Sermon for August 27, 2014

Laws for Living: #7 Peace With Yourself

When the crowds heard him, they were astounded at his teaching. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40

At heart, I am a nice guy. And I can be sensitive, too. Sometimes I care too much what other people think. Sure, I have my moments of when I am unpleasant, but most of the time I like to relax, and laugh, and enjoy my time with others. I want people to feel at ease around me. I want to live the kind of life that the Dalai Lama speaks about. He says, “We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets.” How many of us can say we live like that – a life of peace with ourselves, a life with no regrets?

Of course, I can’t be the nice guy all the time. Then there are the times I just have to stand my ground on an issue. An ethical line has been crossed. A decision needs to be made and the buck has stopped with me. People look to me to make a tough leadership decision. No matter what, someone will be unhappy. Someone may feel hurt. And someone may think less of me. So much for getting to be the nice guy all the time. I can feel very ill at ease in these situations, because my values tell me to be kind, but others may perceive my actions as mean-spirited or inflexible.

Maybe you’ve let your anticipation of how a critic will speak about you keep you from fulfilling your dreams. Perhaps you’ve been quiet or inactive on important issues because you’ve cared too much about what other people think of you. Have you ever sacrificed your sense of inner authority to another person’s opinion of you?

Sometimes we can have a hard time owning our inner authority. We can feel intimidated by approaching critical people, especially those we see as powerful. Our tendency is to try to get someone else to do the difficult work of confronting those we perceive as controlling. For example, I feel angry with Janelle and I see her as controlling, so I share my anger not with Janelle but with my buddy Hal. Hopefully, Hal will share my anger with Janelle without mentioning my name so Janelle won’t be angry back at me. It’s a sure recipe for chaotic and destructive interpersonal relationships.

So here is what I propose for making peace with myself. It’s not original with me – the first time I came across this idea was in The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz. Here’s the proposal:

It’s none of my business what other people think of me

The truth is, most people don’t spend much time thinking about me at all. The same is true for you. Sorry. Few people have time in their schedules to think more than a brief second about us. When I do have time to get my thoughts straight, I’m too busy mulling over my own shortcomings to worry about yours. In the words of essayist David Foster Wallace, “You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.”   

It’s not none of my business what others think of me.

However, it is entirely my business what I think of me and how I nurture my sense of self-identity while staying connected in relationships. There is a fancy word that therapists and coaches use for this attitude. It’s called “self-differentiation.”

• Self-differentiation means being willing to say clearly who I am and who I want to be while others are trying to tell me who I am and who I should be.
• Self-differentiation means understanding that I can be distinct from others, without being distant from others.
• Self-differentiation means becoming responsible for my own life while being committed to growing closer to those I love.

When we can stop seeking validation from external sources and opinions, when we can stop living for others and begin living into our most authentic selves, then we can experience liberation from self-absorbing worry about what others think about us.

When I recognize my authority, I can say three very important statements: 

I know who I am,
I am who I am, and
I am good enough.

I get a sense of this in Matthew’s telling of Jesus and the greatest commandment. We read an episode about yet another attack on Jesus character and reputation by teachers and leaders of the established religion. I think the interrogation is about more than the religious authorities trying to catch Jesus in a theological mistake. Jesus is so threatening to the religious order, the questions are intended to pull him back into line.  It’s a way of saying, “Jesus, if you just change your ways and become like us again, you will have respectability and acceptance.” The Pharisee’s questions are about assimilation. Assimilation is one way to turn away criticism and dissent. Assimilation says, “Give up your self-identity and become like us, and we will all get along. Failure to do so will mean exclusion, and perhaps elimination.” We can see a similar pattern of assimilation and exclusion in immigration debates in America, by the way. We talk about the dream of an America that promotes a process of identity formation among diverse citizens who deliberate freely together. A free-thinking, diverse citizenry can feel so menacing to the majority, we create systems that domesticate or internally colonize the identities of those who don’t fit in. The majority says, “You must walk, talk, think, and act like us if you want to be like us.” Nations do it. Religions do it. Neighbors do it. Churches do it. The person or group in power demands that others sacrifice self-identity and self-reflection to keep a vague and tenuous peace.

Jesus doesn’t cave into the trap of compromising himself in order to help others feel at peace with him. For him it’s not about assimilation but self-differentiation. Jesus knows who he is. He senses where he begins and ends and he is at peace with himself. Because he is at peace, Jesus can confront the systems and empires he calls his followers to resist. Jesus is not influenced by the pain or pleasure associated with reputation. He is influenced by love. Love for God, love for neighbor, and love for self.

You and I will find it very difficult to fulfill God’s aims in the world when we shape our lives around a compulsive concern about respectability or winning the approval of critics. Church, this is not our calling and not our hope. We claim a different authority. We claim the authority of love.

Instead of assimilation, I want to be self differentiated.  It has to do with being a “self” or an “I” in the face of pressure by others or by systems to blend into, the “we.” To be differentiated is to know and act on one’s own mind, especially when one’s position is different from the group’s. My inner authority tells me that I am a loving person who is trying to live out the greatest commandments: love God, love others, love myself. I don't need the approval of others or the disapproval of others. Validation begins from inside me, not from others on the outside.

I love the self-differentiating imagery in Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Journey.”

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save

the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver reminds me to listen to my own voice and not the voices of everyone else around me telling me who to be and what to do and how to fix myself.

This is the most compassionate act you can do for anyone: to stand by the truth of your own life and live it as passionately and as fully as you are able.

This is the point where my New Englandy, puritan congregational roots kick in. My inner Calvinist says, “Isn’t what you are saying idolatry? Aren’t you putting self-love above love for God? How are vanity and self-absorption going to help anything?” I think sometimes we get scared about self-love and self-esteem talk because it can sound pathological. If we love ourselves, we will turn into irrepressible narcissists. There’s a difference between self esteem and narcissism. Self-esteem represents an attitude built on accomplishments we've mastered, values we've adhered to, and care we've shown toward others. Narcissism is often based on a fear of failure or weakness. It’s an unhealthy drive to be seen as the best, and a deep-seated insecurity and underlying feeling of inadequacy. Narcissism has to do with what others think of you. Healthy self-love has to do with what you think of you.

What I’m talking about is making peace with yourself by nurturing a sense of self-identity while staying connected in relationships. Here is an exercise I am working with. I was inspired by an article I read on the Website Tiny Buddha.

• Look in the mirror and say “I love you.”
• Immediately, the judgmental thoughts might begin. “But I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m stupid. I’m afraid.”
• Let those thoughts come and go. Don’t judge. Just notice.
• Look again in the mirror and say “I love you.”
• The judgmental thoughts may come again. “But you don’t understand, I did something terrible. People are angry at me. I’ve made mistakes. I’m unlovable”
• Look in the mirror and say “I love you.”
• Here come those thoughts again. “No really, listen, I’m damaged and I’m damaging.”
• Look in the mirror and say, “Yes. And I love you.”

