Beyond Words

Two experiences have got me thinking about language – its potential and its limits – in these days after Pentecost. In this blog I am going to reflect on the first.

Tuesday evening I had a spell-binding hour in the Chapel of St Chad’s College, Durham listening to the poet Micheal O’Siadhail. It was a virtuoso reading, not least for his own commitment and vulnerability. You could feel him feeling the depths of his own writing. You could see his toe tapping to his own rhythms. You could delight in his delighting in the improvisations captured on the page. His relish, not only of words but languages and grammars, was captivating. It was a feast, typically, from this poet of feasting, thanksgiving and appreciation.

It was more than performance. It was presence.

O’Siadhail’s new book is called ‘Tongues’, but I first came across his writing in David Ford’s, ‘The Shape of Living’. That book was a real God-send to me. I took it on a retreat and read all about being ‘multiply overwhelmed’. It was a profoundly healing, precisely because those words named my experience at the time. But the analysis of multiple overwhelmings was chapter one. Being overwhelmed was not the end of the story. It was the beginning.

And so it is with poetry. Poetry, it seems to me, begins in what cannot be expressed in words. And yet the result is never quite adequate either. Even the best poem is a kind of failure because it points us to both the potential and the limits of its own medium. So even the greatest poem is a failure to put something wholly and precisely into words. Which is why poems need to be read and heard and felt. Smelt, even.

My point is that this particular failure is intrinsic to poetic success. Or should I say that In poetry, as in life, success and failure walk hand in hand. The moment we don’t want to come back to a poem it has either become to us a poor poem or a piece of prose. A sad ending, whichever it is. And the moment a person loses their mystery to us the relationship is either dull or dead. So it is that the people we know and love the best perplex us the most. That’s life. Or rather, that’s love.

One thing about a good poem, well read, is that it can elicit a special sound from an audience, a long and warm ‘mmmmm’. I think it means something like, ‘oh my goodness, that touched my soul and I don’t feel hurt by it. In fact I feel rather grateful.’

This capacity of poetry to marry success and failure is, I think, deeply important. If a poem reduces an audience to an inarticulate ‘mmmm’-making group then… guess what? The poem has taken them to a place not unlike that which gave birth to the poem in the first place. The feeling that what ever it is that is on the tip of my tongue right now is not going to go into words without remainder and yet absolutely demands to be communicated.

It’s a good, real and mysterious feeling. Maybe ‘spiritual’ is the right word. It is about communicating accurately and communing deeply in that space just beyond the reach and grasp of language.

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How to Kill a Presentation

There are loads of ways of making a mess of the great opportunity which a presentation presents.

We have all seen some of these in action and many of us have committed them ourselves.

Here is my selection of some of the most common.

Presentation Killers

1. Give too much information.
2. Expect your audience to know your jargon, acronyms and in-jokes.
3. Read your slides or handouts – suggesting that you think they are illiterate.
4. Talk too quickly, or too slowly, or too monotonously, or too excitedly or too quietly – or too loudly.
5. Use sentences that belong in books, not on lips.
6. Laugh nervously from time to time.
7. Grip a script in your white-knuckled hands and read it.
8. Over-cook, or under-cook, the whole thing.
   

And just to balance things out, here are some top tips:

Presentation Makers

1. Speak as if you are addressing people you like, admire and look up to.
2. Offer the tip of the iceberg of the subject.
3. Don’t even think about using gimmicks.
4. Eliminate jargon.
5. Bring in colour and imagery.
6. Be emotionally present – share your enthusiasm and your feelings as you go along.
7. Get at least one story in there somewhere.
8. Be genuinely interested in questions and feedback.
   

What would you add to (or subtract from) either list?  (That’s a genuine question, I’d like to get better at doing presentations – they are such great opportunities.)

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Between Introvert and Extrovert – Ambivert

I have often wondered why I am less than fully enthusiastic about Myers Briggs. For many people it provides such a lucid way of self-understanding that they happily say, ‘I am an ISTP’ or whatever, even posting the information on Facebook page or Twitter profile – so you know what they are really like.

Part of my problem, I suspect, is too much Psychology at an early age. When I was a graduate student I shared an office with someone who was fast becoming an expert in psychometrics (making and evaluating psychological tests) and he schooled me to have a high level of scepticism about the whole business. He did a good job.

The slightly scary thing for me is that I have found Myers Briggs to be pretty reliable – to have good ‘test-retest reliability’ as my old friend would say. I get the same result every time. But I am still not sure it has got me quite right.

Anyway, it was with my critical faculties ready to go that I looked up a talk by Susan Cain on TED. Cain’s book ‘Quiet’ has roared to the top of the New York bestsellers lists. It is a book in praise of introversion.  Now there’s marketing for you.  A book in praise of extraversion would never do so well. It’s the introverts who love books – they are fascinated by what is going on inside their own heads and lose energy when dealing with other people or are subject to lots of external stimulation.

For the record, I am persuaded by a good deal of what Cain says at the cultural level. We – and the ‘we’ here is a bit of north Atlantic one – have gone a bit overboard in terms of structuring things – not least learning opportunities for both children and adults – in favour of extroverts.  It’s the dreaded groups again!

Cain argues that there is a greater need for peace and quiet, for individual concentrated effort, than we often allow. Teamwork is good but sometimes someone just needs to go away and think it all though. There is limit to the intensity of thought you can have in a group. And probably a limit on originality too. It’s groups, after all, that do group-think.

For me Cain’s talk came to life, the light bulb went on, when she spoke not of introversion and the qualities of introverts but about ambiverts.  Like their ambidextrous cousins, these are people who do not really prefer one way of functioning over another. They are equally comfortable with the situations where the introvert feels most at home and situations where the extrovert  is having a good time.

