Author: Doug Slagle

Message 123 , “What’s On Your Mind?  To Prayer of Not to Pray?”, 3-3-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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Around ten years ago when I was in the midst of a phase in my life when conservative Christianity was a way to cleanse me of gay shame, I regularly engaged in many of the rites that I believed were a necessary part of being a good Christian.  I prayed a lot – with people I served in Pastoral Care, with small prayer groups I joined, with other Pastors, on my own, and at every meal.  I even naively forced it on my daughters – asking them to pray with me at their bedtimes and to hold hands with me in prayer before each meal.

In one horrifying event for my daughters, we were at a local McDonald’s and I insisted they join me in bowing our heads while I gave thanks for the food.  Whether thankfulness for Chicken McNuggets is worthy of God or not, I’m not sure!  But my daughters still tease me about that episode and how they blushed and stared straight ahead while I bowed my head and said a far too lengthy prayer.  Much like most self-conscious teenagers, they were sure that every person in that McDonald’s was staring at us, talking about us and pointing their fingers at us  – “look at that odd praying dad and his girls!”  They scolded me for praying in public when private piety would have been much better – and less embarrassing to them!

I also remember that around that time that a well known Pastor at a very large local church was seriously injured during a minor surgery.  His abdominal aorta was punctured and he was actually dead for several minutes.  As a result, most of his internal organs lost oxygen and shut down.  After his heart was restarted, he lingered in intensive care, near death, for many weeks.  His doctors said that he would either die or be in a coma for the rest of his life.

Pastors and members from evangelical churches around the city and around the world began a prayer vigil for him – one that was organized so that it would be continuous.  Tens of thousands of people participated and chose specific times each day to pray for him.  I was one of them.

This Pastor survived and, while his recovery was lengthy, his escape from the brink of death and eventual return to ministry was seen as a miracle.  Most said it was due to the countless prayers.  The Pastor himself said that prayers were instrumental in his healing. God had answered the many faithful pleas in his behalf.

About a year after that, a member of my congregation was diagnosed with advanced cancer.  She was not given long to live.  She was a woman of deep faith with many friends.  My church began a prayer vigil for her that included hundreds of people.  She also fervently prayed for healing and her life became even more devoted to the God she believed would save her.  Sadly, after an eight month health battle, she died.

In this March messages series entitled “What’s on Your Mind?”, I’ve chosen a topic suggested to me by Wayne Butterfass.  He hopes it might complement a discussion Stuart led on a fourth Sunday a few months ago.  As Wayne asked in his e-mail to me, “Are my prayers being answered?  The small ones seem to be answered, but the big ones – like asking for a friend with pancreatic cancer to be cured – they don’t.”

Along with that question, we might also ask why should we pray?  Does prayer offer us any benefit?  What can be said about showy prayers made in public over Chicken McNuggets or prayers for victory before football games or prayers for greater wealth, career success, romantic happiness or our nation’s blessing?  Is there a God or any force listening to us?   For believers and the religiously skeptical alike, does prayer have value?  Are prayers answered in any way that can make sense?

My understanding of spirituality is not concerned with whether or not God or any other supernatural being answers prayer.  Such a concern involves the existence of God and is a matter of personal faith.  Here at the Gathering, believers and skeptics are equally welcomed and respected.  We participate in the life of the congregation – and in prayer – together.  If one believes that an active and loving God or supernatural being is involved in human affairs, then one will believe that she or he answers prayers.  Theistic skeptics, on the other hand, refute the existence of God and thus, of course, deny that prayers are answered.

But such arguments about the existence of a divine being are pointless and ignore the very real benefits of a spiritual life.  As a culture, we get caught up in such a debate while overlooking the many common spiritual beliefs and practices we can share.   All people have a god-force within them.  We are imbued with goodness and great abilities to shape our lives and our world for the better.  In that regard, prayer is a powerful medium of communication.  Prayer speaks the longings in the deepest recesses of our souls.  It expresses our hopes, dreams and fears.  It gives voice to our collective yearnings and, as a result, prayer helps to unite us, instruct us in the ways of life, and inspire us to act.  If WE are the gods and goddesses that can improve the world, then prayer is our communal call to action.  It is the soothing song of peace.  It is the quiet voice of redemption and forgiveness.  It is the vision of a brighter and more just future.  Prayer has value.  Prayers are truly answered every day.  Prayer works.

It is said that when the human species first uttered a prayer or plea to some higher power, religion was created.  Indeed, prayer is the essence of spirituality.   Prayer is ultimately an expression of human hope which is pretty much what we do here every Sunday with our readings, our songs, our conversations and our attendance.  We hope to be better people; we hope to unite and find community with others; we hope to find insight in how the universe works and how we can improve it.

But, hopefully, we do not leave it at that.  Each Sunday, I pray (!) we each leave with some sense of purpose, some inner resolve to take what we have learned, to use what inspired us, to leverage old and new friendships – and then go out and DO something with them.  As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Prayer is not an old person’s idle amusement.   Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”

And, as I said earlier, world religions largely concur.  In his Sermon on the Mount address, Jesus taught a summation of his sense of spirituality.  Blessed are the meek, the humble, the peacemakers, and the merciful.  Love your enemies, forgive them and never demand an eye for an eye.  Seek the way of peace.  As a foundation for all of his teachings, he asked that we root out and expose all forms of inner and external hypocrisy.  Don’t condemn physical murder when you murder with your angry words.  Don’t condemn adultery when you secretly lust in your heart and mind.  Don’t claim to be a loving person if you hold bitterness toward anyone.  Don’t showcase your charity when all you really want to do is show off how good you are.  Don’t pray in public when what you really want to do is appear pious.  Do these things humbly, quietly and without fanfare.  Ultimately, he asked that we align our heart motivation with how we act.

And then he taught a suggested prayer – what we commonly call the Jesus Prayer – one that includes ALL of the spiritual elements of a worthy prayer.  The Bible offers two versions of the Jesus Prayer – one each in the books of Matthew and Luke.  While the meaning is the same in both prayer versions, the words are different.  This suggests that those who heard Jesus’ model prayer were not concerned with the exact words.  It was the meaning and the ideas of what he taught that had significance.  And that speaks to us today.  There are multiple versions of the Jesus Prayer and no single one is better than any other.  Good versions capture the essence of what Jesus intended for us to pray.  Indeed, his overall intent was for prayer to be an expression of universal hopes.

If we consider the words from the standard Jesus Prayer, we first find an attitude of submission to something greater than ourselves, “Our Mother or Father who is in heaven, holy be your name…”  Such an expression reminds us that we are NOT the center of creation, whether or not we identify a God or a higher power to which we pray.  Our prayers should both acknowledge and express this idea – that there are forces and powers and forms of creation much, much greater than we.  We submit ourselves to our own personal understanding of what is greater than us – to God, to Jesus, to the power of love, or to the goodness of human intention.

Further, we find in the Jesus Prayer that our prayers should be inclusive.  Prayer should not be self-focused and they ought to avoid pronouns of “me” and “I”, using instead “we” and “us”.  Jesus taught that truth in his suggested prayer – “give us…”, “deliver us…”, “forgive us…”, “lead us…”

Additionally, Jesus teaches us with his model prayer that we should not ask for the desires of life – money, power, and material things but, instead, for simple sustenance.  “Give us our daily bread…” instead of “Grant me a new car, or a romantic partner or a healthy body.”  The intent that Jesus suggested in his model prayer is for us to dwell less on ourselves than on others, less on material needs than on deeper life lessons.  We ask for ourselves only the basics of life – daily food, shelter and clothing.  Such an attitude gets at the heart of spirituality – if we live life not with a “me” attitude but with a genuine desire to serve and love others, we will often find the contentment we seek.   Universal laws of karma and reaping what we sow apply.  When we send out honest hopes for the well-being of others, they will return to us.  Good creates good.  Love fosters love.  Generosity inspires generosity.  In this way, Jesus implicitly told us that our prayers WILL be answered – not by God but by ourselves and by others.  We send out into the world attitudes and acts of love that will return to us.

As one of the high ethics of spiritual living, Jesus also taught in his model prayer that we must be humble.  We pray to be forgiven of our misdeeds as much as we are willing to forgive others.  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  The implied lesson is to forgive as much as we ask to be forgiven.   Once again, Jesus told us our prayers will be answered not by God but by us.  If we forgive generously, we too will be forgiven generously.  We will reap what we sow.

Equal to that teaching is the idea that we are weak people.  “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”  We make mistakes.  We sin.  We hurt ourselves and others.  We daily fall short of our desire to be good and loving people.  Our prayer is for help in avoiding mistakes – for insight, encouragement, teaching and modeling of behavior from others.  God is not our help in avoiding temptations.  Our rational minds, our friends, our faith communities, and our contented hearts all show us pathways to goodness.  Prayer inspires us to such goodness and we, indeed, fulfill its request.  We seek to be good.   God does not do this.  We do.

Honest prayer, according to Jesus, is also about trust in a brighter future.  It is hope filled instead of angry, defeatist and negative.  Prayer is persistent and regular.  It is not saved for times of crisis but for frequent expressions of hope, gratitude, love and forgiveness.   In that regard, once again, prayers are answered!  If our attitudes are focused not just on needs – those of ourselves or others – but on joy, thankfulness and generosity – we will be people who find that abundance in our lives.  This is an attitude focused not on what we individually or collectively can GET but on what we individually and collectively can GIVE.   This is how prayer is a language of action!  As we pray for the healing of another, we pray for how we can help him or her – how a word of support, a gesture of kindness, a listening ear or a simple expression of love can bind up any wound and heal any aching heart.  Instead of asking to be loved by another, we ask instead how we can love another – how we can befriend, care for or love another.  Once again, WE insure that prayer is answered because we are inspired to act.   When we serve, we will be served.

Such positive and others focused prayers have tremendous power.  Science has shown in several double blind studies that those who are sick do better and heal faster when they know they are prayed for and when they themselves pray with attitudes of determination, gratitude and generosity.  Hope and love are potent drugs.  With prayer, we administer them and shower them on suffering friends, family members and total strangers.  We cannot claim in all instances that our prayers will be answered with the literal cure of another person.  It is the motivation of our loving requests and the positive words of hope that create opportunities for healing of mind, body and soul.

Those for whom we pray will be encouraged.  They will be served by our prayerful calls to action.  They will be inspired to think positively and thus promote healing in their own hearts, minds and bodies.   Someone we know may physically suffer or die.   But, with our prayers, we can offer and encourage action that comforts and heals their bodies and souls.

Even in this regard, our prayers must be infused with humility.  We cannot pray and demand cures or fixes in all instances.  As Jesus implied in his model prayer, we are weak.  We are fragile.  We each will get sick.  We each will die of some frailty or disease.  Our humble prayers can acknowledge such truths while expressing the much greater desire for peace and contentment.  Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil.  The support of others, their love, their prayers are a comfort to us.

Most of all, Jesus taught his followers that prayer is a communal language.  We can practice it alone but it is best when practiced in community.  This ethic is common to many religions.  For Jews, the word synagogue literally means “house of prayer.”  To meet, sing and learn together IS prayer.   The same is true of Muslims.  While prayer by oneself is allowed if necessary, one should attend the five times a day “salah” or prayer sessions in a Mosque or in a group.  Hindus also gather in mass pilgrimages, as they do at this very moment, to pray together.  Indeed, prayer is a language by which a community expresses and shares its collective memory of dreams, thoughts and expectations.  We serve one another, we inspire, we support and we instruct by our prayers.  As one prays for another, the community as a whole is inspired to act – to reach out, to share, and to love.  As one prays in gratitude for all that life gives, those who listen will share such an attitude.  Entire communities can be changed by prayer – to seek peace, to forgive, to let go of anger and seek after the greater good of cooperation.  Once again, God does not answer such prayers.  People do.

