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

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There is an old joke that has been often told about why Moses and the Jewish people wandered lost in the desert for forty years.  Had the Jews been led by women, instead of by men, they would have asked for directions almost immediately and saved themselves all that time!  Indeed, the joke pokes fun at men as it stereotypes them as too stubborn and arrogant to ask for help.  While there is some truth to this stereotype, it’s also clear that many women have bought into the idea that dogged independence is the mark of true strength.

A more recent story is told about a feminist life coach who had just spent a few days at a conference listening to arrogant men speak of their abilities.   After boarding her airplane home, she went to lift her heavy roller bag into the overhead bin.  Tired and weak from a long day, she struggled to get the bag off the ground.  A man behind her reached out and offered to help.  She brusquely pushed him aside and struggled even harder to lift the bag.  Eventually, she did get it over her head but her arms buckled and the bag nearly crashed onto the head of a seated passenger.  Luckily, the Good Samaritan who had earlier offered his help quickly grabbed the bag before it did any harm.  He swiftly lifted it into the overhead bin.  The female life coach suddenly realized that her stubbornness and wariness of cocky men had made her arrogant and cocky.  She’d been unwilling to accept or ask for help even as she clearly needed it.  Her attitude had nearly caused someone to get hurt

The fundamental issue with ancient Jewish men, as the joke suggests, was one of arrogance and pride.  That same issue affected the female life coach who believed that as a self-empowered woman, she had the strength and independence to take care of herself, thank you very much!

Learning to ask for help is the uncommon New Year’s resolution I ask us to consider today.  On the surface, asking for help from others appears to be needy and self-focused.  It’s an ironic twist on the ethic of helping others more than we help ourselves.  Indeed, how is asking for help NOT a form of selfishness and arrogance?

The truth is that failing to ask for help is a pervasive problem in American culture and history.  Americans have long honored the rugged individual and the independent cowboy who can do it all without any help from others.   It’s an ethos that is a part of our mythology that the true greatness of our nation lies in the “can do” spirit of the individual as opposed to the cooperative abilities of our diverse population.  This individualist mindset hungers to be in control.  It refuses to admit weakness or vulnerability.  It believes strength and success are achieved only by the person who pulls oneself up by his or her bootstraps, no matter the circumstances.  It is a belief rooted in pride of the self – believing that the individual is the center of the universe, instead of the wider creation.

I can suffer from this condition myself even as I believe I am compassionate, cooperative and want to help others.  Too often, I fail to ask for help when I need it or, even worse, I reject help that is offered me.  I fear being judged if I’m seen as weak or needy.  I want to be a helper more than someone who is helped.  My root issue is pride.  I don’t want you or others to see my flaws.  While I am getting better at recognizing when I need help and then asking for it, it is still an issue for me.  As I’ve said before, I often pick message topics that speak to me as much as they might to you.

Refusing to ask for help is the same problem that causes people, usually men, to drive around lost.  It leads far too many people to ignore symptoms of health problems and refuse to see a doctor until its too late.  Emergency rooms are daily filled with men and women who ignore early heart attack signs thinking they can tough out a bit of chest pain.  It causes some to wait until they are deep in debt before going to a credit counselor.  It causes managers and leaders to take on too many tasks while failing to delegate responsibility or admit they need help.  The result is burn out or mediocre performance.  It leads nations into arrogantly believing they can act alone in financial or military action while failing to negotiate, compromise or cooperate with other nations.  Sadly, Japanese nuclear managers would not admit they needed help during the Fukishima nuclear reactor meltdown crisis a few years ago – thus allowing the situation to spiral out of control.  It’s an issue in our own lives when we play the stoic martyr and push away people who deeply want to love and serve us.  Refusing to admit weakness and failing to ask for help is a significant problem in our culture.  Paradoxically, it is not a sign of strength but instead one born of insecurity.  Learning to ask for help is an uncommon resolution many of us ought to consider for the New Year.

It was Benjamin Franklin who coined the phrase that God helps those who help themselves.  Many people wrongly believe the statement is in the Bible.  While hypocrisy, cheating and theft are condemned throughout the Jewish and Christian scriptures, it is a sign of faith if one admits to being weak, vulnerable and in need of help.  Indeed, the Bible soundly condemns those who arrogantly believe themselves to be sufficient on their own.  Blessed are the meek and the humble who admit their needs.

Jesus told those he healed that it was their trust and goodness that made them well.  Implicit in what he told them was the notion that only those who know and confess their needs, only those who do not rely on intelligence, wealth or power as false security blankets – only these people can find true healing.  They are the ones who do not rely on external supports like money or intelligence but inner emotional health.  And, that inward health is based on an awareness of the self – it’s strengths AND its weaknesses.  The rich, haughty, arrogant and proud – they have their security in their material bounty and in their superior attitudes.  The poor in spirit, however, have their security in knowing they are weak and knowing when they need help.

Ultimately, the lesson of Jesus is that being vulnerable is not a weakness.  It is an ironic strength.  Strength through weakness is a sign of confidence in what is true.  It’s an honest confession of frailty and failure.  It is a mark of one’s flawed humanity.  Truth has set one free to be real and to acknowledge genuine need.

And that is a first key action in learning to ask for help.  We must admit to ourselves our own limitations.  We must humble ourselves.  We must admit our need for help in any area of life – in work, relationships, home tasks, our health, ways to self-improve like losing weight, stopping smoking, or sticking to a New Year’s resolution.  Believing we are all intelligent, all powerful superheroes with no need for help from others is a path to destruction.

Sadly, as much as it is part of our American culture to try and go it alone and not ask for help, that ethic is largely taught to young boys all over the world.  It is a part of supposedly teaching boys how to become men through tenacity, sucking it up, endurance and never, ever showing weakness.  Such is one reason why many men choose to go through life as lone rangers.

Hershel Walker, the famous football running back and  Heisman trophy winner, describes an event shortly after he had won the Heisman when he was still in college.  He was a macho guy seemingly at the top of the world – all achieved by supposedly his own strength and ability.  But one day he got into a telephone argument with his ex-wife.  He became enraged, hung up on her, grabbed his gun, loaded it, got in his car and headed for her apartment.  On the drive to her place, he stopped behind a car with a bumper sticker on it that implored people to seek spiritual help for life problems.  Fortunately, Walker took the message.  He was able to suddenly see himself in his rage and recognize he needed help.  He was able to realize he was not superman.  He immediately called a friend who came and took away the gun and then arranged for Walker to meet with a therapist the next day.  Hershel continued therapy for many months and says today that episode was both frightening for him and life changing.  Had he not been able to suddenly admit his rage issues AND his need for help, he says his ex-wife might well be dead and he a convicted murderer.

Spirituality teaches the opposite of arrogance and selfishness.  Asking for help and admitting weakness is a practice almost all religions advocate.

