Since the deacon and I are on vacation in southern California and Las Vegas this week, we will not be posting and commenting as often as usual. Today’s sermonette will serve for today and next weekend. I don’t know if we’ll get any more posts up while we’re on the road, in the air, at the shows, in the casinos – you get the picture. So, read and enjoy. Feel free to hangout in the chapel and visit amongst yourselves.
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Exterminator’s response to last week’s Sermonette reminded me of a stark reality that we can readily overlook: that while we can look at the same information, we may well arrive at different conclusions. Information coming through personal filters and life experiences can create variations of viewpoints. Even when we agree on all the same points, one individual stressing one point above what another may stress can create nuances.
The challenge for us is to remain open to listening to another’s viewpoint. Listening does not mean surrendering of position. Rather, it helps to create a dialog and respect between two or three parties that are in dialogue.
Another part of the challenge is to be slow to come to firmly settled views. In the dialog we may just learn something that could help us to modify our views slightly, or even greatly, in our thoughtful process of searching for a greater understanding of reality, ourselves, another person and in how we should conduct ourselves. Though it is difficult to do, we need to be slow to arrive at firm judgments of each other, particularly negative ones.
Long ago, while in graduate school, I was the Director of Intake at a faith-based emergency shelter (FYI… Guests did not have to be preached to or attend a worship service as a condition of service. Shelter and meals were freely provided because as it was the compassionate thing to do). Even though I was the Director, I scheduled that one of my four shifts would be a midnight shift, the dreaded Saturday graveyard shift at that. One Saturday night, just before 11:00, my car blew a radiator hose. I was in the middle of the countryside. The only public phone in the area was in a bar, about a half mile down the road.
Two calls were made, one to the shelter to inform the other check-in shift worker that I would be late and why. The second was to call for a ride. The car would remain on the grassy shoulder beside the road until the next day.
The seminary I was attending had a code of conduct that forbade drinking alcohol. Further, as part of a religious vow my own faith tradition also forbade the consumption of alcohol. As I exited the bar to wait for the cab I hit a section of rough pavement and stumbled in the parking lot. Unbeknown to me the driver of one of the cars passing by at that moment was Frank. Frank, a friend and classmate, was returning to the seminary. Frank also attended the same church that the chaplain and I were attending at the time.
Fortunately for me, Frank was an older student living with his wife and children in a house just off-campus. After the Sunday service, I asked Frank if he could give me a lift to Napa to get the needed part and take me to the car. As we drove to the car Frank told me what he had witnessed and his tentative conclusion. As Frank was a more balanced man with life experience, he had not shared what he had noticed the prior evening with anyone, including his wife. His plan was to wait to speak with me privately just in case there was some information that he was missing.
A less seasoned person easily would have spread news of what he had seen to others. They in turn would have spread the news to many others. I would have soon found my enrollment at risk until I was able to clarify matters to the satisfaction of the administration. While I would have been okay with the institution, my reputation would have been tarnished in the eyes of many who knew me. Some would have heard the extra information and understood it, but others would not. Once a false report is transmitted, the damage cannot be undone, for it spreads and takes on a life of its own. A rabbi friend of mine described trying to undo the damage of a false report to being akin to gathering a pillow of loose feathers tossed into a stiff breeze on a hilltop. While many feathers close at hand could be gathered quickly, many others would take great labor and even then a host will forever remain elusive.
Some of those may well have held that I got off on some technicality rather than because I was innocent. They would reason that I would not have been brought before the committee or Dean of Students if there was not some significant truth in the first place. Though such reasoning is faulty, we only need to look at the reaction to people who have criminal cases dismissed.
I was fortunate that it was Frank who was passing the bar, not some other person. I cannot fault Frank for arriving at his conclusion. Noticing a person coming out of a bar and stumbling in the parking lot, I also would have concluded that the person was intoxicated. Each of us arrives at a set of conclusions based upon our perspective and the facts that we have before us. I appreciate that Frank held his conclusion as tentative until he had a chance to talk with me.
As mentioned above, our challenge is the degree to which we hold firm to conclusions and judgments about others. Are we willing to be open to new information, information that could stand our interpretation and conclusion upon its head? I would like to say that I am consistently generous in my judgments and that I rarely come to quick and firm conclusions about others. But I regret that I stumble in this area more than I would wish to admit to myself, let alone to others.
Let’s push and challenge each other to be particularly sensitive about arriving at a conclusion about another, and then speaking about it to others before allowing for clarification. Let’s remember that there are moments in our lives when we hold the reputation of a friend or an acquaintance in our hands, and to a degree our own, too, by what we say about them.
– the deacon
