Look at my eyes! (Community Part 2)

I can always tell when I am going to have to put on my "I really mean it" eyes with my children based on the sounds I hear before they come running. Happy giggles produce my own laughter, while crying and shouting mean that I will put on the mask of guiding parental solemnness. After I have managed to figure-out the gist of what has happened, I work into our discussion. It is simple and usually goes something like this:
"Is it a good choice to throw a shoe at your sister?"
"No." He is looking at his toes, scowling.
"What kind of choice is it?"
"A bad one."
"Judah, look at my eyes. Don't do that again. You could have really hurt her - do you understand?" He is still looking at his shoes. Is he paying attention? Does he really see what I am trying to say? I place his little bum-chin between my thumb and pointer finger and raise it so that his eyes are looking into mine.
"Yes mom." 
And then we hug.


It is a rare moment when I don't have music in my head, and I have caught myself singing quietly or humming to myself while someone is talking to me. I didn't realize this was a problem until my friend Krista said "Ugh! Are you even listening to me? Can you stop?". Of course I heard what she was saying. I can do two things at once you know! But I realized that I wasn't really listening to her. To stand in front of someone and recognize their sounds as words is different than listening to them, than really seeing them. Clearly Krista wanted to shake me (her face was red and she was doing the huffy talk that she does sometimes when she's agitated). I was with her, but she felt like I wasn't seeing her. It's not enough to just walk beside someone - we want to be seen by them.  


In order to really "see" someone else, we have to get outside of our own story and into theirs. Emmanuel Levinas the philosopher (see link in the side-bar if you're so inclined to read-up) explained it this way. To look in the face of "the Other" (i.e. Krista, Judah, you) and to regard them as a composite, identifying everything that has made them who they are, unique and completely unlike anything else (in their "alterity"), is to "see" them. It acknowledges that we all have a story, a history of instances and events that have made us who we are. To really see someone, we look past ourselves and our own agendas, and even past what someone is saying (the words they are using, how they are putting them together) and attempt to hear what they are trying to say.


In my last post I talked a lot about how we disappoint one another because of our brokenness, yet there is still that pesky Biblical call, or humanist ideal, to love one another. When we attempt to see one another it makes it a lot easier to get past the hurt. Sometimes when I am talking to adults, I want to grab their chins and say "look at my eyes"! Are you seeing me? Do you really hear what I am trying to say? I'm sure this a commentary on my desire to control my environment (!), but I think this is reflective of a much bigger longing. Levinas was convinced that seeing was the instigator of compassion. What do we see when we look into the face of the other? It is a vulnerable exchange. Recognizing the nakedness and the helplessness in the face of the other awakens in us compassion for the other’s situation. 


I think this was what Jesus was going for, and what he modeled. If you read through the Gospels of the New Testament, his life was all about seeing people. He was moved to compassion, and in doing so, gave people dignity. Rebellious. When you read a great book with characters that come alive, or watch a compelling performance in a film, it is because the author or actor has taken the time to consider the narrative from every perspective. The characters have depth. Jesus recognized the stories of the people around him and it changed his world. It has changed our world too, thousands of years later. What would happen if we all tried to "see"?

Guess what? You suck. And so do I! (Community Part 1.)

When I was a teen I started going to church with my aunt and my cousins, the five of us (sometimes more, depending on the week) piling into their monstrous white van to bump and shake the ten minutes it took to get to the Millet Scout Hall where they attended. I remember being specifically impressed by the idea that I could get up and get a coffee, right in the middle of singing, or even when the pastor was talking. Not being a coffee drinker yet (at the age of thirteen), I didn't frequently take advantage of this, but I thought it was really cool. Nobody dressed-up, and most people wore jeans. Some people even smoked. And once, when we did a service outside, my cousins, who played in the band, wore their sun-glasses.

All of these things seemed really radical at the time, and completely changed my idea of what church was. My world was the world of jeans and smokers; this was real life! Typically when I thought of church, my imagination produced rows of dresses and ties, hard wooden benches, and relief when the doors opened to the sunlight at the end. The people at my family's church didn't mind my questions or statements about my future plans (I was pretty sure my first husband was going to be really old and really sick... chu-ching! $$). It was these things in fact, the possibility that I wouldn't have to change myself in order to be there (because I was a jeans wearing, future coffee-drinking, pseudo-environmentalist that loved rock and roll and Kurt Cobain) that made it reasonable in my head to be there. And it seemed fun. It WAS fun. I remember a few strong soul strengthening moments, but mostly I remember what a good time we had together.

