Rev. Joseph Boyd

Even under the best of circumstances it’s difficult to communicate. Even when technology is working, and the signal is strong, it’s difficult to convey meaning. All it takes is an e-mail without the proper thank you or emoji to offend or leave the recipient in doubt of the true feelings of the writer. All it takes is a like on Facebook or the noticeable lack of response to a post to raise eyebrows. If you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry, I’m not leaving you out.

Communication has always been difficult. It’s not just because of technology. Communication is tough even when you’re face to face with same person year after year for decades. As you grow to know someone intimately, your expectations also grow. You can’t help it. We expect to be understood. I expect you to get me. I expect when I tell you something that you’re going to get exactly what I mean. But this so rarely happens.

I’ve learned this especially though giving sermons. Numerous times I’ve had people come through the line after church, not just in this congregation, and thank me for something in my sermon – something which I never said. I’m actually glad when this happens.

If I don’t offer the best words, I’m glad when you can come up with your own. It’s the best possible scenario for miscommunication.

There are many worse scenarios for miscommunication. The worst possible case of miscommunication is when someone feels unheard or misheard to the point of feeling unloved. They feel like they don’t matter. Listening, truly listening, is one of the most basic and powerful acts of love. It’s very rare to encounter it. It’s why we often pay people to do it – therapists, ministers, social workers. It’s not easy to find someone who will truly listen to you. To listen, you have to give up a part of yourself for a moment. You have to surrender your problems, your preoccupations, your agendas. None of us do this perfectly, and most of don’t do it well most of the time. This ability to listen is the essence of real communication.

The thing that most gets in the way of our ability to listen is the assumptions we carry. The assumptions we have about the person we’re listening to, the assumptions about the content we’re hearing, our assumption of what is best and what is wrong. It’s no wonder it’s difficult to talk with people of different political or religious sensibilities.

The starting assumptions can loom so large that there is no way to actually hear each other. It just becomes Fox News vs. The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal vs. The New York Times. Even our Facebook feeds are catered to our specific viewpoints. We are fed non-stop with commentary, and commentary on commentary.

We seem to be a culture swimming in the greatest pools of knowledge. The amount of information at a child’s fingertips is truly staggering. We are inundated with knowledge, with information, and we’re starving for wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge for the greatest good of ourselves and others. This is a rarer quality, and not something we get a lot of practice at. We are taught that it is good to be informed, that it is good to be plugged in. But we stop there. We don’t know how to apply this information, especially when the information is tragic and disturbing, to the greatest good for ourselves and others.

Yesterday I walked as part of March for Our Lives across the street in Wick Park, a march to advocate stricter gun control policy and greater protection of our school children. It was a beautiful day – crisp and cold but sunny.

There were maybe 400 of us who walked around the perimeter of Wick and then ended up in the center to listen to speakers. The most powerful speakers were the kids – high school and college students who spoke passionately and clearly with integrity. I could tell they had been listening. They named the fear they heard from their fellow students and the people in our neighborhoods. Based on this kind of listening they were prepared to respond by showing up at this march and speak to a few hundred people in the attempt to connect and build relationship, to build a community of support. It sound easy, but it’s not. It takes a lot of courage to listen, and then to respond kindly based on what you hear, and to never stop listening. If we ever stop listening, and feel certain we’ve got the entire picture, we’re likely going to lose our balance and fall.

Phillipe Petit understood this. He had heard about the construction of the twin towers while sitting in a dentist office. For 6 years he planned to pull off what would become known as the greatest artistic crime of the century. As Becky explained, he set up a wire between the two twin towers, and walked on it as crowds below murmured and cheered.

