Manage Well -- We Encourage Part 2

Last week I highlighted what it does not mean to encourage. Now to turn and make the shift to what it might mean. On the assumption that this is a fundamental capacity for those of us called into any level of organizational leadership – business, academy, church – or also thinking of the need to encourage within our family systems and with our friends. Our peers.

Consider that it means, at the very least, three things. To encourage another is to . . .

Show compassion. Interesting to be reminded in a sermon this past Sunday that compassion means, quite simply, to share in the suffering [passion] of another. The key is the “co”. We identify with; we mourn with; we suffer with. We stand with the other. We put ourselves in the shoes of the other. To walk with them; we sit with them. We listen to them: whether it is through the loss of employment or whether it is at the hospital beside or when we walk with someone who has lost a love one or who has experienced a broken relationship. No judgement. No standing apart. We are with them. They are not alone.

The ideal is that we are with them in person. But sometimes this is not possible. My current correspondence with colleagues and friends in Lebanon can only be from a distance. I SO wish I could be with them: to walk through the broken towns and villages in southern Lebanon that are being razed b the IDF. But that is not possible. But they know that I am following the news closely; I am aware –somewhat – of what it is happening. I cannot be there; but I can assure them that even with the news cycle dominated by the World Cup, they are front and centre in my consciousness.

Side note: somewhere C.S.Lewis insists that we do not overstate our difficulty or suffering. True. But when we encourage another we own their situation with them. We do not need to say that we know what they are doing through. Everyone’s situation is unique. But as we are able, to assure the other of our compassion.

Second, we point to the good, the noble and the excellent . . . wherever we see it. As Joella, my wife, is incline to note: God never leaves us without some witness to the goodness and grace of God. We just need to see it. When we encourage, this is what we do: we point out the good, even in the midst of the darkness. There is a line in the collect for evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer that is for me a haunting and powerfully encouraging: “Lighten our Darkness . . . we beseech thee”. That is what we do when we encourage: we lighten the darkness.

This is what artists do for us: musicians, poets, novelists and painters. They signal light and hope and goodness in the midst of a fragmented world. And we encourage when in like manner we point to the light and call attention to the signs of grace, goodness and love.

I think today of the sheer horror of what is happening in Belfast, with the race riots and threats to the lives and well-being of more recent immigrants to Northern Ireland. The foolishness of it all is captured in particular with the threat to a nurse whose only agenda was and is to care for the very people who are threatening her.

And yet . . . and yet: in response to all of this the good people of Belfast have taken to the streets to defend their neighbors, to insist that as a people they are not racists but welcoming of those of other ethnic and religious affiliation. They are insisting that this is not what it means to be a resident of Northern Ireland. They are pointing to the light.

Here too we are reminded of the value of saying “thank you.” We encourage when and where we acknowledge the good and the commendable: we say “well done”, not as flattery, not to make the other feel good, but to name the good, to identify what merits our attention. To lighten the darkness.

And third, we insist on perseverance. When a preacher has delivered an awful sermon and they know it, their temptation is to quit. And as a friend or companion, we encourage by insisting that they get on the horse again. They cannot quit; we will not let them. They cannot despair, we need them to follow through. They made a mistake running the bases the last time hey got on base and we lost the game. But we need them to not quit on us, but learn from the mistake and go at it again. For all of us, it is behind us. Evening sports news might highlight their mistake again and again and perhaps even laugh at their error. But not those of us who need you to be there for us tomorrow. When you face set back, your friends urge you to stay the course.

We all know this as parents. Our sons or daughters failed at this or that or the other . . . and we walked with them through it all: we ached with them. They were not alone. We did not tell them how disappointed we were with them. We stood with them not apart from them. And then, when the timing was right, we highlighted the good . . . we did what we could to lighten the darkness. And then, next day, we were back in the play pitch, perhaps just the two of us, to go through it again: what it means to hit a baseball. We did not let “quitting” be an option.

And of course, this is the way of the Creator. The God of all compassion; the God to who we pray “lighten the darkness”. The God who calls us back to the task at hand.