one of the hardest things

one of the hardest things for us humans, it seems to me, is understanding one another.

it’s dead easy for me to understand the bits in you that are similar to me – that’s easy, because I know what it’s like. but to understand those bits in you where you are different – that’s the challenge. to understand, and to accept – to allow you to be different, to accept you as the unique individual that you are.

I’m reading a book called Personality and Prayer by Ruth Fowke, in which she talks about the different prayer styles that suit different personality types, and I’m stunned by reading about ways of praying that some people find really helpful whilst to me they seem not just unhelpful but impossible… again and again I’m confronted by this challenge: yes, you want others to accept you as you are, but can you return the favour? can you, meirav, accept that for some people using pre-written prayers can actually be a help in connecting with God?

That’s just one example – the last example I came across, in reading the chapter about people who approach life mainly through their senses and who have a strong need for life to be orderly. (SJs, I think, in Myers-Briggs lingo.) Their strong need for order, for routine, for clear rules – all that puts me off, but I expect they would find my strong need for a certain degree of chaos rather baffling too… And when I got to the thing about using pre-written prayers I was really stunned, because this is something that to me seems almost wrong: how can you have a relationship with someone if the only way you communicate with them is by using other people’s words? and yet in this book I’m told that there’s this whole bunch of people for whom it is often helpful to read prayers written by others, and to use prayers whose words are familiar, because, as one friend she quotes put it: “When you know the words off by heart then you can concentrate on the meaning instead of trying to figure out what you want to say.” To me this sounds super weird, because for me the only mode of expression which seems real is if I put things into my own words. But we’re all different – and just as I long to be understood and accepted just as I am, so I need to learn – more and more – to accept others just as they are.

I was thinking about these issues recently when one of the elders led the service in church and the way he went about it seemed to me so very stiff and formal – but then I thought: this is how this guy is, he is stiff and formal, can’t I accept him as he is? just as I want to be accepted with my more informal ways – so I need to allow him to behave the way he does. I think there are times in church life when we can fall into the trap of equalling a certain form of behaviour with being open to the Holy Spirit – like if you’re not waving your arms in the air when singing worship songs, you’re not there yet. But surely just as it is ok and acceptable for me to wave my arms in the air when singing, it should be equally ok for someone else to stand and sing without moving a muscle. Just because we’re free to do xyz, it doesn’t mean that we have to do it. And if someone isn’t doing it, that doesn’t mean they haven’t got the Holy Spirit in them – each person is going to have their own way of expressing themselves. It’s just so easy to judge people by what we see – but God sees what’s in our hearts, he knows if someone is just making a big show to impress others, he also knows if someone is just naturally shy or reserved.

and he accepts each of us just as we are.