Keep at it. Practice until compassionate love for yourself becomes an involuntary reflex, like a breath or a heartbeat.

Believe me, it takes some time. I’m still learning. I hear perseverance is the trick. I believe that practicing how to love myself, and not the perceived image others have of me, is worth the risk and the pain.

Sources:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/compassion-matters/201206/self-esteem-versus-narcissism
Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-stop-beating-yourself-up-over-mistakes/
http://www.difficultrelationships.com/2006/03/25/bowen-differentiation/
http://blog.chron.com/thepeacepastor/2013/06/jesus-and-the-differentiation-of-self/
 

Sermon for August 19, 2014

Laws for Living: #6 Peace with the Ordinary

1 Samuel 16:14-23
Philippians 4:11-13
Tao Te Ching 8

The major difference between athletes who win Olympic medals and those who don’t is not talent. It is more mundane. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke University, coaches a basketball team of 9 to 11 year old boys. “They never want to practice,” he says. “They want to scrimmage so they can show off their three-pointers or their spectacular moves.” It is difficult to help them understand a pro basketball player’s commitment to the mundane tasks of repetition discipline and practice. We learn from other excellent athletes, performers and artists about the centrality of repetition, habit, and doing ordinary things day by day. The major difference between athletes who win Olympic medals and those who don’t is not talent; it is, rather, the ability to engage in the mundane activities of free throw after free throw, of laps in the pool hour after hour, day after day that hone the skills that give them the edge.

I’m wondering whether it’s also true of faith. Is the life of faith developed by tending to the mundane? Is it in the routine and the everyday moments of life where we find the possibilities for the greatest transformation? Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that the life of faith is more about showing off our spiritual sills, about proving ourselves to God and others, about correct belief. But, what if it’s really more about engaging in the daily routine that opens us to God’s grace? What if having strong faith is related to our ability to find grace in the grit of life?

Does it feel like a wasted day when all you do is tie the kids’ shoes, wipe a snotty nose, answer the best you can the “whys?” of inquisitive minds, referee spats, dry tears, kiss scraped knees and wounded egos? Living in partnership with someone and making a home together is not so much about falling in love and living happily ever after as it is eating together, fighting fairly, putting the toilet seat down, squeezing the toothpaste at the right end, and accepting each other at their worst. Can we live that reality with acceptance, or do we carry the fear that there might be something more exciting – less ordinary – with someone else? I know there are some rotten relationships out there. I know people are abused and neglected. I’m not talking about those relationships. I’m talking about couples for whom the romance may have faded, but who nurture a deep sense of loving commitment through the mundane minutia of daily living. Quite often, couples don’t realize what practice and attention in their relationship means until one of them is no longer here.

Commitment to the little things is what the life of faith is about. It is not about what we achieve or what we accomplish, or whether we do things better than someone else, or how much we impress God, but rather the attitude that informs our daily routine.

Throughout the New Testament we find Jesus transforming people through daily, ordinary interactions. He sits by a well when a woman comes along that engages him in conversation. He seeks a little rest, and he sees a crowd of hungry people. He sets off on a journey to do one thing and gets sidetracked by people who are disabled, disfigured or dying. We get the sense that he is living life for as long as he has it. When he meets those who are paralyzed, either in body or by circumstance, he shows them another way. Jesus is someone to follow, not just because he did great things, but also because he did small things in great ways.

We get a sense of this in today’s first reading from 1 Samuel. We overhear a conversation in the court of King Saul, a troubled and paranoid ruler. He hears about someone who can play music that will bring peace to his spirit -- a keeper of sheep and virtuoso with the harp. David gets called to court. I don’t get the sense that David had royal aspirations. Becoming King was not on his bucket list. David did not lie or manipulate people to achieve his political ambitions. As far as I can tell, he simply practiced some rather ordinary tasks for his day: feeding sheep, protecting his herd from enemies, and plucking music in the fields where no one was even around to hear him. The story is not about his talent but about his dedication to things he does naturally.  David develops the skills to be Israel’s greatest king in the fields, doing small things in great ways.

What might our lives look like if we approached the mundane tasks of the day as opportunities to develop faith, and stretch our imaginations, and engage us as people of integrity? What might happen if we were to make peace with the ordinary?

Some of you know the story of Brother Lawrence. He was named Nicholas Herman by his parents, living in the region of Lorraine in eastern France. He received a revelation from God at the age of 18. In the deep of winter, Herman looked at a barren tree, stripped of leaves and fruit, waiting silently and patiently for the sure hope of summer abundance. For the first time, Herman understood the extravagance of God's love. Like a tree in winter, he himself was seemingly dead, but God had life waiting for him. At that moment, he said, that leafless tree captured an image of the love for God that never after ceased to influence him. He eventually entered a monastery in Paris as a lay brother, not having the education necessary to become a priest. He took the religious name Lawrence of the Resurrection. He spent almost all of the rest of his life within the walls of the priory, working in the kitchen for most of his life, and as a repairer of sandals in his later years. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, his somewhat lowly position, his character attracted many to him. He was known for his profound peace and many came to seek spiritual guidance from him. People collected his wisdom and saying, and it became a spiritual classic entitled The Practice of the Presence of God.

For Brother Lawrence, "common business," no matter how mundane or routine, was the medium of God's love. The issue was not the sacredness or worldly status of the task but the motivation behind it. He said,

“We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of [God], and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before [God], who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God."

Do you want to make peace with the ordinary? Then learn to draw water from the kitchen sink with a sense of awe for what water means to our lives, giving thanks for the privilege of having clean, drinkable water at your finger tips. Tend to your work, your study, your worship, your family, your community, doing small things in great ways.

That’s step one. Step two of making peace with the ordinary takes us deeper. Because life is not just about practicing the presence of God in the mundane tasks. Life is also about dealing with pain and distraction. Pain is quite commonplace, really. Pain is part of that ordinary landscape of what it means to be human. I appreciate how Marie Howe describes it in her poem “What the Living Do”. She writes:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Don’t you just know that feeling, when sink has been clogged for a week and you just don’t have time to call the plumber? Or the toilets back up on overflow onto your new carpets? Or just when you thought you caught up financially, something knocks you right back down?  Have you ever thought, “Wouldn’t life be so much better if things just worked, if people listened, if I could get through the day without something unexpected or uncalled-for getting in the way?” But no, life happens. And pain happens, especially in little ways. We drop our groceries in the parking lot. Our coffee spills down our wrist and stains the shirt sleeve we just had laundered yesterday.

