David:     Karen, I’d like to talk with you about something you’re not very good at.

Karen:     Pray tell what would that be? I’m wondering.

David:     You’re half-sleep terrible at chit chat, small talk.

Karen:     I hate chit chat.

David:     Well, we’re going to talk about it and maybe partial remedy anyway, sound okay?

Karen:     Give some suggestions, practical, to other people who hate chit chat. Okay.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Maybe I should define chit chat. It’s just talking kind of about nothing.

Karen:     Sort of surface chatters.

David:     Yeah, it’s like what’s the weather like in your mind. That’s the kind of thing or sometimes sports just trying to figure out what to say.

Karen:     Or it’s sort of an antiseptic form of gossip, you know, telling what other people are doing.

David:     You know, that’s the whole celebrity.

Karen:     Yeah, that’s the celebrity drama. What about celebrities, things you’ve heard about them? You don’t know them, but you’ve heard about them.

David:     Even news can be that. Just talking about what the news and it changes every day. A lot of it, it’s significant. A lot of it isn’t. So, it becomes just kind of, what would you say, it’s a ritual that goes on but…

Karen:     Sort of fills the spaces. Yes, words that sort of fill the spaces but don’t hit much meaning.

David:     I find that I try to put some meaning into those. I know some of them are coming. I know that at the bank when I go in there, they will say, “What was your weekend like?”

Karen:     Been trained on the tellers to be customer friendly.

David:     So, I’m ready when I had an absolutely wonderful weekend. Would you like to know why? The people in line are

Karen:     Say like, “Oh no, we got a talker right ahead of us.”

David:     This may sound strange. When we have a social activity, Karen, with friends, I think about it ahead of time and I say, “What might I ask that I can learn from these people? They’re good friends and I don’t want to…“

Karen:     Oh, they can be in your acquaintances too.

David:     Yeah. But I want to make sure that I am using the time as wisely as I can. And so maybe what I’m doing is helpful to others as well. For example, I think a simple question, say, political discourse of the day is a major thing that is going on with a lot of people. “What station or what commentator, what news reporter do you like to watch and why?”

Karen:     Who’s informing you? Who do you go for your news information? And that’s really an interesting question for people to answer. And usually many of them just go to one resource. You don’t ask that question to identify where they’re coming from politically or where they lean to right or left. But it’s something that helps you understand where their worldview is being formed.

David:     If someone asked me that question, I would say, “You know, I really struggle with that. And I now pretty much go to David Muir at 5.30 because I find that he pretty much gives the news straightforward. He doesn’t make comment about it. They’re the headlines.”

Karen:     It’s mostly a headline sort of report with a little bit of story.

David:     Story at the end. He does a certain Americana. I like that.

Karen:     What’s good about Americana? I love them.

David:     And somebody says, well, I can’t watch him because I watched Lester Holt. I say, you know, Lester Holt is very…

Karen:     I think all of those ABC, CBS, NBC commentators during the night and hour do a good job of presenting the news. What we need to understand is where other news outlets are coming from. Objective news. I mean, when we were growing up, journalism was known for not taking sides. It was reportage. The journalists worked very, very hard of not turning it into opinion. They might give a commentary, but basically it was reporting the news the best they could, as objectively as good. Now that’s changed because the outlets that host news shows often come from a particular kind of bias. So, if we’re going to be informed, we have to understand what the biases of each of those outlets are.

David:     But I like to find from friends to whom are you listening. I think that’s very helpful. I would say the same thing is true in other areas besides news reporting. I would say, “What magazines are you reading?”

Karen:     That’s an interesting question. What periodicals do you subscribe to, and which ones do you read?

David:     Yeah. So, if somebody would ask you that, you subscribe to a lot of magazines.

Karen:     Well, I do right now because I’m wanting to submit articles as a freelance writer to periodicals. And in order to do that, you have to understand what their editorial policy is. I mean, this is what you’re trained as writers to do. For me, it’s been a year of reading through various periodicals as they come monthly or weekly to our house and sort of assessing what kind of pieces are they publishing, what kind of writer’s voices are they looking for. So, I have some feeling of whether I want to try and submit to certain magazine or there’s another one that’s more suitable for my work.

David:     So, yours is a little bit different with most people.

Karen:     It’s a professional.

David:     If somebody says someone asked me, I’m not submitting articles to magazines. They say, “What magazine do you like?” If you say, I’m normally going to read this, I would say The Monitor.

Karen:     Yeah, the monitor.

David:     And I only say the monitor because if I say the Christian Science Monitor, then I’m in trouble.

Karen:     Even the Christian Science Monitor is dropping its moniker. It refers to itself as the monitor.

David:     I really like its reporting. And I like the stories they pick. They usually have a little paragraph. The reason we’re covering this is… And that’s very, very helpful to me. And there are always huge stories. I find myself often, Karen, with The Monitor. It’s maybe, what do you think, 35, 40 pages?

