To both my relief, and dismay, I have discovered that there is indeed a pattern. My relief is the result of having detected a pattern, but my dismay is the result of discovering that this pattern is pretty complex.

To demonstrate, I am going to use the following (fictional) scenario as an example:

1. Someone calls me a “dummy”.

2. I react by feeling hurt, sad, angry, and confused.

3. My hurt feelings give rise to one or more of the following responses: I snap back with an insult of my own, I wander off feeling sorry for myself and trying to figure out why that person doesn’t like me, I begin to wonder if that person is going to try and turn others against me. . .and so on.

Notice that my responses (which take up the bulk of my time and energy) are not directly the result of being called dumb, but are instead in response to my hurt feelings. My responses are only secondarily connected to the situation: The time and energy that I invest in my responsive actions is primarily connected to my emotional reaction, not the incident itself.

This is a hard pattern to challenge and change, so lately I have been just trying to pay attention to this process.  I’m trying to catch myself between my emotional reactions and my continued response. I’d like to think that eventually I can get enough distance between the emotion and my response so as to figure out whether I am making an appropriate investment.

I’ll keep trying, anyway.

The ladies room at work is evil.

Truly.

(So evil, I call it “The Ego Deflator”.)

You see, no matter how cute I am feeling, one look in the ladies room mirror will strip me of any such delusions.  Every line, every shadow, every broken capillary, every imperfection in my face screams from the mirror, assuring me of my soon-to-be-celebrated 40th birthday. When I look in that mirror, I look pale, sallow, washed out, tired, and old.

To be fair, I am not the mirror’s only target. All the other women at work have the same complaint: We just end up looking SO bad in that mirror.

Now some might say that our irritation is just vanity: We don’t want to accept our imperfections or the fact that we are aging.

(This is probably true.)

Yet this mirror doesn’t tell us the truth about how we look. It can’t, because the lighting in the ladies room is horrid. The bulbs are of the ultraviolet variety, and not only do  they give off a rather unflattering glow, there aren’t enough of them, and the walls of the washroom are a nasty, dingy grey which reflects badly in the light.

So while we ladies do see some very real flaws when we peer into that ladies room mirror, we are also seeing ourselves, not as we really are, but how we look in contaminated light. We see our true flaws, to be sure, but we also see “flaws” that aren’t really there.

(The light can be corrupted. The light can be distorted.)

(And because I am human, I am quick to believe in the distortion.)

The mirror doesn’t tell me how I really look, because all it can do is reflect the light available to it.  It took me awhile to realize this, though. I assumed that light was light. Eventually I paid more attention to my environment, and talked to others that shared it, to realize that the light was contaminated.

(I need to know the light better. When I truly know the light, I can know when it has been corrupted. Then I might be able to only see what is truly there.)

This blog post is part of this month’s Synchroblog on Light and Darkness as Motifs of Spirituality. Check out the other posts below:

Phil Wyman finds Darkness: a Thin Place for the Soul
Adam Gonnerman on being “In Darkness”
Jeff Goins is “Walking in the Light with Jesus”
Ellen Haroutunian finds Holy Darkness
Bethany Stedman thinks Light is Coming
Julie Clawson walks through Darkness and Light
Kathy Escobar will Take a Sliver Anyday
Susan Barnes at …and here’s a photo of one I made earlier
Joe Miller thinks you can Discover Light in Darkness
Beth Patterson talks about Advent: Awaiting the Ancient and the Ever New
Liz Dyer says What the Heck
Sally Coleman muses about Light into Darkness
Steve Hayes with the Lord of the Dark
Josh Jinno with Spiritual Motifs of Darkness and Light
KW Leslie contrasts Darkness versus blackness
Erin Word writes Fire and Sacrifice

(Ok, I am going to be transparent: I haven’t posted in a month because I’ve been too busy working on my much more popular tea blog. But I’ve realized that my ministry extends beyond tea, so I am going to try and be more regular about posting here.)

Back to transparency. As I discussed in my last post on this subject, we often seek to define transparency by what might be termed “transparency best practices”: We shift from “transparency” to things like accountability and honesty without considering what it is to be transparent. And as my blogging pal Paul Meyers noted in his comment, most people aren’t even good enough at being honest with themselves to be truly transparent.

Since I definitely fall into this last category, I had to think long and hard for an example of how to be transparent.

And then I thought of my glass teapots.

