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Timbrel Archives:
Feature articles for
daily life
Sample articles:
Breaking the silence
Considering the road not traveled
The elusive goal of balance
Blessed are the messy
Blessed are those who fail
Seeing through the illusions of reality TV
Can wanting others’ approval be a problem?
Art by Ingrid Hess. Please do not use without permission.
* * * * * * * *
Breaking the silence
By Ann Graham Price
Timbrel, March-April
2006
Her eyes were always like that, they tell me—always searching for things outside the frame that defined her life. Our eyes were alike, hers and mine, although by the time I became aware we had this in common, her silence had long been deepened by the years.
And my silence, too, was beginning.
“Why are we here?” she would ask as a little girl as she helped hang the wet clothes on the clothesline.
“Oh, Gladys,” they would snap in exasperation. “Why do you need to know such things? Stop asking so many questions.”
In silence she buried herself beneath her hourglass waistline, her spotless house, that famous meatloaf. Her children grew up asking no questions. Her hair turned white and flaxen and beautiful. All was well.
Arthritis crippled her lovely hands, and she held in them her youngest grandchild—a girl with eyes like her own: dark, inquisitive, searching.
She taught me about soft, pretty things: my mother’s antique bisque dolls; the lavender sachet she would dab on my wrists—but not too much. “Too much and you aren’t a lady,” she said.
She talked of her years in the Philippines teaching women to cross-stitch. More soft arts.
It’s not that I questioned the value of those things. But I ached to see beyond all that, into the silence that kept the generations from really knowing one another. There always seemed to be something more to know that never got said. It lay just outside every family photograph, immediately behind every gesture, at the edge of every conversation.
Who were we? Why did we try to hide so much from ourselves?
Relatives who were with her during her final years tell me she awoke suddenly from a deep sleep one afternoon, quaking in alarm, and could not be reassured.
“Where is Ann?” she asked in terror.
“She is at home, where she should be,” they answered, observing among themselves how she always fussed over trivial details.
“Where is Ann?” she said again, her alarm increasing.
“She is at home, with her parents,” they sighed, and their exchanged glances said it all: There she goes again with her crazy fixations.
But I was not at home with anyone—not then, and not for a very long time afterward. At the precise moment my grandmother awoke with a start, I stood hundreds of miles away at the bottom of a hill that went up and up forever, choking with fear, while the boy from school with shiny black hair came closer and ever closer behind me.
I was 13 the day I discovered there was no safety in knowing which fork to use or in being able to outspell the school superintendent. There was no proper attire to cover this kind of nakedness, no polite excuse to take off the chill. There was only this boy with his relentless pursuit that had gone on for weeks, and my terror.
“Boys will be boys,” they had said at school when I asked for help.
“If you really wanted him to stop, he would,” they had said at home when I pleaded for help.
And there at the bottom of that hill, with no way out, no way to escape, terror turned to rage, rage to despair, which in turn, having nothing else to turn into, turned inward.
Thus was the silence of the generations made complete.
The following summer we took our annual trek to visit the grandparents. I sulked wordlessly in an armchair, enduring the disapproving glances and clucking tongues from my relatives. I knew without having to be told they all preferred me sullen and mute rather than truthful. I had grown adept at hearing unspoken messages. The one for me that summer came through loud and clear: Don’t let your grandmother see what a disgrace you’ve become. It would kill her.
It was the last time I saw her alive.
Many years later I stood like stone at her grave, remembering the face I had once loved so well, unable to feel anything at all. Years, distance and
old wounds stood between us, impenetrable as granite.
I had come to hold her partly responsible for the lie I could no longer believe: of fine old music boxes and dainty lace fans, of white-gloved hands folded neatly in one’s lap, and Beethoven sonatas. As if she conspired to create those things to hide an ugliness she knew lay underneath.
Half a lifetime has now passed since those painful years. I never quite learned to be silent. I found my way into a group of other women who had experienced similar violations. In that setting, I finally was able to speak and to find healing.
I see now how difficult it must have been for my grandmother to speak when no one seemed willing to listen. I suspect she would not have rejected me if she’d known the truth.
My own daughters, 14 and 8, know they can always speak to me. It’s been
a profoundly healing journey for me to champion them in being who they are.
