Category: Personal Growth

Everyday Salvation

“That’s frustrating”

I trained as a student minister for a whole year under a hospital chaplain. He once made the observation that you can respond to pretty much whatever anyone says with “That’s frustrating,” and you will find you have connected with them in a meaningful way. An exaggeration? Anyone, anytime? Yes, that’s an exaggeration—but not that much of one.

I never did actually try it, and would not recommend experimenting with people’s feelings. But I did try for a while imagining what it would be like responding with “That’s frustrating” to what people were actually saying, while responding more authentically (It may sound complicated, but it’s amazing what a mind—even mine— can handle). If you keep that response in mind in conversations you have, you may find it surprising how often it would actually fit the context. I take this as a measure of the level of frustration, or disappointment, anger, and anxiety that are inside us.

Consider the casual encounters we have any given day—perhaps more significant for many of us through a time when there has been a widespread experience of isolation. The words we share then are rarely profound. But do we ever in these encounters, with those scintillating comments on the weather, make eye contact? Probably not. But there is something to try. I have been making a point of this, and it can bring a subtle but important transformation to the brief experience. We communicate much more with brief eye contact (prolonged would be creepy) than with most words. And it may be the only connection of any kind that person might have for the day.  

Faith language uses the term “atonement” for (re)connecting the divine and human. Making connection with another living soul is itself a kind of salvation, overcoming alone-ness. In a real sense, we “save” one another by overcoming isolation. In our everyday chance encounters, there are faces to look into, and people need to see your eyes (so get those shades off).

And maybe check out this song, Searching Faces.

Mitigating Chaos

It’s easy enough to do. It is easy enough to fault powers-that-be for not being powers- that-do when it comes to being prepared for foreseeable trouble and acting on it. Not to excuse anything, but it is also true that the powers-that-be exhibit human geared-for-failure traits that we share. Or I know that I share.

There is the present. In the present there is this reality, global pandemic, that for decades, decades, has been predicted clearly, plainly, and loudly by highly competent and credible people. Will we humans learn from this? There will, after all, be another one. 

There are other threats, so it is said. They can all be prepared for, or at least mitigated in their impact. The chance of an inadvertent nuclear exchange can be lessened if the people who can do so would pull back even a bit from their readiness for intentional insanity. Or so I hear (via Economist podcast). Some put at 50/50 in this decade the chance of solar activity that would down satellites, and fry world-wide communications and power, maybe for years. Maybe forever. Even with that, it is said, there are things that can be done to lessen the impact (though it will still be horrible).

There is, however, little will to do anything about “low probability, high impact” events, even when the probability isn’t really low, and even when the cost of doing something now is relatively cheap.

There is this human thing, isn’t there. We will ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant, and maybe not then. Instead, deny, blame, make excuses. And everyone around the denial goes down with the denier.

That podcast I referenced made mention of three simple steps we can encourage (which really might mean instilling some courage) our leaders to do to help be prepared for disaster. First scan for present and potential danger. Second, develop a plan. Third (it has to be said), have the will to enact the plan.

Those, it seems to me, are good steps for all of us when it comes to work, the organizations we are part of, family and personal matters. Scan and plan. I say this as one who knows too well the impact of my own failures in such things.

We can lift one another in such realities as, or before, they arise, with a “You can do this” kind of genuine en-couragement.

All Times Are Interim

Yes, some people are getting very frustrated with all this, the house arrest, or whatever, in frustration, it gets called. As hokey as it may sound, I try to tell myself there is something, always, to be learned here. As, for instance in this.

About 6 or 7 weeks ago, I had a lens fall out of my glasses (thankfully, not the side with my “good” eye). Worse, the tiny little screw was gone, so I couldn’t even attempt to fix it myself, even if I had the requisite precision screwdriver, which I don’t. And it was just when everything had shut down, so an optical place was out. But the lens was for my right eye, out of which I do not see much useful anyway (because: glaucoma). So I figured I would just make do.

Just a few days ago, after six weeks, I remembered I have a perfectly good pair of backup glasses sitting in a drawer in my TV bench. Worse, I just moved here a couple of months ago, so I quite recently put them there! I am losing it. My mind is going. Such is what one thinks.

So blame it on the time. It’s this thing we’re going through. Only I suspect a lot of us–even though in our minds we know it’s happening to everyone–we find a way to take it personally. The universe has given you a demotion. You are experiencing exile in your own home. It’s biblical exile, punishment. God is getting us for something. 

But, as I understand it, even if it is some kind of exile, it is supposed to be constructive, instructive, bettering. So what am I learning that I will take with me? Not forever, maybe, but for the next stage of things, whatever shape that takes. There is no permanent state.

All times are interim. The next interim time will have its own experiences, insights to gain, and, yes, frustrations.

So maybe frustration over our when questions can be mitigated, just a bit, by attending to what we are learning. For me: Appreciation for optical places, and people who work in all kinds of helpful areas, and maybe I will learn to be a little more alert.