Negative Attention

Negative Attention

people can only hear you when they are
moving toward you

They called me names. They mocked my appearance. They scoffed at my opinions, disdained my attempts at humor. They sometimes threatened violence. A kick to the face broke my glasses once. They called it an accident.

Considering what I might do, I realized that I could leave. I didn’t have to stick around, and I didn’t have to take it; so I resolved that I would show up one more time, if for no other reason than to announce my intention to quit. Mind made up, I felt good. But that night, I made a discovery that changed the way I see. And instead of leaving, I stayed.

They needed me too much.

It was my freshman year in college. I was volunteering with middle school students at a local church. They were horrible, and they wouldn’t leave me alone.

That was the key to my epiphanous moment: they wouldn’t leave me alone.

Other adults in the room didn’t get punched in the back during worship. Other adults in the room didn’t suffer sotto voce critiques of their facial features. Other adults in the room – as far as student behaviors indicated – weren’t even visible.

It wasn’t fair.

That I’d been given so much power.

Edwin H. Friedman claims that “people can only hear you when they are moving toward you,” and for absolutely no good reason, these students had decided to move toward me. They had given me the power over what they heard and how they heard it.

If what has value is like a radio signal in a sea of static, then these students had decided that I was the signal. Other adults in the room were just noise.

I have to admit that, along with the students, I too suffered serious and prolonged bouts of immaturity. In other words, I recognized the power I’d been given, but I didn’t use it well. And the next year, a new group of volunteers – younger and demonstrably cooler – joined the work, so I had to learn to share attention, to be part of a team.

Fortunately, I mostly grew up over the intervening years without growing too “old” to relate. But that time of my life – that discovery I made on a Wednesday night in October, 20 years ago – pointed to a truth that has opened ministry doors in dozens of contexts.

What, exactly, did I learn? That negative attention is attention. When people are moving toward me, whether from loving acceptance or annoyed engagement, they are also attuned to the signals I send. They choose to hear me.

It’s a truth that has helped me to re-perceive what feel like attacks, to see them as opportunities for relationship, as indicators that I have value.

When a parent sends me an email, questioning my judgment, I can rejoice that this parent trusted me enough to start a conversation, to tell me what she really thinks, to give me the opportunity to respond.

When a retired college professor invites me to coffee, sits across from me, and proceeds to tell me why I’m an idiot, I don’t have to hear the isolated critique. After all, I don’t have to take it personally.

I get to.

He has a Ph.D., national recognition, decades of academic experience, and he’s decided that I’m worth his time.

When an elder at my church questions my character in an embarrassing, semi-public, quasi-accusation, I look up and see that she’s looking into my eyes. That she’s not angry. Just afraid. And that thing she just said might be more about her than about me.

What do I do? It depends.

Mostly, I try to receive the gift of attention as a gift, to truly be thankful for the influence I’ve been given, for the value that’s been communicated. I try to listen and really understand. I try to give back.

I’ll admit, it doesn’t always end in raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. But more times than I can count, that parent has volunteered to work in my classroom, that retired professor has shaken my hand and asked if I would be his friend, that elder – in tears – has called to talk about her son and to ask for my forgiveness.

And I pray: God, help me to have the grace to see a world filled with opportunity, a people filled with potential, fields white for harvest. Help me to love my neighbor as myself. Help me also to recognize when my neighbor is trying to love me.

Condemned?

Only those who know they are loved can face hell without fear.

Interdependence

We don't believe that the marginalized have anything to give to us. We don't recognize our poverty.

Power

Our character is most revealed when we are given power. What is character? How should we use power? Always for the sake of those without it. Power must benefit the powerless.

Transformation

The goal is not to become a person of character. The goal is to become a person of character who changes the world. The goal for me is to become the person God wants me to become for the sake of others.

Miracle Story

Kevin, Ben, and Rafaelito look out from the upstairs window of the miracle house.

Miracles

He had the clothes he was wearing and
a black baseball cap.

Over a lunch of shredded beef, avocado and fresh tortillas, Julio – wearing his signature black baseball cap – was telling me his miracle story. Over a year ago, a fire swept through the home he shared with his extended family. Julio lost clothing, blankets, a bed, his birth certificate – almost everything. When three Americans visited a few days after the fire, Julio was sleeping in his car. Except most nights, Julio said he couldn’t sleep: “It was too cold.” He had the clothes he was wearing and a black baseball cap.

Those Americans decided to build a home for Julio’s family, and that spring, a team from Newberg-area churches worked with Julio’s family and members of a local church – Nueva Esperanza – to build a new home. That’s the first part of the miracle. Julio’s family got a house.

Julio couldn’t get a job. He didn’t have a birth certificate or any other form of identification. The pastor at Nueva Esperanza and several of the American workers took Julio to the city’s social services agency, where a social worker walked Julio through the process of getting new papers. But it would cost money, Julio argued. The Americans found a way to cover the cost. But he would have to get back to the office, Julio said, a distance of several miles. His car didn’t run. He couldn’t afford public transportation. The Americans insisted that Julio find a way. And he did. That’s the second part of the miracle. Julio got his papers.

