Seriously, You Can’t Say That

Kelly Tilghman, play-by-play announcer for The Golf Channel's PGA Tour broadcasts, while bantering with Nick Faldo about young players who might challenge Woods she suggested that they "lynch him in a back alley." I can almost hear her echoing her fictional counterpart, Ron Burgundy, when he said “I immediately regret this decision.”

Of course she came out with the requisite apology (two days later). Tiger’s representatives declared it a non-issue, but she was suspended for two weeks by the Golf Channel. This wasn’t the same as the Don Imus spewing-viciousness-for-its-own-sake situation. Nor was this Tiger’s first brush with folks misspeaking around him (Hello, Fuzzy Zoeller and your fried chicken and collard greens comment).

Yet my gut reaction was to essentially give her a pass for her slip of the tongue, after all, who among us hasn’t ever said something stupid that we (immediately) regret? The greater issue to consider in evaluating the situation is to recognize that such comments happen within a certain context.

First off, Tiger and Kelly are friends. Jokes you make within family that sound horrendous when someone outside the family hears them, much less, repeats them. We can speak one way with our “boys”, one way with our family, and another way in public/on the record. Still, we have to always be mindful: some language and images need a “handle with care” label attached to them.

Because, secondly, there is a greater problem of context: such comments will always be heard within the cultural-historical context of America, with its convoluted past involving slavery, civil rights, and race relations in general. The image of lynching harkens back to an unfortunate, to say the least, time in American history. Lynching is simply not an image to be taken lightly, but rather is akin to making a rape analogy and I doubt she would joke about that. Such a comment would be heard differently to different ears.

In short, it’s stupid and you can’t say it. However, I don’t think she should have been suspended. I think her apology should have stood on its own, she be reprimanded, and allow the conversations to be had about why what she said was a poor choice of words. We can’t police every bad sentence, because that would stifle conversations that still need to be had. We have a First Amendment right to make a fool out of ourselves, but more importantly, if we truly are to turn the page on this chapter in our history, we need to allow these conversations to happen and in so doing, we need to have thicker skins.


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Friday Night Date Place – Finding Your Comfort Place

Comfort can sometimes be defined as the ability to pass gas around our significant others. (Note: this isn’t so much a test for guys as we generally enjoy any excuse to do so. In fact, right now any guy reading this is ready to demonstrate to his significant other just how comfortable he is around them).

Backing up, not too long ago, we had a discussion on my message board about the importance of similar world views within relationships. A point that was brought up was how it’s one thing to have to go out and battle your worldview in “the world” but you don’t want to have those battles at home. This kind of brings to mind the idea of being able to breathe in a relationship.

We live in fear of being rejected for who we are or, more specifically, of finally revealing what we're really like only to have people leave us. As much as we want to be known by others, we all have walls put in place to keep people out and keep ourselves from being hurt. It’s nice to be able to lower them, to find someone we can lower them around. When we can reach a relaxed level of comfort around our significant others, we can feel free to be ourselves, to be real.

This is one of those mystery elements to relationships. There are so many ways to be connected to people, from family, to casual acquaintance, to co-workers, to friends. Some people you have simply known forever or who it feels like they've known you forever. This deep sense of connection comes because they've seen you in ways others can't or haven't. They get you, sometimes without words. They let you change. They let you be.

There is an ingredient that is often difficult to explain to your friends about why you are with so-and-so. Your friends may see your significant other’s glaring faults, but the ability to be yourself around them is an intangible quality. But being comfortable, being able to relax and be yourself and be accepted can balance out a lot.

Finding that comfort can be difficult with friends—that easiness to the relationship, like when friends can enjoy a good silence between each other—much less significant others. Frankly, it is rare that we find those folks we can be comfortable around. Because there is so much artifice surrounding the game of dating, it takes time to get to that place where you can be genuine.

