Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

listening

What I’m Learning from My Social Media Fast

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It started with a purple slip of paper on which I’d penned one word.

“Distraction.”

“What is keeping you from growing in your relationship with God?” my pastor had asked at the beginning of the Ash Wednesday service. “What sin is standing in the way?”

I wrote the word “distraction” on my purple slip of paper and dropped it into the basket as I walked forward to receive the ashy cross.

Smart phone in hand, I spend a lot of my in-between time scrolling and swiping, liking and emoting, clicking and skimming. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email — I go from one to the other and back again, my eyes on a two-inch by four-inch screen. In line at the post office, in the dentist’s waiting room, idling at the curb at my son’s middle school, swiping and scrolling, liking and emoting, clicking and skimming.

Distraction.

I vowed to give up social media for Lent in the middle of the Ash Wednesday service. It wasn’t my intention. I hadn’t seen it coming. I haven’t “given up” anything for Lent in years, but the moment I scrawled “distraction” on my purple paper, I knew: social media had to go.

I did not go gently. I argued with God for most of the service. I bargained for Instagram. But it seemed pretty clear; it had to be an all-or-nothing fast. When I got home, I moved all my social media icons on my phone to the very last screen, four swipes in. I’d be less likely to see them there, less tempted to tap.

I noticed the birds first.

Sitting in a sunny spot in my front yard two days after Ash Wednesday, eyes closed, my face tipped toward the early spring sun, I heard the birds, an indistinguishable cacophony of twitters and cackles from the trees, the roof, the power lines. I listened as the blur of chatter began to separate into distinct calls — the screech of a blue jay, tap of a nuthatch on a tree trunk, scuffle of sparrows in the rafters, melodious house finch in the backyard.

More sounds announced themselves while I sat with my eyes closed.

Wind in the white pines, snapping cloth of the neighbor’s American flag, thrum of a bass from a nearby car, skitter of dried leaves cartwheeling across the concrete, chain saw buzzing in the distance.

It had been a long time since I’d listened to the sounds of my neighborhood.

There have been moments like this in the last two weeks. Moments when I listen and breathe. Moments when my soul is stilled.

But mostly, nearly two weeks in, I still get itchy fingers in those in-between times. I’m restless, a low-level agitation humming below the surface.

It’s a near-constant act of discipline to leave my phone in my purse.

Fighting writer’s block, I will myself not to check Facebook or Twitter. Instead, I look out the window. One day, struggling to write the notes for an upcoming talk, I spent most of the afternoon gazing out the French doors into the dull gray of my backyard.

This might sound like a lovely picture of peace. It wasn’t. It was frustrating and boring.

And lonely.

I hadn’t expected the loneliness. I don’t miss the politics. The caustic comments. I don’t miss clicking and skimming until my brain fogs with a swirl of facts and opinions. But I do miss my friends – the real relationships that have formed across the cyberwaves. I miss the pretty pictures of sunsets and vacations and birthday celebrations. I miss the conversations, the random musings, the bits of goodness scattered here and there.

I spend a lot of time on social media in my everyday, ordinary life. Some of it is necessary for my work. Some of it is good for my well-being. Most of it is not. It’s one thing to know this in theory. It’s another thing entirely to understand it in the day-to-day.

So for now I’m listening to the birds and the whisper of white pines in the wind. I’m looking out the window into my gray backyard. And I’m waiting for whatever, if anything, might rise from the depths to the surface.

Advent: A Time for Listening

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one snowy berry

A few weeks ago I sat on a folding chair among a circle of women. When I read the first question from the sheet I held in my hands, a petite, middle-aged woman on my left, her thin hair pulled back into a sparse ponytail, hands clutched tightly together in her lap, launched into a long litany of complaints and lament — a story of illness, suffering, depression, and anxiety that burst from her in a breathless torrent.

The other women in the circle nodded sympathetically. I nodded, too, and tried to look encouraging, but inside, I fretted.

“This isn’t what we’re supposed to be discussing,” I thought to myself. “We need to stick to the agenda. We’re running out of time.” Only 30 minutes were allotted for this portion of the retreat. I was desperate to stay on schedule.

Janet wasn’t answering the question I’d asked. Instead, she rambled on and on, seemingly unable to stop herself. She shared more details, careening off on tangents and then returning to the original thread of her story.

When she finally paused to take a breath, I interrupted and tried to steer the conversation toward the questions listed on the sheet. But Janet persisted. She rehashed details she had already shared, admitting to us that she didn’t know what to do. She was exhausted, she said, hopeless, despairing, and out of options.

snow on birch tree

leaf and waterdroplet

burning bush leaf

We didn’t answer any of the questions listed on my discussion sheet that morning. After trying unsuccessfully to direct the conversation, I finally gave up and let Janet talk. I listened, along with the other ladies in the circle. We occasionally offered a suggestion, but mostly we nodded and listened.

