Nonjudgmental self-observation

When we take a position of never admitting to wrongdoing, we look a little silly to others, don’t we?  We all make mistakes, why run from them?  One of my favorite family stories involves a fruit tossing incident that will forever bring me great joy in the remembering.

I was hosting a dinner party and my best friend’s granddaughter (she was two?  three?) wanted to help me prepare the table for serving the feast.  I had laid out a buffet on the dining room table and was in the kitchen frantically preparing the final touches of the meal.  She went into the dining room to “check on” my work.  I didn’t think too much about it when I heard a dining room chair pulled out.  I thought she was getting a good look at the food.

Then I heard her precious little voice saying over and over, “It’s ok, accidents happen!”  When I joined her in the dining room she was “tossing the fruit salad”....all over the dining room table.  It was just so precious!

But she was also quite profound.  Her little arms couldn’t bear the weight of the heavy serving utensils as she dug them into the fruit, and little fruit parts fell here and there all around the large crystal serving bowl.  And what this child knew, taught by wise parents, was that everyone makes mistakes.  Sometimes even with our best efforts at tossing a fruit salad a grape is going to go rogue and make its escape!

Since that day I have often prayed that this child will retain her memory of this truth and that she will lean into her life and live it boldly, fearlessly, and with joy because she knows that accidents happen to all of us.  How about you?  Can you give yourself a break?  Can you let yourself off the hook?  Can you start by admitting that you are human and make mistakes just like the rest of us?  Nonjudgmental observation - try it!

Lifelong Amends

One of the things that I was taught as a child was that the best defense was a good offense.  Rephrased - never let them see you sweat.  Another refrain:  never, ever admit to anything (always ask for a lawyer even if court-appointed).  Yes, this is what I learned.

Not to deny the value of legal counsel - because I would NEVER do that...but this idea of never admitting to wrongdoing can be a real intimacy buster.  The value, of course, is that if you are really good at bullshitting, maybe you are able to wear people down when they initiate a conversation over some perceived wrongdoing on your part.  Over the course of a lifetime, it builds up a wall of distrust that sometimes even our super powers cannot climb.

I never give up on hoping that we can change and learn and grow.  This is one area where we can make changes, if this is the protocol we’ve been taught to follow when we do something wrong.  We can learn how to be more honest; admit wrongdoing; make amends.  However, it is extremely difficult to overcome this without a lot of trial and error.  

Struggling with this concept myself, I understood when a gentleman came to me wanting to rebuild trust with his wife.  He deeply regretted his financial irresponsibility and the ways he hid their true financial situation from his wife.  Once the cat was out of the bag and she did find out he had been lying about their financial situation, she was reluctant to trust him with anything.  He, in turn, felt like she was treating him like a kid and he was frustrated. Like a kid kept on too tight a leash, he kept sneaking around making other financial missteps.  None were egregious but all reinforced her distrust.

He wanted to stay married but was tired of living in the dog house.  This is where the concept of a lifelong living amends came into play.  After decades of living by the “if you ask I will not tell you the truth” marriage manual, I suggested that it would take decades to restore trust.  And he should stop whining and start rebuilding trust.  If he didn’t want to be treated like a kid, he needed to start acting like a man who valued his marriage enough to grovel.  Yes, grovel.  He needed to OVER share, OVER report, OVER account for his money, his time, his thoughts and even his misdeeds.  How long he asked?  I replied - for the rest of your marriage or for as long as it takes for your wife to see that you are a grown up man who takes responsibility for his actions.

This example illustrates the downside of getting away with stuff through the skilled use of BS.  We may wear people down and get them to stop asking us difficult questions that we do not want to answer, but in so doing, we are making steady and significant withdrawals from the bank of relational trust.  Some mistakes take a lifetime to live down.  

How can you avoid ending up in this position in your own relationships?

Learning to be "wrong"

I was fourteen and attending my first (and only) summer camp ever when I realized that fine people might disagree on the positions held by my family of origin.  The camp was held up in the mountains of VA and the crowd of kids attending were warm and welcoming.  I cannot remember how the leader of the organization I attended convinced my parents to let me attend but I vaguely recall it involved her paying my way and providing transportation.

Because my family moved around a lot, I was pretty untethered from the world.  New to Richmond, the only adult “voices” in my life on a daily basis were my parents and the occasional influential teacher.  Except for this club I was in.  Others took for granted that an adult would show up for us on a weekly basis, sponsor our participation in the organization and actually listen to us!  I did not.

I vividly recall the speaker presentations during that week - not for the content but for the challenge.  These were adults talking about matters that I did not know adults thought about, sharing opinions that were diametrically opposed to my dad’s perspective.  I felt like I had found a new home.  I thought maybe the world was not as scary as I believed.  And maybe, just maybe, there were people in the world who cared about others.  This was all news to me.

During this week I had an insight, soon lost only to be rediscovered many years later, that I might be missing key information about a subject; my family could be wrong or if not wrong, at least have an opinion that not everyone shared.  This was a developmental milestone of sorts; my first foray into making up my own mind about an issue.  It was liberating in the moment and dangerous once I returned home.  I learned how to shut up.

But I also learned that I could be wrong about something.  One of my favorite slogans in the whole wide world reflects the values I began to grasp during this amazing week of discovery:  when we know better, we do better.

Being wrong is not a capital offense; there is not extra credit for being right.  In fact, growing up necessarily involves unlearning, relearning, and realizing that we are always in need of more education.

Today, consider how you might accidentally be closing yourself off to new and life-altering information simply because you are so confident in your “rightness”.  What if...you are missing key information that would change your perspective?

Fight Fair

Back in the day I thought Christians should never fight or argue; today I believe we MUST disagree BUT not fight dirty.  If we follow the teachings of Jesus, then we can disagree on many points about how to apply his teaching but there is no argument that I can find for misunderstanding how to interpret this:  Jesus cared about the sorry people - the marginalized, disenfranchised, the homeless, helpless, hurting, imprisoned.  This is indisputable.

These are the matters that we must be willing to fight over.  My friend Myra posted a FB post about language around suicide.  It was thoughtful, respectful and helpful.  She hit her mark.  But one of her old high school buddies disagreed, kind of rudely, but not terribly inappropriately.  My friend Debi enriched the conversation by supporting Myra’s position and she got blasted by the guy - way out of bounds.  In response, several folks spoke back into this guy’s life by explaining that this is not how we roll; we can disagree but we will not support name calling.  Later I learned that Myra blocked him and deleted his comment.

My point is this:  all of it was done respectfully AND people spoke up and out about the abusive language used.  This is necessary for a civil society to remain civil; we have to fight for this or else the abusive voices will be granted tacit permission to continue their abusive ways.

Fighting fair is a core value for those who believe in the value of life - even the lives of those who annoy us.

Fight fair.  Don’t be a dirty fighter or Myra might block you.

Compassion

As many of you know, I am a big fan of the Enneagram as a tool for self-discovery.  One of my favorite parts has become an increased awareness of how I respond to stress.  Before the enneagram I had a sense about how stress affected me without much vocabulary, context or understanding.

With greater insights comes the capacity, at times, to actually interrupt my stress reaction and choose to respond by using my tools for recovery.  This is a deeply spiritual journey for me and others who are traveling this same path.

Initially I was attracted to, and mesmerized by, all the descriptions of personality.  I enjoyed taking a profile and matching it to someone I knew.  It could have easily become a party game for me without the mentorship of a good Enneagram master teacher.

Today I am less enamored with the personality profile particulars and more invested in how much compassion I feel for all of us.  Whether or not we share the same vulnerabilities, I am coming to understand that we are all vulnerable to the waywardness of our personality and its tendency to steal our capacity for presence.

Decades ago I was focused on my religious education and was more interested in what I needed to learn and know.  Education is a great, even vital, component of spirituality.  I am often saddened to see the ways we have been so easily dissuaded from valuing seminary training.  

But the training is the start of the journey not the destination.  It is as we grow in our understanding of God that we develop a greater compassion for his people.  The Enneagram helps me do that.  Whether or not this is a tool you value, I would dare to suggest that if we are not growing in our capacity to hold compassion then we probably need to take a look at our program.