I am amazed at how well they know me. We share a friendship and intimacy
that I never dared to hope was possible. But I have never spoken of the boy with the shiny black hair. I’ve only hinted at the silence between generations that was my family’s painful legacy. There is a crucial difference between the kind of silence that keeps people from knowing one another, and the kind that protects young people from hearing truths too hard for them.
Will I tell them someday, when they are grown? I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see what questions they ask. For now, since my grandmother’s life began and ended with questions never answered, it seems fitting I pick up where she left off.
I don’t pretend to have the answers she sought. But I do have a few questions of my own. How many other voices have fallen silent? What do we lose by not hearing them? What would it take to encourage them to speak?
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
Considering the road not traveled
By Gayle Sheller
Timbrel, January-February
2005
With or without New Year’s resolutions, winter is a time of reflection.
Reflection invariably leads me to think of all the work not done,
the friends I miss, the personal growth hardly begun. If I managed
to sit somewhere during the holiday season, there may well be a list
of resolutions, some of them changes, some of them reminders of commitments
already made.
Such a list seems to be tinged by regret, the “I’ll-do-it-better-differently-for-certain-syndrome.”
But sometimes, if I sit still long enough, if I don’t react to all
the voices in my head, if I wait on God’s goodness, the list evolves
into one of deep gratitude. To arrive at that gratitude rather than
reactive regret takes deep stillness and inner quiet and paying attention
to the moment.
My faith teaches me that all of my life is a marvelous gift. Given all
the choices possible, and few of us live with limited choices, I
recognize that the very richness of options can set in motion a whirl
of “what if” questioning. If I enter that whirl, I can get caught in
a replay of the past or in some sort of anxiety about the future. Since
the past cannot be relived and the future is unknown, I am spending my
life in futility and apart from the bountiful grace of God. I have lost
connection to the very Source of my life.
We each make our choices with the best information and heart we have at
the time. Sometimes we follow our hearts when our heads have other
ideas. Sometimes our heads bring unruly feelings into line with what
matters most to us. Sometimes we find that miraculous balance of head
and heart and we choose with confidence—only to discover God leading
us down another path altogether.
My life is a typical case in point: I was absolutely certain when I was
a senior in high school that: one, I would not marry before I was
30-something; two, I would be an English professor living in France;
and three, I would have two children, maybe. I was on the track my
parents, my teachers, even my friends and I could imagine for me.
Then, on the night of my high school graduation, I met the seminary summer
intern who had come to our church where my father was senior pastor.
A year and a half later, we got married. I didn’t go to France, although
I did finish a degree in English literature and one week later gave
birth to our first son. Nineteen months later, we had a second son;
six years later, a third son; and five years after that a fourth son,
this one a foster son from Nigeria. After the birth of our third son,
I began to explore training for pastoral ministry. I was soon ordained
and joined my husband in team ministry at the church where he served.
Through paths I couldn’t imagine, I’m now in my 10th year as pastor
to a Mennonite congregation across town from the Church of the Brethren
group I first served.
Had you told me I could follow a pastoral call and live in the same house
for nearly 30 years, I would have scoffed.
Now I’m facing 2005 knowing more choices are ahead. I’ll be leaving the
first house we bought 29 years ago, where we raised our four sons,
to move nearer those sons and their wives. I’ll be going back to school
to change professions, at least as far as I can see now. Such a transition
tempts me to go back, sift through past choices, see if there’s a path
not taken that might get chosen now.
Yet, no matter what choices I make, I am a different person because of
where I have been. I have been shaped by the children raised, the
husband married, the work done, the friends loved. I bring all of
my experiences, the good and the difficult, the joyful and the deeply
sad, to whatever path I walk. There is no undoing or re-doing, only
giving self over to God.
“How hard that must be, Mommy,” one of my daughters-in-law said to me about leaving our house of nearly 30 years. Yes, but no. We made the choice knowing we left other choices behind. Every door opened, every window closed means a list of possibilities foregone. Even my attempt to measure my decisions by what brings me the most life, or what is most born of love, gets challenged, for I can see much life and much love in many choices.
Parker Palmer, a wonderful Quaker writer, speaks often of the burden and
the gift of having choices. Staying in the place we now live, the
house and town where we have raised our children and done most of our
professional work, where we have two churches and friends we love,
would make perfect sense. And going to be near our sons and their families,
moving into a city rich in opportunity and culture, near other church
communities we can love, to a place where we will be the elders of a multi-generation
family, also makes perfect sense.
