Fitted for Shoes

I used to be a bellringer, and one church I visited used to practice on a Saturday night before adjourning to the local pub. Once I was so late that I decided to go straight to the pub, the lounge bar of which was in darkness 'set aside' for the ringers. The landlady didn't recognize me so only grudgingly did she turn the lights on and serve me a pint. When I turned and sat in 'Frank's chair', however, she positively glared at me. Clearly I would never measure up to Frank, still less ever step into his shoes, chair or whatever.

A group I've recently left have, bless them, missed me. It was not long however before someone else was found by the establishment and foisted on the group, some of which thought it insensitive that this had happened. Weren't they still grieving, after all?

My own impression was that it was a very sensitive decision, indeed one with more than a whiff of putting the orphan lamb with a barren ewe. Who better to look after a new arrival than a group smarting and struggling to understand the empty place?

Another perspective on such group dynamics is reported in Scientific American Mind, quoting a paper by Katherine Philips et al in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The upshot is that the effect on the group is disturbing, so they go out of their way to understand the different perspectives the newcomer brings. This effect is evidently most beneficial when the newcomer disagrees with part of the group's 'wisdom'. So a stranger in the pack can be most beneficial.

We are called to be disciples. We won't always be welcomed as such. Yet by daring to don a fresh pair of shoes we and the group to which we minister put ourselves in the best place from which to grow.

When the landlady scowls, however, be prepared to shake the dust off ...

First Aid for Beginners

I've quoted Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself before: that bit in which he says we need to play to our strengths rather than expend needless effort rectifying our weaknesses. He has this to say:

"Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong."

There seems to be a logical inconsistency: if we are not good at identifying our strengths (i.e. we have a weak ability in this area), why does Drucker tell us how to do improve?

Anyhow, I come to this piece with a 'strength' I now believe is a weakness. I have tended to think myself good at getting to the heart of ideas. If I try to discern objective evidence for such an assertion, I struggle. I can however discern counter-evidence.

One example of my imagining that I've understood something has to do with the concept of a 'wounded healer'. Having once heard the term I believed it to signify that one needs somehow to be wounded in order to be an empathic healer. That's not the whole picture, though: at least not in the sense that Henri Nouwen used it in his book 'The Wounded Healer'.

Nouwen's use is from a legend in the Talmud, in which a rabbi asks Elijah how he might find the Messiah to ask him when he is coming. Elijah replies that he is at the gates of the city, sitting with the poor and covered with wounds. What sets the Messiah apart is, the rest are removing all their bandages at once and re-applying them, whereas the Messiah is dealing with his own wounds one at a time. In this way the Messiah will always be ready to help others at a moment's notice (while others are preoccupied in re-bandaging).

But which wound to tend first? Or perhaps I should start by looking to the functioning bits between the bandages ... like reason.