Just Close Your Eyes

 I’m frustrated.  Frustrated about the world situation — who isn’t?  But it is more than that.  It is the frustration of not doing anything positive.

 

I woke up this morning from a very disturbing dream.  It was about a black man, taking a stand, by sitting on a corner step.  He had a need, a need to be taken seriously. 

The dream is muddled in my mind now; but it had to do with my desire to help this man and his family in some meaningful way.  

But as always, this situation got more and more complicated.

As I lay there my mind was thinking about how I could be of help.  And the question came: What do you want to help?

It is an important question I think.

Then my mind went to a much larger scale of the dilemma.  This world is made up of different kinds of people — different skin, different religions, different everything.

In the moment I  became very conscious of my own mindset and began to question, wonder, what we could do to adjust our personal life conditioning.

Conditioning, that was our growing up year — our life forming years.

Specifically the truth of how all of we different beings grew up condition in a specific mindset — and why that conditioning was understood as simply true. 

“Blacks” and “whites,” “yellows” and “browns” and “red skins” all grew up with different cultural understandings.

And my mind asked:  “When you look at someone who is a different color — but are the same inside — how is it that the two of you can come to some better, deeper, understanding of each other?

How can we together find new ground?

My answer: close your eyes.

Just close your eye.  It made such good sense.  Just sit down facing each other and shut your eyes and talk.

No program, no agenda, no organized discussion.  Just two people that would like to be understood.

The man, in my dream, didn’t need my help.  He needed my respect.

No program can teach someone to respect.  How do you program someone to respect?

Thats as far as my morning wonders took me.  

Many years ago, in a seventh and eighth grade confirmation class, I had the kids lay down in a circle, on their backs, looking up at the ceiling.  The rule was they couldn’t look right or left only up. They could not see who was talking. They couldn’t respond, in any way, to another person’s thoughts.

I have found that young people are much braver to express themselves if they aren’t face to face with their peers.

I believe it is the same with adults.  

I can’t help but believe that if we could find a safe place for people to share their hopes and dreams; without the hindrances of their cultural conditioning, we could take tiny steps to some small kind of reconciling differences.

Heres my imagination:  A meeting room with spaces for two people to talk privately.  My mind is going to the old confessionals.  A place where the two people talking can’t see each other. The only rule is each party will not use past history to gain understanding.

Example: No identification that would reveal their skin color, personal victimization, etc. 

The experiment is to be anonymous.  A very controlled experiment like what they do with scientific experiments.  No one knew the others wider background.

The intention of this process is that people, hopefully, want to find a solution to the huge, gigantic, dilemma we find ourselves in today’s diverse world.

As I am thinking about all of this, I am reminded of the powerful move  ‘Freedom Writers.’  Hilary Swank played a young new teacher who found herself in a conflicted classroom situation. She met the challenge in a most genius way.

She got the kids to realize that they were all the same inside — that is they were all afraid.

 Long story, short, she got them to express themselves in a most private way — writing their thoughts and feelings in a notebook.

You’ll have to watch the movie in order to get the full affect.

My point is the impossible worked; because she took the time to meet the challenge rather than to throw up her hands.

It is my strong belief that we, as the church, need to follow her example.  We can do that by using our God given imaginations instead of following the same-old idea of programs and meetings.

Just my bias!

By the way, Jesus modeled the way of life he wanted us to follow.  He didn’t have a program.