The Thin Space

Well, hey, everybody. Happy Sunday evening, or at least Sunday evening in Minnesota, where I am. My name is JC Lippold and I'm excited to spend a little time with you after the weekend has ended. Before the week begins. This is a rather precarious time. Whether you like it or not. You can't do any more weekend y type of stuff yet. Monday is still waiting in the future. So in this thin space in between, in this thin space in between, we take some time to see what there is to see. m. Central standard time on Sunday evening.

I know that there's someone here at Cadre to spend time, to spend time with. And when we do that, all of a sudden there's no choice but to be brought into the moment at hand. So my friends Steve Martin and John Candy are up on the wall. This is my office. This is my workspace. And this is a still from. Hey, Luke, nice to see you. Glad to share the thin space with you. This is the still from the movie planes, trains and automobiles. And it's a wonderful reminder of when we share space with someone else, how we have no choice but to be in that moment with them.

So John Candy and Steve Martin journey from New York City to try to get home for Thanksgiving. I think it's the best Thanksgiving movie ever. And actually, it's the one movie that every time I watch, I always cry. And I'll talk about why in a moment. So these two very different personalities. Hey, nice to see you. AJK Brown 27 64. We are glad that you are here, Abby. Nice to see you as well. Imagine that the four of us are in New York City trying to get home to Chicago for our Thanksgiving celebration, and all of a sudden, someone enters.

Our journey adds a little bit of friction, a little positive friction to the journey that slows us down, that meets us in the curves and the bends and the stumbling blocks we weren't anticipating. And in the midst of this, we end up seeing maybe some of the ugliness inside, some of the reactiveness, some of the undealt with realities that we're carrying. All of a sudden, this other person, almost like a mirror, reflects, reflects those things on us and unleashes some icky stuff. Well, Steve Martin meets John Candy and I guess John Candy meets Steve Martin too.

With the journey is very much Steve Martin getting back to Chicago, and we think that's where John Candy is wanting to go to as well. So this thin space, we're in it together. Here's the thing I wanted to raise tonight. Here's the reason why. Planes, trains, and automobiles makes me cry every single time I see it. If you haven't seen the movie, this is absolutely a spoiler alert. So plug your ears for a moment. At the end of the movie, you realize that John Candy, who has been fibbing a little bit, talking about his wife and his family, that he doesn't have a family and that his wife has passed away, that he actually doesn't have a home.

He's a homeless traveling salesman. His wife passed away, and he realized, I'm a traveling salesman and I have nowhere to go home to, so I might as well live on the road. Steve Martin doesn't realize this until he's traveling home. They finally make it to Chicago. He's on the l train, traveling back home to his beautiful wife, his big house, his children, his parents, and everybody. And he stops and thinks. He goes, wow. This person I've been traveling with, I didn't really think about their reality when I was so invested in my own.

He stops, get us, gets off the l train, turns around and goes back to where John candy is. And he's sitting at the l train station by himself on Thanksgiving morning with nowhere to go. And that's when Steve Martin all of a sudden asks Del, what are you doing here? And Del says, my wife's passed away. I have nowhere to go. And that's when all of a sudden, Steve Martin goes, wow. Come home with me. And this is that scene. The two of them carrying Del's wonderful trunk of all of the things, of all the shower curtain rings down the beautiful street to the big home.

And all of a sudden, they walk in the front door, and Del sees Steve and his wife embrace. They made it home on Thanksgiving. Then Del says hello to Steve's wife, Steve's wife says hello to Del. And Del just wrings out his glove. You can see all the things that Del hasn't been feeling in front of anybody else is starting to be felt. So the reason why this movie makes me cry is not because it's the sad ending, but because throughout this whole journey, unless you know what this man is carrying, you just assume he's this big, goofy, funny guy who you can go ahead and poke at, you can make fun of.

It isn't until that moment when you ask the question, Del, what are you doing here? That you realize how rich of an investment it is for someone else to place their life in your hands and you in theirs. So I wonder if in this thin space tonight, the weekends passed, the weeks ahead. Yes, thanksgiving is coming up. If thanksgiving is something that is a time that you invest, invest energy in, you can't really start kicking into that time yet. So maybe in this moment you go, wow, who's that person that I have never asked the question, Del, what are you doing here?

And maybe ask them that question this week, not that it's going to make you, oh, now you don't annoy me anymore. Now you don't frustrate me anymore. Now I agree with every single belief that you have, but perhaps you go, huh? Now I can understand a little bit more why you are where you are. Abby says, so important, sharing our stories and creating space for others just to share theirs. Yeah. And I'll say that right, Abby, like you just pointed so often, it's I'm going to share my story. I'm going to share my story.

I'm going to share my story. But it's creating that little bit of space and the space for the invitation, for the discomfort to say, tell me your story. Because so often we go, hey, here's space. This is safe space. We don't get to decide if someone else feels safe. We don't. What we do have the opportunity to do is to let someone know that we are investing our time, our energy, if they desire for us to weave into their story, for us to help them carry their trunk down the road, to provide them a home space.

So within this thin space tonight, who is that person? I'm a big fan of doing little things, often not little meaning, simple, but little meaning, oh, here's this thing that I have no idea if there's going to be any benefit, any worth. Who's that person? You can go, hey, tell me something about you and see what happens. It may set you up for one of the most fateful trips that you've ever been on. Full with humor, full with frustration, full with all of the things that you can never imagine. So, Abby and Luke, hi, Marisa.

Nice to see you. And AJK Brown 27 64. Welcome into this thin space. Welcome to the Cadre Sphere. AJK Brown 27 64. Shoot me a message. I'd love to know why you are here. Maybe you and I are getting ready to jump into our own planes, trains and automobiles type of journey tonight and beyond. Everybody, have a wonderful evening. Have a wonderful week ahead, and we'll see you in the thin space next Sunday evening. Have a good one.