We tend to think ordinary means interruptions like these don’t happen. But actually, this IS the ordinary. This is what the living do. It’s quite normal for things to fall apart and not quite work. This is what the living do. It’s a built-in element of life itself. It’s part of the package of being alive. The imperfections of the day are the very things that make us human.

To find God in that which is imperfect is not something that comes easily to some of us. In Japan, there is an entire worldview that appreciates that which is imperfect, unfinished, and ordinary. It’s called wabi-sabi. Wabi comes from a root word referring to harmony, tranquility, and balance. Wabi has come to mean simple, un-materialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature. It reminds me of the words of the Tao that I printed in the bulletin. Lao Tzu talks about someone who is content to be simply one’s self without need to compare or compete -- someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else. Such a person would be described as wabi.

Sabi by itself means "the bloom of time." It indicates tarnish and rust. Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly, mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn tree, an old car left in a field to rust as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, an abandoned barn as it collapses in on itself. There's an aching poetry in things that carry this patina.

So now we have wabi, which is humble and simple, and sabi, which is rusty and weathered. Together, wabi-sabi has to do with taking pleasure in what might first appear to be mistakes and imperfections.

What might it mean to cherish the ordinariness of the life you’ve been given – the life that is not built to last, the life that demonstrates a weathered elegance, the life that remains tranquil when it falls apart? What would it mean to love life filled with clogged sinks and spilled coffee – to know that, as aggravating as it is, it is all well and good? It’s all worth it, because it means we are here. We are alive. And God is with is.

So, praise the ordinary.

Praise the tedium of an ordinary day;
    Getting up in the morning,
    Spreading butter on bread,
    Dishes to wash and laundry to fold,
    Bickering children with beautiful, faces that need a wash cloth.
Praise the busyness of jobs;
    Meetings and emails,
    Papers to write,
    Sticky notes to stick and desks to dust.
Praise the familiarity of friends,
    the faithfulness of pets,
    the tedious requests of people who want something from you.
Praise the ordinary at Christ Congregational church;
    The usual faces and the habitual greetings,
    Good moods and bad,
    Grumbling about this or admiring that,
    Yielding to the familiar rhythms of worship.
Praise, praise the monotony of an ordinary day.

It is what the living do.

Sources:
Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again, 71-78.
http://newenglandchurch.org/sermons/020310gm.htm
http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/lawrence
http://thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com/2010/11/poetry-friday-ordinary.html

Sermon for August 3, 3014

Laws for Living: #5 Peace with Happiness
No one is in charge of your happiness, except you

I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with God’s praise.
I live and breathe God; if things aren’t going well, hear this and be happy:
Join me in spreading the news; together let’s get the word out.
God met me more than halfway, God freed me from my anxious fears.
Look at God and give warmest smile. Never hide your feelings.
When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot.
God’s angel sets up a circle of protection around us while we pray.
Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to God.
Worship God if you want the best; worship opens doors to all God’s goodness.
Is anyone crying for help? God is listening, ready to rescue you.
If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there;
if you’re kicked in the gut, God will help you catch your breath.
Disciples so often get into trouble; still, God is there every time.
God is your bodyguard, shielding every bone; not even a finger gets broken.
Psalm 34:1-9; 17-20

I read once that the average child laughs 400 times a day while the average adult laughs only 7 times a day. It turns out, this is only half correct. If a child was awake 12 hours per day would, that child would be laughing at least once every 1-2 minutes from sunrise till sunset. But for adults, the number may be closer to the truth. I notice a lot of adults will purposely hold back smiles and laughter during certain hilarious situations out of fear of seeming "childish.”  Or they will be too afraid to ask questions that are on their mind because they worry that asking lots of questions the way that a child does might make them feel less intelligent. In other words, we adults are good at putting on a mask – a persona – presenting an image to others of how we want to be perceived.

I’ve also noticed that sometimes, we fool ourselves into thinking the mask we wear is really who we are. Some people trick themselves into thinking we were created to be serious, solemn, and somber people. We can hide our divine light. What might happen if we trained ourselves to see beyond our cracks to the shimmering beauty that lies beneath? Might we let ourselves be content? Might we make peace with happiness?

Imagine yourself at costume party.  Everyone at the party is role playing the character they dressed up as. Except instead of dressing in a set of clothes, everyone’s costume is his or her wearing their personality. The guests come to the party wearing all their beliefs about what they are, who should be, who they shouldn’t be, what should do, and they shouldn’t do. You wear one, too. Your personality mask is a set of agreements about yourself.

Sometimes, we play the same personality role at the party of life keeps for years . . . sometimes a whole life time. Sometimes we completely throw ourselves into the role of our costumed personality. On one level, we seriously believe everything we’ve told ourselves about who we are and how we present ourselves to others. On another level,  another part of their consciousness knows it is all just made up.

What I want to know is this: Does this costume party make you happy? After all the striving to look a certain way, after all the efforts to act a certain way, after all the attempts to direct others into perceiving you a certain way . . . all things considered, are you satisfied? Are you content? Are you happy? If not, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Sometimes, in a moment of enlightenment, we look at ourselves and others and we are able to see beyond the masquerade. We sense the image of God behind the personality mask. We realize that this person is a glory-producing likeness of the Divine who us pretending to be someone else. Sometimes, in a moment of enlightenment, we flirt with happiness. And it feels good.

Social Science literature points to three factors that contribute to greater happiness:
Circumstances, personality, and intentional change. Let’s think about these for a moment.

1. Circumstances. The conditions of your life contribute to your happiness, but much less than you might think. Want to guess how much? Only around 10 – 12% total. That’s right: the things most people chase in search of happiness – money, experiences, relationships, and material stuff – all that stuff together makes up only around a tenth of our happiness level. Changing your circumstances tends to make only a short-term difference to your happiness. We might want to remind ourselves of this next time we think a sports car or a pair of awesome new boots will change life for the better.

2. Personality. Experts say about half of your happiness level is related to genes and personality. According to some research, we can blame human evolution for our desire to focus more strongly on the bad over the good. Throughout our evolutionary history, organisms that were aware of bad things were more likely to survive threats. Humans have also evolved the capacity to examine why these threats happen to us. We want to learn what happened so we can avoid going there again.

Beyond biology, we may get something out of holding on to negativity.

• žDo you have some sort of stake in holding on to criticisms and misconceptions?
• žDo you ever find yourself dwelling on and obsessing about the ways you feel you’ve been wronged
• Do you ever let disapproval from others keep you up at night, fantasizing about how you will put the critics down and triumph over their meanness?
• žHave you ever told sad stories from the past as a way to avoid judgment or win approval?
• Have you ever believed that everything would be better if the world or other people would change?
• Sometimes, ways we get attached to the very condition we say we don't want. We can have a hard time letting go.

