Joshua Minden (00:02):

Welcome back! This week on Stories & Other Things Holy, Dr. Terry Nelson Johnson shares with us an experience he had with his mentor, silky. This story invites us to reflect on the distinction between embarrassment and humility and the ways in which embracing humility unites us together. I can't wait to share this with you. So let's dive in to another episode of Stories & Other Things Holy.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (00:37):

Stories & Other Things Holy.

(00:40):

This is a beautiful tender story or a tender beautiful story. You tell me. I have a mentor, father figure friend, and it's sort of that beautiful combo mentor, father figure friend. And I met him not too long, 10 years after my dad died, and I was in need of a mentor, father figure friend. He was generous with me beyond measure. He was an elegant dude, I mean elegant and athletic, and he just carried himself with that kind of ease. He was the president of his country club, and I keep thinking, you could not find a better president of the country club. You'd walk into that dining room, work the room, knew everybody's name. How are the kids? How'd you play today? His nickname is Silky. You know what I'm saying? I mean, this dude was smooth and handsome. I don't know.

(01:44):

He had the whole package in addition to being compassionate, bright red, roomy. You know what? This dude was, God, what a package. I hadn't seen them for, I don't know, two years maybe. And I went out, I think we were in California, and I know you've had the experience of meeting someone and they've aged not insignificant since the last time you saw 'em, to the point that you sort of pause and like, whoa. And that was my experience with Silky on this visit. And he's this like the quintessential host. So you would imagine him if you were going someplace. He opens the door, he takes you, puts his hand on your forearm as a way to sort of accompany you. And I found myself doing that for him accompanying Silky.

(02:42):

He just seemed a little, I dunno, in need of accompaniment. So anyway, we're walking someplace to get something to eat or something, and his toe caught a little rise in the sidewalk, which there's a crack, and he goes down. He's a tall guy. So he went down, sort of a little bit of an awkward for an athletic guy. Went down awkwardly. And I knelt down next to him and it was clear that he was shaken a little bit. And also those of you who've had experienced physical experiences, you have to sort of let your body catch up with you and figure out, is everything still here? You want to take attendance on body parts, et cetera, see if everything's still working. So we're doing that. And I said, do you want to just stay down for a minute? He's like, yeah, I think I do.

(03:34):

So the two of us are leaning against this half wall thing. And then he just whispers to me, he said, I never thought of myself as someone who would trip and fall. And truer words were never spoken like Mr. Elegant. He wasn't cocky, he was elegant, and he was athletic, and he was sure of himself. Those kind of people do not trip and fall. So we're sitting on the ground, me and silky, my mentor father, figure companion, and he says, I never thought of myself as someone who would trip and fall. And there's that pause and he says, God, it's humiliating. And my heart went out to him, and then as silky would do, he pauses again. And he says, no, it wasn't so much humiliating. I guess it's just humbling.

(04:41):

Do you feel the difference between humiliation and humbled? I think the roots of the humbling are, and Jesus fell for the first time, and Jesus fell for the second time, and Jesus fell for the third time. If Jesus can fall for God's sake, then we too can fall and not be humiliated, but humbled. We're closer to the earth and in some ways we're closer to Jesus. I, God, I loved him at that moment. I guess I pray that when given the choice between humiliation and humble, I'll choose humbled and trust that I'm not alone and I need not host shame for tripping and falling all the ways that I trip and fall in my life. And yours too, I suspect thank God for mentors and father figures and friends who teach us after falling.

(05:42):

Stories & Other Things Holy.

Joshua Minden (05:54):

Bless us, Oh Lord...

Terry Nelson-Johnson (05:55):

For these thy Gifts,

Joshua Minden (05:57):

Which we are receiving,

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:00):

From thy bounty

Joshua Minden (06:01):

Through Christ our Lord.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:02):

Amen.

Joshua Minden (06:03):

Amen.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:03):

Amen.

Joshua Minden (06:04):

Amen. Silky.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:08):

Oh man,

Joshua Minden (06:11):

What a name.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:12):

Yeah, exactly. It's such an appropriate name.

Joshua Minden (06:14):

Yeah. Mentor, father, figure friend.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:18):

Yeah.

Joshua Minden (06:19):

Gee, I wonder what that's like. That sounds a little familiar. That's great. Oh, I love it.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:27):

Yeah, me too.

Joshua Minden (06:31):

What a beautiful witness to get to be there in that moment and to get the benefit of that.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:47):

Yeah. Terrible beauty, grace, baby.

Joshua Minden (06:50):

Yeah.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:51):

I mean you wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Joshua Minden (06:53):

No.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (06:53):

I'll help you fall today because good things will happen.

Joshua Minden (06:58):

Not to jump all the way to the end, but I really like the last three kind of thoughts that you close your reflection with in that story where you talk about being closer to the ground, being not alone and needing not host shame. If we were doing Alexio, Davina, those would be my three words, right?

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:23):

Yeah. What's the middle

Joshua Minden (07:24):

One? Huh?

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:25):

What's the middle one?

Joshua Minden (07:26):

Not alone, not being alone.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:28):

Something

Joshua Minden (07:29):

About being on the ground and being closer to the ground, contributing to not being quite so alone.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:35):

Oh yeah. That's good.