Karen:     I don’t know exactly.

David:     It’s a magazine. I read the entire magazine, which is amazing to me that I’m doing that. And some of them are not huge news stories. Some are.

Karen:     Things you don’t know about. I know that you’re not even exposed to it. The Monitor is known for objective, well-written journalism. And it prides itself on them. And I think that we find ourselves exposed, as you said, to events that we didn’t know were happening or problem spots in the world. It has a global viewpoint as well as a national one.

David:     They’re talking about a new building project in a country in Asia and saying this is going to disrupt the habitat of a certain baboon.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     That is very interesting.

Karen:     It’s very interesting.

David:     I’m fascinated by.

Karen:     They do good work.

David:     Another kind of question that I would ask someone if we have time to spend together over dinner or traveling. Someone would say, “What’s a book, as you look back over the past year, that you have read, that you found really impacted your thought pattern and in your life?”

Karen:     You know, names and favorite books that you’ve read over your lifetime.

David:     True.

Karen:     I’m now in the process of purging hundreds of books that I have collected over the years. I’m an avid reader and thinking, oh dear, I love that book, but it has to go. So, we’re in the process of evaluating the things that they’ve read. So, one of the books through the years that I have loved is Robert Farrar Capon’s book. He was an Anglican priest, The Supper of the Lamb. And it’s just an extraordinary extended metaphor. He begins with a leg of lamb and recipes and shows that there are six meals he can get out of this leg of lamb. But he takes it then into this broader meaning of the Supper of the Lamb.

David:     What’s the title of the book again?

Karen:     The title of the book is The Supper of the Lamb. The Eucharistic Supper, the communion we have with God. And then a deep look at the world that God has made and an appreciation of the beauty of it, starting with this original idea of cooking a leg of lamb and getting five or six meals out of it. It’s a masterwork. It’s just an absolute masterwork. One of the things I do when I read a book, good or bad is I highlight. I’ll underline or take a marker and highlight it in color and make little comments in the paragraph. And then sometimes I do a synthesis at the beginning of the really good books. So, this book was read in January of 2001.

David:     It was probably the first time you read it, huh?

Karen:     This is a mighty book with an original and daring metaphor. Capon is an incredible writer and has made the common holy and the holy common wondrous work. So, I give a little summary myself. So, when I go back to it, then I can remember what that book was about. And then I flip through the pages and read the underlines. And that gives me a really good idea of the writing. Now, I do that because I’m a writer as well, because sometimes I want to quote from certain books and just going and finding those highlights makes it easy for me. I have to read the whole book again.

David:     Are we chit chatting now?

Karen:     No.

David:     We’re not. We’re talking more substance.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     And it’s a matter of saying, “This is what I want to be able to draw the conversation toward.” If you bring that up, people will ask further questions regarding the book. And would you recommend I read it? Do you know that kind of thing?

Karen:     Well, what we’re saying is that you want to be prepped to asking good questions that will change chit chat or superficial conversation into meaningful conversation. And the way to do that is through asking good questions. Sometimes we have to think about those questions ahead of time. In fact, when the kids were dating, our young people were dating, getting that age. We’d say, why don’t you come up with three questions that you want to ask that person you’re going on this date with and see if sometime during the evening you can ask that question where it goes. And they really did learn to ask good questions. We were also doing this at our dinner table when we had guests.

David:     If you can open people up through a leading question like that, so you’re trying to get beyond the surface and do more in depth what people are feeling. That’s very helpful. I would say that this last year, the book that I found most beneficial to me was the one by John Lewis. John Lewis died just about a year ago now. He was an American congressman, very involved in the Black movement.

Karen:     The early civil rights movement.

David:     Civil rights, you think of him as being beaten after he walks across the…

Karen:     Almost beaten to within an inch of his life, they say. Well, he was a very, he was an avowed Christian.

David:     Yes, no question. And a wonderful testimony.

Karen:     A wonderful testimony. And his faith informed his civil rights participation. He did it because it was the way he was doing God’s work in the world. That book is one of the most moving books I’ve ever read.

David:     It’s written by John Meacham, who is a professor, an Episcopalian and a Christian. No question about that. I found it so moving to me that I said, do you go out because you usually purchase the books. I said, get a dozen books. I want to send it with this letter to every one of the grandchildren and the other extended family members because this is something that I would like to share. And it’s not only sharing as far as what he wrote, but our experience as well because it was not long after that Pettus Bridge when they marched across it that we moved into the city of Chicago and began 11 years of ministry.

Karen:     Well, we moved into the city of Chicago because of the civil rights movement. We wanted to be very involved in that. And in the city was where all that civil rights action was. So those were the early years and that did inform us. That movement did inform us in many ways.