Last fall, the Americans visited Julio’s family. The family had planted young trees in front of their new house. The family had been attending the church that helped them, Nueva Esperanza. Julio’s young cousins loved to go to Sunday school. But Julio didn’t have a job. One of the Americans talked to Julio, told him that he had skills, that he could be helping his family if he were working, that the Americans would be back in the spring and they expected Julio to have a job when they returned. That’s the third part of the miracle. Julio got a job.

It wasn’t a very good job. Julio was working with his uncle at an auto body shop. Work was slow, and on a good day of work, Julio only earned the equivalent of $5 or $6 a day. But he was learning new skills. And the money did make a difference for his family.

Then, in the spring, the Americans came back. They were doing a series of work projects at the church: a basketball court, a patio roof, metal sheeting for the roof. They asked Julio and his uncle to help. Julio showed up early on Monday morning, and by the time we’d stopped for lunch, he’d poured water, shoveled gravel, and moved dozens of wheelbarrow loads of concrete. A man from the church was helping us work. He admired Julio’s attitude and his effort. That was the fourth part of the miracle. Julio told me over lunch that the man, Ruben, supervised a clean-up team at one of the vegetable packing plants south of town. Ruben had offered Julio a chance to work that night. If all went well, Julio would have a job that paid more than twice as much as his other job. And the work was guaranteed for four months.

So how did the story end, Julio’s miracle story? Julio got the job in the packing plant. But that’s not the end of the story. At least, not yet.

Newberg Friends has been working in the city of San Luis Rio Colorado for more than three decades. For most of the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with North Valley, West Chehalem, and Nueva Esperanza. We’ve named our partnership Equipo, which means “team” in Spanish, because we really are a team. With each other. With the church in San Luis. With the government officials who help us get supplies across the border, who help us identify families in need. With the families. With Julio.

A boy who lost everything now has a home, a job, a church family, friends in a foreign country. And he’s joined our team, working with us to help other families in need. Maybe that’s the real miracle story.

Creativity

Creativity

Being creative requires
that we collect the ideas we find.
Even
bad
ideas.

I’ve been reading about creativity, and I can guess at what you might be thinking.

They write books about that?

I used to think the same way. Either you have it. Or you don’t. What’s there to write about?

You might be surprised. Almost 38 years ago, for instance, I was born into this world as a not-creative type. But I’ve changed.

Illustration. In fifth grade, I took an admissions test for a special program that the district was offering for at-risk students. I aced the reading comprehension and numeric memory portions of the test. In fact, I earned a perfect score on the memory part – something that apparently made me kind of special. But on the section that examined creativity, I scored in the bottom quartile. My parents received a letter from the district. Out of 100 possible points, I had earned only three.

Students with low scores on this test often have trouble socializing, they’re less flexible than their peers, they struggle to break projects down into smaller tasks, to problem solve, to prioritize. They are easily overwhelmed by new situations and expectations. They struggle to express their emotions. They are considered a retention risk. At age 10, I had been identified as a potential high school dropout.

Because I wasn’t creative.

Creativity – it turns out – is important.

Fortunately, creativity can also be taught. I made it into that special program, and my teacher (whose last name reminded me of atomic number 27) helped me to do the work of creativity. I learned how to steal someone else’s idea, make a little change, and call that idea mine – a process my teacher called “piggybacking.” I learned how to use sensory prompts and word-association to quickly generate new possibilities – a process my teacher called “ideation.” I learned how to pace myself when coming up with possible solutions in order to keep from getting ahead of my ideas – a skill that my teacher said would lead to “fluency.” And I learned a lot about work.

Creativity – it turns out – is work.

Creativity, which I’ve learned to define as the process of making new connections between old ideas, seems to require the following kinds of work:

Collecting: Old ideas are everywhere. They’re in the things we do, the conversations we have, the systems and processes of our lives, our families, our communities. They’re in books and in programs and in people. Being creative requires that we collect the ideas we find. Even bad ideas.

Observing: People are constantly connecting old ideas; pay attention to what they put together, how they do it, and why.

Imagining or Experimenting: Being creative requires asking a question. What if … ? Why don’t we … ? Could I … ? Or taking a risk.

Whatever you call it, creating or connecting, what it comes down to is putting old things together in order to make new things.

So I’ve been reading about creativity. And thinking back on my childhood. And wondering … what if our community had to take that test? How would we do? And could we change?

Change

Change

Every step closer to abolition
of slavery made southern Quakers a nuisance to their neighbors.

