An Unexpected Call
My drawing and commentary of a few days ago about the Sandy Hook shooting got a huge response, well over 60 comments so far and counting. This was due more to me harassing my friends to comment than it was to them just being cosmically led, but I will take them any way I can get them. One of my friends, Kaci Christian, a former reporter here in Tulsa who now lives in LA, took the extra step of actually calling me on the phone to talk about my post. We talked about many things but one thing I liked in particular was her thinking I could expand on the 5 elements by adding the mouth and the ear to compliment the eye. And I think she is right. There are many things to say about both but I am going to continue the track I started a few days ago and apply how these elements had a hand in the tragedy and how they might contribute to a solution as well.
The Mouth – The mouth takes in and it sends out. More than one person talked about how what we put in our body makes a huge difference in who we are, and that is true. But the immediate concern is what comes out of our mouths. This is about what we say in regards to the Sandy Hook tragedy but in a greater sense it’s about what we say any time. Do we talk with a helping hand at the heart of our thoughts or do we talk with an accusatory and judgmental gun pointed at another person, either the person we are talking to or an absent person, either an individual or a group of people.
I have many friends on both the left and right of various debates. I live in Oklahoma so a lot of my day to day friends from running, photography, church, etc. are conservative. I also happen to be from both coasts; raised in California and spending my teen years in Connecticut (not all that far from Newtown). I also am an artist who has spent a fair amount of time with other artists. Those elements lead me to have many liberal friends as well.
The big differences showed up quite angrily during the recent election of course, and there were times when I went too far in expressing myself. My words were too accusatory and judgmental. Not always, sometimes the words were needed and I don’t apologize for that. But other times I just let my anger about an issue get the better of me and I wrote or spoke words that were more of a gun than a hand.
I need to do better with my mouth and the words I let come out. What about you?
Remember this: You do have the ability to make your words be a hand that helps or a gun that shoots. Choose to speak as a hand reaching out.
The Ear – It can hear but does it listen? That is the age old question, isn’t it. Ask many married couples and you will hear stories of them not listening to each other in spite of hearing the words. The key always seems to come down to listening for what is said between the lines, not the line itself. How do we do that in the aftermath of something like Sandy Hook? When I hear a gun owner angrily defend his ownership of guns, what does he really want us to know? When I hear a friend go on an impassioned plea about mental health issues, what is behind it?
When I was first married, to both my wives actually, I heard the obvious from both of them. What they said is what I heard. Too late in my first marriage I finally heard what she was wanting me to hear, not just her auditory sounds. It’s made for a positive post-marriage relationship between the two of us, but I certainly do wish I wasn’t as dumb about it all during the marriage. The good thing is that I do think I learned something from those years and do better with Linda, my wife now. Of course, I am sure she would say I still have plenty of work to do in hearing her but I think she might also say I try hard to get to what is being said with her heart, not just her words.
How can we listen, not just hear, all the responses and feelings about Sandy Hook? We have to start with assuming the best of people. If we only listen for cliche conservative or liberal messages and respond with anger at the assumed agenda then that is all we will hear. Focus on finding out what are the hopes and fears of the person who is talking, not what is their agenda (even if they have one) and we find who they are underneath it all. Then we can listen with compassion and love, not reactive deafness.
What do you listen for?
Remember this: You have the ability to hear deeper than the words spoken. You can hear the hand or you can hear the gun, both often come out at the same time. Choose to hear the hand reaching out.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
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