David:     I don’t know if any of our kids read the book, but it wasn’t my job to read it to them. It was my conviction that I should send them a copy to make it easy for them to read it. Maybe they did. I don’t know. I had never heard anything. I’m going to simplify this more.

Karen:     Ok.

David:     We had a guest the other day, an incredibly creative woman. It just was a delightful experience to have her in the house and talk with her.

Karen:     She’s an educator.

David:     Yeah, she said, let me show you something I put together and I have in my hand a small pack. They’re 10 cards and they’re held together by a little chain.

Karen:     Key chain…

David:     And they’re questions. For grandparents or parents to ask of grandchildren or children just when they’re driving. You know a lot of times you have one of the grandkids in the car and you joke and everything, but you never get to any substantive conversation. So, she said, for example, you take this out and say, “I’d like to ask you some questions. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you love to go?”

Karen:     So, this is one of the cards.

David:     That’s one of the card shots.

Karen:     And then the kids get to choose a question.

David:     What character from a book would you like to be for a day? I think that’s a great question. Here’s one. What song always puts you in a good mood? Now even as I ask these questions, you’re trying to think of answers probably. What is one of the hardest things you have ever done?

Karen:     That was great.

David:     That’s a great question. Well basically it just fits in the glove compartment and then when you think the conversation is not as good as it could be,  and you want to get past what we call chit chat. Then you get this little pack out and you ask the guy. That’s fabulous. That’s like a great gift to give to people.

Karen:     The great even put that on a family dinner table.

David:     Yes, and it shows you the kind of questions that can be asked that draws people out and gets you to a place where you know them just a little bit better. One of the good things, Karen, about asking questions like this is that usually the person after they have responded will ask you the same question back again.

Karen:     Well…

David:     … how would you answer your question?

Karen:     Yeah right.

David:     I have thought about like that question what book really touched you in this last year. And a book that really got to me was one called Sue Center Sudan, a missionary nurse’s journey. You know who Jeff Barker is.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     Jeff and Karen recently retired professors at Northwestern in Oaring City, Iowa. The two of them have been the head of the drama department. And he has written plays about this given missionary from their home area and the plays were big hits, in terms of the college students, but he also then put into writing books. So, I have read Jeff, bless his heart, he sent copies to me, and I read the first two and they were wonderful. And I thought what I am going to get the third one. And it finally came and that’s what this Sue Center is. Sue Center, Iowa and Sudan and the years she spent there and finally, because of the Muslims moving in, she was not able to stay there anymore but it’s a wonderful, wonderful look at a missionary nurse’s life and well spent.

Karen:     Unknown maybe unsung but has had an extraordinary life and extraordinary ministry. One of those common folks who he’s lifted out of time in focused on.

David:     I don’t think I ever appreciated missionaries more than what I finished this third and I thought he’s not going to be able to match the first two books because they were very, very good.

Karen:     That was so wonderful.

David:     This was a great climax to the three of them and yeah, it’s just it’s very fascinating and it can be opened up through questioning as to what’s going on.

Karen:     So, what we’re talking about is don’t settle for chit chat in your conversation with people. Our times together are so rare and so precious. Let’s make them as meaningful as we can and one of the ways to do that is through good questions.

David:     You are kind of extreme and that your kind of outlawed chit chat all together. You don’t say.

Karen:     I’m not that bad, am I?

David:     You’re pretty bad and you leave and kind of water off on your own.

Karen:     Well, let me say this. I don’t have a college degree. I mean I met this charming young man.

David:     Talk more about him. I think you’re going to talk about me.

Karen:     When I was a senior in high school and you swept me off my feet because you felt that God had a destiny for you. The other young men in our life were not at that point in their relationship with God.

David:     They were too young.

Karen:     And so, we started to date, and we were married, and I had a year of college after that. And we started to give my father well-loved grandchildren. But I’ve always had friends a lot of them were PhDs. So, I guess that’s how I got my college education, and I would shamelessly just say, “Tell me about your field. What things are you teaching your students and if I wanted to learn more about the field that you’re in what sort of things would you recommend?” So, I got a very cheap college education through the years from all my friends who were PhDs. Many of them who were college professors. But that learning is available to all of us.

David:     Yes.

Karen:     That learning is available to all of us if we will learn to have substantive and meaningful conversations.

David:     And a lot of that is opened up just by asking simple questions.

Karen:     And the other thing, David, that we need to emphasize is that very often we don’t have conversations about our faith journey. I’d love it that you often in conversations with strangers, on the airplanes or you know just meeting with people, they’ll ask what you do, you’ll ask what they do, and ask what you do and say why I’m a minister. And then you think, “Oh they’re going to choke up.” And then you’ll say, “Because I’m a minister tell me about your faith journey blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” It’s like they’ve been waiting for a long time for someone to ask them whether they have faith or not or whether they reacted to a toxic situation in faith. I never had anyone say well that’s private I don’t want to talk about it. They’re open to it every single one of them. Isn’t that amazing.