When you find that connection, it's precious; and maintaining it can be work, but it's the heart of the relationship. So, besides time, continual conversation can get you to this place. Talking, and more importantly, listening, are skills best developed as soon as possible. The sooner you can quit being so self conscious about yourself and the sooner you can stop thinking so much about how others view your relationship, the sooner you can learn how to just breathe about your significant other.

Or ... not breathe. It took me nearly two years into my marriage before I could pass gas in front of my wife. I thought that was a major breakthrough in our relationship. She informed that she could live with one or two walls in our relationship.


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In the Room

Last spring, a black assistant coach referred to members of his special teams unit as the “White Nation.” All sorts of banter goes on in an athletic locker room, the room being the social context for such comments. Many things can be said in the room, from well-intentioned racial badinage to sexist comments to any of a number of potentially embarrassing jokes. This isn’t to excuse any of that, only to point out that often things said within the room are just that, within the room, and can be especially dangerous outside of the room.

However, I’m intrigued by the idea of joking as acceptance, as a way of letting folks into the room, into their circle. There is a bit of a cultural element at work here, and, no, I’m not referring to growing up playing the dozens or anything like that. But rather, as a guy. Guys can be harsh with one another, riding each other, busting one another out of a sign of camaraderie and equality.

Now, I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by trying to pretend that the locker room mentality, the same brandishing of wit often displayed at a “guy’s night”, is the sort of intellectual sparring one might have seen among the ancient Greek philosophers. Often stupid and crass, at least in guy locker rooms, humor can be the leveler of the playing field, where no one gets a free pass. Humor and nicknames are dual-edged weapons: they can include people as well as be injurious to them.

Not everyone can take certain levels of joking, some folks being more sensitive than others. There can be a fine line between a bullying insult and the camaraderie of equals. What some might consider an insider’s joke others might consider mean-spirited. The difference is one of intent and intent is much easier to gauge when you not only understand the nature of the relationship but also are confident within it.

So being brought into the room comes with a certain amount of risk and may require the development of thicker skin and greater intestinal fortitude. However, by my estimation, there are worse things - like being left outside the room.


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Who Are You Having These Conversations With? Part II

So, I’m getting caught up on the various blogs I read when “He Who Would Be Head Pastor” points out to me that me and one of my message board moderators were on a list of folks called out by someone “looking for a fight.”

Christians love a good fight.

There’s nothing that gets the old spiritual blood pumping like going to war knowing you are on the side of truth. Even when you have apparently run out of targets and have to turn on each other. I’d daresay we spend more time fighting with each other than anyone else. Probably because we have to know “teh truth!1!” before we can proclaim it to anyone else. And you know, this sort of fractious behavior is definitely what we’re called to do, who needs all that silly reconciliation?

If you want to engage me in a conversation, engage me. Don’t try to maneuver me into some manufactured debate-cum-marketing scam. If picking fights is your idea of reaching out in love, then, well, go with your conscious. I tell folks on my message board all the time that just because an ass brays in a field, that doesn’t fill me with the need to jump down and bray alongside him.

Postmodern Negro sums it up best for me:

I saw my name on the list so I thought I’d put in my two cents. I remember reading Walter Martin’s “Kingdom of the Cults” years ago. I remember the end of each chapter where he’d compare each religious cult with the ‘clear teaching of scripture’. He’d say this is what the Mormons say and this is what the ‘bible’ says. And so forth. It would have been better for him to have said this is what Mormons say and this is what my own Christian tradition, Fundamentalist/Evangelical Protestantism says. He would have been a bit more honest if he had said that. The same goes for the many ‘critics’ of emergent and Brian McLaren in particular. Rather than say emergents say this and the bible says that it would be a bit more helpful for this discussion if there was a bit more transparency. That’s one issue. These guys don’t speak for ‘Christianity’! They speak from their on tradition-dependent concerns.

