What Are We Missing?

We all sense what we cannot speak. Something elemental has shifted. It mutes our own voices. Can we find our way back?

Ed Chinn

Photo by Ratt Y. on Unsplash

For more than a decade, I’ve had the growing sense that we’re all missing something.

Not a policy or a program, but a social coherence; a warm, metaphysical essence that is quietly being displaced by something colder, more rigid, something unforgiving.

I’m not suggesting we need to do something. It’s not that simple. The usual suspects in this conversation—politics, gender, religion, technology, AI, etc.—are not the issue and are not helpful.

There is a light we simply do not see.

Birds and Butterflies

Lately, that thought has taken me back to a conversation I had thirty years ago with my dear, and now deceased, friend, Lee Earl. As we talked over lunch one day, his heart seemed to groan as he said,

“White people are obsessed with understanding black people. But as a black man, I don’t care if you understand me or not. I want your respect.”

Later, as we drove away, he continued: “Birds fly in a straight line. Butterflies don’t. But birds don’t try to teach butterflies how to fly.”

In that moment, I sensed something universal. Beneath all our affiliations and arguments, people want respect—not for their qualifications, conformity, connections, or status—but for something older than all that. For reasons that reach back to that holy moment when they were “... formed in utter seclusion... woven together in the dark of the womb.” (Psalm 139:15 NLT)

From Community to Centrifuge

From birth, sparks of destiny began glowing into our times and spaces. We tasted, touched, reached, and retreated. We found our voices, encountered virtues and vices, fell in love, raised barns, and served on school boards. Through it all, we discovered the treasure in others, that mysterious green sprout of life rooted in the moment they were “formed in utter seclusion.” All that formed our own ecosystem, our community.

This was called normal life. Then, somehow, our age became a centrifuge.

It spun faster and faster until it pulled us apart. Minds, bodies, personalities, and beliefs were sliced and stratified. Apparently, we were not acceptable as whole persons; markets preferred us reduced to particles, easier to sort and sell.

What Matters Most?

I first caught sight of what we are missing when my friend, Rex Miller, a speaker and author, convened specialists in architecture, education, commercial construction, and other disciplines for a collaborative approach to writing books. I served as the project editor.

Day after day, city after city, we worked with those leaders as they grappled with serious issues facing Western societies. Because of their education and careers, most were likely left of center politically (others surely were not). But politics never walked into our deliberations. Even when we met on November 8, 2016, the day Donald Trump was first elected—politics never grabbed the microphone.

The relationships in that room represented timeless examples of teamwork. People checked their stuff at the door, joined their minds and hearts, worked for a larger good, and kept their eyes on the ball. To paraphrase Goethe, they refused to let things that matter most to be at the mercy of things that matter least.

And no one tried to teach anyone how to fly.

The Possibilities...

Jesus once said of a generation “It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, who call out to the other children, and say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” (Matthew 11:16-17 NASB)

His words seem to reflect this present age. Culture bombards us with pulsating signals, directions to think, be, or do as it suggests. But real life does not allow external pings to jerk us into conformity with trends or experts. Beneath all the noise, we remain who we were when we were first formed.

For now, the best we can do may be to just get still and quiet. To become comfortable within our own limitations. Step away from the noise and fragmentation of daily life. Practice humility. Recognize and honor the wholeness in those around you, not for their skills or marketability, but for their internal and eternal value.

Perhaps what we’re missing is not light, but the eyes to see it.