Turning the Page

Messages can be messy. We say one thing, they hear another, but we need to be heard so we need to learn about filters and speak with grace and compassion.

The message I heard was probably not the message they wanted to send. Who got it wrong?

Over the past few weeks, the online hotel booking company Trivago has been showing an ad on New Zealand Television featuring a young lady and an older lady. In the ad, the younger lady gets a better deal on her accommodation because she used the Trivago phone app.

As one commenter on Youtube says

‘What Trivago is really communicating in this ad, is that OLD people are ‘not with it’. Young people are smarter and more savvy. Stereotypes in other words.’

What message did you get from the ad?

Now I have asked a few people, and most felt the ad was ageist, discriminating against older people and offensive. Some didn’t see any problem with the ad. That Trivago was helpful to older people.

So I asked a friend of mine, Elizabeth Herr, who is a Certified Body Language Trainer to have a look at the ad.

I don’t see ageism at all. Instead, I see a sense of superiority/elitism from the older woman!

At 0:07, the younger woman has a slightly raised eyebrow, but this seems more indicative of knowing privately that she’s got the better deal – she has a genuine and even smile, but there is no malice.

The older woman, on the other hand, made a ‘show’ of the price quoted to her:

At 0:08, she lifts her chin (also called a chin jut), and her forehead is back. This, in effect, makes her ‘look down her nose’ in a superior manner.

This is followed at 0:10 by an eyebrow raise (to draw attention to what she says), a sideways glance of the eyes and head turn in the direction of the brunette. When she says ‘not bad,’ she also displays a contempt micro-expression (one-sided mouth raise). All of this shows a sense of disdain and superiority.

At 0:15, when she says ‘wait’ after hearing the quoted ‘ninety-five pounds,’ she displays a disgust micro-expression (lips pulled up).

At 0:21, the woman raises her eyebrows at hearing the benefits of Trivago. Eyebrow raise is often indicative that we like or approve of something or think something is ínteresting.

After the brunette explains the benefits of Trivago, she is still smiling at 0:24, but it’s still even (both sides raised, so no contempt).

At 0:26, the concierge tries to pry the card out of her hand while pursing his lips, indicating that he’s feeling stressed, and then right at 0:27, the lady has an angry expression on her face (brow furrowed).

The only ‘dig’ here might be that Trivago is insinuating that people of a certain age bracket are less ‘app savvy’ than the younger generation and is making them aware of their application.

You say one thing, and they hear something completely different.

You think to yourself, or you might even say it out loud …

‘Why don’t they listen to me’!

They may well have been listening to you, but you weren’t speaking their language. You weren’t being clear with the message you were sending.

Sure the listener has a responsibility to listen. They have to choose to listen, to make sense of the words, the non-verbals, the context. What they hear will be some version of what you say, but it may not be the right version.

To understand communication, you need to understand filters.

In photography, one of the ways to get some different looking images is to put filters over the lens of the camera.

When the light passes through the lens filter, it is changed and creates a different image to the reality of what is actually there.

We all have filters that we listen to others through.

• Prejudices

A good communicator takes into account the filters people have and adjusts the message for clarity.

1. Find out the filters

The apostle Paul in writing a letter to some early Christian believers, tells us that our speech needs to be gracious, seasoned with salt.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6 

Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out. Colossians 4:6 (The Message)

Enhance the flavor of your speech with grace. Listen and speak with love.

• People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Theodore Roosevelt

1. What was your first response to the Trivago ad?

God, will it always be like this? That was what their heart was wanting to know. The answer lay in knowing their slave master of despair. Hope is the dance partner of Faith and Love.

Every day felt the same, in fact, every week and every month. Do the job, make a meal, go to sleep: repeat, repeat, repeat — monotonous drudgery.

It wasn’t just the repetitive nature of the grind that got to you., it was the slow wearing down of the soul.

It was like something beautiful and purposeful was being scraped off a ‘Mona Lisa,’ dropped on the floor, trampled on, and ground into dust.

They sensed they were losing themselves. Who they were, who they were meant to be — all at the hands of a slavemaster tyrant.

What keeps you stuck? What keeps you in the same Mental Health timezone?

