From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (6.4MB)
Subscribe: More
One of my favorite tricks when I am frustrated, bored or stuck is to consider where things have begun. For instance, during the awkward social situations into which pretty much all of us are periodically thrown (like standing in clumps of strangers at receptions and coffee hours), one easy path into conversation is to ask about beginnings.
“How do you know the couple?” I might ask a random person in the food line at a wedding reception. In the southern United States, whence my family hails, such a question is sufficient to launch a full-scale conversation: “Well, my Aunt Edna, she knew everyone and loved a good trip out into the country. And so when I was a young child I used to go with her to the haunted house at the pumpkin farm each fall…” and I can settle back with a smile, hearing details about people I will never meet and trusting that, eventually, about the time we are spearing pickles and putting them on our plates, a familiar name of one part of the couple just married will show up.
In introverted Minnesota, my beloved adopted state, the answer will more likely be one sentence. “My Aunt Edna introduced us.” Or: “From childhood.” This means that, in Minnesota, my prodding for beginnings has to be more active. I don’t want to sound like a prosecuting attorney, so I poke gently. “Did you live in the same neighborhood?” or “Where did you grow up?”
What I’ve learned over years of this practice is that the closer to the beginning of something people go, the more animation generally emerges. “Were you friends immediately?” might lead even a reticent Minnesotan to remember and share tales of childhood rivalries over a beloved toy, or a time of being lost in the woods together.
I share this not only as a handy-dandy tip to avoid social awkwardness. (And it will come in handy, believe me.) I share it because, wherever we are, there are stories of beginnings and creation all around us. Aligning ourselves with those stories can bring ease to our inner dis-ease, as well as overcoming chasms between us.
Many introductory workshops for white people about racism, for instance, start by having us verbalize when we first became aware of racism and our racial privilege. Going back to our first encounter, to the younger self’s mind, gives us an entry point into a huge concept. Identifying with that beginning may help us know and say how bewilderingly large racism was and is, even though many white adults have been trained never to acknowledge or even see it.
Or we may be inspired to return to childhood to remember the beginnings of other emotions and thoughts that cause us to suffer now—to revisit, say, that scared kindergartener who was shamed by the teacher, which helps us understand why we are feeling irrational fear about starting graduate school now. It’s not that recognizing the beginning removes today’s fear or ignorance or anything else going on now. It’s that, in recognizing the beginning we may be able to see the pattern in a clear, highly concentrated way. “The pattern’s the pattern’s the pattern,” a friend of mine says when poking around in her own struggles.
There is power in tracing ideas, emotions, relationships, or desires back to their beginnings. In the seed we can see the plant that will ultimately emerge. “Plant a radish, get a radish, not a Brussels sprout,” goes the song from the musical The Fantasticks. Sometimes, going back to that moment when we (or someone else) planted a seed that became a radish plant can help us to discover why we can never harvest those Brussels sprouts we long for. (OK, I feel the limits of this metaphor—most people don’t spend a lot of time longing for Brussels sprouts. But you get my drift.)
When we’re in the woods, the trees and rocks have beginning stories of lava and the ice age and emerging from the ocean. When we are with people we know well, origin stories of love and new choices and activities abound. When we’re with strangers, all around us are stories of birth. When we join an organization, or a congregation, or a club, knowing how it began can often explain current situations that are at first baffling. Learning about how something began can tell us a great deal about its current state of being.
In Minnesota’s January, in the coldest, most frozen, most immobile time of the year, it is hard to know where to look for beginnings of anything that is growing. Is it possible that the seeds which were thrown off of last year’s flowers, even now in their dormancy, are beginning to dream of the beauty they will become in a few months? Likewise, it is hard to figure out where some parts of ourselves begin, particularly inner regions we’re not familiar with, and those we’ve neglected or ignored for long stretches of time. However, we can visualize, remember, imagine their beginning, thus breaking the silence, thawing those places so that we can access them again.
So, next time you’re feeling trapped or stuck—socially, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually—try this experiment. Look for help by tracing how something began, either in conversation or in your own heart and mind. And see if acknowledging that seed, that tiny invisible place of beginning, holds the beginning of your freedom.
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
