"Framing" Those Around Us

I assume that we have all watched enough television police dramas to be familiar with the term “framed.” In those stories the individual is intentionally held accountable for something that he or she didn’t do.

But there is another way we frame people, and that is to decide to see them in a certain way. Sometimes that description is accurate, sometimes not. But, correct or not, our framing determines what and who we see. Sadly, our tendency is often to create a negative frame of reference which allows us to to discount others and their opinions or their needs.

Frederick Buechner offers an admonition concerning this in his book Whistling in the Dark:

“And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.”

Years ago President Jimmy Carter delivered what’s come to be called his “malaise” speech, (Which is interesting because that word never once appeared in what he said, but was attached to it almost immediately by critics.) David French in a New York Times column this past week recalled that speech, describing it as being pastoral, speaking to the wounds and separateness of the nation. French went on to say that it was a speech before its time, that it more accurately describes where we are now.

French writes:?

“Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.”

President Carter put it this way:

“We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.”

In these times we are clear as to what he was referring to. We need to be conscious of how we are “framing” each other. Sometimes, just as in those police dramas, we are creating a case for someone’s guilt that simply is not accurate, but seems to fit our emotional needs. As people of faith, we are called to view each other from a different stance. To use Buechner’s words”: “Love… is the frame we see them in.”

French ends his article this way:

“At the start of this piece, I used the world ‘pastoral’ to describe Carter’s speech. But there is another word: prophetic. His words were not the clarion call necessary for his time, but they are words for this time. As Jimmy Carter spends his last days on this earth, we should remember his call for community and thank a very good man for living his values, serving his neighbors, and reminding us of the true source of?strength for the nation he loved.”

That to me is a “framing” of life that would benefit us all.?????????????????????