Empathy, Listening, and Confidentiality; or, Everything I’ve Learned So Far.

I’m doing my first real counseling-related project through my school.  It’s confidential.

No no, listen.  IT’S CONFIDENTIAL.

There’s something so grown-up about having confidential work.  After my first meeting for this project, I went home feeling panicked and unqualified, but I still relished the moment where I said, “Jack, I’m going in the office to do some confidential paperwork.”

“Okay hon.”

“That means you can’t know about it.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s confidential.”

Sigh.  “Okay hon.”

Mostly for this project I sit and panic that I won’t have anything useful to say to the people I’m interacting with, or that I’ll say something really wrong and they’ll act on my words and end up suffering even more.  Then I think, “All I ever do is make thing worse.  I’m going to ruin people’s lives.  I should just stay in bed all day.”

Then during my next counseling appointment I tell Susan I feel depressed and I have no idea why.  And she says gently, “no idea why?” and I say, “Well, I’ve been telling myself daily that I suck.  Could that be related?”

Step one to becoming a therapist: learn your own patterns.

When I started my first year at Mars Hill I figured the main qualities of a good therapist were empathy and listening, and I believed that for the most part, I had those skills.  They just needed some fine-tuning.  Turns out my empathy and listening skills were in the wrong key, on the wrong instrument, and not even the right music.  Fine-tuning actually meant unlearning and relearning the song.

Empathy isn’t just understanding another’s emotions.  It involves knowing how you feel in the presence of the other.  Next time you’re with your best friend (or better, the friend you’re not sure that you really like), or your sister, or your kids, having a conversation or baking cookies or whatever, ask yourself what emotions you’re feeling right then.  It’s tough.  You’ll leave that person and realize you had no idea at the moment how you really felt… especially if you felt something not noble, like anger or boredom or disgust.  Most of us were never taught to listen to our quietest inner voices, even though they whisper truth about ourselves and others.

The prerequisite to empathy is knowing your own story.  We all know the surface events of our lives, but not always the underlying currents.  I thought I knew my own story before, but holy shit.  HOLY SHIT.  If you want to hear more, buy me a beer.  If you want to hear more and you’re related to me, buy me 2 beers.  If you want to hear more and were in any way involved in my conception and/or birth, please ignore this paragraph completely.

If you don’t know, really know, your own story, then your feeling of empathy for another is more likely the ache of your own unfinished business.

So much for empathy.  Let’s talk about listening.

I realized with a shock around February that I’m a terrible listener, even though I’ve always been a very gifted nodder and smiler.  But listening actually means recognizing a person’s patterns–what words does she repeat?  How does she draw you in, and how does she push you away?  What does she want you to believe about her?– and catching when those patterns are interrupted, say by anger or sadness or delight.

I’m getting better at this pattern recognition.  But it’s tough to look for another’s patterns while you’re tracking your own emotions and keeping your own life in mind.  You need to make sure you aren’t seeing the other through the lens of your mother’s criticism or your middle-child issues or whatever else you might have going on.

Sometimes, when I’m not preoccupied with proving myself to others (which is pretty much never… that would be one of my youngest-child issues), I have moments of empathy and listening that surprise me, and usually whoever I’m with, too.  I love watching friends connect the stories of their lives, take hold of their own heartache, and put words to their as-yet-unnamed strength.

It’s hard not to come home bursting with the beauty and tragedy of these stories… stories of friends I’ve known for years!  But I try not to spill everything to Jack, at least not in the first 3 minutes of walking in the door.  The hardest part of my future career might be confidentiality.  I need to start practicing.

My White Identity Development

I’m taking a class this term on Multicultural Issues in Counseling, and our mid-term assignment was to write a paper on our own racial identity development.

Part of my white privilege, I’ve learned, is that I never really need to think about my race.  I’ve been told through my schools, churches, government, and media that White is normal.  Not until college did anyone tell me that I belonged to a race and a culture like everyone else, and that maybe my idea of “normal” was culture-bound and oppressive.  And it wasn’t until last month, at the beginning of Multicultural class, that I began to see just how much racism I’ve inherited. Shouldn’t I have known this from elementary school?

I’m re-printing part of my midterm paper on my White identity development.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, but please keep in mind that there’s a tendency to change the topic from race into other forms of oppression (gender, class, sexual orientation, etc).  I’ve certainly done this, so I’m now trying to stay with the topic of race, even through the intense guilt and anger it brings up in me.  Also, know that I’m beginning a process that I wish I had started years ago.