I have seen both sides of the divide between belief and non-belief.  I’ve come to a place between those extremes.  It is irrelevant to me whether a literal God exists or not.  Instead, I try to look at what Jesus and other great thinkers and prophets taught about universal goodness.  How can I, in this life, improve my thinking, my attitudes, and my actions so that I can fulfill my reason for existence – to do my small share to improve the world?  When we pray together and when we choose to remember others in their need, we speak words of hope.  We speak words of action, love, and redemption.  If there is a god or goddess looking down upon our mortal selves, he or she has granted us the ability to think and act in ways that have tremendous power.  Our prayers are expressions of our deepest yearnings.  They are calls to act.  If they are sincere, if they derive from a humble heart that knows its flaws and failures, if they seek not for ourselves but for others, they WILL be answered.

Let us pray.  Let us act.  Let us, in turn, answer our own prayers.  We are god and it is to us, to all human-kind, that we must pray, honor and love.

We are protecting the privacy of our guest speaker.  If you have questions or comments, please send them to our e-mail address.  A list of helpful resources provided by this mom is below. 

Please download her message here:

 

Support Through Media

 

Online Support

Genderspectrum.org, http://www.genderspectrum.org/

Children’s National Medical (my personal favorite), http://www.childrensnational.org/

 

Books I’ve Read and found Helpful

Not Like Other Boys: A Mother and Son Look Back

by Chris Shyer

The Transgendered Child by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper

Mom Knows by Catherine Tuerk

Johnny Weir– memoir
Articles

“What’s so Bad about a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?” – New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/whats-so-bad-about-a-boy-who-wants-to-wear-a-dress.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

 

Books for Children

Oliver Button is a Sissy by Tommie De Paola

William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow

My Princess Boy

It’s Okay to be Different by Todd Parr

 

Movies/Television

“Ma vie En Rose”

“The Prodigal Son”

“20/20- Jazz”

“Whale Rider”

“Billy Elliott”

Blogs

Accepting Dad, http://www.acceptingdad.com/

Sarah Hoffman, http://www.sarahhoffmanwriter.com/

GirlyBoy’s Mama, http://open.salon.com/blog/girlyboymama

Raising my Rainbow, http://raisingmyrainbow.com/

Message 122, Gathering Goes to the Movies, “Paperman” and the Laws of Attraction, 2-17-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

In advance of listening to or reading the message, please watch the short film video “Paperman”, the subject of this message.  Click here to watch and scroll down to then play the video.

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I don’t know about you, but I found the short animated film entitled “Paperman” to be sweet and charming.  I can’t fully explain why I feel that way – perhaps I like the film because it evokes a sense of nostalgia for a seemingly simpler time, or because it is a silent film and I resonate with art that tells a story without using words.  I also identify with the characters – two sweet, slightly clumsy, attractive people who are eager to find love and all the joy that it can bring.  I also like the animation in the movie – simple but richly detailed with an artistic flair that does not diminish the realistic depictions of trains, busy streets, drab offices and the innocence of its two main characters.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of this film is its groundbreaking combination of hand drawn characters merged into computer generated images – or CGI for short.  The animator’s flowing and expressive lines are not only integrated into the CGI, but are also adopted by computer software such that many of the character drawings are a combination of artist and computer.  This new art form may revolutionize animation by using technology and the nuanced expression of an artist’s hand.  That is one of the reason’s why “Paperman” was nominated for an Academy Award in the best animated film category.

At any rate, as I said, I can’t put my finger on why I like the film.  My affection for it likely says more about me than it does about the movie, its story or its animation.  In my appreciation of it, I bring something of myself to that attraction equation – my own personality, experiences and outlook on life.

And that idea of attraction seems to be one theme in the film.  What is it about the young woman Meg that catches the eye of her admirer George?  Is it just her looks – her Bambi like doe eyes, her trim and lithe figure, her endearing clumsiness, the cant of her smile, her implicit sense of humor?  We don’t really know why he’s attracted to her but we quickly realize that George is immediately smitten.  Once he spots her again across an urban chasm, George will do anything to reunite with her.

During a recent radio psychology talk show about love at first sight, many listeners called in to tell their stories of immediate love.  Interestingly, all of the callers with stories to tell about love at first sight were men.  Only one woman called in and she forcefully shot down the idea saying it does not exist – that men mistake love at first sight with lustful attraction.  Whatever it is, George is clearly enamored with Meg.

How do we make sense of the laws of attraction?  Why are we attracted to our friends, lovers and partners?  What lights up our brains, our hearts and, yes, our lust when we find we are attracted to someone?  What roles do chance and fate play regarding whom we meet and perhaps fall in love?  Are we mere puppets dangling from the strings of fate or biology – destined to meet and unite with whomever is swept our way and somehow turns our heads?  Or do we, much like George, also work to influence and change the winds of chance and biology?

After discussing much more serious movies the last two Sundays, I want to consider today a more lighthearted film.  I hope to examine the spiritual dimensions of attraction and destiny in the drama of “boy meets girl”, or “boy meets boy” or “girl meets girl.”  How do the multiple forces of attraction, reason, and fate influence us?  Do we have a choice in whom we are attracted to or are there other, more complex factors involved like our genetics, past experiences and even fate?  Most importantly, what lessons are there from the laws of attraction for how we act and speak throughout our lives?

Writing over two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato said that humans are governed by three distinct influences.  We are governed by our reason, by a spiritual desire to be connected with something greater than ourselves and by our physical appetites.  Mostly, he wrote, we follow our reason but, on occasion, the two lesser desires, as he called them, also govern our actions.

For many religions and, indeed, for us, this begs the question as to whether our free will minds influence our actions.  Can we freely choose to whom we are attracted?  As we just saw, George did not do a lot of thinking when he was immediately drawn to Meg as she stood near him on the train platform.  He saw a girl who was attractive to him in many ways, but it is doubtful he thought much about it.  Strong emotions and visceral responses stirred within him and he was head over heels drawn to her.  It was not a conscious decision.  Indeed, it appears he could not help himself!

George was obviously physically drawn to her beauty.  He also liked her smile and her apparent sense of humor – how she found it amusing to have planted a lipstick kiss on a piece of paper.  Intuitively, George liked what he saw not just on a physical level but in her dress, demeanor and probable personality.  All of the factors that drew her to him were deeply planted in him by his genetics, upbringing and past experiences.  He did not think about why he liked what he saw.  He just liked!

That fact, that we are not governed by our reason in the law of attraction but by deeper and more irrational forces, has particular resonance for me and for many gays and lesbians.  The debate over what influences sexuality has not yet been settled but it is clear that none of us make a mental choice about the gender to which we are physically and emotionally attracted.  It simply happens.

Recent science points to the idea that a mixture of genetics and upbringing influences our sexualties.  Some scientists have identified a particular area of one gene that suggests a cause for same sex attraction.  Others point to slight differences in gay and lesbian brains to account for same sex attraction.  Still others have shown that changes in maternal hormone levels during pregnancy can influence sexuality.  And others point to abundant anecdotal evidence that says upbringing by a domineering mother or a distant father can influence gay sexuality.  Most scientists believe all of these factors play a role in determining human sexuality.  Importantly, however, there is a majority consensus by psychologists and other experts that none of us – straight, lesbian, gay or bisexual – are able to consciously or unconsciously choose the deep seated core attractions we feel.  We don’t conjure them up from our rational thinking and we can’t forbid them from our emotions.  They just happen and, much like in George, we are powerless to stop feeling them.

Over the last decade, a scientific group called “deCode” has thoroughly examined the human genetic sequence and identified hundreds of genetic markers for conditions such as diabetes, alcoholism and metabolism rates.  What this study is also beginning to show, however, is that genetics are not absolutely determinative.  We might be prone to be diabetic but we can affect whether or not we eventually suffer from the disease by our eating habits.  In other words, our genes don’t totally dictate our health destiny.  Our own rational choices combined with destiny and biology work together.

And that is clearly relevant in matters of attraction.  Just as the film “Paperman” showed us, there are a combination of factors involved in whether or not George meets Meg again.  Yes, it is purely by chance that George meets Meg and that his office is directly across from a building where she is.  But, George has to then make the decision to do something with what fate has given him.  Even with his multiple attempts to catch her eye again, fate plays its tricks to conspire against him.  The wind diverts his paper airplanes, a bird crashes into one, another sails into the trash can, still another lands on someone else’s desk.

The amusing story of George’s efforts is that, once smitten, he does almost anything he can to meet Meg again.  He is persistent even to the point of likely losing his job all because of one brief interaction with a woman who deeply stirred his feelings of attraction.  In other words, simple attraction is not enough.  Fate creates the opportunity but he must seize it.

Indeed, George lives true to the words of William Shakespeare when he had his character Romeo utter the famous words, “Oh, I am fortune’s fool!”  Much as with Romeo, fate conspired to have George cross paths with Meg and then be deeply attracted to her.  George is fortune’s fool in his pursuit, but only to a point.  He does not allow fate to determine his destiny.  He persistently acts so that his one fortunate meeting with Meg will not be forever lost.  As an implicit message in the film, fate gives us a chance but it rarely repeats itself.

John Galsworthy, a famous English novelist and nobel laureate in literature, once said that, “Life calls the tune, we dance.”  And that is exactly how George reacts in “Paperman.”  If he is to meet Meg again, if his feelings of love at first sight are to be fulfilled, if the tale is to end sixty years in the future as a forever after love story, then George must figuratively dance to whatever tune fate and biology played for him.  To use a recent analogy, binders full of women will not open up everyday to drop a beautiful girl next to him.

Dr. Laura Berman, a contemporary commentator on relationships, says that for us to meet the opportunities that fortune gives us in finding a friend, partner or spouse, we must first be specific about the qualities that deeply stir us.  We should not hide behind what we think we want or what we believe we should want.  We must be honest with what we truly and deeply want.  And that has resonance for those of us who have had to come out of the closet and admit to same sex attractions.  It took me a long time to understand this fact.  I was not happy until I confessed to myself the truth of my inner attractions.

Gays and lesbians should be given the freedom to come out when and how they personally feel best.   Even so, coming out is a truly liberating experience.  As Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”

Next, we cannot allow fate to set the course of our lives.  How much energy do we put into the equation for determining our happiness in life or the person we befriend or fall in love with?  We must act in ways that give a nudge to the hand of fate.

Dr. Berman also says we should learn to embrace empty spaces in our lives.  As humans, too often we feel a need to fill a void we perceive – in how we furnish our homes, in long pauses during a conversation or, in our search to find friends and partners.  Empty things scare us and so we work to fill them up.  This is something I am still learning.  I must be comfortable and happy just with myself.  Only then can I be comfortable and happy with someone else.

Finally, Dr. Berman asserts that the law of attraction throughout our lives is defined by the fact that similar things attract similar things.  If we are happy, engaged, curious, confident and positive people, we will attract similar reactions and attitudes from others.  If we are angry, bitter, depressed and sad, we will likely attract the same.  This holds true for how we interact throughout our lives with friends, partners and spouses.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Love, and you shall be loved.”  We have a strong say in how our life destiny plays out.  We help to create our happiness.  We must take what destiny hands us and then do the work necessary to build a life of joy and fulfillment.

Despite that fact, circumstances in life can and do tear us down.  Much like we discussed last Sunday with the story of “Les Miserables”, life is often painful and harsh.  Cruel people or difficult circumstances hurt us and often prevent us from finding the happiness we seek.  But, we also saw how Jean Valjean in that story constantly worked to redeem not only the lives of others but his own life too.  We cannot give up on life.  We cannot allow hate or misery or past mistakes to define who we are.  Redemption and resurrection are ALWAYS possible.  Just as science is proving, fate and destiny need not have the last word.

And that is also, ironically, a message from “Paperman”.  George redeems his missed opportunity encounter with Meg.  He is doggedly persistent.  He remained hopeful and determined.  The same must hold true for any of us.  Fate, destiny and biology do their best to order our lives.  Other people conspire to define us and set in stone whom they believe we are.  But we can, and often do, overcome all of these forces.

