The Challenge of Writing True Stories

     I watched an interesting movie the other day: Let Them All Talk with Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen.  The main character, Alice, is a writer, and one of her friends is convinced that the book that made Alice famous and for which she won an important award, was actually the story of that friend's own trauma, a trauma she'd shared in confidence to Alice.  The friend can't forgive Alice for this.  The movie got me to thinking some about writing on the whole, and my own writing in particular.

    As writers, we write from our own experience.  We do.  Whether it is obvious or not, we can't write from anything other than our own experience.  We write for many reasons, but I believe the top two reasons are to share the things that we think others will value and to process our lives.  In a sense, writing is therapy.  This is true even if what we are writing is fiction, and even if the connections to our own lives are not obvious. We bring ourselves to our writing and that means it comes from our experiences. This is perhaps especially true for pastors.  We write what we hope will be meaningful to others.  We cannot do that apart from our own experiences because our faith is informed by our experiences: by our relationships to God and to people, and even to all of creation.  But this means two things for my own writing:

    First, people often assume that the points I am making are somehow "aimed" at them.  I've written about this before, in part because it happens so very often.  Does the behavior of other people around me influence or affect my writing?  My preaching?  Of course.  Again, I cannot write apart from my own experience because it has determined who I am, what I think, what I mean, what I do.  I cannot separate my own experiences from my writing, nor would I want to.  My experiences have given me what little wisdom I have: they have informed my beliefs and have challenged me to grow through and with them.  Since I believe faith is ultimately about a relationship with God and God's people, it is a living growing thing as all relationships are.  And that means that my writing and preaching also grow and change based on the life lessons that I face in each day.

    But as I've said before, I think it is very dangerous to preach "at" people.  So I work very hard to preach sermons "at" myself, or the things that I know I need to hear: to say the things that I know I need to remember to grow.  As Alice said in the movie I just watched, "Ultimately a writer is writing about herself."  Yes, even when it sounds like I am "preaching" at someone, usually that person is me.  It is very rare that I have an image of someone else in mind when I am writing or preaching.  And when I do have an image of someone else in mind, I have learned to take that as a cautionary note and try hard to work around it.  I will give a very specific example:

    There came a Sunday when the lectionary passage was Mathew 18:15-22.  It comes around once every three years and we are called to preach on it each and every time it does.  It is a passage that says that when someone has wronged us, we are to talk to them directly, not about them, not gossiping, not stirring up anger.  We are to go to them directly.  If that doesn't work, we are to take a couple "witnesses" with us and again, go to them directly.  If it still doesn't work, you expand the circle farther by bringing more "witnesses" to sit in on the conversation, but still you are called to talk to the person directly.  There's a key word here that I keep using: directly.  There is no room in this for gossip or triangulation.  

    Well, at the time that the passage came up for it's tri-annual sermon, the congregation I was serving was struggling with some serious gossip problems. I didn't know what to do.  I felt that it had come at a crucial time in the life of the congregation.  But I was also very aware that this was one of those occasions when it would be hard for me to resist using the pulpit to preach "at" people who were doing damage in the church.  My solution?  I pulled out a sermon I had written 6 years earlier, for a previous congregation, and I edited it only slightly so that it was not obviously from six years before.  I did not want to fall into the trap of preaching "at" or "to" anyone, so I made sure that I wasn't.  Still, people in the congregation  believed I was preaching "at" specific people.  Ironically, at least two people believed I was preaching at someone who was never in my mind as someone who needed to especially hear the sermon.  And since they never actually asked me if that was the case, (I again heard about it through more gossip, sigh) there was no space for me to explain my process or my thoughts.   

    Unfortunately, this has not been a one time event.  This is one of the curses of writing, of speaking in public ways and in public places.  There is always the chance that, no matter how hard I try not to hurt or upset anyone that someone will put their own interpretations on what I said and either become angry or hurt.  Once that happens it is very difficult to repair the damage. 