There is a Muslim story about a young boy who finds a large rock in the middle of his play area.  He digs and struggles, pushes and pulls to remove the rock.  He strains his young muscles to just barely move it out of the way – only to finally beat against it in anger that it is too heavy.  As he does so, a shadow looms over him.  The boy looks up and it is his father sternly looking upon him.  “Why haven’t you used all of your strength to move that rock?” asks the dad.  “I have tried as hard as I can and I have used all my strength,” protests the boy.  “No, you haven’t,” says the father.  “You have not asked me to help you.”  And with that, the dad scoops up the rock and moves it away.

While the story is intended to teach the virtues of seeking Allah and his help, it is also illustrative of spiritual humility which the boy needed to learn.  When we truly need help, it is a sign of wisdom and honesty to seek it.

And that is the second key in learning to ask for help.  We must ask in a way that is direct, clear, and specific.  It does us no good to play small, beat around the bush and fail to truthfully state our needs.  Too often I will coyly let it be known that help would be nice but then I diminish my request by failing to be specific or direct.  Someone will sincerely tell me they are available to me if I need assistance but I will fail to tell them how.  I will assume they should know, or that they, on their own, will begin to help me in a way that I need.  But my friends are not mind readers.  If I need a ride, I must say so.  If I need help cooking, I should say so.  If I need someone to just listen to my laments, I must say so.  If someone offers to render assistance when I am sick, depressed or lonely, I must respond to their gesture and tell them exactly how he or she can help.

Our duty to family, friends and stranger is to grant them the gift of serving.  Too often we fail to realize that it is a gift to serve others.  In serving others, we really do receive more than we give.  We derive deep pleasure and satisfaction in helping other people.  Indeed, we can show our love for others by graciously allowing them to serve us – to humble ourselves and allow them to be in control for a time.  It is an ironic form of pride to always be a giver and never a receiver.  It is an equally ironic form of humility to ask for and accept help when it is genuinely needed.

The final key to asking for help is knowing how to express gratitude for it.  Too many simply take the help of others for granted without speaking of its value and its expression of love and care.  There should not be a quid pro quo when we serve others – we do not offer our help in return for reciprocal help or expression of thanks.  The one who is helped, the one who does ask for assistance, however, should give evidence of full humility by expressing sincere gratitude.

In sum, learning to ask for help involves three key steps.  First, we must admit our need and we can only do that if we recognize what holds us back – our insecurity, our fear, our pride, our desire to always be in control, whatever it is.  The solution to those problems is relatively simple – we resolve to honestly recognize our limits.

Second, we must then ask politely but as directly, specifically and clearly as possible.  It is not enough to accept help.  We must ask for it.  To do so, is to truly show our humility.

Finally, and third, we must give thanks for our helpers.   An attitude of gratitude, as I’ve said before, is the ultimate form of humility.

Life is, from its very beginning, hard.  We, along with all creatures, struggle and work to survive.  The glory of almost all living animals, however, is that the fight for survival is not a lonely task.  Humans are wired to be in community and to share the unique abilities given to each person.  This is the ethic of moral imagination and cooperation.  We do better as a species when we sublimate the selfish desires of the individual and channel them, instead, into common work for all humanity.  And the only way that can be fully accomplished is if each person serves others more than the self and if each person is also willing to allow others to serve and help them.  Such is the mutuality of life.  I will live and thrive only if you do too.  I need you.  You need me.  Together, we can then build a form of heaven on earth.  Let us resolve in 2014 to ask for help when we truly need it.

 

 

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

 

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Saint John of the Cross was a sixteenth century Spanish friar who became famous as a counter-reformation thinker.  As a mystic, he believed that the pathway to God, and thus a true meaning in life, was not through Martin Luther’s precepts of Bible study, prayer and moral piety but rather through the times in each person’s life when one experiences, what he called, the “dark night of the soul.”  Such times were described by John as a form of death – a journey that one’s inner self takes as it wrestles with the profound questions of existence, meaning and purpose.

As a Pastor, I am sometimes asked to listen to anguished stories of personal difficulties or troubles – and perhaps offer some help.  A few months ago, I listened to someone pour out terribly negative emotions and thoughts.  It was heart wrenching to hear.  This person described feeling totally worthless, dirty, shameful, a loser, as someone with no hope, no expecation of goodness, and no feeling of being loved or cared for by anyone.   These were not the words of a mere pity party but were soul deep descriptions of total defeat, despair and worthlessness.  This person believed God had not only turned his back, but had given up and closed off any chance for redemption of him or her.  It was the bleakest, saddest, and most hopeless self-description I have ever heard from anyone.

What struck me was that this person’s descriptions of being a loser were not the judgements or words of others.  They were the product of how this person thought about the self.  They were the stuff of a dark night of the soul and an inner voice.  That voice was controlled by a figurative demon – a personally created devil that tore down, mocked, ridiculed and judged.  This person could never – and will never – rise out of a dark night of the soul unless that demon – that destructive inner voice – is somehow changed or silenced.

We each have an inner voice that is constantly speaking to us.  For many people, that voice is our worst critic.  It is a creation of the human mind that people have sought to control since humanity first began to process complex thoughts and emotions.

One example of this phenomenon is Moses, a Biblical character who is not likely historical, but who is nevertheless described in the Exodus and Passover stories as having his own dark night of the soul experiences when he doubted his abilities, his purpose, and his plans.  Moses protested against being seen as a leader, he claimed he was unskilled, unworthy, and common.  Like many people, he was filled with self-doubt and low self-esteem.  He had a violent temper, he vacillated in his leadership, he was often unstable in his decisions.  His protests to God about his flaws echo those of our own inner voices that judge our failures, disappointments and flaws in ways that prevent us from acting and achieving.

It is now a historical fact that Mother Teresa experienced her own darkness of the soul during parts of her life.  Indeed, some critics point to her self-doubts as proof that she was a fraud, a self-promoter and a closet Atheist who used charity as as a means to be famous.  I do not judge her in that harsh light.  She was a flawed human even as she acted as close to a saint as I can discern.  I read in her private letters, which were made public several years ago, the same kind of voice that speaks to my soul and the same voice as the one I listened to a few months ago from a deeply anguished person.  It is the same harsh voice that speaks to many of us.

Teresa wrote in one of her letters to her spiritual confessor, “Darkness is such that I really do not see — neither with my mind nor with my reason.  The place of God in my soul is blank.  There is no God in me.  He does not want me.  He is not there.  Heaven, souls, why these are just words which mean nothing to me.  My very life seems so contradictory.  I help souls to go where?  God does not want me.  Sometimes, I just hear my own heart cry out: “My God” and nothing else comes.  The torture and pain I can’t explain.”

          Such soul darkness also affected another modern prophet.  On April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated, he too was in the midst of doubt and despair.  King was in Memphis, Tennessee to help with a sanitation worker strike.  It had not gone well.  Many angry black youth resorted to violent acts during the protest march in which King participated.  His non-violence movement had mostly been forgotten in the anger and turmoil of the late 1960’s.

