Category Archives: community

Saturday reflection: Row E, Seat 2

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January 22, Hope, Nancy and I went to hear Donald Miller for the first time. We know him well, as well as you can know someone from the books he’s written, and the posts and the tweets. But we hadn’t heard him. Nancy and I drove the two hours to Mishawaka, Indiana, picked up Hope and drove the two hours on to Wheaton. Afterward, we dropped Hope hack at school and came home. It was a long Sunday.

Nancy talked about the presentation itself quite well. Hope talked about it in the context of her day and life. So what did I learn? Most of it I won’t list. You’ll hear it over the next decades. But I wanted to tell you a few things I learned, mostly about speaking.

1. I confess. I’m a Don Miller fan. (But he helped me write my dad’s eulogy). Before the event, I went for an autograph. There was an informal line. And when the people in front of us moved down the aisle, Don walked up, put out his hand, and said, “Hi. My name is Don.”

Lesson: Don’t hide, preparing for a performance. Walk around, preparing for a conversation. 

2. Jerry Root hosted the evening. After Jerry introduced Don to us, he introduced the college audience to Don. “This is the community where I live. These are the people that I love.” I quit taking notes then, overwhelmed by the idea of being rooted in community, of building a bridge that way.

Lesson: An audience is a family. Or can be. If you love them.  When you are introducing, make the speaker pay attention to the people. 

3. Don started with stories we already knew, Nancy and I, from A Million Miles. We were afraid that we’d come all this way for reruns. But the laughter said that many people hadn’t heard them Or loved to hear them again.

Lesson: Repeating stories is important. It orients the curious. It reaffirms the faithful. 

4. I probably never sat in Row E, Seat 2 before Sunday night. I did spend 30 minutes many weekday mornings for three years sitting in seats close to that seat. Unless I was late.

I’m a Wheaton grad (80). We had required chapel and we met in that room. On the drive home, it was easy to think, “Have I done anything of value in the last thirty years? Have I told the story that I could have told?” And then I laughed at the danger of the question.

In Row E, Seat 3 sat Nancy. We’ve been married for nearly 29 years. Three children, one buried. Job gains and loses, career changes, moves. Shared bed and board and many months of accumulated conversation. We have changed each other.

In Row E, Seat 1 sat Hope. I held her first almost 21 years ago, noticed her months before that. She has challenged us, blessed us, taught us how to be parents of a daughter.

And so, driving through the night to take my favorite two women home, I smiled, grateful for the story I’m in the middle of.

Lesson: when looking for new stories, don’t forget the one you are in the middle of. It may be the most important one you could find. 

–

My review of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

8 ways to say thank you

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1. Thank someone. I mean actually personalize the thank you. Otherwise we merely have a vague sensation of being generally grateful – which is all about us.

2. Tell someone that gave you a gift how it was used. Last year, someone gave me fun-size m&m packages. I told her how they had encouraged several other people. When someone gives us a food gift card, I tell them how it helped our family have time together.

3. Forget performing. We worry about whether we are thankful enough, whether we are using the right words, whether we are quick enough. For people who gave without expectations, quit worrying about getting it right. Just thank them.

4. Be brief. (Don’t say, “I didn’t deserve this and you didn’t have to.” Just say thanks.)

5. Thank them in a way that shows you know them. Not everyone likes notes or flowers or objects. Some people actually like a hug. Or a look in the eyes. Or a :)

6. Sometimes thanks can be for presence more than presents. Who has spent time being patient with you this year? Who sat and listened to you? Who drove 400 miles and gave up a day of work to come to your dad’s funeral?

7. Understanding of a gift sometimes comes after the thank you.  So say thank you even if you don’t understand. And when you do understand, be willing to thank someone again. “You know how you did that for me 10 years ago? I finally understand. Thank you.”

8. Get out of the center of the universe. We often aren’t grateful because we are worried about the next event or what isn’t finished yet or because we don’t deserve what they did or because we have to ____. All of that is arrogance. We think we are more important (or more unimportant) than anyone else.

