I spent some time in my previous post talking about what it really means to respect food and its role in our lives. The topic of respect for people is much broader and somewhat beyond the scope of this blog, but since I plan to work on the concept for the year I’ll make a stab at it. Here are some brief thoughts:
- You can respect the person without agreeing with his/her ideas.
- You can’t show respect for a person without listening to and responding to what he/she has to say. My biggest challenge here: interrupting. I want to jump in the second, the nanosecond, that the other person pauses, even if he’she isn’t finished. It’s very hard for me to refrain from doing this! But interrupting is a sure sign of disrespect.
- You can engage thoughtfully and respectfully in a disagreement by sticking to impersonal statements of fact. (This style of communication is sometimes called “computer mode.” I don’t remember where I read this phrase, but it’s a good one.) In any contentious exchange I try to make one factual statement and then stop. No personal remarks, no long explanations. If it’s an e-mail exchange, no links.
- You can judge how an interaction is going by imagining how you will feel the next time you talk to the person. Will you feel obligated to apologize for your words? Will there be constraint between the two of you because of how things went this time? I have found this concept to be particularly helpful when I find myself in some type of political discussion. If you follow me on my personal Facebook page you know what my opinions are in that regard; I try to keep that subject off of this blog. Suffice it to say that I belong to a very small camp and therefore find myself in disagreement with just about everybody around me. But I don’t want disrespectful, angry relationships with those people. So I have to exercise a fair amount of self-control, something that’s very hard to do.
So, several weeks ago I put together one of my four-times-a-season retreat breakfasts for the wonderful, wonderful choir to which I belong. (Be sure to
Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense
by Mona Charen, 2018, available in several formats. Audio version is read by the author and is highly recommended. Author’s website is at 
Well, we take off on Wednesday for a three-week trip to France. Now that the Chorale concert season is over and I’ve done the shopping for tomorrow night’s member dinner, I’m sitting down for one last post before we leave. Don’t know if I’ll get anything posted during the trip. May I encourage you, by the way, if you enjoy my posts, to forward your e-mail to someone who might also enjoy them? You can pick an individual post that you think will be particularly interesting to your forwardee. I’d like to see the blog grow.
A number of years ago I was acting as a group discussion leader in a Bible study group, and we were given a document titled “Are you a servant or a volunteer?” This happened near the end of the year when I was feeling a bit weary in well doing about being a leader. I loved my group and interacting with them, but I felt burdened and somewhat resentful about all of the time I had to spend in leadership meetings in order to spend 45 minutes or so guiding a discussion based on prepared questions that everyone was supposed to have answered in advance.So reading the article cemented my decision not to serve the next year. (I’m sure that was not the intention!) I had realized that my attitude fit the “volunteer” mold much more than the “servant” one.
by Kate Bowler, 2018. Available in Kindle, hardback, and audiobook formats.
I had every intention of getting this post written at least by yesterday, but the rush of company, outings, etc., got in the way. It’s Christmas morning. I’m up early because I couldn’t sleep, so here are the thoughts I wanted to get down, and I plan to get the newsletter out later today in between the biscotti-baking, the green-bean casserole making, and the last-minute gift-wrapping flurry.
Christmas is less than a week away, a fact that prompts me to think about gift-giving. What a very fraught subject! I’d be more than willing to just forget about the whole process myself, being content with good food, decorations, socializing with friends and family, and special outings. But I can’t be a complete Scrooge, can I? So here are some ways that I enter into the spirit of the season without putting myself through the wringer or giving items that may not be used or appreciated: