Names not Joe

I remember reading a story about a man who was going to a NFL game. He parked his car and was walking towards the ticket counter when he heard somebody yell, "Hey, Joe." The man stopped and looked around and could not find anybody he knew yelling so he walked on. There was a second yell, "Joe!" The man stopped and looked around again. Nobody he saw waving at him. He was almost at the entrance when a third time he heard a shout, "Hey Joe." This time the man stopped, turned around and yelled as loud as he could, "My name is not Joe."

I thought of this story while I was talking to a friend about an email we both had received. The email was a mass email to about 200 people. There was a request on this email that the sender needed help in a distant city and would somebody be able to go and work there. My friend was telling me about the email, and he said, "She sent me this email asking me to go to this town, but I told her I wasn't going to go that far to work." The whole tone of my friend was that this was a question directly sent to him. It was a general request to the whole list and since I was not able to go I did not consider it a matter that I needed to respond to. But he reacted to it as if it was directly put to him.

We tend to operate as if the whole world revolves around us. It is our tendency to take everything personally. Our operational focus is "me." The whole world is yelling at us. The mass email is sent just to us. The red lights are operated just so we are stopped. The teacher doesn't like me.

The Old Testament story about the Temptation in the Garden reflects the moment in history when Adam and Eve decided to put their own concerns ahead of the creators. The story of the Fall is the story of the moment when it all began to focus around "me" and not the good of the Garden and keeping the limits of the Maker.

And it seems to me that the heart of most religious teachings is the moment of enlightenment when we can by some act of grace step out of the center and see the world from the perspective of others. That we can allow the hurts of another, the concerns of others, the larger world to be at the center of our thinking and have the same passion for that center as we have when we are the center of our thinking.

"If you're name is not Joe, why did you stop?"