I own three teapots. One is white porcelain and opaque. The others are clear glass. I confess to being more fond of the glass teapots because I like to be able to see the tea leaves unfurl as they steep. I like to be able to watch the color of the tea liquor darken so that I can know exactly when the tea is ready to be poured. I like being able to see if the teapot is in need of emptying/cleaning at a glance.  I like being able to examine the leaves after I drink my tea without getting my hands wet.

I like being able to see right through those pots. And the interesting thing is that those pots don’t have to do anything other than hold my tea.  They don’t try to be transparent or function transparently. They are transparent.

Now humans are not teapots. Unlike a teapot we have personalities, moral agency, and intelligence. We have souls. But I still think that my humble teapots have something to teach us about transparency, namely that it is in large part dependent on what we are made of: If we build up a persona out of defensiveness and/or opportunism, it won’t matter how “accountable” or honest we are to others, we still aren’t going to be transparent.  We will continue to manage, or try to manage, how others see us and what it is that they see  and in the process render ourselves even more unknowable to ourselves and to others.

If we are transparent, we are knowable, both by ourselves and others. It isn’t a matter of our actively disclosing information or being “accountable”. Instead, when we are transparent, we are knowable to others: What they know of us depends on their physical/spiritual/emotional/mental proximity to us, rather than strictly on our own actions.

And we become more knowable, we can better know ourselves.

More on this later. Thanks for reading.

A few weeks ago I read this post by Kathy Escobar. I found the post disturbing, and needed to take some time and reflect on both my reaction to it and what I truly wanted to say about it.

Kathy is the co-pastor of The Refuge. I don’t know much about this church, but I get the idea that they minister to a lot of “the least of these“: Folks who are  “high need”. From what she has described in her post, it sounds like the “high need” people may outnumber the “normals” at The Refuge.

Because of this skewed demographic, Kathy gets a lot of pats on the back (and probably the head) for her good work, but not so much in the way of practical support (i.e. people who are willing to become part of The Refuge’s community). Mind you, there are plenty of folks who are willing to send folks to The Refuge: They just don’t want to join them there.

When Kathy has asked folks why they don’t join the fellowship of The Refuge, she gets answers like these:

““we just want to be around less broken people”

“i don’t have the issues these people have”

“we just don’t feel comfortable” ”

I have alluded to my discomfort with the poor in previous posts. So when I read this post, I felt rather, um. . .challenged? I don’t live anywhere near The Refuge, so participating isn’t an option for me, but I still felt this need to justify why I wouldn’t participate if I was a local.

To my chagrin, my responses were identical to those listed by Kathy. In fact, I began feeling a bit helpless, thinking that if I were to become involved in a community such as Kathy’s, I’d probably implode with so many demands on my time, so many broken people wanting to be my friend, so many things and people that I’d have to “fix”. It was just too much, and I shrugged and said “Sorry God, I just couldn’t do all that.”

It was then that I heard the still, small voice say:  “Who asked you to?”

Stunned, I had to sit back and think. I realized that what was making me so uncomfortable about participating in a community like Kathy’s had less to do with what would like be expected of me by the church community, and more of what I was expecting of myself.

The arrogance of my thinking and the largeness of my ego actually got me to laugh harder at myself than I have for a very long time: Here I was thinking that if I were to join such a church, I would be expected to meet needs, solve problems, and make friends with needy people. Never mind that:

1. I have a fair number of needs myself right now, and not a lot of resources (personal, emotional, spiritual, or material) to share with others.

2. While I might think of myself as SuperLainie, the fact is that neither I, nor anyone else, can “solve” other people’s problems.

3. These “needy people” just might have their own friends. And maybe they wouldn’t like me all that much anyway.

In other words, I was willing to withhold my presence from a community where I likely would have been welcomed and loved, all because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to live up to my own (not the church’s, not the pastors’, not God’s) expectations about what I “needed to do for them”.

(Kind of silly, eh?)

While I was reading Kathy’s post, I got the sense that the only expectation that she had of others was a willingness to be present: For her, for the church leadership, and for the church community. Yet I had to admit that, if I were local to The Refuge, I would have been reluctant to offer that simple thing because of my “whole-r than thou” attitude.

Of course, I am not everybody, and others may have different reasons for not participating in The Refuge (or churches like it. But I’d encourage those who have the same “uncomfortable” reaction to consider why they feel so squeamish. Is it because they are truly afraid of not getting their own needs met? Or are they laboring under a heavy burden of unreasonable self-expectation?

And if the later is true, are they willing to surrender that burden for a lighter one?

(Am I?)

