Tag Archives: conversation

Jan 10 2016
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

that’s a gift

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To stop wondering
if what you have to say
is valid, acceptable, reasonable, or appropriate:

That’s a gift.

And to say something
because you need someone who knows you
to hear it
and accept it
and after hearing it reply to you
saying

“I hear you”

without solving it
without explaining it
without answering it:

That’s telling the truth.

And the gift and the telling the truth together:

That’s friendship on a Sunday night
over bourbon and crying babies.

And it’s a sign that the kingdom of heaven is real.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

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Jul 21 2013
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

beyond trayvon

beyond trayvon

beyond even the tragedy of a teenage life lost
which is tragedy enough all by itself
is the tragedy that we cannot have
a conversation about the place in which we find ourselves
that goes beyond Trayvon

we have a story on our hands that rocks the airwaves
and makes for good television, whether legal or talk or music or news
and the story gets stuck in the soundbites
ignorant and hollow and poorly polarized
that sell ads for laundry detergent and weight loss aids

and all the while
there’s an issue on our hands
much greater than Trayvon Martin
which is by itself the loss of a teenager walking down the street
and is a great loss all its own

we have an issue on our hands that makes it impossible
to have real and needed conversations with people of the “other”
we know by name, not our token “other friends”
about what it means to live
black
white
hispanic
asian
gay
rich
poor
single
mentally ill

and in the meeting of our differences
we might find the answers that could lead us
from violence and hip-shooting ignorant vigilantism
to the deep and horrifying and necessary conversation
about what it means to work toward
a day when everyone,
perfectly different,
becomes perfectly alike and different together
celebrating kingdom come.
toward justice.
toward compassion.
toward the ordered throwing of stones.

But, because we can’t think outside the lines
given us by the news that sells laundry detergents and weight-loss aids
we run the risk of being stuck in a conversation that ends
with more hatefulness, ignorance and racism.

But, because we know we are ultimately able to think outside the lines
we run the risk of asking questions that citizens of the kingdom ask
with more compassion, empathy, and christlikeness.

and the story changes depending on which risks we decide to take.

God give us courage to take good risks.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

OTHER POSTS ON RACE AND RISK AND COURAGE

it’s dark in here
failure to imagine
rosa parks
let us turn our thought today

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May 20 2013
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learning to live, poems, what they are teaching me

it’s the quiet conversations

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it’s the quiet conversations
the late night
emails, texts, calls, replies

it’s the quiet conversations
the early morning
coffees, meetings, book clubs, questions

it’s the quite conversations
the midday
confessions, drop-ins, lunches

where we realize that we are so close
to those we pretend to be so different from
and in finding out that we are wrestling
ultimately
with the same
fears
hopes
insecurities
questions
wonders
anxieties
sonnets

and in realizing that we are so close
we immediately feel so far
from being so all alone
and we give thanks.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

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Mar 17 2013
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

the ground remains

the-ground-remains

The weather has finally permitted for my backyard in the evening to transform once again into a glowing outdoor room. A friend of mine and I sat around the rickety wooden table under balls of chicken wire and lights puffing our pipes for nearly three hours this evening.

In my day to day schedule, I like to pretend that I am too important, so I don’t have time for moments like these. There’s no space for propping my feet up, bringing the music outside, lighting up a cigar and laughing, talking about ideas, and wrestling with what we are learning as it is shaken and stirred with who we are becoming.

But tonight, even though as it approached I felt as though I didn’t really have time to indulge this gathering with a friend a needed to catch up with, it was in fact exactly what my mind and soul needed to find each other again.

The work is good. The meetings and projects and plans and research and people are all good, and there is progress toward good things no matter how tenuous or temporary it may be. The calendar pages are flying off the wall faster than the second hand on the clock is ticking, but I am keeping up as best I can nevertheless.

There is something quite magical, and humbling, and ultimately holy and important about stopping long enough with another on the same journey to realize that when I prop my feet up, the ground remains. I am not holding things together, but merely participating in their newness. The meetings and projects and plans and research and people are all good, and for me to be a valuable asset in the mixology, I must make the intentional effort to take time to prop my feet up with thoughtful and entertaining and humble friends. I must hear their questions and see what they are thinking. I must join them in wrestling with their own demons and delights so that I can, in the morning, put my feet back on the ground and start again.

The ground, however, remains. The tasks are still there. My momentary pause from standing on my feet to push ahead is a reminder that I am not the one holding anything together. Propping my feet up every once and a while makes the work a little more honest, a little more true, a little more humble, and a little more holy.

