My friend Rick Landon -- counselor, spiritual director, seminary instructor, former pastor -- emailed me to say he'd recently been to the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Nelson County, Ky.
"Someone (monks said they did not know who)," Rick said, "had written on the white board in the conference room, 'Almost everything is none of my business.'"
Failing to find a monk who could identify the message's author, Rick later did a Google search to see if he could locate the statement elsewhere, thinking, I assume, it might have been coined by somebody famous. He couldn't find it. (I looked it up myself. I couldn't find it, either.)
I told Rick that whoever originated it, I meant to appropriate it forthwith. With his permission, of course.
He said to go ahead, because he was using it, too, in the blog he writes for Lexington's Interfaith Counseling Center. (See: tinyurl.com/yc3m4dxn) Check out his March 7 entry.
"Almost everything is none of my business." That's one beautiful, wise, potent morsel for the soul.
The general sentiment against not inserting yourself into other people's affairs didn't start with our anonymous whiteboard scribe, of course. It's as old as Methuselah's dentures. Dear Abby used to tell nosy advice seekers to MYOB -- mind your own business. In 1949, Hank Williams recorded his take on the idea in a great song called, you guessed it, "Mind Your Own Business."
But the line from the abbey takes matters a step further. It's not just that we should mind our own business. It's that almost nothing actually is our business. Hardly anything anyone else does that doesn't affect us directly should be grist for our psychic mill.
That makes me want to bust Pentecostal right here at my keyboard. Hold my beer -- I mean, er, my decaf coffee -- while I dance up and down my house's hallway, thrusting my arms heavenward and shouting hosannas in unknown tongues.
Freedom! Freedom for everyone -- the interferers and the interfered-with alike!
OK, I'll stop dancing. You're welcome.
Sure, there are caveats. If you see somebody beating a child, or raping a woman, or starving an elder, by all means butt in. Immediately. Beat a gong. We're all responsible for protecting those who can't protect themselves.
Let's face it, though: Mainly the interfering and gossiping and finger-wagging we do doesn't stem from any sense of civic duty.
Mostly we butt into other folks' affairs because we're control freaks who need to fix, or at least feel superior to, everyone else. Or, like Dear Abby's correspondents, we're nosy. Or we reap some type of social currency from getting the inside scoop and then passing it along to friends. Or we hope to deflect attention from our own shortcomings by calling attention to someone else's.
None of those is a good look, is it?
Why did your neighbors get a quickie divorce? Not your business. Why don't your adult children go to church? Not your business; they're adults now. How come the co-worker you detest got a promotion? None of your beeswax; do your own job the best you can and leave your co-worker to the Fates.
Sometimes, I realize, we butt in because we genuinely care. We see folks in pain and want to help. We see them hurtling toward disaster and hope to warn them. As far as we can discern, our motives are pure.
Religious people, to cite one example, often fret about the eternal destiny of that golf buddy who's an angry -- or happy -- heretic. Parents often want desperately to salvage their struggling grown-up children.
Fair enough. But even when our motives are good (at least by our own lights), we need to accept that we can't help people by haranguing them, or by intervening in their affairs without an invitation, or, Lord knows, by talking down to them or whispering about them.
And we need always to be wary of ourselves, because if we're not careful we'll convince ourselves we're acting with clean hearts even when our motives are actually sour and selfish.
Often, the very best we can do is just to say to those we care about, "I love you. I'm here if you want to talk. And if you don't feel the need, that's cool." Then we wait until summoned.
After all, humans possess the freedom to lead their lives as they see fit, even when you or I disagree with their choices. Besides, we never really know all the circumstances of someone else's situation. It could be that by their lights they're doing just dandy, thank you very much.
Usually, minding our own business demonstrates way more mercy and grace than trying to play the savior does.
Not butting into others' lives also gets us out of God's way. When we step back from people's problems, God is freer to do the work only he can do anyway. Those poor wretches might not get the benefits of our brilliant counsel, but they may discover a far better counselor than we are.
So, here it is again, my new mantra: Almost everything is none of my business.
Repeat it with me, friends: Almost everything is none of our business. Almost everything is --
Pardon me! I've got to go dance!
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at
pratpd@yahoo.com