Show, don't tell

Shaking my head in bemused disbelief over the years & years that I went through life confusing the daylights out of folks.  They'd see this bright & sunny person, then they talk to me & I'd sound like a real-life Joe Btfsplk.  He was a character in the Lil Abner comic strip, which ran in either the Bulletin or the Inquirer when I was a kid.  Joe walked around with a small, dark rain cloud always hovering over his head.  That was me, once I got to talking.  

Praise be, that rain cloud finally blew away!!  

Weird, how I got so invested in the awfulness of my life, I couldn't didn't wouldn't see how utterly spectacular it was.  And I truly do feel a deep sense of tender compassion for that younger self who kept banging her head against brick walls trying to change things that were never going to budge.  

Buckminster Fuller said it all - You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing one obsolete.

The message I'd like to sing from the rooftops is - don't be a Joe Btfsplk!!  Don't get bogged down by visions that bring clouds on your parade.  Focus on YOUR very own!  See it & connect to it, believe in it & honor it with action.  And recognize that YOUR vision isn't everyone else's.  It might not be ANYONE else's.  But it is still yours.  

I have a lot of friends who want to see our church welcome women into its priesthood.  For decades, they've sought change.  It hasn't happened.  

Well, some women just decided to write their own stories.  Women like the young friend who was ordained - in a different branch of our faith - on July 4th.  She joined a group of women writing their own stories about women preaching the beliefs they love & treasure.  This most recent is also the youngest - the first added Reverend to her name when she was in her 60s!  


My dear mama was deeply engaged by the issue of a female ministry.  She'd often ask friends who were in favor, "What would a female priest look like?  How would it be different from a male version?"  She never got an answer.  

Maybe they never understood the question.  Maybe, she should have rephrased her question to, "I know the old story.  What is yours?"

Back in my college days, an English professor drummed into us, "Show, don't tell."  Today, friends - Emily Jane, Julie, Roz & Anna - could satisfy Mom's curiosity through the new stories they are living.  

Will they make the old one obsolete?  Does that matter?    .