So cheers to the rickety wooden table in the backyard on a brisk evening under the chicken wire lights and stars with good people on the same road.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jan 07 2013
2 Comments
learning to live, social work, what they are teaching me

dinner at the coffee table

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I don’t know why it has all come together in my brain this way.

Growing up, I remember being furious that this rule was put in place, even in middle and high school, that I MUST be present at the dinner table at least three or four nights a week. If I went out after that, that was one thing. If I ate or not was another thing, but my presence at the dinner table was required three or four nights a week. (I don’t remember which, so obviously it wasn’t as traumatic as I would like to pretend.)

As with many things I now reflect back on from growing up, I hated this rule at the time, and yet now I wouldn’t trade anything for it.

And a few nights ago, I joined some incredible friends from present day around their coffee table for dinner. At our home growing up, when I was huffing and puffing about having to be home for dinner around a table, we would every now and then sit around the coffee table, the same one I now have in my den, and eat pizza and watch TV together. I remember being angry that my parents could guess what was going to happen on the TV show, and I was likely more angry about this because I wanted to be anywhere but there at the moment.

But a few nights go, legs crossed over pillows on the floor, eating while sitting around their coffee table, I found myself in a kind of time freeze. The four year old daughter of my friends was pretending to make meals or be a drummer with her metal bowls and plastic whisks, and we were eating sushi with chopsticks out of styrofoam sakura to-go boxes.

There was much that reminded me, though, of growing up. The space for imagination and casualness, and play and informality. The insistence of good food even though it was spread out across a coffee table reminded me of how much has changed, and how little has changed at the same time.

And today, I’m in a counseling session with a family who can’t pay the bills so they share a home with another family. Four parents, five children, three minimum wage jobs, exponential stress. They were sitting in my office, a mom and dad, completely undone by the situation, and parenting skills to reflect the same. As they were talking, I found myself returning to the living room coffee table a few nights ago with incredible friends learning to be good parents, a four year old playing kitchen, and myself wondering how things will be remembered ten years later.

For all of us.

And most of all, I found myself glad that someone made me sit down for dinner three or four nights a week, no matter how unbelievable and unrealistic a request it seemed at the time.

djordan
Pine Tree

 

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Aug 19 2012
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from the archives

from the archives | a time for everything

 

In reflecting on the upcoming one-year anniversary of mosthopeful.com on August 23, I’m throwing some of the posts that readers have looked at the most back into the mix. Thanks for allowing me the space. It’s been a most humbling experience. This post is especially important to me, as it was a moment of honoring the pain and struggle of the year before, and then celebrating––in advance––what waited in the year ahead.

There were conversations that evening about how we would learn from the ridiculous pains and struggles of the year, and move toward the kingdom with new insight, and new scars, into the future.

A few weeks after that party (talked about below), I was sitting with in Stellenbosch with some of my favorite people in all the world, and I began talking with a friend from London, living and working in Cape Town, about how victories and happy memories are honored with parties thrown and anniversaries given, but the painful experiences and struggles are only valued once we come up with “reasons” for why they happened.

She mentioned, feet in the chilly water at a campsite in Stellenbosch, that we ought honor the painful landmarks in our history as well as the ones we naturally celebrate. The party thrown at the beginning of this year was an opportunity to celebrate and to mourn what had been, and to look with great expectation toward the future, knowing that God is working through his people in his world toward the kingdom.

So, another top-viewed post from the archives…

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View the original post and comments from January 8, 2012

 

a time for everything

 

It is with great joy that I enter 2012.

2011 was filled with pain, loss, struggle, sadness, anxiety, and anger.

The year overall was one of seeing the best of circumstances end up as the worst of possible outcomes.

And yet through each season and struggle, there has been tearful laughter, growing community, deeper honesty, brave introspection, and tenuous hope.

And it all feels a little closer to the truth. A little closer to telling the truth.

To others.

To myself.

To the part of all of us that tries to close our eyes to what we know the painful truth is sometimes.

There are times when everything in me wants to arrange my circumstances in ways that hope for the best; those same times, if I were being honest with myself and those around me, I would instead be anticipating the worst. Before this year, I think I’ve tried to push everything, no matter the truth, into a single season.

As if allowing ONLY a season for birth, and then trying to translate death into birth in order to make sense of it.

As if allowing ONLY a season for building, and then trying to add on to things that needed only to be torn all the way down.

As if allowing ONLY a season for embracing, and then awkwardly trying to embrace when I should have refrained from doing so.