When Zachariah Dicks visited Friends in Georgia in 1803, he predicted that the house in which they met – only five years old at the time – would soon stand empty. “O Bush River! Bush River! How hath thy beauty faded away and gloomy darkness eclipsed thy day.” Only five years later, what Dicks foretold had come to pass. Bush River’s member meetings in South Carolina and Georgia had been disbanded. The roughly 500 Quakers of Bush River had moved away, most of them to Ohio.

The issue was slavery.

Many early Quakers in America owned slaves, and when George Fox made his 17th-century visit to American Friends, he urged them to treat their slaves with kindness, to educate them (an open violation of the law) and to “let them go free after a considerable term of years, if they have served . . . faithfully.” William Edmundson offered Friends an additional challenge: “Many of you count it unlawful to make slaves of the Indians, and if so, then why the Negroes?” Eighty years later, traveling minister John Woolman further identified slavery as a kind of moral disease motivated by “the love of ease and gain.”

But effecting change proved difficult.

Southern Quakers argued that purchasing a slave often prevented the separation of man and wife or parent and child. In addition, Friends in North Carolina had learned from painful experience that their former slaves could be seized by their non-Quaker neighbors and once again sold into slavery. In many meetings, then, trustees were appointed to receive transfers of ownership for the slaves, giving freedom while legally binding these “ex-slaves” as property of the entire meeting. Others worked together to get slaves to the North, where they could be free.

Every step closer to abolition of slavery made southern Quakers a nuisance to their neighbors. So when Zachariah Dicks visited Bush River, he found an audience that Errol Elliott describes as “tired and largely hopeless. They had stood firm, but uprisings and violence” in the region had convinced them that war was imminent.

So they left, sold their property and resettled in Ohio, where they helped build up towns like Salem and Springboro – stops on the Underground Railroad.

Knowledge

Knowledge

I know that once I stop listening,
I will begin to treat others as objects, entering every theological conversation as a kind of game in which my only goal is to say what I must in order to get the other to believe
what I want him to believe,to have him go away with the impression I have created.

I’ve spent my life in the Church. Almost 38 years of worship and service. For the past 20 years, I’ve had a variety of teaching ministries. I’ve read the Bible. I’ve studied the Bible. I’ve talked and written and debated about the Bible. But about two years ago, I started taking seminary classes, and something really important happened: I discovered that for all these years, I’ve known next to nothing about the Bible.

I’m still a long way from earning any kind of degree, but I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of seminary can be on a person, what it’s like to learn about the story behind the story behind the story, how it feels to have information that, previously, I didn’t even know existed.

First, there’s exhilaration at having access to important new information, all of it – so much! incredible! mind-blowing! – suddenly available to me. Second, almost as fast as that first feeling, is a sense of lost-ness, of foolishness for having studied, written, talked over and debated what the Bible says, what other people say the Bible says, without having known this information even existed. Even worse, many of the people I debated – in public, even – knew that I didn’t know. In particular, I feel silly for having written what I have in front of people who knew what I didn’t, especially knowing that they were patient with me, that in some important ways, they protected me in my ignorance.

But the feeling of foolishness doesn’t last long. Once I started learning, it became nearly impossible to remember that there ever was a time when I didn’t know what I now know. Instead, I’m mostly aware of the fact that I know what most others don’t. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with how big the task is of helping others to see what I see, knowing that it’s far more likely that they will resist rather than welcome what I share (mainly because it challenges and sometimes contradicts so much of what they believe).

In addition, I have this fear that not too long from now I’ll become aware of the limitations of what I’ve learned. There’s so much to know, and my ability to take in, comprehend and remember is limited. And there’s so much we don’t yet know. There’s so much yet to be learned. There are inaccuracies that may not be corrected for hundreds of years. There are things that remain invisible, that we don’t even know we don’t know. That we don’t see. Can’t see. Might never see.

But that takes a while to learn.

Admitting it doesn’t mean that I’ve learned it.

In the meantime, it’s becoming harder and harder for me to learn from people who don’t know what I know. Even as I listen to what they say, I find myself thinking: “How would this argument change if they knew what I know?” Sometimes it just seems sad that they hold on to the untenable. I have become more judgmental. Just thinking about my thinking as I’m thinking has become such a difficult mental exercise that I almost just want to give up and stop listening.

But I can’t.

Because I know that once I stop listening, I will begin to treat others as objects, entering every theological conversation as a kind of game in which my only goal is to say what I must in order to get the other to believe what I want him to believe, to have him go away with the impression I have created. I will have become manipulative. A liar.

Tragically, I also will have become a kind of moron, incapable of listening, incapable of being challenged, incapable of learning from others whose personal experience of God differs from and potentially transcends my own.

May God protect me.

At Barclay Press.

Morning

In his 17th-century composition, “Awake My Soul,” Thomas Ken challenges me to “shake off your sleep, and joyful rise to pay your morning sacrifice.” And I am reminded of a time each morning in the silent warmth of early darkness, in the deliciously comfortable lethargy of waiting, that I must choose anew to move forward into the day that awaits.