sarah masen
The Dark Corner
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Interested
"If there's anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people's stories, listening to them and cherishing them." -- Mary Pellauer
"To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell." -- Thomas Merton
There's a certain treacherousness in this business of "Hey, how you doin'?" There's the possibility that they really do want to know (kind of scary in itself) or the all-too-often likely realization that they don't, in the least bit, care at all OR--and this is the absolute worst--that they might have managed, through some twisted, unholy miracle of cognitive dissonance, to make of themselves believers in nothing so much as the solid rockness of their own sincerity and deep-seated affection for you and all of mankind in asking such a question while their genuine desire, expectation, demand was/is for nothing more or less than the perfunctory and meaningless "Fine. How are you?"
Listening to another person speak can be very difficult. And going to the trouble of wondering what it might be like to be this certain someone, particularly when you don't want to, is something that doesn't exactly come naturally. Thinking twice or looking back--looking again--or being generous in your consideration of another is what is meant by the word respect. And there is nothing quite so blessed as being the recipient of such kindness. It might be the most wonderful thing (specifically in the beginning stages of an acquaintance) that one human being can offer another.It is to be a bearer of good news. The merest whiff of the stuff is enough to make most anyone swoon or tear up over the memory of when it last happened to them or the fear that it might never happen again. It can make of the world --for the practitioner AND the beneficiary--an entirely
different place.
In the summer of 1992, I sat in an enormous tent at an arts festival and listened to a very wise man called Henri Nouwen (I guess he was in his sixties) teach and pray and expound upon a number of different things. Toward the end, he expressed some concerns and hopes on the subject of political oppression and issues of social justice in Central America. I'm not sure what I had in mind, but I somehow felt the need--young punk that I was--to let him know that mankind's definitions of justice might not always coincide with the true, pristine, real, capital "J" Justice of God; that we mustn't presume. So I intercepted his exit, introduced myself, and mumbled my way through whatever it was I wanted to say as my enthusiasm quickly outran my verbal coherence.
"And what's your name again?" he asked with a smile and a steadfast refusal to remove his eyes from mine.
"Um. David."
"Hello David." And Nouwen then proceeded to ask me a buttload of questions about where I was from, how I'd found myself there, and all this with a generous commentary (leading to further questions) on all my responses. He'd stopped dead in his tracks and didn't seem at all inclined to be on his way until I'd had enough.
So I ended the conversation. And after he'd taken a few steps in the opposite direction, he turned around to say, "Oh. And what you said about justice--you're right."
I'm told that dignity isn't something you can give somebody. It's only something you can be kind or sensible enough to recognize, because people have it already, in and about themselves, whether we choose to realize it or not. And this, not because they've done something to merit it, but because they're people. It's in them even when they don't know it. And maybe we feel it most solidly in ourselves when someone's decided to act or speak in consideration of it's presence. It's like they're looking at you and they're listening and you're thinking they might really, genuinely be interested and something magic's happening. There's nothing like it.
In the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Philippians, I came across this amazing phrase: "humility of mind." What on earth might this look like? How does someone with a humble head relate to people and size them up and adequately assess their character or responsibly exercise their God-given discernment? It's in this context: "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others." Paul goes on to observe that it was just such a posture that Christ exemplified in being made in human likeness and subjecting Himself to death on a cross. Alongside this passage, I've written a phrase borrowed from John Howard Yoder: "the disposition that ennables unity."
Now is the time to speak of holiness. I don't want to be misunderstood as attributing to a fellow like Nouwen some kind of righteousness all his own. Because I don't believe holiness is something anyone can muster up within themselves. I think it's something that happens. Something in which we find and lose ourselves all at once. It's a consistent acknowledgement of the seriousness and affection and interest with which God regards each of us. It's not something any of us can do anything grand or beautiful enough to deserve. We can only act on it, because of it, and within it. Perhaps this awareness of the reality and persistence of His love can bring us around to admitting that we're not the lovers of God and neighbor we fancied ourselves to be; that we're not really all that interested. It can be a joyful confession, this dropping of tomfoolery, and an easier yoke, certainly, than the vicious circle of self-congratulation and justification we ordinarily subject ourselves to. I don't know that anyone's inclined to perceive themselves or the folks whose faces crop up from day to day as the objects of God's love. But if, amid the indifference of the daily and the distractions endlessly vying for our attention, God actually likes these people, if He's really taken an interest, then maybe we can too.
And yet, I'd think this meandering incomplete if I didn't observe that (not in spite of this holiness but, as disturbing as it might seem, because of it) there's a tremendous amount of money and social advancement to be won in successfully manufacturing the impression or appearance of what we're calling interest. It has an astronomical value on the corporate level insofar as advertising's greatest strength consists in making us feel wanted, desired, and sought. We will gladly pay to have imputed unto us a sense of worth be it as a Saturn car driver, a "Contemporary Christian Music" buyer, an X-Files viewer, a CK1 user, a Grateful Dead listener, a McDonalds Arch Deluxe consumer, a Republican/Democrat Party Member, or a Daytime Television sympathizer . Nothing can be manipulated and played upon so effectively and relentlessly as the human faculty of hope. That we would invest and bend our imaginations toward the expectation of human kindness is not a paltry, weak-willed thing, but rather a noble, deeply-rooted indication of what it is we're made for. We'll go to whomever or whatever bears the loudest scent of the promise of intimacy. Woe unto those who unkindly and unthinkingly press these buttons. On the private and the public level. Woe unto us.
And blessed are...etc.etc. I'll try and bring it all home by mentioning Nouwen again; not to single him out, because such gestures of love and interest happened to me a number of times before and have continued to happen many times sense. I believe the holiness blooms and blossoms when we hear and heed, in our weakness and depression and disinterestedness, Christ's command to love others as He loves us. Through the same miracle that resurrected Him from the dead, we are equipped and invigorated to love well, to be aware of other people, and to no longer persist in our indifference to the fact of their preciousness in His sight. To leave such extremes of living to the clergy or the activists or the Mother Theresa's isn't simply to be no better than "unbelievers." It is to be an unbeliever and to refuse the Tree of Life. Let's not fake it. We are, all of us, loved and created for more. More than anyone's ever imagined.
© 1998 David Dark