]]> http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/10/12/who-asked-you-to-the-arrogance-of-self-expectation/feed/ 0 http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/09/05/porning-jesus-getting-off-on-delusions-of-edge/ http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/09/05/porning-jesus-getting-off-on-delusions-of-edge/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:39:19 +0000 admin http://www.lainiepetersen.com/?p=282

So I was twittering and happened upon this blog post by Paul Mayers. The post puts forth the premise that many of the books out there on “being church” are pornographic:  They titalate, they excite, they tempt, they fulfill fantasies and they may even provide some release. But ultimately, when we put down the book, are we truly satisfied?

As Paul says:

“I guess I’m just tired of the flood of book, blogs, podcasts, commentators who with voyeur like pleasure lift up the skirts to show me how wrong church is.  How broken church is.  How institutional church is. How hypocritical church is.  How abusive, myopic, out of touch, conservative, liberal, self serving, fragmented, divisive church is.  How really it is not what Jesus ever intended to be and quite frankly why he if he showed up he wouldn’t be darkening the door of those kinda places.”

“Those kinda places.”

You mean those corner suburban churches with buildings and budgets and programs and paid clergy?

Well that’s what I thought when I read this post. How boring. How vanilla.

I then let my mind wander a bit. I even fantasized about a vanilla church. The church is filled with women in pressed skirts and blouses, bustling to prepare some coffee and sandwiches for a visit from Jesus. I see the men in their khaki shorts and Polo shirts, neatly trimming the hedges to make the church presentable for Jesus.  The pastors are wearing their best suits.

(Oh ho, hum!)

But then the fantasy “got away from me”. This is how it went:

Jesus comes to the church.

And he darkens their doorway.

He shakes the pastors’ hands.

He admires the shrubbery.

He gratefully accepts some coffee.

(Wait a minute, why isn’t he turning over tables? Why isn’t he spitting these folks out of his mouth?)

Instead he accepts their service, their hospitality. He is kind to the bustling group,  saying to a woman who is fretting that the coffee isn’t hot enough:  “You are worried about so many things, aren’t you?”, as he pats her on the shoulder.

He inquires after the senior pastor’s well-being, noting that the pastor is burdened with many things, but that the pastor should feel free to come to him with his burdens, and he (Jesus) will give that pastor rest.

(Then I snapped out of it.)

(Boy, that was weird.)

Does it make us angry to think of Jesus behaving this way? The idea that Jesus might desire intimacy and union with those who “just don’t get it”? Why doesn’t Jesus realize how vanilla these folks are? Maybe he just doesn’t know what he’s missing.

Maybe Jesus never read our porn.

So where was I?

Ah yes.  In my last post I expressed dismay at the way that my own posts, as well as some discussions on other blogs, were treating the issue of transparency. It seemed to me that we were going ’round in circles, with a lot of hand wringing and caveats and personal opinions getting in the way of coming to any conclusions.

My primary problems with the way that “transparency” is being discussed are:

1. We seem to be equating “transparency” with “being honest when we screw-up”. Now this sort of honesty may well be a fruit of transparency, but it isn’t all that transparency entails.

2. We also seem to be confusing personal transparency with the sort of transparency that we expect from politicians and/or business leaders in their professional dealings/practices.  Again, I’d like to think that professional/political transparency is often the fruit of one’s personal transparency, but I would argue that being transparent in one’s fiscal processes (for example) is different than being personally transparent.

I think that we need to recognize the difference between transparency as a way of being vs transparency as a description of a set of behaviors. As long as we define transparency as something that we do, rather than something that we are, we are going to run into roadblocks, exceptions, and quandries.

More on this over the next few days. If you want to read what some other bloggers have had to say, visit:

KW Leslie’s Baring the Secrets of the Soul

John Smulo’s Wanna Play Peek-a-Boo?

Sally Coleman’s Just as I am. . .reflections on transparency

I am concerned that we may not have very good working definition of “transparency”, and that, as a result, we (not Sally, John and myself, but anyone who has an interest in this discussion) may be talking past each other.

So I am going to think about this some more and then try and write some stuff on what I think transparency is and isn’t.  Depending on what I come up with, I may even end up revising my other posts on this topic.

Peace out.

As I discussed in yesterday’s post, transparency is tricky. While it is often demanded, particularly in the church, there is little in the way of support for those who are transparent. Transparency often means that truth results in consequences, and those consequences are often not good.

