Remaining more curious than certain

-
My church has a problem familiar to many inner-city mainline denominational churches. With a large, beautiful facility and a membership that is a fraction of what it once was, we have struggled to learn what we need to be in order to serve God's people in our neighborhood, in our city, and in our region.

A small group of us have taken on the task of reimagining how we interact with ourselves and our surrounding community. It has been a long but necessary process, because the neighborhood surrounding our church is changing rapidly, and not always for the better. While the new investment in many of the buildings and homes nearby has been great to see, it has also meant many who have called Detroit's North End home for decades no longer live nearby, all for the sake of progress.

Our facilitator for this journey had us read an excerpt of Margaret Wheatley's book, Turning to One Another (link is to my Amazon affiliate account). It is powerful in the context of my church, but it is also powerful in the context of deciding to share my stories, both in deciding to look for my birth father and the journey my wife and I have enjoyed by becoming parents through adoption.

Here is the excerpt:

There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
Ask: "What's possible?" not "What's wrong?" Keep asking.
Notice what you care about. 
Assume that many others share your dreams. 
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. 
Talk to people you know. 
Talk to people you don't know. 
Talk to people you never talk to. 
Be intrigued by the differences you hear. Expect to be surprised. 
Treasure curiosity more than certainty. 
Invite in everybody who cares to work on what's possible. 
Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something. 
Know that creative solutions comve from new connections. 
Remember, you don't fear people whose story you know. 
Real listening always brings people closer together. 
Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world. 
Rely on human goodness. 
Stay together. 

 I pray that I remain more curious than certain. I pray others follow me on this journey soon, too.

Popular posts from this blog

Marching for hope in our neighborhood

-
Image
The Kid and I walked our neighborhood this evening, but with a different purpose than usual. Many in our neighborhood gathered at Gesu Catholic Church to March for Hope . Roughly this time last year, a federal judge who lives a few streets over, was shot on his front porch in a botched robbery attempt. His physical recovery from the single bullet to the knee took the better part of a year and extensive rehabilitation, and his emotional recovery was sped by his church community and immediate neighbors. I don't know the judge, nor am I a member of his church Gesu Catholic. I'm not much of a protest guy either, I prefer to work behind the scenes. I read about the walk this morning , and almost forgot about it until Gladys started to do some work for a class she's taking. So we bundled up The Kid, and the two of us walked over to the church to support our neighborhood. When we walked into the church, I was struck immediately with the knowledge that this was not a protes...
Read more

Yet another blog of parenting advice

-
Image
A friend whose wife is expecting their first child was asking me for advice today. He's going to be a new dad, so he was asking in general terms because until you're in it, you really don't know what to ask for. My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him to get rest. Lots of it, whenever you can from now until the kids are adults. Forget the idea of work/life balance too, because balance is a myth. Sometimes work will take priority, sometimes the kids will, and sometimes dad has to be a priority. If you're too concerned about hitting a false measure of balance, you're going to miss something. The End of the Beginning And that was it. That's all I could come up with until I got in the car and scarfed down one of the sugar cookies I bought for myself as a treat that I had no intention of sharing. Here's what I came up with. Avoid watching Caillou at all costs. For some reason, kids are absolutely mesmerized by him. No adult on that show holds the kid acc...
Read more

The one question you can ask that is guaranteed to offend an adoptee

-
Image
The more I open up about my personal experience trying to find my birth father, the more convinced I become that people talk about adoptee experiences from the wrong lens. There is an implicit bias toward the adoptive parent perspective that can, and often does, negate the experience of the adoptee. I started really paying attention when people were asking me why I waited so long to reach out to my birth father. That is a legitimate question for his family to ask me, especially when considering he was in the last stages of his life. For the general public, I have a different standard and I would hope they would also ask me a second question, but few ever do. Did your birth family ever come looking for you? The only people that ask are my dearest friends. For the most part, I try to answer the first question sincerely and directly. Usually, I land on something like it took a long time to make the decision because I did not want to hurt anyone but eventually I realized I was ...
Read more