Whatever causes George to be attracted to Meg, whether it be fate, destiny or his own inner feelings, the humor and moral focus of the story is George’s persistence.  Even when all seems lost, when the last paper airplane with Meg’s lipstick kiss on it is blown away, destiny and persistence still work hand in hand – George does not give up but defies fate and rushes out of his work to meet Meg in person.

This is one of the great spiritual mysteries of life – how one second in time can alter the trajectory of our lives forever.  We often wonder in amazement how that can be as we also ponder how life would be so different had a fateful event not occurred.

Rarely, however, do we focus on how our own actions worked alongside our destiny.  We are not, as I asked earlier, mere puppets on a string.  All of the great and powerful forces of the universe work together, without our input, to shape who and what we are.  They help determine our lives and whether we find success or suffering.  But, we are not without power and ability to affect them.  Indeed, we are the gods and goddesses that ALSO shape our destiny and the future of our world.

I hope that all of us might act a bit like George in the film “Paperman.”  To the people whom destiny has brought our way, to our friends, family members, spouses, partners, lovers, and even total strangers, let us fling upon the air currents our paper airplanes of hope and goodness.  Life may set the tune, but we will dance on the wings of love…

I wish you, here or listening online, much peace and joy.

 

 

 

 

Message 121,  The Gathering Goes to the Movies, “Les Miserables and Redemption”, 2-10-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

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In the story of “Les Miserables”, Fantine is a young woman who finds herself pregnant and abandoned by the child’s father.  Alone, desperate and unable to raise her child in a world prejudiced more against unwed mothers than absent fathers, Fantine leaves her daughter with a couple who promise to raise the child in return for payment.  She finds work in a factory and regularly sends money to support her child, who is nevertheless abused and mistreated.   But Fantine is found out.  She is fired by a self-righteous supervisor for being an unwed mother.  In desperation to support her daughter, she turns to the one profession available to women with little skill, education or opportunity.  She sells herself.

What hope does Fantine have in life?   She prostitutes herself to a constant stream of men.  Her worth seems to only be as a sex object, a piece of female flesh used, consumed and quickly forgotten by men who care nothing for her humanity, her suffering, or her state of mind.  In an emotionally stunning performance by Anne Hathaway, one that will likely earn her an Academy Award, Fantine is played as a deeply anguished woman caught between the power of love for her child and the terrible degradation she must choose in order to survive.

But Fantine is soon redeemed.  Jean Valjean, the hero of Hugo’s story, is a figure reminiscent of Jesus.  Valjean learns of Fantine’s unjust firing from the factory he owns.  He searches for her and finally finds her in the seedy back alleys of Paris brothels.  Much like Jesus befriended prostitutes and brought them into his band of followers, so does Valjean reach out to Fantine.  And, much like the compassion Jesus showed the adulterous woman caught by an angry mob of hypocritical men, Valjean shows Fantine the unconditional love she had not yet felt.  Redeemed by love but pressed upon by inner demons, she cannot escape the label an uncaring society stamped upon her conscience – slut, whore, miserable, wretched.  We read and watch transfixed.  We see in Fantine too much of ourselves.  We too cry out for redemption and forgiveness of our failures.  What power on earth can save us?

(Click here to watch and listen to the video played during the service.)

Each of us lives on a razor’s edge of heaven or hell.  Despite the darkness in us, we see ourselves in the hopeful light of goodness.  And yet, lurking inside you and me are the sharp edges of shame, regret, fear, lost dreams and guilt.  Our past lives do not measure up to our vision of purity and yet we hope, we hope, we hope to be made whole.  We each pray the silent prayer that at our last breath, we will conclude a life that has mattered and is good.  We cry out to eternal gods and universal forces of truth that we too loved others, that we too showed compassion, that we too changed the world for the better, that we too were kind and just!  Despite our many failures, we dream a dream of absolution and ultimate, final redemption.  Do we declare, like Fantine, that life has killed that dream?  Or do we find somewhere, someplace, our dream fulfilled?

The sweeping story of “Les Miserables”, the film subject of my message today, leaves one breathless.  It is filled with many subplots and numerous characters each fighting to make sense of a desperate and cruel world.  Some find order and meaning only in law, regulation, absolute morality and strict adherence to what is supposedly right.  Such people, as Hugo describes, are the self-satisfied, the wealthy, the comfortable and the moralistic prigs who cannot empathize with or understand weakness, suffering, disadvantage or lack of opportunity.

Indeed, Hugo arranges his story around a clash between two men: Inspector Javert who represents those who self-righteously insist on an absolute moral order in life, and Jean Valjean, a convicted petty thief who has experienced life from the bottom up and understands its complexity, moral ambiguity, heartache and failure.  Javert is a constant tormenter of Valjean, pursuing him even to the figurative gates of hell in order to insure he is punished for his petty crimes.

Jean Valjean is an escaped prisoner, convicted as a young man for stealing bread to feed his starving nephew.  He struggles to redeem his life and salve his nagging conscience through service, love and charity.  He finds and rescues Fantine.  When she dies, he adopts her orphaned daughter Cosette.  He builds a business that employs and enriches the village where he locates it.  He heroically saves from certain death a young revolutionary who had renounced his life of privilege to fight for justice and equality.  Valjean even joins the ranks of street revolutionaries – those who fought against the powers of inequality and wealth that had co-opted and sold out the French Revolution.  In one life, he offers unconditional love and redemption to those he meets and, in doing so, he seeks to redeem his own life of shame and regret.

Throughout the story, Valjean fights a battle against tyrannical forces that abuse and degrade the poor and hurting.  As I said, he is a nineteenth century Jesus – a condemned criminal who reaches out to the outcasts of life – to simply love them.  His is a message of encouragement and forgiveness contrasted against the fundamentalist anger of Inspector Javert who demands righteous judgment and punishment for any and all misdeeds.

Like the stage musical and like the book, the movie emotionally pierces our hearts.  It asks us to consider whether seemingly miserable or bad lives can be redeemed.  Can flawed people be made whole?  Can they be accepted and loved for their own sake?  Can the horrors of human suffering or depravity be transformed into something glorious, uplifting and good?  Or, are the poor, the so-called immoral, the bad, the ugly, the dirty, the thief, the addict, the unwanted, the whore, the unbeliever – the dregs of supposedly decent society – are such people without hope of ever being found good?  Should we judge them, consign them to the justice we believe they deserve and then forget them?  And if we do, might we ultimately point the hand of judgment back upon ourselves with our own imperfections, flaws, and misdeeds?  Where lies the hope of human redemption and how might we find it – for others and for our own imperfect selves?

“Les Miserables” provides an answer.  The power that uplifts, encourages, forgives, makes whole and redeems anyone is the basic power of love.  It is an unconditional and total love for others no matter their differences or character deficiencies.

Hugo challenges us to see the inherent goodness in each and every person.  He asks us to consider the degrading effects of poverty on a person’s soul, often forcing one to steal or resort to prostitution merely to survive.  Hugo’s Paris is a Dickensian warren of dark streets teeming with urban poor – orphans, the homeless, the disabled. The novel’s many characters present the case that criminals and so called depraved souls, they must often make a devil’s choice in life – to steal or starve, to sell your body and your soul or live to see another day.

From the comforts of our warm and secure lives we stand accused.  Who are many of us, in our sanitized and safe homes, in our falsely prim and proper world, to sit in judgment of others less strong, less blessed, less happy?  Who am I to condemn those born and raised in poverty, given none of the advantages of a good education or stable home, who resort to the few opportunities available to earn money – to steal, sell drugs, or compromise their ethics just to live?

We see in Hugo’s Inspector Javert a bit of ourselves.  The law is the law, we say.  Crime, no matter how petty, is a blight upon society.  It must be stopped at all costs!  I can too often walk the streets of Over-the-Rhine, ones little different from Hugo’s Paris slums, and inwardly flinch in fear when African-American teens approach or react in exasperation when the homeless ask for change.  I may give them some but I often mutter to myself in doing so – “Well, you’ve just bought another beer or another drug fix.”

I can judge their place in life as I also judge them.  I fail to ask the questions Hugo poses – what are the larger causes for crime and poverty and inequality?  Whom do we blame – the criminal and the one caught in poverty or the ones who caused such conditions?  Who are the truly miserable in life – those who live on the margins of survival, or the callous, wealthy, and judgmental?

As the symbolic representative of so-called decent society, Inspector Javert speaks the mindset of many religions as well as those who are comfortable and secure.  Bad choices in life have consequences, they say – poverty, prison, poor health, drug addiction, homelessness, depression, loneliness are all matters of choice.  We must uphold the law of consequences to redeem such people.  We must hold them accountable and demand repayment!

Juxtaposed against such a mindset is that of Jean Valjean, himself a one-time victim of poverty.  Not only should we, according to his ethics, redeem, uplift and encourage individuals through our love, we should do so for humanity as a whole.  We can fight and act in behalf of the poor by our love.  We can seek, by our love, better means of education, healthcare and opportunity for those born on the suffering side of life.

Hugo implicitly shows us that personal initiative like Valjean’s building a business does offer a way out.  We and he intuitively know that hand-outs are not the best way to love others.  People need a hand up in life – opportunities to advance, heal, learn and work.

Ultimately, Hugo and “Les Miserables” asks us to dive deep into our hearts.  Love redeems the lives of most of the story’s characters – people caught between self-interest  –  or loving and serving others.  Love is never a moral wrong according to Hugo.  Love must always be the answer – from redeeming those caught in a web of poor life decisions, to standing on the barricades of change and demanding justice for those denied it.

Jean Valjean, like Jesus, seeks out the morally weak, the hurting, the prostitute, the thief, the unwashed, the unwanted.  Indeed, he is one of them.  Redemption of their misery, and his own, comes from love for others.  He offers no pious preaching, finger wagging or condemning attitudes.  Valjean sweeps weak people into his figurative arms and offers them the absolution and redemption that comes only through love.  In doing so, he finds the redemption he himself so desperately seeks.

Tennessee Williams, another great novelist and playwright, once said that, “Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself or herself aside to feel deeply for another person.”  Williams speaks the language of Victor Hugo and his character Jean Valjean.  He speaks the wisdom and compassion of Jesus who loved and forgave a thief crucified next to him.  No matter his life of crime, such a man was worthy of Jesus’ love and redemption.  Contrasted against such sentiments are the words of Inspector Javert who tells Valjean, “Men like you can never change.”  The pope said much the same thing when he offered the religious perspective on life.  He said, “There is no redemption from hell.”

The Pope was wrong.  Victor Hugo shows us he was wrong.  Each and every human intuitively knows he was wrong.  In the depths of hell that we see in the streets outside our doors, in the horrible pits of struggle with addiction, illness or depression, in the jet black depths of our own inner hells of failure, doubt and fear, we know that redemption is possible.  We do not give up on others or on ourselves.

We know the triumphant power of compassion, mercy and love to change lives for the better.  We see how the love of a mother for her child trapped in a web of addiction never gives up.  She believes in hope after hope after hope after hope.  We see the acts of loving people who visit prisons and the dark corridors of death row convinced that such people are not forever lost – who act much like Jesus and his love of a thief dying next to him.  We see countless acts of people who love a homeless and unwanted teen, who help a frightened and pregnant girl, who befriend a confused and lonely gay man.  We see a nation that refuses to abandon its elderly, poor or immigrant workers.  A nation founded on love for others, a nation that reminds itself that selfish interest is a path to greed and moral destruction, a nation that seeks the best answers to redeem and uplift others, that is a good and just nation.  Such a nation tells the world that redemption of the lost, hurting and poor is and always will be possible!

I have bored many of you with my life story.  I won’t do so again today.  But I will report that my lifelong search for Jesus and redemption ended in the most unlikely of places.  Many years ago, I thought I found him in a church of moral absolutes.  I thought I found him in a fundamentalist understanding of God and the Bible.  I thought that love and grace came by belief in the resurrected Jesus, and so I sought him where people spoke the most about him.  But I was wrong.  I did not find him there.