Which leads to why I haven’t responded to these guys. For the most part these guys don’t hang around my cultural orbit. I like to read some white male theologians…mainly the ones that are open to discussing broader issues. The guys that have mostly criticized emergent tend to be a white male theological conservative ghetto…so they don’t really speak to the concerns I have as an African-american Christian deeply wedded to the black prophetic Christian tradition. The issues these guys mostly raise are issues of concern for folks who hold to a foundationalist Euro-centric reading of the gospel. Its mainly out of my orbit…so I don’t really pay attention to it.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about emergents are their posture of learning and listening. I’ve tried to emulate their humility when talking to people (emphasis on trying - I’m not there yet). Come to find out it’s the arrogance, the certainty, of having answers for everything that turns a lot of folks off to the church, that makes them turn a deaf ear. I’m not a part of that Christian ghetto culture. Most portraits of Emergents are probably as fair as my “conversation starter” that involved me intimating that D.A. Carson is a racist. I’m a horror writer who is a Christian. I help run what many would label an emergent church. I walk outside the church ghetto with people who challenge my views and way of thinking. I listen to them, I respect them, and I even, wait for it, learn from them. And they listen. Why? Because I’m not here to pick fights or declare war on them. It’s how conversations happen.

All of which brings me back to my friend.* I explained to him that most of the misunderstandings we have boil down to differences in ministry styles. The point of my article which he objected to was th at you start conversations with what you have in common, by listening to one another; not by saying “here’s where you’re wrong (because I obviously know more than you).” I can’t whip out Bible verses to “prove myself” because the Bible has authority if you have faith in it. What I can do is be the Bible. Be the message. If folks aren’t seeing Christ’s love in me and how I live and talk, then I’m wasting my breath anyway (again, emphasis on becoming - I’m not there yet). People need to belong before they believe, even if they never believe.

I just don’t have the time energy nor inclination to be baited into a fight. That’s fore better Christians than me, I guess.

*To be completely honest, my friend’s humility and contriteness after our conversation is exactly why I have hope, and love, for the church. Neither one of us had to “prove” ourselves right. We were too busy trying to figure out how to best love one another.


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Who Are You Having These Conversations With? Part I

Recently, I was involved in a misunderstanding with a person I used to attend church with. These sort of misunderstandings have been happening a lot more lately because my church has been labeled emergent. That’s fine. People are often guilty of relational laziness and need these sorts of labels rather than engage the people around them. Our church describes itself as missional because we’d rather be “being” the church than talking about it. Since I’m just as guilty of using labels as crutches as anyone else, I’ll describe my friend as a mainstream Evangelical with a fundamentalist streak.

This friend took umbrage with an article I wrote because, to his reading, I was losing sight of the “ontology of Christ”. Once I got wind that he had concerns, I called him. We talked about his concerns. To his absolute credit, he apologized to me and then, in an all too rare demonstration of what it means to follow Christ, he volunteered to go back and apologize to the people whom he had talked to about me.

One of my points to him was that I don’t have time for “ontology of Christ” debates. Honestly, whom am I going to have that conversation with? Other Christians who have spent too much time in church, around other Christians who’ve learned a lot. Which is fine, I’m called to love them, too. But that’s not where I spend a lot of my time.

Since this is mostly aimed at my Christian brethren, let me put this in jargon you’ll understand: I hang out with the “lost” (an ironic term, since my friends like Wrath James White, Harlequin, and Paul Puglisi know exactly where they are). Why? Because I don’t want to spend my days talking about whatever new doctrinal burr is up some people’s butts. A lot of the times those conversations boil down to one person who know everything talking to someone else who has everything figured out. They want to play who’s head is puffed up more or who has the biggest doctrinal penis. That’s a game I’m not interested in playing.

Of course these are unfair caricaturizations, but it sets up what I really want to talk about.

Tomorrow.


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Friday Night Date Place - Conversations 101

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Friday Night Date Place (and it’s still Friday night if I haven’t been to bed yet), to bring you an important relational message.