He had become an advocate for the poor as well as an anti-war activist – two outgrowths of the Civil Rights movement but ones which earned him increased scorn.  President Johnson was furious at King for his anti-Viet Nam war statements – seeing them as unfair coming from someone whom Johnson had helped tremendously by advancing Civil Rights laws.  The FBI had King under surveillance, his phones were bugged and many conspiracy theorists have wondered if J. Edgar Hoover or Johnson had a role in his death.  King was also planning a poor people’s march on Washington but it was getting little attention and even less support among the poor he was working to help.  King, too, was a man of tremendous courage and insight but who had his own flaws.  He had no interest in making lots of money but he liked silk suits and other small luxuries.  He preached a call to civil morality even as he also had a wandering eye for other women.  Such possible defects in his character make him even greater in my mind – a man who was not perfect but who rose above his flaws to pursue a more perfect world.

All in all, King had come to seriously doubt himself, his purpose, his non-violence movement and any hope he could continue to change things for the better.  He was contemplating leaving his activist work and retiring to be President of Morehouse College.

I recount such stories – the person I listened to, Moses, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. – as a way to describe that force we each have inside us that can either advance or defeat us.  That force – our inner voice – talks to us all day long.  We hear it in our dreams and it is often the first thing we hear as we wake.  It helps guide our lives, plan our actions and remind us to be our better selves.  In its positive form, it can boost our confidence, empower us and help us perceive our true life purpose.  In its negative manifestation, it holds us back, tells us lies, judges us, condemns us and causes us to discount our life purpose.  For some, a negative inner voice constantly demoralizes.  For others, the negative voice is temporary – only occasionally rising up out of brief sadness or trauma.  For others, a constructive and helpful voice predominates.  For still others, the inner voice acts in a negative way by overly boosting the ego – leading one to arrogance, over-confidence and insensitivity to others.

Changing our inner voice is the lead off subject in this, my third annual January series on uncommon New Year’s resolutions we might consider practicing.   Last year, if you remember, we looked at the uncommon resolutions of accepting others as they are, lengthening our anger fuses and, finally, staying teachable.  You can find those messages on our website.  I don’t know if you resolved to practice any of those but I sought last year, as I do this year, to find overlooked ways we can resolve to improve ourselves.  Most New Year’s resolutions – while still very good – are common – stopping smoking, losing weight, exercising more, saving money, etc.

But how many of us even perceive that our inner voices are a problem?  It’s clear that the person I listened to a few weeks ago did not.  Eckart Tolle, a contemporary writer and commentator on spiritual matters, says that it is one’s inner voice that brings about a dark night of the soul.  That negative voice questions motives, values, and meaning in life.  Every mistake one makes, every flaw in character are highlighted not by external enemies but this nagging, deceitful, nasty voice.  That voice can condemn us to feel small, impotent and deeply troubled.

Other experts assert that this inner voice in us is often an echo of a parent or other person who has diminished us as a way to boost the critic’s own fragile ego.   We repeat their words over and over – “you’re nothing, you’re no big deal, you’re a disgusting faggot, you’re hopeless, you will never amount to much, nobody really likes you, you’re ugly, you’re dumb” – whatever it is that we heard from another person which our inner voice then repeats over and over.

Most of all, experts assert that our propensity as humans is to judge other people and ourselves.  It is one reason why the Bible, the new Pope and I all advocate efforts to stop judgmental attitudes.  Who am I?  Who are you?  Who is the Pope to judge anyone else? – especially as we each have our own failures to correct.  As I mentioned in a message on that subject this past October, judging and discerning very different.  There is no malice or negativity in discernment.  Such thinking merely observes facts.  Judging ourselves and others involves applying labels of good, bad, moral, immoral, beautiful, ugly, smart, stupid, etc.  It is motivated by jealousy, insecurity and a desire to tear down instead of uplift.  The target of our labels and judgments is all too often our very selves.  And the result is not good.

If we have labeled ourselves as stupid, what hope is there that we will speak up to others with a thought, apply for a challenging job or task, or believe what we think has value?  If we tell ourselves we are hopeless failures, how can we nourish dreams and goals for a better future?  How will we be able to act when opportunity does knock?  If we believe we are ugly, we won’t notice the attention others pay to us, we’ll isolate and find ourselves endlessly lonely.  Too often, for many of us, the inner voice is more subtle.  It may not tell us we are total losers but it will plant seeds of doubt in our souls – doubts that hold us back from being and doing many things.

That voice, for me, has held me back from a lot in my life.  It almost kept me from accepting this job even as part of me wanted the challenge and oppportunity.  But my inner voice whispered to me I might fail, that I’m not good at public speaking, that people would dislike me.  Our inner voices tell us a story we repeat in our minds – and, if we allow such thoughts to persist, they become self-fulfilling prophecy.  Experts call this our mythology of the self – one that is not based on reality but is rooted in personal criticism, doubt or, on the opposite side, an inflated view of the self.

A negative inner voice too often sees everything in black or white.  An event or a personal mistake are seen as either all good or all bad.  This voice also overgeneralizes – believing that if we say or do something one time, we always act that way.  Our voice tells us we are never good and always bad.  And, as such, this voice discounts or ignores anything positive.  We might do many wonderful things in life, in our jobs, in our families.  But one mistake is overblown and generalized.  There is nothing good in us.  It’s all bad.

The negative inner voice jumps to conclusions by determining a bad outcome even before it happens.  It magnifies minor problems beyond any sense of reality and it uses emotional reasoning – “I feel guilty, therefore I am a bad person.”  Again, such statements to the self can be sly and subtle – quietly insinuating a possible failure, negative outcome or judgment of character.

The most important thing we can do to quiet or change a negative inner voice is to begin to realize when it talks to us.  That is not an easy task.  I’ve tried and I could do it for a while but I soon forgot to note when my voice spoke to me.  Many experts believe we should keep an inner voice diary by writing down exactly what our voice tells us.  We can take an inventory each day and write down exactly – without any censoring – what it is that our inside voice has said.  After a week or more, we should look back and identify patterns in what we tell ourselves.

Once we identify the negative ways our inner self talks to us, we can then apply our reason to correct it.  We should reality test it.  What evidence is there to support what I just told myself?  Is it fact based or an interpretation?  What is the liklihood such an event will happen?  What are alernative explanations or ways to understand an event, problem or personal mistake?

We should stick just to facts and avoid labels.  “Oh, I forgot my mom’s birthday.” instead of “I’m a neglectful and bad son.”  We should also engage in what some experts call ‘possible thinking’.  Instead of “I’m fat”, one can say, “I want to lose ten pounds.  I have the ability to do that.”  Just in this one example we see the difference between discernment and judgement.  One statement labels the self, tears down the self, despises the self.  Such negativity is unlikely to lead to any kind of positive action.  The other voice simply discerns a fact – a desire to lose some weight.  It then uplifts the self by acknowleging an ability to accomplish a goal.   This form of possible thinking does not guarantee success but it is far more likely to stimulate action.  That is how we must learn to talk to ourselves and to others – to encourage, to lift up, to support, to be gentle.  Harsh and judgemental words to ourselves and others are destructive and are never kind.

