In this talk, given at a 1990 women’s retreat, Dorothy Ranaghan gave some tips about how to foster good conversation in a women’s group, emphasizing the importance of listening and responding in love. She also noted that good conversation in a women’s group balances the spiritual and the practical.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
SHARON ROSE: If Gerry’s talk was on what women’s groups are, Dorothy’s talk is on what we do once we get there. Yaaay, Dorothy! [Applause.]
DOROTHY: You know what we do when we get there?
WOMEN’S VOICES: What, Dorothy? What? What? What, Dorothy?
DOROTHY: We talk. [Laughter.]
Now, right away if you’re like me, you know that the first thing you pray the day you wake up on [sic; “after”?] women’s group is something like, “My sin is always before me. [Laughter.] Against you, you alone, have I sinned; what is evil in your sight I have done.” Or in this case, it’d be more appropriate to say something like, “What is evil in your sight I have said.”
The very idea that the Lord has given all of us a chance to use our tongue regularly is a sign of his great love and trust in us [laughter].
But he has given us a very real gift of women with whom to grow in holiness. That’s what’s—Gerry’s bottom line is, I think, that we’re given a chance to grow in holiness with our sisters, and we really want to make the most of that gift.
Now you know as well as I do that there are a lot of different models out in the world for small groups, small discussion groups, and many of them are very different from the one that we have chosen. There are support groups, and there are consciousness-raising groups, and there are 12-step groups, and there are card parties, and there are sewing circles, and there are many kinds of therapy groups. And they too encourage a small group with a warm, friendly atmosphere that fosters intimacy and openness and all of these good things.
There’s one primary difference, I think, that you notice right away between our model and many of these other models, particularly any of the therapeutic models. By “therapeutic,” I mean the sort of “get it all out and feel affirmed” type of groups. And basically, that [difference] is correction. And Laurie Magill’s going to talk to us a bit about that later. But correction isn’t going to be present in most of those support groups, because everyone is just really encouraged to sort of “let it all out” and feel validated and heard and cozy. And that’s very good, but sometimes it can mean the freedom to say whatever we want about whomever we want, and that certainly isn’t what we’re about. Our goal of holiness excludes that way of behaving, because we can affirm the sinner, but we certainly can’t affirm the sin.
But—the only reason I’m even mentioning it here at the beginning is that what I want to focus on is not so much the real negatives—you know, what we can’t do—but I want us to be able to really enter women’s group with sort of an eager anticipation of how, “At least tonight, I will begin afresh to really listen in love and to respond in love to my sisters. How can I speak and respond in love?”
When I asked the question of myself, looking at the task of getting ready for this talk, I said, “You know, what really is supposed to happen in women’s group?” The words of a song kept coming over and over in my mind. I will spare you singing it. [Laughter.] But it—I found myself humming it a lot this week. It’s not terribly profound, but it does say a lot of what I think we want to talk about today. It’s basically the song from the King and I that says, you know,
Getting to know you,
Getting to know all about you;
Getting to like you,
Getting to hope you like me. . . .
Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you,
Getting to know what to say.
It really puts it pretty clearly in terms of what we struggle with when we start going to women’s group. I think it isn’t the entire purpose of women’s group, but it certainly defines it well enough that we can think about that in the background of our mind as we start to talk today. Anything that fosters that “getting to know all about you” is really good and right and proper for women’s group. We’re talking, after all, about going beyond getting acquainted. Of course we have to do that first, but we need the—to talk about the ability to really come to know one another. And the way it needs to look right up close is what Gerry Sgroi said: it’s a combination of this [sic] very spiritual and the very practical things.
We often hear as handmaids two major complaints about women’s group . . . women’s groups that aren’t going terribly well. One version of it is, “My group is too stiff, too formal, too artificial. Everybody prays all the time. We pray about everything, and we spout Bible passages all the time, but nobody sounds real. It’s like we rarely share from the heart.” That’s one way it’s put. Such groups, in fact, often use prayer as something to hide behind, so that they don’t have to really get personal with one another.
The other and seemingly opposite major complaint is, “My group is too casual, too unorganized, too superficial. Everybody avoids prayer, or anything deep and serious. All we ever do is chit-chat and talk about terribly insignificant things.” Now this group, like the group that prays too much, is not experiencing the fullness of what we mean a women’s group should be and can be, because it also stays on the surface. Now, I’m not saying that we should never pray, and I’m not saying that we should never chit-chat. Of course, we’re going to do a healthy dose of both. But, both of these problems, which seem like they’re terribly opposite, are really the same problem. Both groups are finding different ways of staying superficial, of staying on the surface with one another.
What I prefer to call a “true women’s group” may actually not pray at all for two weeks or more at a time—scandalous as that may sound—and that’s not really a terrible problem, if things are going well. Because when prayer is needed, we will have been actually listening to one another at such a level and in such a way that we really know what our prayer needs to be all about. We need—we know how to pray for one another and for other needs when those times arise. Prayer then is not a substitute for personal sharing; it’s the fruit of it. It’s born of it, and it surrounds everything that we share with the depth and the love of God.
Similarly, in our chit-chatting about everything from detergents to homework to housework to diapers to grandchildren, these are not insignificant things to talk about, because in fact they form much of the substance of our daily lives, which are not insignificant. They’re ways of learning about one another. In fact, we learn very much about the personal and the practical side of other people’s lives when we listen to their day-to-day experience. And after all, we’re not always profound . . . and deep. [Dorothy speaks in a slow, dramatic, husky voice. Audience laughs.] Some of you are, but I’m not. [Laughter.] Nor should we push it and try to be that way. You know and you’ve probably met very, very intense people: people who always stare you in the eye and who simply cannot seem to talk casually, who always have to speak on dense subjects or with great emotion. They’re very draining, and they’re not much fun, okay?
However . . . however . . . even seemingly trivial subjects can and should lead eventually somehow, in the evening or in the course of the afternoon, to personal sharing if we allow it [sic] to. We need to try to get beyond sort of a “journalistic” type of sharing that says [Dorothy speaks the following lines like a robot]: “This was my day. This was my week. My kids did such and such. My grandkids did such and such.” Because although all of those things are important and all of them are good places to start, the whole point seems to be, what does it mean? Not just that it happened; you could read that in a newspaper.
But to share with your women’s group, you need to ask yourself, what did any of it mean to me? How do I feel about all those events or all those people? In what ways have I been taught anything or built up or dragged down? Did the Lord show me anything? Where in my day or week or in my relationships am I joyful, or am I hurting? These are the kind of things we need to bring into that reportorial style that some of us fall into so easily. To do that, it takes trust. You have to trust one another to go that extra mile from objective reporting to sharing subjective experience.
Now, you would think that to learn to do that in our groups correctly, that what I need to do next is to review the sins of speech. And that’s not a bad idea, and I intend to do that. [Laughter.] But I sometimes think, and some of us have talked about this before, that what is almost more effective would be if some of us would learn some of the basic rules of etiquette—in fact, specifically, what is known as the art of conversation.
Now, I know, etiquette can seem like a dirty word. But knowledge of etiquette, especially the old-fashioned Emily Post kind, or even the contemporary Miss Manners kind [light laughter], never hurt any group of people who want to spend a lot of their time together. It never hurt anything. Etiquette—particularly for those of you under 25, believe it or not [laughter]—is not a set of stuffy rigid rules and regulations. It is at its best defined as “good common sense that is linked with thoughtfulness for others.” And if women’s group is going to succeed, we have got to learn more and more how to be thoughtful to one another. Simple etiquette.
If you ever read any etiquette books—and it’s fun to do, even if it’s not supposed to be a staple of our lives—you will find that there are pages and pages and pages devoted to . . . eating, for instance (maybe that’s why I like the books!). [Laughter.] It tells everything about how to serve the food and how to prepare the food and how to arrange your table and how to put the flowers on and how to make everything gracious and where to put the silverware. And the most awesome part is how to learn which order to eat things in when it’s set there for you. And how to present things in such a way that it will be gracious and elegant and really serve not just to make you look good, but much more importantly, how it will serve to make others feel at ease, how it will serve to make things go well.