That hole of depression. That tightrope of anxiety.

For a nation of people, it was the oppression of an Egyptian slavemaster. They were building a man’s glory while destroying their own.

That was the lot of the nation of Israel. Slaves to Pharoah. Brickmakers day in, day out.

So they [the Egyptians] organized them into work-gangs and put them to hard labor under gang-foremen.

It’s easy to identify an external slavemaster.

It’s their fault. They are the ones to blame. They are the ones who are making my life miserable. So easy to give others more power than God ever wanted them to have.

Yes, some people are controllers; they like to be slave masters, dominating, and oppressing. They, too, are trapped in their fears.

There is an interesting psychological concept called Locus of control

Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an aspect of personality studies.

Individuals with a strong internal locus of control believe events in their life derive primarily from their own actions: for example, when receiving exam results, people with an internal locus of control tend to praise or blame themselves and their abilities. People with a strong external locus of control tend to praise or blame external factors such as the teacher or the exam. Wikipedia Locus of control

What does your focus tell you about your locus?

I have found in myself and others that focusing on how other people treat you (external locus) takes away a sense of personal power. You give the other more power than they need to have.

We even can do this with God. Blaming God for our circumstances instead of taking healthy responsibility for our own choices.

Oh, yes, and we can blame the devil. ‘The devil made me buy this dress’ by Flip Wilson springs to mind (must listen!).

There has to be a time where you come to an internal locus of control. What can I do? What do I have control over?

There comes a time when you have had enough of being a slave.

The slavery of a belief you have held in your brain. A Pharoah sized belief is keeping you in captivity. You recognize that there is some internal thinking work you need to do.

No one else can do this for you. It’s your brain, your responsibility, 100%.

You cry out in prayer because you realize that this is too big for you to do it by yourself.  

Supernatural goals need supernatural resources. Larry Crabb

You sense yourself as being like those Israelites.

The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cries for relief from their hard labor ascended to God:

God listened to their groanings.

God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

God saw what was going on with Israel.

God understood. Exodus 2: 23-25 (The Message)

Then, in the male aspect of God’s divine nature, God moves (Exodus 3).

God moves to a man on the run. A man also trapped and enslaved by his beliefs. Moses had been living in the desert for 40 years. He had killed an Egyptian slavemaster and had fled.

Forty years of being shaped by both the harshness and the beauty of the wilderness.

Forty years in the wilderness getting to know the beast

We all need a Moses. Someone who will speak healing truth to our lies, the concoctions we have created in our minds that keep us enslaved.

It will be Spirit (Holy) nudging, poking, prodding, alluring us to face the falsity.

I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth.  Jesus John 14:16-17

The words of encouragement will come through others. People who have a compelling vision for you that things can be different. Silence will be involved where you have to both wrestle and dance with your own beliefs.

I, Barry, may also be involved. If I can, at the very least, pray for you, then it would be a great privilege. Send me an email via the contact form.

Will it always be like this? I don’t think so. History tells me that change happens. Hope is the dance partner of Faith and Love, so let’s keep seeing where this leads.

• Despair is what happens when there is a lack of new creation. When things are just are what they are and there is a deep sense of impotence that there is nothing you can do about it. Rob Bell Episode 219 | Jesus H. Christ – Part 9 – Is That His Last Name?

1. What beliefs are keeping you, enslaved?

Barry Pearman

Image cc: Nagy Arnold

Criticism comes to us all, but we can grow through it. We need to listen, ask questions and learn how to handle it with dignity.

They knew what was going to happen even before they got home. They were going to have to run through a gauntlet of criticism.

• Where did you go?

Some of the words were like outright punches to their soul, while others were like a cat digging its claws in just to let you know its there. Little scratches, dragging deep, cutting to the core.

This was becoming a normal part of life.

Poke, poke, prick, prick, punch, punch.  It was wearing them down to where they saw every little comment as a criticism. They were getting swallowed up by the negativity and losing their breath.

It’s a sad reality that words can cut you down, and little jabs can take you out.

Have you ever been criticized? How did you handle it?

Most of us don’t handle criticism well.

