Wednesday, January 9, 2008

some thoughts about listening, and telling

For the past couple of months, I have been given the opportunity to be a part of a church-sponsored group that meets once a week to talk about, well, let's just say that we talk about how we can help more people in our day-to-day interactions. We are attempting to talk to our church about helping people and developing relationships with people we wouldn't normally even look twice at. There are lots of acronyms involved and words like "missional" and "intersection" thrown about, but that's not really important, nor what this post is about. The thing is, I was hesitant about joining this group, wary of why I was being asked to be a part of it, and frustrated at the seeming initial lack of organization. I was thrown into a group of people of varying ages and asked to work together with them. I could see from the beginning that I would need to do a lot of listening in order to find my place, or to be in any way helpful to them.

Let me digress a little bit here to say that honestly I have been trying, for the last couple of months, anyway, not to think too hard about God. Thinking about God or talking about God inevitably made me sad, because it made me think about all of the unanswered questions that I have, and the grief that has been following me like a lost dog for the past couple of years.

What am I trying to say? Tonight's meeting made me think about God. And it was okay. I was thinking about how amazing it is when you really listen to people, though you may or may not agree with them or even understand them. I've just been reminded of the staggering multiplicity of stories that are out there, on people's tongues and unfolding in people's lives. I am not just talking from my "writer's" platform, either. The sheer enormity of stories, anecdotes, lessons, whatever you want to call them, were reflected to me in the stars on my drive home. Maybe that is cliche -- stories are like stars -- and suddenly I'm remembering the Bible verse that talks about how God knows each hair on our head, each grain of sand, each star in the sky, and I'm thinking about the giant web of intersection that is life. Yes, we never know who we are helping, and the ripple effect that kindness can produce. But what I want to say is this. I was humbled and comforted to know that my stories, the ones that have been told and cried and laughed over a hundred times, and the ones that are never told -- the stories that I will never tell and that I will never hear from others' lips -- those stories are still important. Those stories are, somehow, being reflected in what has happened in the past, and is happening in the present, and will happen in the future. Even stories about people who died too young, or were never even given the chance to take a first breath.

When this group I am meeting with finally comes up with a "game plan," that will be wonderful. But some of the amazing work that is being done is in that little conference room with a group of people that may or may not understand each other at every moment. Stories don't have to be ABOUT God or about faith to BE God or to BE faith. There is faith in each story that we start; to me, there is an element of the divine that we open our mouths or hold out our hands, and words are shared that SAY something. So maybe the most important thing is not necessarily that we are understanding everything, but that we recognize that the telling, or even the potential for telling, is enough.

1 comment:

Amy R said...

The other day I was extremely anxious and scared. I realized I too had been avoiding the thought of God. I thought of God and my grandmother's faith in him. she went to him unafraid, and right now, I must hold onto her faith in order to find my own. As I walked out to the parking garage repeating the lord's prayer over and over, a calm invaded my thoughts that I'm still clutching to.