    Is it possible that sometimes I am, without intention, still tapping into some of my own feelings and therefore lashing out?  It's possible.  I try to be self reflective, honest with myself, and kind to the people in my area of influence.  But I'm also human.  I try to own my own mistakes.  But we also all have blind spots and I am no exception to that.

    The second point I want to make is that I do use stories to say what I want to say.  I use stories to illustrate my points, such as the story I just told about my gossip sermon.  Many times these stories come from books or movies.  But the stories that are most impactful, that make the most difference to those who hear them, and that ring the truest, are the stories that are true, and that I'm in the unique position to share because they come from my own life.  These stories are real.  But that necessarily means that other people are in those stories: other people who are also real and have been a part of my life.  So how do I avoid hurting people?  If the story involves someone easily identifiable, I often ask them if it's okay if I use it.  For example, if I tell a story involving my kids, I ask them if it's okay before telling it.  Sometimes, for whatever reason, I have a story and I am unable to ask those involved for permission.  In those cases, I will often change key elements of the story to "hide" their identity.  Sometimes I have not gone far enough in these efforts when I've believed the story would be heard as an apology or a clarification of something that has happened.  And so, occasionally, sometimes my stories have hurt others.  I've told a story that I thought would not be offensive or hurtful and the person who saw themselves in the story was hurt or offended.  Or I've told a story that I thought would in no way be connected with a specific person because they were distant, not in my sphere, or not connected to people who would read what I write, and was surprised to find that was not the case.  

    I remember when this has happened and I use those instances as warnings and reminders to myself to be careful.  But I am human and I do make mistakes.  It is for this reason that as I have sat with my book about what my family experienced in Ohio, I've had a hard time pushing it into a realm of publication.  I worry about the people who might be hurt.  I worry that no matter how hard I've worked to hide identities or change names that people will see themselves and will interpret what I've said negatively rather than complimentarily.  I think this is one of the biggest challenges of writing.  How do we speak truth without injuring others?  This remains a growing edge for me.  It might always be so.  All I can say is I'm working on it.  And that I hope that those who feel hurt by the things I have written or said would have the courage to talk to me about it.  I want to grow.  And I want the opportunities to make things right.

Taking Offense and Turning it to Good

Genesis 45:1-28

Matthew 15:10-28

Luke 4:21-30

               What offends you?  What do you get upset about and defensive about and irate about?

               Now, a more important question: Does it help to take offense?  Do problems get solved?  Injustices corrected by our becoming offended? 

               In the face of injustices, sometimes it feels like there are only two responses.  The first is to get angry.  And the second is to turn that anger inwards and to just accept the pain and injustices that come our way, often accompanied by a sense of helplessness or even hopelessness.  Anger often involves lashing out.  And one or both of these responses may include walking away, leaving the situation that has offended us.  Sometimes anger can make a difference.  Sometimes speaking out the truth in anger, like Jesus did as he flipped over the tables of the money changers in the temple, will make a difference, affect change, challenge and overcome injustices.  We don’t know the results of Jesus’ actions on that day, but we do know that the story of his turning those tables continues to inform us, educate us, make a difference in how Christians understand their church buildings and what they can and should be used for.  But other times anger does not actually make things better.  When anger is not accompanied by something productive, like ideas about how to change things, a direction for ways in which something might be done differently, or an offer of help for ways in which something could be done differently, then it tends to also be simply destructive. 

For those of you who read my blog, you know that this week started in a very unpleasant way for Youngest and I.  I was driving Youngest to school Monday morning when a ridiculously large truck started riding my bumper.  When I finally pulled over because he was scaring me, he drove as close as he could to my car, nicking the mirror even, to express his outrage, and then slowed to a crawl when I got behind him.  When he came to a stop sign, he refused for several minutes to drive through.  Clearly he was expressing his anger at me about something, but I’ll be honest and tell you that, first, I don’t know what he was angry about!  I was driving behind someone else and it was impossible for me to go any faster, if that was the problem.  I know I didn’t cut him off since I was in the same lane the entire time.  Secondly,  this behavior did nothing of good.  It only succeeded in scaring myself and my young daughter, upsetting me for most of the day actually, and causing worry (since once I was behind him, I saw that he was dropping off a kid at the same school I was) that I would run into him again the next day (which, in fact, I did… so now I’m anxious about driving Youngest to school at all).

