I Learned the Hidden Curriculum

The reason and wisdom of those red- faced warriors inside and outside various Town Halls have taught me:

1. Having a doctor, especially for mental health, is seriously overrated!
2. Family members, especially the dying themselves, should stop whining for comfort care!
   
3. Private is cool, and to spend your savings for private insurance is really, really cool.
   
4. We are Not our brother's or sister's or child's keeper in "chrisjun" America.
   
5. Deficits are suddenly very important (wars, occupations, and bailouts notwithstanding).
   
6. Venting works for a few short minutes, while lower brain function lasts a good long time.
   

Some are too hotheaded to do anything but just vent, which has never worked for me and only enrages me more. So the town halls? Maybe we should drop them in favor of some much needed anger management sessions, and charge their insurer- I'm sure THEY'LL pick up the tab!

What Got You Here?

It may not be what you think!

That's what I find refreshing and expansive about Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. As a good sociologist would, Gladwell questions the American mythology of entitlement, which is all about personal mastery. Instead he looks at the details of success that we overlook, and have absolutely no control of: birth date and place, generational cohort, ethnic make-up, family heritage.

The examples in the book are amazing. For example, few people think about the Beatles' success a result of practicing, refining, and performing their craft in the strip clubs of Hamburg for seven years in the 1950's before the "British Invasion" of the 1960's. Bill Gates had a rare opportunity to log thousands of "practice" hours writing software on one of the first multi-site computers during his high school years. Gladwell points to chance when it comes to the explanation of how his family came into being: a white settler chose a certain black Jamaican women to be his wife, and this fact coupled with unique historical opportunities (schooling, for example) available to their heirs explains much of his familial and personal success.

According to Gladwell, personal initiative does play a huge part in success, just not in the parameters of the choices, not in the historical givens of a situation. These personal factors have to do with details we sometimes overlook: the opportunity to learn a skill and the long hours practicing it in meaningful work, willingness to do the kinds of work that fall to us because it might be "below" or "beneath" others, and personality traits (especially people skills/relational intelligence).

Gladwell stops short of expressing gratitude- it's just not really in the sociologist's vocabulary. But I think the ability he has in telling the story of success also comes with an appreciation for the fact that success is, by and large a gift of many factors out of our control. Whether you call it chance or gift makes a big difference. Gladwell allows for both. Christians call it grace, that which we receive that comes out of God's love and abundance, that which we have nothing to do with, beginning with our birth, our life, and any health we enjoy. Everything looks better when seen as a gift, wrote Chesterton. How true!

Be Where You're Not Needed

"The God who made the world and everything in it, he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things." Acts 17: 24-25, NRSV

If we are in a profession that makes a business out of helping people, and clergy are prime suspects, then the reason our health and wholeness are at risk on a massive scale is because we have learned how to keep everything looking good even though we ourselves are EMPTY. Compassion fatigue? Not me! Go, go power ranger!

Appearances are valued in this culture of ours and churches only magnify the importance of looking good. You could call it an addiction -- driven to be needed and liked and wanted. It doesn't take long for us to develop a God complex, functioning as though our supply is unlimited, ignoring or denying our real needs for rest, renewal, and sanity. All the while telling others to rely on God's resources. Really!

But the rush of being needed and liked usually runs counter to being with God. It's just that God is the One who doesn't NEED anything. God will always be completely happy being God! Could that be the reason why we find it so hard listening to and breathing in the Holy Spirit? Because we are so filled with the toxin of being needed?

Awareness of our real need is the healthier posture from which to offer whatever we have to give. How freeing- and absolutely liberating- it is to be in this Presence that doesn't sap us, but offers life and love in fullness.