Instead, I found him in a miraculous place.  After years spent in my own desert of despair, doubt and rejection of anything spiritual, I found Jesus in a place that often did not talk about him.  I found him in the warm acceptance of me, a gay man.  I found redemption in new trust placed in me, to live out my passion and calling as a Pastor.  I found Jesus in the love offered to those who hurt.  I found him in ideals of service and self growth.  I ironically found Jesus in a church where Atheists and Buddhists and skeptics are comfortable.  I found him in a place that loves everyone no matter their race, economic status or sexuality.  I found him in a place much like where Jesus hung out – not in a fancy building with high ceilings and million dollar construction but in a humble place populated with the outcast, the meek, the humble, the unloved, the addict, the different.  I found Jesus, and I found my own redemption……..here.

My friends, I do not place the Gathering on a high pedestal.  We know our shortcomings.  We know how we can often fall short – like when a recent visitor reported she felt alone and without friends in here.  We too can often judge others with self-righteous certainty.  We too can sometimes ignore the suffering of others.  We too can reject those who act different, think different or believe differently from us.  But that’s why we’re here.  To get better.

We know where to plant the seeds of hope.  We know that we cannot give up on our world.  We know that redemption comes by love, by forgiveness and by service to others.  We know that seeking and searching after insight is a path to redemption of our flaws.  That is why we hunger for the wisdom of the ages, from prophets like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, from great thinkers and novelists like Victor Hugo and from the shared thoughts of each other.

We dream a dream of personal redemption from shame and failure.  We dream a dream of redeeming a suffering world.  We dream a dream of love for others equal to the love we have for ourselves.  We dream these dreams and then we go forth to try our best to live them out…

 

I wish all of you, here and online, peace, love and joy.

Message 120, “The Gathering Goes to the Movies: the Film ‘Lincoln’ and Does the End Justify the Means?”, 2-3-13

 

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

To listen to the message, download here:

 

As President, Abraham Lincoln enjoyed telling a story about two religious women who were discussing the possible outcome of the Civil War.  One of the women announced that she believed the South would win the war.  “Jefferson Davis is a praying man,” she piously said.  “But Abraham Lincoln is a praying man too,” the other exclaimed.  “Yes, indeed he is,” the first woman replied, “but the Lord thinks Lincoln is joking!”

This story perfectly captures one of the great qualities of Lincoln.  He had a keen sense of humor and he peppered many of his conversations with funny stories.  He used them to poke fun at himself, to disarm his critics, to politely end conversations that had gone on too long and, just as Jesus used parables, to leave his listeners with something memorable.

It is in that regard that Lincoln’s calculating brilliance showed through.  His folksy humor suggested his backwoods Kentucky upbringing.  When matched against more educated and supposedly refined opponents, he seemed the country jester or the rural naïf who was out of his element.  Many did not take him seriously.  But friends and opponents who ignored Lincoln’s cunning and intuitive wisdom did so at their own peril.

False impressions of Lincoln have also shaped him into a mythic hero of honesty and moral purpose – one who fought and was martyred in order to preserve the Union and end slavery.  In many biographies about him and even in his marble Memorial in Washington, Lincoln is depicted as embodying all that America sees as good, righteous and moral about themselves.  For many, he is the quintessential good and decent American – a man of pure and noble purpose.

A closer examination of Lincoln by historians and, more recently by the filmmaker Steven Spielberg, reveals a far more complex, nuanced and often conniving person who was, at times, the nastiest description of all – a consummate politician.  Such revelations surprise many people.  Recent histories strip away the gloss of myth and thus uncover a statesman who was a regular practitioner of the sometimes sordid art of politics.  Machiavelli, the famous renaissance Italian writer, claimed that an effective leader must act in morally questionable ways in order to achieve a higher good.  While few leaders wish to be labeled Machiavellian, Lincoln lived true to that philosophy.

As I have done in February for the past three years, we’ll look this month at different films that have been nominated for the Best Picture award.  We’ll seek insight into spiritual lessons we might learn from them.  Since most forms of entertainment are ultimately morality plays about life and human behavior, finding spiritual enlightenment from great film artists is a worthy endeavor.  A movie’s views may or may not be our own but, like most works of literature or art, good movies provoke introspection and deep questioning of what is right and wrong.  They help lead us to a better understanding of our values and how we might live in ways that advance humanity.

In that regard, Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln” is a worthy contribution.  In his examination of Lincoln’s efforts to pass the 13^th amendment in a deeply divided House of Representatives, Spielberg compels us to consider a timeless question we frequently face but are usually too afraid to answer.  Does the end justify the means?  Did the passage of one of the hallmarks of constitutional amendments, the 13th, outweigh the dirty means by which it was achieved – by lying, bullying, bribery and other nefarious tactics?  In the film, Lincoln is shown to deceive Congress, lie to them and even meet in the middle of the night, to arrange with paid henchmen, efforts to bribe, trick and bully wavering Congressmen to vote in favor of the amendment.  What we see is almost, almost! a 19th century version of “Nixonian” dirty tricks.  What Lincoln did was possibly criminal and certainly executive abuse of power.  His actions make the nickname “Honest Abe” seem ridiculous.

But, the film also depicts the joyous and uplifting approval of the amendment by the House.  After its adoption ten months later by three fourths of the states, the amendment insured an end to slavery throughout the United States as it enshrined in law the ideal that each and every citizen, no matter race or ethnicity, was free and equal.  Not only did it permanently end slavery, it became the foundational constitutional precept for ending Jim Crow practices and the resulting Civil Rights laws.

Many people of faith and, indeed, those who profess no faith, believe they operate by a set of guiding morals or principles that are often universal and eternal.  Do not kill.  Do not steal.  Do not lie.  Such ethics are framed in the Biblical Ten Commandments even as they are also represented in many other moral codes of conduct.  The Jewish faith has thousands of religious laws and countless interpretations of them by which those of orthodox belief seek to maintain their purity before a perfect deity.  Muslims have their Five Pillars of faith by which they regulate devotion to Allah and the teachings of his prophet Muhammad.  Hindus and Buddhists have their own traditions and rituals which also prescribe how one ought to live in a morally decent manner.

Importantly, however, such religious and moral rules often conflict with other moral principles humans wish to achieve.  Did defeating Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler allow for the firebombing of Dresden and the killing of thousands of civilians?  Did the defeat of Japan and preventing countless additional troop and civilian casualties allow the United States to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities with minimal military value?  Would water-boarding a terrorist who has knowledge of an attack that could kill thousands be morally justified?  On a simpler level, is it OK to lie to a friend or family member if it means not deeply hurting his or her feelings?

How far can we go in bending or breaking so called rules of morality if the goal we wish to achieve is believed to be greater or better?  These are vexing questions to ask ourselves and I don’t believe we will arrive at any perfectly satisfying answer for each and every situation.  But, we either ask such questions and seek solutions, or we ignore them at our peril.

As I often say, truth is not a black and white, yes or no, good or bad proposition.  Truth often lies somewhere in the murky, obscure and grey middle.  Those who say life can be led by adhering to absolutes either delude themselves or else are too rigid and too doctrinaire to be of practical use in any real world solution.  Indeed, those who are moral, political or religious absolutists are, in my humble opinion, immoral because they fail to discern and think about the many ambiguous or even negative implications of their unbending rules and beliefs.

In the Biblical story of Exodus, the Jewish people find themselves, after forty years of wandering in the desert, without a leader.  Moses has died.  To lead the Jewish people into their new land, God selects Joshua.  In a prudent effort to scout out the new land, Joshua sends three spies across the Jordan River to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Jericho – the walled border city that was key to gaining entrance into Palestine.

The spies do their duty and eventually meet a prostitute, Rahab, who because of her profession had close contact with leaders of Jericho.  She also lived in a strategic part of the city – near its defense walls.  Rahab gave confidential information to the spies about Jericho and even hid them in her home.  When that city’s military leaders learned there were spies in their midst, they questioned many people including Rahab.  She, however, acted as a traitor and lied to the leaders by denying any knowledge of the Jewish spies.  Rahab did so knowing full well the spies would report back to Joshua who would then lead a military assault on Jericho that would likely succeed, since they now had inside knowledge.  Given how ruthless the Jews were known to be when fighting so-called pagans, Rahab knew her lies meant the death of most of Jericho’s residents.  Indeed, that would soon be the case.

But nowhere in the Bible is Rahab condemned for her actions.  She is even called a righteous woman.  And, in one of the highest compliments paid to any Biblical character, she is listed in the New Testament book of Matthew as a direct ancestor of Jesus.  Such an inclusion clearly indicates Jews and Christians condone Rahab’s lying.  In almost all Jewish and Christian commentaries, her lies were moral lies because they helped achieve a supposedly good result – the ability of Jews to claim the land promised them by God.  In the name of a godly cause, it seems that almost any action, including bearing false witness and breaking one of the Ten Commandments, is not only OK, but good.

The same is also true about the conquest of the rest of Palestine.  In the Biblical book of 1st Samuel, God tells the Jews, “Now go, attack the pagans and totally destroy everything that belongs to them.  Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”  Again, almost all Jewish and Christian commentaries approve such a command – even the death of innocent children and infants.  They claim that God’s ways are perfect and that such harsh measures were necessary to insure the moral purity of Palestine, since the pagans practiced ritual sex acts and child sacrifice.  Indeed, that is the implicit motivation of God in issuing his command.

Jesus himself acknowledged that breaking absolute rules in the name of human compassion is a good and right thing.  He purposefully approved the theft of small amounts of wheat, even on the Sabbath, when one is hungry and in need.  He committed such theft himself.

While some, including the Atheist writer Richard Dawkins, assert that these examples render the Bible unworthy of respect, such an assertion is equally absolutist.  The Bible was written by many different individuals, at many different times, each with different agendas and purposes.  It is likely that the history portions of the Bible were written with the intent to justify Jewish conquest of Palestine and even to encourage a bit of boasting on their part:  “Look at how God was on our side!”  For us, however, we need NOT abandon the countless great insights and pieces of wisdom in the Bible even if portions are morally inconsistent.

The essential question for us today is how we humans often justify the methods used to achieve a desired result.  Just like the Jews of the Bible, many Americans have justified the killing of Native Americans and the conquest of their lands because it was a manifest or even Divine destiny that our continent be settled and supposedly civilized.   Our nation and its history are not perfect but America has significantly contributed to world-wide ideals of democracy, compassion and equality.  How do we reconcile that fact with our history of land theft and conquest of Native Americans?  That is not an easy answer, for if we say such actions were totally evil and indefensible no matter what, then we must also claim that America is not a just nation and its existence is based on a moral wrong.  Much like some writers of the Bible used allegedly good outcomes to justify the conquest of Palestine, so must we also grapple with our own dark history contrasted against the inherent goodness of American ideals and institutions.

All of this takes us back to the moral question posed in the movie “Lincoln”.  Does the constitutional ban on slavery – and its resulting foundation for complete human equality – somehow make the dishonest and deceitful practices Lincoln used to pass the 13th amendment permissible and even moral?  We ask ourselves once again, can a moral end justify immoral means?

John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century English philosopher, writer and economist, advanced the ideas of utilitarianism.  Mill proposed that humans judge the utility or merit of anything in life by the goodness it brings.  A thing or action is moral if it achieves the “greatest possible good for the greatest number of people.”  That is a key proposition and it can inform our own tentative approach to moral quandaries similar to Lincoln’s.

Mill rejected the Christian belief that goodness is revealed to us by God.  Rather, goodness is largely determined by reason and applied intuition.  Indeed, we have just considered examples from the Bible where seemingly immoral acts were justified by supposedly moral results.  Even God and Jesus, according to the Bible, abandoned the absolutes of the Ten Commandments and used ethical reasoning to determine that stealing, lying and killing are permissible in certain circumstances.  Such examples indicate that even religion and holy Scriptures cannot address all questions of morality.  Ultimately, we are left to ourselves, our minds, our hearts and our intuitive sense of love and compassion to determine what is good, right and true.

