Onamatopoeia

Onomatopoeia.  That’s a word I haven’t thought about for quite a while.  You know it, right?  You probably learned it in language arts in 4^th or 5^th grade.  It’s the creation of a word that imitates natural sounds (Merriam Webster), such as buzz, hiss or chirp.  Such a long, complicated word for a simple concept.  And hard to pronounce.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I sit in a waiting room while one of my children receives speech therapy.  It’s an interesting mix of people in that waiting room from week –to-week.  Over the last several weeks I’ve shared the waiting room with a girl (who, based on her homework, must be in 4^th or 5^th grade) and her father.   She is an exceptional student.  I will spare you all of the reasons I know this to be true.  Week after week, her father gives her a pretty hard time about her academic success.  It is, honestly, pretty painful for me to observe.  In pushing her to excel, I see her confidence stripped away, one mistake at a time.  I try to distract myself by reading or checking e-mails.  We’ve all got different parenting styles.  He seems to be a stressed out dad.  I don’t know his back story.  So, while it’s not how I would choose to encourage academic success, I’ve tried not to judge.  He clearly loves her.  And she lights up talking to him when they are talking about things other than school.  It’s just that those conversations don’t happen very often in that tiny waiting room.  “Just keep your head in your book and ignore it,” I tell myself.

Then, it happened.  They were arguing about the pronunciation of the word onomatopoeia.  The girl was right, the father, well, he was not.  He was making her feel stupid.  You could see her posture change.  Her head hung.  I just couldn’t be silent this time.  I smiled and whispered to her, “You are right.”  She was shocked.  Her father glared.  Uh-oh, what did I just do?! The soundtrack of “Wicked” started playing in my head.  The big song at the end of the 1^st act.  “Defying Gravity.”  When Glynda admonishes Elphaba for not keeping quiet : “I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re happy now…I hope you think you’re clever!”  Did I just make things worse?!  Why didn’t I just keep quiet?  I’m naturally a quiet person, so that should have been an easy choice.  I’m an observer.  I feel intensely about lots of things I observe.  I am just more likely to go about acting on those observations quietly.  It works for me.  Although the whisper of ‘you’re right’ felt really loud to me, I said it anyway.  After a few moments, the tension in the waiting room changed subtly.  The dad got out his phone and looked up the pronunciation of onomatopoeia and discovered his daughter truly was right.  She smiled. He called her Miss Smarty Pants (which I didn’t love, but it’s a shift).  She smiled at me.  I made eye contact with another mom in the room, she smiled and nodded.  Did I change this girl’s life?  Probably not, but I hope, in that moment, I showed her that it’s worth speaking up, sometimes.  Even if it’s a whisper.  And I shifted her father’s attention from academics to having a loving conversation with his daughter.  They laughed a bit.   That makes my heart sing, in an onomatopoetic way. 

Too Many Intersections to Focus

I’m going to warn you, this post is going to be all over the place.  And I think that is OK.  It is where I am, right now, right before the beginning of Lent.  Social media and access to the digital world 24/7 have killed my attention span.  I’ve become so accustomed to reading short snippets and connecting with friends in short snippets, I can’t seem to focus on anything long-term.  I was thinking about this last night at a Session meeting while we were discussing the pros and cons of the practice of lectio divina in a large worship setting.  While I have appreciated lectio divina in a much smaller, more intimate space, I have struggled (like others, I gratefully learned) with it in our larger sanctuary.  What I DO appreciate about it in the large space, though, is the silence.  The time to focus my attention only on the scripture that was just read. The time to focus my mind on the Word.  Time to listen for the “’still, small voice’ of a word or phrase that somehow speaks to us.” And I absolutely love how we end that time: “Holy wisdom, holy word.  Thanks be to God.”  Thanks be to God, indeed.

That discussion led to me thinking about Lenten discipline on my run this morning.  See, I told you my brain is all over the place.  What can I do to deepen my Lenten experience this year?  I’m certain it needs to involve lengthening and focusing my attention. I am finally reading Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird.”  Have you read it?  In it she talks about how her brother had been procrastinating writing a report on birds for school that was due the next day.  He had just started working on it and was overwhelmed.  He didn’t know he was going to get it done, and her father said, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”  That kind of describes my attention span these days…so much to do, to focus on. I am immobilized and can’t really get started on any of it.  Lent will be bird by bird for me this year.  Moment by moment of silence.  Reflection by reflection.  Blog by blog.  I am seeking to deepen my focus and my relationships, but it occurs to me it can’t happen all at once. And it can’t happen on Facebook.  Or can it?

In the last couple of weeks, Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with a friend I met in third grade.  She was the first friend I made when we moved from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California during the school year.  When we both began playing an instrument in 4^th grade, our moms took turns transporting us from our elementary school to the junior high school in the middle of the school day.  As we progressed, we joined the local youth symphony, and our parents transported to and from practices on dark evenings and Saturday mornings.  I treasured those times.  I still do.  One year, we performed with other Los Angeles area youth symphonies at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion…it was TELEVISED.  Pre-VCR.  A big deal then…not so much now in the You Tube age.   My parents used an audio recorder held up to the TV to document the experience.  I remember listening to it when I came home and hearing my mom’s voice exclaim, “Is that Kimberly?!  It IS Kimberly!”    So what does this have to do with anything?  Well, as much as social media frustrates me and kills my attention span, it also, in the right situations reaches out and allows for connection.  It allowed me to crawl into my brain and remember with gratitude a childhood friendship.  That is focus. 

The other thing about Facebook is that it makes me want to do all the things and support all the causes…there are so many good causes.  But how do I focus on any of them?  So I end up feeling inadequate.  While wanting to support all the things, I end up supporting none of the things.  I think the answer lies in listening to that still, small voice inside me and FOCUS.  Focus on my passion.  I’ve got a few HUGE things to plan and organize this spring, but they don’t overwhelm me.  I am enthusiastic about them.  And that’s how I know I’m on the right track.  Because that still small voice?  It’s God’s loud voice telling me I’m on the right track.  It’s God saying, “Is that Kimberly feeding sheep?!  It IS Kimberly!”  Thanks be to God.