Picking Up Napkins and Other Things That Upset the Applecart

Yesterday I was crossing the street and observed a gust of wind snatch up a bajillion Starbucks napkins, confetti-ing (read: littering) them along my path ahead. It was actually pretty for a minute, all those recycled-brown rectangles fluttering around airborne. But, like all wild things, it had to come to an end, and they became grounded.

I was then forced to make a choice: to leave them in my fast-paced wake or to stop and give Mother Earth a little nudge in the right direction.

You shoulda seen me dancing all over the road, alternating between hand plucking and foot-stomping the little buggers. After one multiple-stomp attempt to catch a single one (it mattered to THAT starfish), I earned a driver's reluctant grin (must've been a Charlie Chapman fan).

Do you ever get deep about napkins?

You bet your mother lovin napkins I do!

I immediately went down this thought train:

We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence... 



And then, it's converse, this:

We sometimes unnecesarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward...

What came to mind for that one was when we went to Disney Land this past Fall and did the right thing by arriving an hour ahead of the 4:00pm afternoon parade in order to reserve front-row seats on the street's curb. We thought it through. We planned accordingly. We did the work. As it were, there were two reasons for subsets of our party to leave and come back (#1 potty, #2 ice cream if you must know) prior to the parade's start and around the time the crowd was thickening.

Each time someone asked if the gaps left behind by our temporarily absent tooshes were available for the taking, I hated having to say NOPE.

Finally, I collapsed. A young family who had positioned themselves behind us (and whose kids - even standing up - would not be able to see well over our sitting-down bodies) seemed like the perfect peeps to squeeze into our space. I didn't swap our spots for theirs. Ours were just made smaller; we made room.

Even though our actions rightfully justified our initial place and theirs theirs.

Now, I am under no illusion that we are saints for having shared a parade-side curb at Disneyland with teensy children.

I mean, now that it's in print, it sounds a little more like just behaving like decent humans.

I mention this story - rather - because not everyone in our party was in agreement with this decision (based on body language exclusively) and, at the time, it got me thinking about the same thing the recent napkin moment did:

Much of the time, there is a thinner thread connecting cause and effect than we like to think.

Because, here's what we like to think about our human behavior:

Cause                                           thick solid line                                       Effect

Degree of Effort                          thick solid line                            Degree of Achievement

Degree of Work                           thick solid line                             Degree of Success

Action                                           thick solid line                                  Outcome


It's sorta a human thing, really.

It's why, if we're going down the Bible road (and you know I love me some Christian anecdotes), the dudes and dudettes (ok, it was just dudes... the Disciples as it were) who noticed the blind man drilled Jesus about what this man's parents one generation up had done such that God would make him sightless.

We Homo sapiens like to explain things. We like correlations. We like control. We like to know what to expect. We like certainty. We like concrete. We really, really love thick solid lines.

When I took statistics in college, I was fascinated by it. A layman's introduction to statistics is as follows: correlations between one set of data and another is rated by a "correlation coefficient," a value that ranges from negative one to one. If you're trying to connect two variables to one another (smoking and lung cancer, lets say, or exercise and heart disease), what you DON'T want is a 0. A correlation of zero means your research has led you to nada conclusions, you flunked. What you'd love is to get a -1 or a 1. A perfect negative correlation (as one variable increases, the other decreases or vice versa) or a perfect positive one (both variable increase/decrease in tandem).

But the truth in statistics and in life is that perfect correlations are fairly elusive.

Our role in this life: There is a thread. Oh, yes. There's a thread, a dotted line, a rational-clue-based scavenger hunt that makes all the junk that happens in life somehow connect to how we conduct ourselves. We set shit in motion, we do. Good luck, as they say, does follow hard work around. Human behavior matters.

Otherwise, every motivational poster made by humankind can be shredded. Coaches and teachers can retire. Total chaos would reign. Nothing would mean anything.

The best way to look at ourselves?

I say this: Recognize that most of where our participation in life meets life's actual play-out is, correlation coefficient speaking, about a ± 0.5.

This both ruffles the feathers of my self importance (i.e. pisses me off) and makes me feel completely and totally good (i.e. relieved).

I think we'd all be a lot more healthy if we viewed things with this ± 0.5 mentality. Cuz when I spend time with people operating under the ± 1.0 mentality, accompanying it seems to be a lot of harshness, their views towards people specifically. Actually, their views about their Source too. And, furthermore, most seem to be pretty on top of life at the time of this ± 1.0 mentality. (Goes something like this: I worked hard, I paid the price, I was responsible. This was earned.)

