Naming the Good

I think it might be time for a bit of refresher on where Spring Church has been, thematically, where we are now, and where we’re heading soon. This might be because I’ve been reading my students’ survey comments—so I’m now realizing just how much I should’ve reviewed and repeated throughout the year—but I also think it’s worth taking a moment to be grounded in what we have learned, what we are learning, and what we will learn. If all is going well, we never really stop learning, though school might be long in the rearview mirror.

This Lenten season, we focused on how we can be good friends with suffering people, even if we’re not suffering ourselves.

Practicing empathy and concrete skills to be with friends in their suffering was a huge theme of Lent, because while we aren’t always grieving, we pretty much will always know someone who is. In my blog series, I wrote continuing short stories about a religiously diverse set of people who navigated suffering with suffering people. In church, we practiced what kinds of things we can do, say, and think to be present and empathetic on the faithful path.

In Eastertide, we’re focusing (and have been for a few weeks) on noticing and naming the good in each other.

It can be a tad easier to grieve with people sometimes, because we humans have a fun habit of comparing ourselves to others literally all the time. Someone’s doing worse than you? Generally, we can handle that. But someone’s doing better than you? It’s a bit harder to celebrate that. At church, we’ve been practicing celebration by noticing and naming the good in each other, coming from a place of love and honesty. As I’ve been writing the blog, there’s a consistent theme of being honest with yourself and others is the best way to be healthy and functioning on the faithful path.

So, where are we going? A target idea we’ll be engaging with combines where we are and where we’ve been: noticing and naming the good in each other is still important in the hard places.

This isn’t to say that we should just buck up, take everything on the chin, and ignore all the bad things happening—but it is to say that there’s space to name and talk about the good, even when things are hard. What does that actually look like? I don’t have a fantastic answer yet (mostly because I’m not able to attend Common Table gatherings—but perhaps you, faithful reader, can!). But what I can say is that in loving community, there’s space to acknowledge that life can be very, very difficult, and it can be so hard to see anything good, or a way out. For example, the other day my dad was talking to a friend who was lamenting about growing older and needing hearing aids. This friend didn’t want to get them because it felt like ceeding to being old.

“I can’t give in yet!” he sighed. “I don’t want to admit that I’m old.”

“You know,” my dad said, “a lot of people who don’t get hearing aids and can’t hear well experience social isolation because communication becomes so difficult. And once you get them, you’ll be able to connect with your kids and grandkids! That’s so good!”

Now, this is an incredibly brief summary of what was probably a longer conversation. But the friend was able to see that he wasn’t talking to his kids as much, and his grandkids were making fun of him for how often he said “huh??” in response to something. The conversation was able to acknowledge that yes, aging is scary, but there is also some pretty cool technology that can bridge the gap. That was my dad naming the good inside what’s hard (yes, dad, I’m admitting you can be pretty smart sometimes. Don’t let it get to your head).

So how can we as a church practice naming the good during a hard situation without coming across as insensitive or judgy?

Come to our Common Table Gathering this Sunday to find out. I’ll confess, I’m very excited for this next month, because I’ll be moving back to Bellingham! That’s right folks, no longer will I be writing blogs from the sunshine-y corner of Southern California; I’m coming back!

If you want more of my writing aside from these delightful blogs, feel free to check out my Substack at @poetrybyemma! My column is Deep to Deep.

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