As Steven Spielberg depicts in his film, Lincoln knew that if an end to the Civil War resulted without an emphatic end to the very reason over which it was fought – that of slavery – then the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the war, both in the North and the South, would be of no meaning.  Even worse, without a constitutional ban on slavery – something the Emancipation Proclamation did not do – the nation could very well have found itself once again in a civil war.  American history would be very, very different – and far worse – had the 13th amendment failed.  If the amendment’s passage required a few bribes, a few untruths, a few threats and a few patronage jobs, then the great good it brought to millions of people was and is worth such actions.  Indeed, as a counter-intuitive statement, Lincoln’s lies and deceptions in that instance were deeply moral acts.  The utility, and thus the intrinsic morality of the 13th amendment have been proven time and time again.  It brought the greatest good to the greatest number of people.

In making any decision about the means we use to achieve goals that are good and right, we must apply rigorous examination.  There is little question that Lincoln deeply thought about his actions.  His guiding star was saving the United States and ending racial slavery.  He knew America was not perfect and yet he also understood the implicit goodness of our nation.  Such a nation must not perish, as he said, lest the high ideals of liberty, justice, fairness and democracy be diminished instead of enhanced.

For each of us, let us not presume to understand or know absolute morality or absolute certainty on any matter.  As we all know, there are very few absolutes in our universe.  In matters of what is right, true and good, there are even fewer.  But we have been endowed with wonderful minds, compassionate hearts and collective insights that grant us the tools to sort through moral questions with reason and heart wisdom.  I suggest we abandon the extreme poles of right and wrong, moral and immoral, believer and unbeliever, liberal and conservative, and move instead into the often messy and ill defined grey zone where compromise and collective reason prevail.  Let us look to the greats of the past – men and women like Jesus, Lincoln and others who acted not with absolute certainty but with well-reasoned intentions to serve and love as much of humanity as possible.

I wish us all peace and joy.

Our guest speaker on January 27, 2013 was Alice Skirtz, the author of the book Econocide.  Ms. Skirtz has her MSW and PhD in social work and she is an LISW-S.  As the former director of the Salvation Army social services dept. and as one of the founders of the Coalition for the Homeless, she has been a 40 year advocate for the urban poor and homeless in Cincinnati.

To listen to guest speaker Alice Skirtz, click on the download button here:

Message 119, “Uncommon New Year’s Resolutions, Staying Teachable”, 1-20-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

To Download and listen to the message, click here:

 

For many of us who love and appreciate dogs, recent research has looked into how and why they learn.  The American Kennel Club conducted research into ways dogs are teachable, the characteristics that make them so, and the breeds that are best at learning new skills or tricks.  While most dog owners will assert that their Fifi or Fido is the smartest, most loyal, and best looking, this research shows that teachability is not a function of canine intelligence.  Many dogs and breeds are very intelligent but they are not suited for being teachable in the sense that they want to learn and are quick to do so.  Some dogs are patient, gentle and quiet – ones best suited for guarding livestock or for being a household pet that is a loyal companion or a long suffering playmate to young children.  Even so, according to this research, all dogs, at any age, are capable of learning new skills or so-called tricks.

Highly teachable dogs, however, are best suited for herding livestock, for pointing and retrieving, for serving as seeing eye or aid dogs, or for more contemporary skills used in police and military work.  These dogs and breeds are known for having distinctive qualities that make them teachable.  They are energetic, eager, alert, and active with a strong work ethic and very curious minds.  In measuring teachability, dogs that learn well are able to regularly and correctly perform specific skills after only 5 or fewer command and training repetitions.  These dogs, however, are NOT always the best household pets or companions as they get bored easily and they need continual challenges and physical activity to keep them engaged.  As reported by the American Kennel Club in their research, the ten most teachable dog breeds  – but not necessarily the most intelligent  – are the American Border Collie, the Poodle, the German Shepherd,  the Doberman Pinscher, the Golden Retriever, the Sheltie,  the Labrador Retriever, the Papillon, the Rottweiler and last, but not least, the Australian Cattle dog.  If your dog is not on that list, please send your letters of protest to the AKC – and not to me!  And, if you are a cat owner and completely disgusted with my opening remarks, well…we all know that cats are far more intelligent than dogs!

At any rate, what is fascinating to me in doing the research for this message is that the qualities that make a dog highly teachable are the same for humans.  And, as with dogs, every person, no matter how old or young, is capable of learning new things and new skills.  Some people are more disposed to learn quickly but everyone CAN be taught and everyone benefits from lifelong learning and an attitude of teachability.

Phillip B. Crosby, a well known author and business quality management expert, asserted in one of his books that, “There is a theory of human behaviour that says people subconsciously retard their own growth. They come to rely on cliches and habits. Once they reach the age of their own personal comfort with the world, they stop learning and their minds run on idle for the rest of their days. They may progress organisationally, they may be ambitious and eager, and they may even work night and day, but they learn no more.”

This statement sadly describes too many people and can even describe how some of us approach life.  After some years of education and life experience, we settle into subconsciously believing that we know all we need to know.  Our values, our knowledge and our thoughts about any number of subjects, including politics and faith, begin to solidify and soon become rigid and inflexible.  Without knowing it, we can become close minded to anything new or different.  As Phillip Crosby pointed out, we might adopt a few new practices, work hard and even accept some new situations, but we don’t really learn new sets of facts or new skills or new thoughts that take us mentally and physically beyond what we knew and thought when we became too rigid.

As the third and final of my uncommon New Year’s resolutions that we’ve considered in this month of January, I believe that staying teachable is a crucial and foundational attitude for all of us.  Indeed, if we believe we have already arrived at all of the knowledge, opinions and values that we need in life, why should we attend church, why should we read new books, magazines and newspapers and why should we listen to new speakers or attend seminars and classes?  Certainly, many of us continue to do these things all our lives, but to what degree are we truly and honestly open minded?  How much of our reading, listening and so-called learning is derived from books, speakers or shows that confirm and support what we already know and believe?  How willing are we to consider totally new thoughts, skills, ways of life, opinions or values?  How capable are we to accept and adopt significant change in our lives – in where and how we live, work, attend church or find relaxation and entertainment?

While I don’t advocate thoughtless and trivial changing of our deepest convictions at the drop of a hat, I do question whether we are even minimally open to the possibility that we could learn something totally new such that we would dramatically alter our lives and beliefs.  Are we open to the  possibility that we could evolve in our thinking such that over time and after acquiring new knowledge and new insights we would find ourselves changed?

Being teachable, in my mind, is not just having an intelligent mind that is able to assimilate a few new facts.  It involves an attitude and an openness to different ways of life, thoughts and opinions.  It means being willing, no matter how painful, to consider other viewpoints and other approaches to living that are different from our own – and then honestly considering the wisdom and validity of them.  Ultimately, we may not change, but the larger question remains: have we already made up our minds to reject the new and different or, are we truly open to possible change?  Much like highly teachable dogs, do we wag our figurative tails in eager anticipation to hear and learn something new – even if it contradicts what we already think we know?

The Biblical book of Proverbs says that “The discerning heart seeks knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.”  Buddhism confirms this wisdom by asking us to grow through our minds.  Indeed, the goal in life, according to Buddhism, is to reach a state of full enlightenment about all truth.  For Jews, Muslims and Christians, enlightenment is what a person gains in eternal life – thus shaping how he or she lives and what he or she believes.  Paul, writing to the people in ancient Rome, encouraged them not to be conformed to everyday worldly patterns of thinking but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.  He asked them to be open to radically new ways of spiritual thinking – ones that embodied Jesus ethics of love, compassion, forgiveness, humility, gentleness and generosity.  Instead of living by Roman values of savage, brutal and self-focused thinking, Paul taught a new of way of life that was totally  different.  Significantly, almost all world religions advocate that their particular path to Divine truth is the better way. But, such assertions are premised on a person being open minded and willing to change.  Conversions to any faith cannot happen unless a person is teachable.

What that means for any of us is not that we automatically change our current faith or spirituality.  Instead, what it means for me is that we are called to be teachable, curious and open minded about all things, including the most fundamental faith questions humans ask.  Why are we here?  What purpose do we serve?  Is there eternal life and, if so, what will it look like?  We’re called to learn and consider the elements of ALL faiths, to ask questions, to be spiritually curious and to continually seek after things and matters that are universally and eternally true, right and good.   Spirituality, is not about arriving at hard and fast ideas and beliefs – no matter our faith.  Spirituality involves opening our minds, hearts and souls to what the Divine continually reveals to us and to all humanity.  We are spiritually inquisitive people, therefore, in order to improve ourselves and to then go out and help build a kinder, just and more joy filled world.

Being and staying teachable throughout our lives is about applying several characteristics into how we think and act.  Ultimately, as it is with dogs, teachability is not about innate intelligence.  We all know people who are quite smart but who seem to lack intuitive common sense or basic wisdom.  John Maxwell, the well known contemporary author on business and management skills says, “Teachability is not so much about competence and mental capacity as it is about attitude. It is the desire to listen, learn, and apply. It is the hunger to discover and grow. It is the willingness to learn, unlearn, and relearn.”  For Maxwell and almost any human resource manager or boss in any company or business, teachability is an essential quality desired in an employee.  It is a quality necessary for success in any line of work and, for our purposes, in any life endeavor.

Maxwell outlines several characteristics a teachable person has.  First and perhaps most important, a teachable person listens!   He or she listens with the express intent to understand what the other is saying.  So often we can appear to listen but we are mentally working ahead and thinking about what we want to say, either to agree, disagree or talk about ourselves.  Instead, the point of active listening is to not only hear the words spoken but to actively assimilate them and process them so that we fully understand the point the other is making.  We don’t have to agree or disagree.  Our goal, instead, is to comprehend in such a way that we can  repeat, using our own words, what the other has just said.

Second, teachable persons ask lots of questions.  They are eager and willing to gather more information and gain new insight.  They are like the very eager dog who almost can’t wait to be shown a new skill.  I don’t consider myself perfect in this, but I am often accused of being like a therapist when I talk to folks.  I like to ask lots of questions.  I want to know about people’s lives and their thoughts because they interest me and I learn so much from them.

Third, a teachable person is always looking for teachable moments – those unique times when one can really learn something new and different.  That might come after one makes a mistake or when someone else describes mistakes he or she made and the lessons they learned as a result.  Teachable moments are also occasions to hear new speakers, read new books or watch new movies or shows.  For me, this involves forcibly extending myself beyond what I already believe and think.

When reading facebook updates or my news page, I often struggle with reading posts from friends and others that express ideas and thoughts very different from my own.  I have the impulse to unfriend the person, reply in anger or simply hide their posts.  The same is true with commentators or TV opinion shows I come across.  I try and force myself to read and watch what others have to say not just to hear the arguments of others but to deeply understand them.  I still struggle with the impulse to immediately reject differing thoughts and move on to people and things with whom I agree.  But, as long as what people say is not hateful or mean spirited towards others, I’ll listen.  (I offer the quick aside that I strongly believe we should always be respectful in our language and never speak or write hateful or insulting words to or about anyone.)

When listening to or reading opposing opinions, I try my best to think about what the other is saying and to honestly consider the merits of their point of view.  I still struggle doing this and I may not change my opinion but I hope I am at least open to that possibility.  And, I hope that on occasion I DO change my opinion based on what I read or hear.  I am not anywhere close to perfect in being broadly open minded to opposing ideas but it is an attitude I want to increasingly adopt.  I honestly want to be a teachable person.

Fourth, Maxwell says that a teachable person clearly understands the process of learning.  We learn by regularly examining our lives – our speech and actions.  We determine how well we have performed or how effective our speech has been in any situation.  This is done through honest self-reflection and by asking for the sincere opinion of others.  After doing that, a teachable person then assesses how he or she could have done better.  That is a crucial step in learning when we accept our past mistakes and think about possible future corrections.  We have truly learned, however, when we change our behavior or speech.  Almost anything we do or communicate can be improved and altered if we are teachable and willing to learn.