But if you read these books, you’ll discover something much more interesting. And that is that there are infinitely more pages devoted to what to say to the people you’re around when you’re at that table. In other words . . . Fine. The table looks good; the food is great. But everybody sits down and you all stare at one another. Unless you have learned that the true hostess, the really gracious woman of etiquette, knows what to say to the people and how to arrange them in groupings that will allow their conversation to go best. In fact, if you’re seated at a real dinner party, trust . . . that you have been put there to talk to the people around you for very specific reasons, and if you don’t hold up your end of it, it’s going to go down the tubes real fast. Okay?
These are the kinds of background thoughts I want us to have in our mind as we proceed, because this is not irrelevant. This is really important. If you remember the movie My Fair Lady, particularly one of the older versions—or if you’ve ever really read Pygmalion, upon which it’s based—one of the reasons that Eliza Doolittle fails so utterly when she goes out on her first little foray into the world an- —under the tutelage of her mentor about how to speak and how to be a lady of graciousness after she’s been picked up from the gutter. . . . She fails in her first outing not because she [Dorothy precisely enunciates the following] didn’t pronounce the words properly [light laughter] and not because she held her teacup incorrectly, but because she didn’t have a clue as to what subjects were and were not inappropriate. She started talking right away about how they “done ’im in,” you know [laughter], and I—if you didn’t see it, you should. It’s a classic case of how not to carry on a conversation, and everybody’s staring at her dumbfounded because she’s blowing it all over the place with these huge gaffes and not understanding yet what a lady would know about what’s appropriate conversation. So anyway, keep that in the back of your mind too.
So already, you have to see the King and I, My Fair Lady. . . . [laughter drowns out Dorothy’s words]. Keep going. It’s okay.
WOMAN’S VOICE: Funny Girl! [Laughter and banter.]
DOROTHY: Conversational groupings are more important to a good hostess than the centerpiece, because learning to converse is learning to love. Now, as the mother of many children, I have—like most of you have probably had to do—I’ve had to teach the art of conversation. Years ago, I learned that I needed to do that. I keep finding that there are more things written into the job description of motherhood than I ever realized [laughter], you know—driving a car, all these things. They never tell you that when you first start.
But the art of conversation is important to teach the children because—we had a guest at our house one night for dinner. This was years ago, and I heard the conversation, and you know, you sit there and you die inwardly, and at the end of it you say, “I have work to do here.” So I’m going to give you this conversation as it happened at my table.
Guest: I hear you play volleyball.
Child: Yes. [During this dialogue, Dorothy as “Child” speaks in a dull monotone.]
Guest: Have you played very long?
Child: I guess so. Not really. [Laughter.]
Guest: Do you like it?
Child: Yes. [Light laughter.]
Guest: Do you hope to play in high school or in college?
Child: No. [Laughter.]
This is what I call “non-conversation.” [Laughter.] Such non-conversations are deadly. And at that point, I saw clearly that it was time to teach my children the art of conversation. So the next week, I took them into a little room—three of them, anyway, that were old enough to listen to me—and decided I would teach them that it was meant to be a dialogue, a two-way street in which both parties took active responsibility to move the conversation along.
“When someone. . . .” I told them, you know, just the basic things that any of us have to teach our kids. I said, “Listen. When someone asks you a question, both the proper etiquette and the loving Christian thing to do is not just to answer the question, but to add—give them a little rope, okay? In other words, add to the question you’ve been asked something of your own life, some other piece of information that will help the other person know something about you and give them something else to continue talking to you about!
So I replayed the conversation to them in endless ways about how it could have gone better. Okay? I’ll give you just one example of how I sort of told them it could have gone better.
Guest: I hear you play volleyball.
Child: Yes, I do. I’m really new at it, though, and I’m no great star.
Now you see, the guest, if she’s shrewd, will pick up on the newness angle here. The child has added something personal here. [Light laughter.] The guest, of course, in my imagination, does, and says, “Do you like learning the fundamentals of the game?”
And the child says, “Yes, we’re at the age when the most exciting thing is just to get your serve over the net.” [Light laughter.]
Then the child says, “Did you ever play volleyball?” Now see, this is a very smart child [laughter], okay? Right away, get the conversation off yourself, okay? [Laughter.] Start opening up to the interests of the guest, and see if there’s anything there that could, you know, let it go off you. ’Cause kids are very self- —you know, they don’t like you to focus on them.
