The Beauty of Nurture
By Charles Rush
February 12, 2012
I Kings 19: 11-13 and Mk. 2: 1-5
[ Audio
(mp3, 7.1Mb) ]
en I was in college and graduate school, I worked nearly every Valentine's Day as a waiter. Next to Mother's Day, it is right up there. We had a pool among the waiters on certain couples that came in for dinner. They weren't usually hard to spot. These were the guys that were trying just a little too hard, the demand for special seating, a look at the premium wine list, flowers delivered during dinner.
The bet was a
simple: buying or not buying. As in “Is she buying this schtick?”
“She ain't buying it yet.”
“How do you know”
“Eyes are
wandering far afield”
On Valentine's
Day, even waiters were very good at spotting relationships that were in trouble
and guys that were hoping for a ‘Hail Mary' pass of sorts with a ‘spare no
expense' approach to romance. It only worked in relationships that were very
young or superficial and I doubt it worked very long in those either. These
guys were clueless but their material provided an amusing diversion for the
bored wait staff.
Perhaps you saw
the cartoon this week in the New Yorker. A couple is sitting in Starbucks. And
the man says to his date, “Conversation? I thought we were just meeting for
coffee.”
Some people may
be experts in structured finance or Magnetic Imaging but when it comes to
relationships, they are hoping for a good day at the lotto to pull out a save
at the very end. That save comes through about as often as a lotto ticket.
Today, our
experts on great marriages and great romances are showing what the writers of
the bible already intuited from anecdotal evidence handed down through the
generations. The qualities that make for fulfilling romantic relationships are
not all that different from the qualities that make for great friendships, the
qualities that make for emotionally attuned people. The really good news is
that we can all get better at those things.
But there is no
short cut to becoming emotionally attuned any more than there is a short cut to
getting into physical shape. As Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say about body
building, “You have to put in de time.” But what a wonderful
result when you do.
I think of the
story that is told during the political season of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a
really rich guy that ran for President who was noted for his ability to connect
with ordinary men and women in America. The story is told of his funeral,
attended by tens of thousands of people. Apparently a reporter covering the
funeral stopped on the men attending and asked him, “Did you know the President?”
The man said, “No… but he knew me.”
Pundits on TV
are always talking about that magic charisma that certain leaders have where
they can make people feel a connection, like they wish they could bottle it and
sell it. Of course you can't bottle emotional attunement any more than you can
bottle the physical prowess of Blake Griffin's slam dunks.
I imagine that
years from now, after the studies have been done, we'll all come to see that
emotional resonance and spiritual charisma are attributes that require not only capacity but a lot of
intentional development like unto athletic practice and training or artistic
practice and development. But emotional and spiritual attunement is an end in
itself.
The most moving
eulogies come from people who feel that they were understood by the deceased,
they were valued, they felt guided, cared for. When humans talk like this,
whether they use the words or not, they describe being loved.
Probably the
point of our lives is right here. I wonder if we don't have a finite amount of
love within us. And our goal is to channel it to others. When we run out, then
it is time for us to move on. And the object of life is to die with as little
left in the tank as possible. Rare is the man or woman who runs out before
their time. Most of us die with too much that we've been carrying around our
whole life waiting to use. Don't be that guy.
I love this
story that is remembered in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus was fairly renowned as a
healer. Even the Roman historians make mention of this fact. Lots of people
came to see him. Some of them seeking healing.
And you have
these anonymous people that come bringing their friend and the crowd is too
big, so they can't get in through the front door, so they go up on top of this
rustic dwelling and lower their friend in where they can get Jesus attention,
hoping to get their friend the healing that he needs. That is what love looks
like in action, we care enough for those close to us that we know what they
need and we do whatever it takes to get them the healing they need.
When you think
about it, how little of that has changed. Every week, we pray for families that
have a serious illness that has interrupted their lives. They have to stop,
change their whole life schedule around,
re-assigning a whole bunch of extra duties particularly on the parental front,
seeing specialists, learning all about what he needs to know about the disease,
listening to their sick loved ones on a deeper level to pay attention to their
needs. We don't always know what to do,
but we can all cover each other in love and what a beautiful thing to watch.