Could I imagine ever regretting either choice? Yes. Will I? Not if I practice
gratitude. Do I ever wonder, what if? Of course. Could I say what
I’d change? Not close.
God only asks two things of us: to love God with our heart, mind, soul,
and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. The shape of such life
takes as many forms as there are children of God. Being still, knowing
God’s love, and simply seeing all the life that’s been given to me
in spite of my plans leaves me sighing deeply, smiling a little, and
lost in gratitude.
Not a bad place from which to make my next choice.
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
By Melissa Miller
Timbrel, September-October 2004
Pondering the mystery of which items in the laundry basket are clean and
which are dirty, I am struck by the irony that I’m about to
lead a seminar on balance. A woman who finds herself using the
same basket for laundered and dirty items may not be the best model.
On the other hand, balance is not the same thing as perfection, so
I offer the following thoughts, gleaned from a Canadian Women in
Mission workshop held in July at Mennonite Church Canada’s 2004 assembly
in Winkler, Man.
For some years I searched the scriptures for guidance to set work and volunteer
boundaries. I finally concluded that the Sabbath commandment offered the
teaching I sought. How can we honor the temple God has entrusted to us if
we are frequently overloaded and driven to distraction?
As noted in Genesis 2:2-3, God established a weekly rhythm that includes both work and rest. Claiming our Sabbath rest reminds us that:
-- God has freed us from the oppression of slavery, including slavery
to non-stop work;
-- we follow God’s model of creating and producing,
then resting and savoring enjoyable companionship with our
Creator;
-- God is the one who is at work bringing
all of creation into God’s transforming grace; we are instruments
of God’s activity, which continues on as we rest and sleep;
-- God invites us to practice self-care,
which improves our health and our ability to serve God.
Repeating meaningful activities can aid our Sabbath-keeping. At our house,
we gather for breakfast before church. It includes a lovely
omelette, fruit, and a small piece of chocolate, served on china,
with juice in a goblet. Over time, this ritual has helped us pull
away from our hectic weekday routines and ease into Sabbath rest before
we attend worship.
Some families read the lectionary texts at breakfast before church. My
mother, who lives alone, often invites people for Sunday dinner
or goes to an ice cream stand with a friend; Sabbath often means
visiting with others. Each individual needs to experiment with
Sabbath practices that fit. The point is to move away from “fuss
and bother” and towards that which restores and uplifts.
A second resource for maintaining balance is to drink from our biblical
well. Verses like Psalm 23:2-3 (“God leads me beside still waters;
God restores my soul”) recall God’s grace and steadfast presence.
Other verses offer comfort and hope when we are distressed and
overwhelmed: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made
perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Two exercises drawn from the Catholic tradition also have helped me in
my attempts to stay balanced. The first one, called Four Rooms,
offers a model for living with rooms labeled Physical, Emotional,
Mental, and Spiritual; the idea is to visit each room each day,
striving for a balance in the four areas. I naturally hang out in the
rooms called Emotional (which for me means conversations with friends
and counseling work) and Mental (reading and seminary courses). More
discipline is required to visit the Physical room (for me that means walking
and tai chi) and the Spiritual room (Bible study and listening to God
through prayer).
In the second exercise, called the examen, two questions shape this night
time reflection. Where did I experience consolation today—a
sense of connection to God, life and others? When did I experience
disconsolation today—cut off from God, life, and others?
Like other families, mine has adapted this exercise. Mostly it’s mundane
reporting of “bests and worsts”—a high mark on a test, a frustrating
meeting, a great pizza, or a relationship strain. While the overtly
religious language is usually missing, I feel God’s arms wrapping
around us as we claim the space to share pieces of our souls, strengthening
the bonds that link us with each other and the Divine. It is sacred
space. Those who live alone sometimes practice the examen with others
by phone or over a weekly cup of tea.
The examen reminds us that God desires wholeness for each one of us, and
for all of creation. We are called out of the craziness of the
surrounding culture with its false gods of materialism, excessive
consumerism, and lonely individualism. We are invited to practice
God’s shalom in our hearts and in our homes.
May God bless our efforts to be balanced.
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
Blessed are the messy
By Diane Zaerr Brenneman
Timbrel, November-December
2004
I like to think I’m a neat and organized person. I remember a high school teacher who said I was “responsible” enough to be yearbook editor. I like to run my office with dispatch and my home as well. Efficiency is the name of my game.