But the guest says, “No. I’ve always loved watching the game, though, and I admire those who learn to play.” And then she says, “Do you think you’ll want to play in high school?”
And the child says, “Yes. I don’t know if I’m good enough, but it certainly wouldn’t be as hard as my studies will be at Trinity, where I’m going to be going next year.” [Laughter.] And see, once again, this is another good conversational technique. You want to get off this volleyball thing. You already said you feel like a loser, okay? [Laughter.] So, you aim it toward something else. You give her a handle to take the conversation off of this, which is—could be more deadly, and to say, “Let’s talk about Trinity now.” And they can do that, or you could—you understand. There’re a million things you could do to liven it up. But just the deadly ans- —question and answers don’t get anywhere.
Now, whether people are praying or chit-chatting or sharing deeply, there are several things that we can do to promote good speech and personal sharing. They’re all what I call “ways to love our sisters well.” I’ve listed seven; there are probably others.
The first is to pay attention. Inattention is tuning out. Now particularly when women have been together a long time, this is likely to occur. “Oh, here she goes again, talking about some new book or her grandchildren or her job or her hair or her husband.” And so we sort of “half listen.” Our listening has to be pure and whole, like a bottle filled with milk. We wouldn’t want a bottle filled with half milk and half water. It’s diluted. And yet that’s exactly what some of our conversations turn out to be, because we’ve got a pint of what someone else is saying and a pint of our own thoughts. And unless we listen, unless we make the effort to find out what another sister’s interests are, we’ll never come to any common interests. And common interests are the only way in which you can move the relationship toward friendship. The absolutely only way.
I need to have an attitude that says, “I want to delight in whatever delights my sister. And if I don’t find out what makes her eyes shine and twinkle and glow, no matter whether it’s something quite different than what make [sic] me happy, I will never find a common ground with my sister. But I need to listen to see what gets her excited.”
The second thing is, we need to avoid superficiality. And superficiality happens when we’re afraid to share about the things that really count. Now, maybe we’ve been hurt before. Maybe we shared it, and something didn’t happen right. And we have ways of dealing with that; I’m not gonna talk about that now. But one rule to remember is that there is really nothing that we don’t—that we can’t talk about in women’s group, except perhaps the sins of others.
We can, and we should, talk about almost anything. Gerry listed a whole bunch, and I think they’re worth repeating. We can talk about our husbands and children—that is, if we have any—about domestic subjects, about books, Scripture, community teaching, our work, our prayer lives. Even many, many subjects related to sex can and should be talked about in the right way.
Interestingly enough, the right way to talk about sex is impersonally. To talk about it, not like, “Joe and I are doing this. What do you think?” [Laughter.] That won’t work, friends; won’t work, okay? No. But an objective conversation about certain aspects of sexuality is perfectly appropriate if we can talk about it in the right way. If it has to get much per- —more personal, the appropriate forum for that is to talk to a handmaid.
The third to remember is to try not to dominate. Now, you know some of us are more talkative than others. And that is absolutely not a terrible thing. In fact, it can even be a good thing. Because if we were all timid, things could get very dull, okay? Some of us depend upon others of us to keep things moving for a little while. However. Everybody needs to be able to share, and holding forth for too long needs to be discouraged. The head of a group can do that best, really, by asking other people how they feel about what’s been said, or carefully changing the subject entirely, by a well-focused question to someone else about her week. I’ve often heard that done in my presence [laughter], and it’s always done so graciously, and I say, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you.”
But if someone has experienced a tremendous joy, like an engagement, or an overwhelming grief, like a death, then she may need to dominate, not just for one night perha- —but perhaps for weeks, and that’s okay. That’s really okay. That’s not a bad thing. That is—it is quite different. It is not—it is rather insensitive not to, in fact. Our love and sensitivity at that moment is going to help us sort through just exactly where—how we need to do that.
