Tag Archives: Conversation

August 11, 2012 · 4:31 pm

On Being Overwhelmed

I haven’t been blogging because I haven’t known what to say.

I still don’t.

There are multiple conversations in culture that demand attention (just cruise your Flipboard for awhile), and to most of them, I simply say this:  I don’t know the answers to the questions we’re facing.

But not long ago, I read a post over at Stephen Pressfield’s blog that accused folks like me of simple cowardice.  Ouch.  To be an artist is to choose a point of view and go after it.    To sit on the fence on anything is to have a yellow streak.  Choose what you think and get on with it.  The writer went on to say that if you don’t choose where you stand on issues, you won’t have anything to say. There’s also the famous enjoinder that reminds us that all it takes for evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing.

And this blog has been silent.

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I can’t tell if I’m experiencing a storm, a carnival, or some variation of the two.  A storm-like carnival, a carnival in a storm, or a carnival-like storm…who knows?  All I know is that there’s a lot of stuff—dark and beautiful—whirling around.  And we’re all pointing and saying, “Look at that!”  Not only “Look at that” but also, “Let me tell you the truth about that.”   I watch smart, articulate people I know hold court among friends conversing on a particular topic, and as they speak with conviction and clarity, I wonder, “Why aren’t you as overwhelmed as I am?”

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Here’s what’s whirling in our carnival storm: theology, philosophy, biblical studies, world religion, archeology, symbology, psychology, biology, physics, economics, sociology, neurology and brain studies, sexuality, politics, issues of justice, entertainment, creativity, art, ecology, fiction and literature, poetry, theatre, music, popular mass media, media criticism, history, aesthetics, phenomenology, and…the list goes on.

To say it more simply, what’s whirling are our ideas about what it means to be human, and just what it is that constitutes “the good.”

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A conversation with a very smart friend of mine recently reminded me that I have traveled further down the postmodern path than I ever thought I would.  He mused that perhaps the kind of Christian you became might depend on whether you read the book of Hebrews before you read the book of Romans, or the other way around.  We were talking about atonement theories (exactly how Christ’s crucifixion paves the way for reconciliation with God), and his simple statement reflected my current thinking that so much of what (and how) we think and feel is determined by more factors than we can get our heads around.   It can be as simple as the order in which you encounter bits of information that you eventually come to hold as your most sacred thoughts.

Genetics, the nurture of our family of origin, the specific time of history into which we are born, our economics, our social circles, our exposure to ideas in all domains of human learning and enterprise, our various degrees of intelligence and giftedness, our educational opportunities, our emotional structures and the various ways in which all these lenses are put together to create dynamically changing ways in which we see the world.   And finally, add to it the notion that we are story-telling creatures by nature, and that the brain may not care whether the stories are true or not, and suddenly, deciding where to put your feet down becomes a bit dicey.

All this is to say that the latest version of what one colleague once termed my “ongoing tortured self” (“If Jeff isn’t tortured about something, he isn’t Jeff”) feels more serious than most.   If all those categories of human activity and study listed above are thought of tectonic plates…well, you know what happens when tectonic plates start shifting.

At the end of the day, the starting place is simply this: we are limited, and what we know will always be dwarfed by what we don’t know.   There isn’t much to do about that.  It’s in the design of things.  That is not to say we can’t know anything—there are in fact, amazing things to know and be sure of, but that list of “knowable” things is, in itself, mysterious, and up for much debate.    Will I ever know anything with enough certainty that I will shout down those who disagree with veins popping in my neck?

I doubt it.

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I begin each day with a meditation on the nature of God, and as Peter Rollins reflects on in How (Not) to Speak of God, I’ve ended up not wanting to say anything.  He quotes philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his introduction: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”   Sometimes the not speaking is about knowing your own ignorance, and sometimes its about awe, but either way, no words will come.

That being said, it’s time to start speaking again, though as always with me, it’s going to be mostly questions asked, not declarations made.

Wondering what inspiration means…

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February 27, 2012 · 10:49 am

A Few Thoughts on The Art of Conversation

So Friday night I got together with a few friends for intentional conversation, and the topic was…well, conversation.   We asked questions like, “If you’ve just had a great conversation with someone, what were the things that made for the greatness of the time?”  ”What are conversation killers?”  ”What do you expect when you enter into conversation?”  ”How do you keep a hospitable conversation going when opposing viewpoints are in play, especially about topics such as politics or religion?”   “What do you do when the person you’re talking to never asks you a question?”  ”What do you do when one person dominates a conversation between a roomful of people?”  ”How do you ensure that lesser voices get heard?”

