THE PEOPLE'S WARDEN'S POINT / Phil Schwartz
Looking Good, Feeling Good

Billy Crystal, through his Fernando character on "Saturday Night Live," told us that looking good was more important than feeling good. Looking marvelous was the goal. Ascetics and sages throughout the ages have told us that feeling good, or inner peace, was all that mattered and that external appearances mean nothing. While I would put more credence in the words of the latter, I am not convinced that that’s all there is to it.

It is well known by the medicos and to anyone who has been seriously ill that one of the first signs that a person is on the mend is that men will shave and women will put on makeup. In fact, when I have been seriously ill, one of the ways I helped myself feel better was to shower, shave and put on a fresh set of clothes. This certainly implies to me that looking good and feeling good are in some way connected.

Similarly, there appears to be a connection between behavior and attitude. Does a good attitude lead to good behavior and a bad attitude lead to bad behavior? Or can good behavior lead to a good attitude. In other words, can one consciously change one’s attitude by behaving well? I not only think this is possible but, in some situations, it may be our only recourse. Praying for your enemies is a classic example of this.

During the last Bishop’s Committee retreat, one of the things we all agreed upon was that we needed to make a concerted effort to look better, that we needed to make our church and ourselves more appealing. The former, of course, is the aspect where I, with Ted Wright and Alan Spencer, most closely relate, as we form the Buildings and Grounds Committee (with me as the Chair for the fifth consecutive year). The latter relates most closely to New Member Ministry and Fellowship from a B.C. perspective but, more importantly, to all of us in our various activities at the church.

Will making our church look better help us to feel better? Will changing our behavior and thus making ourselves look better change our attitudes? While these, on the surface seem like trivial, even ridiculous questions, I suggest that they are not only far from trivial but that they really speak to the core of us as a church and a congregation.

Let me give a few examples and let you decide.

How did you feel coming Sunday after Sunday and sitting in the same drab green pews? Then how did you feel when you were sitting in them adorned in their current cloth? How did you feel coming to church and seeing the lawn uncut and unkempt? Then how did you feel when you noticed that it was neatly cut and trimmed? Certainly, for many if not all of us, the way we look as a church has something to do with how we feel when we are there, be it at worship or a fellowship event.

Similarly, how do you feel when you go into a new situation and are virtually ignored by the people there? Does it feel different to be greeted warmly by those same people and to be made to feel "at home"? You bet it does. While for many of us greeting strangers at all, much less warmly, is a difficult thing to do, I believe it is a learned behavior and has little to do with being an "introvert" or an "extrovert." This is clearly a situation where attitude follows behavior, and not vice versa.

What does all this mumbo-jumbo have to do with us? As mentioned above, I think it has a lot to do with us—us as a church, us as a congregation and us as the members of the Body of Christ.

Among the resolutions that the Bishop’s Committee adopted at its Annual Retreat, two stand out. First, we are in dire need of putting our best face forward from a physical/visual perspective. We need to clean up our buildings and grounds and make them such that they are a joy to be around. We want them to be special to us, inviting to newcomers, be easy to navigate, and to be a place of peace and a sanctuary. Toward this end, several work-days are planned and a special Garden Guild has been established. Several specific goals have been established and with the congregation’s and God’s help, we will accomplish them this year.

Second, we need to welcome the newcomer and to nurture the existing congregation. We need to love each other in an overt manner, not just in our hearts. We need to show each other that we care. Maybe right now our level of caring is low or, perhaps, not as high as it could be. This is where the attitude-changing behavior comes in. I believe that if we force ourselves to open up and at least attempt to show our feelings for one another, that our attitudes will change, our love will grow, and our behavior will naturally follow. It has been said after all that love is a verb not a noun, an action word, not a description or state of being. Therefore, we must not let New Member Ministry and Fellowship be thought of as the responsibility of the BC and selected volunteers—it is all our jobs and it is what Christ demanded of us. Amen!