Sunday afternoons have been filling up lately. I'm sure this will die down after the Intuitive Leadership book discussion is over in a few weeks. But it's kind of supposed to be Jill and my day off together. That's continually negotiated, though. I'd like to be able to say, "Here's mah schedule," and just leave it. But it's constantly changing. We have to keep sitting down and talking about when's what, and how we're going to get rest in, or us time, or see friends we hardly ever see. Seems like it's the same thing with everything. Saturday night group; sit down, talk it out, change. Tim talks about that in his book in the chapter we've been in for a couple weeks. How Israel got all obsessed with the ark, and used that as a totem, instead of maintaining relationship with God. They stopped being creative and stopped the relationship, and got the crap beat out of them for it.
Last week, we were scheduled to go to lunch for Juliet and my Aunt Heidi's collective birthdays. You ever notice how some people just have a title in front of their names from here until forever? Aunt Heidi. Like her identity to me is entirely wrapped up in the fact that her brother had a kid. If I met her in any other circumstance, her identity would be formed by what she did, and who she was. As it is, her name has the word 'aunt' in it, so that's who she is to me. And to her kids, she's 'Mom.' and no matter how close she might get to her daughter, I don' t think that Becca will ever see her mom outside of that strict familial context. That's one of the things Jill is most concerned with about having kids; that they won't see her as a person.
I have lunch with my dad every week (when he's in the country, that is), and some weeks we have good conversation about all sorts of deep and personal ans spiritual topics, and some weeks, we just kind of sit there and chit chat. Depends on the mood. We've had a pretty substantial conversation over a long period of time about the nature of truth, and what we can know, and how much our lenses and biases get in the way. A lot of it all swirling around the word 'objective,' which we keep having to renegotiate and grapple with. And it all stemmed from a conversation with Dave at Borders one Wednesday about Mark Driscol saying that Rob Bell was a heretic for not believing the Bible was inherent. I said I though that inherent wasn't such a good word for a book like the Bible, and that led us into discussing objective truth, and how I think that objectivism leads to oppression, and that everyone has a lens they see the world though, and you can very be fully objective. My dad likes to state my position as 'strict objectivity,' which I think is a bit redundant, but I'll accept it for the conversation.
One time we were sitting in Chipotle, by the window, and I'd finished my burrito bowl, with the barbacoa and the black beans, oh! the black beans, and he was still going on with his as he usually is, since I am such a quick eater. We were talking about this objective truth business. And I heard something almost desperate in his voice when he was talking about how if we didn't know something for sure, 100%, how could we know it? Like, he'd based his whole life on a thing, and our conversation wasn't questioning the thing itself, but the way that he knew the thing. That was shaking, I thought. That was a lucid moment for me of knowing my dad outside of the existing familial context of 'father.' He wasn't just my papa, he was a guy that I knew with things that he clung to as real, and hopes and dreams. Those moments are always hard to come by with people I know well, but I cherish them, because I love knowing people for who they are, not who I've set them up in my head to be. The actual, not the image.
So I ended up giving my Dad the Intuitive Leadership book because I thought it might end up casting some light on what I was saying about objectivity, but we got our communication lines confused, as we do almost all the time (yay, family) and he thought I was having him read it to make my point about inherency. But he enjoyed it none the less.
Even though she doesn't have an appellation tied to her name (unless you want to include 'the'), I get that same dissociative way with Jill sometimes, too. Sometimes it's hard to clarify where the line is between us. We've been together for a long while now, and we think in the same ways about a lot of things. Sometimes I just have to ask her opinions of things so I can hear her voice instead of mine.
I guess it's that way with almost everyone I know. I have to force myself to see them for who they are. I like the peopleness of people, and if I'm not careful, I can miss it pretty easily. I'm not a good listener. It's something I'm working on. Knowing how to listen, and actually doing it is hard. Of course, it's that way with almost everything in life, eh? Knowing how to do a thing comes easily. The doing it is what comes hard.
So, that Sunday, when we were supposed to go to lunch with the family, Aunt Heidi got sick, and it was snowing with a slush of epic proportions, so they canceled. Instead of going to lunch with the big ol' family, Jill and I went to lunch with Jeremy and Juliet. We talked about Lost, and I had a far-too-many-points-but-oh-so-good cheeseburger (because it's one of the cheaper things on the menu), and Jill had a tropical breeze drink thing and Juliet had a strawberry margerhita, which is much better than the caramel appletini she had the week before for her birthday, on the way to her surprise party that she did not yet know about. I watched some soccer out of the corner of my eye for part of it, which is sort of because I don't like looking at people when we're talking. There're a lot of reasons for this, I think. One is that I'm such a visual learner that I get very distracted by what people are doing, and I have a hard time paying attention to what they're saying. ANother is that since I'm so visual, there's a lot of emotion and authenticity in faces, and I don't always like engaging with that. I have a hard time being serious sometimes, as I've said before. I do this at plays, too. A lot of times I'll be staring off into dark space while the show's going on. Just listening to the voices.
So, after lunch, I was kind of sleepy, but there wasn't enough time for a nap before I went to the book discussion, seeing as how I had to finish some reading first, and I'm still off caffeine (grr/yay). Something odd happened there: I didn't talk much.
If you've been in a group discussion with me before, you know that I like to talk. A lot. And the chapter we were discussing was on a topic that I love talking about: post-modernism. Chapter 5 of Tim's book is pretty heady, and there were a lot of heady conversations going. But for the most part, I stayed out of it. Maybe it's because I was tired, and maybe it's because postmodernism is something I've talked a lot about already, and maybe it was because some of the other guys are even more in love with their voices than I am (hard as that is to believe) and maybe it's because I really wanted something relevant to my life to talk about, and we weren't getting anywhere.
So I was quiet for at least 20 minutes. Of course, I jumped in after a while, you know how I do. But being quiet for so long was interesting. And kind of dull. I don't know how so many people handle it. Just listening. Weird.
Skip forward a week, and we go out to lunch with the whole family, grandparents and all, and I watch a little bit of a prison show out of the corner of my eye, and Jill and I share nachos, which are a pretty good size to share, but also oh-so-many-points, and we have a laughing sort of good time with everyone.
Back at the book discussion, I'm silent for a long time again. Same reasons, I think. But maybe, also, I'm finally learning to shut up. Which would be nice, but I ain't promisin' nothin'. Maybe it's maturity creeping in. Who knows.
Today's a day off, and so is tomorrow. Jill and I have turned off our cell phones, and although I'm sure I'll check my email at least once to find out when exactly Adam's flight is tomorrow night, Jill and I are getting our Sunday afternoon on for two whole days. I'm still blogging, and I worked on my book this morning. Jill's watching movies still. But we have nothing really planned. Ah, yeah.
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2 comments:
i realize today is vacation...but check the e-mail i sent you.
bion, I in point of fact actually understood why you 'loaned' me Tim's book. If I was merely checking out an clearer explanation, you would have had it back in hours, But Lo, I found it engaging, and well thought out and found myself agreeing with him in many ways, although he seems to jump back and forth from anger to patient elucidation after his introduction for about a third of his treatise . . . but then, most pleasantly he seems to end with a strong coherent summary in the last 1/3 that should be required reading for the American church.
I think his anger mirrors the anger of postmoderns, but his reaching out to modernists is a model for those who can do it. Helpful and touching, really.
so there :)
Have a bodacious vacating experience and don't answer anything until your time is up. There's more than enough time to answer e-mail after you are 50 anyway.
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