Here it is:

On the first day of Multicultural Issues class, we were asked to discuss the question, “Who makes you dance?”  The “dance,” Professor Hollins explained, is one of anxiety followed by awkward cover-up.  Two panicked steps back and one embarrassed compensating step forward.  A nervous and silly-looking jig.  I thought, “does she seriously want us to name an ethnic group?”  I hoped, as I had in college, that I could admit to being a white victim of societal racism without naming the particulars of my own unconscious beliefs.  I tried to think up a softer answer than the one that jumped into my head.  But I knew that the professor was asking me to give that first answer, the one that nagged from the pit of my stomach.

I sat at a table with four other white people.  The first person said she grew up in the south with many racist attitudes, then when she went to Africa she understood how hard it was to be a minority.  This answer irritated me.

The second person said he felt uncomfortable in large groups when he was one of the only Whites.  Then he added as an afterthought that he felt uncomfortable in all large groups, so it was hard for him to tell how much of it had to do with ethnicity.  This answer irritated me too.

Then it was my turn.

I was furious.  Were these two really going to leave it at that?  Give their vague answers that touched the topic of race then revoked it?  Were they really sitting there claiming victimhood?  How would I look next to them when I gave my clearly racist answer?

I looked at my hands and said, “I, uh, find myself really anxious around… African American men?”  I didn’t mean for it to be a question, but I felt like I needed permission to say that.  Someone at the table nodded.  Then a flurry of words came out of my mouth, about movies and newspapers and the media and how I didn’t mean to develop these attitudes about Black men, but I did.  I suddenly felt that it was very urgent to emphasize my victimhood, and minimize the clear personal racism I had just expressed.  My table seemed just as nervous as I was.  There was silence, then we moved on to the next person.

When I got home I told my husband about this exercise, and started wondering out loud what personal experiences I had with African American men that might have led to my discomfort.  I haven’t had close Black friends since grade school.  I could name a few interactions with Black men that might have confirmed my stereotypes that they are “dangerous,” “angry” and “seductive,” but I could recall far more neutral or positive interactions.  I realized how deeply and unconsciously I must believe advertisements, movies, and news outlets in how they portray Black men.

In the Resistance and Immersion phase, Sue and Sue (2008) write that “for the first time, the [White] person begins to realize what racism is all about…Racism is seen everywhere (advertising, television, educational materials, interpersonal interactions, etc.).”  As I become more resolved to name racism where I see it, I realize how daunting that task is.  I cannot sit in public, watch television, or browse items at a store without noticing how our world caters to white people, and overtly or subtly oppresses people of color.

As I have read, written, and participated in this class, I’ve experienced a lot of what Sue and Sue (2008) describe as “guilt, shame, and anger toward oneself and other Whites” that typifies the resistance and immersion phase.  I worry that I must somehow pay the world back for my privilege, which is a terrifying and impossible task.  I feel guilty for how easily I was able to go to college and now graduate school because of my race and social class.  I am weighed down by the thought that I have not earned my keep in this world.  It’s a relief to know that guilt, shame, and anger are a normal part of the resistance and immersion phase.  Perhaps that means these feelings will not last forever (especially since they are helpful to no one).

Despite feeling so much shame, I am finding that I can stay in the hard and messy conversations much more than I was able to as an undergraduate.  During the lunch break on the second day of class, one student said that she wished Multicultural Issues had been offered the summer before our regular classes started.  But after a pause, everyone at the table agreed that we were glad to be taking the class now and not earlier.  The inner work we’ve done in the past nine months allows us to engage in conversations about race.

It’s paradoxical to me that the very privilege I feel so guilty about– the “luxury of the middle and upper classes” of being able to “sit and talk about things” (Sue and Sue, 2008, p.150)– is what allows me, little by little, to be engaged in conversations about race without completely shutting down. When Sue and Sue write that we have all inherited racist beliefs, I am able to understand that this sad truth is not an attack on my right to exist (it helps that Sue’s language is not personally attacking).  I do not hear the anger of oppressed minorities as a demand on me to somehow make up for years of past pain.  I am slowly able to enter conversations about race as an adult, learning how to be responsible for myself and the harm I’ve done without accepting burdens that are not mine to carry, and without backing out of the conversation in terrified self-defense.