Ambiverts are equally happy to see a meeting in their diary as to see a space for writing a report. They enjoy a party and, guess what, they equally enjoy a good book. They find both satisfying and rewarding and like to have a varied life.  They have enough introversion to be able to take stuff on board slowly and enough extraversion to be able to push ideas out without feeling depleted. They can write a book and talk about it without feeling that one or other task is all a bit too much.

I found this amazingly helpful. I have always hesitated over personality test questions like – ‘would you prefer to go to a party or read a book?’. ‘Depends on the party’, I think. ‘Depends on the book.’ ‘Depends what I did last night.’ Until discovering ambiversion I had felt this was a fault.  That there was something sinister about it. I now think what I always thought – that it is sensible, reasonable and well-balanced.

Cain has spoken up for introverts. Someone needs to do the same for ambiverts (they only get one mention in her book). Make it easy for us people on the borderline – or rather in the middle of the continuum – to come out.  ‘I am an ambivert!’ You can whisper it to a friend or proclaim it to the world – yes, you can do either.

Being an ambivert means you have an answer to that question which always makes more sense to the person asking it than you.  So have it at the ready.  ‘Are you an introvert or an extrovert? It’s okay you can tell me?’  ‘Neither, thank you.  I am an ambivert and my Myers Briggs type is ASTJ’!

See Susan Cain’s great talk at http://blog.ted.com/2012/02/28/an-introverted-call-to-action-susan-cain-at-ted2012/

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Exemplary Forgiveness and the Maryland Story

In 2006 five little girls were killed and another five wounded by a local man who then killed himself. The Amish people of the village not only comforted the families of the children but also the family of the gunman. Imagine it. It is astonishing.

In Maryland something similar is happening today. A week ago a homeless man shot a parish priest, the Rev Mary-Marguerite Kohn and administrative assistant Brenda Brewington.  Now the Bishop of the diocese is taking a lead in offering a forgiving response to the man’s family, and several churches in the diocese have offered to host the gunman’s funeral.

This is a moving story.  It is inspiring. It points to responses other than anger or hatred, retribution or resignation, despondency or despair. In it we see ‘victims’ refusing to be oppressed by evil action.  There is real spiritual power in this and we should salute it and let it inspire us.

But before we cheer too loudly we need to think a little more deeply.  This is certainly a forgiving response. It is a story which belongs somewhere on the mountain range we call forgiveness and that, I believe, is territory which we should seek to call home.

It is a place, however, which we cannot access at will.

I like the realistic comment of psychologist Everitt Worthington – one of the more helpful commentators on forgiveness from psychology, not least since he himself suffered a bereavement through murder.  He emphasises that there is much more to forgiving than making a decision or a statement about it.   And he points out that in a situation like this different people will respond in different ways and at different paces.

This is what makes ‘exemplary forgiveness’ so difficult. Yes, it is wonderful. But no, it is not a stick to beat yourself with if what has happened to you has thrown you not into the mountain range of forgiveness but into the wilderness of hurt.

So -  let us applaud the moral and spiritual leadership we are getting from Maryland. But let us also look with compassion on those for whom forgiveness in the aftermath of attack, abuse or violation is simply beyond imagination. Their broken and hurt-filled voices also need to be heard. If we drown them out we run the risk forgetting the pain, the hurt and the outrage of evil acts.

That is not to deny for one minute the quality of this forgiving response. Just to say to those who find it difficult that maybe your role is to stay with the hurt, pain and maybe anger a little longer.  Your role is to feel it deeply and possibly for some while.  If you can do that without bitterness or hated – well, that puts you on one of the foothills in the mountain range of forgiveness. That too is a good place to be.

Follow this link for the original story:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/episcopal-leaders-forgive-homeless-shooter_n_1504561.html?ref=topbar&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

Related article

• Episcopal Leaders Forgive Md. Church Shooter (baltimore.cbslocal.com)

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If You Sit Very Still

Today I received a book in the post.  Nothing surprising in that, given the way we tend to shop. But this book is special. It is the deeply personal and inspiring memoir of Marian Partington, whose sister Lucy’s remains were found in the basement of 25 Cromwell Street Gloucester in 1994 – twenty-one years after her unexplained disappearance.

I had been sent the book because I had written some ‘ praise’ in advance. This is what I wrote,

The question of how people feel, and then cope, in the aftermath of tragic loss violently inflicted, is one which we have all asked ourselves.  By sharing with searing honesty her own journey, Marian Partington tells a story which is both precisely hers and yet also belongs to the human spirit.

It is not a story of ‘coping with loss’, nor of ‘overcoming emotion’ nor less of ‘achieving forgiveness’. It is the story of simply, doggedly and patiently refusing to accept the path of victimhood, revenge or bitter resentment. Instead Marian has walked the way of uncertainty, humility and hope which, though spiritual struggle and human kindness, accepts and transforms sadness, loss and evil.

She offers us a profound and poetic reflection on her experiences. The poetic dimension is not incidental. The victory of which this book speaks has at least three levels. Yes, we learn that goodness is stronger than evil, and that the sacred can be recovered after profanation and degradation. But we also learn of the grace of words which can cast transfiguring light on the ugliest cruelty and sorest loss. 

The journalist Deborah Orr wrote this, ‘If You Sit Very Still’  is the lyrical, humbling fruit of a long and determined effort to make sense of humanity at its darkest and to achieve forgiveness, serenity and peace.

This book will touch people deeply. It deserves to be very widely read.

‘If You Sit Very Still’ by Marian Partington is published on May 10th by Vala Publishing Co-Operative http://www.valapublishers.coop

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