Created Space for Big Questions
Russell Jackson is the president's chief of staff on the television drama Madam Secretary. Typically he could be described as calculating and bloodless, keeping the show's more compelling characters at a distance. A brush with death from a heart attack has mellowed him some, but not much.
Jackson's wife, a physician, insists on prescribing the process. She sets the expectation that her husband will implement a more healthy, reflective habit. He recoils. In true Chief of Staff fashion, he delegates the task to an underling. Don't make it weird, he postures. Jackson's visible discomfort increases when Dr. Henry McCord, a religion professor he knows well from more structured, professional dealings offers help. Jackson is sure any professorial suggestion from an ethicist will only be toward more of the murky musing the analytical decision-maker finds so distasteful.
The outcome, then, is surprising. Rather than dragging Jackson into the abstract and metaphysical immediately, the good doctor suggests that he resume and outward habit from a time he felt at peace, gradually acclimating himself again to the idea that he is more than his high-pressure professional role. Incremental changes matter, Dr. McCord reassures. He seizes his moment with Jackson, teaching, "Small moments create a space where we can ask big questions."
Jackson's room for reflection comes in the small moments he learns to protect while resuming a childhood hobby of building model airplanes. He likes, he says, the correlation between precise planning and exact execution which so often eludes him in the swirling drama of the West Wing. Here, in control of the limited variables in play, it seems he can slowly consider that which he can't control.
Reverting to the habits of a simpler time to allow the mind to adopt accompanying clarity is a well trodden path. David flees the intrigue of the palace politics to the wilderness setting of his shepherd's Psalms. Peter, unable to process the full, awful weight of his Master's crucifixion, opts for the familiar rhythms of fishing. My wife and some of her friends take up crayons as instruments of calm. Likewise, going to the seashore to connect with the vastness of the ocean and the memories it provides brings out her more reflective side.
Making time to write just for writing's sake can do this for me. I write cover letters and resumes as an improvised and temporary profession, but this is much more reaction to the expectations of others than reflection of my own volition. Even sincere prayers written on my devotional and expositional blog Luke's Gospel here https://brianesh73.livejournal.com/ can be shaded with ought simply because I am a fallen human, and each missive falls in line with 14 years of repetition bordering on a mostly healthy addiction.
Instilling this deployment of words as the blend of something new and something old coheres with why journalist Sarah Stillman says she picked up her pen as a middle schooler in the first place. "I never thought that words flowed out of my mouth correctly. It was only when I took the time and sat down to massage the word then make them actually resemble what was going on that I felt at home."
This habit, then, is my late adopted home away from home. What is yours?
Jackson's wife, a physician, insists on prescribing the process. She sets the expectation that her husband will implement a more healthy, reflective habit. He recoils. In true Chief of Staff fashion, he delegates the task to an underling. Don't make it weird, he postures. Jackson's visible discomfort increases when Dr. Henry McCord, a religion professor he knows well from more structured, professional dealings offers help. Jackson is sure any professorial suggestion from an ethicist will only be toward more of the murky musing the analytical decision-maker finds so distasteful.
The outcome, then, is surprising. Rather than dragging Jackson into the abstract and metaphysical immediately, the good doctor suggests that he resume and outward habit from a time he felt at peace, gradually acclimating himself again to the idea that he is more than his high-pressure professional role. Incremental changes matter, Dr. McCord reassures. He seizes his moment with Jackson, teaching, "Small moments create a space where we can ask big questions."
Jackson's room for reflection comes in the small moments he learns to protect while resuming a childhood hobby of building model airplanes. He likes, he says, the correlation between precise planning and exact execution which so often eludes him in the swirling drama of the West Wing. Here, in control of the limited variables in play, it seems he can slowly consider that which he can't control.
Reverting to the habits of a simpler time to allow the mind to adopt accompanying clarity is a well trodden path. David flees the intrigue of the palace politics to the wilderness setting of his shepherd's Psalms. Peter, unable to process the full, awful weight of his Master's crucifixion, opts for the familiar rhythms of fishing. My wife and some of her friends take up crayons as instruments of calm. Likewise, going to the seashore to connect with the vastness of the ocean and the memories it provides brings out her more reflective side.
Making time to write just for writing's sake can do this for me. I write cover letters and resumes as an improvised and temporary profession, but this is much more reaction to the expectations of others than reflection of my own volition. Even sincere prayers written on my devotional and expositional blog Luke's Gospel here https://brianesh73.livejournal.com/ can be shaded with ought simply because I am a fallen human, and each missive falls in line with 14 years of repetition bordering on a mostly healthy addiction.
Instilling this deployment of words as the blend of something new and something old coheres with why journalist Sarah Stillman says she picked up her pen as a middle schooler in the first place. "I never thought that words flowed out of my mouth correctly. It was only when I took the time and sat down to massage the word then make them actually resemble what was going on that I felt at home."
This habit, then, is my late adopted home away from home. What is yours?
Gardening. It's creative. It's solitary. But it is for the neighbors as much as it is for yourself.
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