Endings

This week I had to say goodbye to my practicum group.  Before our last meeting, we talked about endings.  Our Practicum Facilitator, Jeanette, told us that people usually try to make goodbye less difficult.  We find something to get angry about, so we can brush our hands off and be done, good riddance!  Or, we create distance, convincing ourselves that we don’t need that person as much as we thought.

As Jeanette went through the list of ways we make parting easier, I heard my own voice at every airport: “I had a great time with you, and I’ll call when I get back.”  We’ll talk soon, I say mostly to myself, so this isn’t really an ending.  I borrow from the future to alleviate the pain of leaving.  And by doing that, I’ve missed so many chances to end well.

Good endings, Jeanette told us, involve remembering.  Ending well means telling stories.  It means recognizing that we’re at the end, and not cheapening the end by backing away from it.  It means celebrating and mourning, together.

So on our last day of practicum, we told stories.  We remembered each other, how we were in September, and how we are now.  I didn’t console myself that I would see these people next year.  I will see them, but we’ll never again be in a group together.  I told each person how I would remember them.  And I heard their words to me, which were almost too good to bear.

Then, the next day, I had my last one-on-one meeting with Jeanette, and that was a billion times worse.  I did not want to say goodbye to that woman.  How do you let go of the person who first confirmed that parts of your own story were dark and tragic, and told you your tears were right and good?  I just couldn’t.  So I didn’t say goodbye for the first 40 minutes.  Instead, I found less painful things to talk about while I creatively didn’t look at her.  Or swallow.

Then when our time was up, I panicked that if I wasn’t honest now, I might never again say anything that mattered.  So I took the world’s shakiest breath in and said, “I was scared to come here today, because I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”  I’m not sure if the last few words were audible or not, but she seemed to get it.  She looked surprised, choked out a soft, “oh,” and started crying.

We sat for two minutes, and I hope to remember those two minutes my whole life.  At the end she said, “You’ve touched my life, Christine, and I won’t ever forget you.”  I think she said that because it’s true, and because she knew I would have trouble believing it.  Love must be much bigger than I imagine.

Since then, I’ve been seeing endings everywhere.  What if I left each visit with my sister saying “I had a great visit, and now it’s finished.  We’ll never have another like it.”  What if I let myself comprehend that, next time I see my nieces, they will be different people entirely.  What if, on our anniversary, Jack and I told stories, celebrated, and mourned the quick passing of our newlywed years.  What if I told my sweet 2-year-old nephew, “I remember your first cries, and I will never hear them again.”

Endings are everywhere.  Death is everywhere.  Sometimes it seems like Good Friday lasts forever, and Easter is only a sad illusion.

Revelation

When I worked at Peet’s, I would often take a person’s order, and while I was making the drink I’d ask that same person, “Can I get something started for you?”

I have a real problem remembering faces.

Jack is very gracious to me when we watch movies, and I have to pause every five minutes to ask, “Wait… I’m so confused. Is that the new lover or the old lover?”

And Jack will be like, “THE OLD LOVER IS WHITE. THE NEW LOVER IS BLACK. HOW CAN YOU NOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT?”

And I’m like, “They’re not straight?!? But what about the woman? Or was it two women? I’m so confused!”

Beyond just not remembering faces, I’m not a visual person. I don’t have a mind’s eye, and my real eyes barely work (contact prescription: -7.5). Recently a friend tried to teach me how to wear makeup, and she was talking about rose shades and berry shades and bluish browns and greenish purples and I was like PLEASE just give me a tube of lipstick that doesn’t make me look like I forgot to sleep last night.

I’m intimidated by all things painted, drawn, sketched, sculpted, or visually representative of something else. This is one of the reasons I’ve never read the last book of the Bible. Revelation is just too visual for me. (The other reason is the people who love Revelation. Or more precisely, people who love thinking that Revelation is about them. You know what I’m talking about.)

So when I saw “Apocalyptic Literature” on the syllabus for my New Testament class, I was intrigued. I was pretty sure no one at Mars Hill would claim that the European Union was a sign of the End Times.

At the beginning of the 3-hour class, the TA, Rob, talked about features of apocalyptic literature. Then, for the second half of class, he turned off the lights and read the book of Revelation, out loud, from beginning to end, with no interpretation or commentary.

Image after image bombarded us. Four-headed creatures and fire and swords. Sounds of thunder and weeping and rushing waters. An earthquake. Shining white linen with golden sashes. Pus-filled sores. A woman in labor and a dragon waiting open-mouthed at the end of her vagina to devour her child.

