According to Wikipedia, the Johari Window is a technique designed to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others. It was created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995) in 1955, and is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise. Luft and Ingham named their model "Johari" using a combination of their first names.
I first encountered it as a mentor of the Education for Ministry (EfM) program decades ago. It has stayed with me as a very helpful tool, but I admit I don't see it very often and have no idea if it's something still used or not. It's relatively simple to understand and straightforward, I think - the image makes it pretty clear. In the upper left box are things we know about ourselves that others also know about us. In the upper right box are things everybody else knows about us, but that we are blind to ourselves. In the lower left box are those things which we know about ourselves but keep hidden from others. And in the lower right hand box is the unknown. We are a mystery even to ourselves. Theologically, we might say "God knows" if we are so inclined. But in my experience this is a challenging one because if we don't know something and others don't see it either, how do we discover it so that we might be changed for the better?
I'll leave that question for now, but hold this thought about Johari's Window...
I've been ordained for more than thirty-seven years, and have done hundreds of funerals over the course of that time. I still find it fascinating to sit and talk with family members about the deceased and even more fascinating when the circle expands and friends are included, or share a reflection at the funeral. Even the most integrated person has different relationships with different people. There are jokes we share with some and not others; ideas we share with some and not others - for a whole bunch of reasons. So an oldest child tells me that mom, who has just passed, was a strict disciplinarian. And then the youngest child, maybe number five or six, says that mom was a pushover - and let her get away with everything.
You get the point, I trust. The goal for me is not to solve the mystery and figure out who is right. Rather, every time I have this experience I ponder anew what a great mystery we all are. There is only so much those in relationship can share - only so much that is known to them. Much is hidden and all is filtered through the particular nature of that relationship, and time, and place.
I have been thinking a lot lately and trying to pray with the ways that "so-called liberals" and "so-called conservatives" knew Charlie Kirk. I put myself in the former group but have to admit I did not have the animosity toward him before his murder that some did, mostly because he wasn't really on my radar. For whatever reason, I knew very little about him. But what I knew (and what I have learned) made me believe that those on the other side who would make a hero of him in death - even a martyr - have been ill informed.
But what if, even if there is truth in that. we literally heard and saw and felt different things based on our own self-understanding? What we think we know is very limited - for all of us.
I was and continue to be fascinated by this post from a journalist I have a lot of respect for, Van Jones. If you've not seen it, please watch it.
Are you still with me? This may or may not be a helpful post because I'm still working through all of this but what I find so compelling about Van Jones' reflections are that (a) he's not a friend and in fact (b) he strongly disagreed with Charlie Kirk on almost everything and (c) he shares a heartfelt story that affirms the claims about Charlie Kirk wanting to engage respectfully across difference and (d) he says that maybe this will help someone - maybe on the right or maybe on the left.
It is a reminder to me that no one knew Charlie Kirk. Not even Charlie Kirk. Not even his wife. Not the person who murdered him. Not the people who showed up at the funeral/rally this weekend. Not Van Jones...
What Johari's Window ultimately taught me a long time ago is to be humble about what I know even of myself, let alone others. So much is hidden. Our lives are complex. Only God knows.
The internet, however, and our current climate, are fast and furious. Some of my conservative friends were posting almost immediately about how liberals would not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk and yet without irony that when an elected official in Minnesota and her husband were murdered in their home, they didn't mourn or demand that flags be flown at half-staff.
I'm weary of the posts - even the ones I agree with - that have come from this day. I've read that some people celebrated his death but no one I know did and liberals for whom I have great respect all condemned the violence and offered condolences for his family. Bernie Sanders was incredible. It's almost as if in some circles that was not enough, however. I don't know how, or if, we will sort through it. I don't know how, or if, we can tone down the rhetoric.
But for me there is an underlying epistemological question of what we know and how we know it. Many of us, on the left and on the right, claim to "know" far more than we do. Other than Van Jones, most of the commentary I read comes from people who never met the man. We know far less about the clearly disturbed young man who killed him. But as best I can tell after a little time has passed, the simplistic polarizing narratives that were initially put out there have little truth to them. Life is more complex.
In addition to cultivating humility, I am praying that we can also learn yet another lesson from Ted Lasso: to be more curious. To practice staying open. In all those funerals I've presided over, through almost four decades of ministry, I have never once felt that I had to come up with the definitive eulogy about the deceased. I feel that same way about preaching Jesus. How to stay open, to listen, to learn, to be unafraid of complexity? There is a reason we get four (canonical) gospels rather than one, and five if you count Paul's Letters taken together as a kind of fifth gospel. In truth as much as we learn about Jesus, we learn from the New Testament that we are hearing how Paul, and Matthew, and Mark and Luke and John felt about Jesus.
It does seem to me that if we can cultivate these practices of humility and curiosity we will, in God's own time, find a way forward. And we may even learn, or remember how to engage one another across differences as we seek to bind up the wounds of this nation.