The fourth path to love is to remember not to hold back. Natural reticence with strangers is a good thing. And there are but few of us who could freely enough share, with—immediately, at any personal depth, with the cost that that takes, right away in a new group. Yet, there are groups that have been together for a long time and still feel like they’re literally pulling teeth to get one or more individuals to open up. And that’s just not right. If a healing or a reconciliation is needed, we should seek it. There are ways to deal with that. If trust is lacking, we need to pray for it.
But more often than not, it might just be pride. “If they knew what was really going on with me, they wouldn’t like me anymore.” Or “I’m not where they’re all at, and I might as well just fake it and let them think I am.” Or any number of guises for pride. They really need to be renounced. We can’t help each other be formed as women in the People of Praise, we can’t grow in holiness, if we hold back areas of our strength or our weakness. We all have something to learn from everyone else, and we all have something to contribute. We just need to love our sisters with it.
The fifth aid to good communication in women’s group is to avoid complaining or whining. Some of us whine and moan [Dorothy whines and moans these two words] about absolutely everything. One cure for negative speech—which I’ve had to try to use for years and I haven’t succeeded yet, but I’m trying—is to try to start with at least two positive things for every complaint you want to make. [Laughter.] Now a complaining personality will have to hunt to find two positive things to say first, but the exercise is absolutely worth it. Down-building conversations tend to down-build. My complaint leads to another’s complaint, and then it’s one-upmanship to see who can moan the loudest. This is not very encouraging in women’s group.
The sixth helpful attitude is really a two-sided one. To put it the right way, I would say we need to be absolutely sincere with one another. Now that means both being forthright on the one hand, and yet non-argumentative on the other.
Now, we all know (myself especially!) the argumentative person. Have any of you seen or been privileged to see yet a new movie that’s in town—it’s called Avalon? If you haven’t—now I know, movies are one of the opinions we often disagree about the most. But if you haven’t seen it, this is the third movie on my list that I would recommend that you see. [Laughter.] It’s a classic. It’s the best movie I’ve seen since Driving Miss Daisy. It’s absolutely a gem of a character study. But there is an old—on it—a stereotypical Jewish mother in this movie, who complains about absolutely everything. She ar- —will argue that black is white, okay? And it’s good to watch her [Dorothy laughs], because as you find yourself grating as you watch the movie every time she opens her mouth, you will understand what we don’t want to do in our women’s groups, okay?
Such people cause problems, because disagreement is inevitable among us. I mean, some of you are going to hate this movie when you see it no matter how much I loved it, okay? It’s—trust me, it will happen. I never understand why, of course, but it will happen. [Laughter.] But the point is that our disagreements have to be over issues and not just a perpetual- —stem from a perpetually prickly attitude. Okay? Now, we are allowed legitimate difference over many issues. The—I’ll get back to that in a minute.
The insincere person who is not argumentative tends to be insincere on the other side. So non-forthright is she, that—and so eager to avoid an argument, or any disagreement, or anything that would ruffle the waters—that she’ll tell you whatever she thinks you want to hear. And that’s a big problem. I mean, if you feel very strongly about using cloth diapers, and this is an environmental issue to you—I mean, in my days, it was playpens; we argued endlessly over playpens: to do or not to do, or you’re gonna destroy your child’s inner brain capacity if you do, and all—you know. [Light laughter.] These were very serious emotional issues, which, when we started to listen to each other’s points of view, got a little less emotional, and we stopped attacking each other and what bad mothers we were and got to talk about, “Yes, you’re allowed to think that, and I’m allowed to think this, and we need to stop attacking one another.”
But if your issue is, for instance, cloth diapers, and someone in your women’s group thinks that you should do as she does and use paper, but she doesn’t really want to express her viewpoint because you’ve made it quite clear that you think she’s ecologically insensitive if she holds this point of view, then what we’ve got is a personal relationship problem, one based upon being either too strong in the way you say things or too timid to raise another point of view, lest you look like a fool. But both are being dishonest, either by exaggeration or holding back. Because what you need to do is deal with the issue and talk about, “Oh, how did you come to think that?” and respect your sister’s opinion. Assume that everyone is better than you are and that, therefore, you really will have something to learn. Doesn’t mean you have to change your opinion at that moment, unless it becomes clear that since we both value truth more than feeling, if there is a truth in another opinion, we want that. We don’t want all of our opinions to be formed by emotions. We want them to be formed on fact and truth. Because God is truth, and there’s something to be learned there.