A true test to apply to our inner voice is to ask what would one’s best friend say about a situation or mistake?  Best friends love us as we are.  Best friends know our flaws but see tremendous good in us.  Best friends speak truth in gentle ways.  Best friends want good things for us.

And that ought to be how our inner voice treats us.  Indeed, our inner voice ought to be our very best friend – one whose love for us is reality based and not overinflated with ego.  But it also should see who we really are in all of our goodness.  It should see our potential and cheer us forward.  It should love us uncondtionally – not flinching from the need for improvement and admission of flaws, but loving us anyway.

I don’t know if the person in despair who I listened to has been able to change the inner voice.  I hope some first steps have at least been taken.  We see in the story of Moses that he persevered despite his negative self-talk.  Something inside propelled him onward – giving him the confidence to act and lead.  So too with Mother Teresa.  She came to find that her dark night of the soul was actually a good thing – a way for her to better understand suffering and to reach out in ever more profound ways to alleviate the despair all around.  As she came to believe and write, poverty and hunger create physical pain.  But the greatest pain is experienced by those who are alone, unloved and unwanted.  She could identify with those who felt deeply alone and thus she redoubled her effort, and those of her fellow sisters, to be the faces of love to the leper, the aged, the dying man with no family.

And so too did Martin Luther King, Jr. rise out of his dark night.  In the sermon he had prepared for the Sunday after he died, he wrote of pursuing his non-violent goals, of knowing that the battles against hate, violence and poverty would be long ones but that hope must still prevail.   As Julian Bond said after he had read the sermon, King preached his way out of despair.  His positive inner voice took control.

We have that ability too.  An inner voice in us waits to be heard that will champion our lives, our dreams, our abilities.  Let’s listen to that voice.  Let’s resolve in this New Year of 2014 to muzzle the negative voice.  There is a light of great goodness and potential in each of us – no matter our age, health or condition.  But that light will never shine to its full brilliance unless and until we believe in its power.  In order to believe it has great power, we can first tell ourselves over and over that good things lie ahead, that we can literally change the world, that we can and will make a difference.

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

 

To download and listen to the message, click here:

Will you donate $5, $10 or $20 in appreciation for this message? Your online tax-deductible donation will help us continue our charitable outreach work to homeless children and provide future online messages.  Please click the “Give Online” button located above. Thank you!

 
It is a time honored cliche but there is truth in the saying that out of the mouths of children comes a lot of wisdom. The University of California at Berkeley conducted a study on differences in wisdom between adults and children under the age of 15. What they found were obviously higher levels of intelligence in adults but a remarkably similar level of wisdom between youth and adults. Even more, the study noted that children do not filter their intuitive sense of what is wise and true through a prism of acquired facts which, as we know, can be manipulated in adult minds based on belief systems. Instead, children have a fluid sense of intelligence that translates into wisdom and cleverness which they have obtained simply by viewing the world around them. Without adult filters, therefore, young people have a purer sense of truth as they offer us wise words that merit our attention.

Here are a few gems of wisdom on love and life from children.

From Megan, age 8, “If someone gives you free ice cream, you should clean their room for them.”
An unknown child says: “When your mother is mad and asks you, ‘Do I look stupid?’, it is best not to answer her.”
Ricky, age 7 says: “Tell your wife she looks pretty even if she looks like a truck!”
and, he also adds, “Love is like an avalanche where you have to run for your life!”
from Jonathon, age 8: “Nothing hurts more than guilt.”
from an unknown child: “No matter how much you cry at night, things won’t change unless you help them change.”
with all due apologies to Teri Emerson, Jack, age 9 says: “Piano lessons can make fifteen minutes feel like an hour.”
Angie, age 10, says: “Most men are brainless, so you might have to try more than once to find a live one!”
Mae, age 9, said: “No one is sure why love happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell. That’s why perfume and deodorant are so popular.”
from another unknown child, “Life is too short to waste time matching socks.” I agree with that!!!
and, finally, Dave, age 8, says: “Love will find you, even if you are trying to hide from it. I been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.”

The wonderful thing about all of these statements is that each one rings true and is wise. Be nice to people even if you have to tell a white lie. Be generous. Be a peacemaker. Practice the Golden Rule. Spend your time doing things that matter. Personal pity parties do not change anything. And, romantic love is an eternally hopeful emotion even as it is one of the hardest things we practice in life.
Such wisdom expressed by children is one reason why the holiday television classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” has been so successful. Indeed, it is also a reason why Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip remains popular around the world over sixty years after it began.
In Schultz’s Christmas television show, we watch as children – Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Sally and others – work through all of the emotions adults have about the holidays. But they do so as children while they engage in uniquely child focused activities – like writing letters to Santa, putting on a Christmas pageant, or simply playing in the snow. Charles Schultz’s brilliance as a comic strip writer was that his children characters deal with very adult issues. Charlie Brown must work through his holiday depression. Sally expresses the greed many feel in wanting big and lavish gifts. The other children simply want to party, sing and dance as a way to express their holiday joy – events that we adults try every year to create. And Linus is the wise one in us all who is able to see beyond the superficial and frivolous activities of the holidays to find the real meaning of Christmas – one of hope, generosity, peace and love.

By excluding all adults from his comic strips and from his television specials, Shultz created a world where the wisdom of children predominates. Indeed, there are no adult characters or voices used in any of the Peanuts comic strips or television shows – only a wah-wah-wah voice for adults symbolizing both the gap in communication between adults and kids as well as the sometimes arrogant and far too complex speaking styles of most grown ups. I imagine kids here today are hearing the same sound from me as I speak: blah, blah, blah…..wah-wah-wah-wah!

How Schultz used only kids to express his humor and his ideas perfectly captures a major theme of the Christmas holiday. We celebrate the birth of a baby conceived out of wedlock to two teenage parents. The story of that child’s birth is the reason for the season. The babe born in a manger has come to symbolize, much like all children do, the innocence, purity and hope of youth. Indeed, that child as an adult prophet taught that we should have faith like a child – a faith that is wide eyed with wonder, a faith that is grounded in the inherent goodness of all people, a faith that is just, fair and understanding.

Children, as we all know, are not perfect people. We all seem to be born with the inherent human desire to think of the self over the interests of others – a character flaw we spend lifetimes working against. But like adults, as the Berkeley University study has shown, children possess a knowing wisdom that it is unfiltered by grown up biases, fears, hatreds, disfunction, arrogance and self-consciousness. Children intuitively know what is good and just. They know what constitutes real joy. They perceive nature and the universe not with jaundiced eyes but with the awe and respect that they deserve. They know how to live in the moment – not fearing the future or regretting the past.