Truth be told, it will probably be the most important project we actually get
to direct.
Right now there
is a trove of empirical research that has been done on marriages and an astonishing
amount of it confirms the collected wisdom handed down to us from scripture.
The quality of our marriages are directly related to
the quality of people we are becoming.
I was a little
befuddled as a young minister that the Bible believes so deeply in marriage and
says so little about it specifically. It took me a few years to realize that
the qualities St. Paul describes for the church in general are the same
qualities that make good marriages, that make good friendships,
that make solid community. Love, patience, forgiveness, compassion,
understanding, a spirit of peace in the midst of anxiety, a disposition towards
reconciliation, gratitude, genuine hope, integrity.
Our
psychologists of course add other dimensions, how important it is for us to
understand our personal emotional make up, how important it is for us to
identify the way we were shaped by our families so that we can understand our
growth areas, our dysfunctions too.
But when they turn to the ‘How To” portion of the program.
How do we need to grow? Very little of it is really specific to marriage as
such. It is more of the nuts and bolts of how we become healthy, attuned
people. We may lead with our romantic pose in the early chase, but very quickly
romance cannot survive if we don't grow emotionally.
Half of the
‘How To' portion for marriage therapy is how to argue constructively rather
than destructively. The other half, which keeps you from arguing so much in the
first place, I would broadly describe as ‘How to pay attention.'
Our job as
friends, as spouses, is primarily to understand others. The more intimate we
are, the deeper our understanding must become. We are interested. We don't mind
attending to this person, anticipating what it is that they need. We become mindful
of others, intentional in what we are doing (as opposed to being on auto-pilot
just cruising through the day just focused pretty much on our thing and our ‘to
do' list).
Really good
friends care about you. They are interested in your life. They ask good
questions that get you to thinking and reflecting on your week, your life. One
article I read described people that were very good at asking others questions
and noticed how when you keep doing this, eventually you become gifted at
getting your friends to share their dreams, their hopes for the future, their
vision. What a powerful thing that is to be the person that others feel safe
enough to share their hopes and vision with because that is so close to our
essential identity. But that is why you love people that inspire you with
confidence to project your hopes onto the future and think about where you are
headed.
And people, who
become really good at this, figure out ways to develop commonalities, so that
your vision of the future is something they can support as well. And people who
become really good at developing commonalities begin to develop shared meaning
with you as you go. Sharing meaning is what makes good friendships great. It
makes good marriages great. It makes good churches great. There is an intimacy
even in difference.[i]
Of course,
paying attention is broader than words. Humans turn towards each other in so
many ways and our emotional attunement is communicated with touch as often as
words. When I get together with my friends from High School, we greet each
other with the same ‘high five' we used our Junior
year when we were making a run at the State championship. Who can forget
hugging your kid when they return from their first summer camp? Or how about
your spouse reaching over in the middle of the night and hugging you from
behind after a really crappy day that ended a crappy week in a cruddy year? Or,
putting your hand on your best friends shoulder the
day that he gets married? These are all moments when we are ‘connecting'
emotionally, sometimes in a powerful way.
There is no
short cut to developing emotional expressiveness, for listening, sharing,
connecting, for letting other people into our lives who influence us and shape
us. The better people we become through our emotional growth, the deeper and
profounder love we embody in our lives.
If you are
lucky, you might stumble onto the deeper meaning of love like one my fraternity
brothers.
He went to Med school in Europe, met a wonderful woman and married her,
settled back in the United States and raised five children together.
When we were
younger, he had the big personality, the life of the party, very popular
person. Not surprisingly, he developed a great practice, a big social life, and
had his kids involved in most every activity, many of which he coached. She
loved this part about him and let him lead most of the time.