Still, we need to keep trying to be transparent, even as we evaluate how we ought to go about self-disclosure.  Here are some ideas on how to accomplish appropriate transparency:

1. Consider the Scope of Your Transparency

My mother once gave me some very wise advice. She told me that if I was ever in a social situation and I belched (or worse), that I should say “excuse me”, but only as loud as the belch itself. In other words, be polite to those who heard you, but don’t announce the event to those who weren’t even aware of it.

We need to make sure that our transparency is appropriate: Broadcasting a personal failing that only affected a few people is not only unnecessary, but it can also be a twisted form of self-aggrandizement.

2. Consider that Once the News is “Out” People Likely Won’t Care About it After a Few Months (or Even Weeks!)

When I was 18 (and quite unmarried) I got pregnant and decided to carry the pregnancy to term. When my best attempts to keep my condition failed, I was constantly worried that people were always “talking about me”.  While I know that my family and social network likely engaged in an initial flurry of gleeful gossip, that all died down rather quickly.

(In fact, I was told point-blank by my parents and some older friends that I was NOT a topic of conversation, or was I at the forefront of everyone’s mind!)

Because humans are mostly self-centered, we are convinced that everyone is always thinking about us, for good or for bad. But the truth is that most people are far more concerned about themselves than they are other people.  We need to keep perspective about transparency: Yes, we risk being gossiped about and ostracized (in some cases), but a new “flavor of the week” is just around the corner. Trust me.

3. Being Transparent is not Equivalent to Putting on a “Kick-Me” Sign (i.e. You aren’t obligated to take abuse.)

Being transparent is just that: Letting other people know about the challenges, struggles, and yes, the good things in your life.  When we are transparent about difficulties (or even outright screw-ups), we are doing so in order to be honest and to prevent more misunderstandings and misdeeds from occurring.  We are asking for help and support from others in our struggles.  What we are not asking for (nor do we deserve) is “punishment” in the form of ongoing admonitions, nasty remarks, and inappropriate intrusions into our personal lives.

For Christians, being transparent ought to be the fruit of grace, rather than the means by which we try to achieve it. When we are transparent, need to remember that while we may still be working through our guilt, nobody ought to be adding to it. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you “deserve” the condemnation and abuse of a busybody just because you did something wrong.

4. Giving an Accounting: To Whom are You Accountable?

This is a sticky concept, but I am going to give it a whirl. I think that sometimes we overestimate just who we are accountable to.  Public figures have an even more difficult time with this, because they have such a large sphere of influence.

But I think it is an important question to consider when we are talking about transparency.  Do we really owe someone who reads our blog occasionally the same level of transparency that we offer our spouse? Our children? Our pastor? Our employees?

Determining accountability is a crucial step in appropriate transparency. It is also probably best addressed in another blog post.

5. Being Transparent When You Can’t Be

There are times when “being transparent” steps on the toes of others. If our being transparent is going to incriminate or endanger another person, is against the advice of an attorney (i.e. a legal case is pending), or is going to cause humiliation for innocent/not-so-innocent bystanders, we need to shut up, step back, and think about how we are going to deal with the situation.

One way of coping with a situation like this is to consider point #4 and figure out who we are accountable to.  If we are able to be transparent with our “inner ring” of accountability, we not only are able to get the support that we need, but we have demonstrated, against any future insinuation, that we were appropriately accountable and transparent.

The other option, which I am not a fan of because it can cause more problems than it solves, is to be partially transparent: You can tell people that there is an issue, and that you have been taking steps to deal with it but that you are unable to reveal what it is. The trouble is that this approach will get people curious, gossiping, and perhaps some in the “investigative path”.  On the other hand, it may be an option under circumstances where you believe that the “truth will come out” eventually, and you want to prepare people for the eventual revelations.

For Tomorrow:  How We Can Support Transparency

. . .or What’s the Point of Transparency if you Have To Lie Anyway?

Seems that a lot of folks like to talk about transparency. A lot. We also add a whole bunch of stuff about “accountability”, and run various workshops and sell books on how to achieve both in our lives and relationships. Which is all well and good until. . .

. . . we actually engage in a behavior or are involved in a situation that we are supposed to be transparent about.

This is where the trouble(s) start, because, as we all know, transparency means vulnerability. When we make ourselves vulnerable, there are those who will take advantage of that vulnerability to either do us harm or to benefit themselves in some way. Sometimes they will do both.   Then, in addition to our personal struggle, we have to deal with the fallout of our transparency, which in some cases can actually be worse than the initial “issue” that we were transparent about.

