Learning From Observation Over Conversation

The Lives of the Desert Fathers by Norman Russell opens with this little story expressing why people would seek out holy men and women in the deserts of Egypt in order to learn from them:

We have come from Jerusalem for the good of our souls, so that what we have heard with our ears we may perceive with our eyes - for the ears are naturally less reliable than the eyes - and because very often forgetfulness follows what we hear, whereas the memory of what we have seen is not easily erased but remains imprinted on our minds like a picture.

Russell adds, that these pilgrims desired to learn from conversation with these desert sages, but more so pilgrims desired to learn from observation.

It is not deeply profound to be reminded that actions speak louder than words. It is not new that we best learn from doing rather than listening. And yet we continue in the Church to lean very heavily on the spoken word to teach others.

Preachers are important, but not in the ways that preachers think we are. Preachers are important not just for the words they say (the conversation) but through the lives we live. People listen to preachers who live lives that are compelling, interesting, different and authentic. For all the sermon classes and preaching tips I have taken, I have yet to be in such a training that elevates the life of the preacher over the words of the preacher.

That is, we preachers still elevate conversation over observation.

The truth is that conversation is easier than observation. Teaching by conversation does not require one to be open to the Spirit of resurrection. Teaching by observation does.

So take a look at the Church we serve. Many people are learning from us not by what we say in sermons or doctrine, but by observing our lives. Maybe God was onto something when it was proclaimed that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6, also echoed by Jesus in Matthew a few times). God desires mercy and compassion over the dogmatic and orthodox sacrifices that our religion demands.

Oddly enough, one does not have to know anything about religious practices to be merciful but you need to know a lot of religion to practice the proper sacrifices.

Learning through conversation is good. Observation is better.

The Evil of Our Public Lives

When I was younger I was told that if I was not willing to do something in public, then I ought not do it in private. The concern was that what we did in private was potentially more evil than what we would do in public. There may some truth to that for most of us - especially in our teenage years when we might violate social norms or rules in private (Kevin Bacon might owe his career to such a truth).

While the concern of evil lurking in the private was emphasized, the inverse was all but ignored. That is, sometimes we would do things in public that we would never do in private. The concern that what we do in public was potentially more evil than what we would do in private was never really considered.

However, the reality is the more we ignore the latter the more we are prone to participate in evil in the world.

The evil of the public life memorialized in the coliseum

Most people would not privately whip themselves into a frenzy and loot, harass or kill. Yet groups do this all the time. Most people would never breathe threats of violence toward another, but then we get online and that is often what we do.

If the story of Jesus teaches us anything it is that our public lives can be more evil than our private lives. We can kill the very Christ of the world in public displays. We can loot the very heart of God in public elections. We can be like Saul and become the mob of violence and retribution in public.

Maybe we need to take some of our concern that our private lives are evil and examine our public ones.

Expecting Traditional Nurses to Treat Hospice Patience

Recently a friend of mine shared that she worked for a nursing company. It was in the economic interest of the company to get into the hospice care market. The nurses were put on a rotation of patients, however now some of the patients had received hospice orders. The nurses moved through their rounds going from home to home and engaging with different patients as they always had done.

It was a disaster.

The nurses did very well with the regular patients, but were not good for the hospice patients. It all stemmed back to the way the nurses were trained. These nurses were trained to help people recover their health. However, these same nurses were not equipped to work with patients that were not going to ever recover their health. The nurses were not bad nurses but they were the wrong person for the patient on hospice.

The Universal Church faces a similar situation. Clergy are trained like these nurses were - to help churches recover health. But the current reality is that many churches are not going to recover health because the role of church in America is in decline. The Church has congregations who need help recovering health and yet other congregations need a hospice nurse.

Clergy are not equipped to work in churches on hospice and there are many churches on hospice.

I understand that this is a bit of a taboo to speak. Nurses are trained to think in terms of health and not in terms of dying. The irony is clergy have the language of death and the hope of resurrection in Jesus, yet clergy resist talking about churches dying. It is as though clergy forget that death is not the last thing and that resurrection is what we testify to! Could it be that we as clergy have a resistance to talk about dying because we have an underdeveloped theology of hope and resurrection?

The problem of having clergy trained to bring churches back to health is similar to the problem of having nurses working with patience on hospice - there are misplaced expectations, clergy feeling like they cannot midwife the church into the next stages, and congregations are harmed. We as a Church ought to take seriously the questions of what it means to be clergy leaders to an institution that has major sections on hospice.

Will we continue to operate out of fear? Will we re-tool clergy so that we are equipped to this new challenge. Will congregations accept hospice care?

As a people of the Resurrection we ought not fear death. Rather, we hope that resurrection is the Truth of creation and that nothing, life, or death or life beyond death, can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.