Communication

Chance? Work? A Miracle?

I have been blessed in my life so far to have been impacted an mentored by many people I now cherish. I didn't necessarily appreciate and/or enjoy all of the relationships with some of them during the moment, but I now see how I have been formed and shaped (for good and bad) by them. One of them is an older woman who lived a long fruitful life of many relationships. She was the wife of a pastor who sought to sharpen other people and mature future leaders by basically taking the role of a devil's advocate. Granted many times I wanted to half-nelson her (which would have been totally inappropriate as I was in my 20s and she in her 70s when I first met her - but it sure what have felt good - until I would have had to call 911)...but I digress. The point of the matter is that she taught me a lot. One of the sayings she often repeated was a truism I learned to experience only through her consistent dronings.

"Communication is a miracle."

In my flippant reponses I thought it was stupid, so obvious, too trite to matter...yet on further relfection through life experience, theological wondering, and hopefully personal maturation through social interaction and work experience, I find Isabelle's comment to be so true that it's a bit frightening.


I've thought much about her in the past week or so. I recently posted a blog article entitled "Shop Farmer Joe's". Since then I've heard and recieved several comments by email and phone call about my words/response to the continuing and emerging situation around the unionization debate and spoiled-food-claim-debacle swiming around the Farmer Joe's store in the Dimond and the deep shared desire for meaningful and meaning-making community within the larger context of East Oakland, and specifically the Dimond District (in which I primarily work as serve as pastor of a neighborhood church). Divided between pro-union and pro-business (as we always like to spin our various and diverse positions in a positive light) they all expressed that first and foremost they are pro-neighborhood...excited about the Dimond, proud to live in East Oakland...to have stayed, to have not fled to Piedmont, Orinda, or other safer places through the Caldecot or with a different zip code. They're proud and hopeful that the emergence and opening of Farmer Joe's in the Dimond (after the oringinal store in the Laurel) is a big sign and continuing catalyst of deep, systemic and organizational transformation within our neighborhood seeking to articulate, affirm and embrace the identity - both historic and emerging - of the place in which we move and live and have our being.


In some brief and rapid online reading tonight, I ran across a hot-off-the-keyboard-presses blog entry from Kristine Dang on her Dimondites site entitled "garbage" in which she shares a bit about some of the mis-communication and dis-communication directed towards her in terms of her response and blogging on the whole Farmer Joe's situation. I'm not meaning to take sides, nor taking the easy solution of seeking to be Switzerland. But I can say I deeply appreciate her Dimondites Blog and echo her desire for community and organic, inclusive and participatory dialogue/community within the larger Dimond Context.


Why is it that communication has to be a miracle? In the past week I've had several conversations that went no where. There was no connection. There was no listening because there were either too many elephants in the room or unclaimed baggage needing to be unpacked. I'm not saying I was in the right all the time. Yet the sadness of these multiple encounters were that they weren't encounters or dialogues...they were more like ships passing in the night with horns blowing, or sermonettes preached to another person, or cacaphonic noise. There was no encounter, only failed manipulation, propaganda dissimenation, and endoctrination efforts. Communication is more than just getting a message across. It's more about encounter and dialogue, about two subjects talking with - not just to - each other, in a way that invites and nurtures relationships, births community, and creates initiative towards shared, joint and mutually participatory action. More and more I suspect that there is indeed something sacred about communication. Maybe it is only possible by God's presence, purpose or passion. Maybe a theologian (John V. Taylor) I once read is correct in asserting that the Spirit of God is the "Go Between God" who makes all relationships, inter-personal encounters, and community not only meaningful and meaning-making but also possible. Without something present other than just our will-to-power, or egos, or desires wether spoken or unspoken...no communicaiton, no encounter, can happen.

Reminds me of the words of the apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of his first letter written to the early Christian church community in ancient Corinth

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as
to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all
my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not
have love, I gain nothing.

Words are cheap - as the saying goes...yet Love is the thing that seems most absent in my recent non-encounters and refelections. I'm struck by Kristine's words tonight...and so many others of the past days. Maybe they're brief encounters that leave me longing for more, deeper discussion and thoughtufl dialogue, pointing towards an emerging initiative for shared action in the context of community, instilling in me a desire for love like Paul writes of or the Indigo Girls sing of when they say "love is just like breathing when it's true."