Living With The Unexpected
Rev. David Takahashi Morris
February 25, 2007
When I was attending my first big sales meeting as an editor with a large college textbook publisher, one day we had a sudden problem that involved getting our display books packed up and out of the conference rooms in a hurry. I started directing traffic and suggested a system that got our group out fast. My boss said: “You know, you’re good in a crisis. You’re always right there with a quick solution, you never seem to lose your head. I really hate that about you.” I think he was kidding about that last part. . . but I felt good.
There a re a lot of nice things you can say about a person, but “You’re good in a crisis” is especially gratifying. It implies trust, respect, authority. If you’re good in a crisis, people listen to you. People turn to you for leadership when they really need it. People trust you, even rely on you. You’re a good person to have around in a pinch.
What makes us feel that way about someone?
It’s partly qualities that show up when things fall apart. Someone who stays calm when others panic is good to have around. A quick analyst who takes fast action is highly useful. Maybe even more valuable is someone with the charisma, authority, or persuasive skill to get others working together quickly.
Being good in a crisis is partly an effect we have on other people. If people feel calm around you, if you can call people to their best selves, if people feel more confident or hopeful or willing to pull their weight when you’re around—that’s good in a crisis.
And partly it’s a matter of simple effectiveness. Things turn out better because you’re there; you see trouble coming and head it off. Good to have around in a pinch.
In our culture, being good in a crisis also means being unfazed. Looking at you, no one would ever know chaos was threatening to descend on every side. Nothing seems to surprise you, really, or even if it does, you take it all in stride.
Are you someone like that? Do you know anyone like that? Do you hate them?
Of course, life does surprise us, all the time. We go along day-to-day, knowing just who we are and where we’re headed, and along comes some startling event, some chance encounter, some collision of circumstances that knocks us completely for a loop. It’s not always for the worse, either. The best things that ever happen to us are usually just as unexpected as the worst.
Think about your own life story. When the really big landmarks came, the turning points that open up the best and the worst chapters, were you ready for them? If there’s a life partner with you now, for example, or if you’ve ever been partnered, were you expecting to meet that person when you did? Did they look like partner material at first glance? If you’re doing work you love, is it what you were expecting when you were in high school? Did you become what you thought you’d be when you grew up?
That last might be a less comfortable question. We do take detours and u-turns along our lives’ journeys. We hit bumps in the road; some of them just potholes and some of them stone walls that seem to block us completely. There are losses, disappointments, and disasters throughout our story, as well as lucky meetings and random delights.
Good or bad, unexpected turns throw us off track, take out our easy assumptions about ourselves, about other people, about life—and sometimes send us off in totally new directions. They remind us that we’re not really in control of events, no matter how much it might seem we are when things are going smoothly.
Sometimes an
unexpected event is large enough to have a major effect on our life. When this kind of thing happens, the world
suddenly shifts around us. Whatever we knew was true yesterday, suddenly isn’t
so today. The person we could always
depend on is gone. The story we’ve
always believed about our inability to succeed turns out never to have been
true. The high opinion we’ve always had
about our motives turns out to be hiding something much less benign. Whatever it is, for better and for worse it
reshapes our landscape of reality. We
thought we were playing quarterback in the big game, and suddenly we realize
the center has just hiked us a man’s brown leather
What the [heck] is this?
In that moment of shock or awe, what resources do we draw on? It may be true that there are some people who just naturally never lose their balance, even in a time of disorientation and crisis, but the rest of us need something else to rely on. For some it’s an inner sense of calm and hope. This doesn’t come from nowhere, and we’re not born with it; it grows out of a well-tended relationship with our deepest truth and highest values—with what we hold as sacred. If we’ve carefully cultivated such a relationship, our sense of the sacred is never far from us. Whatever happens, we can keep our bearings, because we can quickly bring ourselves back to a deep sureness that there is meaning and worth to be found in every moment.
For others the inner resource is a powerful sense of purpose, a solid commitment to certain goals. This too isn’t accidental or inborn; we build this commitment with careful thought and dedication over time, and when the unexpected happens it is right there with us, helping us sort out our choices and decide quickly what actions will move us in the right direction, and what will take us astray.