Joshua Minden (07:35):

Yeah. And I just thought, huh, it redeems for someone like me who shame's been a part of my journey is just, I think it's why I jumped there so fast was because it's like, oh no, you literally, you bypassed where I would've gone.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:53):

Yeah.

Joshua Minden (07:56):

What is it about shame that is kind of disarmed in humility?

Terry Nelson-Johnson (08:07):

Yeah, I mean, it's so fascinating that the words are, they're almost commingled. They're so close, but they're so different and they must have the same root and the root. I'm just extrapolating, but the root has something to do with the earth, humma, whatever the Latin word for earth is. And I could be so far off, which is just funny in its own right. But let's just say for the sake of argument. Yeah, I'm sure you've witnessed it in film, in art, it's a relatively common, although very poignant image scene, or maybe you've witnessed it personally. I've witnessed it personally. When someone receives tragic, usually tragic, the context is usually tragic news. The police officer comes to the door or the military person comes to the door or the doctor comes out of the operating room, whatever the context is,

Speaker 3 (09:19):

And

Terry Nelson-Johnson (09:19):

They say, I'm sorry, we've done everything we could. Or The last thing I want to do is to be the deliverer of this news, but you've lost your son. And then the next scene is often that the person receiving the news is on the floor and bending over, using the counter to balance themselves, kneeling down. None of it is enough. They go to the earth and they intuitively know that they need more to hold them.

Speaker 3 (09:56):

And

Terry Nelson-Johnson (09:56):

So they go all the way down. They prostrate themselves in their own poverty to something bigger than they are. For me. That's the thing. When I'm standing, it's sort of all on me. And you have to have your core good when you're standing and you need balance. And now that I'm a medium old guy, all the PT people are saying, all comes down to balance. You don't want to fall because that's what sends you guys, you old people sort of down the slippery slope. So they're teaching us all about balance and core and what have you. And then life tells us, oh, you're going to fall. Falling is part and parcel of this. You're going to fall because you didn't make the first team, the travel team, or you weren't first chair violin or your parents got divorced or your parents went bankrupt, or your abrasive stayed on for too long. You got terrible acne. Turns out that you're gay, whatever, all this, we're going to fall. And the nature of the fall is different for all of us. But the bottom line is we're going to fall

(11:06):

Silk's line, which really moves me, is I never thought of myself as someone who would trip and fall precisely. None of us think of ourselves as people that are going to trip and fall, but then we do. And then as long as we're doing this, we're going to circle back to common themes. It's sort of the nature of exploring spirituality, these threads that make up the fabric of the soul, of the spirit. So we have to find language to explore them, and that we often come to the same language. So trust is there an earth to go to when I fall and I can't take it. And it's totally non-conscious when the person, you've lost your husband, you've lost the baby, whatever it is, and then they know that they can't stand. They can't depend on their own core. They can't depend on their own balance. They need something bigger to hold them. And what bigger than the earth and sort of the mother earth,

Joshua Minden (12:10):

Oh,

Terry Nelson-Johnson (12:12):

Receives us when we fall

(12:16):

And silk's. Interesting thing is, no, I want to get up as soon as possible. I don't want anybody to see me here. And that's common when you trip and fall in the bathroom, you're sort of hoping like, man, I hope that wasn't videotaped. I hope nobody saw that. And if we can get up and out of there and realize no one saw us, we're like, whew, I escaped. No, you fell so silky. Think do you want to stay? I say, do you want to stay down? He says, yeah. And then he uses the time down to do that initial sense of how are all the parts, which I think is a fascinating part of the process. But then he uses the next part to just ask himself, and he's a natural mystic. He's like, who he is. So the fact that he would go, it's not really a matter of humiliation. It's a matter of being humbled, and the same exact experience can lend itself to humiliation or to humbled. He could have emerged, he could have stood up and said, God, that was humiliating. Never got to humbled.

Joshua Minden (13:16):

And

Terry Nelson-Johnson (13:17):

That's what we do. We don't. I work, it's almost like needing something that the work of maturing our souls is to contemplate common experiences and to get beneath the initial response, which is that with God, that was humiliating to point of order actually. It's really more humbling than humiliating.

(13:46):

And then you go from shame to a universal human experience. We are all going to fall and falling isn't bad. There's no need to be in shame. You fell a lot when you were a kid. As you get much older, you'll probably fall as falling. And then so often you tell stories. You don't even know the language you were using. But if Jesus can fall three times for God's sake, I love the for God's sake part, and that Jesus wasn't falling to please God, but Jesus was falling because of his own incarnation. Like, Hey, we fall. Jesus falls. Everybody falls. And Jesus in all of his Jesus, apparently he's still a faller. And then he has to decide of all people that could claim humiliation when he fell, I'm in a diaper. I'm being falsely accused. I've claimed that I have a unique relationship or a profound relationship with the mystery of the divine, and I'm a faller. And then the crowd's like, well, anybody who falls can't probably be who you think you are. You're the king. The kings don't fall. They get carried and have horses and donkeys and whatever they have. No,