And it was too much. My poor imagination has not been worked so hard in years. It tried to keep up, but like a rusty old bike chain it snapped and got tangled in itself. And whenever it became too much, whenever I was tempted to go get a drink of water or check my email or stand up and beg Rob for mercy–whenever I thought I would burst into tears if my senses were strained any further, one of Revelation’s horrific creatures would cry,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”

As if they, too, were full to the brim and begging for mercy.

At the zoo

Last month I went to the zoo with Jack, and we discovered the indoor tropical exhibit. The first cage held an ocelot, which I had never even heard of. I took one look at it and immediately told Jack three things:

1) I want one.

2) If I were in Harry Potter my patronus would be an ocelot.

3) That face just turned my insides to goo.

It was seriously the most beautiful creature I could imagine:

A few weeks later I was sitting in class thinking about ocelots when it hit me: what do the babies look like? I googled, “Ocelot babies” and found out that two kittens had been born to the Woodland Park Zoo ocelot in September. I immediately gmail-chatted three things to Jack:

1) Ocelots have babies.

2) Ocelot babies are near my house.

3) There is a God.

Yesterday my friend and co-student asked if I wanted to go to the zoo and talk. It seemed like a good place to go on a February afternoon. Because February is tough, especially for students. It’s a good month for ruminating and brooding. I liked the idea of brooding with Grace while watching otters play. It seemed like such a ironic, both/and, already-but-not-yet, ambivalent, “hold everything in tension” thing to do.

When I saw the sun this morning I thought, “No no no, this takes away February’s usefulness. How can I possibly brood when the sun’s out?” But of course, it was wonderful. The animals were displaying their best quirky/horny spring behavior. AND. The ocelot kittens were to be in their exhibit at 2:30.

We had an hour to kill, so we meandered towards the day-and-night exhibit and talked. February has been hard. Grace talked about her tears, and how she had hoped that Mars Hill would erase them, but instead people call them a gift. I’ve been realizing my own secret fantasy that Mars Hill would teach me how to be bold and outspoken, so I could be seen and heard and fully accepted.

Mars Hill is not known for fixing problems. One of our professors says that a therapist’s job is to make things worse before making them better. I’m beginning to think that the “better” is much more beautiful and painful than I can now imagine.

There’s a little walkway between the zoo’s indoor day and night exhibits. The walls are painted with dark, shadowy forest against a night sky. A Wendell Berry poem leads you from the day exit to the night entrance:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

We stopped. “I’m reading that really differently today,” said Grace.

Yes, I thought, me too. It’s not just about bats and owls today.

Maybe things don’t get better. Maybe I will be lonely and unseen. Maybe Grace will always have tears. Maybe everything is always and forever dark.

We paused, and Grace finished both our thoughts: “But it’s been traveled before.”

For the Prospective Mars Hill Graduate School Student

Dear person who browsed here from the MHGS Blog Hub,

Last week we had an assignment that was nicknamed The Tragedy Paper.  We were to write the story of a “defining personal tragedy,” and reflect on how it affected our Faith, our Hope, and our Love.

I have not led a tragic life by most standards.  The story I ended up writing had never been called a “Tragedy” by anyone, including me.  When I first told this story to my Practicum Facilitator in September, I spoke of my adolescent self in third person.  I had very little love for her.  She had embarrassed herself.  Surely she deserved what she got.

My PF looked horrified.  “Do you hear the contempt in your words?” she asked.

I tried telling the story again, through a different lens.  I started to listen to that teenage girl.  She was scared, and trying so hard to do the right thing.  She asked for an advocate, because her world silenced and dismissed her.  I spoke for her, not with contempt, but with compassion.  In defending her, I grew more and more angry.

If all that sounds weird, but also intriguing and maybe a little bit wonderful, consider applying to Mars Hill.

I made the mistake of going to the coffee shop where I used to work to write my paper.  First I typed out the part that I remembered best: the horrible words that were spoken to me, the ones that have echoed in my head for years.  Then I went to the bathroom to weep.

For three hours I sat at Peet’s Coffee, reflecting on my tragedy as well as my Faith, Hope, and Love.  The customers I used to serve came over and asked if I was okay.  And I really didn’t know the answer.  No, I’m not okay, this hurts.  But then again, Yes, I’m wonderful!  Writing this paper feels right and good, and the dead part of me is beginning to stir.  And did I mention that I’m furious?  Yes, I’m very angry, and I think that’s part of the new alive-ness.  Thank you for asking, how are you?