But at certain
points, he did not deliver what she needed. He was the American, brimming with
optimism, with plans. She was more cautious, more anxious, enumerating the
things that could go wrong. Despite the fact that she was the Psychiatrist and
had read more of the books on integrated emotional well being, she was actually
driven more by her caution. She loved his optimism which completed her in some
ways, but it could also be a point of friction when he reverted to it too
quickly rather than pay the deeper attention to her.
A few years
ago, her mother died and then her father died, both back in Europe. When her
mother died, he sent her back to care for her mother briefly and attend the
funeral, while he kept the ship running back home. It didn't go well and his
wife voiced frustration and disappointment. He may have kept everything running
on the home ship but overall, it wasn't what she needed and he knew it.
Her father
dies. Her father was a man with a national reputation, apparently a tremendous
husband and father as well. They had two or three kids in college at the time
with the whopping tuition bills that Stanford and Georgetown can hand up to
humble even the successful. He made the difficult decision for both of them to
go to Europe to be with her family for a couple weeks, so they could attend
several tributes that would develop, basically to be present for her, for
whatever she needed. When you are self-employed this was an expensive decision
but it was the right one for her. Things went much better in a difficult and
reflective time of life.
Not long ago,
one of their grown children developed a medical condition that was very
serious. People have died from this condition. My friend did his usual take
charge piece, finding the best place in the world for this condition to be
treated, lining up the team, doing the research on the subject, and
communicating with all of their friends his optimism about the statistics and
how it would all turn out okay.
His wife needed
something different which was apparent. She needed more control over things she
could control and less involvement from their friends. Some of it was
irrational in his opinion but he knew what she needed to be soothed. [Perhaps
the key point]
Among other
things, they had been in a twenty year argument about cigarettes which he
continued to sneak every once in a while. It just bugged her that he wouldn't
quit, not even for her. At this point, this argument had degraded so that he
couldn't promise to quit. She wouldn't believe him. So he did something sneaky
or clever. He had the priest at their Catholic church
mention to her in casual conversation that he had made a vow to quit/quit for real
during Lent and that he had started his Lenten before Christmas. It worked. She
knew he would lie to her but he wouldn't lie to the Priest. [Don't get any
great ideas out there].
Without saying
anything, he started going to the gym at lunch, one of those gyms in Atlanta
where you can easily be seen in the front window, which just happened to be
near her office so that her staff could report his behavior back to her.
Their daughter
comes home for this procedure. She is married now, so she brings her husband.
Normally, this would be the occasion for a big party but my friend thinks about
what his wife needs and he orders three video's from Netflix from Old Europe in
the Old European tongue which they all speak at home with some regularity. He
orders some take out, fixes pop corn and all four of them sit on the couch and
watch old movies. I'm sure he was like a bull on a chain but he did it and
actually delighted watching his wife dote on her daughter.
He does a
couple other things like this and one day recently, the nurses in his office
buzz him during afternoon rounds that a patient is in his office. He opens the
door and his wife is sitting there. He takes a seat, wondering what this is
about. She sits there for a while in silence. She has been reflective of late. Finally
she says, “You really love me don't you?”
He sits there
for a while, mulling this over, and finally says, “I'm trying”… She
leans over and puts her head on his shoulder like she might cry. He strokes her
hair. He's thinking to himself, “She is so smart, accomplished, so powerful and … I'm holding a little girl right now”.
And that is how
the door opens to a deeper love, when you know each other well enough to know
not only their hopes and dreams but also their fears and anxieties. When you intuitively
respond to those sensitively in comfort and compassion, when you can be the
strength for others to draw upon and find refuge. You may not cure them but you
make them better. In those moments, it becomes such a privilege to be connected
like that, you are just grateful to be alive and able to play that role.
“People who
need people… are the luckiest people in the world” so goes the Broadway tune. I
wish you that kind of luck. May you find someone to care about, someone to
listen to, someone whose hopes and dreams you can share, someone you genuinely
want to support through their difficulties and losses.
May your life be suffused with love and healing whatever besets you. “De mi corazón a suyo.”
From my heart to
yours. Amen
