Outreach problem number one: numbers

Last year, I sort of ressented my college chaplain. He was friendly enough, but he seemed over-stretched. He would go through the motions of smiling and being helpful and he would seem interetested in you... for the whole of two minutes. He was always looking like he wanted to escape. Fair enough, fair enough, I got really good at giving him a fraction-of-a-second cheery hello and getting out of his way quick. He seemed grateful for that.

This year, I got to know him a little bit better, but I was still pretty miffed. See, now I was the girlfriend of one of his colleagues, so he extended invitations to the bar to "you and Danielle". Boy did I hate that.

Then there was the end of year service at my college (the guy is leaving). Forward came a dozen of teary-eyed students -and professors- telling our chaplain about what an amazing friend he'd been. They seemed to mean it too! I changed my lens: by the sounds of it he does sound like an amazing guy. Too bad he tuned me out all the time. I don't think he disliked me in any way, shape or form. Truth be told, it was quite the opposite, I was a friendly -and above all undemanding- presence, almost refreshing.

And then one of my favourite blogger took on the topic. When you're trying to do outreach, you cannot meaningfully relate to hundreds of people, it's simply not possible. This is especially true when you are reaching out to vulnerable people. What do you do when you swallow the red pill and now you realise how much loneliness and despair there is around you? If I reach out to someone who obviously could do with a listening ear, I sometimes become an instant best friend and get almost stalked when I give my phone number. I enjoy being a best friend, but I can't be a best friend to very many people at the same time. And I don't know how to scale down my involvement with someone that seems to want a lot more of my time and attention.

I honestly cannot deal with too much stuff right now because I just lost my grandad, and I've got a research council deadline from hell to attend to. In short, I'm crazy busy. I can tell my sister that I'm busy. But to a severely isolated individual it can sound like an excuse, no matter how true it is. Blame it on my crap communication and obvious lack of Christian love, that's still only one part of the story: there's the message sent and there is the message received. To people who have been rejected all their lives, my occasionally being busy sounds like yet another rejection. I learned it the hard way, as I mentionned in the comments on one of poseroprophet's posts.

This is also the reason why I chose to re-post this very important message a couple of weeks ago: vulnerable people can be EXTREMELY sensitive to the slightest criticism on their behaviour or to shifts in your level of interest. Some of your friends may have broad shoulders, they can take a bit of shit and it doesn't matter (I love such friends, thank the Lord for them!). But someone who hasn't had a friend for the last 10 years often does not have such broad shoulders at all, so thread carefully: you're gonna have to be the one with the shoulders. This is especially true if you're not interacting within a structure in which there is some continuity. But even if you are within such a structure, some people are so insecure and transcient that they might never be seen there again if you fuck up.

Never overextend yourselves and hurt people in the process. Friendly indifference is a hell of a lot better than rushed best-friend-ness. Hell, I feel like going on a one girl crusade for friendly indifference, because friendly indifference is a fertile ground for organically grown friendships: the ones in which trust has the time to develop incrementally. I'll discuss incrementalism in my next post, I told you I had stuff to say.