I turned in that paper along with my 90 classmates.  We were exhausted.  All week we had wept, raged, and posted not-so-clever facebook status updates (“Christine is working on her tragedy paper…. FUCK EVERYTHING”).  Some had shared their tragedy papers with new friends.  None of us are the same since handing it in.

In the end, I was proud, so proud, of that paper.  I’ve rarely heard my own voice freed from the demand to please others.  It was unapologetic, furious, explosive.  It blew open a space in my soul for God’s words: I grieved that too.

I like this school.  Maybe you would too.  Drop me a comment or email if you want to talk.

Why I’m having trouble blogging

… it’s because of the therapy.

Therapy is doing what it’s supposed to do… that is, it’s helping me express my feelings with increasingly dramatic adjectives.

Here’s a game:  One column contains words and phrases I used pre-therapy.  The other column has new words that I’m finding more suitable.  See if you can guess which column is pre-therapy and which is post-therapy:

Sad  …………………………………………………………………………………. Heavy with grief

Kinda vulnerable ……………………………………………………………… Completely exposed

A little down …………………………………………………………………….. Burdened

Angry…………………………………………………………………………………. Enraged

Anxious……………………………………………………………………………… Terrified

Fine, thanks, how are you? …………………………………………….. Oh God.  I… I just don’t know.

Why yes, it’s 2:15 ……………………………………………………………. [Breaks down crying]

And as I laugh at my own jokes (someone has to), I’m so aware of hiding behind them, too.  They give a satisfying non-answer to the question, “How’s therapy going?”

I can hear my counselor gently reminding me, “pearls before swine, Christine.”  The Internet is a pig, and my counseling stories are far too precious for its hairy snout.

But in my lighter moments, I’ll make the best counseling jokes I possibly can.

I wish all my assignments were like this one.

I have a short reflection paper due on Monday.  The assignment is to “spend an hour in prayer and in the presence of the Spirit contemplating what is good/beautiful/glorious in your character, and what aspects of your sin/depravity/blindness create the most relational challenge for you.”

If you haven’t ever sat down and asked God, “Please show me what is glorious in my soul,” you’re missing out. I don’t know why that isn’t a commandment in Leviticus.

Here’s my paper:

Last week a friend gave me one of the greatest compliments I could imagine.  She said I was the only person whose bathroom she wouldn’t be embarrassed to stink up.  We both giggled for a while, but I didn’t let on how very touched I was.  I do want to free people from shame and anxiety.  I want to offer such grace that even the biggest social stigmas become trifles.  This desire is one of the most beautiful parts of my character.

But this desire runs so deep because I still carry a fair amount of shame and anxiety myself.  And while one part of me refused that shame and invited my friend to a sense of freedom, I have also dragged others into my own depravity.  One of my very best friends once said that she found me too judgmental about her dating relationship.  She was right, and that judgment came out of my own shame, anxiety, and my flawed sense of right and wrong.

In my contemplative prayer, the idea of judgment came up frequently when I thought about my depravity.  As much as I want to be grace-filled, my heart is convinced it knows the full extent of right and wrong.  I don’t quite know where these ardent rules came from, but I sure have given them a lot of power in my relationships.

It seems clear that my ability to give love and grace to others is limited by how much I allow for myself.  I believe that for my time at Mars Hill, God is calling me to practice my gifts of acceptance, love, and grace on myself more than I have previously allowed.

Therapy

Mars Hill requires their counseling students to receive 40 hours of counseling outside the school with a Licensed Mental Health Therapist.  Licensed Therapists in Seattle charge at least $100 per hour.

$100 X 40 hours = ____

Yup.

Counseling students are going crazy with all this therapy.  We’re surrounded by therapists.  We pay $100 to talk about our parents.  We sit with our Practicum Facilitators (who are also therapists) twice a month and discuss why we were so anxious in Practicum last time, and why we panicked and said that one thing, and why we felt such shame for a whole week after we said it.  And then we talk for an hour about that shame, and our therapists teach us how to listen to it, be curious about it, wonder what other words connect to the word “shame.”  And then we find ourselves telling older stories, stories of really embarrassing times… times when we got it wrong, so wrong, again!  Can’t I do anything right?!?  Didn’t God promise me his Spirit of Love, so I could love others?  Then why do I just hurt people, over and over, why didn’t God change me like he promised?