In not too many years, something happened there, and we had to stop meeting together. This was really sad and disappointing. Eventually though, my relationship with my friends from camp and the youth pastor from another church got me involved in another place. It wasn't as open (a janitor there threatened to throw away my Rolling Stone magazine if I ever brought it around again, and a lady chastised me for using the term "sucks", for example) but I was learning how to play guitar and lead worship, and I felt like the people directly around me valued me and had value. There was an obvious love for me and my sister among the youth and music staff, and that kept us coming back.

Again, in not too many years, something happened there and we had to stop meeting together. This time the loss was devastating because instead of just being an attender, I had helped shape and grow this community. When people talk about prayer, real prayer, they are talking about engaging your spirit with an unseen force, and often times it is done out of a love for others. Having grown to love the people of that place, having thrown myself into building community with them, I mourned for a long time when everything we had worked together for was pulled apart. It was painful, like death is painful. A divorce. (Which I guess are really the same thing - death and divorce.)

I have been considering community for many years now, and for the past few, I have been researching community academically. What I have come to understand is that community is vital in human existence. This accounts for the way we live in families, and even the influx of individuals into dangerous and maladaptive communities like gangs or cults. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and to belong in a meaningful way. To be loved. For a person that follows Jesus, community is part of the package. And this really "sucks" because... well, people suck. They are constantly disappointing. Even when we do the "right" things, the outcome is not guaranteed.

I found a gift in my inbox this morning. My friend Steve, who has committed his life to community, sent this, "God does not reside in perfection. God has chosen to reside in us. And to reside in our broken, hurting lives, which we live in a broken, hurting world, BUT we do so in the company of a mending, healing, reconciling God." We are ALL broken people. What gives us the possibility of strong REAL community, as individuals living in a world with other broken individuals, is the super-glue of God. (I don't really care what label you want to put on this in your mind or heart. God with a big G, or a little one - whatever your concept of the divine is, that is what I am talking about right here.)

You may feel your stomach tense-up when I say this, but this is my conviction: it is not morals or ethics that transform our lives or open us wide to the potential of who we were created to be, but rather the living presence and the possibility of God. This is dynamic, and ever-present. I am broken, yet this force resides in me, and because of this I still have hope that healthy community, healthy relationship, is possible. My perception is that you suck, and so do I. We can't get away from that.

But I think that we can get past it.

All before 7:15

Typically when I wake-up in the morning these days it's because I become aware of a persistent noise in the conscious world that will not go away. And I'm not talking about the alarm-clock, but rather a child yelling "Mom, I'm d-uhn! MOM! Wipe my bum!".
This morning I was out of bed before I was even awake. Considering it now, I'm pretty sure I heard the initial giant crash that preceded the screaming. My heart was thumping fast, and I was nearly blind, a combination of fuzzy morning vision (sans glasses) and the brightness of the sun in their white room. Loud, very loud. When I became alert enough to search the floor instead of frantically scanning at eye level (what's at my eye level in their room? Nothing.), I found my 3 year-old lying on his back, doing the gulping-I'm-hysterical cry. His positioning, and the presence of his older sister gazing down at us from on high, made it clear that he had fallen off the top of the bunk-bed.
I gathered him in my arms (before I asked him where he was hurt, which was not the best idea, but turned out fine since he was mostly just scared).
"What happened?" Wide little mouth: cry, cry, yell.
"He was going to pee when he just fell off." These are the first words his sister, nonchalantly swinging her legs over the top-bunk ladder, has said. Pee? I picture him standing, urine arcing onto the floor and soaking the stuffies. I started feeling the carpet and realized his pants were up. Okay, so we're only dealing with the single incident and not a multi-layered disaster. This is good.
Again, "What happened?".
"He was sitting on that edge and we were playing fishing, and he just fell off mom. And he couldn't even see!" Ah, he fell off backwards. "If he had fallen over there" she pointed to the toy box, filled with pointy and sticky-outy paraphernalia "he coulda really been hurt. Maybe we should move the stuffy bin so that when he falls again..." When? How about we don't strategize for the next accident?
Time to switch from comforter to dictator. I'm sure it will not surprise you when I humbly say I produced an admirable lecture, even in my not-awake-yet state. Honestly, I am aware that was mostly for my benefit - it got my brain working enough that I could create some new rules.
This is where I would have had a cigarette if I smoked, which I don't. Instead we just went to the kitchen and I made them breakfast.
And good-morning! Its gonna be a glorious day.

TDS... And it begins!

SO the lovely Amy B. has been telling me for some time now that the occurrences of my everyday existence, while frequently unfortunate and strange, are also laughable and valuable in some way. After a year of incredulous facebook statuses and hours of coffeehouse discussions, I have decided to create TDS - True Damn Story, a place for me to relay these moments and sort out what I'm learning from them. This will also be a forum for my thoughts on everything from community and parenting to philosophy and literature, and I hope that you'll take part in the conversation as well.

And it begins!