Thoughts for today

I get a newsletter from the state association of the denomination I belong to. I usually skim it and recycle it, but two things in the current publication struck me.

First, there was a list of "how to build community." Lots of the things we all already know, like talking to your neighbors and fixing stuff even if you didn't break it (though the cynical side of me sees that as somewhat of a quixotic task; there's an awful lot out there that's broken, and sometimes fixing something leads to someone else deciding to break it again.)

But the last statement struck me:

"Know that no one is silent though many are not heard."

And I get that that's probably an allusion to what would be called the "dispossessed" - the homeless, the poor, people whose ethnicity or religion or gender orientation or whatever leads them to be an extreme minority in their community.

But I also know people who are "not heard" who might be seen as more "mainstream" and not so likely the ones to be championed. But there are lots of people who are not heard at times. I've sat through "organ recitals" (lists of aches, pains, and doctor visits) that some of the older ladies at church go through, telling myself that they probably have no one (widowed, kids are all grown and gone) to tell this to. And I've listened to students who "don't want to worry their parents" about some issue.

And I admit - there are a lot of times I feel "not heard" myself. Meetings where I bring up a point that I consider important and no one wants to even think about it. Or when I am in an evening meeting, I'm the only non-retired one there, and I note that I have an 8 am class the next morning and would really like to wrap it up as the meeting runs on and on and on. Or - and I'm fairly sure I'm not the only woman with this experience - I bring up a point and it's ignored, but a man restates my point and everyone thinks he's had a brilliant idea.

And this makes me think of something I commented on a while back, drawing on this quotation from Incurable Insomniac:

"Not being heard is one of humanity's greatest problems. It always has been. That's why everyone is so crazy. Loud car stereos, loud ring tones, yelling, shouting, bad behavior--even Twitter and Facebook. HEAR ME! I MATTER! I HURT! I'M AFRAID!

I think that's true. I know I start to get a little crazy when I feel like I'm not being heard. And then there's the entire issue of innocent or possibly deliberate mis-hearing and mis-communication. We've had a number of things happen on campus that later got "walked back" (ugh, I hate that phrase) because someone somewhere said the wrong thing or something was said and there was a lot of pushback and then it was later said that that wasn't what was actually said and so...

Anyway.

There was also a nicer story in the newsletter, sort of the flip side of this. The Transitional Regional Pastor (our regional pastor is retiring, so he's taking her place for now) wrote about traveling home from the national meetings. He had one of his guitars with him (I didn't even know you could fly with a guitar any more, I thought they insisted on them being checked!) and he was just tired and frazzled while sitting waiting for the next leg of the flight, so he pulled out the guitar and started to play.  A lady sat down near him and listened for a while, and then asked if he was a professional musician. (He kind of is, but he told her that he didn't earn his living by playing - which is true). She continued to listen and when she got up to go, he offered her a gift of one of his CDs that he happened to be carrying with him.

Later, when he got home, people started talking about how they had seen him written up. It turned out the lady who listened to him was a columnist in Detroit and she had written about how the music provided her a few minutes of respite, how it helped her even though she was tired from traveling. The pastor writing the column referenced the verse from Hebrews about how we may entertain angels unaware.

In doing what he "needed" to do (for his own peace) at that moment, he helped someone else. I guess in a way that's the opposite of the desperate "HEAR ME! I MATTER! I HURT! I'M AFRAID!" demands that I think we all hear every day. (I am trying to figure out how to respond to an e-mail from a student who did poorly on the first exam and sent me a tale of all the woes in her life at the moment. I want to be sympathetic, but I cannot give extra credit because someone is going through difficulty.)

I don't know. I admit I swing between the two poles, of being the pastor in the airport with his guitar, and being able to provide comfort to others (and also myself) by doing something important to me, but there are an awful lot of times that I feel like I'm not being heard. Or perhaps that I don't have people in my life fully willing to listen to me.