chapters of our stories are not something to be disowned, or edited to the cutting room floor. Instead, we begin to recall the hard, early chapters as the setting of a story that is about healing and change, the setting for a really good character arc. The events of the past are no longer a random, cruel chapter of life—they become the backdrop for a life-story that can inspire the uninspirable. (Noun)hope is not a future that we wait for, it is the energy of transformation, right here and now, and it is a lens of grace, through which we can look at the chapters of brokenness we have lived and find meaning there.

In the end, the sickness of my beloved tree was a blessing, because it revealed a sickness in me—the dis-ease of (verb)hope. By the way, the tree bloomed full and green in this warm, early spring. It’s beautiful again. But not as beautiful as this: by the time the leaves popped, it didn’t matter what they looked like. (Noun)hope had bloomed, and the limitations of life and the finitude of all things material had been stripped of some of their power to disappoint and terrorize and defeat.

(Noun)hope changes everything, because it changes us. I wonder if you’re as thirsty as I was for the kind of hope that transforms us into people who not only survive, but thrive, in the midst of life’s pain and suffering. Are you bored by a hope that keeps you stuck and waiting? Are there chapters of your life that need to be redeemed by writing a purpose for them into your story? Do you want to genuinely enjoy the character you are living out in your life-story, a character that is engaging life and hungry for transformation? If so, begin the hunt for (noun)hope today, track it down ruthlessly, and don’t stop until you have captured a hope that transforms, and heals, and redeems. You were made for nothing less.

 

What’s Your Story: Perhaps you’d like to share about a time when waiting with passive hope left you disappointed, but deciding to change yourself became a hope-full and life-giving endeavor? Please feel free to share your story, or any other thoughts, in the comments. If you are reading this by e-mail or RSS feed, click here to comment.

Note: Next week I will post the final part of this reflection on hope, and I think it will be entitled, “Dangerous Hope.” If you would like to be notified of that post, and future posts, you can subscribe by e-mail in the sidebar. You can also receive notification by joining me on Twitter or Facebook. And, as always, thanks for reading. It’s a gift. 

Note: When I began writing this post, it was a lot less about me and a lot more about the psychotherapeutic endeavor. In the end, I could only ask so much of your attention, so I cut most of the psychotherapy reflection, which was the original inspiration for the post. If you are interested in reading about it, feel free to visit my Facebook page, where I elaborate on how this relates to what happens in the first seven sessions of psychotherapy.

Photo Credit: Taken from the following website: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/tracking-offline-conversions-hope-seven-best-practices-bonus-tips/

Check It Out: For a brilliant depiction of (noun)hope in song, check out Alabama Shakes, performing “Hold On,” on Conan O’Brien.

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Cheap, Crappy Hope (Part 1 of 3)

April 13, 2012 — 13 Comments

I settle for cheap, crappy hope. I think many of us do. Because when our stories are written with the pen of brokenness and we bear the inevitable scars of life, our wounds reduce real transformation and redemption to a fairytale. We are like people born and raised on a mountaintop, accustomed to living on thin air, ignorant to the rich, life-giving oxygen below. We are born blind—we have no vision for real, life-shaking, story-changing, world-altering transformation. We are hopeless in the fullest sense; we have not lost hope—we have simply never known it to exist.

My four-year-old son, Quinn, has never been able to hear completely out of his right ear. Although pediatricians repeatedly gave him a clean bill of health, he struggled to hear, his speech lagged, and his frustration often boiled over into rage. Only recently, a specialist determined that, due to mysterious causes, he carries fluctuating levels of fluid in his inner ear, resulting in impaired hearing and a level of negative pressure that, to quote the doctor, “would be painful enough to put most adults on the floor.” Quinn has never known anything else. Quinn’s story is one told in a muted world, with unpredictable and excruciating pain. He cannot fathom anything else, so he never complains, never pleads for something better. Most days, he suffers quietly.

I listen to similar stories of this-is-all-there-is brokenness every day. Stories in which anger has been the only way to feel and to relate, in which painful and violating touches have been the only way of life. Stories in which parental breath smells like beer and fathers go directly from work to the Lazyboy. Stories resulting in the logical assumption that parents aren’t supposed to be interested in their children. Stories in which believing in something means hating everyone who doesn’t. Stories in which pimples and peers were a devastating combination. Stories in which perfection was not considered an unattainable goal, but a daily expectation with shameful consequences. We live these stories, and a life of pain and suffering becomes a given, like the ground you walk on or the sky over your head.

Yet, people cannot live without hope.

We are terribly resilient. Deep down, we know that we need hope like oxygen, so we refuse the fate of a hopeless life. So, living blind to the possibility of real transformation and healing and flourishing, we settle for cheap, crappy hope. We latch on to small, cheap objects and promises, and we suck heavily on the thin air of crummy hope. This kind of hope comes to us in so many disguises: the release of a new video game, a bottle, good grades and a prestigious college, the triumph of our favorite athletic team, a new outfit that turns heads and earns attention, a better job, a Facebook comment, a better house in the best school system, the promise of a spouse who will never disappoint us, or the achievements of our children. These are good things, even wonderful things. They bring enjoyment to life and they are meant to do so. But the moment they become our hope, we are in trouble. Because when the video game starts to bore you, or the team loses, or the outfit gets too tight, or the spouse turns out to be human, or the kids turn out to be kids, our wispy-thin hope gets shattered. Cheap hope feels good for a while. But it has an ugly underbelly—when we settle for breathing the depleted air of cheap hope, the redemptive chapters of our stories go unwritten, awaiting an author with a vision for something more.