But believe me, there are opinions about so many things that can divide us if we’re not careful in speech. “Movies” is probably the most important [laughter]. Playpens, diapers, laundry detergents. But let’s face it: even doctrine divides us. We need to be careful how we speak about these things with one another, because we do not want to offend our sisters. And there are many legitimate differences among us. We need to approach them in noncompetitive, non-argumentative, and totally sincere openness to learn why we believe what we believe.
Now if the subject is community teaching, we should and must talk through our difficulties with it. That too is a subject that is fit discussion for women’s group—if we can do so in such a way that what we’re talking about is our difficulty with an area. We’re not judging the teaching, and we’re certainly not in any way sort of pronouncing against it or something. What we have to understand is, it’s part—particularly, it’s part of being underway to sort through what this is all about. We need to help one another come to cherish our way of life. So that we have to talk about our difficulties. But we need to learn to do it in the right way, not as an attack on the community, okay? “I’m having a little trouble with this. How did you see it?” you know. “How did you come to really find this is important to you?” etc. Okay? That’s legitimate. That’s right. That’s how we love one another.
The seventh area comes logically from what I was—just been talking about [sic]. And that is that how we talk about things is so important, because we need to avoid sins of the mouth. I mean, obviously, we—we’re not going to speak with profanity or gossip or slander or rash judgment. Except that sometimes we do. [Light laughter.] Laurie Magill will talk about what we do in that case. But, if—let’s look at it really, really—in sort of—in case-by-case examples. I think that is ultimately going to help all of us. And if we hear ourselves in it, mea culpa, mea culpa.
If you say, “Have you ever had to deal with bedb- —bedwetting problems in children?” you’re asking a legitimate question, and it may help you to solve a particular problem you’re having at home. But if you say, “My son Nehemiah is driving me crazy with his constant bedwetting. I’m tired of all these sheets. I think he’s doing it personally to spite me” [laughter], you have stepped over into speaking ill of another. Now some of us think our children are fair game for precisely such conversation. But as we have learned: remember, they grow up. They take their places next to us and their brothers and sisters, sometimes in our own women’s groups, okay? We need to understand that our younger children are brothers and sisters in Christ as surely as everyone else in this room. And we do not want to slander them.
Now I grant you, the example of bedwetting is not a sin, and so it’s not exactly slander. But it certainly does lessen our respect for the particular child. And it can tend—any problem that we share about a child in too much depth can tend to make us “lock” that child into that problem forever in the minds of our hearers. My own son has gone through agony with that in [Boy] Scouts. You know, he’s not perfect yet, but . . . one of the leaders once said to him, “Well! [Dorothy chuckles with a superior tone] We heard you were coming, and you’ve—you know. You really have this, this, and this problem. And that’s. . . .” He was so crushed, you know. And they’ve been reconciled, and that’s all been worked out. But it’s like, he said, “I really thought I had changed,” you know. In a year a kid can grow. But it’s like, if you get met a year later with “I heard about that problem you had,” you know; the kid is crushed. And we do that. We do that regularly, I’m afraid. We lock people into the—you know, the testimony that they would have been able to give two years ago, instead of whatever God’s doing with them now.
In talking about our children, we need to use the same guidelines we would in sharing a problem about anybody: our mother, our husband, our friend. We bring it up to discuss our problem, not theirs. I don’t say, “My husband is so insensitive and irresponsible! He never, absolutely never, notices the plumbing needs around our house, until there’s water all over the floor, and it’s gonna cost a zillion dollars.” [Light laughter.]
Now, this is both slander, and exaggeration. [Light laughter.] I could say, “We’re having a lot of water leaks around the house lately, and we can’t seem to get around to fixing them because we’re all so busy. Has anybody learned a way to sleep with a leaking faucet nearby?” Now, that gets people alert [sic] to the fact that you’re dealing with a frustration. It doesn’t, however, lessen anyone’s opinion of your husband. It may even get you some plumbing help. [Laughter.] I don’t know! But it certainly is not exaggerative, okay, and it’s much better. Or you can say, “My husband has to be away on business for about 10 of the next 25 days, and I know we’re not going to be able to get to some of the major plumbing problems that we’re having till at least mid-November. And I’m just really having trouble, you know, coping with that kind of hassle with everything else going on in life. Could you just pray for me that I sort of keep my mind off that problem and stay peaceful while he’s away?” Or something like that, okay?
