Interconnections

I ran across this quote last night, from Frederick Buechner, an american writer and theologian:

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt (from The Hungering Dark, 1968).

I've been asked to do the "centering" for a meeting this morning, which typically takes the form of a story or anecdote to remind us what we are doing and why we are doing it, helping us be present and grounded as we begin our work together. We each take a turn, and this week it's mine. So this quote is what I'll bring into this meeting today, with the hope of reminding each of us in this group of the many "touches" that we overlook or ignore because we are too busy with our own to-do lists or with the noises in our own heads, forgetting to look at either the "good or ill" that travels out from us unless/until it makes a return trip and directly impacts us again.

I've been thinking about this phenomonon as I have followed the blog of Patrick and Kim Bentrott, as they have reflected on their experiences in pre- and post-earthquake Haiti. Patrick is a graduate of ours, and I remember him exploring in a class of mine (2 years ago) whether or how Sallie McFague's theology might help motivate congregations around life-and-death issues such as environmental destruction and economic injustice that were found in Haiti even then. Now, he is my teacher, particularly around the cultural/religious superiority of certain "relief" attempts and the media's linguistic stereotyping (e.g., "looting" rather than "foraging") in Haiti today. I wouldn't claim that we taught him even a fraction of what he has been teaching the world based on his experiences now, but, at the very least, it's my hope that our setting provided a place for him to develop his voice for the kind of creative, critical, engaging theological reflection that I see in their blog today. It makes me appreciative of the luxury of space, time, and resources for the conversations that we have here, knowing that we can never anticipate the impact those spaces might have on the subsequent journeys we or our students travel.

Buechner's quote is more than just this, though, and I'm not bringing it into this meeting solely as a way to feel good about our educational community (even though, reading the roster of students from that TIC-2 class, I was reminded of the impact our students have made and continue to make in the world -- you all are amazing!). Partly, my interest is in the impact we have "for good or ill" -- not forgeting that what spirals out from us can as easily be harm as it can be good. I was reminded of this yesterday by one of our students, that sometimes how we enter the building or whether or not we call people by name can be as significant as policy decisions or larger institutional commuication patterns (even though these, too, are important) [btw, thanks for that conversation, if you're reading this!].

Beyond this, though, Buechner's phrase "who knows where the trembling stops" is evocative to me, particularly as we think about our institution, not as a place of simple transactional relationships, but as one element in an interwoven tapestry of people and communities. A word spoken out of anxiety in one meeting or one e-mail affects not just those who hear that immediate message but cascades out from there into places and relationships and communities in ways that are unmeasurable. The same is true for messages of anger (we've all seen, and felt, how anger ripples out and has a residual impact on so many others), and I would propose that indifference, arrogance, and self-centeredness have similar "trembling" implications. The challenge, I think, is to explore whether or how other ways of being might similarly move forward. Partly here I think about solid senses of hope and optimism, but I'm more interested in the less certain elements of time and place and and instability and possibility, and even of emptiness, back to my theme of questions rather than answers. How do we carry forward things like risk, uncertainty, and possibility, touching lives, one after the other, in ways that embody openness and authenticity? I'm imagining here what it would be like to be in a meeting or conversation where, rather than seeming to only be about two people who are battling or positioning against each other, we instead were able to place ourselves together in what we do not know and cannot see, letting an authentic mix of possibility and uncertainty move us forward and move forward from us. What difference could that make?

So that's what I'm wondering this morning. I'll let you know whether my listeners in this meeting have any ideas, and look forward to your thoughts as well.