Thoughts in Transit

I’m en route to Oklahoma City for my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary. Should be a trip. A hundred relatives from Oklahoma and Texas will be there, many of whom I’ve never met. I really am looking forward to it.

The Detroit airport has this incredible fountain around gate A40 or so. It’s on this round black platform that’s about forty feet in diameter and is lifted about three feet off the ground. Scattered concentrically around the platform are jets that project cords of water. When I say cords, I mean each jet projects a water stream that is so concentrated, it’s as if each stream is directed by one-inch-wide clear tubing. Each jet shoots a stream of water anywhere from three- to eight-feet high through the air toward the center of the platform. When all the jets are flowing, it looks like a sculpture of numerous glass tubes that arch in and through and between one another toward the center. Though the cords do not touch one another, they come impossibly close, so the whole thing looks as if it couldn’t be, yet it is. Normally not all the jets are flowing. They’re timed to create a dancing effect: A cord of water shoots from here and another shoots from there. Then the same thing happens but with several cords of water at the same time. The jets toward the outside of the platform shoot, then the ones closer in, and on and on. It reminded me of dolphins leaping out of the ocean, circuitry, and glass sculpture all at the same time. It is a visual symphony.

On my way to the Grand Rapids airport I listened to a BBC interview with the author of a book called Three Ways to Get Things Done. I only caught about 20 minutes of the interview, but the author was talking about moving away from hierarchy within companies toward what he called heterarchy, I think, which was a way of organizing that dispersed authority. The idea was not that there would be no leaders (leaders are essential, he said) but rather a system where each individual had the opportunity to be a leader due to one’s own skills and talents. The interviewer said something very important at one point. He said the trick in business has always been to release employees’ energy by somehow aligning their own personal goals with those of the company. The author was quick to agree with that point and then added a note of realism by saying we probably will never succeed in achieving this sort of utopian ideal, but he does think perhaps all companies can get a good deal closer to it than they are.

I like the idea of questioning what is most usually taken as an inherent tension between the goals of any given individual and the goals of a company. What if when a person was hired her superior(s) said to her, “Here’s the deal. This company has a lot of resources by virtue of the fact that a lot of smart and talented people work here and because we are engaged in work that is important to human civilization. You have been hired, obviously, because we think the resources you bring to this company are important and will fill a void that we had before you came. Now, what I/we want to know is what gaps or voids do you have that you think we as a collective of smart and talented people might be able to help you with? The reason we ask is because we actually think it’s best for everyone concerned—you, me, our colleagues, our associates, and our customers—for each employee to be working toward the fulfillment of his or her own goals. So tell us, what are your goals? They can be personal, professional, whatever. What are they? And if you don’t know right now, that’s okay. Think about it, and I’ll ask again at the beginning of next week.”

If someone had talked to me that way, I imagine I would have said something about wanting to contribute great books to the reading public, wanting to help authors meet their potential, wanting to help shape ideas in the church and beyond. No matter how my superior had responded, as long as he took me seriously and did what he could to help me meet these goals, the most significant difference this kind of conversation would have in companies is that it would change the way employees think about their jobs. All of a sudden I am not working for my company—not carrying out duties my company has assignmed—as much as I would be working for myself, trying to accomplish what I think is important.

Do we have to assume that a company’s goals diverge from a person’s goals. Surely we don’t always assume this; otherwise we’d never hire anybody. The problem is that sometimes the degree of “goal overlap” is limited to something like, “I need money to live. This company needs my services. So I will give them my services, and they will give me their money.” That’s a start, I guess, though it seems a bit exploitative from both ends: the company is exploiting the employee, and the employee is exploiting the company.

Again, what if we started with the assumption that there was far more overlap between personal and company goal sets. There may well be some genuine divergences, but what if we started with the assumption that these would be few and far between—that the company and its employees can help each other in just about every area of life? What if companies did not think of employees as service units as much as a generative community, doing work together to make the world a better place? What if employees did not think their company as a paycheck provider but as a clinic for world improvement? What if every day I woke up and drove to work, I thought of myself as going to my very own laboratory for making the world a better place for eight hours? What if I did not think of my work life as a category within my life as much as a seamlessly integrated essence within my life, along with several other essences (like home life and husband life)?

Questions

Last night Alyssa was reading Real Simple and saw an article that listed questions to ask to get to know someone: What are you most proud of? What’s the most difficult thing you have ever been through with your family? What are some of your strongest character traits? What’s the best trip you’ve ever taken?

