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This article appears in the Wilderness issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.

Questions are part of our lives: from the formative to the every day, from life-changing milestones to the difficult questions no one ever wants to ask. Trinity News asked Susan Gilmore to share how she would ask some of those questions:

Question: How are you?

Susan Gilmore: “Tell me how you’re doing. I’ve thought about it several times knowing you were going into that difficult situation with your family.”

I don’t ask people randomly how they are doing. If I’m going to make inquiry into a person’s interior, there has to be some legitimacy for my poking in there. For instance, If I’m going to ask you, it better be because there is some context for it in something that belongs to the two of us.

Question: Do you think you have a drinking problem?

Susan Gilmore: “I believe you have a drinking problem. I could be wrong. I could be right. You may not want to hear it but the reason for my bringing it up is a concern for you and I want to be helpful if there is a way that I can helpful.”

That better be the truth… that it is more than just to get them to think about whether or not they have a drinking problem. [As] the uncoverer, what is my role in that? You don’t just go ripping away people’s defenses without some context for how you are going to be helpful or what impact you are going to have.

Question (to a child): What were you thinking?

Susan Gilmore: “Tell me what was in your head when you made that choice. Tell me what you were thinking about. Tell me what was going on inside your head.”

Most kids will respond, “I don’t know.” “Well, that won’t do because we need to link what is going on inside your head with the choices you make.” Unfortunately, instead of having that conversation, people say, what in the world were you thinking? And they have no intention of engaging in a purposeful discussion.

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Wilderness
A Trinity News Companion