I’ve described before the first few Christmases of my oldest daughter Sara. As a young toddler, she delighted on Christmas morning not in all of the toys Santa had brought her, but instead in the opened boxes, torn wrapping paper and colored ribbons all around. A teddy bear that moves its mouth and says a few recorded words? Big deal! But, oh! those boxes and all that paper – they were the stuff of houses to build, hats to wear and bright necklaces to put on herself and others. She taught me a great lesson. Adult attitudes and adult seriousness should not be allowed at Christmas. Have fun! Be silly! Stop focusing on the perfect meal, the expensive gift or creating manufactured merriment. Simply be. Simply stare in wonder at all the lights. Laugh at Uncle Fred’s corny jokes. Act like a child. Have faith in the hope that all will be good. Celebrate the here and now.

And so, in that spirit, I ask everyone here to put on a party hat under your chair, take the noisemakers in hand, act silly – shout out in celebration of the morning – for just a moment, right now, take on the spirit of a child!(noisemakers, hats, child like fun!)

What I hope to convey this morning is that young children intuitively “get” the real meaning of the holidays. Whether or not they know or understand the religious meanings, they do know it is a season about hope, about fun, and about joy. Just as my daughter Sara understood Christmas morning was not about the elaborate gifts but instead about play, about the lights, the festive ribbons, cookies, and time with others, so too can we as dour adults give in to our inner child.

It’s all of us adults who have made Christmas so commercial, so busy, so elaborate and so serious. If we left the holidays in control of children, or of the child in us all, we’d let go of trying to impress others with big parties, fancy meals, expensive gifts or perfect celebrations. We’d be like my young Sara – putting on silly hats and laughing and playing with friends and family. We would spend Christmas Day in our pajamas, play games, eat candy canes, decorate our trees with handmade ornaments, happily reminisce and share meaningful hopes and dreams of the future. There would be no worry about money because we would not have spent a lot. There would be no regret over past Christmases, departed loved ones or imperfect celebrations. Instead, whether we are alone or with fifty people, we’d live in the moment and celebrate the hope and exuberance we have inside us – that life right now is good, that the world around is beautiful and something to be enjoyed, that connecting with other people is what brings true joy. That is what the babe born in a manger should represent. Jesus was and is an every-child. And all children are symbols of hope and promise. All children are simple in their needs and wants. Feed them. Keep them warm. Love them. If we admit it, that is all we really want this Christmas or any other day – to have the basic securities of life, to be loved and to love, to embrace our existence and celebrate it right here, right now.

Like Charles Schultz, we should banish the adult in us from Christmas – and perhaps from life itself. I need to stop worrying so much. I need to take life and other people less seriously. I need to open my heart to innocence and forget cynicism. I need to be gentle with myself and others. Just as Charles Schultz did, I need to take the complicated matters of life and reduce them to their bare essentials. I’m not perfect. I’m broken. I make mistakes. But, deep inside, I know how to love. I know how to laugh. I know how to be silly and have fun. I know there is a child in me that yearns to be set free.

Charlie Brown represents for us a perfect, ironic success story. He’s someone who never succeeds in life even though, in truth, he does. His perseverance, his dogged determination to win a baseball game, to kick that football, to love a pathetic, unloved little Christmas tree, to retain an intuitive trust in other people, these are hallmarks of children. Don’t give up. Stay positive. Find success in how you live and how you treat others. Those are the same ethics of the baby Jesus – born to poverty and with seemingly no future.
(ending) That child calls us to live simply and humbly, love and serve others, embrace hope, live in the moment with happiness and fun in our hearts.

To all of the children here today, to all of the children in each one of us, I wish a merry, a silly, a laughter filled Christmas of great peace and much joy.

Message 151, “A Charlie Brown Holiday: Battling the Blues”, 12-15-13

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

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Many of you have enjoyed hearing one of our past guest speakers – Bart Campolo – who is a local Pastor.  He is well known for his speaking abilities but he is perhaps most known for being the son of the internationally famous minister Tony Campolo.  Tony has written several best selling books, has spoken at hundreds of large events and he served as the spiritual advisor to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Tony has long been admired by many evangelical Christians – and he considers himself an evangelical.  What I like about Tony is that he is a progressive evangelical – one who has supported equality for African-Americans, understanding for gays and lesbians, and service to the poor.  One of his primary ethics is that people of faith should express their spirituality more through acts of service to the poor and outcasts than through piety, Bible study or prayer.

He has also made many controversial statements and one of them is that depression should not be seen by Christians as a spiritual flaw – one due to a lack of faith or trust in God.  Tony was an early Christian advocate of the notion that depression is often a medical condition and needs to be treated as one.

For himself, Tony writes in his book “Let Me Tell You a Story: Life Lessons from Unexpected Places and Unlikely People” that he personally tries to be outwardly joyful even if he doesn’t feel it.  For him, joy and happiness are contagious.  One is able not only to pass it along to others but to begin to actually feel real joy if one simply undertakes to speak and act joyfully.  Such an attitude, along with his many controversial statements, led his young son Bart to once tell him, as Tony relates in his book, “Dad, you know, you are dangerous!”

Tony says that he is most dangerous – from a sharing joy perspective – when he is out in public.  He often rides in elevators in New York or Philadelphia skyscrapers and, when entering a crowded one full of serious business people, he will often say to everyone, “Well, we are going to be stuck together for the next several minutes.  Let’s make the best of it.  Let’s sing!”  And then he leads them in some upbeat song.

He also writes that, since he frequently crosses a toll bridge outside of Philadelphia, he will pull up to the toll booth, pay his toll and then also pay for the car behind him – telling the toll collector that this is payment for his friend in the car behind.  He then enjoys watching in his rear view mirror as the befuddled toll worker tries to explain to an equally confused driver what just happened.

I’ve heard similar stories of folks who find joy in paying for their order in drive thru lanes at fast food restaurants while also paying for the food order of the car behind.

Tony tells an instructive story about a member of a church he used to attend.  The Pastor at that church was a very serious and proper preacher.   The church congregation was equally dour and humorless – afflicted by being terminally white, uptight and Protestant.  A few African-Americans joined this church and one of them, a man named Frank, would loudly and joyfully shout out a ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Praise the Lord!’ or ‘Amen’ every time the Pastor made a meaningful point.

But such spontaneous shout-outs annoyed the prim and proper Pastor as well as members of the congregation.  This Pastor approached Frank one day and begged him to be quiet for an entire sermon – in return for which the Pastor would buy him a new pair of winter boots that Frank wanted.

During the next Sunday sermon Frank visibly squirmed as he tried to suppress his joyful outbursts.  But, as the Pastor made his summation point at the end of the sermon, Frank could contain himself no longer.  He loudly and happily exclaimed, at the Pastor’s final point, “Boots or no boots, I don’t care.  Praise the Lord!”

Tony says he discovered his secret to finding real joy after one boyhood Christmas.  All year he had wanted and begged for a new Lionel model train set.  He even told Santa at Gimbel’s department store that this is what he most wanted.

