A New Dictionary
(reframe – verb) : to frame (something) again and often in a different way.
“Can we reframe that?” is a refrain you’ll often hear around our home. I will just have reacted to something with a lot of energy or described a situation that I find distressing, and my wife, Morgen, will say, “How could we reframe that?”
See it in a different light.
Cast that memory in a new perspective.
Tell a different story about what happened.
If you give a new meaning to the end of the story, you will see what came before differently.
Two of my favorite writers are Frederick Buechner and David Whyte. Buechner’s books, especially The Sacred Journey and Telling Secrets were my first clue that we often need to look backward in order to move forward, that carefully looking at our past, in particular our earliest family relationships, helps us understand how we often show up in the present. Buechner also married together beauty and truth in his writing like few Christian authors can manage to pull off – lyrical without being sentimental, tight.
He also wrote three “alphabet” books, Wishful Thinking, Peculiar Treasures and Whistling in the Dark, where he provided fresh definitions of sacred and ordinary words.
David Whyte does the same in his incomparable Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Whyte is a poet, and Consolations is book of essays, each on a particular word, like honesty or friendship. Each entry is three or four pages that read more like a prose poem. And like a good poem they reward reading closely, slowly and again.
Whyte’s book has stayed on my bedside table for years and even after all these readings, I still have to read over some of the sentences two to three times, not because they are unclear, but the opposite. His writing is so clean and precise that I know every word was chosen with deliberate care, like a poet’s dictionary.
At the end of his ordeal Job said, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you,” (Job 42.5) implying there is such a thing as using words, we only come to realize later, that we did not understand until now. Similarly, the poet of the psalms talks about our need to hear, what we once heard, but with a fresh hearing (Ps. 40.6, 66.11).
In the spirit of Buechner and Whyte, then, here are some everyday words, likely to be often heard in a church or among Christians but precisely for that reason, needing to be reframed.
Remember
We usually think that the opposite of to remember is to forget. But consider that remember can also be the opposite of dismember, as in, remembering is putting the pieces of our lives back together, as opposed to cutting off parts of ourselves, our experiences, our souls. You’re probably aware that the instruction to “remember” is quite frequent in the Bible (by some counts, second only to “Do not be afraid”). Is it because God’s people are particularly forgetful? Is God nagging us like the parent of a scatterbrained child? Remember your lunchbox! Remember to wash your hands! Remember to bring both shoes home! Remember I love you!
We are finite and limited creatures. There is no way for us to hold in our consciousness all that has happened to us at once. Painful and difficult memories are especially tempting to push away, “out of mind,” and do our best to distance ourselves from them. Is it any wonder we feel scattered, strung-out, broken? But when we re-member, with the help and in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we are like Humpty Dumpty, being put back together again. The Spirit does what all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t do – move us towards healing and wholeness.
Kindness
Kind is a word that I think we usually get wrong. It’s been watered down into a benignly sentimental word, as if kindness were a soft thing, as if being kind were the same as being nice. Often when we describe someone as kind, we more likely mean that they are nice.
And being nice is not all that bad. But being nice is different from being kind. Kind people aren’t always nice. And nice people are not always kind. You run into nice people every day. Thankfully. Kind people, on the other hand, are rare and beautiful things, like those exotic flowers in the desert that only bloom one day a year. When you come across it, it’s breathtaking. Anyone who wants to learn how to love must engage with what kindness looks like in our relationships.
Kindness is not natural. No one stumbles into being kind. Kindness is the considered choice to replace a critical spirit with a charitable judgment. Behind a critical spirit lurks a great deal of insecurity, even self-loathing. People who are deeply ashamed tend to shame others, either out loud or in the privacy of their own heart. We may call these quiet judgments “being discerning.”
If we are fortunate, sometime in the middle of life’s journey we gain the dawning but horrifying awareness of how often we fail to meet our own expectations, let alone God’s. We see that we are a mess of contradictions and that what ticks us off is often what makes us tick.
And this humbling, humiliating, ego-bruising self-awareness can produce in us a new posture, one of compassion born of genuine solidarity. In the failings of others, we recognize our own rooster-crowing moments. “Look at that,” is replaced with “Father forgive them, they know what they do.”
Compassion leads us to replace a judgmental heart with a spirit of connection and curiosity. “How could they? I would never!” becomes “I recognize that pattern. I wonder what unhealed, untouched pain is moving them react like that?” That’s not who they want to be.
Kindness can look naïve in overlooking offenses and missteps. But, it’s not that you see less. Kindness sees more fully, more clearly, more of the story. It’s a fruit of the Spirit and that’s what the Spirit enables, opening our eyes to more of reality in God’s world.
Kindness sees clearly and yet moves toward with deliberate patience and persistent care. There’s nothing cheap or easy about kindness. Kindness is hard and, properly speaking, always undesevered. Undeserved kindness is a living, incarnational expression of grace. Kindness is what grace in practice looks like. Wise people are kind people. “Here is a wounded, sin-burdened, human being, yearning to be recognized and understood, desperate to be loved, and terribly afraid, just like me.”
Jesus is the only person who does see clearly – all the way down, all the way through, each one of us. He sees and on the cross he stayed. And he still sees and yet moves toward us in relentless kindness. The measure we have received and experienced this kindness of Christ is the measure that we will extend it to others. Kind people have learned that in the end kindness is the only thing that changes people. Kindness can look (and feel) like weakness. But kindness is not weakness; it is a strong and courageous virtue.
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