Last but not least in qualities a teachable person has is the ability and willingness to honestly and deeply ask oneself how willing am I to change?  How truly teachable am I?  Am I too defensive in resisting new thoughts or actions?  Am I too arrogant by insisting my opinions or my way of doing things is absolutely right, no questions asked!?!   Am I too fearful of change and of upsetting the status quo?  Am I too afraid of failure?  Am I too lazy to do the work necessary to change?  We all know that changing our thoughts, actions or beliefs involves a process of learning that takes time and effort.  We have to work!  Am I too complacent and comfortable in my current situation or way of thinking?  Once again, we all know that change involves altering, for a time, our comfort levels and our equilibrium.  Our lives, our world view, our work and even our friends might be upset and disturbed for a time.  Am I willing to endure such hardship in order to realize a greater good?  In determining whether or not we are really teachable, we should ask ourselves these important questions and honestly answer them.  If we then realize we are not fully teachable, we should ask ourselves, do we want to be teachable and do we want to change in order to improve?  Hopefully, we all want to be better and more effective in everything and anything we do.

When I arrived at the three uncommon New Year’s resolutions I’ve used in this January message series, I saw them as three separate and unique resolutions.  As I said two weeks ago, they resonate with me.  Going through the process of researching and writing these messages, I see the three resolutions are related to each other in ways that I had not earlier seen.

I said last week that a primary goal in our lives is to live at peace with ourselves and with others.  Toward that end, one personal resolution we can undertake is to accept others as they are and to stop being judgemental.  Related to what we are discussing today, we can only change ourselves.  We cannot change others.  They must do so themselves.  Our task is to encourage people and not judge them.  Our call is to respect, honor and love all people no matter how different they are from us.

In order to accept others as they are, we will need to find ways to control and properly express our anger.  Yes, others hurt us.  Yes, others express opinions and act in ways that are not only different from our own but seem to confront who and what we are.  Such differences can easily excite feelings of anger or resentment in us.  But, as we discussed last week, anger expressed with violent speech or violent actions are selfish and egocentric.  So too is passive aggressive anger where we hide our feelings while acting out in subtle but destructive ways.  We control angry feelings by remaining calm, by not suppressing the feelings and by actively seeking solutions to issues through gentle dialog and negotiation.

In accepting the differences in others and by finding ways to control our anger, we can build peace in the world and in our lives by being teachable and willing to change – as we have discussed today.  Usually, that means we are humble enough to accept that others have valid opinions of their own.  We will also accept the very real possibility that we are wrong in at least some of our most sincere thoughts, beliefs or practices.  We are all imperfect people full of issues and flaws.  The beauty in us is revealed by our humility, love and ability to change for the better.   The wise, the good and the strong are those who can accept others as they are, who learn to control and appropriately express their anger and who then are willing and able to be taught and to change.

My dear friends, life is so hard for each and every one of us.  No matter who we are, we each struggle with ways to live peacefully, happily and healthily.  We each want what every living soul wants – to live with  purpose, to find basic security and to have opportunities to be happy.

On this eve of celebrating one of the great prophets of history, Martin Luther King, Jr., let us live true to his legacy of nonviolent change.  To bring about peace in our time, we must bring about peace in our souls.  Embracing humanity in all its wide diversity, let us act and speak not in anger but in love.  And then, let us work for positive change in ourselves and in our world.

I wish us all great success in our New Year’s resolutions as I wish you each, here and listening online, much peace, joy and love.

 

Message 118, “Uncommon New Year’s Resolutions: Lengthening Our Anger Fuse”, 1-13-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, perhaps some of you have heard of the Anger Universal Church of America.  It’s a place that celebrates rage and fury.  Each Sunday, it practices rites of bashing of the heads and the Holy Sacrifice of Community.  It’s mission is to serve its own agenda and NOT yours.   They hold a monthly blessing of the guns.  A statue of Sarah Palin shooting a rifle is above the altar – with the church motto underneath: “We worship the rogue in everyone.”  Insults are traded instead of prayers.  Church patron saints are Mel Gibson and Lorena Bobbitt and a frequent hymn they sing is Merle Haggards “The Fightn’ Side of Me”.

If that sounds like a perfect church for you, then perhaps you’re in the wrong place this morning!  My topic today is the opposite of what might be celebrated at that fictitious church.  Sadly, too many people attend churches that teach gentleness and self-control but, in their everyday lives, such folks act as if they attend the Anger Universal Church.  We’ll consider today the second of my three uncommon New Year’s resolutions I’ve chosen for our January message series: “lengthening our anger fuses.”

Mark Twain, whom many of you know I like to quote a lot, he once said that if one is angry, he or she should count to four.  If one is very, very angry, one should just swear!  Such a witty statement seems to comically support the popular notion that “mad is bad.”  In many churches and among a lot of well meaning people, anger is seen as an emotion we must work to eliminate.  That’s an impossible task.  Anger is a common human feeling and one that, from an evolutionary standpoint, has served us well.  Angry feelings have allowed our species to survive because the emotion stirs us to defend ourselves.  It is a physiological fact that the emotion of anger releases a flood of adrenaline into our bloodstreams initiating the well known “fight or flight” response.  But like many other human emotions, our call is find a way to control angry feelings and to channel them so that they do not control us.  To feel angry for a moment, is not bad.  It is how we respond to that feeling that can be bad.  Indeed, the title of this message is on lengthening our anger fuse such that we find ways to control angry feelings and appropriately express them before they ignite into something destructive – to ourselves and to others.

Almost all of us struggle with how we respond to angry feelings.  We can either explode in fury at a person or a situation, we can engage in more subtle and hidden forms of anger expression, or we can learn to control it and express it in ways that create positive solutions. While we all know explosive varieties of anger, the passive aggressive kind is harder to identify.  Usually, a passive aggressive pulls away and hides their anger while still pouting, demanding their rights, using sarcastic humor and quietly sabotaging a solution.

Ultimately, inappropriate expressions of anger are selfish acts.  Our egos, our sense of self and our beliefs about how the world should operate have been violated and we seek vengeance!  So, we explode or we passive aggressively retreat.   But, too often we fail to deal with what initiated our feelings in the first place.  We don’t calmly verbalize our feelings, we don’t seek a resolution of the problem, we don’t accept something we can’t control, and we don’t forgive and move on.  Bitterness and resentment pollute our thoughts and actions.  As the Buddha pointed out, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; but you are the one who gets burned.”

Just as our bodies respond to feelings of anger by helpfully pumping adrenaline into our bloodstreams and prompting us to act, our bodies also respond in other ways, most of which are profoundly harmful to us the longer we stay bitter, frustrated and enraged.  Adrenaline causes our hearts to beat faster, thereby raising our blood pressure.  It tells our liver to shut down causing massive amounts of cholesterol to be dumped into our blood instead of being processed and eliminated as waste.  Researchers at the Ohio State University showed that angry feelings also cause the release of an enzyme called homocysteine which narrows blood vessels.  It’s an evolutionary response to pool blood in our core and thus protect us in any physical fight.  People who are chronically angry, resentful or bitter, however, suffer increased heart disease and risk of stroke as a result of this enzyme.  Those who are passive aggressive and hold onto their anger for long periods of time, they experience even higher and more prolonged levels of the enzyme.  From a psychological and physiological standpoint, uncontrolled angry feelings  – whether of the exploding variety or of the passive aggressive kind – both do significant harm.  Uncontrolled anger is an acid that burns all who are touched by it.

As with most life issues we face, I believe there is a spiritual response to feeling anger.  Intuitively, we know there are universal truths of goodness and decency to which we are called to practice.  Indeed, spirituality is about searching for ways to live more peacefully, cooperatively and lovingly.  As I often note when we discuss matters of self-growth, we cannot hope to heal a broken and hurting world unless we also heal our broken and hurting selves.  A spiritual effort to alleviate hate and injustice in the world must begin with a spiritual journey to heal the self –  one’s mind, soul, heart and inner being.  How can we hope to eliminate warfare, bigotry and hatred – all expressions of anger of one sort or another – if we cannot learn to better control anger within ourselves?  As we often say, we must BE the change we want to see.

For myself, I don’t usually vent my anger with great outbursts of rage.  As a conflict avoider, I hate violent, bitter or vicious expressions.  Because I saw too much of that in my youth, my tendency is to retreat and suppress anger or conflict.  That may be one reason why it took so long for me to come out as a gay man – I avoided confronting the truth in myself and the resulting conflict with all that I had been taught.

But by suppressing angry feelings, I do not eliminate them or resolve them.  They still linger and they burn a hole in me.  I can express those inner feelings in passive aggressive ways by withholding kindness or being more distant.  Over the years, I have forced myself to be more open about how I feel and what I think.  When conflicts do arise or when I do feel angry emotions, I am learning to engage in calm discussion and to find solutions versus avoiding conflict and thus feeling bitter.  I am not even close to being cured of this issue, but I am growing.

The opposite of my approach of suppressing anger is to loudly and violently burst into rage and use physical or verbal violence.  We see that too often today with shootings, war, hate filled speech, name calling, bullying and enraged tirades.  Such visible manifestations of anger do great harm both physically and psychologically – to the victim and the perpetrator.  An end to violence in our time requires a conscious effort to control and appropriately express any type of uncontrolled or inappropriate anger.

The Greek philosopher Horace said that an outburst of anger is momentary madness.  And, when we see or experience such anger, we know that Horace was right.  Angry people can act in ways that are irrational and totally contrary to their values.  Almost all experts and spiritual commentators, however, assert that we can learn to control our angry feelings.   The prophet Muhammad said that, “The strong is not the one who overcomes people by use of his strength, rather he is the one who controls himself while in anger.”

To that end, experts propose that the first and most important way to control our anger is to claim it, acknowledge it and identify it.  Since feelings of anger are natural and a part of a survival instinct, to deny we are angry is to lie to ourselves and to others.  When we feel angry, we should admit it and then identify what has really upset us.  Too often we can feel anger at a person or event for no reason.  Instead, we might really be upset about something else.  We must learn to be honest with and about our feelings.

The second step we should take, after admitting we feel angry, is to simply pause.  In almost all instances of feeling anger – ones where we are not threatened with immediate physical harm – we should make a conscious decision to overcome the instant impulse to fight or run away.  Instead, experts suggest several practices when we feel anger.  One is to engage in deep breathing – inhaling to the count of four and exhaling in the same way and to do this for as long as it takes to feel calm again.  Such deep breathing oxygenates our brains to help us think more clearly and it immediately helps to slow down our heart rates.  That, in turn, slows the distribution of adrenaline throughout our bodies and physically helps us counteract the fight or flight impulses caused by that hormone.  Other experts say we should close our eyes to help refocus our minds.  Still others say we should move into sunlight either by going outdoors or moving to a window.  Sunlight affects how we think and literally brightens dark outlooks.  With prolonged feelings of anger, some experts encourage exercise as a way to release pleasure causing endorphin hormones.  And, still others, suggest finding humor in a situation.  We might see the silliness in getting angry at something we can’t control – like shaking our fist at traffic – or the ridiculousness of an insult thrown our way.  The ability to laugh at oneself or find humor in the middle of any conflict is a perfect cure.  We so often take ourselves too seriously and feel insulted when we should simply laugh or let comments pass.

Whatever we do, this crucial second step is to purposefully pause and stop any impulsive action or speech.  Importantly, we should tell the person at whom we are angry that we are not ignoring them but taking time to reflect and cool down.  That admission may help the other person do the same.

In our digital age of instant and impersonal communication via e-mail, text messages and facebook, it is even more important to stop and pause when we feel angry.  Far too many e-mails and text messages are sent out in anger, often making accusations and using speech that is not only hateful but incorrect.  One should resolve never to send out an e-mail or other instant digital communication in any conflict, disagreement or anger situation without first saving it, waiting on it and then re-reading it a day or two later.

Once we sense our anger is under control – that we don’t feel impulses of rage – we can begin to deal with the feelings.  Spiritual advisers encourage people, as a next step, to tap into their inner values of kindness, mercy and forgiveness.  This must be a conscious decision.  It won’t be easy.  If we focus on being graceful and kind to the other, angry feelings will dissipate.   Acting with grace means understanding why the person acted as they did, feeling compassion and love for the person and then simply extending mercy by offering forgiveness.  As I said, this must be an intentional effort on our part – at least while we are trying to change.  In time, turning anger into mercy will become increasingly natural.