All too often, one criticism collects with another criticism, and a pattern is formed in our brain. A belief is birthed that we are a failure, everything we do is wrong, and we have no value.

This can be so hard wired into us that even when someone isn’t criticizing us, we still hear it as a criticism. Our negativity bias in our brain can warp even a kind word into a critique.

What can help to handle the negativity is to ask yourself some questions that will shift your thinking out of reaction and self condemnation into a more reflective pragmatic mode.

1. What was my emotional response to the criticism?

 Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts,

As iron sharpens iron,

Remember, you can’t control how others respond to you. What you can control is how you respond to them.

It takes time, reflective time, where you listen to yourself and what gets generated within you when a criticism lands. Then move out from there.

• Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. Matthew 7:3-5

1. Can we become hypersensitive to criticism? How can we defuse the hypersensitivity?

Give them your Shirt and confuse the bully into shame

How ‘Going the extra Mile’ Flips the Power Dynamics

Does ‘Turning the other cheek’ mean I have to keep taking abuse?

Barry Pearman

Image cc: Matthew T Rader

We all have a cocoon around us that may keep us safe, too safe, but there is a time for leaving the old and entering the new. Sometimes we have to walk through the crowd to get there. 

Something new was happening in them. They were changing, leaving. There was a spark in their eyes, and people were starting to notice, comment, and ask questions. They were leaving a tired old cocoon.

It had been a safe place,  but now it was getting too cramped and tight for all the work they had been doing on the inside. It had been mostly hidden work, and only a few knew the struggles and suffering they had been through, but now it was time to evolve. 

When the memories joined up, and the story gained clarity, things began to make sense. When she was offered new truth and insights, further sense was made about who she truly was. Lightbulb thinking moments began to spark, then whole street rows of lights glowed, and a new path was shown.

Massive learnings were beginning to take place.

What she had believed about herself once was now being turned upside down. She was starting to see her life the right side up.

I’ve noticed that often when people have this sense of emergence, there are several responses.

1. Wonderment and joy. Everything seems fresh, alive, and full of adventurous invitation. There is a whole new world to explore.

In an interesting little story of Jesus, we see him breaking out of the cocoon of others’ expectations. Their response was a desire to kill the butterfly.

He had just announced to his township who he was, and they didn’t take kindly to his divinity.

They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. Luke 4:29-30

At times you have to leave the town behind because the town will keep you in the mindset of a town.

The next time he came home, the town still kept him in the framework of the past.

He came to his hometown and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said,

“Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him.

But Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.” 

The town saw him as the carpenter’s son, mother – Mary, brothers, sisters.

That was the identity for which they could place him in. The markers of identity were true, but he had left the cocoon of their context.

They were trying to fit the box of their context around the Son of God. Impossible.

No miracles happened there, nothing of life-changing power for them. Jesus moved on through the crowd yet again. Leaving them behind in their own cocoon.

What are the walls you are pressing up against that need to broken apart? Are there some beliefs about yourself that you need to tear away? Are you allowing others to define your town?

There is a beauty and purpose that may well be waiting for expression.

Let it come in its own time and walk through the crowd because, as Mother Teresa says, ‘it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.’

• And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.

1. What frameworks do you and others keep yourself in?

Image cc: Suzanne D. Williams

Anxiety can make you want to control, but learning to detach can bring peace. Perhaps you care too much and its time to let go.

She was holding on tightly. Too tightly. It was care, it was love, but in that embrace, she was suffocating the life out of the other, and destroying peace in herself.

She was not allowing the other to find their way through the pains of growth.

I know what it’s like. You become so emotionally attached to someone that they are glued to your soul. In a good sense, its love, but on the dark side, it can lead to control, manipulation, anxiety, worry, and fear. 

You see their warts, and you want to fix, rescue, or save them.

A heartbeat of anxiety pounds within your head and worry flows around you.

You’re consumed by it, but you know that there is nothing you can do. You’ve tried to control, manipulate, and bribe compliance, but the more you do this, the greater the anxiety grows. You try to take power over the situation, but it only backfires in your face.

I’ve noticed in these times of fear that a quiet invitation to detach comes. To let go that which I have been clasping on to.

