If I had any advice to give to a younger self, it would be to never give advice. Forbid it.
I prefer paying attention to the hidden, the bidden and the unbidden. Those all matter as much as any advice I have received. But first, an apologia for advice givers.
Advice might have been useful to me – and many of my mentors gave it. Some of it was sort of useful. “Never talk about what is great about you but what is great about the organization you are applying to for a job.” “Talk about what you can do for them, not what they can do for you.” “When you are totally shocked at a confession of theft or incest or lying or adultery or some such, just say tell me more. Say it calmly. Don’t show how upset you are.”
But much of the unsolicited advice I received helped progressive Christianity dead end. was also part of the reason our movement of progressive Christianity dead-ended. People advised me not to threaten the powerful, to accomodate to the biggest givers or to suck up to them. The advice was often maternalizing or paternalizing. It made me feel small. It made me feel like the captive of history instead of the captain of my fate, all the while my culture was arguing the latter bullshit was the only way to be:
You need to be masterful.
You need to be powerful.
You cannot be confused.
Even if you are confused, fake it till you make it.
“Never end your sentences with a question mark. It makes you look like a girl. Always look like a boy. End your statements with a period.”
What?
*
So much of what people say is the higher bullshit. Welcome, I often say, to the land of bullshit. Approach people with a pound not a grain, of salt. They are not saying what they really think. They are saying what you want to hear. Very few of us ever graduated from the high school of peer approval.
My world consists of teaching clergy for a church that no longer exists. It consists of pastoring people for an institution that may go out of business – right in the very time people are desperate to belong to something beautiful or at least decent. The best advice I got recently was to stop teaching for the past and start teaching for the future. “Professor Schaper, what you are telling us is how to pastor in a church that isn’t there anymore.” Ah. Teach me how to teach God in a global world, where everybody has their own tradition, and all are right. Now each god, including Jesus, is too small. These insights are all hidden in plain sight, like Poe’s purloined letter, sitting on the table, unnoticed and considered misplaced.
“That worked then, it won’t work now.” Agreed. So why not indulge in a kind of mutual mentoring? I’m completely unprepared to disvalue my experience and its wisdom. At the same time, I don’t see much application in it to what my sons and daughter are experiencing. Ok, Boomer.
Teach me how to preach without a respected, culturally endorsed pulpit.
Teach me how to preach when preachy is a bad word.
Teach me how to lead when leaders are suspect.
Teach me how to lead people to Spirit when all Gods have tarnished themselves with the help of their own disciples.
Teach me how to lead.
“Leaders have to disappoint people at a rate the people can tolerate,”said an unknown wise man on a coffee cup.
All of these truths about change are hidden in plain sight. Thus, my refusal of advice. I need advice. I need it from those who weren’t raised in my Christian cages. (These cages were also life giving for me.)
Why do I play a word game with the bidden and the unbidden? Because I advocate maximum personal authority, agency, self-differentiation. I bid it, the way Stephen Covey bids self-management and time-management. I bid it with long to do lists, great strategies, sophisticated forms of ongoing learning.
And then the unbidden comes along, joining the purloined letter on the table. A man is deported to Haiti, a country with no medical system. He has high blood pressure. He leaves behind four children. He makes squash soup. He laughs. We joke on the phone. He goes on, after terrible tragedy. He names the restaurant he opens “Donna’s.” It gets sacked. He goes on.
More often the unbidden shows up in nature. Strong evening clouds striated. The early daffodils. The forced forsythia. The puppy that sits on top of its cage instead of inside it. The world is still beautiful even when the news is not. My granddaughter winks at me, even though I didn’t wink at her. My grandson tells me “I think I see what’s going on here” and he says it forty times that one afternoon, authoritatively. He is four.
So, if you must have advice, look for the hidden, not the bidden. And be more ready day by day for the unbidden. It’s on its way anyway. Why not welcome it?
Rev. Dr Donna Schaper is senior minister at Judson Memorial Church, co-founder of New York City New Sanctuary Movement and Bricks and Mortals: RemoveThePews.com. Author of 35 books, most recently I Heart You Francis: Love Letters from a Reluctant Admirer. She also grows a good tomato.