So, let’s be aware that we can open up conversations of faith through very simple questions like, “Tell me about your faith journey what kind of a faith system where you raised in as a child if any and where are you in that process.”

David:     As you’ve gotten older have you thought of sometime maybe attending a church or whatever. Here’s a verse from Colossians. This is chapter 4 verse 6. I think I’m pushing it a little. “Let your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Karen:     Oh, read it again. It’s lovely.

David:     You think it fits?

Karen:     Yeah, I do.

David:     “Let your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Now I’m going to go back to that key sentence. I actually had a letter the other day, “I like your key sentence idea.”

Karen:     I do too. I think it’s a wonderful form of communication.

David:    Rather than allowing time with friends and associates to be swallowed up in small talk or chit chat learn to ask questions that will help improve who you are as a child of God.

Karen:     Now you need to ask me what I’m reading now.

David:     What are you reading now Karen? I did that really well.

Karen:     You did it really well. Well, I try and read books that have pertain information about topics that are essential to where we are in our time. So, the book I’m reading right now is The End of White Christian America. It’s written by Robert P. Jones, and we are in the midst of an extraordinary demographic shift. We have multiculturalism. We have a globalization of the world, and this is making many people in our society extraordinarily uncomfortable. I’m not sure that they all can analyze it the way a sociologist would analyze it, but I recommend it for people who want to have a good understanding of what this shift is all about and how it’s affecting us as a nation.

David:     What’s the title again?

Karen:     The End of White Christian America. It’s written by Robert P. Jones.

David:     Now is this a Christian book?

Karen:     I don’t believe so. It’s more of an academic book. He doesn’t have a diatribe. It’s more of a very clear objective analysis of what’s happening in the States right now and it’s extremely helpful in understanding why there is so much reaction and polarization going on.

David:     If you ask questions of other people and they never ask you a question how do you solve that?

Karen:     Well sometimes there’s a well let me tell you what I’m learning about that area so that it becomes much more of a conversation, but I often am more concerned about getting those people to talk.

David:     People will not believe me Karen. But when you are in a conversation with someone else, you many times will not talk as much as the other individual which is a great skill you have.

Karen:     Oh me. People won’t believe you if you say that about me.

David:     They won’t believe that you didn’t talk more than the other people.

Karen:     Yeah, but I’m not nearly as good at having conversation as you are. You’re much better than I am because I get caught up in the conversation and forget sometimes the interpersonal dynamic. But you’re the expert on this honey in the family.

David:     Well, I’m just saying that you’re coming along.

Karen:     Yeah, I’m coming along… doing better

David:     You’re doing better. And you’re learning that as you ask questions other people will talk and you draw them out and other people are fascinated.

Karen:     They’re fascinated. The most unsung person if you ask the right question is fascinated.

David:     I think the right question that I hear you asking a lot relates to who listened to you when you were younger. Can you explain that?

Karen:     Well, I’ve conducted these listening groups which are three to four people who meet once a month or twice a month for seven months and that’s all we do. There’s a formula for it. So, they adhere to the listening group formula. But all of a sudden, I realize how powerful listening was. It had never hit me and then we have a friend who’s a neuroscientist who has explained to me what happens neurologically in the body. This is the way the body is made by our Creator God and extraordinary things happen. Healing things happen when people feel listened to. So that’s why I’m into that topic.

David:     So, you tend to ask people in the different eras of your life, tell me about somebody who truly listened to you.

Karen:     Yeah, did you have people who listened to you and often they don’t except there’ll be one teacher or one-use pastor or someone who’s a neighbor who steps in and becomes the listener in their life. And it is powerfully transforming for them.

David:     In fact, as they talk about this.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     It’s like it brings back all those memories. This person listened to me.

Karen:     Well, it’s not just the memories they have the feeling, the physiological feelings they experience them again when they even tell about that person. So, I will say to them, “Don’t tell me about the person tell me what you’re feeling right now.” So, the body goes through this neurological happy dance and even the memory of being listened to. It’s an extraordinary thing just extraordinary.

David:     Yeah, and it’s the total opposite of chit chat.

Karen:     Total opposite of chit chat.

David:     It fills in the evening and when you’re all done, you’re done.

Karen:     Ah what a waste.

David:     Yeah, what a waste but we are the ones who can control what goes on. So, if we’re dissatisfied or if we find ourselves going back to the same conversations over and over again or if we’re tired of talking about the weather.

Karen:     Or whatever topic it is.

David:     We’re the ones who can change it and in changing it we find ourselves growing in the Lord.

Karen:     Yeah exactly.

David:     Thank you for talking with me again.

Karen:     Nice to talk with you always. Great to listen to you too.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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