I think that the best way I can describe this healthy form of detachment might be in two metaphors and a parable.

Space vehicles

I see myself letting go.

The release in the dance

Two dancers joined together. Hand to hand, eye to eye, waist to waist. There’s a closeness and a connection, but then comes a moment when one dancer is released to perform another movement. There is a healthy detachment with the hope of return.

Loving the prodigal

It’s a story with many layers, but in the parable of the Loving Father (Prodigal Son), we see a loving father releasing his son to go his own way. Its a detachment. He is letting the son go.

There is the hope of a return, but it’s not certain. The father is not dependant on a son’s approval or love for him to have peace. The father hopes and looks for the son to learn something about his very own loving and secure nature.

The son enters the darkness to return to the light.

Healthy detachment comes with love for the other and yourself. You realize that holding on is not helping them learn. It’s not helping you find peace. Your protecting them is not allowing them to learn from the natural consequences.

Unhealthy detachment comes with selfishness. It’s all about you and getting your needs met your way. You have no concern for them at all. Its the opposite of love, its indifference.

One of my favorite quotes is this.

“Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.”  G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

What he is saying that if you live your life like a chessplayer where you are trying to control all the pieces and manipulate an outcome, then it’s going to be very stressful and anxiety forming.

Whereas, a poet finds creative freedom by being attached to the ‘imagination.’

Detaching requires wisdom. A knowing that it’s going to be ok on the other side.

This knowing is discovered through practice. The more you learn to let go, the greater you learn that you will be ok. That someone greater is still holding your hand.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr serenity prayer is a prayer of release and detachment. Its a prayer you might like to pray whenever those feelings of anxiety well up.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Reinhold Niebuhr

Anxiety can make you want to control, but learning to detach can bring peace. Perhaps you care too much and its time to let go.

• Anxiety can make you want to control but learning to detach can bring peace. Perhaps you care too much and its time to let go.

1. What feelings emerge when you consider letting go and detaching?

A Simple Way That God Cares For Your Worn Out Soul

Barry Pearman

Image cc: Natalie Grainger

‘Power over’ was normal, but ‘power with’ was what they needed. When we listen deeply, we move forward.  Mental health flourishes when power is shared.

She was small in stature, and I think she also saw herself as being a little person, insignificant. She was also quiet and never really said much or offered up an opinion. When she shared some of her story, I learned how, as a young adult, she had developed schizophrenia.

In her delusional state, she had done some very destructive things to people’s property. She had been committed to living in a Mental Health hospital and lived there for many years.

In an ordered regimented world like one of those old Mental Health hospitals, you lose your power, and you can even lose your identity.

Do this, do that, and you and the world will be safe. Straight jacketed secure, but safe none the less.

But I always made it a point to seek out her opinion. Not the surface opinion but her views deeper down, under the self-belief she had that her opinion didn’t matter.

There was gold to be had under the layers of power abuses she had endured.

In mental health work and much of life, we need to understand the role of power. Who has it and how it’s used. ‘Power over’ and ‘Power with.’

Power over

It’s ‘My way or the highway’; Win: lose where I win, and you lose; ‘I know what’s best for you.’

This type of power is enforced in many ways. It could be by controlling the resources we need to live: money, food, shelter, medical care. Or it could be more subtle by controlling information, approval, love.

We often only become aware of its functioning when we see it in its extreme. The bully and the battered wife.

Sometimes, particularly in Mental Healthcare, it is needed. When someone is unwell, they may not have the rational ability to make informed decisions. For their safety and the safety of others, they may have to receive compulsory enforced health care.

I well remember talking with people who were having psychotic episodes who thought they were perfectly well, yet everyone around could see that they had lost contact with reality. They were hearing and seeing things no one else experienced, and this was leading them to want to do dangerous things. There had to be an intervention for their sakes as well as society as a whole.

Power with

This is sharing the power to make a decision about what to do.  It grows out of the soil of listening. There is mutual respect and support for each other. A valuing of each other’s opinions and a desire to learn more.

In a ‘power with’ relationship questions are asked

• Can we work on this together?

When someone becomes unwell with Mental illness, often they lose a great deal of power. People, with all the best intentions in the world, tell them what they should do.

