NorthPark Presbyterian Church

I’d really love to report to you that I have some deep new insight on words and communication today, but I don’t. I only have these smashed-up, over-used, trite phrases and thoughts that you’ve all heard before.

Sigh.

Currently I’m praying desperately for insight as to how to make this broad and open-ended topic (therefore, easy to write about, right?) interesting, fresh, new.

And can I tell you something, honestly?

I’m coming up with nothing.

Nothing meaning that, I think I’ve written 7 or 8 different drafts and they are all terrible. Terrible, car-wreck sort of bad. It’s really, really entertaining that I call myself a writer on days like these.

So, as I sit here, (this is draft 9 in case you’re counting), thinking very wistfully and hopefully that this means that my writing can only get better (or at the very least I can get out of this bad writing funk) I’m thinking that the only one of these pieces that will actually work, that will bring some sort clarity to this subject is my personal journey with words, so here goes it.

Words, love them as I may, get me into trouble.

Not trouble, like oops! Little Johnny’s in the cookie jar! Not the sweet, innocent forgivable trouble, but trouble, as in Johnny’s just stuffed all the cookies down into his shirt and has intentionally pushed the porcelain cookie jar over the edge of the counter just to watch it shatter into pieces.

Oh yes. Trouble.

Back in the day, I was a gossip. I probably still am now, though I do hope I’ve redeemed a bit of myself, learned from my hard, fast, and baptized-by-fire lessons. Though, some days I’m not so sure; some days it just feels sort of tamed, and a lot like being, I imagine, what a recovering addict feels like-you need a whole lot of grace and support and God and constant reminders to get through the day without slipping up.

In high school, I was a good friend, but I told secrets. In college, more or less the same, though I have to say my good friend skills were a little lacking, and told more secrets. Early on in my career, a little less of a good friend, and again, more secrets, and then I added in the enticing extras — a lot of talk, gossip, and judgment about how others carried on, more concentrating on the how they carried on than concentrating on the how I carried on.

And several times, I would even venture to say a little more than a handful of times, I got caught. Caught saying bad things about my friends. Caught saying negative things. And in one incident, I was apparently so negative that I had to sit in my manager’s office and listen to a lecture about why my behavior was not appropriate, her angry tone and many angry words thrown at me like daggers.

I’d love to say that I didn’t deserve that, that it was too harsh, but truth is, I needed to hear it about my words and actions. Whether of course, I wanted to hear it or not. I will be authentic in letting you know I did not like hearing it at all, especially at that moment.

But that experience, the one where I felt such a deep sense of shame and embarrassment was actually the turning point, a pivotal moment for me.

I had to do something about this, I finally realized. I had to stop hurting other people’s feelings. Just because I was in a bad mood that day, didn’t mean I had the luxury of taking others down with me. I had to somehow find or summon some strength to put on a positive game face, and I will have you know that this is not easy for me. I’m nothing if not truthful, and if you must know, my natural personality airs on more of the grumpy side than the wake-up-with-sunshine side.

But what I had I finally realized was that I affected other people with my words, hurt them even, people I loved, and I realized I was going to need to change, because degrading others is not what I wanted to do, to be known for.

Change was hard. Change still is hard. And took forever. And it meant I had to make different, uncomfortable choices like, as much as it would have been so delicious to have the last say, the last cutting and snappy remark about a celebrity’s outfit or someone else’s choices in life, I was going to have to leave it alone, walk away. Be brave and look stupid and judgmental for walking away, because I just couldn’t handle the temptation to cut someone else down to the size I thought they needed to be in order to make myself feel less insecure.

That was and still is the hardest thing to do today — walk away. Especially when it is so easy to fall into the vortex, the endless pit of comparison, and it tastes so good for that moment to demean someone else, to tell him or her what’s wrong with their lives, what’s wrong with their personhood, essentially.

Because gossip and all that entails is reducing another person in order to make yourself feel better, to somehow feel more secure about yourself, your life and your choices. And it’s a nasty, vicious cycle to get into, because the more you do it, the more you need it, and the more you need it, the worse you feel until you walk away from it for a while, and then you return again, and it’s like getting on a fast-moving ferris wheel after not sleeping enough and eating too much fried food. It just does not feel good.

And sometimes — I’ll admit it, I fall into the trap. I’ll glance at the magazines, I’ll watch (and judge) the reality show of the moment, and don’t even get me started on Wife Swap. If it’s on I just need to turn it off and find something much more entertaining to do or take up knitting, or rocket building, or some sort of engrossing hobby immediately as that show is a trap for me.