The fourth step in controlling our feelings of anger or bitterness is to think about, and then seek, solutions to the issue.   This involves calmly communicating to the other person, if possible, why we feel angry.  One should avoid loud and accusatory words while, instead, making calm statements of fact – saying, for example, “When you forgot my birthday, I felt ignored and angry.”  With such a simple admission, people can move toward a solution and find ways to prevent future conflict.  Ultimately, as we all know, the spirituality we all seek is to live in peace.  Do we pursue vengeance and thus an increase in anger or do we seek peace – a way to move beyond our hurt?  Are we part of the problem of anger in our world or part of the solution?

Last but not least, we can help reduce future feelings of anger by recognizing their triggers in us.  By admitting to our anger triggers, we can better plan control strategies for the future.  And, by knowing our anger triggers we can also explore the underlying causes of them.  Are there issues of self-confidence or self-esteem involved in my anger?  If so, how can I work to feel better about myself?  If being angry at a lack of control over people or situations causes me to feel anger, what thoughts help me feel better?  Might I focus on areas of life I can control – and simply accept the rest?  Or, might I seek strategies to solve the problem and thus reassert control?  If traffic makes me feel out of control and angry, perhaps I can drive at different times or use a different driving route or listen to soothing music or practice deep breathing.  Those who are impotent, they rage and fume at the world.  Those who are powerful, they work toward a solution.

One of Jesus’ primary concerns was the hypocrisy he saw in so-called moral and religious persons.  Addressing that concern, he spoke against appearing outwardly good while being inwardly flawed.  People can be like whitewashed tombs, he said.  They can appear clean and bright on the outside but be dirty and full of death inside.  To those who piously speak against adultery, he said that lusting in one’s heart and mind is virtually the same thing as actually being unfaithful.  Regarding perfectly valid opinions against murder and violence, he pointed out that people symbolically murder others with their inner anger even as they appear outwardly pleasant and nice.  That can hold true for me and perhaps some of you.  Outwardly, we can appear kind but inwardly we can seethe with bitter thoughts.  We act on those thoughts by withholding affection, kindness and resolution of a problem.  Some of us don’t hide our anger but verbally abuse others as a result of angry feelings.  Based on Jesus’ ethics, however, if we hold onto or express uncontrolled and unresolved anger, we are no better than the violent thugs we all condemn.  We have symbolically committed murder.

But such anger and violence toward others is exactly what all of us oppose.  We sing hymns yearning for peace.  We pray against hate.  I sign most of my e-mails and letters extending peace.  If we actively seek peace in our world, if we speak against violence, rape, intolerance and hate, if we voice protest against war, if we decry horrible mass shootings, then we must also be true to those ideals with our hearts, minds, words and actions.  We must seek to control the anger that poisons our souls.

In the year ahead, I encourage us to consider the uncommon New Year’s resolution to lengthen our anger fuses by learning and adopting ways to control it.  Let us find solutions to issues that divide us and then let us open our hearts to show mercy and forgiveness to any and all who have angered us.  If there is anyone in our lives right now with whom we hold active or suppressed anger, we must let it go.   Let us undertake in the weeks ahead to do so.  We must search out that person and seek resolution of our issue with him or her.  If they do not respond, we have done our part.  If they do, we have helped build peace in our time.  Whatever we do, we must forgive, let go and move on to renewed love.   Holding onto anger and expressing it in hateful or passive aggressive ways helps to destroy the world.  Let us, instead, build a better world by resolving to build better, more peaceful and less angry selves.

 

And, indeed, I wish us all much peace and joy…

 

 

Message 117, Uncommon New Year’s Resolutions: Accepting Others as They Are, 1-6-13

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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Some anonymous witty person once said, “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other.”   And, for those of you who keep track, I used this same monthly message theme of uncommon New Year’s resolutions last year.  While all of my messages and their weekly topics are original and I have yet to repeat one, I do repeat some of my monthly themes.

So, if the uncommon resolutions we considered last year did not go in one year and out the other, you’ll remember they were for us to perhaps resolve to be more gentle, more forgiving or to laugh more.  You can find and listen to those three messages online.  This January, I’ve chosen three more uncommon resolutions that resonate with me.  We’ll consider resolutions to accept others as they are, to be slow to anger and, finally, to stay teachable.

It is said that over 100 million Americans make at least one New Year’s resolution each year.  Only a third will have at least modestly succeeded in keeping their resolution by the following year.  Experts encourage us to allow for lapses and not quit our resolution if we do fail a few times.  The important thing is to approach a resolution one day at a time and seek success for that day only.  Having a friend or family member to act as a cheerleader or encourager is also helpful for most people.  This year, the five most popular resolutions, according to one poll, are to be more productive at work, to get organized, to start a business or find a stable job, to work on boosting one’s self confidence and, fifth, to be more open and friendly toward others.  The resolutions I’ve chosen this year don’t appear on any top ten resolution list for any of the past several years – so, as I assert, I think they are uncommon.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous English playwright, wrote in his play “Pygmalion” that people should consider other people as if they were in heaven, where each soul is equally good and beautiful.  As a socialist, Shaw used many of his plays to poke fun at the arrogant and snobbish attitudes of British aristocracy and the class system that perpetuated their control.  And his play “Pygmalion”, better known to Americans as “My Fair Lady”, is one of his most famous and most pointed comments on the class system, whether it be in England or anywhere else.

For our purposes today, Shaw asserts in “Pygmalion” that efforts to judge and classify people by outward appearance, speech or behavior is not only wrong, it overlooks the unique human differences within each person.  Critically judging others is not only arrogant, it ignores what is good, decent and right in each person.  Shaw implicitly suggests in “Pygmalion” that we negatively judge others and seek to change them far too much.  Instead of focusing on our own issues in need of change, we are too eager to note the deficiencies in others, to call their attention to the perceived flaws and then to offer unsolicited opinions on how they should change.

While most of us would never presume to critically judge another because of their race, faith, gender or sexuality, many of us are too willing to find fault with those closest to us – family, friends or associates. We set ourselves as the arbiter of how others around us should act, appear or think.  Without realizing what we are doing, we convey the message that our way of doing things – from the big to the small – is the right way.  Indeed, while we believe we are tolerant and accepting of others, we often fail to really accept and celebrate the differences in those closest to us.

Faced with many pious religious critics of his own, Jesus pointedly called them out for their judgemental attitudes.  He said to one group of religious elites, “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?”

This vivid analogy used by Jesus – of big or small pieces of wood in one’s eye – is memorable and perfectly captures his teaching style.  What Jesus taught with the analogy was not only a lesson against hypocrisy but also a well-known fact.  It is not our duty, nor within our capacity, to create lasting change in others.  Change in behavior must come from within a person and from their own conscious decision to learn, grow and improve.   As Jesus taught, we must not try to change or be critical of others.  We should judge and change ourselves first.

This attitude gets to the heart of loving the self and loving others.  It’s a spirituality of acceptance and total tolerance of others that is rooted in a love foe all people.  Jesus taught that we must not judge and we are to turn the other cheek.  The Buddha encouraged his followers to cultivate a limitless heart toward others.  Echoing Jesus, the prophet Muhammad taught his followers to first accomplish a “conquest of the self” and thereby love others first.  Deepak Chopra, the contemporary spiritual commentator, says that inner peace comes from an acceptance of other people, events and situations as they occur.  While he says every event in our life offers seeds for self growth, we must engage in “defenselessness”.  This involves letting go of a desire to blame or find fault in others or in ourselves.  Genuine peace and love comes not from complaint, bitterness or anger at others or at ourselves.  Instead, we are to act in a manner that models the better behavior we advocate.

And that is exactly what Jesus taught the pious religious critics who enjoyed judging others based on how they acted, prayed or believed.  They judged others while ignoring the blatant ways they themselves were unloving and hypocritical.   This is also an essential message found in the play “Pygmalion”.

Henry Higgins spends weeks cajoling and teaching Eliza how to be a refined and genteel woman.  After she successfully acts out at a garden party what she has learned about being a so-called lady, Higgins exults.  He had crafted an aristocrat out of a supposedly low class prostitute.  But it was all veneer with no substance. Indeed, the socialist Shaw makes the larger point that by focusing on Eliza’s outward appearance, language and behavior, Higgins followed the arrogant notion that goodness is found in superficial qualities like dress, speech and wealth. That is the false criteria of class, according to Shaw.  Higgins treated Eliza like an object to be shaped, much like the play’s namesake Pygmalion of Greek mythology.

In that myth, a lonely and unmarried artist yearns to meet a perfect woman.  He sculpts his image of female perfection in marble, which the goddess Aphrodite then brings to life for him.  The artist soon learns that perfection is not the ideal he envisioned, as the woman is too perfect and thus lacks the kind of real humanity we all desire in our romantic partners.

But that is also how Eliza turns out.  She is too perfect.  After all of Higgins’ teaching efforts to change her, Eliza acted the part of a beautiful, elegant and refined aristocratic woman too well.  It was a false front that hid the unique inner strength and power of Eliza, the street smart survivor whose own parents had largely abandoned her.

Shaw uses Higgins’ friend Colonel Pickering as the moral center of his play.  Pickering does not instruct Eliza how to act nor does he endorse efforts to change her. Instead, he very simply treats her with respect, concern and decency.  Shaw notes in the play that while Higgins treats everyone he meets with the same condescending manner that only he knows how people should act, Pickering treats everyone he meets, no matter how low or high class they are, as a Duke or Duchess.  Indeed, Eliza herself tells Colonel Pickering that it was HE who taught her how to be a real lady – one of kindness, gentleness and humility.  He did so not by instruction, but by simply being a man of kindness, gentleness and humility.  Pickering democratically celebrates each person without trying to change or judge them.

And that is precisely the spiritual message we might learn and New Year’s resolution we might adopt.  Instead of seeking to tell others how to act, we must simply BE an example of how we believe others should act.  If we want to change others or change the world, we must BE the change we want to happen.   Does a loved one or partner or friend have a behavior you wish they would change?  Instead of nagging the person or telling them how wrong they are, our call is to accept the person as they are and encourage change, if it is even needed, by being the person we are.  We are to stop judging and start being.  That does not mean abandoning values and principles we believe are right and true.  It means, instead, that we accept the truth that the only person we can change is ourselves.  Genuine change in any person is a function of inner resolve and not a force that comes from outside.

This truth is consistent with the idea that god is not an outside force that influences the world.  We are the gods and goddesses who change the world for better or for worse.  The same holds true for our inner minds, thoughts and behaviors.  We are the gods and goddesses who make ourselves grow and learn.  Change in us comes not from the God of the Bible or from anyone who presumes to act like God by judging us. It is we who initiate inner change and we who then execute it.

Combined with our resolve to accept others as they are, is the need to be empathetic and humble – two ideals I believe are important in any person.  If we accept others as they are and how they act, we empathize with them by seeking to understand the circumstances, facts and underlying reasons for why they act as they do.  Second, in accepting others as they are, we practice humility by realizing our way may not be the only way.  Others act in ways that are neither good or bad – they are just different from our own.  Humility means accepting that fact.  It means seeing the world in a vibrancy of differences – not only of race, faith, gender or sexuality – but in opinions, politics, behaviors, personalities, likes and dislikes.

That returns us to the teachings of Buddha and Deepak Chopra.  By viewing others with a Buddhist limitless heart, we will practice Chopra’s “defenselessness” – accepting people and events as they happen without blame or criticism.  Not only will we find peace within ourselves, we will be at peace with others.

