Truth-Telling

Truth-Telling: 15 February 2022

Turns out, I’m not wired for real estate.

Out of the gates I’ll admit that I was too emotionally close to the house I was selling, the one that held my childhood treasures, the family records, the accumulation of history—and junk—that no one else, apparently, could dispose of. The house that for 18 months I’ve tended; whose contents I’ve curated, claimed, adopted out, gifted, packed, moved, sold, donated, recycled, shredded, cleaned, and overwhelmingly kept out of landfills.

But I really thought I could sell it. Because it’s a great house, that’s been wonderfully maintained, in an exclusive neighborhood, with nothing else for sale, in a seller’s market. How hard could it be?

I created and shared a webpage with a description and pictures. I welcomed people into spaces sacred to my elegant mother and Socratic father. I described solid maintenance and a Scotch-Irish skepticism of trendy updating. I shared childhood stories with strangers. The week culminated with two lowball offers and high-gear insomnia.

The emotional closeness was hard, but I’ve long been ready to deliver this large baby into loving hands. It wasn’t the smug socialites, though there were a few of those. It wasn’t even hearing all the renovation plans, though some were truly mind-boggling (why are you even looking at this house?). It was the offers that got me.

Ooh, Daddy would have loved this part. How he relished a good round of fierce bargaining. Not I. And it’s not the money. I have no trouble talking about money. I’m a nonprofit Director of Development: managing, budgeting, and asking people for money is my full-time job. And in my spare time I’m chair of my church’s Stewardship Committee. It’s not the money. It’s the game I dislike.

Let me interject here that I have nothing but respect for real estate agents. I admire anyone who is proficient in their field, especially one in which I struggle. If anything, my respect has deepened. To a person the agents I met were polite, genuine, and courteous. My difficulty in real estate is not the players, it’s the ground rules.

What makes me successful in my job, (and volunteer work, and even this blog) is my sincerity. I can tell the story of our work, explain the need, describe transformation, and invite your meaningful participation. Talking about money is the art of matching my organization’s potential with your desire to create positive change. It’s match-making visions and assets. Ministry, not sport.

This year Emma played on the Earle Street Baptist Church basketball team. On the morning of my Open House we attended their Basketball Sunday (think doughnuts, crafts, and recognition during worship). The New Testament reading was that tricky one early in Luke when Jesus, having survived the temptations in the desert, returns to Nazareth and preaches for the first time.

Folks are so proud of their native son; they’re really rooting for him. Until he reads from the Torah (Isaiah 61) and schools them on the truth of their arrogance and xenophobia. It doesn’t go over well. (You may have heard Jesus’ wry assessment of this moment: “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”) They try to kill him.

To his great credit, Rev. Clyborne did not shy away from the awkward implications. In fact, he doubled down, saying, ”If you have never been offended by Jesus, the chances are pretty good that you either don’t know him very well or you don’t know yourself very well. Because Jesus is the one who tells the people the truth so clearly that they would do almost anything to silence him, even to the point of trying to kill him. And if you do not believe that about Jesus, that probably means that you have not recognized Jesus in some of the people who you find offensive.”

I’m Presbyterian with a deep Quaker practice, so I didn’t act on my desire to stand or clap or Amen—but that’s pretty bold preaching right there. I appreciate people who emphasize equally that God loves us AND that God is holding us to some pretty uncomfortable love-your-neighbor standards.

The Jesus story doesn’t get easier. Eventually, as Rev. Clyborne points out, “they did kill him. Not because he told them something wrong, but because he told them the truth. The truth often makes us angry before it makes us free.”

Jesus loves us enough to tell us, to be our, Truth.

So I’ve been thinking about truth, I’ve been looking for the bold truth-tellers in my life. And I’ve been recalling my 20 years living and worshiping with Quakers.

Quakers helped to settle many of the original colonies and were influential for a brief period in the early years of our nation. They hold several testimonies that inform the group’s interface in the world: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality. These undergird their early abolitionism (the first protest against slavery in America was made by Pennsylvania Quakers in 1688), involvement in suffrage (women have always had equal status) and staunch advocacy of peaceful, nonviolent resolution of conflicts.

What brought Quakers to mind recently was a passage I remembered reading years ago in my 1991 edition of Howard Brinton’s lovely, Friends for 300 Years. It is in his discussion of Simplicity.

“One by-product of truth-telling was the initiation of the one-price system in business. It was the custom in the seventeenth century for merchants to ask more than they expected to receive and for the customer to offer less than he expected to give. By a process of bargaining a price was agreed on. The Quaker stated at the outset the price which he was prepared to accept. As a result Quaker businesses flourished. A child could be sent to make a purchase from a Quaker merchant. (p. 140)”

That’s an example of simplicity, surely, but also integrity, equality, community and peace. It's a matter of trust. We can optimize our industries and our organizations for trust.

Or we can spam, initiate antagonistic ‘please listen as our options have changed’ phone menus, offer FAQs instead of customer support, ensure that front-line voices have no authority to remedy complaints. This is the trade off of your lowest-cost bargain.

Here’s an interesting post by Seth Godin, whom I admire for his advocacy of generosity in marketing and business. He writes:

“Why are some industries so irrational (when seen from the point of view of the customer)? So many things about college, funerals, real estate, hotels, weddings and the contractor trade are frustrating and opaque to customers. It almost seems as though they’re organized with a long-term, industry-wide focus away from customer satisfaction.”

His compelling conclusion? The customer is often a first-timer, in need of indoctrination. And the customer has far less power, because they won’t be back again any time soon.

I’m fascinated by his suggestion that, with the rise of internet and the connection economy, these industries are vulnerable to disruption—I can see a shift back to Quaker merchant simplicity. I’m thinking of how CarMax changed the pain of used-car shopping for me by providing trustworthy, fair, fixed-price offerings.

But for now, that is not how real estate works.

So I went looking for some truth-tellers. My cousin Lynne, herself an accomplished broker/realtor, talked me off the ledge. She listened to my lack of sleep and abundance of anxiety ramblings and said, “Julia, you’re not going to like this answer, but you need to get a seller’s agent.” (True also that many of you advised the same.)

I chewed on it, ran numbers, worried about my brothers, stewed a little longer and then consulted the realtor Mark and I worked with to find our wonderful home. She referred me to a colleague whom she thought a better fit for selling my parents’ house—thank you, Heidi, for that generous bit of truth-telling—and I gratefully signed paperwork with him. My brothers were supportive. My dog ceased his anxious shadowing. Mark and I left for our church’s couples’ retreat.

And y’all, the most amazing thing happened.

Sunday night I received an email from a friend of my father who was interested in the house. Daddy, who did not suffer fools, loved her and treated us all to dinner a few years ago. We had a pleasant conversation Sunday night. She told me how much she’d enjoyed visiting Daddy at his house; I asked her price range; I told her the price I thought fair; I cleared it with my agent to show the house this one last time before he took over. She and her husband met me at the house Monday morning; they loved it; we had an agreement within an hour. My gracious agent congratulated me. Maybe I shed a few tears.

I know it doesn’t always happen that way.

But I can’t help but notice a frustratingly familiar pattern: I work as hard as I can, do well to a certain point, arrive at a brick wall, despair, look for the truth-tellers, resist, surrender, and shake my head in awe at God’s grace.

I felt, as Quakers say, held in the Light. I’m holding you in the Light, too.