The African
American theologian Howard Thurman reminds us that no human being is ever free
from the peculiar pressures of life, and so, he says, “the only possibility of
stability. . . is to establish an
Do you have such a space within? How quickly can you get there? This is the foundation that lets us confront the unexpected without losing our bearings, the foundation that keeps us from throwing away our life’s priorities in a moment of ecstasy, or surrendering to panic or despair in a moment of loss.
Sometimes, the unexpected isn’t just startling, it’s wrong. Sometimes, our desire to be “good in a crisis” leaves us facing the unexpected alone, letting everyone else pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. In times like those, taking it all in stride may not be the right thing to do
Have you ever set aside some heartache so that you could walk into a meeting, a party, a classroom, a church service without letting anyone see something’s wrong?
Have you ever kept a big piece of good news quiet, trying not to call attention to yourself, maybe because you don’t want people to think you’re showing off?
Have you ever kept quiet about an injustice because you didn’t know what would happen if you spoke up?
Have you ever absorbed a shock and tried to keep on going as if nothing had happened?
I think we’ve all done these things. Sometimes we do them for our own good reasons, waiting for the right moment, looking for allies, choosing who we’ll share our triumphs and troubles with. But sometimes we do them because we feel pressure not to upset the system, pressure to keep up appearances, pressure not to challenge someone else’s picture of the world at this moment.
If you’ve ever acted out of those motives, then Louis Jenkins may have written this poem for you.
So you’re standing there with that ridiculous shoe in your hand, and the crowd is cheering, and the receiver is waving his arms, shouting “Throw me the ball, I’m open, come on!” How often do we just heave that thing as far as we can? Let the guy downfield worry about it. Maybe he won’t notice either, maybe he’ll just catch the shoe and score with it, and we’ll both be heroes. Maybe no one will notice at all. Maybe I’m just imagining this, anyway. No one else seems bothered by it. Just pretend everything’s fine.
But no. “One has certain responsibilities, one has to make choices.” Sometimes you just can’t go along. “This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it.”
It’s a scary thing to do. We don’t want to lose our “good in a crisis” credentials. What if we’re wrong? What if we’re right, but no one listens? What if we infuriate someone we care about? What if we ask for help and no one’s there? It is scary, and that’s why I like Jenkins’ take on this. He adds a sense of humor, which for me is both a sense of perspective and the freedom to make the declaration light-heartedly but firmly:
“This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it.”
Can you think of somewhere you might need to say this?
Maybe tonight when you’re trying to figure out how you’re supposed to go to work, take care of your kids, and make sure your mother or father is getting fed and won’t go for midnight walks down the street when you’re asleep. Maybe this afternoon when you’re looking at the homework or housework or paperwork you’ve got to do and trying to keep your mind off that person you met at a friends’ house last week.
If you’re not quite ready to say it there, maybe you could try it with a friend here at church, or Leslie or me, or one of these wonderful Pastoral Visitors we commissioned this morning.
This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it.
Maybe at the office, where that new process isn’t really working out as well as the marketing department claims it is. Maybe at the mall where you work, when you hear that your health insurance is too expensive for the store to maintain, and by the way, your supervisor is concerned about the two days last month when your daycare provider was closed for snow and you couldn’t get to work on time.
This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it. [Say it with me. . .]
Maybe at the IMPACT action next month, when the City and County Councils need to hear that we’re not satisfied with a housing market that leaves working families homeless, or a public transportation system that leaves thousands of people walking to work on Sundays to bandage our wounds, give us our medicine, feed our college students, and mop the floors in our retirement-living centers. Maybe in the newspaper or in Congress, when we’re told day after day that war is for peace, that failure is success, that it’s acceptable for our young people to lose their lives and their physical and mental health, and that if we can just keep doing what we’re doing, only a little more and a little bigger and for a little more money it will start working soon.
This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it.
This isn’t right, and I’m not going to throw it!
I know you’ve got a situation in mind. It’s easy to say it here; this is just practice. You can do it where you need to. We can each find that Island of Peace, and from there we can decide if it’s better to cope—or to call for help, or call for change, or call a halt. Now that’s being good in a crisis!