May Newsletter (Part the First)

Where Are We Looking?

It is a spring evening. A group of 15 and 16 year olds are gathered in a small upstairs classroom in Downtown St. Albert. We are there for our first classroom session in the Driver Training program. After ascertaining how many of us have already had at least one in-car session the instructor asks if any of us had been told to stop looking at the center line on the road. As I recall many or most of us had been given that instruction.

How could the instructors tell where we were looking?

Because when you look (especially if you look intently) at something for too long you tend to aim at it. When student drivers focus too much on the center line then the center of the car tends to end up going over that marking. Instead we were taught to aim for the center of the lane, not to stare at it, you still have to keep glancing around and be aware of your surroundings, but to aim for that, keep the car there, don’t stare at the line.

The irony of course is that we would have been carefully watching that line to make sure we stayed on the right side of it.

I think the same principle holds in much of our lives. The place we direct our focus, whether we do it because that is our goal or because that is the place we want to avoid, tends to be where we end up steering. Add in interpretive factors like optimism vs pessimism and if we aren’t careful we will end up in totally the wrong lane – or even the wrong place. So where are you looking?

As life comes along at you where are you looking? Are you spending too much time looking in the rearview or side mirrors? Are you shoulder checking so carefully that you don’t realize the wheel is turning as you turn your head? (Full disclosure, this was a mark of my early driving lessons) Or are you keeping an eye on what is behind or on either side but maintaining a primary focus in front of you. Not too far ahead, but farther than the tip of the bumper. How is that determining where you end up?

I think this idea of looking in the right direction, the idea that where we look is where we steer, applies to communities as well. If we as a community spend too much time looking back at some “Golden Age” we might find ourselves running off the road. If we spend too much time looking enviously at neighbours who appears to be doing ‘better’ (whatever we think better might mean) we might miss the place we need to turn. If we focus on those things that we think limit us we might steer directly towards them. If we stare at what is directly ahead of us we might miss what is farther out and fail to plan for what may come later.

Of course the challenge when having this discussion in community is that there are so many pairs of eyes. More pairs of eyes to have different ideas of where we should be looking and so we may bog down debating where we need to focus. At the same time the benefit of doing it in community is there are so many pairs of eyes. Some people can look to the sides and share what they see. Some can look behind and remind us from whence we came. Some can look right in front of the bumper to keep us in the moment. Some look farther down into the distance to see what is coming up. And some sit in their seat and scroll through Google Maps dreaming about where we might end up.

So where are we, the congregation of St. Paul’s United Church, looking?

As a part of the visioning discussions of the last year we were asked where we saw this congregation in 5 or 10 years. That, I think, was the most important question we asked. Where is the road taking us? Do we want to change the path? That, I think, is why when Karen and Paula first presented the results to council they had us look at the answers to that question first.

Where are we looking? Are we looking at where we once were? At where we are worried we might be headed? Or at where we dream to go? As a community of faith there is another big question. Are we looking at where we want to go or are we looking for signposts of where God wants us to go? What do we see in all those various directions?

We tend to go where we are looking. It was true for that group of teenagers starting driver training. It is true for individuals planning their lives. It is true for communities. Together, let us try to look in the right direction, so we head that way.

Gord