On Christmas morning, when he opened the large box with his name on it, he shouted out when he discovered it was his long desired train set.  For the next few hours he gleefully worked to assemble the trains and their tracks.  After doing so, he turned it on and then watched as the train made endless circles, round and round, until it hit him – his joy had evaporated.  His excitement was over.  The train was actually boring to him.  This thing, this object on to which he had placed all of his Christmas hope – was not so great – not so joyful.  He quickly understood that the things of Christmas to which we attach happiness are mostly empty – they have no real meaning.  Joy, for him, had to come from something more sustainable – someplace not connected to gifts, events or situations.  Implicitly, Tony supports what I often advocate.  We are usually able to choose the emotions we feel by how we cognitively think.  By actively choosing to speak and act joyfully, Tony feels joyful and imparts that emotion to others around him.

As we turn our attention today to the theme this month of a ‘Charlie Brown Holiday’, the subject of Christmas depression is one that is dealt with openly and honestly in the Charles Schultz television special.  First airing in 1965, the show, which is a holiday classic, confronts Charlie Brown’s persistent holiday blues.  As Charlie says in the show, “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards, and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.”

Interestingly, CBS television executives who saw the show before it aired were upset at this depiction of seasonal blues. Such subjects were simply not discussed in that day and age.  People were programmed to suck it up and hide any discontent they might feel.  For Charles Schultz to use it as his central theme was revolutionary – but one which the viewing public approved and liked.  Holiday depression is a common phenomenon and Schultz used humor as a way to address it and offer a solution.

Much like Tony Campolo challenged fellow Christians to re-examine their attitudes about depression, the honesty of Charlie Brown’s blues are culturally significant.  A majority of the Peanuts comic strips deal with issues of Charlie’s self-esteem, disappointments, and failures.  We all know about the endless times he tries to kick a football that Lucy holds for him.  We remember the many times Charlie’s baseball team loses – and during its nearly fifty years, only wins nine times – and those came when Charlie did not play!  Charlie does not get any Valentine’s cards, he can’t fly a kite, he constantly seeks psychological advice, he seems perpetually alienated from the rest of the world.

In so many ways, Charlie’s difficulties mirror those of a shy and awkward young Charles Schultz who was deemed a failure before he reached twenty.  But for us, Charlie is an Everyperson – someone who struggles to understand himself, the world and his place in it.  Life is cruel and harsh, it’s overly competitive, it rewards the beautiful and strong, and it is often profoundly disappointing.  By middle age years many people suddenly ask themselves, “Is this all there is to life?”

Christmas and the holidays bring such feelings to the fore.  We remember past Christmases that were bright and happy as we compare those to more modest present ones.  Or, we recall past ones that deeply hurt us and leave us emotionally scarred.  We remember and mourn loved ones who have passed and are not there for us this holiday.  We experience profound loneliness whether or not we are in a relationship.  We see all around us images and expectations of happiness and, yet, for us, those emotions seem forced.  Our finances may be tight and, yet, we are told to spend and be extravagant.  For gays and lesbians, the holidays are often difficult as they often must face families who disapprove of them.  Added to such holiday blues are medically verified season issues.  Christmas falls near the winter solstice, the shortest daytime of the year.  Many people, including myself, suffer from seasonal affected disorder when a shortage of sunlight profoundly affects mood.

Whether our depression is holiday related or not – it has distinct symptoms.  Clinical depression is marked by persistent feelings of sadness, anxiety or emptiness.  Eating habits significantly change – either one eats too much or loses all appetite.  Sleep is affected as depressed persons either sleep too much or too little.  Depression is also identified with irritability, an inability to concentrate, a lack of energy and a focus on death or suicide.  Overall, depressed persons feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.  And that is exactly what Charlie expresses in the holiday TV show.

For any of us who experience such symptoms, without let up, for more than a few days, experts advise getting professional help.  Sucking it up and trying to fake oneself through depression is not good.  Therapy and medications do help.  Clinical depression is not a defect in character.

And Charlie Brown follows such advice.  He seeks the assistance of the dubiously qualified Lucy and her lemonade stand form of roadside therapy.  As with many amateurs who try and offer advice, hers is more focused on her own issues than on empathy for Charlie’s.  But, she offers a nugget of wisdom by encouraging Charlie to catch the holiday spirit by agreeing to direct the school Christmas pageant.

For many of us who experience bouts of holiday depression in mild form, there are ways to cope.  Some experts suggest remembering a holiday coping acronym of  R  –  E  –  S  –  T  (rest).  First and most importantly, we must Recognize our feelings and thus understand that our expectations for the holiday need to be limited.  Other people, including our families, will disappoint us.  We can learn to accept that and offer others the grace to be flawed – much as we are also flawed.  We can also learn to accept that creating a perfect celebration experience of beautiful decorations, meaningful gifts and memorable events is not possible.  If we Recognize that culture has set the holiday bar too high for anyone to possibly reach, we will be content in a more relaxed, quiet and less than perfect holiday.

Second, for the E in REST, we should try and Eat well and Exercise.  Eating well does not mean denying ourselves holiday treats but it also means that, as much as possible, we don’t change our eating habits by overindulging or starving.  The same goes for alcohol consumption.  Moderation and balance in all things is best.  Exercise is most important.  If possible, we should get outdoors, take walks and engage in anything that is physically active.  Exercise increases endorphin hormones in our bloodstream which helps boost our mood and helps us feel better.

The S component in REST is to simplify our holidays as much as possible.  Suggestions include the swapping of nice but unused things we currently own – as a way to exchange gifts.  We can hold very simple celebrations with just a few close friends or family members with whom sharing and talking is uplifting and happy.  Overall, as Charlie Brown affirmed, simple is not bad nor is it Scrooge-like.  Without trappings of excess and money, true holiday meanings of peace, hope, love, and humility can prevail.

Finally, the T in REST focuses on our gift of Time.  We should set aside time both for ourselves to relax and, most importantly, for volunteering.  Countless experts advise that the best way to battle the blues is to serve others – visit an elderly or sick person, offer to drive a shut-in to the store,  make an event out of selecting, buying and giving a gift to someone in need, working at a local food bank or homeless shelter, inviting someone who lives alone over to dinner, writing a note or card of appreciation to a friend, co-worker or person you value.  Volunteering our time in ways that help the least of God’s children is not just a moral obligation, it is a conscious way to find purpose and meaning – and thus joy.

To summarize REST for the holidays, Recognize your limits, Eat well and Exercise, Simplify, and volunteer Time to others.

While depression and the holiday blues are real conditions, they are curable. We find that when we are depressed, we mostly focus on our needs and our problems.  While, those concerns are real, they can be put in proper perspective by thinking of others.  A life well led and a life of lasting legacy are ones of grace, generosity, compassion and gentleness toward other people.  I firmly believe that many of the problems in today’s world would be solved if every person worked to diminish their ego while boosting their concern and empathy for the condition and feelings of family, friend and stranger.  Love and charity in the world must begin in each and every human heart and each and every home.