As if allowing ONLY a season for speaking out, and then trying to explain why I couldn’t be silent if I had wanted to.

The pain of 2011 has made important room for fall and winter. There is a need and space for dying, for tearing down, for refraining from embrace, for remaining silent. A season for these things.

And in the spaces made from telling the truth about our winters, spring comes on the heels. The ground is made soft, the legs become limber, the imagination becomes ready, and things begin to take root, people begin to dance and build again.

And so here’s to the new year, filled with possibilities for both celebration and mourning. Life and death. Dancing and weeping. Building and tearing down.

And an insistence on the holiness of both––on telling the truth about both–to ourselves and others.

For everything there is season.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

 

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Jul 17 2012
2 Comments
grief and trauma, what they are teaching me

apparently still and incredibly crisp

floored again in dialogue with a client today
the incredible resilience following him into the room
ignored by the very person living under so much
withstanding, but still struggling
struggling with real and reasonable and incredible grief

and still holding it together
hair on, face on, courtesy on, honesty on

the wrestling only barely under the surface of
otherwise apparently still and incredibly crisp waters
all hiding
all hoping
no one notices what a mess
we all show and tell each others stories

and in hiding and hoping no one notices
we all ourselves fail to notice
our fighting resilience as the only thing stronger than our struggles
and the only thing strong than our fight to hide our struggles

until we see it through a dark mirror
that we all look much the same
and we are all incredibly resilient as we float over
otherwise apparently still and incredibly crisp waters

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jul 03 2012
1 Comment
learning to live, poems, the calendar

at a high top table under low light

corny jokes to the server
hospitable laughs in return
at a high top table under low light
clinking glasses and eating crumbs
conversation about
faith
fury
family
funnies
fortitude
fears
watches watched, but only barely
because it’s only a monday evening
realization that what we
beg for
clamor for
whine for
fight for
pay for
sing for
hope for
long for
is waiting for us on Monday evenings
at a high top table under low light
clinking glasses and eating crumbs.

And is waiting on Tuesday mornings.

djordan
Pine Tree

RELATED POSTS
+ monday mornings are the clearest view
+ no time to grab a camera
+ catch us up into reality
+ in one place 

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May 07 2012
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what they are teaching me

when they disagree

Bertrand Russell, BBC Radio station with pipe in hand

One of the things that has become a favorite of teaching has been when students disagree with me. This semester has seen a class filled with diversity in age, income, race, and worldview. It has made conversations thicker and richer because no one in the room can get away with saying something while assuming everyone both sees it the same way and agrees with our conclusion.

I’ve seen the nature of the class feeling and creating a culture of safety in dialogue grow all of us into wiser practitioners and students of those around us. They have been a gift, and I thought of our class when I read these notes from Bertrand Russell in last week’s braingpickings.org weekly email. Considering Russell’s stance on religion, and also considering sending practitioners into the world who are Christians, it feels that more important than even knowing certain things is knowing how to think through certain things, how to disagree, how to ask questions, and how to engage.

I hope you find these as interesting as I did, in light of Russell’s zeitgeist and the one in which we find ourselves.

djordan
Pine Tree

RELATED POSTS | The Best First Class Ever | We Can Assume | Failure to Imagine | The Risk of Narrowing the Voices

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Apr 26 2012
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learning to live

daring to speak

Just after a hard rain, the chairs dried but the red brick still slippery wet, we just spent the last few hours out there. Sitting on the front porch, pipe in my hand, cigar in a newer friend’s hand, I was reminded again of the courage it takes to speak about ourselves in the hearing of others, and to trust that our humanity will be shared rather than used against us.

Words come tumbling out of my own mouth, and I wonder if they will be met with an appreciation for both their ambiguity and honesty, or if they will be the nail in the coffin of my once-perceived sanity and standing.

And as they come tumbling out, as they did tonight, time seemed to move slowly, Matrix-like, as if I could see the words themselves passing over the cigar cutter, the lighter, the pulsing citronella candle inside its orange ceramic shell, making it finally to the hearer. In that slowness of time, the notion that vulnerability is our biggest fear and our only hope seemed to float on top those words.

And they were heard. And affirmed. And shared.

Then words come back. Heard. Affirmed. Shared.

As many times as these kinds of moments happen, I’m always amazed at the palpable fear in daring to speak. But beyond the fear, the daring and the speaking are the only ways to honestly offer the invitation for anyone else to find in themselves the courage to speak back.

Otherwise, we all remain silent and unhearing.

djordan
Pine Tree

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