3. Intentional Change.  Intentional factors make a sizable contribution to our happiness – up to 40%. These are all factors that we can change – the thinking and actions that we have control over.

We can change behaviors by doing things like exercising regularly or engaging in a productive hobby.

We can change our thinking. For instance, in our worship service today, we took time to count our blessing – to make gratitude a mindful act. It’s an act of intention. We can make an effort to recognize and appreciate the good that we have, celebrating each small success, being thankful for health, and having gratitude for the support of others. If you want an exercise to help you out here, take a cue from marriage therapist John Gottman. He says there is proven ratio needed to increase the happiness in relationships:

5:1

Positive and good interactions must outnumber the negative and bad ones by at least five to one. In other words, bad events are five times more powerful than good events. Negative events are so much more powerful than good ones, we must ensure that the good outnumber the bad in order to prevail.

We can also change our will or volition. We can do things like striving for a new goal or working on a skill. If you are stuck on this one, try doing some community service. Go out and surprise yourself with how awesome and amazing you are. Do a bike ride for charity. Sign up for a 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk. Raise money for an important cause close to your heart. Learn to play the saxophone. Take a tap dancing class. Volunteer at Shepherd’s Table. Deliver meals on wheels. Write that novel you've always dreamed of writing. Be someone who inspires happiness in others.

Bottom line: Theoretically, it is possible to be happy no matter what the external circumstance. It is useful to think of the ability to control your emotional responses to events as a muscle; just as your biceps become stronger only when you exercise them using the appropriate weights, your ability to control your emotional response to events gains strength when you take on challenges that correspond to your current ability. If you are someone who lets relatively minor events, like an encounter with a rude waitress, spoil your mood, how can you expect to maintain your happiness when a more extreme event, like a week-long visit from a unpleasant relative, unfolds? Change your thoughts if you wish to change your circumstances. Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. Since you alone are responsible for your happiness, then it’s within your power to be happy. We can all be happier. We can do it by focusing more on intentional factors and paying less attention to the other stuff.

In our Christian tradition, there is another factor at play when it comes to making peace with happiness. What I am about to say may seem to contradict everything else I’ve aid up to this point. So hear me out. It’s called the surrender mindset. Taking personal responsibility for your happiness involves adopting a surrender mindset, which refers to the willingness to fully and unquestioningly accept the outcomes you are dealt in life.

Surrendering isn't the same as capitulating, by the way. In other words, a person with a surrender mindset is not a weak, rudderless individual who has "checked out" from this world. A person with the surrender mindset may dream of breaking the world record in the 100-meter dash, but if she were to discover a physical condition that prevents her from achieving this dream, she will be able to re-imagine her dream and move on to other goals without hesitation. When many of us moan when our favored outcomes don't unfold, the person with a surrender mindset is able to move on.

One effective way to develop the mindset involves faith in a larger intelligence or force. Some research says that those who believe in a good force larger than oneself will find it easier to surrender. Here is the contradiction. I just told you that nothing external to you can make you happy. Now I am telling you that there is something external that can influence your happiness. The reason for this is straightforward: if you believe that the Universe is shaped by a force more powerful than you, and that this force has your best interests at heart, then you will find it much easier to make peace with the circumstances you are given. Instead of trying to make yourself happy by purchasing a new gadget or looking for other people’s approval, the surrender mindset helps us learn to be content with any situation. It helps us realize that we may not be able to change what happens around us, but we can always change how we relate to those events. Or, if you are convinced God is always dealing you a bad hand, you are more likely to ruminate about the past than to move forward into a new future.

The author of Psalm 34 has this surrender mindset.  Listen again to the words the author uses to describe a relationship with a God who has our good in mind:

I bless God, I live and breathe God; God freed me from my anxious fears.
Look at God and give warmest smile. Never hide your feelings.
When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot.
Worship God if you want the best. God is listening, ready to rescue you.
God is there every time.

Ultimately then, surrendering has to do with trust. Trusting that God is taking care of you is crucial for being happy. If we want to take personal responsibility for our own happiness, then we do something that seems illogical: we trust in the Good. We take responsibility for our own happiness by surrendering our happiness. Strange, huh?  When we figure this one out, we go enter into new types of relationships based on honesty, responsibility, courage, and wisdom.

We can be happy. In that spirit, I offer these affirmations:

Beginning with the early dawn, I will radiate my cheer to everyone I meet today. I will be the mental sunshine for all who cross my path this day.

I form new habits of thinking by seeing the good everywhere, and by beholding all things as the perfect idea of God made manifest.

I will make up my mind to be happy within myself right now, where I am today.

Sources:
http://www.getorganizedwizard.com/blog/2013/03/theres-only-one-way-to-be-happier-and-this-is-it/#ixzz393DP9aGx
http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/how-to-build-a-happier-brain/280752/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200403/marriage-math
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sapient-nature/201112/taking-personal-responsibility-your-happiness
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/enlightenment.htm

Sermon for July 20, 2014

Laws for Living: #4 Peace with Uncertainty

You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm. I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living. Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man when he cries for help in his distress. Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor? Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me. Job 30:21-27

It’s one of the oldest stories in existence. His children are dead. His wealth, obliterated. His wife walked out on him. Now he is sick, covered with skin blisters and rashes. His friends don’t really know how to console him. God doesn’t answer his prayers. He suffers. He complains. Confusion and doubt consume him. It just doesn’t make sense. He is a good man, a righteous man. His name is Job, and he did not do anything to deserve such suffering.

Centuries upon centuries later, we still ask the same questions. If God is good and all-powerful, why is there evil? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why doesn’t God stop wars and genocides? Why does God allow my loved ones to suffer? If God is near, why doesn’t God answer my prayers? In the play J.B. by Archibald McLeish, Job comes to this conclusion: “If god is god, he is not good. If god is good, he is not god.”

We learned from childhood that when we do wrong we get punished. Disobey, and you get in trouble. Do something good, you’ll get a reward. Is that what’s happening here? Is God punishing humanity for sin? I doubt it. Sometimes, well-meaning people will offer fast and loose Scripture quotes to give you an explanation. They tell us: If we obey God, and live moral and wholesome lives, we will be healthy and wealthy. If we suffer, God must want to teach us something. Suffering is the only way God can get our attention. It all sounds so true. But then we begin to wonder, “If this is true, why is it we feel worse instead of better?”

As we get older, we often realize that there is no real correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of pain we experience. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true. We do the right thing and still get knocked down. We do the best we are capable of doing, and just as we are reaching out to receive our reward we are hit upside the head and sent spinning. This is the suffering that bewilders and outrages us. This is the kind of suffering that bewilders and outrages Job. Job does everything right, but everything goes so wrong. Job outright rejects the kind of well-meaning advice that provides glib explanations for every painful condition. Job suffers. And Job doubts God.