We need to wake up to the cheapness of our flimsy hope.

And we can wake up. We can become aware of the possibility of more and the hope that goes along with it. The awakening is a gift, often unsought but always welcomed like deep gulps of fresh air. You may have lived a life in which your mother’s anger and abuse were unquestioned, until that day when your boyfriend’s mom smiled at you—her eyes were kind and when she complimented the color of your eyes, you knew she meant it. And the words were like oxygen. Or, you assumed every family had a fridge just for the beer and that all dads lived in front of the television, until one day after school you went home with a friend. And it was you and he in the driveway with his dad, a ball, and a hoop-—his dad wasn’t allowed to block shots and everybody was drinking ice water. And it was more than your thirst that got quenched. Or, you didn’t even realize your parents were disinterested in you until your college roommate stayed up all night with you listening to your story. And suddenly, new storylines felt possible. Or you didn’t realize you could go to church without hating half the people in the country until you found a church on campus freshman year, where they welcomed you and it didn’t matter who you voted for or how many skeletons you had in your closet. Or it never occurred to you that you were loved only when you were perfect, until you botched the dishwasher repair, and your wife broke out in laughter that was laced with love instead of shame. When hope breaks in like this, it can change everything.

Quinn is finally being treated for his ear problem. His hearing is improving, and the pain is decreasing. It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s a long way from perfect, but he is beginning to understand that his brokenness is not the only way, that healing may bring something vastly different and new. Last night at the dinner table, after several requests for us to repeat ourselves, I watched him stop for a minute, wheels turning beneath his deep, serious eyes. And then he leaned gently over to his mother, turning his head to the other side, and he asked, “Momma, can you tell me in this ear, it’s clean.”

It’s clean—this is the way I’m supposed to hear, and now I know the difference. I want it to sound this way; I want it to be this way. Quinn has had a glimpse of real healing, and he is trading in the cheap hope of parents repeating themselves, of guessing at what people are saying and struggling to follow conversations, for the possibility of real transformation.

We need to wake up to this big, beautiful, overwhelming hope. I think we need to begin by deciding we have endured enough brokenness, by deciding we aren’t going to wait any longer to be surprised by hope, by deciding we are going to become people who act like hope exists, even if it is an act of faith. I think we need to start by identifying the broken pieces of our lives and then deciding that each and every one can be redeemed. We need to quit anesthetizing ourselves to our disappointment and disillusionment by adopting cheap, transient sources of hope. We need to have compassion for the blindness with which we have lived, but we need to settle for nothing less than a life that tells a new story. And we need to believe that no one else is going to write the new story for us. We need to write our life-stories with the pen of hope, stories that heal us, and that in the healing become bigger than us. Stories that create healing in the world. Lives that give birth to new hope for a world that is so desperately in need of it.

 

What’s Your Story: Have you ever been surprised by hope? A friend, a teacher, a stranger who showed you a better way? We all need to hear your story of surprising hope. It will wake us up. If you feel so inclined, please feel free to share your story in the comments. If you are reading this by e-mail or RSS feed, click here to comment.

Note: Next week, I plan to post Part 2 of this reflection on hope, and it will focus on why hope is more than wishful thinking, why it is a transformative force in our lives. If you would like to be notified of that and future posts, you can subscribe by e-mail in the sidebar. You can also receive notification by joining me on Twitter or Facebook. And, as always, thanks for reading. It’s a gift.

 Photo Credit: http://itsdstndx0.blogspot.com/2011/06/hope-inspiration-3.html

In Therapy & Personal Growth , , , , ,
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Conflict Kills Community (But It Doesn’t Have To)

April 6, 2012 — 12 Comments

The most extreme conflicts conclude with bullets flying and bombs dropping. But the vast majority of conflicts in our world don’t make the CNN scroll. They begin with far more subtle differences of opinion, and they destroy relationships and community. Siblings fight over, well, everything. Teenagers fight over the best ways to feel liberated. In marriages, we constantly disagree about who is giving more to the relationship, and the peaceful community within our four walls is splintered. In our churches, we disagree about how to worship or which people deserve to be loved—we wear our smiles like armor but nothing is redeemed or reconciled, and eventually a group of us start a new church community down the block. In our workplaces, we disagree about how frequently to meet or whose project should get funded, and the cubicle walls become like prison cells, everyone in their own solitary confinement. In our nation, we slander anyone with a different political ideology—we do it via commercials, telephone campaigns, debates, and dinner table conversations, and we become a national community in gridlock.