When I first heard of this feat, I asked myself why would anyone do this? And then I wondered why the people below started to cheer. Surely they saw a man’s life was at risk. There was no net, no safety precautions – just him and a wire. I imagined putting myself back in time on the morning of August 7, 1974, walking in downtown New York City, and looking up to see a man walking on a wire. I’m sure I would think my eyes were playing tricks on me. Can you imagine being the first person to notice him? You would have to get people to buy in, just to prove to yourself you weren’t crazy. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Yes. Yes, they do. Together you worry about him. Then you see that he is walking slowly, confidently, gracefully, you let it settle in – this is absolutely awesome. No words can describe it. It’s beautiful, it’s dangerous, it’s hopeful. It’s completely ridiculous. It makes no sense.

Phillipe Petit made himself understood by doing something that made no sense. It’s a paradox, but I think it challenges a common assumption – that we will be happier if our life makes sense.

Once we finally figure out our life and the rough bits are sanded down enough, once we can finally make sense of all the chaos and disruption of our best laid plans, we’ll find some peace.

A calling makes no sense. It has its own reasoning and you can surely explain it in a way that makes some kind of sense, but the reality of it is always outside of sense. I have never felt compelled to climb to great heights and string a wire and walk on it. That was Phillipe Petit’s call. But what you and I do is just as much beyond sense. I feel compelled to show up to Youngstown, Ohio and don a robe and stole and speak in a pulpit that was built before my parents were born, and wrestle with our greatest questions as a species. This too has its own kind of ridiculous quality, and it also has a kind of poignancy and beauty. My life does and so does yours.

We want so much to be understood, and yet the path we’re on is always beyond our full understanding and the understanding of others. The path often feels dangerous and it pushes us to the brink, past the limits we impose. Reality doesn’t fit into our stories and boxes – it spills out of them. But sometimes we have try to fit it in a box. I discovered recently that my driver’s license expired.

I have an out of state driver’s license, and since it expired, the only way I can get an Ohio driver’s license is my taking both the learners permit test and the driver’s test.

This really upset me. It makes no sense to me. I’ve been driving for nearly 20 years, and I tried to find some way around it, but I’ve learned DMV is pretty stubborn. So I show up with all my paperwork ready to take the learner’s permit test. I’m standing in line with a bunch of 15 year olds. I show them my birth certificate and social security card. They look at both a good long while, and then say your birth certificate has two middle initials and your social security card only has one initial. I explained that my parents gave me two middle names – Anthony Benjamin but that certain systems only have room for one middle initial, so I just use A. instead of A.B. They said – “Well, for all we know you have documents from two different people.” I was pretty frustrated at this point – I said you can google me if you want. I’m a minister, you’ll see my picture. This did not help matters.

I was able to rustle up another piece of paperwork that had two of my initials, and that allowed me to finally take my learner’s permit test. I passed with an 85%. I have my driver’s test on Tuesday – wish me luck.

I have had to drive with my wife Jennifer in the car. I never realized the freedom I took for granted, being able to drive whenever I want.

I think we all yearn to be free, and we’re all trying to do our best to live large, creative lives while we maneuver having to fit in other people’s boxes. Sometimes those boxes are small and annoying like the DMV, sometimes they are inhuman and disparaging like the cage in Maya Angelou’s poem. Maya Angelou – one of our greatest American poets. She understood the tightrope. She knew the cage of racism and misogyny, and she knew the twin towers of joy and sorrow. In her life she explored every nook and cranny of her spirit trying to get at what it means to be fully human. I think it would be accurate to say that the freedom we seek is always found on the tightrope – between the twin towers of joy and sorrow, of past and present, of life and death. The poetry, the music happens right in the middle.

We’re already on the tightrope, and we walk on it everyday like it’s nothing special. The key is not to look down for too long. We will experience joy, we will experience pain. We will experience freedom, and we’ll know the contours of some kind of cage.

Know this – The whole world is supporting our tightrope walk, even if they don’t understand it, even if we don’t. We walk out like Philippe Petit, we offer others always the possibility of freedom within constraints, and even if it’s not understood, people can’t help themselves but say “Wow. Look at that. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”