Ironically, obedience was the theme of the retreat I was leading that weekend. During the morning session, I had talked about the biblical Greek word for “obey” — hypakouó – which literally means “under hearing,” and is translated as “to listen attentively.” Yet for a long time, I failed to do that with Janet. I failed to obey the nudge of the Holy Spirit; I failed to listen to someone who needed to be heard.

I am not always open to interruptions, especially when I am busy. Often I’m so wedded to my schedule, to staying on task, I miss these opportunities to minister simply by being present and listening to a person in need. Even when I recognize these moments as a prompt from the Holy Spirit, more often than not I ignore them. I press on, bent on fulfilling my own agenda.

This is the first week of Advent, a four-week period in which our to-do list increases exponentially. We shop, wrap, bake, and socialize, write out cards, fight traffic, and drape the shrubs with lights. Yet it’s during these weeks that loved ones, acquaintances, and even strangers need our attention.

The holidays can be difficult – isolating, grief-filled, fraught with unrealistic expectations. Now more than ever we need to take the time to stop and listen to the lonely elderly person, the disgruntled coworker, the sullen teenager, the grieving friend, the harried cashier – the people around us who are yearning to be heard.

As we walk through Advent, let’s remember that the holidays, while the busiest time of the year, are also the time people most need compassion, empathy, love, and a listening ear.

This year, let’s not let our busyness get the best of us. Instead, let’s embrace the holy interruptions and listen, really listen, to those around us who need to be heard.

This is an edited version of a column that originally ran on December 5, 2015 in the Lincoln Journal Star. 

Sitting on a Bench for Five Minutes a Day

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leafandsun

I started a new thing this week. A small thing, really. When I walk the dog every afternoon, I stop and sit on a park bench for five minutes.

That’s it. I sit for five minutes; that’s my new thing.

The bench is new. It appeared this summer, fastened onto a concrete slab, a memorial plaque on the ground beneath the seat. It overlooks a field of prairie-ish grass, a small ravine, a couple of oak trees, a Scotch pine. In the summer the field and ravine are speckled with black-eyed susans and Queen Ann’s lace, but now, mid-November, the wildflowers have died off, and most of the trees are stark and bare, save the oaks.

The oaks are always the last to relinquish their leaves. They hold onto them, sometimes well into winter, and then, when circumstances are just right, or maybe when they simply can’t hold onto to them for one minute longer, the oaks drops all their leaves at once. It’s kind of annoying, actually. Who wants to rake in February?

On Monday, the first day I sat on the bench, I looked at my watch after two minutes and then again after four. I did notice the oak trees, though — the fact that their leaves still clung, stubborn and tenacious, to their branches when all the other trees around them were bare. When the breeze blew, the rustling oak leaves sounded like sausage sizzling in a hot pan.

On Tuesday I was a little better. I took a cue from Josie, who sat still, ears pricked, nose quivering, I tried to copy her. I looked at what she looked at; I tried to smell what she smelled. I’d assumed she’d be puzzled or restless by our stopping. I thought she’d pull at the leash or whine to keep moving. But she seemed content, sitting and waiting, observing and absorbing her surroundings.

The breeze on Tuesday was lighter. The oak leaves sounded like rushing water.

Silly as it sounds — it’s only five minutes, after all — I resist this bench sitting. I’m reluctant to interrupt my routine, my push to get from Point A to Point B.

Unexpectedly, it feels oddly vulnerable to sit on a bench, right there in the open alongside the path, doing nothing but staring into space, feeling the slippery softness of the pine needles under my feet, sniffing the air for who knows what, listening to the leaves. I’m glad this part of the path is not well-traveled. I wouldn’t want someone to think I am a crazy lady, sniffing at the air, rubbing my shoes across the ground, a dog at my side.

I think that’s what all our movement and busyness and go, go, go and stuff, stuff, stuff does for us – it shields us from exposure, vulnerability; it shields us from our own thoughts, our own selves. Busy movement allows us to skate through our days on autopilot, too distracted to poke at whatever lies beneath.

I don’t know what these five minutes a day of bench sitting will do for me. Maybe nothing at all. Or maybe everything.

Maybe I’ll hold tight to my leaves, stubborn, tenacious, refusing to let go. Or maybe I’ll drop them all at once, like an oak tree on a winter afternoon.

For the Days You Forget to Listen

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My friend Deidra is a gifted public speaker. When she speaks in front of an audience, no matter how large, she’s natural, relaxed, funny and insightful, and she doesn’t use any notes. It’s just the podium, a bottle of water and the Bible up there with her. In fact, Deidra doesn’t prepare for her talks much ahead of time. Instead, she waits for God to, as she puts it, “download into my brain what he wants me say.”

As a planner and a person with a significant fear of public speaking, I am in awe of Deidra’s method. Sometimes I’ll ask her a day or two before she’s scheduled to speak, “So…has he downloaded yet?” If she shakes her head no, I promptly have an anxiety attack on the spot.