Go to the doctor, read this book, try this herbal remedy. In looking for help, they may get all the advice but little support in working through the options.

Often there can be a disconnect with an ability to do anything about heir situation. They don’t know about the options available to them.

Many times I have sat with people who have been confused about their mental wellness. The best message I have given them is, ‘I don’t know what is going on either, but together we will find a way through.’ Then we might talk about options such as going together to see a Doctor.

I believe that how you view God is how you view everything. If you think God is a distant old man in the sky reigning ‘power over’ lighting bolts down on us, then that is going to color your thinking.

For me, I believe that God is in a ‘power with’ us relationship.

We may be looking for the miracle ‘power over’ encounters of healing when all along God offers us miracle moments of ‘power with’ love and grace.

John tells it this way

The Word became flesh and blood,

In the Greek, it says that God came and tabernacled with us. A tabernacle is a tent, so I see a holiday campsite and God coming and setting up a tent next to mine. We share some sausages, have a few beers, listen to the cricket (sport), and maybe go fishing together.

The presence of God tenting with me empowers me to express this ‘power with’ relationship with others.

The invite is to observe those moments where you want to quickly ‘power over’ others. Why do you want to do this?

Then to pull back and look for ways in which you can develop a ‘power with’ relationship.

It starts with listening. Asking good questions and providing information that will keep the dialogue flowing.

Empowerment of others may mean a lessening of your own self. It may mean putting the needs of others ahead of your own. It may mean taking the back seat so others can learn to drive. But hey, then you can enjoy the scenery!

• If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1. What examples of ‘power over’ and ‘power with’ can you think of?

Further reading

Barry Pearman

Image:Ryan Tauss

We all want immediate results. A change to our situation, but Mental Health recovery takes time, so let’s be patient with ourselves and others.

‘I wish this would go away’ were the unsaid words messaged in the face of despair, looking at me.

I had seen that gaze many times, and with compassion, I would have loved to have given them a miracle sweep of a magicians wand and see their depression leave, the memories of trauma retreat away, the marriage restored, the grief softened.

We live in an immediate world. With the gentlest of touches on the screen of a smartphone, we can get instant results.  But the healing of a broken soul can seem interminable. 

Of course, there is a time for pace, to get to the desired location quickly and efficiently, but I have found in my own life and others that in the healing of the soul, in Mental Health recovery, there are no shortcuts.

If a so-called shortcut is found and taken, then it seems that you wind up back where you started in the first place, still facing the problems and the pain.

Short cuts to relieve the pain might be a preferred addiction – drugs, alcohol, porn, hobbies, sex, shopping. Anything that offers the briefest of moments of avoidance. We also like to minimize, fix the problem quickly, move on, move.

We slap a bandaid on the wound without cleaning out the pus, and we think we’re done.

We have a brand of cheese here in New Zealand called Mainland cheese. Its made in the South Island, and part of its branding message is that it takes time to make good cheese.

The advertisements feature images of beautiful South Island scenery and peaceful music. It’s like stepping back into another time with two elderly gentlemen talking about the old times. It’s very nostalgic.

The message is that ‘good things take time.’

Mental health takes time. Reflection time and brain change time.

When you look into a mirror, you see the image of yourself a fraction of a millisecond ago. It’s the speed of light, but it is history you’re looking at. So you comb your hair this way or that. You apply makeup, or you shave that bit of stubble you missed.

You observe the reflection and learn from it.

Experience is not a great teacher.

I have seen people have the same experience over and over again. They do the same stupid things repeatedly, and never learn from them.

They haven’t taken time to dig deep into what has gone on, why they repeatedly do the same thing over and over again. They have a blind guide, and it’s themself.

Mental health grows out of deep and sometimes painful reflection. Taking time to embrace the reality of the struggle fully.

Good things can’t be rushed. It takes time to sit and ponder.

It’s so good to know that our brains are capable of being rewired. That we can have new networks laid into the physical structure of our brain. This, of course, takes time.

I would love to be able to see the rewiring of my brain from when it was at its most depressed/ anxious state many years ago to where it is now. Old pathways are dying off, new ones growing, and then falling away as even fresher and more unique paths take their place.

