Breaking free from ‘normal’

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana schooled hundreds of mid council leaders on Monday by taking them to the movies.

The “theater” was a conference room at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky, where Dana asked participants in the Mid Council Leaders Gathering (MCLG) to watch Pixar's "Float." 

The short film by director Bobby Rubio explores a father’s struggle to cope with his child’s special gift — being able to fly through the air with the ease of a butterfly.

In the end, there is a moment of acceptance as the father and son enjoy a blissful ride on a swing, a symbol of the joy that can come from breaking free from society’s constraints, pressures and judgment.

“If we move beyond the values of the world that encloses what normal looks like into a world where we open up that box and do away with the box, it is liberating for everyone,” said Dana, associate pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon, Virginia.

The discussion was part of the afternoon plenary on the first day of the Oct. 11-14 gathering, an opportunity for representatives of presbyteries and synods to learn, collaborate, create new relationships and strengthen old ones while attending in person or online.

In addition to Dana's presentation, the Monday agenda included an overview of Presbyterian Life & Witness, a presentation on important actions taken at the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), worship and singing as well as meeting important leaders.

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Dana, whose latest book is “Better Than Normal: Virtues for an Off-Script Life,” spoke on various leadership topics, such as what it means to be a differentiated leader. She also encouraged the crowd to be like an avid runner who focuses on form rather than pain or miles.

“I'm a big fan of the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” she said. “That's what focusing on form is about. What is mine to do? How can I contribute to this system, so that it can be as healthy as it possibly can be."  

Dana also made time for small group discussion and encouraged people to share local examples of how presbyteries are getting beyond defeatist language, or being “stuck,” to doing productive things like using their property for affordable housing and feeding the hungry.

During the examination of “Float,” some people related to the film from a family or individual perspective while others saw parallels with the church and the need for healing.

“So many of our churches have difficult or hard things in their past, and they don't believe they will ever recover,” one film watcher noted. “There are so many of our pastors and church staff and church members who have been hurt … by unkind actions in the church, and there is resilience and forgiveness when there is love.”

Another said, “I imagine the presbytery as a swing. … Now, we can't take you into the air, but we can get you moving in the right direction.”

During a break, MCLG participants lined up to receive copies of Dana’s book, which she had woven into to her presentation. According to the book’s introduction, it lays out a vision of a world that will “grant us all greater empathy, creativity, and an ability to live freely and more abundantly no matter what life throws at us.”

Today, there is a tendency to “expect and demand that the world kind of do things that feel good to me, rather than developing the skills of courage and the virtues of courage that allow me to live in discomforting spaces,” Dana said.

Often, people and even churches settle for blandness, lifting up the generic, because “we don’t want to talk about the specifics of what makes us different or beautiful,” she said.

The antidote, she said, is “to see the beauty in variety as opposed to beauty in some idealized conception of what it means to be human.”