I ask this: Would a ± 1.0 type person pick up napkins that he didn't drop? Would she make room for someone who didn't do anything to receive it?

As a ± 0.5 thinker, I almost look for ways to make the apple cart teeter. It's fun-in-a-naughty way, really. When I find that space that's untouched by statistics...that space when it can go the expected way or not... that space where the element of surprise can affect the ho-hum assumptions about what is deserved or undeserved...

That space can be rather magical.

And here's how you know: People's response to it.

When the magic of grace fills a space that otherwise would be absolute, people show you the magic:

You get grins.

You get tense shoulders dropped.

You get laughter.

You get tight jaws loosened.

You get a glimpse of playfulness.

You get an actual affect, a change in the energy.


I call it good-will naughtiness...


We sometimes unnecessarily take responsibility for that for which we are not responsible.

Sometimes when someone does something wrong, that someone is unnecessarily spared the consequence.

MAGIC

We sometimes unnecessarily share the benefit of having been responsible with those who didn't participate in earning it.

Sometimes when someone does something right, that someone unnecessarily shares the reward.

MAGIC

This magic is called good-will naughtiness... And I'd like for all of us to have a little more of it.

How What Threw Me Has Wound Up Affirming Me

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was a Christian. I mean, it wasn’t my fault I was clueless about his agnosticism: he led my parents’ freakin Sunday School class at our Christian church. He appeared by all measures to be all in. Apparently, my parents at the onset of their marriage had hashed out a deal that my dad would be closeted about his lukewarm feelings towards Jesus’s presumed divinity with us kids and loyal to the church my mother was deeply devoted to. All she really asked was for him to show up. But, the perpetual joiner, he couldn’t help himself but to go and be involved.

Even though I didn’t find out about his agnosticism until my early teen years, I credit my dad for his authenticity with the Christian church itself. I think most of the adults, including the pastor, he was upfront with took great comfort in hearing his refreshingly raw honesty: Dad didn’t know about Jesus’s Christ-ness and he wasn’t afraid to admit it.

But when I learned, I wasn’t comforted. 

I was straight-up confused.

How could he go each week? How could he fake it? How could I have shared a house for a baker’s dozen number of years with someone who didn’t share this BIG thing with rest of us (and not know it).

There are two things, in long conversations I remember having late into the night during those years while in the house and a few back for college breaks after I left it, I remember penetrating my thought process at the time the most. Hell, they’ve penetrated it ever since.

#1) Dad used this word often, when I asked how he could be SO Christian and yet not one: 

TRAPPINGS.

He said that he chose to be part of a faith community because he stood for the same things it stood for: the values, the focus on contributing to common good, the priority to care for our community/world in a collective way. But that he would not assume the title, because he could not subscribe to all the “trappings.” 

Trappings.

It made me think he was worried about getting “caught.” Like Christians were out to get him.

(P.S. Lots of Christian ARE out to get people. Thankfully, we didn’t surround ourselves with those).

But it wasn’t his control or independence he was afraid to lose… it wasn’t that he was reticent to belong to something, get swept away by something… it wasn’t that he was too stubborn (although, it’s only fair to note that he most definitely was). He wasn’t avoiding Christianity to make a statement, to be different.

All of these seemed to me to be likely reasons for my dad to have chosen heathen-ship.

Here’s what it really was: doctrine and theological belief – at least in the Christian culture I was raised in – was as necessary to the decision to be a Christian as eating no meat is to the decision to be a vegetarian. And so… if Dad couldn’t look in the mirror and say that he had accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, then he couldn’t say he was a Christian.

And, to him, all that doctrinal jargon was fluff. Unnecessary. Getting in the way. Man made. 

Trapping.

Like there is this artificial shroud of thick, foggy air wisping around Jesus that we people made ourselves and bore into existence between us and him, and that as a result we have to penetrate through all this dense religiosity to get to who he actually is, and that the thicker and more oppressive and less see-through the fog of religiosity gets, the higher Jesus gets elevated into something he’s not.

Dad was saying that it wasn’t himself he was worried would get trapped.

It’s Jesus.

And we did it to him. 

And then, #2) “Have you ever thought of this, Tricia: How would your life, my life, anyone’s life be different if Jesus hadn’t come along?” 

Trishie may not have gotten much sleep that night.

Or the next.