We had this conversation as a sort of test run for an experiment I’m planning on dabbling with this year.   Along with a couple of dear, like-hearted friends, I’m going to be hosting a series of evenings during the year centered on intentional conversations between friends about things that simply need to be talked about.  The word “salon” comes to mind, but I doubt what we’ll be doing could be called a salon, but perhaps merely salon-esque.   I have a general list of topics going, but I want to stay alive to that new ideas that will present themselves as we go.  We’ll certainly talk art, music, and  theatre, and what else?   Maybe politics, or at least subjects with political implications, maybe faith and/or religion (I’ve been talking about those kinds of topics for years), and hopefully some science and sociology as well.   (After watching the Oscars last night, it would be great fun to unpack the meaning of celebrity, achievement, honoring of achievement, beauty, the state of racial justice in the U.S. film industry, etc.)

But I wanted to start with an evening about the art of talking.   My impression is that there’s fairly wide agreement that the tone of much public discourse is toxic, and for many people, that toxicity creates a barrier of entry into meaningful conversation.    Our need for dialogue and connection has perhaps never been greater, and the best that can be said about our skills for entering into those dialogues effectively is that we need work.    One thing we came away with in our conversation Friday night was the fact that we just don’t get the kind of opportunity we need to actually sit down and practice the skills that make for great questions, high quality listening, the considerate and humane exchange of ideas, and great conversation that nudges all toward better relationship and deeper truth.

There was nothing scientific about the discussion, and we weren’t really seeking to prove anything.   So we each walked away with different ideas ringing in our minds, and there was no “here’s the next step” sort of conclusions.   At best, we took some thoughts with us to mull over.   Here are a few of them:

1) Conversation and relationship has the best chance when we are working to discover, to remember, and to protect the other’s humanity.

2) Empathy and compassion are built across bridges of human likeness.   The very notion that we should be able to honor differences is a shared notion, one of the ways in which we are alike.

3) Authenticity is paramount.   At the same time, expression and restraint are in tension, and there are times when your authenticity of expression must give way to a wise use of restraint on behalf of the other.

4) “Winning” is a very different intention than “Building relationship.”

5) The quality of the questions asked determines much about the shape and quality of the conversation.

6) One-upmanship is a conversation killer.  ”I know, I felt the same way.  Here’s what happened to me (and it’s way more interesting that what happened to you!)   Sure, on the front end, it’s establishing connection, but by the third time, I’m just getting annoyed.

7)  Being slow to take offense is one way to keep a conversation going.

8)  The best questions open up possibilities instead of narrowing them.

9)  There’s far too much information for anyone to learn it all.  That means there will always been something to learn from the person you’re talking to.

10) Conversations driven by hidden agendas are not relationship building conversations.

11) Genuine curiosity is a huge help.

12) So is humor.

What about you?  What do you value in conversation?

 

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January 18, 2012 · 8:01 am

Listening and the Hunger for Great Conversation

I love conversation.  The exchange of experiences and ideas borders on the miraculous when you consider how specific our lives are to ourselves.  How to explain this thing going on inside my head?   This dance of images and ideas, memories and dreams, each of them presenting themselves for my further consideration constantly, falling into my mind like so many snowflakes.   But then I want to offer them to you as well, and say, “Look at that” or “listen to this” or “Help me understand why that thought just flittered in.”

Dallas Willard thinks our life is our thought-life.  I’m not willing to go that far, but he’s pretty close.  And to unpack these lives of ours seems to be one of the things we are built to help each other with.   It’s so strange that we have to pay people to be friend enough to sit and listen and ask the provocative kinds of questions that help us re-imagine our lives.   They’re called therapists, and they’re so helpful, but why can’t we just get more skilled at listening and asking wall-breaking questions?

I think one of the keys to opening the locked doors inside each other is to follow the advice of Jesus that St. Matthew records.   It’s simple really…”Do not judge.”   There’s the whole conversation about discerning and knowing right from wrong, blah, blah, blah, but it’s very profound to simple be present with the person you’re listening to, and create a space whereby they can speak their lives.   How strange that we want to control and comment and instruct and fix and otherwise really miss the person trying to offer us something.   Listening is a rare thing.   Listening because someone’s actually interested is even rarer.   Listening without judgment is a great, great gift.     It not only spurs conversation, but it fosters the kinds of connections people long for, that a Facebook post just can’t deliver.