               We see this same rage behavior in the Luke story today.  They didn’t like what Jesus said about it being challenging to bring healing and help to those in one’s own town.  They didn’t like it and they responded by driving Jesus out of town, which meant that there really was absolutely no way, now, that he could help them. 

               Our responses of rage, of yelling, of doing damage: these hurt people, hurt relationships, cause a lack of trust and a lack of honesty from those we are engaging who then become afraid of speaking their minds or being present in any kind of real way in the world.    

And that other option of just accepting perceived injustices?  Of walking away?  That’s frankly not very effective either.  Walking away doesn’t make things better.  And as Christians we are called to do something about real injustices and to change the pain or cruelty that we experience or witness.  When the injustices aren’t real, when the slights that offend us aren’t genuine, it does even less good to rage or walk away because we never have the opportunity to learn when our assumptions are wrong.

This morning Upworthy posted a story about a man who was offended by another man.  The offended man was taking a class and every time he approached his seat, this other man’s stuff was on the seat.  As soon as the other man saw him, he would say, “oh, you are here” and move his stuff, but, as the offended man said it, “He knew I would be there every day, so why didn’t he just keep his stuff off of my seat?!”  Then one day he was late for class.  And as he walked in, he saw that someone else was trying to sit in his seat and that the man who offended him by putting his stuff there said to this other person, “I’m sorry, this seat is saved for my good friend!” and then moved his things when he saw the author of the article walk up.  His offense had kept him from understanding that the man’s stuff was there as a way to save him his seat.

               What I would like to propose today is that there is at least one other way to deal with injustices, both personal and communal.  Today’s first scripture reading was the end of the story of Joseph.  To recap the larger story: Joseph was not very popular with his brothers.  He was favored by his father, which led to his brothers not liking him very much at all.  But he also chose to share with his brothers that he had had dreams of them bowing down to him.  This, too, failed to make him a very popular member of the family.  So the brothers threw him in a pit and then sold him as a slave to Ishmaelite traders, telling their father he had been killed.  This was an amazing injustice that lead Joseph into slavery, and then into prison.  Eventually he ended up as Pharaoh’s helper – in charge of Egypt’s land.  But not before a great deal of suffering had taken place.  How did he feel towards his brothers?  How did he handle all that had been done to him?  How did he treat those who had almost killed him and sent him to a life they knew would be horrible?  When they came to him begging for food, not recognizing him, what did he do?  Here was the perfect opportunity to get his revenge, to act out in anger and revenge.  He could have turned them away.  He could have announced, “as you did to me, so I do to you” and refuse to give them food.  He could have locked them up, or sold them as slaves.  And truthfully, he didn’t let them off easy.  He wanted to be sure they had changed.  But once he had seen that their hearts had changed, that they were no longer the young men who had done this terrible thing to him, he forgave them and acted towards them with grace and love, providing food during the famine, rescuing those who had wanted him dead, providing for these his torturers for years – caring even for those who had hurt him so badly, recognizing and remembering that in the end the path they forced him down, while not an easy one, ended in new opportunities and life for all of them.

