The Temperament Test
I love my church, once I get through the door. Before that happens, though, I encounter the Greeter. This blitz is something I have to prepare for each week. As she bubbles, I bristle. As she touches, I contract. I'm not sure how many cups of coffee fuel her effusive enthusiasm, but I'm adept at adapting spiritual reasons for the gulf of temperament that separates us. I contemplate the things of the Lord more seriously. I understand the mess the world is in more deeply. Anybody that sunny can't be that smart. What passes for my reasoning descends into the justification that if I have relegated someone in my instant appraisal to be less pensive and penetrating than I am, I can dismiss the possibility that I might learn from him or from her.
The flaws in this thinking are obvious when its assumptions are spelled out on the page, or in someone else. I still carry my prideful preconceptions with me from setting to setting and day to day like a cumbersome hazmat suit I am convinced is the perfect outerwear for all occasions. Even in the green space of the public college campus where I work, the bucolic representation of the ideal of open exchange, I can employ my shortsighted sorting system. This week, I encountered someone there from a different department with whom I have a history of brief interchanges on books and even biblical topics. Like the Greeter for whom I brace each Sunday, this particular personality is as emphatic as I am equivocal. Additionally, my campus encounter embodies in her dress and attitudes aspects of identification with her African-American heritage to which I find it difficult to relate – without consciously objecting. Thus, I examined her one-sentence summary of what she learned from her pastor the previous weekend as though I were an epidemiologist looking for evidence of the next plague. Epidemiologists don't shed a hazmat suit as quickly as I repented of my pride when she also started quoting some of the dead white guys I revere as heroes in the faith.
The conflating of personality differences with deeper, less visible attributes can confound us when theological issues aren't obviously involved. This message laid siege to my pride even in my safe, and often self-reinforcing, sanctuary of my leisure reading. Sports books aren't neutral ground once conviction and change have gained some momentum in our lives, so I shouldn't have been surprised that conviction could confront me from the pages of John Feinstein's Legends, profiling basketball coaches Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina, Jim Valvano of North Carolina State University, and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University. Juxtaposing Krzyzewski and Valvano, Feinstein comments, "The two men's public personas were very different: Valvano the class clown, Krzyzewski the serious book worm – ironic since Valvano was a voracious reader and Krzyzewski rarely finished a book." How many libraries of understanding from the more quickwitted, more assertive, or more passionate likes of the Valvanos who cross my path have I missed because I didn't like the tempo of the music that is wafting through the stacks?
Who sets me up as Aristotle's Golden Mean for the perfect mix of instant, outward enthusiasm and reflectiveness, anyway? The great philosopher, and prototype of extraversion, produce-smashing comedian, Gallagher once commented that we have emphatic, pejoratives labels for people who drive too slowly. We condemn, he says, with equal decisiveness those we think are too hasty in their driving. We are really, he says, declaring to the highways and the world that we alone know and drive the perfect speed. If the Department of Transportation commemorated this with their signage, we would be chagrined at the foolishness of this thinking. Even spelled out on a page, we see our own narcissism as an off-ramp would take before encountering much of the wonder and wisdom life has to offer.
The flaws in this thinking are obvious when its assumptions are spelled out on the page, or in someone else. I still carry my prideful preconceptions with me from setting to setting and day to day like a cumbersome hazmat suit I am convinced is the perfect outerwear for all occasions. Even in the green space of the public college campus where I work, the bucolic representation of the ideal of open exchange, I can employ my shortsighted sorting system. This week, I encountered someone there from a different department with whom I have a history of brief interchanges on books and even biblical topics. Like the Greeter for whom I brace each Sunday, this particular personality is as emphatic as I am equivocal. Additionally, my campus encounter embodies in her dress and attitudes aspects of identification with her African-American heritage to which I find it difficult to relate – without consciously objecting. Thus, I examined her one-sentence summary of what she learned from her pastor the previous weekend as though I were an epidemiologist looking for evidence of the next plague. Epidemiologists don't shed a hazmat suit as quickly as I repented of my pride when she also started quoting some of the dead white guys I revere as heroes in the faith.
The conflating of personality differences with deeper, less visible attributes can confound us when theological issues aren't obviously involved. This message laid siege to my pride even in my safe, and often self-reinforcing, sanctuary of my leisure reading. Sports books aren't neutral ground once conviction and change have gained some momentum in our lives, so I shouldn't have been surprised that conviction could confront me from the pages of John Feinstein's Legends, profiling basketball coaches Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina, Jim Valvano of North Carolina State University, and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University. Juxtaposing Krzyzewski and Valvano, Feinstein comments, "The two men's public personas were very different: Valvano the class clown, Krzyzewski the serious book worm – ironic since Valvano was a voracious reader and Krzyzewski rarely finished a book." How many libraries of understanding from the more quickwitted, more assertive, or more passionate likes of the Valvanos who cross my path have I missed because I didn't like the tempo of the music that is wafting through the stacks?
Life has a way of revealing the actual motives behind my self-justification. I can tell myself that I'm the Upright Analyst, the Objective Prophet explaining what is wrong with the world, but I am equally ready to critique anyone else in the same role. When one of the most optimistic people I know expressed some momentary pessimism by complaining, I was abrasive in my correction. Suddenly, it was this person's contentment that didn't meet my offended standards, and this lifelong phlegmatic deputized himself as the Resilience Police and sanctioned accordingly.
Who sets me up as Aristotle's Golden Mean for the perfect mix of instant, outward enthusiasm and reflectiveness, anyway? The great philosopher, and prototype of extraversion, produce-smashing comedian, Gallagher once commented that we have emphatic, pejoratives labels for people who drive too slowly. We condemn, he says, with equal decisiveness those we think are too hasty in their driving. We are really, he says, declaring to the highways and the world that we alone know and drive the perfect speed. If the Department of Transportation commemorated this with their signage, we would be chagrined at the foolishness of this thinking. Even spelled out on a page, we see our own narcissism as an off-ramp would take before encountering much of the wonder and wisdom life has to offer.
Perhaps, driving the speed which conditions and our consciences dictate, we might look through the windshields of our perspective and see something other than an opportunity to justify ourselves. We might marvel, instead, that people so similar in so many respects can express our individuality and so many different ways. We might greet life, and its Greeters, with more grace.
My mother is too organized, as is her house. My wife isn't organized enough. I alone achieve the perfect degree of sloppiness.
ReplyDeleteThe unanticipated link between the topic of this piece and today's Bible blog entry is interesting, maybe even profound within my sphere of reference. This is today's Bible blog: http://brianesh73.livejournal.com/1142013.html . Personally, I thought it might have had more juice than the above piece, but I never know to what degree other people can relate to something that is Bible-centered and essentially a prayer. Thank you for your thoughts and for your consistency.
DeleteProofread. ¶2 s2 "day today" or "day to day"
ReplyDeleteI like that you cite dead white guys, basketball coaches, and Gallagher in the same piece.
ReplyDelete