But then I got kids. And a husband. And a farm. And a new job.
It now astounds me how piles can grow in the oddest places. Is it possible
that stack of papers has been there for six months now? I know the
soccer shin guards were right here last week. . . . My kid wants to
do crafts with the dust bunnies he found in his bedroom.
And who can explain laundry? Sometimes I suspect my kids get out of bed
in the night, rifle through their drawers, and throw clean, neatly
folded clothes into the hamper while I sleep. I can spend an entire
Saturday organizing everyone only to find fresh stuff poking out in
new places on Sunday.
Is there any blessing in this mess?
Of course, I know that in this material age we must be vigilant not to
acquire so much stuff in the first place. Because their first mother
died, my kids have three families that shower them with gifts and
I’m not innocent myself. It’s just that there are so many great learning
products out there. I remember a 3-foot shelf of books I shared with
my two brothers when I was growing up. Both of my kids have their own
floor-to-ceiling bookcase that’s stuffed to overflowing. My husband has
learned to hide the children’s book catalog when it comes home from school—mostly
from me! A new spiritual discipline is required to live simply with
today’s materialistic possibilities.
But even if we had less stuff, life itself is messy with four schedules,
two half-time jobs, church, community, and school. And, of course,
laundry.
Is there any blessing in this mess? Could God have something for me in
the midst of the piles and the dust around me? Cleanliness is next
to godliness. But do I earn God’s love any more if the laundry is put
away? Or can I experience God’s love and blessing in the midst of the
mess?
In the Bible, God certainly had a high tolerance for mess. Creation began
with chaos, after all. The wandering Israelites seemed to make a
mess of the whole Promised Land idea, and God still used them to become
known to Jew and Gentile alike. Even Jesus couldn’t be born in the nursery
his mother had prepared for him but had to come on the road—when a barn
was the only birthplace to be found.
Yet I seem to think I can only sit with scripture and converse with God
when the living room is picked up. With this dictum, the one I most
often run out of time for is God. I wonder what grace God is holding
out to me that I rush past in my hurry to stuff, stack, and pack.
I remember visiting a college artist friend in her first house with her
young family. There were pleasant stacks here and there and the kids
were happily engaged in one creative project after another. One could
see evidence of sprouts trying to grow in the window sills, musical
instruments and books in a corner, library books stacked on end tables
and floors, paints and paper and clay in yet another corner.
I remember thinking: this is the way artists live. And I’ve noticed a certain
messiness in the homes of other artists, too. Maybe artists are too busy
seeing the possibilities around them to clean up. Or maybe mess is the raw
material out of which something creative can happen. I may be tidying myself
right out of something creative!
Is there something about mess that can bless?
Being overcome can remind me I cannot parent, pastor, or farm alone; God
must sustain and guide me. It is only through the grace of God that
I’ve been given any of these responsibilities in the first place. It
seems messes are by-products of responsibilities. The high school yearbook
wasn’t completed without a lot of missed deadlines, hurried meetings,
and cropped photos flying around, either.
Even though I know better, latent in my heart somewhere remains the belief
that I have to be good enough for God to love me . . . tidy enough,
efficient enough, organized enough. The early church must have struggled
with this, too, because in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul says,
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your
own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works” (Eph. 2:8-9).
Salvation is a gift God offers freely, not ever something I can earn.
Rationally, I don’t believe God dwells only in the neat and organized houses. God forgive me when I act like it.
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
By Elaine Maust
Timbrel, November-December 2003
I did not set out to be a lifelong failure. In fact, I intend to be successful. But failure has come upon me in every stage of life, as predictable as losing my baby teeth or the graying of my hair.
I have, at separate times, mortified both my children and my parents. Once, during our 25 years of marriage, I nearly sent us to the matrimony mortuary. I know the heartache of disappointing God.
I have humiliated myself by offending unintentionally, saying the wrong thing, wounding a friend. As a competitive businesswoman I know the distaste of botched sales. I have killed several plantings of tomatoes in one season. I once prepared a lovely squirrel stew for a vegetarian. I cannot operate a CD player successfully two times in a row. I failed third grade math.
And likely I have done annoying or detestable things of which I am unaware. You might say, I am a professional failure. A perfectly qualified expert, able to address this subject in print.
Could a new beatitude be written for folks like me? Something that begins, “Blessed are the failures, for . . .”—for what? Could failure bless?