               In the Matthew passage for today we are given two examples of ways to respond to things we don’t like.  We first have the Pharisees.  They were offended by what Jesus said and they reacted with offense.  They reacted by being angry, by pulling away, by plotting his destruction, and in the end by having him put to death.  In contrast we have the Canaanite woman who asks for help for her daughter.  Even though Jesus first ignores her and then insults her, she, in great contrast to the Pharisees, does NOT choose to act out of offense or anger.  Instead she acts with gentle, non-attacking, straight-forward persuasion.  She does not get angry.  But neither does she crumple, give up, or walk away.  Instead she offers a different perspective.  The Pharisees became offended but nothing came of that reaction of offense except, in the end, the crucifixion of an innocent man.  They did not get Jesus’ attention by acting offended.  And they certainly didn’t persuade him to change his tactics or change his mission or his approach or anything.  Jesus’ response when his disciples mentioned the Pharisees offense was to tell the disciples to leave them alone.  “The blind are leading the blind,” he said. Their offense came to nothing except anger and pain for themselves, and dismissal by Jesus.  But in contrast, the woman who chose to not act with offense, the woman who instead gently but persistently chose not to leave, not to act in anger, not to get mad nor to just accept what came her way and in helplessness to walk away, the woman who instead showed up and asked for what she wanted with determination but again without becoming angry – this woman, this woman got what she wanted, challenged Jesus and changed his approach to her and to all the other gentiles who followed in the gospels. 

               How do we respond when people offend us?  Do we pick up our toys and go home?  Do we feel helpless and hopeless?  Do we act out in anger?  Or can we choose this other way, speaking our truth in peace, with determination but also without attacking, without rancor, perhaps with humor and with the simple but powerful act of being present?

               I read in the news that a high school student in Tennessee was suspended for saying “bless you” to another kid when he sneezed.  Apparently the teacher was offended by this and considered it an infringement on the separation of church and state.  While I personally believe very strongly in a separation of church and state, the purpose of that separation is to allow each person to practice and live out their own faith, whatever they may be.  To suspend a person for an act of kindness that originated from their faith (and that’s assuming that it wasn’t just a flippant automatic response, which is also a possibility), is to fail to understand the purpose and reasoning behind a separation of church and state.  It is, instead to impose on an individual rules about where and how they can express their faith, the exact opposite of what the separation was intended to do.  Putting my strong opinions about this aside, a teacher’s offense at an act of kindness will no doubt have lasting negative effects on those around her.  Already, the community has become more divided around this issue.  Instead of people talking to each other, listening to each other and growing in that listening, people are entrenching in their own opinions and acting out with anger, with aggression, with attacking, accusing, hurtful words.  An act of kindness has become the center of a controversy that has turned people bitter, angry, has made enemies out of friends and created a stubbornness and unwillingness to hear each other that will be hard to overcome.  I wonder what would have happened if, instead of suspending the girl, the teacher had used the moment to open a conversation about separation of church and state, what that means, how that should be lived, the history of that policy, and where it has taken us now.  People might still have disagreed, but if the conversation were set in an atmosphere of exploration, people might have learned and grown from it.

              When I was in college I lived in a Christian co-op with 19 other students in what was the campus ministry center.  Living in this center involved a commitment to participate each week in one of the regular programs of the campus ministry center.  It also involved committing to attending a weekly potluck and each week one of us put on a program for the others to consider some aspect of faith or living out that faith.  The community I lived in was very diverse, ethnically and in every other way.  And while we were supposed to be committed to growing together as a community and as a body of faith, there were divisions.  There were smaller groupings of friends within the community.  One week, the woman leading the conversation was a white woman who had felt excluded by the rest of the community.  She led a program in which we were all invited to pick someone we didn’t know well and try to get to know them better.  I don’t remember all the ins and outs of this conversation.  But I do remember that about a year later, one of my friends, a Latino man, shared with me that the people of color within our community had felt the presentation was racist and excluded them.  I was shocked because they had said nothing at the time.  They had left the community at the end of the year, found housing elsewhere without ever explaining why they left, without ever telling the woman that they were angry or hurt or upset.  I asked Mike why this group had never voiced their feelings.  And he told me “we, people of color, know that it is not our job to have to educate white people on their racism.”  Well, they are right.  As people of color, it is not their job to educate the rest of us on our bad behavior.  Women don’t have the job of educating men on their sexism.  Poor people don’t have the job of educating wealthy people about their privilege. People with disabilities don’t have the job of educating those who don’t.  It is not the job of people who might have experienced any kind of injustice to educate those who perpetrated it.  Education should be done by other people who have those privileges.    

