Russellings of the Spirit

One of my favorite radio programs is a public radio show called The Moth.

If you have never listened to it, you should. Here is a link to the website: https://themoth.org.

The Moth is people telling stories. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The stories are recorded at public events called StorySlams and cover a wide array of the human experience. On a given week, for example, you might hear someone talk about the year she spent as a member of a sultan’s harem, an addict remembering his long, slow climb to sobriety, or a teacher discussing a group of third-graders and their military maneuvers on the playground.

The stories on The Moth are not all winners, but I always come away from listening feeling somehow enriched.

Last week as the final music of the latest Moth episode was concluding, I realized I still had forty-five more minutes of driving ahead on my hour-long trip. So I set off in search of the next option on the radio dial.

The public radio station had gone to classical music, so that was a quick, “Nope. No thanks.”

My mind having been stimulated by The Moth, I didn’t feel like just zoning out to classic rock or alt beats, or country/western music, so I began searching for talk radio options.

You know, talk radio… that place you go to find intelligent, well-reasoned opinions being expressed and then responded to by other intelligent, well-reasoned counter-opinions.

What I found instead was screaming, ranting tirades by angry radio hosts, responded to either by screaming ranting FANS or screaming ranting FOES of the original viewpoint presented.

The tone was such a jarring contrast to the tone of The Moth that it literally hurt my head to listen. I punched the next button as quickly as I could.

“I know!” I said, to no one in particular. “How about sports talk radio?”

But the result – as you have probably guessed by now – was exactly the same. Screaming, ranting radio hosts, responded to by screaming, ranting callers. I was shocked to discover that the fate of the Free World actually hung on the Cleveland Browns’ decision about who to start at quarterback this week!

And so… I hit the “Power Off” button and spent the rest of my drive in silence, contemplating Life, Love, and Laundry.

Admittedly it was a small sample size from which to draw conclusions, but my experience raised an interesting question for me. It made me ask: is there some fundamental, core reason we need adversaries in order to be fully human?

It certainly seems sometimes, doesn’t it?

I often get the feeling that we go out of our way to set up oppositional types of situations… in all realms of life. Team A doing battle against Team B to determine the winner seems to form the basis of our systems of war, sports, politics, and most business.

Lately, it seems as if “winning you over to MY point of view” is the way we talk to one another, too.

Advocates of this approach suggest that adversarity(yes, I just made that word up) is the only way anything ever improves. They point out that businesses that lack competition become lazy and lackadaisical about innovating or providing exceptional service.

And I am not sure I would really ever work to improve my jump shot if I wasn’t going to use it to try and win a pick-up basketball game.

But we also need to remember that – according to the psalmist – we are each “… fearfully and wonderfully made…” (Psalm 139), with – I presume – an unbridled capacity to continually hone and refine our God-given abilities.

But does that necessarily mean refining those abilities in the heat of battle?

As I listened to the story-telling on The Moth, delving deeper and deeper into the meat and meaning of a few simple life experiences, I felt the deep tingle of inspiration stirring inside. I loved the open and vulnerable way the storytellers peeled back the layers of their lives and invited me in to look.

I wanted to do the same… and tell the stories that have helped shape MY life.

Without having to threaten to crush or annihilate me, those storytellers coaxed me closer and closer to a willingness to explore similar places in my own life. They beckoned me to walk where wonder and surprise and humor might have swirled together to create a rich place of meaning… to look again at something I might have overlooked before.

Yes, King Solomon also told us, “…iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17).

But sometimes the best tools are made from something a lot softer than iron.

Abundant blessings;