Bamboozled

This week I have been totally bamboozled-twice!

Firstly in a conversation with a marketing consultant about the best way to use social media and secondly, in a conversation with a retired gentleman running a community allotment.

Digital communication and gardening.

Not subjects that have too much in common but in both conversations I found myself operating on the very edges of my own knowledge.

For  example, I only have the vaguest idea that blackfly is a parasite  and that brassicas are a type of vegetable. But what you do to treat the former and where and how you should plant the latter are profound mysteries is to me.  Likewise the subject of social media – meta  Data? Not a clue. RSS  Feed – no idea (but I know it’s not something I put on my plants).

Google+ profiles/rankings/domains/hosting/platforms? -my eyes are glazing over or rolling back into my head in despair.

Why despair? Why should it matter that I know so little about these  two key areas?

Only that I probably spend about 25% of my time doing promotionals type stuff on social media for the church I work for and it became obvious in the conversation with the expert that much of an effort is being wasted simply because I don’t really know what I’m doing.

And secondly, I’ve just had edible garden beds installed in my church garden with a view to fostering a community Garden Project and it’s clear that I don’t know a thing about gardening.

There are two ways to respond to this situation:

OPTION ONE –  I could sigh, call myself a failure, berate myself for my own inadequacy, wonder what mad fool notion took me along this path where I’m clearly so ill equipped for the task in hand and generally feel miserable.

I’m good at option one! Option one is my natural default position.

OPTION TWO:  I could accept  powerlessness and weakness as the gift it actually is. I could see it as an opportunity to empower others, to be led by others, to learn from others and generally to become hugely more interdependent on others. This is a much healthier way to be.

However option two is scary.

It means admitting my limitations,  it means waiting in faith, believing that what I need or who I need will come to me when I need it. It means abdicating from the pressure to do everything or to know everything.

It means believing that what I need or who I need will come to me when I need it. It means abdicating from the pressure to do everything or know everything.

There are other people out there, people like Nick or Roy  who may have bamboozled me but could also bless me with their competence.

Being in a position of needing help is not the same as having failed.

I love this quote from Danielle Strickland ” God will always take you to a place where you cannot be the answer, where you are vulnerable and exposed, where are you are not able to bring about the desired objective:  only God can (and everybody knows this) .

Also  this from Wendell Berry “it may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun are real journey “