As I said earlier, depression is not a spiritual defect.  Jesus got depressed at the death of his friend and at his own impending execution.  The biblical David experienced lasting depression over his failures as a person and at how his enemies treated him.  Job shouted out in desperation at how God seemed to have abandoned him.  The prophet Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet for his lament at the evil he saw around him and at the seeming indifference to it from people of faith.  Mohammad experienced several bouts of sadness and frustration.  Great modern figures like Gandhi and Mother Teresa lapsed into a crisis of the soul.  Mother Teresa doubted God’s reality and was in deep distress over her inability to effect lasting change in poverty.  Gandhi was deeply saddened when India divided into sectarian violence pitting Hindu against Muslim.

But for each one of these prophets, depression was not the final condition of their lives.  Each one found ways to rise above it – choosing gratitude, trust, love and hope in life, in faith and in other people.

For me and for many others, mild depression is a state of mind that I can choose to embrace or work to defeat.  Like Tony Campolo, I can choose to speak, act and think joyfully – even when I don’t feel that way – or I can choose to sink into a funk and treat myself and other people in ways that are cruel and mean spirited.  Tony Campolo discovered that joy can be shared with others by his attitude and actions.  Charlie Brown found joy in choosing to love the seemingly unlovable small, pathetic tree.  In it, he saw himself.  He purposefully chose to love and serve something beyond himself.

And that is the enduring appeal of Christmas.   Its message calls us to humbly love others.  In the nativity story, God expresses his love for humanity with the gift of his Son.  In the same way, we can find ways to escape sadness with the gift of ourselves – of our time, our empathy, our generosity, our kindness, our service, our gentleness.  We have these simple gifts inside us and we must share them.  In doing so, we will find the ironic truth that happiness is often a decision and that with the gift of ourselves, the true meaning of the holidays are found.  In this season of hope, let us choose to be a presence of joy to all we encounter.

And to each of you, here and listening online, I wish you much holiday cheer.

Message 150, “A Charlie Brown Holiday: It is About the Tree”, 12-8-13
(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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Robert Hoge was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1972 with two severely deformed legs and a large, fist sized tumor in the middle of his face. The tumor altered the development of his skull so that his eyes were pushed to the outside of his head and his nose was an indistinguishable mass of flesh. He was the fifth child to his parents but his mother reacted to his appearance with shock. She was overwhelmed by how he looked. She did not want to bring her son home. A supposedly helpful pediatrician encouraged Mary Hoge to quietly put her child in a home for disabled children and forget about him. She almost did.
But Mary and her husband consulted their four children. All of them did not hesitate – they begged their parents to bring Robert home. He was their brother. Mary documented her reactions over succeeding years in a remarkably honest diary. As Robert grew older, she allowed he and his siblings to read the diary to understand for themselves Mary’s struggles and emotions about her son. She described deeply loving Robert and being fiercely protective of him, as most mothers would be. But she also could not keep herself from despair at his terrible disfigurement. Robert underwent numerous surgeries to try and remove the facial tumor and reshape his face. At age 14, doctors reported they could do more to improve his looks but that with each succeeding surgery, the risk grew that the procedures would render him blind. Robert’s brother pointedly asked what good would it be to improve his appearance if he could not even see himself. For the young Robert, that was an epiphany moment. He chose not to have more surgery as he also began the long effort to come to terms with his appearance. As he said, “This is actually a conversation I’d like to have about disability, and about beauty and about ugliness, and the first person I had to have that conversation was with myself.”
Robert is an amazingly understanding man. Now being a father himself, he says that he sympathizes with his mother’s reactions. Every parent wants their child to be perfect, he says. Robert became a journalist, later moved into politics and now serves as the media adviser to the governor of the Australian Queensland province. He and his mom wrote a bestselling book which includes many entries from Mary’s diary. He regularly speaks throughout Australia as he honestly accepts how society uses appearance as a primary criteria to judge a person. He rejects the notion that everyone, no matter their appearance, can easily be accepted. But his attitude, his warm, friendly, intelligent and wise demeanor directly confronts the notion that he is somehow ugly. As his boss, the governor of Queensland put it, most people very quickly no longer notice Robert’s outward appearance. It seems the real beauty inside Robert clearly shines through.
As we launch into a three week message series using the theme of a Charlie Brown holiday, I want to look at some of the ideas expressed in what is now considered a classic television special. The show, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was created in 1965 after CBS executives asked the Peanuts comic strip creator Charles Schultz to develop a seasonal special based on his cartoon. The show was quickly written and animated – within about six months time. Even its music, which many consider to also be classic, was quickly composed. CBS executives, after first viewing the show, were upset. They did not like the story, its inclusion of the character Linus reciting from the Bible and its focus on holiday depression. They predicted a flop but went ahead with airing the show. It was watched that first year by over two-thirds of all homes in the US – by far the most watched TV show that year. Its been translated and shown in many countries around the world as it also won both an Emmy and Peabody award. In the almost fifty years since its debut, it has been shown on American TV during every holiday season. Its simple story of how Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang find the real meaning of the holidays still strongly resonates.
As most of us know, the story is about Charlie Brown being deeply depressed with Christmas and its emphasis on commercialization and mindless frivolity. Even his dog Snoopy gets caught up in holiday commercial euphoria by entering a home decorating contest. His sister Sally brazenly tells Santa in her wish list letter to him, “If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself – just send money. How about tens and twenties? All I want is my fair share!” And Charlie’s friends are solely focused on creating a celebration pageant replete with perfect decorations, music, food and dance.
Charlie finds himself seemingly alone in a world gone mad as it forgets the intrinsic values of the holiday. Suffering from deep holiday depression, a subject which was groundbreaking for its time when such subjects were not openly shared, Charlie cannot understand why his feelings about the holiday are so dissonant with the culture. Why is he the only one who does not share a striving for Christmas excess – gifts, money, lights, parties, uninhibited merriment? Is the problem his, or that of the culture?
After agreeing to direct the school Christmas pageant, Charlie still faces roadblocks to his vision of the holiday. His classmates want rock and roll music, dancing and a Hollywood style retelling of the nativity story with Lucy, Charlie’s arch nemesis, demanding to play the Queen of Christmas. Throwing up his arms in disgust, Charlie plaintively asks if anybody understands the real meaning of the holiday. His friend Linus then recites from the Biblical book of Luke the account of the first Christmas. Charles Schultz insisted on including this scene, against CBS objections, believing that it best represented his own quest, like Charlie’s, to rediscover holiday values.
With Lucy, Sally, Schroeder, Pig-pen and all of the other Peanuts kids still wanting a huge Christmas party show, they put Charlie in charge of finding a suitable tree to decorate the stage. Charlie and Linus travel to a tree lot where they find countless large trees plus many artificial ones – trees of the 1960s that were a made of shiny aluminum. Charlie rejects all trees until he spies one sad little tree in a corner of the lot – one that is barely a pine twig stuck on a stand. Proudly, he buys it and returns to his friends with the tree he had chosen. He is immediately laughed at, scorned and mocked for his inability to do anything right – even picking out a tree. Charlie picks up his ugly tree, is followed by Linus clutching a blanket and sucking his thumb, and the three misfits walk out into the snow – only to come across Snoopy’s garish and brightly decorated dog house with a first prize ribbon affixed to it. For Charlie, that is the final insult. Even his dog, supposedly a boy’s most loyal and understanding companion, has rejected him. He drops his tree to the ground in final defeat.
While Charles Schultz’s Christmas TV show has obvious Christian themes and symbols, ones that subtly underscore that religion’s interpretations of Jesus’ birth, it nevertheless highlights more universal values similar to those that Robert Hoge and his mother struggled to find. Ultimately, the two stories – one fiction, one true life, describe the eternal human quest for authenticity, dignity and power in the face of a very strong human propensity to worship the superficially beautiful and fake.