They know you’re frustrated. [Dorothy laughs.] They’re going to pray for you. They’re going to be with you. But you haven’t blamed it on him. You’re said [sic], “I’m really having a problem with this.” “I am having a problem,” okay? Which is true.
And . . . Laurie’s also going to talk more about confidentiality, so I don’t have to mention too much about that. But—you know, here’s an example of something that you could blurt out in a women’s group that would be slander, and it would really be outrageous. But I’m not saying it couldn’t happen among us. I’m going to purposely make a very wild example so that it wouldn’t have happened in your group, okay? Let’s say Bonnie and Clyde . . . [laughter] are having marriage problems, and Bonnie has not been saying anything for a year because she doesn’t want to talk about the sins of anybody else, but her husband is making life very miserable for her. And finally, she’s in this group of women that she just loves and trusts, and they have her heart, and she’s in a particularly weak moment, and so she just blurts out her problem, you know? “Clyde is drunk every weekend, and to make matters worse, he’s started to beat the kids,” and I mean, it’s just horrible. When it all comes dumping out on the floor in front of you, it’s just a disaster. It’s like an open sewer in the midst of the room, okay?
Now. Of course, Bonnie should not have shared that, that way. She probably should have shared a year ago that she was having a little difficulty and shared it in the right way. It wouldn’t have come blurting out in this way. But, coming out as it does right now, it leads me into my next point, which is a whole point of how to respond to personal sharing. And, it leads me to another point, which is: the head of the group needs to know what to do with that. Now, confidentiality for everyone in the group starts right there, okay? That sharing doesn’t go out of that room. With one exception. If something that horrible has been shared, the head of the group must talk to the coordinator of her area. The coordinators cannot be sideswiped by not knowing something that out of order is going on. No one else in the group should talk to anyone else in the group, or to anyone about it. You only talk to the person who is responsible to be able to do something, who is pastorally responsible for someone.
Now, if the situation that was dumped in front of you is not quite that extreme—we’re not talking about violence or serious sin, okay—then it is okay. Like, if it’s just, you know, someone’s struggle with headship or someone’s—you know, the normal good way of speaking about different difficulties. You don’t go running to the coordinator saying [Dorothy says the following in a “sneering” tone]: “So-and-so’s having trouble with community teaching,” you know. [Laughter.] It’s gossip. It’s none of your business, and it shouldn’t happen.
But I’m talking about serious, serious problems of child abuse or of infidelity, or something that is not known to the people who should have some responsibility there. Then it’s like when we had to teach our children in high school. You know, kids in high school have a code: “We never narc” [laughter], okay? You’ve heard it? I’m sure you’ve heard it. You have to teach your children sometimes that when it’s issues of life and death, they must “narc.” Because the loving thing to do is—to allow a problem that is very serious, like a child that is involved in early promiscuity or sexual relationships or drug abuse, you mus- . . . . You know, she shouldn’t tell you, or he shouldn’t tell you, but that child should go to the parents of the child that they know about. It’s not gossip to do that! It may be life and death for someone else, okay? So we need to have a fine line of distinction of understanding what confidentiality means. And if you’re not the head of the group, trust: confidentiality applies to you.
How do we respond to people who are sharing personally? Are we good listeners? Do we really hear what’s being said? What do we say after a sister has said something very personal or with difficulty? The standard rule of thumb is that we respond in love. Our response can’t be competitive. If someone says Fred sent Mary’s flower [sic; “Mary flowers”?] this week for no reason at all, we should rejoice in that good news about our sister, and not respond, “Oh, I get flowers all the time too.” Because it’s selfish to constantly turn the conversation back to yourself. If someone says, “My son got all his spelling words right this week on his test,” rejoice with your sister in her joy, rather than say, “In my daughter’s advanced program, they don’t have spelling tests anymore.” [Dorothy and others laugh.]