Thanks.

helping ellen.

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I walked toward the front door of the church building, carrying a cup of Starbucks, my Chrome laptop, and my Kindle.  Sitting inside, I knew, was Ellen. She’s a woman who didn’t have a job, a house, a car, parents, family, or a place to stay. She ended up at our church because she had run out of options in the big town and came walking toward us.

I don’t think she was intending to come to our place today. I think she was asking churches if they knew of any place to stay because that’s one of the options when you don’t have anything else.

I was acutely aware that the technology in my hand could, new, pay for a month’s rent for her. I was aware that the coffee in my hand could buy a dozen eggs.

Often at those moments I have a twinge of guilt, followed by writing a post like this in which I talk about the need to share resources and deal with inequities. And then we have conversations about whether we should always live in guilt and can’t we have fun sometimes and technology isn’t wrong. But I realized that I didn’t want to write that post.

But I gotta ask about how I’m using what I have.

For example, the Kindle can be an amazing tool. I have the pictures of everyone from our congregation that would let us take their picture for a directory. I have my 99 goals list. I have drafts of some writing of a friend. I have a couple Bibles and a book on Everyday Justice.

I have the potential to stay on task. To learn names and faces. To pray specifically.To learn for writing.

If I do, we will all learn to help Ellen.

If I don’t?

—

By the way. Ellen’s got a place for the night and a couple meals and we’re working on tomorrow. I knew you’d be wondering. Because you care.

The way Jon likes it.

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We were running DVDs at the office. 1000 of them. We were going to pass them out on Sunday. It’s a project that had lots of people helping, including some high school interns.

I was talking to the interns. One said, “I even put a bunch in the cases. The way you like them.” I didn’t know there was a way that I like DVDs to go into the case.

Well, I’ll be honest. I do know that there is a way. I like the recipient to be able to open the cover and see the label on the DVD turned so that it can be read.

What I didn’t know is that other people knew. That a high school student had been trained by a staff member in “the way Jon likes it.”

When I told the story to my friend Kim, not knowing that I had a way for disks, she said, “But it is the way you like it. Right?”

She’s right.

What’s scary to me is how easy it is for rules to be created and propagated without knowing for sure why the rule exists. I’m not blaming anyone for this DVD case religion of Jon. I’m blaming myself. I don’t want the rules to be “because Jon like it that way.” I want the disks to be turned because it looks good when someone opens the case OR I want someone to say, “It doesn’t really matter.”

And it doesn’t really matter.

Some religious leaders were complaining to Jesus one day that his disciples weren’t washing their hands in the ceremonial way. Jesus said, “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

The command of God is to love each other, not stress about DVD labels.

help.

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“I don’t like to ask for help.”

That’s what she told me today. Out of work. Heart problems. Great reasons to ask for help. But she waited.

And we can help with food and paper goods and toothpaste and razors. I can offer a phone number to someone else.

A couple weeks ago, someone else said, “I don’t like to ask for help.”

I said, “But you help all the time when you can, right?”

“Yes,” she said, “but…”

I know. I understand. I don’t like to ask for help either. I do my best to figure it out, whatever it is. In a learning styles inventory awhile back, I found that my learning style is “intrapersonal.” I learn inside my head.

But I really like to help. I really like to figure out how to solve someone’s challenges, to answer questions, to think about how something can be done. And both of the women that I talked with are helpers, too.

So why do we like to help and not like to ask for help? I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s about pride. Helping makes me feel good, asking makes me feel beholden.

But sometimes, we can’t do it alone. Sometimes we must ask for help. And sometimes the sooner we ask, the less deep we get.

David wrote,

Yet I am poor and needy;
come quickly to me, O God.
You are my help and my deliverer;
O LORD, do not delay.

There’s no particular time this is in his life. It could have been many. And David was often, I think, alone. Shepherds are, of course, but so are kings and generals. And they are pretty independent. But David knew that all the stuff doesn’t keep you from poor and needy.

So ask.