Escape Lane Friction

When classrooms get too noisy,

and house groups have that disruptive element

and a dinner party nudges toward the anarchic

— watch them, always stirring things…

There's always one.

Catfish.

Troublemaker.

Fast-paced loose cannon.

Why did we invite them?!

(Mental note for next time.)

...

I watch for the one(s), who belong, despite their own resistance.

I see them testing the water unusually.

Genuinely. It's not just performance.

...

Once I wrote a three week meditation book for a group who asked me to.

I wrote about Bonhoeffer, and Lewis, and Meister Eckhart… and also

created within it a Devil's Advocate kind of mischievous ongoing contrary commentary, that couldn't help piping in at the end —

I wanted to give voice to the one who can't wait to jump in with the opposite point of view, or a digression that needs a microscope and an X-ray machine to see why it mattered saying at all.

I've seen that when I've been a teacher, or a group leader. I've seen that in myself. So as I write, I often still write diversions —

an escape lane for the reader who needs brakes of a different kind…

more friction to keep them

trusting.

That might help explain things. 🙂 ps. A few years ago I heard this story. Or something like it. There was once a group, with an infuriating member. He drove everyone round the bend. Week after week, always chiming in, making jokes, changing the subject. They couldn't get anything done. And people didn't like that. You could tell. They didn't exactly hide it. And in the end the man got the message, and he left. Even though he'd paid to be there. Let them know he wouldn't be back, and didn't mind about the money.

The group was overjoyed. Phew. At last. Now we can be a group.

But the next week they met again, and there he was. They could hardly believe it. What? But— How…?

The group leader explained. He'd asked the man to come back. Covered his fees, and invited him to be his paid assistant.