I felt stumped. And it made me mad that, as a person who took her faith so seriously, I didn’t have some semblance of confidence about how the world as a whole would be different were it not for Jesus.

The best I could come up with was kinda canned and chinsy, “Then we wouldn’t be saved?”

To be fair to myself, it was sorta a stupid question… if we are using Christian speak and operating within the Christian framework then it’s obvious that God would have fulfilled his prophesy somehow, if not by the guy from Nazareth. My answer shoulda been, “If Jesus didn’t exist with the whole virgin birth thing and cross thing and stone-rolled-away thing, then it woulda been Fred (with a cloud elevator entrance, then golden dagger death, then mystical pigeon rebirth) or Gina (by way of a clamshell reveal, then circle of fire exit, then invisible mermaid appearance). 

I mean: WHO CARES. 

And that’s just it. That’s JUST what I think Dad was getting at – whether he meant to or not. (Perhaps a more accurate statement is that it’s what I’M getting at these some-many years later as a result of Dad’s provocation):

It’s not the package that matters.

I choose the package of Jesus, because It’s the best-known manifestation of the God I have come to know.

Would I have known this God without the package of Jesus? I say yes. I find my God everywhere.
But at some point ya gotta hitch your wagon to something concrete. And Jesus, I argue, is the most concrete package that demonstrates, incarnates if you will, the God I know… the God with whom not many were familiar at the time.

Which is to say:
a) He is loving (not judgmental)
b) He is peaceful (not violent)
c) He is forgiving (not vengeful)
d) He is humble (not boastful)
e) He works for the poor (not the powerful)
f) He relies on Bigger Understanding (not human understanding)
g) He is accessible to everyone (not just some)
h) He provides a spirit of calm (not fear)
i) He is personal and experience-able (not distant and unavailable)
j) He says we are fully worthy (not 99% or ¾ or ½ or UN)

And lastly:
k) He makes my life simultaneously harder and better

I don’t hide the fact that I get super reflective at Easter-time and Christmas-time about this Jesus guy. I turn him over and around and upside down in my head. Hope he doesn’t get dizzy. I know the process for me is dizzying. 

I guess I just wanna be pretty darn sure He’s the guy for me.

This Christmas season, I turn to my dad for that answer…

..whose surprising admittance to me that he was not a Christian has turned out to be a powerful clarity-maker:

I choose Jesus for the same reasons Dad wasn’t so sure:

#1) I follow the Jesus who is untrapped by our human bells and whistles.
#2) I follow the Jesus who is a concrete package to make better known the God in my heart.

Turns out, that man I shared a house with the first half of my life and I had a lot more in common than we realized. 

(Except the stubborn part… I completely and wholly refuse to believe that I am ever stubborn...like, ever.)

Cling Loosely

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And yet...

"Which of you, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it?"

Life is a funny little thing, isn't it?

I find myself uncertain sometimes of how hard to cling to it. This, coming from a woman who happily weeps when holding a newborn infant and commits to bleary-eyed sobbing at the news of funerals of strangers.

I went through a phase in my young adulthood years, where I often internally acknowledged, "I could die today. And that'd be ok."

I wasn't depressed, mind you. And not obsessed with death, though it sounds it, in the least. Quite the opposite. More: obsessed with living. Fully recognizing that it [life] is not guaranteed to last and fully accepting that living it to the best of my ability was what made that knowledge ok.

And then, during a recent gathering of women who dedicated some discussion time to what our role ought to be following the Parkland shooting, one participant brought an unexpected thing to light. The conversation had been caught up in a whirlwind of emotion, some of us sad, some of us mad, all of us distraught. And this one friend, who happens to be an ICU doc, said, "I think it is important to remember that people die every day. Hundreds. Thousands. Many not in as sexy a way as a school shooting..." I forget exactly how it went from there. I'm pretty sure we weren't buying it... so zero-focused on the current event and its awfulness, the whole school kids thing and the unnecessary senselessness thing making loss of life feel so much worse.

She wasn't downplaying awfulness; she was leveling the playing field of human life and, inter-connectedly, death.

When the towers came down, I remember shortly afterward finding myself in a church van on a road trip returning from leading a church event with two of my 40ish-year-old youth pastors. At the time, I was newly out of college and serving a church as the youth intern, so lost about how to frame the event for the teenagers in my sphere of influence, must less for myself. We stumbled upon the subject in the darkness of those interstate miles and this is what my youth pastor said: "This is how it goes. The facade that peace is guaranteed is nothing more than that: a facade. No nation is exempt from unexpected horrors and history is evidence of that. Loss of life is loss of life. Is it necessary to fabricate spiritual implications?" My. Youth. Pastor. Said. That. I remember being both heavily disturbed and oddly comforted by what seemed like a dismissal... a "What's the big deal? Move on!" response to one of the most devastating losses of collective lives in our country's history and THE most hard hitting events in my own lil ole life.