Is that OK? Is it alright to have doubts? After all, some studies show that rejecting one’s previously held beliefs can lead to shame and guilt. Paul’s Letter to the Romans in our New Testament clearly states, “... those who doubts are condemned.” Feelings of guilt and shame can erode a person's sense of self-worth As the famous Protestant theologian Karl Barth wrote, “No one should flirt with his unbelief or with his doubt. The theologian should only be sincerely ashamed of it.” Thank you Dr. Barth! Now I not only have doubts. I ashamed, too.

Barth and Paul do not get the last word. There are wise people who tell us it’s OK to doubt. Consider an ancient Zen saying: “Great Doubt: great awakening. Little Doubt: little awakening. No Doubt: no awakening.”

Some people come from religious traditions where there is a system of dogma, canon law, or a corpus of right beliefs to guide the believer in the spiritual journey. Some traditions rely on creeds and catechisms to be the most faithful interpreters of Scripture. In the UCC, we take a different approach. And sometimes our approach gives people heartburn. Our covenantal tradition means there is no centralized authority or hierarchy to impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the historic faith. The UCC therefore accepts the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies of faith, but not tests of the faith. Non-creedal does not mean anything goes. It means that we are a Protestant Christian church which does not require members to recite the Apostle’s Creed, or any other statement of faith in order to be members of the church.

It also means that we arrive at greater truths through a process of questioning, sharing, journeying, and yes, even doubting together. In some ways, you could say that the UCC preserves the individual’s freedom of doubt. For those who want to know the rules and follow them to the letter, you can see how this can be frustrating.

Remember Renee Descartes, the “I think therefore I am” guy? We use that phrase to sum up his rationalistic philosophy. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist. There is actually an expanded version of his philosophy that does not get repeated much: Dubito ergo cogito. Cogito ergo sum. "Since I doubt, I think; since I think I exist." Descartes believed that doubt was essential for learning the truth. More specifically, Descartes believed that a person can grasp the truth only by doubting and calling into question everything one knows. He said, “I am a thinking (conscious) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many.”

Doubt has now become a modern phenomenon. We now live in an age where we have the luxury of being able to question matters of faith. In some ways, we are all skeptics, believer and unbeliever alike. The general view of our day is that there is no longer one true faith evident in all times and all places. Every religion is one among many. The clear lines of orthodoxy are made crooked by our experience. God is no longer thought to be the center of the cosmos. In our day, the individual and the material world have become the centers of meaning-making. I would say that if we allow ourselves to think about it for a while, most modern Westerners feel adrift and cast into a cold, anonymous, dark and infinitely large universe that is ultimately unknowable and un-mappable.

That puts us in a place where we have choices to make. Some religious traditions claim that the modern way of thinking requires people of faith to bring back and live out medieval moral codes. They will call it getting back to the spirit of the New Testament Church, but what they really want is an enchanted, spiritual worldview charged with presences like the Spirit, or angels and devils -- unnatural presences who come upon and enter into an open, vulnerable individual. In the medieval mindset, to be human meant to be open to an outside force, whether good or evil, open to blessing or curse, open to possession or grace. Some religious traditions seek to preserve that way of being. Others religious traditions say the universe is not really like that. The world doesn’t work that way. There is no longer a distinction between sacred and profane, or between sanctified and secular. Like it or not, we have to deal with our doubts as those who live our lives individually, yet in community, before the face of God. In the words of the novelist Flannery O’Connor,

“There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would ultimately be possible or not.”

C.S. Lewis, a great Christian writer and theologian, believed that doubts were good part of our spiritual development because they make us examine our faith. He wrote,

“If ours is an examined faith we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, then we were believing that which was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown stronger . . .”

This from a man who started his faith journey as an atheist. When Lewis gave himself permission to explore of his doubts, after years of searching and struggling, he became one of the most powerful and insightful writers about Christianity.

Some say that doubt is part of our psychological development. A psychologist named James Fowler has studied faith development in Christians. Fowler thinks that when people hit their 30s and 40s, they enter a time of anxiety and struggle as they face difficult questions about who they are and what they believe. Perhaps for the first time, a person takes responsibility for her beliefs and feelings. Where once a person accepted what religious authorities said without any questions, she now re-examines what she’s been told. Nothing feels certain anymore. Disillusionment reigns. This stage is not a comfortable place to be in. Most people, after entering this stage, sense that the world is far more complex than they previously thought.

I can speak from experience and say that when I am in those times of doubt, when I am journeying in those dark nights of the soul, when it seems that God has moved or that the box I was trying to trap God in was exploding, these are the times I grow the most.

Doubt is an important quality to have if you are a spiritual seeker. Perhaps we need to alter Descartes’ formula a little bit. He said, “I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am.”  Maybe it should go more like this: “We are, therefore we think; we think, therefore we doubt.” To be human is to think. To think is to doubt, otherwise we’re just parroting what we've been told, and that's not thought at all.

Doubt can motivate us to study and learn. Doubt can help us question counterfeit beliefs that have crept into our faith. Doubt can humble our arrogance. Doubt can give us patience and compassion with other doubters. Doubt can remind us of how much truth matters. Authentic faith must be as open to questions as it is receptive of answers.

If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can we go to cry?
If this is not a place where our questions can be asked, where can we go to seek?
If this is not a place where our heart cries can be heard, where shall we go to find comfort?

May this church be such a place for all of us—a place where our questions, and even our doubts, are always welcome.

Sermon for July 13, 2014

Laws for Living: #3 Peace with Others

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:1-6)

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~e.e. cummings

Jake’s emotional outburst was legendary. Infamous. Seven years after that fateful meeting when Jake’s temper spewed the hot ash of anger, seven years after Jake had left the church, seven years after the congregation’s minister had also resigned and moved far away, members of the church still talked about Jake’s roaring, vulcanian tantrum.

The members of this established, oldline church tiptoed around conflict in the weeks leading up to Jake’s explosion. The congregational temperature rose due to a number of issues including financial pressure and shrinking membership, the grief of impermanence and no place to vent worry. Blame increased. Some people faulted the long-tenured pastor, whom several members thought had stayed past his usefulness. While some devotees united around the minister, another group called for his retirement. The factions kept their anxiety just under the boiling point until Jake erupted on that critical meeting night. After Jake’s emotional explosion, the church could no longer manage the heat of conflict.

Seven years later, I met Jake at a denominational event. He was confident and approachable. We hit it off over dinner. Finding an opening to hear his version of the story, I asked him, cautiously, what happened at that meeting. With evaporating poise, gazing down at the floor, hands folded in front of him, he said,   “That was a terrible night. There’s no doubt about it. I lost my temper. I know everyone blames me for what went wrong at the church. But do you know what I wish? I wish just one person would have called to see if everything was alright.  No one ever talked me after that. No one ever reached out to see if I was OK. If they had, I would have told them about how I came home from work that night, right before leaving for the church meeting, and my wife told me she wanted a divorce. I was so upset. So angry and confused. I went to church that night even though my world had turned upside down. Looking back, I shouldn’t have gone to the meeting. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I’m sorry. But still, I wish someone had bothered to ask.”

