If you’ve heard me talk about anything lately, you’ve probably heard me talk about improv. Last Sunday, we talked about the difference between being inspired and being innovative when we perform together.
Being innovative on stage is surprisingly ego-driven. I’m thinking five steps ahead of where my team is. I’m trying to plan what comes next, to be funny or clever, or to position myself in a way that makes me look good. I’m so focused on what I can contribute that I can lose sight of what is already unfolding around me.
But being inspired asks something different of me. It asks me to be present.
When I’m inspired by my team, I have to listen to what is actually happening. I have to hear what my scene partner is saying, receive their idea, and allow it to shape what comes next. If I’m going to say “Yes, and…” to them, I first have to say yes to what is already there. Yes to their words. Yes to their idea. Yes to the direction we are moving together. And then, from that place of listening, I can offer something of my own. I must first allow myself to be changed by what the other person is offering.
The practice is not to get ahead of one another, but to stay with one another. To resist the urge to redirect, to plan five steps ahead, or to decide what something should become before we’ve given it a chance to unfold. So, instead, we listen and then respond. We allow ourselves to be changed by what the other person brings.
It isn’t easy to stay present and trust that we can build a new world together, one step at a time. As people, we often want to know where we’re going. We want to have something clever to say, to make a meaningful contribution, to ensure that things turn out well. But what is beautiful about a good improv scene is that we arrive somewhere great only because we followed the same path together. The path where we responded to one another along the way, rather than walking down several different paths, all the while trying to get everyone else to follow ours.
I’m deeply inspired by this practice of presence that improv requires. And I keep wondering what it might look like to carry this way of being into all of our lives.
What if listening wasn’t simply the pause we take before offering our own thoughts, but a way of being genuinely open to another person? What if we weren’t so focused on what we could contribute, how we could be helpful, or what we thought should happen next?
To be inspired by another person is to make room for the possibility that they might take us somewhere we never would have gone on our own. Their words might change our perspective. Their ideas might open a door we didn’t know existed. Their presence might invite something new and different out of us. But we can only discover those possibilities if we are truly listening. If we are willing to stay present long enough to be moved by one another.
Perhaps this is an invitation for all of us: to slow down, to listen more deeply, to resist the urge to always be the one with the next idea, or to move on too quickly. Let us be less concerned with directing the moment and more interested in discovering what the moment is asking of us.
Blessings,
Pastor Eli