Who is Your Paraklete?

In Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, Margaret Feinberg describes how she assembled the army she needed to fight breast cancer – the oncologist, the doctor, the friends and acquaintances – all of the people who joined with her, not just to fight breast cancer, but to fight back with joy.

Some were medical specialists; some were friends. Some did extraordinary things; some did normal things – and there were times when what she needed most were normal things. And this army became a source of paraklesis, the New Testament Greek for encouragement or comfort. It’s the word St. Paul uses to describe Philemon; it’s also the word Jesus uses to tell the apostles of the helper – the Holy Spirit – he is sending after he leaves them.

A paraklete doesn’t have to be someone who brings tongues of fire and the sound of a great, rushing wind; not does he (or she) have to be someone caught up in a friend’s serious illness. A paraklete can simply be a friend, someone to confide in, someone who refreshes your spirit as you refresh theirs, someone who is there to understand and commiserate, and sometimes celebrate.

Work, for example, can often be difficult. What helps make it bearable is having someone you can talk with. Like a paraklete. Someone to roll your eyes with at the next crazy announcement or organizational change. Someone who helps you understand what is happening. Someone you can listen to as they go through a hard time. It helps when it’s a colleague because they know the cast of characters, the culture, the environment, and the history of your particular workplace.

Let me be clear: I am not taking about mentors, although a mentor can also be a paraklete. I’m talking about colleagues who are friends.

When you go through regime change at work, everything becomes problematic.

I was once in a situation where regime change resulted in one, then a second, and then a third of my parakletes leave. One looked to be inevitable; another took the initiative and left for another job. The third was something of a surprise; it had been expected but not for some time to come. In this case, too, the individual left before being asked to leave.

My workplace became something of a desolate place. A place where I still had colleagues and people I liked, but not anyone in whom I felt comfortable in confiding. You discover you can be lonely in a large crowd of people you work with every day.

Those are the times you understand what a paraklete can mean. And not mean.

Margaret Feinberg found her parakeletes, and they made an enormous difference.

They always do.

Do you have a paraklete?

Led by Jason Stasysyzen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Fight Back with Joy. To see other posts on this chapter, “The Living Breathing Gift of Joy,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Alok Rohit via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Christmas Card Lists Tell Stories

My wife and I undertake Christmas cards as something of a team effort, dividing them between us. She handles her family, I handle mine, we generally split friends, and I do the ones meant for work.

About 5 a.m. on a recent morning, I was doing my card list when I realized we had quite a personal history sitting in front of me, in the form of lists. We keep them by years, and the lists go back to 1977. Technically, they go back to 1973, our first Christmas as a married couple, because the 1977 list is based on the first list we did – taken from our wedding invitations.

In 1977, we were living in Houston; she was working for the Houston Chronicle and I was a speechwriter at Shell Oil. Earl Campbell of the University of Texas had just won the Heisman Trophy (it was a big deal; this was Texas); Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta in white disco polyester was just opening; Egypt and Israel were holding their first formal peace talks ever – in Cairo.

And we were spending our first Christmas in a new townhouse that we had moved into in July.  I even remember the street – Arncliffe Drive in northwest Houston.

In 1977, I wrote the Christmas card list on a ruled steno pad. The names were a combination of colleagues at Shell Oil where I worked; family on both sides; and friends.

A lot of our friends in Houston lived in apartments; we were all 20-somethings and few of us had the wherewithal to buy our own homes.

Seeing the family names on the list is what now gives me pause. Most of them have passed away. My parents. My wonderful aunt who lived in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans (and would survive Hurricane Katrina with my mother). An uncle in Alabama. My mother’s next-door neighbor who was her treasured friend; the lady died this year, two months after my mother. My grandmother and aunts in Shreveport. My aunt and godmother. Aunts and uncles of my wife. A lady I worked with at Shell who had once been manager of the Manhattan Chess Club.

I’m not sure what has happened to all of the names on the list, like my favorite journalism teacher at LSU, and many of my work colleagues at Shell (some, I know, have passed away). Friends from church in Houston. Others slipped into the fog of years only to be rediscovered on Facebook, like a couple we met when we worked at the Beaumont Enterprise.

Each name is a story. I took three journalism courses (two in introductory news reporting and one in the history of journalism) and two independent study courses from that professor at LSU. He was an incredible teacher; he taught us how to work amid chaos and noise and meet deadlines by singing in the classroom or doing calisthenics while we feverishly finished assignments. He gave me a B+ on my first assignment, with a note reading “not bad for a cub.” He also weeded out the less serious students by giving automatic Fs for a misspelled word, a factual error, and errors in grammar and punctuation (we lost 70 percent of our class after the first semester).

A few years later, he left LSU, and we lost touch. He’d be in late 80s now.

I look over those names, and I can remember work events, parties, situations, issues. I look at the names of family and see the people who helped shaped me and my own family in uncountable ways.

The names remind me that the past is still with us, always with us.

Photograph: vintage Christmas card via A Parallel Universe. 

The Qualities of a Good Friend

In our weekly discussion of The Cure: What if God Isn’t Who You Think He Is and Neither Are You, by John Lynch, Bruce McNichol and Bill Thrall, we’ve reached a chapter entitled “Two Friends.” It’s about the positive and negative influences in your life, and what the differences are between them, especially when the differences may not be immediately apparent. 

My mind began to drift. I asked myself, who are the influences in my life, aside from family? Who are the people I consider friends? Not just casual acquaintances, but real friends, people you feel you can trust, go to advice for, stand by you, and who know they can expect the same from you? 

I have to admit my list is rather small. 

Five years ago, I could name several people at work, where I spend most of each waking day. But retirement has claimed some; others have left for better opportunities, including one in just the last few weeks. The individual asked me for advice about whether to accept a job offer from another company; I listened more than I talked, but it was obvious the offer was better than the existing job at our company. This was a leaving that hurt; I think I’m down to one close friend at work now. 

I consider friends at church. The situation is complicated by the question of which church – the one we attended for 15 years and poured a lot of ourselves into, or the one we attend now where we’re both have been rather “gun shy.” One couple whom we were particularly close to moved away; another went to another church; others drifted away with the change in churches (we went in one direction, they in another).  

We have neighbors we have great regard for, but I can’t say we see them on a social basis except once or twice a year for neighborhood get-togethers. And there are virtual friends, people I have met online, some of whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face but many, perhaps most, I have not. I will say this – for those virtual friends whom I have actually met face-to-face, I have not been disappointed – they were the same in person as they were online. One day I hope to meet an online friend who lives in another part of the world; we missed meeting each other in London in October by a few short hours. 

The question in all of these examples is, what makes a good friend? What makes another person a good influence? The Cure has some answers that resonate with me. 

A good influence, a good friend, the authors write, is one who asks permission to earn trust, to be let in to your confidence. 

A good friend sees you as a saint – a saint who still fails. They see behind the façade and love you anyway. 

A good friend wants to see you grow more, and give love more. They’re not interested in changing your behavior as much as they are in seeing you love more. They’re don’t try to “fix” you, or correct some behavior or thinking they believe needs fixing. You feel accepted. This doesn’t mean you won’t need occasional reproving, but when they do it, they do it in love, and you know it. 

A good friend is something we all hunger for, and something we all need.

 

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing The Cure. To see more posts on this chapter, “Two Friends,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines. 

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.