But here’s the growth: talking about people now, the subject I so loved to chat about in the past, well, now I feel incredibly bad the next hour, the next day, sometimes even the next several days. It feels as if I’ve smashed that cookie jar all over again, and smiled as it shattered. I feel remorse and guilt. And that’s a good thing, I’m convinced. It means I have convictions and perhaps a little of God’s tugging on my sleeve, telling me that I can rise above the constant chatter that makes people feel belittled and worthless. It means I can finally move toward the person I want to be: the person who chooses to think of them as good, to think of them as God’s children. Because they are. Because we all are.

What I’d apparently unlearned about friendship and words in all those years since elementary school was this: that people are people. They are human, are real, are delicate, have flaws, and very real wounds. And by talking about them in negative ways, I was just reducing their humanity and I wasn’t helping to build them up.

And when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of it, how would I want someone to treat me? With grace and dignity? Or with scowls and whispers and hidden shared secrets every time I walked up to a group of people?

We should chose words wisely, we know this. We need to use words to build each other up, not tear down. Again, this is not a new concept here.

Insightful? World-changing idea? No.

But powerful, and the right thing to do? Absolutely.

A couple of weeks ago, some of our Nigerian friends at church hosted a lunch for the entire congregation.

It was lovely, in all definitions of the word. Just wonderful. The food was great, the company warm and inviting, and all around it was just a good time.

As clichéd as it may sound, there is something to be said about breaking bread together, wherever you are, whomever you are with. It just doesn’t get old, this hanging out with people, eating good food.

And this is simply what we did.

Of course, we want to praise ourselves-

Look at us! We are uniting black and white!
Look at us! We are trying for world peace!
Look at us! We are capable of the Noble Peace Prize!

I would love to say all of those things, because, perhaps maybe one day this will be finally true, and we all as a society can get over this whole skin color debate once and for all.

But last week?
Nah, we just sat down to lunch together as friends. That’s all.

Whoever said, or made up, (or enforced the “rule”) that you have to sit and like and live and behave like those that are the same color as you, is crazy.

Sure, there is comfort and knowingness in those boundaries, in what you know, in familiarity. Sure, there is some societal norms and acceptance around that.

However, to say that those colored like you are the people you ultimately connect with, that they are all your friends, well, that’s like wearing just one outfit for the rest of your life. Sometimes, it just doesn’t fit, and on top of that, it doesn’t make sense to do that; your mood changes, your ideas change as you grow and evolve, and so do your choice in friends.

Now, I’m not going to pretend to be the white person I’m not and say I have tons of friends of all different creeds and colors. I don’t, unfortunately, and that tells you more about me and my comfort level than anything else.

In fact, if you want to classify and categorize me into a group, I am One of Those: just another white person still figuring out how to dance to a beat.

However, I will tell you this: those friends of ours, they cook a mean, yummy lunch.

And those friends of ours are just that: friends.

And in the meantime, I’m going to have fun with them and talk about the headdresses that they wear, those big, bold, beautiful pieces that I am too ashamed to wear, and we’ll work on peace negations later.

In the meantime, we’re just going to continue to have lunch.

In years after 9/11, I tend to reflect a little more each year. Maybe it’s part of getting older, maybe it’s part of being a parent, I don’t know. Whatever the reason is, that’s the truth in what I do a lot of around this time in September: reflecting. And trying to learn from the past.

And each year I tend to make the remembrances in September a little more formal, a little more of a ritual of remembrance. September in general, is a month of bitter sweetness for me; it’s the month after my mom found out she had cancer in 1994, it’s the month my grandmother died that same year, the grandmother who seemed to be the only one in my family with a personality like mine, and it’s also the month of Labor Day and 9/11. So in the beginning of the month, I tend to draw in closer to myself, my soul, and into the emotions of remembering.

So, each year, pretty much with consistency, I wonder and ponder about 9/11 too, as I imagine most do.

And particularly this year, I wondered:

Have we learned anything? Have I learned anything from this?

This was a huge tragedy, and I’m not trying to undermine or sell the emotions short. 11 years later, I still cannot find the right words to explain the hurt, the terror, the fear and the unspeakable bravery I still feel about the events of that day.

But I still wonder the same thing:

Have we as a people learned anything? Have I learned anything from this?