Brain change is a process of unlearning old ways and learning new paths.

Its an evolving creative garden of neurological delight.

In the past, when I have been asked to pray for the healing of someone with a Mental Illness, I have prayed for those small little neurons to change physically.

That is where Mental Health miracles take place.

Most people want an immediate change to the way they feel and think, but that would be a too radical change for anyone to handle.

Mental health healing is slow and gradual. It needs to be. No one could handle a brain transplant the way we emotionally want it to happen.

There is some good work going on, but it takes patience for the maturity of the cheese to come.

Patience, not pushing, demanding, or pressuring yourself to be something you’re not ready for. There is a natural healing that has to take its own time.

There is a practice to be had of acceptance and then stepping out and trying new things. Patience grows out of an awareness of our limitations but with a gentle hope for something more.

Imagine all the billions of neurons in your brain. Super tiny, all firing off little electrical messages that help you do everything you do.

Some of those neurons have run their course in your life. They were useful once, but now after careful reflection, you want to learn some new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. That may seem daunting to you, but let’s keep focused at the size of a neuron. Super small, you want to see change.

Form a habit of small.

Prayerfully ask God to help with the rewiring of your neurons.

I have lots of suggestions in my free ebook  Four Spiritual Exercises for Mental Health. 

Also, there are links below to other articles that can help.

• Where there is great love there are always miracles. Willa Cather

1. Why do we want quick solutions?

Barry Pearman

Image cc: Alexander Maasch

Many live under a false identity, a name used for the convenience of others, but when we learn their true name connection happens. So what’s your real name?

She said what her name was I knew that it wasn't her real name.

Now that caught my attention because in front of me was a lady of apparent Indian descent. Being the curious character I am, I pushed a little further, and she told her ‘real’ name.

I call her by her real name now. Connection.

I understand why so many people with foreign names adopt a new name. Its called convenience. It’s easier for others to remember, to speak, and I suppose it is a statement of a desire to fit in.

I’ve been carrying out this weirdo experiment for a little while now. Wherever I go regularly, and I see the same person serving me like at the petrol station, I ask them their name. If I think it’s not their real name, then I push a little further, ask them their real name, and endeavor to remember it for the next meeting.

Some of the Asian names are difficult to say because of all the tonal inflections, but just because it might be challenging to pronounce does not give me a license to ignore their true name.

One person used the words ‘True name’ to describe the name they had been given.

My brain leaped at the word ‘True’ because it’s opposite to the word ‘False.’

Maybe it is a false identity that we are dealing with — living under a false name.

True self/ false self.

Do we want to know something false?

When I recently asked someone how it felt that I wanted to know their name, they said it felt good, nice, and special to think that someone wanted to ‘put the effort’ into knowing their name.

I suppose they felt welcomed and valued.

In God’s economy, there are no foreigners. God knows everyone and knows them all by name. Their true name.

Explicit instructions were given as part of the law.

“When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt. I am God, your God.  Leviticus 19:33, 34

Welcoming the foreigner may be as simple as getting to know the true name of the person who mows your lawn or serves your food at the Dunkin Donuts.

We live in an increasingly lonely world, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The foreigner maybe someone you meet every day but is disconnected at a heart level of connection.

It’s often inconvenient to stretch out and be vulnerable.

To open your arms, metaphorically, and embrace the other means your own heart is being exposed to the potential of rejection. A behavior of love being misconstrued as an act of intrusiveness.

Jim Wallis, in his book Faith Works, tells the story of a lawyer, Dale Recinella, who gets involved in helping out at a local Soup Kitchen.

About twenty years ago, I started helping out at the noon meal of the Good News Soup Kitchen in Tallahassee.

It was located in the city’s then worst crack/prostitution district, halfway between the State Capital and the Governor’s Mansion. I showed up every day in my three-piece suit to help from 11:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

The staff assigned me to “door duty.” That meant my job was to ensure that the street people are lining up to eat waited in an orderly fashion. Every day, I stood at the door for an hour, chatting with the street people waiting to eat.

