Portions of the monologue from “This is Who I Am” keep me in awe of a calling toward listening and relatedness. Such a call is humbling and impossible to follow in my own pride and strength.
The speaker confided, “We all grew up to expect that promises will be broken.” Her confession of the collective and weighty legacy tuned in my attention to the sobering element that to listen to such is to tread on sacred ground. Are my shoes off? Am I ready to receive the message? Where is my face turned? Do I fall prostrate? Turn my head up toward God? What would a good charismatic modernist do so? Do I look at the speaker, or shut my eyes because I do not deserve yet another chance to get to learn this message?
What is it to grow up and not know that a yes is a yes and a no is a no? What is it to grow up and not know that a promise equals a word that will be kept? If words do not maintain their meaning then what is a hearer left with?
What is it to grow up and not know that the word of God equals a promise?
The speaker confided more which reverberated to my core, “If you want to help me, you need to listen to me.” I reflect on her prescriptive message. Why is it so rare to properly do the simplest of things? To listen, to know another, to let her teach me who and what she is? To sit in her presence and engender her trust by genuinely and un-intrusively caring and waiting? To meld my intrinsic selfishness into genuine extrinsic other-focused?
I think of the difficulty of experiencing a person at face value when there are easy surface distractions to throw me off his/her scent. Such are as smoke-screens which keep the casual observer at bay. If I am insincere and carnal in my looking and listening do I really deserve to know more than what first meets my eyes and ears??
I myself am a genXer who resides in many ways between modernity and post-modernity. I am caught off-guard with surface messages and easily forget that messages do not equal a person. I reflect on the with-it and entrepreneurial, counter messages through which I often consider post-moderns, like pigeon-hole-type constructs which characterize shallow stereotypes such as I-am-networking, creating-my-own-image, designing-my-OWN-solution post-moderns; these are private constructs which are often dancing in the back of my head as I think of trendy conglomerate representations of the “movement”, as though there is a conscious choice to be post-modern.
The “This is Who I Am” monologue and livingthetext course dialogue leave me reflecting on the desire of post-moderns to be known. I reflect on the post-modern passion to be pursued and rescued from miss-direction, and to be guided to a worthy shore by worthy guide(s).
As a psychologist-in-training I appreciate surface messages and cultural trends as context. As a modernist, certain messages default as easy smoke screens (e.g., a with-it entrepreneur may be equated with one who needs no help). Messages perceived in such a manner may be fantastic camouflage for post-moderns when it comes to effortlessly shaking insincere pretenses [like insincere pretenders of (feigned) interest and compassion] off the scent of the path of one who is deeply, sincerely and thoughtfully needful.
This course is bringing me more in tune with the earnest hearts of post-moderns and particular communication styles which I have routinely considered without ample depth, and have confused for void and isolated, instead of that which runs richly with passionate and intense quest for depth and connection.
This brings me back to a livingthetext type question stated earlier in this posting: If words do not maintain their meaning then what is a hearer left with? If words don’t hold up, what does? These questions bring me back to a manner of being (as was referred to during class lecture), of awe and relatedness through Incarnate love which is very personal, joyful and sacred to me.
The place of the Bible in my future ministry may remain primarily as it is now. For now, the Bible in my ministry seems highly prescriptive toward melding my character to more align and reflect to character of Christ. A most recent, and entirely unprofessional, example involves tireless, repetitive, private readings of James 3:13-18, as I pleaded for God’s mercy (I’m still pleading!!! ;o)) during my angry attitude toward a friend. I pleaded to have the gift of living and giving His mercy genuinely and seamlessly to my friend. I read the verses literally dozens of times, yet the words still do not seem penetrate my mind or memory, yet their essence has. My actions and attitude have changed miraculously during the week (ok, I’ll fess up, this friend I have referred to is the man I want to marry!!). I spoke of the amazing change in my behavior and attitude to one of my OTHER friends, and noted that I can not remember hardly any of the words of these scriptures which I have read scores of times. She adeptly pointed out with a smile, “the words of the Lord will not return void” (seems that is in scripture somewhere).
I expect to have clients who have grown up to not know that the word of God equals a promise (really concerning the weightiness of those words, that’s just all humans, right?). My livingthetext ministry then, is to be a part of being the word God in a client’s life. When words have lost their meaning among a culture, as this course is teaching me about post-moderns, my ministry is to be among those I help and pointing to others who can help; being a part of the Image Dei for my clients, and being prepared and able to dynamically relate to each on a personal and individual level.
The central use of the Bible in my ministry has been and will probably remain as a heart-tool which continually draws me closer to Imago Dei, as long as I use it. My prayer is that I will continue to be an increasingly steadied shadow that shifts and changes a little less, with intentional growth toward the end means of discerning and reflecting God’s image of the client to the client (James 1:17-18).
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4 comments:
As a therapist myself, I found a lot of common ground within this reflection. Our position is a bit different...the Bible is a more subtle part of our ministry to a postmodern generation. In a way, it reminds me of Taylor's Postcard 4, in which he quotes Robert Webber as stating that the ancient church bellieved that the rule of prayer is the rule of faith. In otheer words, show me how you live and I can tell you what you believe. Maybe for you and me, Cathie, this will be how our ministry works. Our faith will be seen in how we relate to clients. As you put it, how do we show clients that words from another can be trusted? Is making our words trustworthy a part of showing our faith?
Steve Taylor, "The Out of Bounds Church" p. 68
As Christians I believe that our faith and living should not be seperated. However, it is true that the gap existed between faith and living has made many people fall into dilema. I want to relate this issue to preaching. If our life and faith are completely harmonized, it will be a perfect preaching to people in the world. "Conversational preaching wrestles with Word and words, with Silence and silence, seeking to invite everyone to participate in those life-giving conversations that make up the ongoing stories of God's people" (1). And I believe that this new way of preaching must be manifested through Christians' lives. I hope your ministry with clients will also be going well through your life preaching.
(1)Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. p.5.
Words often times lose meaning but i am still a believer that they have the power to change lives, but in context of action. you talk about therapy, which i've been through. i guess, when all was said and done, it felt more like restoration. there was a shattered bit of my life that needed a lot of delicate care. in memory i regared much of my healing to the community of believers around me. that's essential. Taylor refers to it as a 'redemptive community', where we actually get to be the Body (p.107).
being a therapist means, among other things, listening, being personal, being relational, being a roadsign (signpost) to wholeness or the One who is Wholeness. (p.85). thanks for your immense insight...cheers.
Talyor, Steve, The Out Of Bounds Church, Zondervan Publishing, 2005.
I found your questions more powerful than any possible answer. What will we have when words are taken away? – a postmodern response is… nothing relevant? I understand that this is over simplistic and very generalized but with an overarching post I can’t get be too detailed. The bleeding of the word is crying out for a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The instrument that has been overlooked for decades in the Church is the tool of the image as you concluded in your post – I couldn’t agree more. The image is creative, as our creator, and to be creative we must being willing to make room for the space it takes to be creative. It is not our creative power but God’s. Steve Taylor keys in on this reality in his book, The Out of Bounds Church when he says that there is room in the theology of the emerging church for the creative power of God.1 To bottom line it, the greatest image of the gospel is a body living as the bridegroom of Christ.
Your thoughts are innovative and provoking, great job!
1Taylor, Steve, The Out of Bounds Church, p. 61
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