The questions quite spontaneously created a great time of mutual exploration for us. I learned that the most difficult thing Alyssa has been through with her family happened relatively recently. I learned that her self-conception is that compassion is one of her strongest character traits, and I agree with that conception. I would add empathy. I simply don’t know many people who naturally care as much as Alyssa does about people in general. I learned, simply by being asked, that I think one of my strongest traits is an ability to connect one on one with people. I hadn’t really thought this about myself until Alyssa asked me about it. I feel like people have an easy time talking to me. There are probably loads of exceptions.

We also talked about what traits or habits we have that we would like to change. Alyssa said judgmentalism about herself. I said I can be a bully sometimes and just plain mean. Alyssa said she wished I didn’t bite my fingernails. But it was in a spirit of casual observation, so somehow it was okay that we were being self-critical and even critical of one another.

Wise Wendell

Sojourners ran a beautiful piece from Wendell Berry, called "Tilling Word and Land," on the connection between farming and writing. Check it out.

Emergent Gathering, 2005

What a magical time we had together in New Mexico. A hundred and fifty or so people made their various ways to Glorieta, a forest retreat laced between the hills and evergreens, and together we made of our gathering what we could. We began cautiously, but I knew things would go well when upon finding a seat before the first main session, a curly-haired stranger named Wendy, noticing I was alone, sat beside and befriended me. It was the kind of ritual in Christian compassion and solidarity that would be rehearsed many times during our three days together.

Perhaps the best part of this event for me was the sheer lack of strut and puff. We were not a people who needed our egos stroked. We were a people led to this place by a desire for Christ and his mission. In many ways the spirit of our gathering was summed up by Grace McLaren in a pleading prayer that God would never forsake us. We were pilgrim souls in breathless need of God.

I talked to a fifty-something man who said he felt like a giddy 14-year-old at a really good youth retreat; he said he did not often get to feel that way. Indeed, we don’t, and I believe this has more to do with our cocoons of protective busyness than anything else. I know how silly it is to get caught up in the emotion of newfound belongingness. But it is a holy silliness, a joy born of relief that maybe somebody out there can relate to me.

It is not so much ideas and theories that I carry back home with me in this jet at 32,000 feet but rather dreams of how I might make a living offering to the kingdom of God. The conversations I participated in brought me into ways of living I had never considered before. In the words of J.R., “I thought I was living holistic Christianity. I wasn’t.”

Highlights:

- Cigars and scotch at 202!
- Meeting Julianna, an obviously sophisticated, generous person.
- I saw a coyote! A real live wild dog trotted between two copses of trees, glancing over his shoulder at me, Doug, and Damien while we were on a walk. But it gets better. Damien shrugged his shoulders like it was a squirrel and said he saw those all the time. Show off.
- Meeting Grace, a recent empty-nester who is loving life.
- Brian’s talk on the need to shift from the idea-driven language of postmodernism to the life-driven language of post-colonialism. See anewkindofconversation.com
- Meeting Jason of Christian Century. What a publication. And after meeting Jason I know why.
- No TV, no telephone, and very limited access to the Internet. It was hard at first, but I grew to love it.
- Meeting Andrew Jones finally and hearing the words of Jesus from him as he taught us how to make pizza.
- The children. All those beautiful children.
- Kelly Bean. She looks like a young version of my mom. I’m serious. If I showed you a picture of Kelly next to a picture of my mom in college, you’d think they were the same person.
- Ken and Deborah. Wow! These two should be beatified.
- And so many more…

If you missed this one, stay tuned at www.emergentvillage.com for the next as well as comparable events. You can also sign up for emailed updates there.

Knocking around in my head

Here's something I found myself writing to a professor friend minutes ago . . .

If the institution is to the church what the body is to the soul, then we as leaders need to focus much more on making better persons of ourselves than on the functions of the institution. Too many pastors today appear to be no more than "batches of functions" (institution!) instead of living souls of generative energy (church!). And frankly I don't blame the pastors (too much); they're living into the reality that is expected of them. Makes me want to scream my head off.

And this . . .

I've been reading about network theory, and I just felt compelled to write and say I'm really excited about it. I think I'm "getting it" in a way I hadn't before. The reason I'm excited, I think, is because it takes me further into the whole idea that church as "service in a building" has had its day.

I'm really jazzed by the idea of the church being a living network of relationships not only because it means we can have more influence but also because, understood this way, church becomes who we are all the time.

Man, I just think this whole business of segmentation--that, you know, this part of my life is for church and the rest is for something else--is in the very GUTS of most Christians. I mean, we just can't even conceive of being the church all the time everywhere. We've been socially programmed to think of church in an entirely different way. But actually, for me, the idea that I am a living part of the church all the time in all I do is really liberating. It frees me to be who I've wanted to be all along.

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