Tag: fully present

Letters to my Children: It should come with a warning….

bryan dupuis9 Comments

Evan, Adeline, and Malina,100_5419

It happened again the other day. I was at home after a full day of work. We were in the basement playing and you (Evan) started calling my name. I had no idea that you had called my name several times earlier and finally gave up. But you really wanted me to play so you tried again. I wish I could say I heard you the first time, or the second, or the third. It wasn’t until you yelled my name that I looked up from my phone.

I was in the room but nowhere near any of you.  I was around but not fully present. In that moment I surrendered and allowed myself to be controlled by a device I carry in my back pocket.

Your face was a mixture of frustration and confusion, wondering what I was reading that was more important than the Lego Ninjago you were trying to assemble and needed help with.  It wasn’t until I saw your face that I wondered the same thing.

The technology I have in my life right now is amazing. The technology you will have when you are my age is hard to imagine. I am saying all of this to you three because I believe that for your generation, one of the greatest challenges to following Jesus, living in community with others and engaging the world will be to be fully present  — to God, to one another, and to others you will encounter in your life.

The more technology develops the more it seems to implant itself in the fabric of daily life. This is not a bad thing, but it should come with a warning….be present, engage people fully, quiet yourself before God. Nothing will be more important than being completely in the moment, lost in a conversation or an experience or great beauty….without distraction.

When it comes to responding to you or responding to the flashing green light on my hand-held device….may you never have to wonder who will win.

Love,

Your Dad.

Forgetting to Say “Hello” Could Kill You!

bryan dupuis

Sweet Hot Electric Water.                                                    

That was what we dubbed the shower at the place where we stayed in Botswana, Africa while on a mission trip with a group of High school seniors and college students.  There was nothing wrong with the place where we stayed, it was just that there was some sort of mix up between the electrical wires and the plumbing.  Every time one of the females stepped in to the shower, they got shocked.  You can’t plan for things like that….a shower that carries with it a small, but invigorating electric current. Certainly Paul never wrote about that in his list of hardships while traveling to spread the Gospel.

We would laugh and laugh as we talked about the “sweet, hot, electric water”. But the next day when one of the property managers came by, I walked straight toward him, determined to see if we could get this situation resolved.  Now in our team trainings at home and on the field, they talked about the differences in cultures, and how we interact with the people we would meet in Botswana. They stressed the importance of greeting people. They told us that greetings are not the sort of thing you brush past.  No, before you move forward in the conversation, get to the “business” at hand, you must take time to properly say hello, to inquire about the other person, to be fully present in the conversation.

Well I quickly walked up to the manager, and without even thinking I said, “Hey, we are having a little trouble with some wires and water in the shower, do you think someone could take a look at it?” The manager looked at me for a moment, and his smile lessened.  It was as if he was graciously willing to look past my act of rudeness in order to teach me an important lesson. ” He interrupted my ramblings and said, “Excuse me….good morning.”

I stopped as my mind raced to figure out where that response came from, I had clearly already said hello. But then I remembered….I messed up.  I knew that nothing was going to be done about the “liquid shock” coming from the shower head until we started things off right.  I smiled at him and said, “good morning, how are you?” We talked for just a few moments and then the man said, “so….there is a problem with the shower?”

My wife made me a journal when I went to Africa so that I could write down what I learned on my trip. I learned so many things during that time, but I only wrote down one idea….GREETINGS MATTER!  I learned that greetings set the tone of the conversation. Your greetings greatly affects the direction of your words, and many times it is what we say in the beginning of a conversation that plays a role in the outcome.

For the people of Botswana, greetings not only frame the conversation, they are the soil from which a conversation grows.  A clear and genuine “hello” or “welcome”, a few words of interest in the other person you are speaking to….these things are part of hospitality and a way to honor one another. Here in the West, we brush past greetings as a necessary (but not really important) part of getting to what we really want to say.  Even when we do say, “how are you?” we are not really asking about the well-being of the other person….that is just a way of saying, “hey”.  We wouldn’t know what to do if we asked that question and someone replied with more than one or two words.

As I look back, I realize that the way I start a conversation is sometimes an insight into my heart.  Sometimes a lack of genuine greeting at the beginning of a conversation reveals my true motives, my priorities, and my focus.  But what if we began to take greeting others seriously.  How would it set the tone for the day if you greeted your spouse, really greeted her in the morning when you woke up, or in the evening when you returned home?  How would your children respond if you looked them in the eyes, welcomed them, and listened to how they are doing today? What about your co-workers? Your boss? Friends at church? What about your Father in heaven? Do you brush past a genuine greeting, of listening and engaging, in order to get to what you want?

Don’t miss the opportunity that exists in every conversation you will have today….start well….take a deep breath….and say hello.

PS. The sweet, hot, electric water stayed with us, though they were able to lower the voltage.  The girls didn’t seem to mind and nobody got hurt.  And if you read this and decide to start a band….please consider using sweet, hot, electric water….or even “The SHEW Band” for short.