At first glance, he may appear a bit on the dour side, but working in the office with him, we soon saw past that. (When the robust conference worship music reverberated through our cubicle office walls, he would say, "Look," with toe tapping to the beat, "I think I am picking up the African rhythm!")
Ben and I worked closely with Kari and grew to love the quiet man. Every day he was in the office before we arrived, with a button-down shirt and suit coat. And every night he was still working after we left (except for the last night, when we walked back to the hotel together at 1am).
Kari acutely felt the pressures of coordinating the office. He was in charge of ordering office supplies (with a very limited budget), coordinating the print jobs for the Congress, overseeing the copy room, and shaping the process for archiving Congress materials (a task which weighed heavily on him).
His English was very good--in fact, I hardly thought about the fact that it wasn't his first language. But one encounter sticks in my mind.
Toward the beginning of the Congress, when each department was in a flurry setting up office space, and the demands on our sparse supplies were mushrooming, some fellow came in with a fairly extensive request. Kari tried to explain that we were trying to share resources among offices as best we could and he couldn't accommodate all he was asking for. The fellow left again, not perfectly satisfied.
Kari looked at me. "Was I too harsh to him?" he asked. I assured him I didn't think he was out of line.
Kari sighed, "It is not easy, you know. You have to think of the right words to say and then think if there are any wrong ways that could be interpreted and what order do the words go in, and with all that you can't always get the emotion in that you mean. You don't know if it is coming across right."
It was a bit of an epiphany to me. Of course, it makes perfect sense that non-native speakers of a language have to work harder to communicate in it. But it made me want to urge everyone who came into our little office to listen with an ear of special grace.
And it made me consider, how often have I been rebuffed or offended by someone's rough tone or curt response, not considering how many other factors are at play in his life? Heaven forbid that I am so obsessed with my own image and identity that I evaluate every nuance and inflection of someone's demeanor as though it related exclusively to me.
I'd like to write more about Kari. Riding up the elevator with Ben on our last morning (having said our final good-byes to him), I told Ben that I suspected he might be one of the greatest spiritual giants we've met. In such a quiet, unassuming form.
No comments:
Post a Comment