When people act badly, I try to remember Jake’s story. We don’t often know what happened during someone’s day before we see them. One person could be having a lovely day while another may be feeling terrible. When someone snaps at me, I tend to take it personally. I may choose to be offended. I can also choose to marginalize or disparage the person by whom I fee attacked. I can criticize. I can gossip. I can fault. I can judge. Or, I can choose another reaction. I can choose not to take it personally.

I can choose to follow the words of Christ from the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge. Take the log out of your own eye before you examine the speck in someone else’s.” It sounds straight forward to me.

We tend to think that Jesus is talking about the self-righteous kind of judgment – those opinions of ourselves that put us in a one-up position over another. There’s another kind of judgment I want to talk about today. It’s what happens when you look at another person and judge the other to be more competent than you. What happens when you look around and others are always smarter, faster, thinner, wealthier, happier, nicer, luckier and more talented than you?  It’s a double judgment, really.

The first judgy thing you are doing is comparing yourself to another person – haunted by the specter of self-judgment. The second piece, however, is that you are really making assumptions about the other. You are deciding for yourself that the other person must have it better than you – the other person is better than you.

Have you ever delighted in the downfall of someone whom you perceive as better than you? Have you ever been in rivalry with another person, but the other person has no idea?  Psychologists have a world to describe this phenomenon:  projection.  Projection involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people. For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might start believing that she or he does not like you. Projection is an unconscious fantasy that we are able to rid ourselves of some part of our thinking by splitting it off and putting it outside ourselves, usually into somebody else. 

In church language, we have another word for this behavior: Envy. Envy is a feeling of unhappiness at the blessing and fortune of others. It’s a projection of an idealized fantasy. In others words, instead of dealing with my own unhappiness, I make up a story about how great the life of another person is, convince myself to believe it, and then resent the person I made up the story about. Instead of taking responsibility for my unhappiness, I make up a reason why someone else is responsible for making me unhappy. In the words of one ancient theologian, envy is sorrow for another’s good. It’s the painful and often resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by someone else. Envy and rivalry are poison to true community. When envy takes root, we are constantly on edge, competing with each other and throwing elbows over the smallest advantage.

So, when Jesus says, “Do not judge others or you to will be judged,” the intent may be deeper than just confronting our tendency to look down on others. J.B. Phillips paraphrases Matthew 7:1 like this: "Don't criticize people, and you will not be criticized." In The Message, Eugene H. Peterson paraphrases it, "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults -- unless, of course, you want the same treatment."

The English theological and scholar John Stott prefers the word censoriousness. It means, “marked by or given to censure;” not  an objective, discerning judgment, but the harshness of one who is a fault-finder, a blamer, one who puts the worst possible interpretation on the motivations of others.

Part of the problem with envy and judgment, with projection and censoriousness, is that they are based on false perceptions. Whatever we are thinking about another person is probably not true. We don’t know what pains the other person bears. We don’t really know how another person is doing behind the veneer of success. We don’t know what that person faced before he came into a meeting and exploded unexpectedly.

And yet, many of us have a tendency to compare ourselves with others—over and over again. Demoralizing and useless as it is, we keep doing it. 

Think about it. What does your status, your value, your worth have to do with anyone else’s?  What does the size of my body have to do with anyone else’s?  How is my self worth any different if I say it should be equal to or greater than someone else’s?  Comparing myself to others does not change a thing about me in reality. I am what I am. Right now.  And that’s the reality.  Or, as one anonymous commentator said, “Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.”

What might happen if we stop mentally assessing our worth by comparing it to others?

What might happen if we can make peace with others by making peace with ourselves?

Here is your homework, if you choose to accept it. It’s called “Flip the Focus.” The next time you find yourself being judgmental, envious, or censorious, identify something positive that you have —a trait, a possession, a relationship, a value— something that you can feel good about. It has nothing to do with any other person.  We are done comparing ourselves with others, so this so there’s no need to try to ‘one up’ someone else in your mind.

For example, the next time I wish I had a big vacation house on the shore, I can flip the focus and remember: I may not have a vacation house, but I do have a loving family to share my time with.

If I find myself comparing my body to another person’s, I can flip my focus and remind myself of how well my body has served me all these years.  And I can remind myself of other positive traits—I’m a generous friend, a loving partner, a talented cook, and a funny person.

Let’s move away from devaluing ourselves and others. Choose to move away from feeling bad about yourself for not being like someone else. Flip your focus and remind yourself of all that you are instead of focusing on what you think you aren’t.

Over time, you will see a change. You will find yourself looking for the good in everyone, including yourself. Instead of always finding ways that we don’t measure up, you will find ways to celebrate the parts of you that make you unique.

It’s OK to be easy on yourself with this. We are all caught up in this problem together. But do you know what? As Christians, we are also caught up together in Jesus Christ.  We are caught up together by the Spirit, and together we can be set free.

I do not need to envy my neighbor’s success. I do not need to bring another down by judging her in my mind. I am not defined by the blessings of others. I am defined by the grace of God. I can make peace with others by refusing to measure myself by a false standard. I can resist the compulsive and relentless urge to compete with everyone under the sun (especially those who are called to do the same things that I am). I can put away malicious dreams about the downfall and failure of others by savoring the sure knowledge that God is lavish in grace and that she has promised to graciously, freely, and abundantly give to me, and to them, God’s all-consuming love.

Sources:
http://www.hopeingod.org/sermon/winning-war-against-envy-and-rivalry
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/stop-making-comparisons-start-valuing-yourself/
http://dbhamill.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/a-tale-of-two-liturgies-last-weeks-sermon/
http://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-projecting/

Sermon for June 29, 2014

Laws for Living #2: Peace with Hardship

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen

from “Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining Into the World” by Jane Hirshfield

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. James 1:2-4

We are told each moment offers a gift. James seems to say this. He writes to first century Jewish converts to Christianity – people who know a little something about trouble and hardship. James writes, “Troubles are an opportunity for great joy.” In other words, “Each moment is a gift.”

Is this true? Is hardship a gift or is it a curse? What exactly do we call the wildness that thunders and storms into our lives – the sudden illness, the loss of a loved one, the awakening that leads to a spiritual crisis, the unexpected reconfiguring of your world, the tempest of love? Events like these break in and break us open. Are these roars and rumbles gifts or curses? Are they chances to surrender ourselves or dangerous opportunities to finally experience life?