Before I came to Good News, “street people” was a meaningless term. It defined a group without defining anybody in particular. From the comfort of my car, my suburban home, and my downtown law office, street people were just “those people out there somewhere.”

Then, one day, an elderly woman named Helen came running to the Good News door. A man was chasing her, threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him back his dollar.

“Tell him he can’t hit me here ‘cuz it’s church property!” she pleaded.

In true lawyer fashion, I explained that Good News is not a church, but he still couldn’t hit her. After twenty minutes of failed mediation, I purchased peace by giving each of them a dollar.

That evening, I happened to be standing on the corner of Park and Monroe, a major intersection a few blocks from the State Capital and outside my law office. In the red twilight, I spied a lonely silhouette struggling in my direction from Tennessee St.

“Poor street person,” I thought, as the figure inched closer.

I was about to turn back to my own concerns when I detected something familiar in that shadowy figure. The red scarf. The clear plastic bag with white border. The unmatched shoes.

“My God,” I said in my thoughts, “that’s Helen.”

My eyes froze on her as she limped by and turned up Park. No doubt, she would crawl under a bush to spend the night. My mind had always dismissed the sight of a street person in seconds. It could not expel the picture of Helen.

That night, as I lay on my $1500 deluxe, temperature-controlled waterbed in the suburbs, I couldn’t sleep. A voice in my soul kept asking,

“Where’s Helen sleeping tonight?”

No street person had ever interfered with my sleep before. But the shadowy figure with the red scarf and plastic bag had followed me home.

I had made a fatal mistake.

I had learned her name. 

Let’s put an end to fraudulent living and get to know each other’s names, their true names. As we embrace the ‘foreigner,’ we might just learn something about our name and the identity we have.

• ‘An embrace involves always a double movement of opening and closing.

1. Whom do you know that might have a different name to the one they use with you?

Barry Pearman

Image Unsplash Cristian Newman

Life has challenges and can’t be faced alone, but with the help of faithful and loyal friends, we can make it through. We all need a Batman.

They were right there beside me. Where I went, they went. I couldn’t shake them off, and neither would I want to. They saw both my very private moments of despair and the times of victorious success. He was my batman and carried my bat well.

Long before Batman made his appearance as comic book caped crusader, some men had a role in military life as being a batman for a senior officer. They were essentially a servant to an officer in the army.

The term is derived from the obsolete word ‘bat’ meaning ‘packsaddle.’ The batman was in charge of the officers ‘bat-horse,’ which would carry the officers kit during a campaign.

A batman’s duties often included

• acting as a “runner” to convey orders from the officer to subordinates

Batman (military)

Not a name we probably know, but Sam Hodges was batman to J.R.R. Tolkien at the Battle of the Somme in World War I. This place of hellish death and evil was the context out of which Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien, I believe, honors his batman by naming one of the principal characters in the story after him.

In the epic story, a small furry footed hobbit called Frodo is on a mission to rid the world of a powerful ring. Alongside him walks an equally little man named Samwise Gangee, a batman to his friend.

So typical was the loyal response of a batman to his officer is that of Sam to Frodo.

“Come, Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. ‘I can’t carry it [the ring] for you, but I can carry you.”  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

When we look into the biblical hero stories of men and women like you and me, we find batmen.

David had Jonathan. He also had his mighty men who would go way beyond the call of duty to serve their leader.

Naomi had a daughter in law Ruth, who declared her loyalty.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  Ruth 1:16-18

Jesus had Mary

Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  John 12:1-8

There is something special about the truest of batmen and batwomen. They see something beyond the immediate struggle. When the one they are serving loses heart, they come alongside and fill up the encouragement tank.

They know that their role is subservient to some higher calling. That there is a mission, and their part to play is backstage.

I’ve been batman to many. I haven’t dug any actual foxholes, but I have provided places for people to come and find shelter from the storms and battles of life.

It takes the vision of seeing in someone else the battles and challenges they are facing. That takes deep listening.

Then a coming alongside and pouring encouragement into the soul.

For a man, it might well be noticing the remembered movements he is making in his world. He is on a quest, and he stumbles, he falls, you pick him up and tell to keep going.