However, as Christians, as people of faith, it is our job to act with love towards all people.  It is not an act of love to walk away from a situation without talking to people who may be unknowingly doing harm.  It is not an act of love to refuse to engage one another, even our enemies in open and honest conversation.  Scott Peck defines love as “working towards the highest spiritual growth for the other”.  It does not work towards the others’ highest spiritual growth to walk away.  It does not work toward the others’ highest spiritual growth to hide behind feeling “offended”.  We are called to move beyond that.  To instead find peaceful, humorous, loving but truthful ways to be present and honest and real with one another. 

               I will admit I do not always find this easy.  Not at all.  I remember several years ago when Eldest received a 75% on her assignment the first day of class which was to have her parent sign her syllabus, a syllabus I did in fact sign, I found myself quickly moved towards feeling offended.  This was my assignment.  Had I spelled my name wrong?  Why did I get a 75% on signing her syllabus?  But my decision to be offended started me off on the wrong foot with Eldest's teacher.  Instead of being present, again using humor, or simply asking if there had been a mistake, I approached it with my bristles out.  This served no one.  Least of all Eldest.

               There are so many things we could be offended by on a daily basis.  So many.  That person wasted our time by refusing to use their turn signal.  That person snarled rather than smiling.  That person failed to invite everyone to their party.  That person wrote something that could have applied to us.  That person failed to remember that someone was gifted in a particular way and to include them in a project.   That person gave an excuse that we know was an untruth.  Well, again, we can find things to cause us offense daily.  And when we fail to speak up, sometimes those little things start to add up until we are so offended we explode or leave.  Hanging on to our grievances isn’t the solution.  But reacting with anger or walking away are not usually productive options either. 

               We see this more and more in our culture, in our community.  The divisions between world-views and thinking is expanding in this country and becoming more volatile, more violent, and more permanently damaging.  We have stopped being able to hear each other or communicate in ways that bring learning, growth and understanding.  Instead we attack what we don’t agree with and end up increasing the divisions, entrenching in our own worldviews without possibility of growth or change, and tearing families and other relationships apart in the process.

               So what do we do when we are feeling offended?  Well, first I think taking a deep breath is  always a good start.  Remembering the Canaanite woman, remembering Joseph, remembering how others responded without a sense of righteous outrage when they could easily have done otherwise, remembering our call to forgive, remembering our call to love even our enemies, remembering that we can do a lot more good and spread a lot more love by choosing something other than offense.  All of this can help.  But the bottom line is that it takes practice.  And looking at the good models we have in some people helps.

               Ben Weir is one of my truest heroes.  He was one of the Lebanon hostages in 1985.  He was held for 16 months and suffered cruelly.  He was also a friend.  And truly one of the kindest, gentlest spirits I have ever met.  I remember one time when I was with him he was confronted by an angry attacking young man – “what kind of God do you believe in anyway?  You went over there as a MISSIONARY to try to convert people to a hurtful religion and you were punished because of it.  You got what you deserved.”  And Ben’s gentle, quiet, but listening response… “I’m sorry that you are feeling angry.  For me, my faith got me through that time.  But I understand that can be hard for folk going through hard times.  I would be happy to listen any time to what you have experienced.”  I never once heard him snap or respond in anger.  And even after his cruel treatment, he remained one of the world’s most respected advocates and workers for peace in the Middle East.  His gentleness permeates everything about him.  And through his actions he modelled for me, as for many, a person I would like to be: one who chooses a different way - who listens - who loves - who sees.  He also shows up, no matter what injustice or offense is aimed his way. 

               My prayer for all of us is to find that kind of peace, that kind of wisdom, that kind of LOVE.  Amen.