And that is precisely a lesson I must learn.  Not only do I need to try and be more “defenseless” with myself – accepting what I have done and not worrying about the past  – I must find a greater peace with others.  As a parent, I too often nagged and repeatedly suggested how I thought my daughters should act.  I can lapse into that mode too easily now, even though they are adults.  I tell them, for instance, what classes they might take or career paths they could choose.  While I don’t advocate abandoning the role of parent for minor children who depend on safe and loving guidance, my approach with my adult daughters must be more in the form of a cheerleader.  Yes, I’m available to offer advice if I’m asked but often that needs to be in the form of sharing my experiences instead of my opinions.  It should also involve far more listening than talking.  By allowing my daughters to share openly and freely with me about their dreams, fears and mistakes, and without judging them, I offer them the freedom to figure things out for themselves.  And it endorses the idea that only they can change their lives.  I am powerless to do that for them.

As your Pastor and thus your employee, I put myself in a different position with regard to suggestions and criticisms.  I have openly invited and asked for your advice about my work.   Your advice in that regard helps me not only know how you feel about my work performance, but also helps me determine ways to improve and better meet your needs.  And that holds true in most romantic relationships and employee / employer relationships.  If we are truly humble and willing to learn, then we will seek the advice of others.  We will gladly give close family members, best friends and our employers the permission to advise us on matters that pertain to them.

Importantly, however, how we advise or criticize others, even when they ask for our wisdom, is crucial.  Nobody gives permission to be abused or attacked by anyone.  Is our advice to family members or those who work for us about lovingly helping them, or about attacking them?  Do we listen?  Do we have all the facts?  Do we seek solutions?  Do we practice the ethics of love, gentleness, empathy and humility in what we say?  Ultimately, do we practice the Golden Rule – advising and speaking to and about others in the same manner we would want to be advised and spoken about?

A New Year’s resolution to accept others as they are does not mean we should  abandon our own core beliefs and values.  Nor is it about being a doormat and victim.  Instead, it is about a spiritual form of finding peace for ourselves and encouraging it with others.  It’s about finding the kind of inner confidence in ourselves such that we have no insecure impulses to find fault in others.  It means accepting that we alone are responsible for our happiness and success in life.  We cannot expect others to create it for us or to always please us.  Indeed, accepting others for who they are lets go of self-centered thinking that others around us must act and behave as we wish them to act and behave.

Imagine a world where everyone acts as Colonel Pickering does in the play “Pygmalion” – one who treated everyone as a Duke or Duchess. Imagine a world that follows the examples of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and Gandhi – those who sought not to judge others but to instead BE examples of peace and goodness themselves.  There is an old Christian cliche that rings true in this regard – one that few Christians truly follow but one that all people could heed.  The saying encourages people to preach the good news of love, generosity and forgiveness as often as possible and, only when absolutely necessary, to use words.  The moral of that saying is to focus on the self and act according to the ideals all of us claim to admire.  We must walk our talk.  Let us not judge as much as let us love.  Let us not seek change in others as much as we seek it in ourselves.  Only by each person working to improve their own inner selves will the world be a better place.

I have many pieces of wood in my eyes.  I assume some of you have a few in your own.  Whether they be bits of sawdust or large planks, such differences about us are what makes the world a beautiful, engaging and fascinating place.  Let us resolve to accept others – and ourselves –  without blame or fault.  And let us acknowledge that if change is needed, it can only come from within.

I wish us all a peaceful and joyous New Year.

Message 116, “It’s A Wonderful Life” Holiday: The Power of an Underdog

(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

Watch this film clip prior to listening to the message: Click here.

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Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at this holiday film classic “It’s A Wonderful Life” from a few different angles.  We talked two weeks ago about how the film helps to redefine what is considered to be a family.  George Bailey comes to understand that family is not just those who are related to him by marriage or by blood but by affinity, shared experiences and mutual care.  Family for George and for us are those whom we rely on in times of trouble – friends, associates, members of one’s faith community and even total strangers.  As I said in my message two weeks ago, our real family members are the people in our lives related not by blood but by heart.

And last Sunday, we saw how the film shows us that small acts of kindness or service to others send out waves of influence far into the future – much like ripples created from dropping pebbles into a pond.  George discovers in the movie what life would be like had he never been born – how his family, his friends and his community would be far worse if he had never lived – and thus changed through his big and small acts of influence.  Our call is to live like George – to do our part by impacting the world for the better, and in our own way acting much like the little “g” gods we were created to be.  God is not some outside influence controlling our lives, she or he is us and it is WE who are to work in helping to build a better world.

And consistent with those two themes from the movie is one from the clip we just saw.  Far from being a man of power and wealth, George Bailey is an Everyman.  He’s not college educated, rich or from a prestigious family.  He’s a little guy who fights passionately for what he believes to be right – to help other average people, to speak against greed and indifference, and to promote opportunity for everyone.

George Bailey is the classic underdog in life who is up against strong forces of money and influence exemplified by the town tycoon, Henry Potter.  What he discovers during the course of the film is that genuine strength comes not from being rich, well-armed or connected to people and positions of power.  The paradox of the underdog is that strength comes from weakness, humility, gentleness and concern for others.  George is the perfect Christmas hero – an underdog much like the historical person Jesus was – poor, uneducated, from a backward and insignificant town and born to equally poor, young and uneducated parents.  Despite his flaws, his weaknesses, and his relative poverty, George discovers the innate power of his ethics, compassion and desire for basic justice.  There is strength in weakness.  There is power in being an underdog.

We find hundreds of examples of that fact in history and in popular culture like movies or books.  Fictional and mythological underdogs abound.  Hollywood loves them.  As a few examples for us to consider from fiction and mythology, (show slide) Moses led his people out of slavery and into a promised land – despite his fears and lack of self-confidence.  (show slide) The mythical David, as a symbol of the historically oppressed Jewish people, fought and conquered a much stronger Goliath.  (show slide)  Rocky Balboa is the classic underdog who fought and defeated much stronger boxing opponents.  (show slide)  Clark Kent is the fictional nerd and underdog whose alter-ego is Superman.  (show slide)  Captain Underpants is a contemporary cartoon character who, like many nerds and offbeat kids, fights against bullies and adults who taunt them.  And, finally, (show slide) Rudolph is a classic fictional underdog – a symbol of those who are different and shunned by others.  He nevertheless heroically saves Christmas.

From the pages of history are many other underdogs who altered the course of human life.  (show slide)  Gandhi was a man of small stature with unusual ideas about personal habits but who, by his non-violent protests and ideals, defeated the British Empire and forced it out of his native India. (show slide)  Nelson Mandela fought white establishment and brought down South Africa’s apartheid system from a prison cell.  (show slide)  Abraham Lincoln is the archetype of an American underdog hero.  Educated by himself and a small town lawyer of no wealth or prestige, Lincoln rose to the Presidency and navigated the nation through its most serious crisis.  He had a deep sense of humility and self-effacing charm that acknowledged his underdog status.  Once, when accused by an opponent of being two-faced, Lincoln quickly replied, “If I were two-faced, do you think I would wear the one I have on!?”  (show slide)  Martin Luther King, Jr.  walked in the non-violent footsteps of Jesus and Gandhi to bring down American Jim Crow laws and inspire a nation.

Each of these fictional and historical underdogs found greatness not in money, status or military conquests but in their commitment to high ideals.  They remind us of what we celebrate today – the birthday of a prophet, a teacher, a man of history who has profoundly impacted the world.  One who, by his ideals and his teachings, radically influenced the way humanity thinks about violence, forgiveness and concern for fellow humans.

Whatever our beliefs about the Biblical Christmas story, we cannot ignore its essential message that each of us, in our ordinary or humble ways, can change the world for the better.  As arguably the most influential person in human history, Jesus began, lived and ended his life as an underdog.

Jesus was a nobody who hung out with other so-called nobodies in his society – thieves, prostitutes, fishermen, lepers and women.  He was described as ugly, scorned by the elites and a man of sorrow and depression.  He did not promote the advantages of money or military might but advocated, instead, virtues of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness and non-violence.  Far from being a warrior king of great physical power, he exerted influence through the power of his ideas, his compassion and his humility.  Indeed, Christian author Philip Yancey once said that while the world celebrates wealth and influence – the heart of Jesus was with the poor, weak, hungry, sick and outcast.

We find from the story of Jesus, from fiction and from the examples of history that there is strength in weakness.  There is power in being an underdog.  There is greatness not in arrogance, but in lowliness, flawed humanity and a humble heart.

The irony of this fact is that as humans we strive to be strong, powerful and rich.  We want to be seen as successful in the game of life – as winners and not losers.  Too often, we instinctively celebrate brute strength or great knowledge over thoughtful introspection, war over deliberate negotiation, and ironclad conviction over compromise and cooperation.

Those who are underdogs, who are considered weak by the world’s standards, they often find their power in the ability to see the potential of others.  People who are underdog heroes are not conflicted by their own flaws or diminished by the abilities of others.  They offer the kind of grace and confidence to allow others to achieve and succeed according to each person’s individual strengths.  Most importantly, underdog heroes have deeply rooted empathy for the struggle of others.  Better able than most who enjoy the fruits of wealth, status and success, underdogs understand the difficulties, pain, hard work and perseverance of those who must struggle just to survive.

And Americans have always loved underdogs.  Our nation began as an underdog and we celebrate those who by diligence and effort make their own way in the world.  As a nation of underdogs, we also incline to empathy and compassion for people who are equally underdogs.  We celebrate, serve and cheer them on.  Without making too much of a political comment, our last election was, I believe, decided by this sense of American empathy:  Who did most voters believe is an underdog and thus able to identify with and understand their own personal struggles?

The paradox about ourselves, however, is that as much as we admire strength, we cheer for the underdog.  Our need as individuals and as a nation, however, is to learn and adopt the ethics and values of the humble.  We need to embrace the irony that there is strength and goodness in weakness.  Underdogs are more likely to seek cooperation by promoting the individual strengths of each person.  Underdogs are more able to empathize with the weak and powerless by understanding that only when most people have opportunities in life to achieve and thrive, will society as a whole be better off.

George Bailey did not run a charity that gave out free money nor did he advocate for a government to do the same.  He ran a for-profit bank that trusted the implicit goodness of all people to work hard if only they are given a chance – a helping hand up instead of a helping hand out.  He challenged Henry Potter for not loaning a taxi driver the money to buy a house because the loan was too small and the risk too great.  George’s bank did make that loan, however.  As an underdog, George saw in the taxi driver an ordinary Everyman like himself – someone who worked hard, tried to do the right things in life and dreamed like all people to raise a family in a decent and safe home.  Customers in his bank, as he said in the clip we just saw, are people with dreams and fears and struggles.  They are not cattle or calculations on a ledger sheet for how to amass great wealth.  That is a deeply American value.  It is a deeply human value.  It is an intrinsic value of Christmas and of the historical Jesus.  Every human is fearfully and wonderfully made, with dignity and value, and with unique abilities to offer the world.

This Christmas, let us aspire to our inner underdog.  Let us celebrate a culture of humility, gentleness and, indeed, weakness.  In doing so, we will find new strength, new abilities and new powers to build a more compassionate world.  Out of the tragedy last week in Newtown, Connecticut, we learned even in horrific moments of violence, underdogs have power and strength.  A principal who dedicated her life to serving children, physically threw herself at the armed gunman and helped save many young lives, even as she was herself killed.  A teacher hurriedly rushed her students into a closet and then lied to the gunman that they were in the cafeteria – even as she too was killed but her students spared.  Their names and their legacy of underdog heroism will live far longer than the strutting actions of a gunman who arrogantly sought violence in a false belief it gave him power.

The film “It’s A Wonderful Life” shows us the innate strength of an underdog hero like George Bailey.  The story of Christmas shows us the power of humility and weakness in a child born in a manger.  It shows us the strength of ideals like generosity, care, tolerance, non-violence and forgiveness in the life of that child who grew into a man of no wealth, prestige, beauty or military might.  As people with flaws, insecurities, weaknesses, fears and doubts of our own, let us each find our underdog selves.   True to the life and ethics of Jesus and true to all of history’s underdogs, let us then go out and build a brighter, more peaceful and more joyous world.

 

I wish us all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year…