Many of you are familiar with the serenity prayer, or at least the beginning of it. It goes like this:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The second part of the prayer – perhaps the less familiar part – goes something like this:

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as God did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that God will make all things right
if I surrender to God’s Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with God
Forever in the next.

Let’s go back to the line that says “accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.” That’s quite a statement. Common sense tells us that if we can solve all our problems, eliminate all hardships, and remove all the causes of stress in our life, only then we can find peace. We tend to believe the reasons for our anxieties lie in circumstances over which we have little or no control. If we can gain the upper hand over our problems, we will have serenity. We can make peace with hardship.

For some, we have to fix life’s problems on our own because God has fallen asleep on the job. We must draw upon our human capacities. No supernatural help is coming. That’s why we struggle so hard to gain control over difficult people and impossible situations. We secretly tell ourselves that we will only be happy once we become more omnipotent. We try desperately to manipulate people and situations over which we have no control. We end up failing and we get upset because we always fall short in one way or another. What we eventually discover is the more we struggle against unmanageable circumstances, the further we are from the peace we seek.

Scriptures like the Book of James, and modern texts like the serenity prayer, put us in a tough spot. They suggest we are looking for peace in the wrong places. They say the reason for our anxiety lies not in our circumstances but in whom we are trusting. They propose we must admit we are only human and then surrender our will over to God where it belongs. They talk about accepting hardship rather than by struggling against it. Peace is the by-product of trusting God.

Our scriptures are rather insistent on this. “Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding . . .” Well, that’s all fine and good, but so what? What does it mean to trust and surrender to God when hardship is staring me down?

Poet Jane Hirshfield thinks about some of these ideas in a poem she calls “Each moment a white bull steps shining . . .” She opens the poem saying,

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Jane Hirschfield wants is to imagine a strange and frightening white bull – no ordinary creature, but one that steps forward, shining into your life. The bull is the embodiment of strength, power and sexuality. It is also dangerous and scary. You have probably never encountered such a beast before. Is it a gift or a curse? Perhaps your life was coasting along. Fulfilling. Predictable. And then, out of nowhere, in this very moment, something enters your world that you cannot fail to notice; something strange, fascinating, and overwhelming. Your comfortable, conventional circle is suddenly broken. Everything is thrown out of kilter. What do you do when you are offered a gift like that?

Can we trust that this can be a true gift and not the curse we may take it to be? Can we accept it with grace – as if it were kind of gift we would have chosen for ourselves?

Eastern Christianity offers us a tool to help answer that question. Eastern sages said that the way to find peace is to remember that there is a divine resource, deep within us. The Eastern Church calls it theosis. God’s aim for the world is for all of us to be restored to the full potential of our humanity. And our full potential is a lot bigger than we can imagine. We actually have the potential to be one with God. We were created to be one with God. We were created to be one with all creation. If we can reach full union with God, we will be able exist within God’s love. The Eastern Orthodox Saint, Basil the Great, said. “The human vocation is to fulfill one’s humanity by becoming God through grace.” United in love, we become divine. That is theosis. Ok, let’s admit that this kind of talk makes Protestants twitchy. It sounds like idolatry. So take a deep breath and hear me out. The idea of theosis is that, through daily spiritual practice, we become more and more like Christ, slowly and steadily. With patience and practice, we arrive at union with God. In union with love. We can’t help but to become love in the flesh. Thomas Merton has this experience. He wrote of his own theosis.

“In Louisville, on the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to each other, even though we were total strangers ... I have the immense joy of being human, a member of the race in which God became incarnate ... If only people could realize this!  But it cannot be explained.  There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Despite the pain, despite the hardship, no matter what comes our way, we hold one another in love. Tenderly. Gently.

What might happen if we stop looking at hardship as a barrier to serenity and begin sensing it at it as the pathway to a much deeper and more enduring kind of peace; not dependent upon circumstances beyond our control, but upon loving union with God?

If the gods brings to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Jane Hirshfield wrote another poem that speaks to our condition and can help us make peace with hardship...

FOR WHAT BINDS US

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around you, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle.

I like the image of proud flesh. It’s actually called granulation tissue. Treating proud flesh is an important and necessary part of healing a wounded horse. Horses are majestic animals but also incredibly fragile and thin-skinned. The most frustrating injury a horse can get is a cut on its lower leg where there’s very little muscle or fat between skin and bone. The skin pulls apart, and it’s virtually impossible to suture. The healing process can be deceptive. Healing appears rapid. You can almost watch fresh pink tissue forming on the horse’s leg injury. But the new tissue keeps growing, pink, ugly and lumpy, growing above the healthy tissue around it. That scar tissue is called proud flesh.

It’s a long, painful process to treat a horse with a wound on its lower leg. It requires patience and hope, courage and stamina. The horse hurts and doesn’t want you messing with its wound. The horse sees you as the source of its pain and will most certainly kick.

I get it horse. I’ve been there, kicking against the threats in life. I imagine you have been there too. We face those painful moments and ask, “Is this a gift or is this a curse? My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me? How could God let this happen to me? How dare you try to comfort me?”

The wound hurts. The hardship is real.  But with care and attention, with attentive love, that horse can heal up and run with stallions.

Maybe people are not so different: Worn, weary, wounded, and wondering if these moments of life are gifts or curses. Then, in a flash of grace, in loving union with God, we experience theosis. We make peace with hardship by becoming the presence of healing love. We become one with God and God’s creation. And they are one with us. We are changed. We are God's love. We rise. New life stirs. Yes, the indelible bruises of hardship mark us. We still bear our scars and wounds. New life doesn’t remove them. They actually have a purpose. Those scars show us where healing has happened. Don’t ignore the wounds. Touch them.

Touching my wounds is only way to know who I really am,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds.

Sources:
http://pjmiller.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/proud-flesh-a-metaphor/
http://www.mpbconline.org/sermon.php?sermon=2008-09-07
http://lowellsermons.blogspot.com/2009/08/our-praxis-gives-theoria-of-our-theosis.html
http://interruptingthesilence.com/2011/07/09/theosis-the-human-vocation/
http://interruptingthesilence.com/2011/07/14/theosis-in-the-episcopal-church/
Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again & Again (Harmony Books, 2007)

Sermon for June 15. 2014

Laws for Living: #1 Peace with the Past

If we deny happiness, resist our satisfaction,
We lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. . .
~Jack Gilbert, "A Brief for the Defense"

One of the survivors of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil drill disaster made an escape that sounds like something from a Tom Cruise Summer blockbuster movie. While drilling the ocean floor, a geyser of mud, methane gas, and seawater erupted onto the rig, shooting 240 ft into the air. The methane ignited into a series of explosions and ultimately a firestorm. The initial blast sent a three-inch thick metal fire door slamming into a worker on the exploding rig. As soon as he was able to free himself, another explosion sent another door straight into him, pinning him to the wall again. By that point he was starting to get angry. After watching all their fire drills go to waste by the panic around him, the worker plunged two or three stories into the ocean which gave him a few seconds to think about the fact that he had jumped from a place that wasn't on fire into the ocean, which actually was aflame with burning oil. When he got over being stunned by hitting the water, hard, he realized he wasn't dead because he felt a burning sensation all over his body; fortunately he wasn't on fire.