And then there was the death of our dear Duncan. After four and half months of many joyful and happy moments but mostly while weak and fragile, our little guy suffered two cardiac arrests in the hospital in a short time and was responded to quickly enough by a roomful of docs and nurses and meds each time to be brought back. In the hours that followed, Duncan was not in good shape, and Scott and I spent most of them prayerfully discerning: we felt that God were asking us to let Duncan decide...that we ought not take additional measures were his heart to stop again.

His heart did stop again. And we let it.

For us, loving him best meant not clinging to his life.

I think sometimes it is hard to approach the paradox of life...

One guaranteed to be individually valuable enough to be pursued, followed, sought after by the Divine, even when there are 99 identical bleating back-ups on deck

yet

One also summed up by the word "dust"... part of something, yes, and only separate from the bigger whole for this short time, insignificant compared to the rest.

We are taught to believe deeply that this life matters. And it does. It matters so much that becoming lost while in it will send a search-and-rescue team. How do we live it like it matters that much while keeping loose our grip upon it, resisting the tempting notion that we must fight to keep it?

I don't guess I really know.

But discussion group gal and youth pastor and Duncan all have taught me about perspective. And I think that's the best place to start... When I discover myself gripping, it's usually when I've zoomed in too small. When I zoom out big, I find myself most at peace and in connection with the Divine and ungrippy. It's then that I tend to remember what Perspective has to teach me : God's got this. Always has. Always will. This life isn't all there is. Mine is a life that is part of something bigger.

I'm both a speck of dust and a damn-important sheep.

And this makes me cling loosely.

A La Carte

I won't bore you with the minutia of details surrounding the cable snafu we had back in the Fall. To sum up, it went something like this: Call to report internet is down, troubleshoot over phone with one rep, problem fixed for a couple days, call to rehash the downed internet story all over again, troubleshoot over phone with a difference rep, then a different one, then a different one. Once case got bumped to the "SEND SOMEBODY" category, we got to be delighted by the charm of one, then two different technician dudes in our home. Then a third. It was like "Sliding Doors" meets "Cable Guy."

Whoops. I just bored you with the details of my cable snafu.

End of story: After regurgitating my cable sob story a solid dozen times and the passing of a solid dozen months (SIKE: two), the original problem got fixed.

I know that you know this story from personal experience, or a variation of it, well. But when I reflect, here's the confounding part: Every Xfinity employee - count them seven - involved in epic Arthur-Cable-Crash-of-2017 did his/her job and did it well. I wanted to be frustrated with Wanda, Brian, Sherry, Malcolm, Jerry, Jason, AND Greg, separately. Believe me, I did.

But it wasn't any of these workers who failed me... they weren't to be blamed for delaying my hard earned TV drama binge habits. In fact, they were quite honestly top notch.

It's the model that failed me. 

So a la carte. So specialized. So small picture. So cog in the wheel. So work-up-to-the-boundary-of-job-description-paramaters-but-no-more. So "Take a number, please." So Left Hand Doesn't Know What Right Hand, nor whole body, Is Doing. So Big Business... 

Have you ever watched Grey's Anatomy? I was obsessed for a solid decade (and will never get those hours back). I remember a scene featuring an exasperated parent whose kiddo had been through the ringer - years and years of medical problem after medical problem unresolved. In they march to the hospital and this time Mom means business. She turns to Meredith Grey after an emotionally charged moment (cue tear-invoking music) and says, "I need you to be more than his doctor. I need you to make him your Number One Problem. Make him your person." 

I'm sure you experience no dismay when I tell you there is a happy ending. Grey stays up all hours, cracks the code, and exits the episode a hero to the child and family.

Hollywood medicine? Yes. Does this scene help me thread my point? Shamelessly, def.

Let's talk about medicine's model and whether it has a tendency to march to the same beat to that of cable companies...