Stay tuned.  I’m looking for ways to initiate and sustain great conversations.    I’ve got some ideas that will require intentionality and effort, but who knows.  Maybe this will be the year I’ll hear the world truly speak, and for the first time, listen…

Create a space for someone to speak their life today… 

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September 21, 2011 · 6:48 am

Making Sense and Nonsense: A Conversation at Vermillion

Last night I was privileged to hang out with my friend and collage artist extraordinaire Marty Gordon.   We decided to take in a conversation of seeming epic proportion at a Capitol Hill art gallery gathering place called Vermillion, where a man named John Boylan was hosting a artist-dense conversation on the notion of making sense in a world of increasing craziness and “new norms.”    Boylan has been leading these kinds of conversations for well over a decade, and the back room of the Vermillion was packed with folks of all ages, most of whom were artists of some kind.  There were painters and teachers and non-practitioners, the common thread being the conviction that artists had a role to play in helping the world make sense of reality.

It began with politics and a bit of education on the history of art regarding surrealism and dadaism as attempts to forgo making sense in the cultural landscape that was WWI.   The conversation careened around the room with lots of folks willing to pitch in.   Machine noises (refrigeration units?) would kick on occasionally, making hearing difficult, but I supposed we kept trying to hear because we wanted so much to make sense of things.   There was the much-agreed-upon craziness of the right (they’re driving an anti-intellectual mood just now), the ongoing pitch of Eastern mysticism as a means to non-violence (think Ghandi and TM), and the very sane idea that artists should be working in the communities of which they are a part, embedded among the people they serve.    The artist as hero didn’t get much traction, but one articulate painter called into question the whole Modernist notion of the artist as solitary vision meister or revolutionary.  That’s over, he said.   Television is in some sense the Surrealism of today, and the politics we are living in is just “lies, lies, and more lies.”

I didn’t say much, save for a comment at the end about our increasing discomfort with the discovery that our romantic notions of peacefully coexisting “senses” (read “conclusions”) will only go so far.   People really do come to different narrative conclusions–they tell the story differently.   And different readings of reality really do matter when it comes to street-level living.   The narratives of human enterprise, human community, human consumption and production, human sexuality…the stories being told by differing groups can sometimes co-exist peacefully together, and sometimes not, depending on which story we’re talking about, and just where power lies.

Ghandi and Buddha both got nods as having good ideas.   No one spoke of the Christ, and the disdain for what seemed to be the only public face of Jesus in this discussion was evident and strong.

Marty and I left the meeting a bit unsure of what to make of it.  Passionate, intelligent conversation that left me more bewildered than inspired.   Artists are sensitive folks with huge hearts, with radars that instinctively lean in a Jesus-like direction: solidarity with the poor and the less privileged.  I kept thinking of Walter Brueggemann’s idea that the prophet has to make two moves: 1) bring the critical voice to the ruling falseness of the day, and 2) energize the community through a renewed vision of the real.   These artists really want to live as prophets.  But to do that, you have to first make sense of what reality is.

And the basic human problem is this, and we’ve been struggling with it since the beginning:  how do you make sense of what is obviously so much more than we can wrap our heads and hearts around?  We used to struggle with just a few narratives.  Now there are thousands.   “Sense” must be made even though our knowledge and understanding has limits, and eventually we must all turn to faith in something we cannot see.   For that is our design.   And since for so many, God is long dead and gone, where does our design for faith turn?

The leap to faith (even if not in God, but in something else) will always seem to be nonsense to many.

This is not an easy world we live in…

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May 16, 2011 · 7:34 am

How to Pray

The disciples wondered how to pray, and asked Jesus to teach them.  The gospel of Matthew records the version of Jesus’ reply we know as The Lord’s Prayer.   Simple, direct, covers all the bases; praise, petition, and ascribing appropriate glory.   Paul says plainly, “Pray continually” or more famously, “without ceasing.”      And to the church at Ephesus, he writes, “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests…and always keep praying for all the saints.”   Jesus told his disciples to pray in secret, to not make a show of it, or the praise they would get from their peers would be the extent of their reward.   (Funny word, that.  ”Reward.”)

We talk of relationship with God.  Do we mean something fundamentally different than our relationship with the other persons in our lives?  I have relationships with my wife, my kids, my extended family, my friends, and even those who I meet for the first time on any given day.   This is odd to say, but in relationship we exchange energy, we trade in the essences of who and what we are.  The clunky word for it is communication.  In communication,  we offer bits and pieces of our selves, impulsively give or elaborately planned, and this delightful, intriguing exchange anchors our human experience.   We attach many values to this process: love, honesty, beauty, kindness, and of course, all of their opposites.