Differences between people create tension, discomfort, and fear. Tension leads to conflict, and conflict results in distance at best and violence at worst. All of it becomes fatal to relationships and connectedness and the community we so badly need. Conflict kills community. But it doesn’t have to.

In fact, sometimes, conflict can be the beginning of authentic community.

Several years ago, I stumbled into a particularly heated marijuana debate between two acquaintances—not a couple of half-baked high school kids raging against “the man,” but two highly educated professionals. One man was militantly in favor of legalizing marijuana, the other man violently opposed to it. And they wanted my opinion. I remember feeling a sense of dread, like I was wading into dangerous waters, with hungry things swimming beneath the murky surface. The debate did not go well. They never do.

Only later, on the way home, did I get a glimpse beneath the surface of those ideological waters. My wife explained that the legalization advocate had recently watched his father die a slow and excruciating death from cancer, while marijuana was the only thing that relieved his father’s pain. And, as it turns out, the marijuana opponent had been raised in a family torn apart by drug addiction. That’s when I realized what was floating beneath the surface of these competing ideas.

Stories.

The stories of two hurting people. Stories of pain and anguish and loss. Stories that have formed their ideas and opinions and beliefs. Stories that have delivered them to a natural conclusion about the way the world should work. A person’s ideas are never simply their ideas. Opinions and beliefs are never born in a vacuum. They are the logical result of a story. The intensity of any given opinion usually depends upon the intensity of the story that gave rise to it. If you want to understand a person’s ideas, you need to understand who they are and the story that has been told with their lives.

The therapeutic space is a small and hidden community of two. And it may be our first experience of a relationship that can graciously bear the burden of disagreement, without distance or violence. In this space, we may express an opinion or value that directly opposes the beliefs of our therapist. Yet, the therapist does not respond defensively, or with a desire to change or alter. Instead, the therapist responds with a gentle curiosity, with a desire to understand the story that gave birth to your belief.

This spirit of curiosity and gentle exploration is disarming. We no longer have to respond with reflexive defensiveness. In the safe space that is created, we can piece together the origins of our beliefs. Whereas before, the need to quickly and effectively defend ourselves obscured our life-story, we now develop a deep, wise understanding of the ways that we were formed. We discover that we can have opinions, and so can others—we don’t need to hide them fearfully, but we also don’t need to wield them violently.

And in doing so, we become a people inviting others into the fullness of their own stories. We become walking storybooks, differently-shaped and differently-believing, but nonetheless writing new chapters of our lives together. We discover that conflict need not be the death of relationship and community. It can be the birth.

I think we assume communities are comprised of like-minded people, so we believe in order to preserve community—a marriage, a friendship, a collegiality, a church—we must be like putty, changing our beliefs to match the beliefs of others, or conversely, convincing everyone to believe what we believe. But perhaps an authentic community is a group of people with a vast array of opinions and differences that range from semantics to fundamental incompatibilities in worldview. Yet they are a people committed to living in the tension, refusing the temptation to do violence to the other’s philosophy or worldview. They have decided they will value people and the stories those people are telling, above feeling perfectly at ease, or right, or validated.

If this is true, when people disagree with us, or when we disagree with them, we don’t need to immediately eliminate those people from our lives or escape their community. Instead, the decision to be (or not to be) in relationship with that person can be based on other questions. Are they willing to step graciously into disagreement with us? Do they have the courage to break the surface of their opinions and enter into the danger of knowing and sharing their own stories? Do they have the patience and tenderness to be an audience for our story? Because there will be some people who use their opinions like a shell, like impenetrable armor. You can offer them the opportunity to engage their own story and yours, but they may not be willing to do so. If they have locked their own story away somewhere inside of them, they may not even be able to offer it to you. And you can’t make them. Others, you will find, share your hunger for authentic community.

Are you hungering for genuine relationship and authentic community? Why not begin today? Start by disagreeing with someone for whom you care deeply. But do so graciously, with the desire to understand who they are and why they believe the way they do, and with a loose-enough grasp on your own opinions. And if they are ready for community with you, they won’t run and they won’t fight back.

You might even see a look of relief flooding their eyes, because they may share your hunger for something new and healing and beautiful.They, too, may be eager to put down the weapons of opinion and ideaology. Eager to trade them in for the soothing balm of an attentive ear. Eager for a relationship in which their story has infinite value. Eager to forsake the isolation of the winner’s circle for the complicated fellowship of authentic community.

I hope we settle for no less in our friendships and families and neighborhoods, and in our communities of faith and townspeople and countrymen. I hope we disagree, and I hope our stories are told.

What’s Your Story:  Do you disagree with anything that I have written? If so, feel free to do the courageous, community-making thing and participate in the UnTangled community by graciously sharing your disagreement in the comments below.  Or perhaps you agree with what I have written, and your story testifies to the reasons why. Please feel free to share your story in the comments. If you are reading this by e-mail or RSS feed, click here to comment.

Note: If you would like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe by e-mail in the sidebar. You can also receive notification by joining me on Twitter or Facebook. And, as always, thanks for reading. It’s a gift.

In Community, Story & Narrative , , , ,
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