As I was working on the enews from last week, I found myself a bit stuck. I was trying to come up with the Beyond Sunday Morning activities for the Practice of Repair.
So, I googled ‘repair practices’.
I often do this as a way of getting my creative juices flowing again. I’ll read a related blog post or a craft tutorial and new ideas will spring up in my head.
This time, however, I ended up on a website I never thought would teach me something about spirituality. It was a website from a car repair shop that had a few articles about…well, car repair.
The one I read explained ‘The Three C’s”, a methodical repair process for mechanics to use when a customer comes in with a problem. The three c’s are concern, cause, and correction. Identifying the concern, discovering the cause, and finally correcting it.
Cause is the one that stands out to me. Often, we want to make the symptoms disappear as quickly as we can, jumping from concern to correction without identifying the root cause.
This is true for all sorts of things, interpersonal relationships, physical items, even social issues. Band-aid solutions don’t work. Because they don’t identify the cause. If a friend routinely stands you up for outings, no amount of apologizing the next day will maintain that friendship. If your cat is scratching your furniture, it doesn’t matter how many times you reupholster it, the cat will still scratch it. Police breaking up encampments of unhoused people doesn’t give those people houses.
Is there something in your life that needs some repair? Try looking at it like a car mechanic. Concern, cause, and correction. Just don’t forget that middle C!
~Aline Harris
