I have been convicted today. Not by a some law official or court judge, but by an inner "voice".
At lunch time I was sitting in our Space2B area at the back of the church having my lunch. There was a group of people around me in easy chairs with several conversations going on about me. I was talking to a woman beside me, genuinely interested in her.... but during one of her answers I was distracted by something that was said in another conversation across the coffee table. I pulled myself up, and thought, "How rude... I didn't catch the last part of her sentence! I was not listening respectfully!" ... I struggled there because I tried, as a minister to keep an eye on the movement and flow of the conversations. I was worried that these people, some of whom were strangers to each other, were feeling included, or were not being put off by others etc etc. But that "professional" concern meant that I was not as attentive in the one-on-one conversation as I should have been.... and those one-on-one conversations matter. By my inattentiveness I could be communicating, "You don't matter! You are insignificant!" I certainly would not want to do that.
I went from there around to one of my chaplaincy sites, the latest one I have taken on. On the way I bumped into a man from another chaplaincy. We got talking and we had a short, but meaningful conversation. We have a warm relationship toward each other, are relaxed together and conversation flows freely along with humour. When he learned where I was headed, he asked about how it was going. So we talked briefly about that.
When I got to my chaplaincy site I started talking to the workers there. It is my new chaplaincy, so I am all worried about how I am doing. Will I make a success of it? Will they accept me? How can I break through to these people? As I was talking and relating, in my mind I was comparing my conversation with the one I had just had in the street. It was then that I was convicted. Both conversations were with chaplaincy "clients", but I was different. In the one in the street, I was relaxed about me and concentrating on the other. I suddenly realised that, in the new chaplaincy site I was too much worried about me! As I conversed, I was all of the time wondering about my performance. I was trying to calculate whether I was being a "good chaplain", what sort of impression I was making and if I was being accepted. I should have been just purely and simply interested in the other person, attending genuinely to them and "there" for and with them. It is one of those things where you are a good chaplain if you forget about being a good chaplain, stop worrying about yourself, and focus on and attend to the people before you. Jesus said, "If you lose yourself you find yourself." ... well something like that. The inner conviction I had was, "stop worrying about yourself, and love the people you are there for." (This is true of so many things in relationships... for example in the marriage relationship it changes "having sex" into "making love" and deepens the whole experience.)
I know it is right.... just got to practice it. "Lord give me the freedom from a self absorption, so that I can truly be a channel of your love."
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