(15:04):

Jesus. If Jesus can fall three times for God's sake, then I can host my own falls too and discover that in them there's humility and the earth and mother Earth is large enough to hold me, whatever it is, the grief, the embarrassment. Just let the earth hold you. And that's what's going to help transition from humiliation to being humbled and in humbled. There's an element of gratitude because what being humbled does, it reminds you that you're not God basically, that you're little God is big. We're little. And that to be humbled is to reclaim our status as not God. Like. Oh, and there's something liberating about it. Oh yeah, I'm just like one little guy amongst many. And I don't have to work so hard to be better, to be faster, to be smarter, to be richer, to be whiter, to be straighter. I don't have to do all that shit. I can be who I am with all these other people that have fallen. And then we're all laying on the ground being held by Mother Earth altogether. Who knew? That was a good riff there, dude.

Joshua Minden (16:27):

I would say so. I would say so. I love this idea of, and just to dig into this one part, again, I love this part about or this commonality that there's almost like maybe a ubiquitous instinct that we talk about. We go to the floor or we go to the ground, we go down, my wife and I have an expression, and it's a reference to a particular event early in our relationship. And we call it a kitchen floor moment because there was a day where we wound up in the kitchen floor, and it was a very pivotal moment. And it's interesting though, because although I don't generally share that with everyone, it's not everyone all the time kind of a thing. But I almost never to the time have had someone say, and what would that be? A kitchen floor. There's

Terry Nelson-Johnson (17:36):

Something about this idea that's good.

Joshua Minden (17:40):

It's like I don't have to explain what I mean when I say I wound up in the kitchen floor. Everyone's like, oh, yeah.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (17:47):

Oh, one of those.

Joshua Minden (17:49):

Yeah, because that place in me just met that place in you.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (17:55):

Unless the person has never gone there, never let themselves gone there. I will not fall. Or I'll get up so quickly that I won't be able to identify those. I don't even want to talk about that. We don't talk about that here. Don't go there. So there is that recognition from those who have had the courage to host it, and not if you're humiliated, you don't talk about it. You get off that kitchen floor as quickly as possible and you don't tell the story.

Joshua Minden (18:24):

Oh, that's so good. Yes. So that's that distinction. The humbled versus humiliated. If you've been humbled, you commiserate.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (18:36):

That's right.

Joshua Minden (18:36):

You have empathy because you've been there. If it goes to humility, you're protecting or avoiding or managing against that experience.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (18:46):

Humiliation,

Joshua Minden (18:47):

Right? Yeah. The humiliation.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (18:49):

If humbled. It's fascinating. Humbled humility, which is the word you just used.

Joshua Minden (18:57):

Oh yeah, I did. I mixed the words up. So having gone there and become humble leads to that empathy.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:06):

That's right.

Joshua Minden (19:07):

And that visibility, having not gone there and been managing embarrassment, I'll flip the words around a little bit. Insecurity.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:17):

Yes.

Joshua Minden (19:19):

Then I can't have that empathetic moment with you because I haven't allowed myself.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:24):

That's exactly right.

Joshua Minden (19:25):

And that's why you tying it to gratitude made so much sense. Because if you get to humble, you can be grateful because one, I'm not in control. You talked about like God, it's like I don't have to be the one to do it. I'm not God, but also because I am part of a community of people that have been there.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:43):

That's right.

Joshua Minden (19:44):

That's just so rich.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:45):

And Jesus was there,

Joshua Minden (19:48):

And so much more than we can ever comprehend.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (19:53):

Yeah. That's really good.

Joshua Minden (19:55):

And how great is it that the man who was such a important figure in your life in that moment, yeah. Could model that for you.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (20:07):

It's just stunning to me. I can picture his face and he was like, grace personified. He is grace personified. But when we think grace personified, we sort of clean up grace. We make it look good all the time. And the thing is he did, he sort of had that kind of, he was the handsome. He was really good on his feet. He was all the stuff that you go, there's a gentleman. And then to have that entity on the ground having tripped, and then to have that entity make that transition from humiliated to humbled. Wow.

Joshua Minden (21:00):

Yeah. And what more can one say in this space, than...

(21:07):

Bless us, oh Lord,

Terry Nelson-Johnson (21:09):

For these thy gifts,

Joshua Minden (21:11):

Which we have received,

Terry Nelson-Johnson (21:13):

From thy bounty,

Joshua Minden (21:15):

Through Christ our Lord.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (21:17):

Amen, baby. Amen. Amen.

Joshua Minden (21:24):

Thank you again for joining us for this episode of Stories & Other Things Holy. It's my hope that this reflection on the difference between humiliation and humility can be a meaningful and hopefully impactful reflection going into your week. And that's what this podcast is all about. We are here engaging with these stories in the hopes of contributing to the renewal, the transformation, the healing, and the comforting of the face of the earth and her people. And so, if you have insights, perspectives, suggestions, encouragement or critiques of the work that we're doing, we would love to hear them.

(22:11):

Email us at Connect@OtherThingsHoly.com so that we can more effectively contribute to that renewal. Thank you again for joining us for Stories & Other Things Holy.