Book Review

Caldwell, Bo. City of Tranquil Light. Henry Holt and Company. 2010.

In 1906 two Mennonites, Will and Katherine, separately join a missionary journey to the North China Plain. They are surprised by love for each other and the people of Kuang P’ing Ch’eng—City of Tranquil Light. Together Will, the preacher, and Katherine, the nurse, share hardships and personal loss as they survive the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty. Through societal collapse and dangers from bandits, civil war, and the attacks by Southern armies of Chiang Kai-shek, Will and Katherine slowly earn the respect of the local people. These courageous nationals continue the work when the Communists threaten and missionaries are forced to leave China.

“City” is a beautifully written life story told from Will’s perspective with Katherine’s journal entries, growing tendrils of grace and faith from the earth of China to our hearts far across the sea.

“Chung-Kuo.  It means Middle Kingdom, because of the people’s ancient belief that their country was at the center of a vast square earth, surrounded by the Four Seas, beyond which lay islands inhabited by barbarians. That’s us.”

ANXIETY 4

In earlier posts on Transitional Thinking (Wed., April 20), I described the differences between Problems and Polarities. When an organization’s operational system does not distinguish between the two, anxiety heats up. In the frantic search for solution, finding someone to blame becomes crucial.

To review, a Problem can be solved. People involved in a tiff can be brought together and held accountable. (Gossips must also be held accountable.*)

A Polarity, however, requires management because “there are two complimentary dimensions, which are always in tension and need to be appropriately balanced for the context.” Sometimes we want hot water, sometimes cold, both appropriate desires.

Members of a family age and leave for their own households. But they carry with them the learned pattern of knee jerk reaction/shouting, or calm/quiet waiting for explanation: two system extremes. To qualify for the middle you react to anxiety-producing stimuli by going on alert, but ask “why” or “what is the matter here” before you respond.

An organization like a congregation is composed of individuals who learned how to handle anxiety from their families. Every group we have encountered contained individuals demonstrating both extremes and the middle. We have experienced congregations whose corporate character tilted from productive Problem solving and Polarity management toward reactive chaos.

Organizations with ineffective systems neither resolve the Problem nor explore the contrasting dimensions of a Polarity. They hover anxiously. Anxiety becomes the modus operandi; the organization deteriorates as it must. (The word dysfunction has been misused as the blameworthy cause.)

An anxious group may find temporary relief when new leadership demonstrates and demands behavior change. But when the leader departs, if the group does not own its new insights, the system may return to former patterns like a hard ball on a rubber band. If you’re the next leader, watch out! You’ll get the “icks.”

* Romans 1:28-32 “Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives.”

The Message

ANXIETY

Proverb

Fools have short fuses and explode all too quickly;

   the prudent quietly shrug off insults.

Truthful witness by a good person clears the air,

   but liars lay down a smoke screen of deceit.

ANXIETY 3

One of the houses in which we sojourned offered hot water in the downstairs bathroom that could redden skin in the split second it took to reach from the loose hot to the stuck cold handle. Contrarily, the hot water in the upstairs bathroom where we showered took longer to get warm than a dead mule to move. Such was the water system in that house.

Organizations, be it a family, a senior care facility or a congregation, have developed a system for dealing with anxiety, pain with an uncertain cause. These systems range in effectiveness.

We all agree that anxiety is a miserable experience. One of my favorite people used to describe her anxious spells as the “icks.” A professional person, she sat in the back row in church.

I quickly learned to turn the cold water on before the hot. In every congregation we have served there was one person who had learned to start yelling as soon as he felt anxious. Dementia does the same because controls have been lost. A previous resident liked to “poke” her family and then refused to respond when they jabbed in return, claiming to dislike conflict.

When we become so obsessed with the temperature in the room, the minister’s leadership, or our spouses’ driving that it interferes with our ability to live, worship God, enjoy the car ride with our mouth shut, that’s a concern.

If we are expending so much energy on the worry that we can’t function effectively, we have a problem that needs to be addressed. Our coping system is not working effectively.

CHANGE

Hope moved into our home bringing her bedroom dresser. Her children removed the drawers at her house, transported them, and without sorting through any of them, slid them into place at our home.

One afternoon about 3:00 PM she needed redirection. I brought her into her room. She picked the drawer and I placed it on her lap. We rolled the drawer to the kitchen table. We slowly removed the contents piece by piece, talking about their use and where they came from.

One of the contents was a yellowed paper lined with mimeograph ink smudges. If you don’t know what a mimeograph is, Bing it. The language is from the days when bread was $.05 a loaf and a house kit from Sears and Roebuck cost less than $2,000.

The treasured article is as follows:

OLD FOLKS

Remember we old folks are worth a fortune. We have silver in our hair, gold in our teeth, stones in our kidneys, lead in our feet and gas in our stomachs.

I have become a little older since I saw you last and a few changes have come into my life since then. Frankly, I have become quite a frivolous old gal. I am seeing five gentlemen every day. As soon as I wake up, Will Power helps me get out of bed. Then I go see John. Charlie Horse comes along and when he is here he takes a lot of my attention. When he leaves Arthur Ritis shows up and stays the rest of the day. He doesn’t like to stay in one place very long, so he takes me from joint to joint. After such a busy day I am really tired and glad to go to bed with Ben Gay.  Wow, what a life!

The preacher came to call the other day. He said at my age I should be thinking of the hereafter. I told him, “Oh I do all of the time. No matter where I am, in the parlor, kitchen, etc., I ask myself, What am I here after?”

ANXIETY 2

From previous post Anxiety: 

“Because anxiety affects our thinking capacities, it diminishes clarity and objectivity. It interferes with our capacity to think creatively. We cannot stand outside of the vague dread and observe it."  Dr. Peter Steinke.

Suspense generates excitement in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. He is quoted as saying, “If you touch off a bomb, your audience gets a ten-second shock. But if the audience knows that the bomb has been planted, then you can build up the suspense and keep them in a state of expectation for five minutes.”

That’s great cinematography but in an organization, uncertainty and tension of opposites creates anxiety. Anxiety in an organization that is uncertain of its direction explodes into discord and disunity. Its free-floating-fear fastens onto an issue or person blowing rumors and opinions out of proportion.

Another Hitchcock technique hid aspects of reality from the viewer. The scene would begin looking normal and safe, but behind the ordinary lurked extraordinary evil. As the camera would lead the viewer through the home or the office or the church—although I don’t know of a Hitchcock movie revealing the evil possible in a congregation—a nervous unsettling would stir in the viewer. He played with our natural anxiety.

Congregations mired in anxiety are only fooling themselves. A visitor may not know what specifically is wrong, but they are uncomfortable and exit never to return. And the reputation is made. Unlike "The Birds" or "Psycho", organizations disintegrating in conflict are not recommended for second viewing.

Dementia is more honest about anxiety. Loud noises, raised voices whether laughing or angry, door bells, unexpected changes cause emotional pain and the reaction is immediate.

Our seniors have taught us to listen before speaking, nod sagely, breathe deeply and deliberately before responding to their upset. Their anxiety can never be ignored and passed on for another day. (I apologize to my children that I lacked this skill when they lived in my home.)