While I believe in transparency (and I am going to explore it in some upcoming posts), I also think that it has become a buzzword with little real meaning. While it sounds virtuous, also brings with it some real problems which, if not considered along with the decision to “be transparent”, can have devastating effects on ourselves and others.

Here are a few of the problems with being transparent:

1. We run the risk of feeding rumors, gossip, and innuendo:

Unfortunately, even the most carefully worded explanation, confession, story, or report can and will be misunderstood by some people.  As the information spreads via word-of-mouth, the truth can get more distorted until our transparency is twisted into lies.

2. Being completely transparent is not always wise or even ethical:

There are certain situations in which being transparent, at least for the time being, just isn’t possible. For example, someone might be involved in a legal proceeding of which they have been told to NOT reveal details to others (particularly online/in print).

There are also situations in which being transparent might adversely affect or embarrass someone else. Honorable people will often endure suspicion and scrutiny in order to not expose the failings of someone else.

3. Being transparent can mean jeopardizing one’s ministry, financial support, job, and/or friendships:

In some segments of the church, admitting to a failing may be applauded, but it will also lose you your  job and friendships.  Some churches will, for example, remove someone from leadership if they are having family or marital difficulties, offering no provision for the financial needs of that person or their family. In some cases, these ex-leaders will also find that their friends have disappeared along with their source of income.

It ends up becoming a Catch-22: A person trying to serve the church is supposed to take transparency and accountability seriously, but if they make themselves transparent and accountable, even about things that are largely out of their control, they can lose their ministry anyway.

4. We make ourselves vulnerable to emotional abuse:

When people are hurting, they don’t need people who neither know nor care about them making judgments, assumptions, and accusations against them. While it is easy to say that we shouldn’t care about what others say about us, the truth is that most of us can’t shake off personal attacks. Being transparent when times are tough can, in some cases, actually slow our healing.

5. Transparency, particularly online and/or in the media, is often done in sound bytes:

Most “situations” that people get themselves into don’t arise in a vacuum: People don’t always behave badly, because they are malicious or indifferent. There is almost always a fairly significant history, along with mitigating factors,  behind the “story”, and this is poorly communicated in sound byte transparency. Thus people may become aware of a situation, but have no knowledge as to how that situation came about. Judgment is often much easier than understanding.

For Tomorrow:  Five Considerations for Responsible Transparency

I should note that my post was made in response to Shades of Gray and a Washington Post article, both of which offered critical perspectives on short-term mission trips to third-world countries. I was agreeing with their criticisms, but I perhaps should have better clarified my own position.

There is a place for short-term mission work, but I think that these opportunities should be a response to the actual needs of communities, not a business in and of themselves. I am concerned that there is a “marketing-to-the-missionaries” aspect to these programs: Yes, some services/labor may be given to a community, but if the primary emphasis is put on the experience of the mission team (rather than meeting the needs of a community), this is a problem. I don’t question that many people who participate in these programs find them humbling and a real opportunity for growth, but if they aren’t meeting the needs of those who they are supposed to serve, they are being cheated out of fulfilling their desire to truly be of service.

Secondly, these trips may not be a cost effective way of getting work accomplished, and, in some cases, they may be responsible for driving down wages of local workers. Obviously this is not always going to be the case: In a disaster, such as a flood or an earthquake, people are desperately needed to rebuild infrastructure and stabilize the area. Well-organized short-term mission teams and individual volunteers are absolutely crucial to these efforts. In addition, there are many churches, aid agencies, and social service programs that have well-organized short-term mission and volunteer programs that do serve critical, and well-defined, community needs.

Thirdly, many aid agencies working in underprivileged communities (both domestically and overseas) desperately need both cash and specialist labor. If a community has few medical professionals or engineers, it makes sense to sponsor a medical or engineering team to that area. If there is a shortage of housing in that community, it makes sense to send cash to an agency and let them hire local workers to do the building. Just because a community is poor does not mean that it completely lacks human resources: It may well be that sending cash is far better stewardship than sending a team of unskilled workers.

The lack of cultural sensitivity displayed in some of these programs is problematic. Granted, problems of cultural sensitivity and disruption are inevitable, but I think that efforts ought to be made to minimize them.

In our desire to “do good” we should remember that we don’t get to define what “doing good” is. Neither do churches, parachurch ministries, or even aid agencies. Instead, we need to take the time to listen to those whom we seek to serve so that they can tell us what they need.

We might be surprised.

Or we might not.

But the point is that we need to listen.