Failure, like pain, is a common denominator. When I admit my failures, I rejoin the human race instead of pretending to supercede it. In fact, embracing failure liberates. It relieves me of needing to be more than I am, an ordinary human being. I am an average mother, pastor, wife, friend, and person. And behold, average is acceptable.
Psalm 103:14 describes God’s opinion of humans with, “He remembers that we are dust.” Thank you, God! On my worst days, I pray, “Hey, God. Remember me? I’m dust.” Expectations of dust are utterly unimpressive. What a relief.
Failure reminds me that I need to be forgiven. I want to be the forgiver, the great hearted, the generous one. But I am the one who must ask for the gift of forgiveness and wait to see if those I have offended will grant it.
But the moment immediately following a failure is most crucial. Will I deny my mistake? “I have no idea how that dent got into the car!” Or will I admit and embrace my mistake? “I’m so sorry. I dialed your number by accident. I’m embarrassed.” At those moments I remind myself that this is a path to grace.
The Bible says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord” (James 4:10a). Fortunately, we do not need to strain to become humble. Our humiliations will do that for us, easily enough, if we allow them.
Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “Great graces cannot be obtained without humility; so those who are to have them must be humiliated. . . . When you yourself experience humiliation, you should take it as a sure sign that some grace is in store. . . . The humble person is he who has turned humiliation into humility.”
Failure also calls. I do not understand this, but I have seen it over and over again. One of my most profound moments of call to ministry came as I drove down a sweltering Mississippi highway sobbing out my regret to God at being a failure at bringing people to him. The Holy Spirit told me to pull off the road and called me to be a minister.
When others are searching for their callings, I invite them to listen not only to their successes, but also to their failures. If God calls a runaway prince to become a liberator for a nation of slaves and a murderous religious zealot to become a missionary, maybe God can use our deepest failures to call us, too.
One day I sat at the kitchen table and prayed for mercy for my mistakes. Not the silly ones, like the time I went to the wrong appointment, and kept it, or the time I inadvertently seasoned pot roast with cinnamon. What plagued me that day were big failures. Like being a pastor responsible for someone leaving the church hurt and angry. I asked Jesus, “What do you say to me about all this?” I waited.
I imagined Jesus walking across the kitchen and putting his hand on my shoulder. He addressed my accusers and the self-accusations in my own heart. He said words that still stop my heart: “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. . . . She did what she could” (Mark 14:6, 8).
Given my propensity to fail, one might safely ask how I get myself out of bed in the morning. Probably again today I will forget the name of a child at the church’s tutoring program. Likely I will make an expensive mistake on a bid at the cabinet shop. Who knows, I might even create a fresh and very entertaining vehicular disaster.
But knowing I will fail, I give the day to God. Again today I will do what I can for this God I adore. I move ahead with joy on my path of grace. For I am one of the blessed. I have failed.
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
Seeing through the
illusions of reality TV
By Susan Biesecker-Mast
Timbrel, July-August
2003
Yet as recently as May 11 of this year, five reality shows claimed half of the top 10 U.S. ratings spots. Between 12.5 million households (for the show ranked 10th) and 14.2 million households (for the show ranked third) watched these shows. Even more impressively, from a ratings perspective, “Joe Millionaire” reached more than 40 million viewers on just one evening last February and, thus, became the most watched television show of the season.
America is (perhaps even we are) watching reality television. (And watch out, friends up north, with the June 11 premiere of “Canadian Idol.”)
What are reality shows?
Reality shows are “unscripted.” Rather than act according to scripts created by professional writers, reality show participants choose their own words and take action as they see fit within the limits of the show’s environment and rules.
In order to create drama without a script, reality shows have adopted features of game shows, soap operas, and talk shows.
Like game shows they include competition. Some shows focus on athletic competitions and tests of will (“Survivor” and “Fear Factor”). Other shows consist of talent/ beauty contests (“American Idol” and “Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest People”). Still others showcase competitions among women (and sometimes men) for a member of the opposite sex (“Bachelor,” “Bachelorette,” “Mr. Personality,” and “Joe Millionaire”).
Like soap operas, reality shows feature negative social interactions. Contestants lie to, gossip about, cheat, betray, and humiliate one another in order to win.
Finally, like tell-all talk shows, contestants reflect at the end of the season on their and other contestants’ behaviors, strategic choices, and morality.