Another true story: Our eight year old Sullivan starts exhibiting tics at school and home. Tics blow up to impairing proportions. Parents take Sullivan to primary care doc. A lovely woman, believe me. Primary care doc listens, exams, asks questions. Primary care doc writes referrals, sending parents and Sullivan to four different specialists, some to rule out scary shit, some to get more questions answered - then recommends a follow-up appointment with her office in a couple weeks. Sullivan and parents head home to begin the specialist-appointment-making assignment (and subsequent insurance company rigamarole - nuther topic for nuther day). Primary care doc types up post-visit report, snaps shut her laptop, takes a swig of Diet Coke, then goes on to her next appointment. Primary care doc spends zero seconds thinking about Sullivan's case from the moment she closes his online chart.

Primary care doc and I get along great. As far as pediatricians go, she's a gem. Been in the business for decades, seen it all, and cuts to the chase. I've gotten to the bottom of many problems with primary care doc's discerning eye.

And, to drive this point home again, she is absolutely doing her job and doing it well. 

I don't feel icky towards our pediatrician. 

And if you're guessing what I do feel icky towards, YES, it would be the model.

I do sometimes fantasize about the old model. You know...the Laura Ingles model... when the town doc comes to visit when you've empaled yourself with a pitchfork or when you are experiencing symptoms of sedentary or when you're swept up with worry over the development of a strange, growing rash. That doc knows your symptoms, yes, but that doc also knows YOU. That doc doesn't have a patient every 25 minutes, nor the mind-numbing chore of oodles of paperwork and, rather,  leaves your house with you on her mind all the way back to the office (on her horse). She might even make a courtesy call that night. And maybe even the next day. And beyond.

You are her problem. You are her person.

This phenomenon crosses over into the way we educate today... teacher time with kids split up into tiny little slivers. One year at a time. And, in upper grades, 55 minutes or less each day per year at a time. I was a teacher. I'd like to think I developed trusting relationships and had a pulse on my students. But, I admit, I lost track of most once they left me. I was not there beyond my one year to catch a trend change, a behavior shift, a broad strokes pattern forming. And the next year's teacher doesn't have the context of the year before and the same problem with the year after... one year sometimes isn't enough. Despite all the conscientious colleague collaboration and communication that I know goes on beyond the scenes (and beyond the job description), teachers are limited by the model.

Laura Ingles and Anne of Green Gables, in their one room school houses, I bet got the full experience. Not a thing could slip through the cracks of their teachers' tight knit oversight and long-range-sight. Serving at max the pupils that could fit in one small room at a time and for multiple years, a teacher of that prairie school makes each student her problem, her person.

If there are any internet technicians, customer service reps, doctors, or teachers who haven't kissed this blog entry goodbye already, I PROMISE what follows has been worth the drudgery. I'm gonna perk up my thus-far Debbie-downer one-sidedness. Oh, yes. Perk. Up. I. will.

GUESS WHAT? My fantasies about the glamor of the-good-ole-days are wrought with all kinds of trouble. (P.S. Ignoring the trouble is what makes them fantasies. A girl is entitled.).

I don't want my kids attending a prairie school, without the resources for a kick-ass International Baccalaureate program or foreign language offerings or a Chess Club, Theater Club, or - heck -My Little Pony Club, and where they don't get exposed to a rainbow of diversified teaching styles and mentorship. I don't want a one-stop-shop, small-town doctor working on something as unusual and neurologically complicated as a tic disorder. Hands off, generalist! And, as long as it took to get shuffled from one Xfinity rep to another, I cannot imagine the additional inconvenience that would stem from bagillions of teensy mom-and-pops cable providers, all operating on their conflicting and limited homegrown grids.

Our population has grown. Our knowledge of the human body and what can go wrong with it has grown. Our opportunities have grown. And our businesses and their impact have grown.

I don't want to go backwards.

I just want to go forward with more intentionality.

Because I'm me, I've brewed up a plethora of ways to "go forward with more intentionality" and absolutely all of them are altruistically motivated and absolutely none of them make sense economically. Business majors would roll their eyes at my scheming.

How can we make stubborn, relentless, loyal, holistic, big picture, follow-through caring profitable?

How can we make stubborn, relentless, loyal, holistic, big picture, follow-through caring in everyone's job description?

Thank my stars, visionaries with far bigger brains than mine in for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations around our globe who look to answer those two questions are popping out of the altruistic woodwork. I do my happy dance. Thanks, Millennials. Your cause-caring is paying off.

I'd say let's let this rub off - in more ways than it already has - on how we do business systematically, too. With medicine. With education. Let's blend a little of the old with the new we've got now. Sounds like a yummy stew of possibility.

Make new friends. Keep the old. There's something to be learned from both.