Then you realize you’re talking about something different… not shame, but disappointment.  Disappointment with God.  How long have you felt that disappointment?  Oh I don’t know, since day 3?  What do you do with that disappointment?  Mostly I just ignore it and worship God with only part of me, a very small part, which really is no worship at all.  Then your therapist recommends that you journal about “What would a faithful God look like?”  And you think, that would be admitting in writing that I don’t think God is faithful.  And she says yes, that’s okay.  He likes that.  He likes to wrestle.  And through her kindness you see just the briefest glimpse of God, a terrifying and beautiful God that wants you to call him unfaithful so the wrestling match can begin.

But your 50 minutes are up!

So you head downstairs, to the student lounge.  Your mind is spinning and you feel that dammit, you’re losing it.  You’re losing that glimpse of God that was in the room during your therapy session.  By the time you hit the first floor you’ve already transitioned back to regular life.  Can I get to Taco del Mar before class? Then someone who knew you were in your 1-on-1 session sees you and asks, “How’d it go?”  And you say:

“Amazing.  We talked about shame.  And shame-cycles, and I realized that I just need to SIT in my shame, you know?  Just SIT in it!  And befriend it!  And love myself!  And we talked about how I hate God and need to wrestle.”

Which of course makes no sense.

Here’s what I’ve decided: describing therapy sessions is like describing dreams.  You just won’t be able to do it justice, ever. You can talk about the man who, in your dream, was your husband…but he wasn’t your real-life husband, and he made you go back to work at the coffee shop because he was mean and didn’t like how powerful you would become in graduate school, so you went back to the coffee shop and everyone made fun of you.  You can tell all that to your groggy husband when he wakes up but it won’t convey the horror and shame, the fury and dread that still linger even after the alarm went off.

Because only half of therapy is what you talk about in the session, the “aha!” and “oh, shit” moments of realization.  The other half is, as Buber would say, the I-Thou connection, the in-between, and the glimpses of the Eternal Thou.  Which Buber can describe only because he’s a late-romantic German philosopher, and most thankfully you are not.

So, many apologies to anyone who, in the next three years, will have to hear me describe my therapy (maybe even regularly).  I know how much it sucks.  And thank you.

Creation, Incarnation, and my 1-year-old Nephew

I’m watching my nephew for an afternoon this week.  The email I sent to my brother said something like, “Out of the generosity of my heart I am offering to babysit for you on Friday.”  But what I meant was, “Can I hang out with your kid?  I need that time with him, I really do.”  The deeper I go into my work at Mars Hill (3 weeks now), the more I miss Joris.

This week we read twenty pages of a 15-volume work by Karl Barth called Church Dogmatics.  The chapter was titled “The Spirit as Basis of Soul and Body.” And through this great work, I discovered what may be the cornerstone of every seminary education… I can now join in the chorus of Divinity students past and present.  May we all confess together that

German Theologians are fucking hard.

I underlined a lot of things in the Barth article.  One of his shorter sentences was “God is the living and active basis of man.”  God sustains our lives by giving us his spirit, not just once but constantly, every second of every minute. In him we live, and move, and have our being.

See, we’ve been reading different theologies of creation, and our professor has been offering us this new perspective: creation is incarnation.  God creates so that he can live within this world.  He re-creates it, day after day.  He is constantly sustaining and creating, and he calls us as co-creators and participants.

Our professor made the outlandish statement that God needs us.  Later he modified it and said, “Okay, need isn’t the right word, but the relationship is murky.  God created us to create with him.  What if, for example, we all just stopped having sex?”

Eighteen months ago I watched Joris take his first breath in this world; a shivering, screaming new co-creation of God and his parents.

Now, I see his delight in the world.  He shrieks when he sees a dog.  He studies faces, and memorizes the regular ones (he even came up with a sign for Obama).  He wants to know how everything feels to the touch— dirt, sand, Auntie Chris’ teeth… I don’t think “childhood curiosity” is an inaccurate term.  But I’m beginning to think it’s more than that.  God is calling Joris to co-creation.  Joris loves the world because of God’s creative spirit in him.

And as I’ve been reading these articles and obsessing over lofty ideas about Spirit and Matter, creation and incarnation, sin and Imago Dei, I have this sense that I will understand this more if I watch Joris play.

I’m looking forward to Friday.