Accompaniment – Page 15

Showing One’s Face

My wife and I used to work here in downtown Cairo, Egypt.

My wife’s work was in the legal aid clinic. She worked often with one translator, a young woman from Somalia, when preparing the cases of Somali clients. This woman wore the niqab, so my wife had only ever seen her eyes.

Then, the day before we were to return to the US, this young woman approached my wife to say goodbye and told her that she wanted to find a place alone so that she could show my wife her face.

There was no real privacy on the compound. The workspace of the entire legal aid clinic was, generously estimated, about 14 feet by 24 feet, with an adjoining bathroom. So my wife and this Somali woman went into the bathroom, saw each other face to face, and said goodbye.

Deciding to show our face to someone takes significant courage.

How do we become people who have the desire to show our face to one another?

How do we become someone of such love that people want to show their face to us?

A Fresh Piece of Paper

Growing up, when we (one of my siblings or I) had convinced ourselves that a homework problem had stumped us, our father would do the following.

He would bring us to his desk, turn on the desk light, give us a blank sheet of paper, and sharpen our pencil. He would talk out the problem with us if we wanted and then (this part was key) would leave. He showed that he trusted us to solve our own problems.

And, surprise! We always figured it out.

I think often about that exercise, particularly when I feel momentarily stuck. What a gift to be given the habit of trying again, at a different angle, with a fresh piece of paper.

Difficult Conversations

One of the things that makes difficult conversations so difficult is that there are actually multiple conversations going on. In a truly tough talk, there is probably:

1) The Feelings Conversation: Narrative spun out of the reality of how I am / we are feeling

2) The “What Happened” Conversation: Narrative establishing the facts the conflict

3) The Identity Conversation: Narrative and analysis about what this means for how I see myself / us.

If two people are stuck in different “conversations,” they can neither attend to each other nor communicate effectively.

So, in a relationship where conflict is possible, it is an enormous help to have the ability to talk about and refer back to these three conceptual hooks before a conflict begins. (For more, check out the book on difficult conversations.)

Making a Point, Making a Connection, Making a Difference

Making a point is, in the short term, quite fun. With a rhetorical flourish, we spin a narrative about how we see the world. Sometimes, this involves putting someone in their place in a way that activates the defensiveness of their ego (and ours). Little positive change can come from this.

Making a point is different from making a connection.

Making a connection is harder than making a point. It begins with listening. Truly, humbly listening. And then, with prudence and patience, willing the good of another.

Put another way, in order to make a difference in the world, first we must make a connection with a person. This path is far better (and more courageous) than simply making a point.

Be Careful or Pay Attention

A month ago, our family spent a week on a ranch with a group of lifelong friends and their children. As a group of our children scaled a rock wall together (and I became increasingly nervous), I asked another dad how he considers the physical risks that his children take. He responded with the following.

“My wife and I don’t really say ‘be careful’ to our kids because we don’t want them to be fearful, or necessarily careful, as they interact with the world. Instead we say, ‘pay attention.’ We want them to pay attention to their surroundings and how they are feeling at any moment. To be able to assess risk clearly and learn from any situation that they encounter.”

That sounded right to me, and honestly like advice that I should take.

Now, as I remind my children to “pay attention” when they take risks, I am reminded in return of a profound hope for them and for myself. I hope for our ability to attend to the world and the inner life with sensitivity and intuition, rather than with fear.

Fingerspitzengefühl

I am learning German, and so am developing a deep affection for the language’s compound nouns.

Three words combine to make one of my favorites: Fingerspitzengefühl.

Finger is the noun for finger. Spitzen is the verb for to sharpen. Gefühl is a noun meaning sensation or feeling.

Literally, it means “the sensitivity in the tips of one’s fingers,” but is also understood more broadly as intuition or a sure instinct.

So, let’s pray for the grace of Fingerspitzengefühl, in our interior lives, our relationships, and our work. May our attentiveness and compassion be sharpened to be as sensitive as the tips of our fingers.

The Cultivation of Solitude

In our senior year of college, a group of friends began hosting “professor dinners” in which we crowded around a mediocre meal and asked a beloved teacher an impossibly difficult question.

In the final weeks before graduation, three professors were asked, “what is the greatest challenge of our generation?”

The first answered, “the ability and conviction to speak truthfully.”

The second answered, “solidarity with the poor.”

Then, the third answered that “the cultivation of solitude” was to be our greatest challenge.

Wait… the WHAT?

Largely an overzealous, justice-minded bunch, reactions ranged from sceptical acceptance to muffled horror. Didn’t this guy know about the urgency of the struggle for justice?

Of course he knew. But, he also knew that without solitude, we would not be centered within ourselves, be capable of sharing this center with others, or authentically build communities worthy of trust strong enough to bear the challenges of our age.

Neither Faith nor Works

In Scripture and Tradition, the conversation of “faith or works” is a well trod path.

Sometimes, though, it strikes me that a more present danger of our age is that we have neither faith nor works.

Certain ideological narratives can masquerade as faith, but have nothing to do with trust in a loving God. And often this narrative only serves to whip up self-righteousness instead of actual work on behalf of real people.

Let’s work and pray with each other instead.

Saving Frogs from the Pool

A friend once told me that, when he would visit his mother’s home, he found her preoccupied many times a day with searching her pool and screened porch for tiny trapped frogs. When she found one, she would catch it in a net and release it into the yard.

For her, the house was the extent of her sphere of influence. This assumption limited how she considered the possibility of her life and thus bound how she chose to spend her attention and energy.

Certainly, to engage the world productively, we have to judge what is actually in our control, and then make prudential decisions about how to engage the world. None of us is infinite.

Too often, though, we encounter too little, and spend time stressing out over frogs.

Far better to encounter actual suffering and address it actively and compassionately.

What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

Years ago in Chicago, we had a friend who, on someone’s birthday, would put them on the spot and ask: “So, now that you are x years old, what do you have to say for yourself?”

I came to love the exercise, to watch others take account and share a bit of their distilled wisdom.

My birthday was this week, and my brother challenged me to answer the beloved question on the blog. So, for 2021, here is my answer.

It has been of great value to me to discover my story, to understand who I am and how I tend to engage the world.

It has also been of great value to me to discover our stories, to understand the narratives of the tribes of which I find myself a part.

And it is of ultimate value to me to consistently lay both my story and our stories into the narrative of The Story, the mystery of a loving God. This movement saves my story and our stories from becoming idols over which I obsess.

Put another way, kenosis before The Story returns me to my story and our stories with power, clarity, and the freedom to love, tuned to what is of ultimate value.