Chaplain's Corner

Not long ago I received an email from a woman in Denmark. She had been reading my articles and felt that I was a person that she could ask some of her spiritual questions. Several years ago I received an email from a woman in England asking if she could quote something I said in one of my articles. One another occasion I mentioned a song I was looking for and I had responses from New Jersey and Saskatchewan. What I am getting at is that we never know what influence our lives will have.

Influence, we don’t think enough about our influence. My wife is a counselor and may times the issues she deals with have to do with the influence that someone’s actions years ago continue to have in her client’s life today. Years ago I had a fellow from the Maritimes begin attending the church I was pasturing. He was a nice guy, he had a wife and four kids, and I enjoyed him a lot. One day he confided in me,”My dad told me I would never make anything of myself.” That revelation explained so much for he lived his life in an effort to prove his did wrong. He had made something of himself. He was a very skilled machinist, he played the guitar and sang and he has since finished a doctorate in theology. Sadly, so much of the energy behind all his accomplishments was to prove his dad wrong, even though his dad had died.

You see, we all have influence. When I write these articles I don’t know if they will be read in Tolstoi, Manitoba, or Calgary Alberta or Abilene Texas or Copenhagen, Denmark. I don’t know if the influence will be encouraging or enraging. I don’t know what my influence will be, because I can’t possibly know who will read the article or what state of mind or what position they may embrace as they read it. But this doesn’t mean that I should be indifferent about my influence.

I was teaching a training session a few weeks ago about communication. In the session we discussed the intended and real impact of what we say and how we say it. We have all experienced this. We say something to a person and they blow up at us and when the dust settles we are scratching our head wondering, “What did I say?” “I don’t get it.” This happened to me when I was in my training to be a chaplain. I was in a training group of three men and two women. One day, I came into our office area and very innocently asked, “How are you gals today.” Now some of you may read that and instantly know what happened and others of you may read these words and think, “What was wrong with that?”

Well, I learned for the first time that day that women of the feminist bent took really offence to being called “gals”. We spent considerable time that afternoon discussing my question and the impact it had on the two women in our training group. I wish I could say that I understood why “gals” is an offensive designation for women, but even after the discussion I just don’t get it. But I did learn that I should find another way to say good morning to a group of women, for there were some that too umbrage to being addressed as gals.

Now I had no idea that this would be offensive, my intention was as innocent as politely asking “How are you this morning?” But the impact and influence of my question had a very unintended outcome; it offended two women that I liked very much.

Our spirituality has to do with a lot, but one of the things that is inextricably intertwined with our spirituality is our relationships with others. As spiritual beings we have an almost unstoppable longing to be connected with other people. We seek to meet that longing in legitimate ways and illegitimate ways, in moral ways and immoral ways; by hook or by crook we find a way to connect to other people. Language of course is one of the ways we do that: spoken language and written language have been passionately engaged from the dawn of humankind’s existence in order to connect meaningfully or not-so-meaningfully with others. That is why we get distressed when something we say is misunderstood or taken out of context or has an impact that we never in a million years anticipated or intended.

Now, we could become downright neurotic if we because overly concerned with the impact of everything that we said. We could become so worried that we may say something to offend or hurt somebody that we eventually become voluntarily mute. I know people who don’t talk much anymore because they are just plain afraid that no matter what they say, it will be taken wrong and the dual pain of hurting another and being misunderstood becomes more than they care to bear. Now this is extreme, but I would imagine that in at least one relationship in your life, you have become a lot quieter than you would normally be, simply because you just don’t know how the other person is going to take what you say.

So what should we do when our influence damages another? Well, we should probably look in a number of different directions to determine what kind of response is appropriate.

First, we should look within – we all have “blind spots” areas in our life that others see clearly but we can not see at all. Sometimes when we have a negative influence on another, their response is actually revealing one of our blind spots and if we can endure the pain or exploring what transacted, as unintentional as it may have been, we will find something in ourselves that we need to address, an area that needs growth, a sensitivity that needs to be enhanced.

Second, we should look to the other – sometimes these inadvertent offences reveal a tender spot in the others life that we were not aware of. I grew up in a very patriarchal setting. The husband was the head of the wife and family, men were leaders in the church and business and industry. Being raised in this patriarchy, I learned that I often communicated in a way that left the women I worked with feeling “subordinate”. I had a few courageous women who addressed this and I am grateful. I honestly don’t believe that women are subordinate to me. And I learned that the culture I grew up in gave we a manner of communicating that did not match my real attitude and left women feeling demeaned.

Third, we should look at the culture we are living and working in. By culture I mean something as small as the culture in a workplace or something as large as the culture of a country. Our community has been blessed with many Filipino immigrants; they have brought richness to our community that is wonderful. One of the realities about Filipino culture is respect for those older than oneself. One of the Filipino men I work with addresses me as “Sir”. Now I prefer “Larry” and even though I have encouraged this, he continues to address me as “Sir”. I have accepted this because I know that this is part of his culture and to not address me in this manner would cause him to feel badly within himself. So sometimes we need to be sensitive to the culture of the person or place we are with or in to understand the intent of what is said.

Even after carefully monitoring my own blind spots, the sensitivities of others and the cultural realities of a relationship we may still have an influence or impact we didn’t intent. When this happens, may we simply be gracious enough to seek to understand, ask forgiveness and do all we can to preserve the relationship. For as I said earlier, part of our spiritual make up longs for relationship and we do ourselves and others a favor when we do all within our power to guard and maintain the relationships we so need to meet these longings of our hearts.