Fellas, fellas, fellas. I realize many of you are brooding Cro-Magnons, waiting for the potential within you to be recognized and a woman to come along and make you presentable for the rest of society. I get that, just as I applaud (and question) you ladies who jump on that diamond-in-the-rough/social misfit/fixer-upper grenade for the rest of us.

One of the things about being a brooding Cro-Magnon is that your selfishness can often be indulged. The world can be reduced to your wants and your needs and as a loner type ((sigh* that “bad boy” too many women are inexplicably drawn to, God bless them) you don’t have to do that whole “relate to humans other than yourself” thing.

Don’t take it personally, O gentle Cro-Magnon soul, you are basically in the same position as the rest of us. Relating to women can be tough. As a wise pastor once counseled me, and you may want to jot this down, “there’s something about having a vagina that must make a person crazy.”

With that in mind, let us examine a couple typical conversational scenarios and see the possible pitfalls that we might fall into.

Scenario #1:
Woman: “My day has me so stressed out ...”

Once you begin to hear about her day, do you:
A. Try to solve the problem?
B. Try to compare what she calls stress to what you went through today?
C. Try to listen to her as a sympathetic ear?

ANSWER: None of the above (what, you’ve never taken a quiz before?) This is what is known as the “white noise” portion of the relationship conversation. Women don’t want you to solve their problem, just listen. It’s how these aliens process their day. We men have precious little brain space and we can’t clog it up with the minutia of their day. So the key is to sound engaged while actually being in your happy place. Practice this conversational discipline: deep, slow inhale; deep, slow exhale, then say “uh huh”. The timing works out so that you sound like you’re paying attention and, as an added bonus, it keeps you from saying something stupid. Later, you can always claim to have “missed that part” if she asks you something about it - because you’re a dim-witted Cro-Mangon, she’ll understand. She’s happy that you’re just trying.

In this next scenario, you, O gentle Cro-Magnon soul, have mysteriously fallen into an argument. Go figure, since you’ve been studiously following my sage advice. Again, the key to conflict resolution is conversation. The sad reality is that at least one of the parties involved has to be the grown up. They have to suck it up and take the lead in getting to the heart of the problem, facilitating both parties positions being heard, and ensuring that compromise is reached or even a possible apology achieved.

Scenario #2:
Woman: “I’m sorry for my part of the conflict ...”

Fellas, do you:
A. Become your own lawyer and defend your original position?
B. Become a logic professor and break down the fallacies of her original point?
C. Become a petulant ass, hop on your high horse, and charge ahead with your rightness?
D. Become a student of the Maurice Broaddus School of Breathing Your Way Through a Conversation?

ANSWER: None of the above (aren’t you paying attention?). Remember this phrase if you decide to become your own lawyer: “Your Honor, my client is an idiot.” Fellas, apparently you’re new to relationships, and I’m simply trying to prepare you for the reality that is marriage. “I’m sorry” is your out cue. The fight is over if you let it. Admittedly this is a dream scenario, but if you get the apology, you take it an run. To be doubly safe, you apologize for something to. “For what?” you may ask. You’re a man - you’ve done SOMETHING wrong between the time you woke up and your next breath.

Now may also be a good time to explain to you the concept of a Pyrrhic victory. You can always win the argument. You can argue, badger, and charge your way to proving your point superior, but it may come at the price of bashing her self-esteem or doing irreparable harm to the relationship. Remember, what’s been said can’t be unsaid. And nine times out of ten, most arguments are about nothing in the first place. So you have to ask yourself “is being right worth it?”

A word of reassurance saves you from women playing the “tears card” for which there is no defense. O gentle Cro-Magnon soul, we know you love yourself and your world rotates around your own orbit. However, you have to attend to her needs and wants. Sometime, when we do Conversations 102, we’ll talk about things like noticing her hair and make up. And the proper responses to things like “does this outfit make me look fat?” (Run!)


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.