The conversation–dreaded for all the unknowns hidden underneath your specific need–with that person you know only by what wrong you’re seeking to speak to them about, when, in the small space of eight minutes, you will explain how they’ve mistreated you and when you will tell them without telling them that they need to change, and they will accept what you’ve said like a gift, and you’ll really see grace and splendor because it could have gone in a dozen wrong directions.
One Reason To Be Grateful
6 Feb- Comments 4 Comments
- Categories Faith-related, Relationships
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Urban Plan for Intersections
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"We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate." --bell hooks in a book about writing.
"...the artist must bow to the monitor of his own imagination; must be led by the sovereignty of his own impressions and perceptions; must be guided by the tyranny of what troubles and concerns him personally..." --Richard Wright in a letter to Antonio Frasconi
"I mean the common run of us who love magnificence, beauty, poetry and color so much that there can never be too much of it. Who do not feel that the ridiculous has been achieved when some one decorates a decoration. That is my viewpoint. I see a preacher as a man outside of the pulpit and so far as I am concerned he should be to follow his bent as other men." --Zora Neale Hurston writing to James Weldon Johnson
"But that is the rub from any angle--getting the chance." --Claude McKay
"I am in between. Trying to write to be understood by those who matter to me, yet also trying to push my mind with ideas beyond the everyday. It’s a purgatory I inhabit. Not quite here nor there. On good days I feel I am a bridge. On bad days I just feel alone."
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What are you doing in my head today, Pastor Michael?
I started across the street this morning to talk to my neighbor, who was shoveling his driveway (which was strange, since there was barely an inch of snow), about the increase in “business transactions” he has been making on our block, and how cavalier and careless he’s being lately, and to remind him of both of our 4 year old children who may start to wonder what he’s doing…and before I got halfway down my driveway a truck pulled up to him and pulled away 2 minutes later. Sigh. When I get to have this conversation, I hope it doesn’t go in a dozen wrong directions.
We can trade notes one of these days, Katie. And I have every confidence in you since I’ve seen you in action.
Thanks Michael. This post changed the course of my day. We’ll all likely be snowed in on the block this weekend…hoping for some opportunities.
May those opportunities be fruitful and painless, Anonymous