You know, our response should simply be to her statement, not to our belief. For example, if she says, “I’m going in for a mammogram next week, and I’m really a little bit nervous about this,” it is not helpful to launch into a speech about how painful you felt it was and how much you hated it, and how inaccurate you’ve heard the results are anyway, and it’s not . . . your view that counts, right now. Maybe your comments at a later point could come up, and it might even be helpful to the sisters in the group. But right then and there, listening to her means you listen to her fear, to her hesitancy. You respond to that. Ask her, “Have you ever had one before?” You know, “Do you know what it’s going to feel like?” Let her decide, then, whether she’s going to keep talking about it, whether she’s had any symptoms or difficulty.
You don’t ask; you don’t assume that she wants to tell you all that’s been going on with her right now, if it’s that personal and she doesn’t know you very well. But if she does, then listen. Talk, if she doesn’t. Don’t probe too much. Curiosity can be renounced. I’ve had a terrible time learning that, but I suppose it can.
Our response can never be rude, either. If I say—which I’m very likely to say, so beware—“I went to see the movie Bambi for the fifth time. It’s an all-time favorite of mine,” it does not call for a response from you, which says [Dorothy says the following in a whiny, high-pitched tone]: “Why would you waste your time on a childish movie about deer and squirrels and birds and skunks?” [Laughter.] That’s the fourth movie I’m recommending you see [louder laughter].
WOMAN’S VOICE: Bonnie and Clyde! [Inaudible.]
DOROTHY: And it is just as rude to laugh at my love of those skunks as it is to laugh at our attempts to share our life in the Lord with one another. I’m sure we’ve all had some experience with that, and you’ll see some examples of that in something we’re gonna do later.
Another word for rudeness is “judgmentalism.” If I say (and I am likely to say [it]; this is the next movie I want you to watch), “I want to watch Cinderella for my birthday celebration,” it should not be responded to by, “I couldn’t do that. Christians are not supposed to indulge in fantasy.” [Laughter.] Now the merits of movies can be discussed, but people should not be squashed!
And the most difficult thing for us to remember is that our response can’t be pastoral. Gerry alluded to that, and then she just sort of laid it out there and ran away. I want to put some more meat on it if I can. Because remember that not everyone is asking for our precious advice. If a sister shares about hunting around all day for new clothes, don’t assume that she wants your advice on what looks good on her. It may be that if you’re truly a good listener, what you should have heard is that she actually wouldn’t mind a little word of praise for having had [sic] lost the 30 pounds for which the clothing hunt has become necessary.
Are you really listening to what she’s really saying? If someone says “I’m really having a hard time with my schedule and being busy,” don’t assume that that sister wants your advice on how to quit her job because you think she’s doing too much, or that she should drop m- —youth ministry because you think she’s absolutely overcommitted, and it’s a wonder she hasn’t seen that before. “I mean, we’ve just been talking about that, and we all think that’s true of you!” [Laughter.] I mean, she may be overcommitted. But she’s already admitted that in her sharing. She’s also involved, remember, in a headship relationship outside of this women’s group.
And so unless she has asked for advice in planning priorities, don’t offer it, because we don’t take authority over one another that way. Just talk about how you are working on your busy schedule and how you’ve prioritized your time, and how maybe. . . . Your personal sharing, then, is going to help her sort out some of the things that are going on in her life. If it’s a similar situation especially, maybe she’ll be encouraged. Or just strengthened to endure! Sometimes that’s all we really want. If you can’t change anything, at least somebody can encourage you to hang in there.
There are so many of us here, and absolutely all of us lead very full and active, Spirit-led, and busy lives, and I think there’s probably just a wealth of experience to share with one another. I think our conversational run—wells don’t ever need to run dry. But, we should find . . . tremendous joy in women’s group. When it’s working right, the second half of that song from My Fair Lady [sic; The King and I] should be true of us. Because the last lines of that song are about getting to know you. Say, “Haven’t you noticed . . . ”
Haven’t you noticed
Suddenly I’m bright and breezy?
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I’m learning about you
Day by day.
Week by week. If you’re lucky, year by year.
Bless you. Amen.
[Applause.]
Copyright © 2022 People of Praise, Inc.