Given these characteristics, it’s not surprising that we find reality TV shows “unworthy.” While network executives might argue that they don’t meet the standards of prime time television, I suspect most of us just think they’re silly. Watching a grown man eat worms or a “judge” point out the “flab” on a young woman’s thigh or a couple look for signs of their compatibility in their preferences for restaurant chains may seem like mindless escapism.
But I think there is more to reality shows than that. These shows entertain not so much by disengaging our minds through the spectacle of some meaningless competition but, rather, by engaging us in a fantasy world characterized by the illusion of inclusion and the illusion of “reality.” Our engagement in these illusions ought to trouble us, I want to argue, for the way that they encourage us followers of Jesus Christ to be of the world.
The illusion of inclusion
In the illusory world of a reality show, anyone can become rich and famous. Whether you’re a construction worker or a waitress; come from a small southern town or a Midwestern suburb; are white, black, Hispanic, or Asian—you can be a star. You don’t need an agent, the ability to memorize a script, or acting lessons. All you need is the courage to audition and some luck. Next thing you know, you may be competing for a large cash prize, your dream mate, or a contract with a major music label. That’s the illusion.
What’s the reality? Not just anyone can get on a reality show. Although there are exceptions (which perpetuate the illusion of inclusion), most contestants on reality shows are young, have a model’s physique, and a “good” face. On ABC’s “Are You Hot?”, for instance, the average female contestant is 22 years of age, 5’8” tall, and weighs 120 pounds. No female contestant is over 30 years old (and only one is 30), less than 5’4” tall (and, again, there is only one at this height), or weighs more than 140 pounds (one of the two who weighs this amount is 5’11” tall). The male contestants are similarly young, tall, and well built. Reality shows are not inclusive.
The problem with the fact that reality shows seem inclusive when they are not is that they set up unrealistic expectations for viewers about what people should look like and be like. If anyone can be on the show and everyone on the show is “beautiful” in a very narrowly defined way, then shouldn’t everyone be “beautiful”? These shows suggest that success is a question of personal courage and will. What, then, are viewers to think of themselves and others who do not conform to this narrow standard for beauty?
The illusion of “reality”
In the illusory world of reality TV, “reality” is that human beings must and will sin. This is so because human beings want to win. Indeed, it is in their very nature to want to win. They want to be the best, to have the most, to stand apart. And ultimately they will do whatever it takes to win. They will eat worms, lie to a teammate, betray a friend, even cheat on their spouse in order to win because the desire to win is in their genes.
Reality shows are not about reality. They don’t give us access, as they promise, to the souls of their contestants. They don’t provide us with a revealing look into the true nature of human beings. What they do is set up fantastic environments within which contestants compete according to elaborate rules within a game they have worked very hard to play.
Contestants have conditioned themselves and auditioned themselves, adopted certain personas and learned how to perform them on TV, signed contracts and agreed to specific rules. And when such contestants are inserted into a mass-mediated context within which the stakes are high, they’ll give the networks what is required: riveting drama vis-à-vis sin. If there is anything that we can learn from reality shows about human nature it is this: human beings are great performers. They have the capacity to perform the personas that the context requires.
The problem with this illusion is perhaps obvious. To present base actions as if they are the necessary outcomes of human nature in the context of high stakes competition is to suggest that the best that we can be as human beings is unrepentant sinners. For if it’s true that trying to win is natural and that winning demands sinning, then what is there to repent in acting sinfully?
Reality shows are not simply bad television in the sense of mindless entertainment. They do not disengage our minds in meaningless escape. Rather they engage our minds in illusions that teach us to have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others and to settle for sin as necessity. These lessons are bad for everyone and ought to be especially troublesome to anyone who believes as Jesus taught that God’s reign in which we will sin no more is available to all.
Bad TV, good conversations
In this article I have tried to make a specific case against reality shows. I think these shows are bad TV and that we should not watch them.
But far more importantly I have tried by example to suggest that we should talk about media forms and content critically as a church. I think we should discuss what we see in the media not only to share information about what the media are offering but also to encourage or discourage each other from consuming certain kinds of media. We should not seek to return to a time when authoritarian leaders told us never to watch TV. But I do hope for a lively discussion among us all about how we as followers of Jesus Christ are engaging and resisting the ways that the media seek to shape us.