God is unfathomable.  But our faith is that He is there.  Francis Schaeffer helped me to understand His “there-ness,” His “personhood.”   That He has a “character” to be learned and known.  Enoch, in Genesis, walked with God, and knew God.  Jesus, in his John 17 conversation with God, notes that this is the essence of life eternal…to know God.   We of the Judeo-Christian tradition interact with what we call “the Word of God,” a reality the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews says is “living and active.”

In relationship with Anjie, Amy, and Daniel, and all the others of my life, their words mean a lot to me.  To listen, to hear not only their word choice and sentence structure, but to listen to the joy in their voice, or the sorrow.  Their “word” also consists of body language that tells me in an instant if they are up or down, burdened or lightly moving through the world.  I pay attention, and learn much.

All of this is to say that prayer as we often approach it, puzzles me.  I’m fairly sure that in many hearts, prayer is puzzle that seems impossible to solve.   “God” is a word that points to so many perceptions in our world.   We reach out to find, to touch, to connect with, to be heard by, to listen to…the most fundamental reality we can think of. We seek our beginning, our anchor, our destiny.  We seek a place to stand as the world comes apart in tsunami, marriage break-up, death of friends, financial ruin, and the multiple despairs that nip at our heels.   No atheists in foxholes, someone said, and the basic cry of the human crisis–help!--is perhaps the beginning place of all true prayer.

The impulse to write this entry came from touching a place of honesty with God this morning.   Do you ever find yourself praying along, going down the list, in the well-honed groove (whatever that might be for you) yet behind those thoughts are deeper thoughts, other thoughts, thoughts that hover underneath your prayer life, but for whatever reason, those aren’t the bits and piece of your self you typically offer to exchange with God?  It’s not that you’re avoiding something, it’s just that to pay attention to this deeper river is often more work than you’ve got energy for.  Or maybe you just don’t notice.

This morning, I stopped the “on-top” prayers, and went for the river further down.

Damn me if you want, O God, for not getting it right, but this is all I’ve got.  This is what’s on my mind.  This is who I am today, and what can I do but be this before You? What do I think but what I think?  There is an end to my logic, to my ability to process, to my exegetical skills, to my exposure to the miraculous, the faithful, and the evidence that sends faith into assurance.  So, here are my questions. Here are my doubts.  Here are the crises facing the people I love.  These are the amazing things that I see, and these are the amazing things I hope for.  These are experiences that I can’t make sense of.   These are the thoughts that threaten to derail me.  These are the political issues that make me babble like an idiot.   People are suffering here, and the human race seems really nutty in its design.   Talk to me.  I’ve read a hundred books on how to talk to You, and they all say different things.  Advice comes in all sizes and shapes.  Candles, music, postures, styles, volume, pace, faith vs. honesty, power of the word, journals, incense, five minutes or an hour, Holy Spirit groaning, leading, healing, an angel language, and public prayer.   Listening, paying attention to breath, silence, dancing, prayer walks, the laying on of hands, anointing with oil…all advised with a hope of an outcome that will mean “prayer works.”

Does it work?  Do I work?  Do You work?  What is the work of us together, in relationship, traveling the realities You made for us to walk in together, nutty, heart-breaking, and breathtakingly beautiful?

I tricked you with the title of the blog entry.  How to pray?  The answer to how to pray is to pray.  To be.  To speak.  To talk.  To think.  To immerse (baptize) our life in going hand in hand with God through the plain-jane ways of days.   I have no idea how to pray, and I pray always.

I enjoyed my weekend with Anjie.  We watched TV, worked in the yard, worshipped on Sunday, slept, chatted over breakfast scones, thrilled over our children, laughed with common friends, worried over people we love, and discussed how in the world we’re supposed to help.   We trotted out some ongoing struggles, spent some money in support of things we believed in, made some decisions about how to do our schedule this week.   We looked forward, we looked back, we looked around.   We embraced and kissed, revealed and no doubt kept stuff to ourselves.  We talked to God together, said goodbye for a few days as our work calls to us, and we exchanged energy that is all about the faith we have in each other.  Not perfectly, not without tension in moments, not without mystery that escapes us, but all in all, relationship that is as it should be, and perhaps a bit more.

Conversation with God.  To know what’s on His mind, for Him to know what’s on mine.   His will for me, my will as it interacts with His.   His freedom moving with mine, and mine with His.   Life from life, word from word, action from action, I metabolize whatever He gives me moment-to-moment, and we talk again.  As Paul, in all kinds of prayers, in all kinds of ways.

I cannot hide from the One I want to know.  I cannot hide from the One I want to know me.   I’m trying to be done with any such hiding.   I fail, but I try.

How to pray?

Maybe it’s a little like writing.  Put some blood into it…

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