When Deidra is preparing to speak, she does two things: she listens to God and she trusts. She trusts not only that God has something specific for her to say, but also that he will communicate that message to her on his timetable, not hers.

budwithtext

I forget this sometimes. I forget that God created me to fulfill his purposes, not mine. I forget that the gifts he has given me are to be used not only for my personal benefit, but, more importantly, so that I can help others (1 Corinthians 12:7). Often I’m so busy planning, strategizing, organizing and figuring out how I want everything to work out, I neglect to ask God what he has in mind.

I used to think Deidra had a unique and extraordinary gift in her ability to listen to and obey God. I figured she was some sort of twenty-first-century mystic with an iPhone 6 connection to the Almighty. But the better I get to know her, the more I realize that she has worked at honing her gift of listening over time. Deidra probably wasn’t born with special spiritual ears, as I once assumed. Rather, she has practiced the art and skill of listening to and trusting God, day in and day out, month after month, year after year.

God created us anew in Christ Jesus for an express purpose: so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Each of us has a mission and a purpose – probably more than one – specifically ordained by God. But unless we practice listening to God, we might never discover that purpose at all.

Q4U: How do you listen best to God? 

A Time to Listen

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Well hello January! It looks like I’m back to writing — whew! — and I just want to say thank you for being patient with me while I took some time away from the computer and away from writing. I did some good thinking during my hiatus, and although I didn’t come to any radical conclusions about where I’m headed next in life (more on that down the road), it did me good to enjoy some creative space. So thank you for that.

I’m starting off the new year with a piece I wrote just after Christmas for the Lincoln Journal Star. I shared it on Facebook the week it was published, but it turns out the Journal Star has a wonky new policy in which readers are only allowed a certain number of visits to their website each month before they are required to subscribe (for free). So I’m posting the piece here because I doubt many people actually read it online. This is a topic I considered long and hard before I decided to write about it, and truthfully, I was reluctant even then. I tend to avoid controversial topics because, well, I’m a good girl and I don’t like to stir the pot, but the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily on this one. So here it is: a post about race in America.

Pioneersparkwinterwithprayer

One of the things I complain about most relentlessly is my children’s lack of listening skills. Listening is particularly challenging for younger kids. I’ll ask my nine-year-old to do something two, even three times in the span of ten minutes, and more often than not, my request goes unheeded. When I sit him down to chat about the value and importance of listening, Rowan typically doesn’t even wait for me to finish, but instead interrupts with a response that almost always begins with this:

“Yeah, but…”

Rowan doesn’t stop to listen to what I have to say because he is too busy launching his defense.

I’m familiar with this “Yeah, but…” response. It’s one I’ve offered more than once over the last few months.

“Yeah, but…” was my response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson this past August.

“Yeah, but…do we know all the facts?” I asked.

“Yeah, but…didn’t people say he committed a crime just moments before?” I countered.

“Yeah, but…wasn’t he confrontational with the police officer?” I reasoned.

I wanted to explain the situation. I wanted it to make sense from a rational standpoint. And, more importantly, beneath all my questions and reasoning, I wanted to set myself apart, to be able to say in good conscience, “Well, at least I’m not responsible for Michael Brown’s death.”

When I first heard about Eric Garner’s death, my initial reaction was similar. It wasn’t until I watched the video [warning: disturbing content] and saw with my own two eyes how the situation unfolded that I realized there was not a rational, reasonable explanation for Eric Garner’s death. It was the first time I entertained the possibility that the issue at hand was much bigger, much deeper, than the question of reasonable and rational.

Watching that video changed something in me. It stripped away my arguments, my defensiveness, and my level-headed reasoning. It left me raw, vulnerable, grieving. That image of Eric Garner on the ground, arm outstretched, palm open, obliterated my last “Yeah, but…”

I was, finally, at a loss for words. I was, finally, quiet.

It’s time to be quiet, friends. It’s time to listen to our fellow human beings, to lament alongside them, shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand. It’s time to empathize, to show our compassion, to let ourselves feel their pain and anger as much as we are able.

It’s time to stop explaining, rationalizing, defending, talking around, pointing fingers and feeling insulted, threatened and defensive. There is an entire history behind these issues, and we need to understand its human impact. We can’t do that if we react defensively first.

There is a time and a season for everything, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes. There is a time and a place for questions, dialogue and debate. But first, before everything, comes the listening. The hearing. The acknowledgement. The being present.

Obviously I didn’t kill Michael Brown or Eric Garner. But as a white person who has not listened, really listened, to the anger and the sorrow, the fear and the hurt of the African-American people in my community and in my nation, I have played a role in the racial unrest that is bubbling to the surface and boiling over in our country right now.

I acknowledge and accept my responsibility. I’m done with, “Yeah, but…” Today my prayer is a simple one, and I ask you to join me in it:

Lord, let us have ears to hear. Amen.