Sidebar (on the lighter side): Top 5 rejected reality TV shows
5. “Joe More-With-Less”
4. “MVS House”
3. “Faith Factor”
2. “Missional Island”
1. “Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love Shack”
For reprint permission, contact the editor.
* * * * * * * *
Can wanting
others’
approval be a problem?
By Jane Hoober Peifer
Timbrel, January-Febrary
2002
As I sit down to write this article on how we as women sometimes struggle with the need of others’ approval, I realize I have embodied the point in my preparation for this task. What did I do? I asked my women friends what thoughts they had on the topic.
A friend told this story. She got brave and painted her room a bright color, and then started asking her friends and family to give their opinions about her choice. Her good friend observed: “So you needed to know what others thought in order to know what you thought?”
Does this realization—that we women seek out others as we are formulating
our own opinions—mean that something is wrong with
us? Is there something about women that makes us more
prone to needing others’ approval for our decisions?
I contend that there is
nothing wrong with us, and yes, for good reasons we
find ourselves “worrying about what others think” perhaps
more than do our male counterparts. Still, our desire for
others’ approval holds the potential for trouble.
At seminary, I remember how “at home” I felt when I began reading Women’s Ways of Knowing, authored by four women psychologists. The very fact that they were able to write a book together illustrates so well their observations about how women understand themselves in the world, and how they know.
The authors suggest that our conceptions of knowledge, truth, and what is important have been shaped throughout history by a culture dominated by men. We women have been taught not to trust our gut, because so often what comes naturally to us (relationships and connections) is not valued as much as what comes naturally to men (separation and autonomy).
Thus women’s need for approval is strengthened in two ways: first, because our natural sense of things has not been the valued way of knowing, we end up feeling critiqued and therefore need reassurance; and second, because relationships and connections are really what make us tick, it is just logical that we will want to take into account what our sisters and brothers think.
Here’s one example. I have heard men declare that having congregational co-pastors does not work because it isn’t clear “where the buck stops.” After eight years of experience as a co-pastor, I don’t know what they are talking about. Certainly co-pastors may have problems working together, but I’m not convinced it has anything to do with where the “buck” does or does not stop.
I, personally, do not enjoy being in a buckstopping position, but I’d argue that this preference has not hindered my ability to lead: gathering opinions from the congregation, negotiating, making connections, setting direction, and moving forward with confidence, sometimes prophetically. This difference in leadership styles has been documented in the business world as well.
In an essay recently republished in The Wisdom of Daughters, Virginia Wiles describes the differences between men and women like this: “Stereotypically, the ‘boy’ is encouraged to choose self, even at the cost of the destruction of the relationship; the ‘girl’ is encouraged to choose the relationship, even at the cost of the destruction of self. . . . Placed in the context of the Christian tradition, the ‘boy’s’ pride is recognized as sin. But the ‘girl’ and her church think her sacrifice of self is virtue. No one noticed her fall. And yet her choice, no less than her brother’s, leads to a trap that can be described as a death.”
As women our challenge is to avoid sacrificing ourselves in order to maintain relationships and connectedness. Many of us know that tension well. And sometimes we are totally enmeshed in a relationship and have no idea how out of balance we’ve gotten.
This happened to me some years ago when, through a very painful experience, I became aware that a particular person in my congregation—whom I admired and liked a lot—had “taken up residence” in my head. As I prepared worship services, I would register in my thinking whether this person would like my plans. I realized that I needed to “evict” this person and return to my own center, where God resides, nurtures me, and calls me. In this case, I needed to distance myself from this person for a while until I could return to the relationship with freedom. “Free me, Lord,” became my breath prayer during those months.
I have found great help and strength from the book Inner Compass by Margaret Silf. She tells the story of feeling God’s nudging to get more involved with a person who needed healing. She knew that more involvement with that person would be costly for her, and so she was struggling to make the decision.
In the silence of her prayer, she writes that she sensed the assurance from God saying, “I won’t love you any more than I already do if you say yes, or any less if you say no.” She recalls feeling kind of disappointed—after all, wouldn’t she get a few more brownie points from God if she gave herself to this person? Then the voice continued, “No, because to do so would be to violate your freedom.”
Unconsciously, we make decisions because we are afraid of losing something or because we are hoping to gain something, and we need to monitor the times when we are hoping to gain the approval of those around us. Our ability to rest in the unconditional love of God, rather than to act in response to our fears or hopes, will free us to be connected in this world in the way God designed.
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