We see this story again and again, in real life as well as in books and screen: the hero, so righteous, so noble, good and pure, one trauma is not enough to break her. If traumatizing a hero once can earn the audience's sympathy, then what better way to earn love for a character than to lay trauma after trauma on her like a falling row of dominoes? Whatever can go wrong for our hero will go wrong. The hero will lose everyone she loves, find every promise broken and every dream unfulfilled. Some call this dramatic effect “The Trauma Conga Line,” and it’s a story as old as the book of Job. In the face of suffering, the audience wants to save the person. We want to pluck her out of her tragedy and hug her with nurturing love. Audience members experience relief from their own hurts by fantasizing about relieving the protagonist’s pain.

The Apostle Paul also had a place in the Trauma Conga Line. When we pay attention to the book of Acts and Paul’s letters, we read about one trauma after another. Paul was flogged an uncounted number of times, received 39 lashes five different times, beaten with rods three different times, was stoned one time, shipwrecked three times, and spent a day and night bobbing in sea. Paul was weary and in pain, and often sleepless. He was imprisoned many times. As legend has it, Paul was tortured and eventually beheaded by the Emperor Nero. During one of his imprisonments, Paul writes on of the loveliest, most hopeful letters in our Scriptures. Either he is the ultimate optimist, or he’s insane from all the trauma. In the Book of Philippians he writes,

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you" (Philippians 4:6-9).

I can just picture a tortured man with a long beard and tattered clothes chained to a murky subterranean cement wall. Cue the music – it’s Bob Marley in the background singing:

“Don’t worry about a thing,
‘Cuz every little thing, gonna be alright.”

Or, if you need more irony, maybe the Shirelles singing, “Mama said there'd be days like this . . .”

Joy? Praise? Thanksgiving? Beauty? Acceptance? We are not always so sure about positive, life-generating responses to trauma. Suffering we get. Suffering characters resonate with us because many of us have narratives of our own lives that tell the story of one ache after another. An antagonist has tested and tried us, beaten us down, robbed us of joy and stolen our dreams.

All of our experiences of the past put us where we are now: all of the past traumatic events. all of the past disappointments, past insults we’ve believed, past offenses, and past mistakes. We can be quick to blame others. We can become victims of the past. But what about joy in the midst of suffering? Gratitude in times of want? Beauty in the face of terror? What might happen when we make peace with the past and allow ourselves to create, to love, to shine? What happens when we make peace with the past and begin to risk delight?

Imagine yourself as the hero of your own story. You start out in the ordinary world of your life with nothing but a nagging notion that things can be better than how they have been in the past. There must be something more to life. Listen to the voice that separates you from your past. That voice asks you to step into a Hero’s Journey.  What is it you’re no longer willing to accept anymore in your world? What’s a new goal that you want to set for yourself, a goal enticing and powerful enough that would want to make peace with the past and step into a new life? What is the treasure you seek?

In all good hero stories, the treasure is guarded and protected. There are obstacles in the way. Challenges to overcome. As the hero of your story, the closer you come towards your treasure, the more difficult the obstacles become. Heroes have no choice but to face down the most difficult challenges. So, you travel into the heart of darkness; you go into the Innermost Cave of the Evil One, the one being who would do anything to see you fail. We all have someone standing in the way of our deep desires. There’s that someone you’ve been putting off facing even though you know you need to; or the situation that’s been giving you difficulty but you’ve avoided facing; or a limiting belief that’s been weighing you down.

Facing failure may be the most difficult point in your Hero’s Journey.  It’s where everything seems bleak and all hope feels lost.  But facing the worst of your demons, you push beyond your limits, and triumph over that which stands in the way of claiming your treasure.

Once you triumph over the worst of the negative energies coming your way, then you can learn from them. You’ve stretched yourself so far beyond your old self that you will no longer return back to the status quo. You get to claim your treasure. But wait! That’s not all! You also find that the journey itself has strengthened you. You’ve grown wiser with experience and knowledge. You’ve been reborn.  And the treasures you’ve discovered will also benefit someone else out there who needs it.

We can do it. We can discover joy in suffering. We can uncover beauty in ashes. We can shift our perceptions. We can make peace with the past.
The journey can begin today. What might happen if you declare, “Not even the Trauma Conga Line can break me.”
I no longer pretend.
Today I embrace who I am—all of me—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I am grateful for all of the experiences I’ve encountered.
I realize that I was judging myself far more harshly that anyone else ever could.
I let go of the belief that I have to hide from my past.
I let go of the belief of being “less than.”
I let go of the belief of not being worthy.

Or, in the words of Poet Jack Gilbert:

If we deny happiness, resist our satisfaction,
We lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight.

Poets have a stubborn refusal to be cowed by terrible circumstances. They can praise the gift of life and the beauty of this world, even in the midst of suffering. They know this world is a ruthless furnace. It devours everything in its flames. But there are two types of flames. As T.S. Elliot reminds us in The Four Quartets:

The only hope, or else despair,
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
To be redeemed by fire or fire.

Which flames do we allow to define our existence, the flames of hell or the flame of the Holy Spirit? Gladness, joy, beauty, delight – these have no place in our hells. When we are captive to the suffering of the past, we turn inward, tempted to wallow in self-absorption. In our personal hells, injustice becomes the only measure of our attention. But the flame of God, the gift of the Spirit, turns us outward to the world, no longer alone.

A compassionate intelligence knows this world is both heaven and hell, here and now. When we feel sorrow, our job is not to blame the past. Our job is to feel the depths of the sorrow. And when joy arises, who are we to question? Our job is to give in to delight, utterly. The only thing we are not allowed is indifference. Indifference is the greatest obstacle to an awakened heart.

In the midst of our traumas, our personal hells and inner caves, obstacles and challenges, yes, even in rehearsing the sufferings of the past, we acclaim this: whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Think on these things NOW. And the God of peace will be with you.

Sources:
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/releasing-the-need-for-approval-and-making-peace-with-yourself/\
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/6-questions-that-will-make-you-fee-peaceful-and-complete/
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWoobie
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TraumaCongaLine
The Hero’s Journey By Alvin Soon From Life Coaches Blog, http://www.peerzone.info/sites/default/files/resources/The%20Heros%20Journey.pdf
The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz
Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again by Roger Housden.