And there is lots that I remember from this day, a lot of panic and trying to figure out how God/did God let this happen, a lot of trying to just process the fact that this wasn’t the very worst nightmare ever, that this wasn’t a dream. That this was real life, and the most nightmarish day ever.

But I also distinctly remember thinking this:

This is our wake-up call. We have to slow down.

And 11 years ago, compared with the light speed that we move at today, 11 years ago in September, by comparison, we weren’t moving fast. At all. Our cell phones just had the beginnings of texting options. We had no iPhones yet. We were still years away from understanding Facebook or Twitter or even what “social media presence” meant.

Yet we were moving fast enough, chasing the American (or what we called it) Dream of money and happiness with enough gusto and force that I think we lost sight of what was really most important: Family. Friends. People. Community.

And on my drive home today, I was trying to pinpoint it, that moment, that turning point in time when life went from just barely manageable to light speed; to when did it get so crazy? When, exactly did we start with this speed of (sort of) living life?

When did life (pre and post 9/11) become so serious and so insane that we lost sight of what was most important, when it was staring us straight in the face daily?

In my teeny-tiny house, you don’t lose sight of the fridge; it’s big, it’s bold, it takes up half of my post-stamp sized kitchen, and it’s an important thing in our daily family life. Yet, somehow leading up to that day, and 11 years after, we have lost sight, I have lost sight, we continue to lose sight of what’s most important, the literal fridge in the kitchen: Family. Friends. People. Community.

In every story that I’ve studied from 9/11 about the details of that day, particularly those stories from New York or Washington DC, there is consistently some mention of people, of family—something along the lines of “I just wanted to hold my kids” or “I just wanted to tell my wife I loved her” or “I just wanted to hug my dad.” I’ve read a lot of remembrances in these years since 2001, and the one thing that is the same thread through so many stories is this: Family. Friends. People. Community. This cannot be a coincidence that they all cite the same things.

No one comments about the windfall of paper, of all that paperwork that fell like a heavy rain when the towers fell. Not one person lamented about the state of their desk, a lost file cabinet. And the people who were at work that day the subject again revolves around people and loved ones. What co-workers they lost, or found, or saved or comforted. What co-workers or people or firefighters or community cried with them and for them.

Please hear me in saying that work, productivity and making a living is important. For most of us, it’s what pays the bills, makes us feel productive and successful in life and is and can be enjoyable.

However, I think we’ve totally skewed it’s importance in that it’s totally intoxicated us into believing that the things we value, that we really cherish deep in our hearts, is second place.

We’ve tricked and duped ourselves into believing that people, friends, family and community are second place. That they will always be there; that we can pick back up after a crazy hectic week, or working 60+ hours a week, that they will be there, always, whenever we’re ready to dive into the mess again of living and being in community with people.

And yet still I think:

When did it become so crazy, this world?

When really, the question is—when did we allow it to become so crazy?

About a year ago, I started to put some boundaries on my family life and personal time. It happened sort of inconspicuously, to counteract the interruptions at dinner, as most of the time when we sat down to dinner, we would inevitably get phone calls, texts, you name it, all through dinner.

And with what limited time we had as a family, I devised a plan: I told all of my extended family and friends that 6:30-8:30 was family time; we wouldn’t pick up the phone or text or call or email during that time. And we wouldn’t answer calls, texts or emails during that time either, unless it was an emergency scenario. It was a signature on my email that read:

Family time is from 6:30-8:30 every night.
We don’t answer calls or texts or emails at this time.
Leave a message and we will get back to you after family time.

I wish I were brave enough (and consistent enough) to tell you that this is still my signature on my email. But, like everyone else, my time and my boundaries have been eroded by the constant demands of work, of commitments, of other things important, but not as important and as life giving and life changing as family, friends and community. So I too have fallen into the category of allowing my world to become crazy; to let the outside world dictate what is important in my life, which is, again--Family. Friends. People. Community.

Hopefully you can do something like this too, and together, maybe we both can learn something big from 9/11 in doing something small that tips the scales of unbalanced lives back into the balanced position. Maybe it’s waking up 15 minutes early to read to your child before the day gets hairy, messy, explodes all over the place. Maybe it’s volunteering. Maybe it’s getting to know those neighbors that moved in 6 months ago. Maybe it’s being patient with your spouse on a consistent basis.

And maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from this tragedy and live, really live the lives that we have left. After such tragedies as 9/11 what are we left with? More time? More chances? Maybe, if we’re lucky.

But what we are left with, after we subtract God and ourselves, is each other. Would be wise if we made each other a priority.