A Tempest in a Teacup

My Year in Review (2018)

When your expectation had a different meaning for life.

Listen

this morning i woke up with a hangover
and a tattoo bandage
and another old song i can’t remember
and it’s a tempest in a teacup
a two drink minimum
it’s altogether meaningless to me

’cause something deep down in my heart
something that made me who i was invisible
oh, i guess it just didn’t pan out
guess it’s just another heart i broke
a dream i woke up

so now it’s back to the whiteboard
back to the namesake
it’s an honest to god ironic rebirth
but it’s a tempest in a teacup
a verdict with no judge
it’s nothing and it’s everything to me

’cause something deep down in my heart
something that made me who i was
invisible
oh, i guess it just didn’t pan out
guess it’s just another heart i broke
a dream i woke up

Derek Webb “Tempest in a Teacup” Fingers Crossed (2017)

What do you feel as the song fades quietly into silence?

Upon my first listen (of at least a hundred now and counting) the imagery of a deconstruction of meaning was quite apparent in the words. One reviewer of Webb’s latest album writes of this song,

“A Tempest in a Teacup” is a searing portrait of deconstruction, of a man with nothing left.”

The song definitely opens in a place of disorientation. This is deconstruction. Or at least, it’s the part of deconstruction that offers the sense of in-between-ness also known as liminal space.

Have you ever felt like something was broken, but the solution wasn’t in view?

And what if your entire identity is wrapped up into that which you now see as meaningless? Or broken?

Back to the whiteboard.

Throughout my years in design and as a pastor, I’ve almost always “gone to the whiteboard” when I’ve felt stuck. But the trick with the whiteboard — is to use it in a safe environment. You don’t go to the whiteboard if you can’t be vulnerable. Nor do you go to the whiteboard when you already have the solution in mind — -you go to the whiteboard to work out stuff with a blank slate. You go to the whiteboard when you want to try something — knowing you can erase and start again. You go to the whiteboard when you have nothing left. You go to the whiteboard out of desperation. But you also go to the whiteboard with renewed hope.

In what ways have you returned to the white board lately?

• Is it a hopeful place — the space of newness to create?
• Is it a mournful place — resenting what has brought you back to a place you didn’t expect to be?

Go to the whiteboard and write

Share on the board one word (or phrase) that might be a new starting point for you.

If you were rebuilding, what would the beginning be?

The phrase ‘tempest in a teapot” is an idiom that refers to ‘a small or unimportant event that is over-reacted to, as if it were of considerably more consequence.’ Maybe, in the end, our desperate need for a grand meaning may be the very thing we can let go of. Life is precious. Let us live it with great love — is that meaning enough?

The next several articles will include the content from the two evenings we prepared/encountered over two Sundays as a community. But you can download the full PDF.