Yeah, but what you heard is not what I said
Strother Martin had it right
I promise I am not making this up. A couple I know told their son he could have his good friend over to spend Friday night. These kids were about eight. When they got home from school, the son said to his mother, “Mom, now remember, all he can eat is black toast and Tylenol.”
“Black toast and Tylenol?”
“That’s what his mom told me to tell you: black toast and Tylenol.”
Which made no sense to the woman, so she called the other mother.
Who started laughing. “No, no; not black toast and Tylenol. He’s lactose intolerant.”
It happens all the time, does it not? Confusions. Misunderstandings. When what you hear is not what the other person said. Not exactly. And even when you do hear the right words, you may not understand what you are being told.
As on the day we moved into the parsonage at my new appointment and some folk from the church showed up to help us empty the U-Haul. As soon as we finished, I fired it up to go drop it off, and the church secretary unceremoniously climbed up into the cab to ride with me. She wanted me to know, first thing, that she was on probation for shooting and killing the headboard of a bed where her not-yet-ex was with his not-yet-next.
I didn’t know whether she was warning me or ’fessing up. I mean, I was glad she told me, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that piece of information.
One way or other, I was a little wary from the jump, more so when, the first time I gave her a job to do—you know, like file this or copy that or whatever—she replied, “I don’t care to do that.” Oooo-kay. And I made a mental note not to ask again.
But in a little bit she stuck her head in my office and told me with a smile that she was done and was there anything else I needed.
“No,” I replied honestly.
She replied, “Really, I don’t care to do it.” At which point I realized that while I had heard her saying, “That’s not my job.” What she was actually saying was, “I’ll get right on it.”
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We misunderstand. We get confused. Because what someone means is different than how we receive what they say. Our “decoding” does not match their “encoding,” or vice versa, so that the way we translate and interpret is… off.
What’s sent is missed. What was intended is misconstrued.
Just as frustrating is when what we work hard to say, whether to another person or to a group, is not despite our efforts in their idiom. Our words “fall to the ground” as the Bible describes it. Preachers know that sinking, sick, aggravating feeling of firing our best shot and missing the target. No wonder most of us are on probation.
Which is why, several times every week, for one reason or another, I think of the late Strother Martin. Remember him? Who, according to the American Film Institute, delivered the 11th greatest line in movie history—when, as Captain, the brass hat warden of a Florida work camp where a defiant Paul Newman, nicknamed Cool Hand Luke, had been incarcerated and, in one great scene, once again, returned, face-down in the dirt after trying to escape…
Captain says, “What we got here, is failure to communicate.”
Failure to communicate… indeed.
To my mind, it a wonder that there are not more hurt feelings, more fist fights and estrangements, more incidents of word rage than there are, and more silence, because day-by-day, one reason or the other, one place or the other—at work, the pub, and Lord, goodness, at home—we so often fail to communicate.
And even in churches.
A pastor buddy of mine, upon his retirement, was asked what he would remember most from his long years in the ministry. He said, “That there are an infinite number of ways to be misunderstood.”
Feeling sorry for ourselves, are we? Bless his heart!
Actually, I do agree. Only, if I were asked, now, today, I would add—speaking with the wizened voice of bitter experience—that there are an infinite number of ways, also, to misunderstand. When someone is sharing from the ruins of their life, from the depths of their broken heart… and you miss it. Just miss it. At least at first. And by the time you catch up you have said something or done something that is inappropriate—have spoken glibly or not at all—that says to them you really don’t care what they are sharing.
Of course, I have been on the other side of that, too. So have you. We all have been misunderstood, and we all of us sometimes misunderstand—and that is when we are all speaking English.
Forget trying to make someone in another country understand even a simple thing—I couldn’t get so much as a roll and coffee at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the guy behind the counter about came at me, because I couldn’t say in a way he could understand what I wanted. My pointing offended him.
If we have such difficulty talking to each other, whether people we love, people we loathe or just people behind the counter, how can we talk to God? Or listen? Which is to say, how can we pray?
Well, we can’t, unless the Lord teaches us how. Which he does, by putting words in our mouths.
Next time: Lord, teach us to pray