For a woman, it might well be noticing the beauty that is contained within her. There is an invite there to know something of that divine beauty. She gets hurt, used, and wants to hide, but you confirm the beauty and help her to reveal it once more.

In the foolishness of self individualism, where its all about ‘me’ and less about ‘we’ perhaps we have lost the awareness of batmen and batwomen. The faithful Samwise Gamgee, the loyalty of Ruth, and the self-sacrifice of Mary.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote this

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; ‘The Man in the Arena.’

For every ‘man in the arena,’ there has to be a batman or batwoman in his corner. Someone who will wipe away the dust and sweat and blood. Someone who will give him water and a warm, encouraging pat on the back.

It’s time to acknowledge and endorse the role of Batman and Batwoman and rid Gotham city of despair.

• Real encouragement occurs when words are spoken from a heart of love to another’s recognized fear. Larry Crabb

1. What are the qualities of a good batman?

Barry Pearman

The heart of a man dries up without words of encouragement. But the gift of respect can flood his life with hope. Let’s listen well.

All he wanted was some whispers of thankfulness.

Some acknowledgment that what he did mattered. He had worked hard all day, fought his battles, and sweated out a song. Now Otis wanted to come home and be told ‘Well done.’

He wanted his remembered movements to be noticed, affirmed, and validated as having value, particularly to his soul mate, his wife.

I believe Otis Redding wrote the song ‘Respect’ with those thoughts in mind.

Aretha Franklin changed the lyrics and the music and turned it into an anthem for both the women’s rights movement and the black freedom struggles.

Redding’s version was written from the perspective of a hardworking man who can only look forward to getting home and finally receiving the respect he deserves from his family. His version is less a plea for respect and more a comment on a man’s feeling of worth in his work life and at home. He mentions that he’s “about to, just give you all of my money,” and that all he wants in return is respect.

Franklin’s version [she changed the lyrics] is a declaration from a strong, confident woman, who knows that she has everything her man wants. She never does him wrong and demands his “respect.”  Respect – Wikipedia

You can’t demand respect. It’s a gift from a considered observation.

It’s interesting to dig into the Greek language and discover something of what this word means.

phobeó – to show reverence, venerate, to treat with deference or reverential obedience

It also has some fear-based connotations – to put to flight, to terrify, frighten.

But in the context of healthy relationships, it’s about seeing something almost god-like in the other. Something that captures your attention and admiration.

We are not in a relationship with a mere mortal as C.S. Lewis would put it.

Pulling back the curtain of a man’s fumblings and foolishness, we might see something that makes us stand in awe. That’s respect.

There is a greater story going on, one that has been going on forever, and we are all part of it.

I can trace a few verses of my story back to 150 years ago to where a young man in England boarded a sailing ship and ventured off to a distant foreign land called New Zealand.

I learned a few years ago that before his embarkation, a church service was held at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which was pastored by Charles Spurgeon.

Could my story include listening to one of the greatest biblical orators of ‘our’ time?

I wonder if Charles Pearman remembered the story of Abraham leaving the comforts of his home and venturing out into the great unknown.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. Genesis 12:1

Charles and Abraham remembered and moved.

I remember something of God’s nature and character and move into my world to bring something of the greater story to bear. My children are doing the same. I see the strands of an invisible thread knitting its way through our lives.

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

Aretha might have been demanding respect, but really it’s a gift.

Men and women who demand you respect them lose it in an instant. That’s called authoritarian leadership, dictatorship, demandingness — all repugnant.

Respect is an acknowledgment of seeing something in the other that makes your heart sing. It’s seeing the remembered movement of a dance that’s been going on forever and cheering on the steps.

If you want to listen to a man, then listen for the remembered movements he makes.

Every man wants to have some sense of acknowledgment that his life has weight. That there is a good consequence to his remembered movements.

1. Become a student of awareness

These three steps may seem weird to you, but practice them and watch a mans life grow

• Praise and encouragement are much more effective in changing others’ behavior than is criticism, but which do you use on yourself? D. Riddell

1. What does the word ‘respect’ mean to you?

Why Male Depression feels like being Impotent and Weightless

Barry Pearman

Photo by Lachlan Dempsey on Unsplash