The Charlie Brown Christmas story is all about that pathetic little tree. Robert Hoge’s life story is all about his outwardly horrifying appearance. The story of the first Christmas is all about one born into poverty, with no belongings, no money, and no family status. Indeed, the theme of Jesus’ life story is about how weak and ugly things are made beautiful – the unwed mother visited by God, the baby born in a barn, the poor laborer who becomes a famous itinerant preacher, the lepers and outcasts who are made whole, the enemy of Rome nailed to a Cross who is resurrected. Three stories about ugliness and weakness – the Charlie Brown tree….Robert Hoge….Jesus. For each of us, our stories are much the same. Our lives are, ultimately, about the ugly little tree in us.

But that little tree in the Charlie Brown story ironically has power. It is immeasurably strong. It’s greatness is found not when the Peanuts kids decorate it and turn it into one of beauty. Instead, it’s found in it’s transformational power to change hearts and minds. It is far more powerful than any twelve foot high tree or one made of metallic durability. Robert Hoge, likewise, is an amazingly beautiful man. The ugliness of his deformity has become something powerful as he, his mom and society confront uncomfortable truths about how we judge others – mostly based on outward qualities like beauty, wealth or power. And so too was the prophet Jesus scorned and humiliated, one who triumphed not by strength and status but by humility, non-violence and advocacy for the poor and sick.
Christmas reminds us, then, of an eternal truth. To be fully human is to be vulnerable and frail. To be fully human, is to be much like a helpless child, one in need of nurture, community, love and attention. To be fully human is to be riven with imperfections – troubled with fear, doubt, insecurity, denial and sadness. One of the human affects we adopt is to put on a mask to be more than we are. We hunger for validation and security in things superficial – money, power, knowledge, beauty, status, material possessions, entertainment, drugs, sex, food, religion. We make our holidays into episodes of excess with expensive gifts, extravagant decorations, and of mindless busy-ness, all in a futile attempt to find real meaning and lasting joy. We grasp and claw and work to be anything but who we really are – pitiful, limp trees – ugly, misshapen bodies – lonely, misunderstood seekers. That is our reality. That is us.

But Charlie Brown, Robert Hoge, the helpless babe in a manger, the naked prophet nailed to a tree, they all tell us a different story about humanity and about ourselves. There is strength in weakness. There is greatness in frailty. There is power in lowliness. There is beauty in the ugly. Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, the hungry, the poor, the addicted, the depressed, the outcast. The world calls you ugly, a failure, a misfit. But inside us all is a mustard seed of redemption – one of beauty, truth, service to others, goodness and love.
Those who are outwardly wealthy, arrogant, intelligent, beautiful or strong – they find false security in life. Smug in trappings which hold no lasting greatness, they fail to see how they too are hungry and poor. We must therefore embrace our ugliness and weakness. Out of the depths of despair, in the pit of loneliness, in the pain of disease or poverty, we can discover lasting truths that transcend all our masks and all of the superficial things of this world.
Being in authentic community with others heals.
Sacrificially serving people and causes beyond ourselves is a real path to meaning and purpose.
Humility is a way to find grace.
Forgiveness brings redemption.
Empathy creates understanding and peace.
And, unconditional love for ourselves and for others is the greatest power in the universe.
In this message, I speak to each one of you individually. I also speak to myself. In our heart of hearts we know our struggles, our flaws, our disappointments, our excuses we use to cover up pain. Some of us mask ourselves better than others. But we are all weak little Charlie Brown Christmas trees. We are all as ugly or uglier than Robert Hoge.

We are all running from something – fear of being unmasked, insecurity about our own potential – sadness in our loneliness – regret and despair over past lives and decisions. This holiday season – for the next three weeks – for the new year – we can default into what Charlie Brown fought against. We can run to shopping malls and restaurants and parties and vacations in a vain attempt to find satisfaction and joy. We can cook and decorate and spend our way into a numbed sense of fulfillment that will soon feel empty. We can celebrate the superficial all around us – in people, in events, in things. We can console ourselves in a stupor of depression, isolation, overeating, overwork, soul-less charity, empty religion, or mindless use of alcohol, sex or drugs.
To you the addict, to you the one depressed, to you the fearful one, to you who has built walls around your heart, to you who is angry at family or friend, to you who cries silently in the night over unmet needs and broken relationships, to you who wraps yourself in a smug cocoon of superiority, to me who hungers to feel liked and loved, there is hope this Christmas. There is hope, after everlasting hope, after hope. A resurrection awaits.
There is strength and greatness and dignity in each of us. But we must first admit it and believe it. We must believe it. There is goodness and beauty in each of us. But first we must show it. We cannot be loved unless we first love ourselves. How many of us self-destruct in so many ways with anger, isolation, addiction, arrogance, self-hate? We cannot truly love and respect ourselves unless we practice the timeless human verities of which I listed earlier. We each know those truths. We know they are a means to overcoming our weaknesses. At any time of year, they are more essential than ever. Deeply connect with people. Serve and give to others more than to yourself. Humble thyself. Let go of anger toward anyone. Listen to and understand your enemy. Love yourself and others. Simple to say. So difficult to practice.
This holiday season, indeed for the next new year, let us tap into what is authentic and great in us. Let us embrace and love who we each are as flawed individuals. But let us see the wondrous beauty in us. May we find our quiet dignity. We each have so much more to give the world. We each have so much yet to do in life. Inside you, inside me – is a small, pathetic little Christmas tree waiting to burst forth – waiting to be crowned with a shining star on its top – waiting for its time as a thing of authentic strength and beauty and power…
I wish you all very happy holidays.

I want to make some brief comments about the passing of Nelson Mandela. In so many ways, he exemplified the topic of my message this morning. Tried for crimes against the South African state, he was convicted at age 41 and sentenced to prison on the notorious Robben island – a former leper colony located seven miles off of Cape Town – for the rest of his life. It was a bleak existence where inmates spent their days in hard labor and confined at night to small, cold prison cells.

But Mandela refused to allow his situation to defeat him. During the 27 years of his life in prison, reduced to the humblest of living conditions and at his seemingly weakest, he somehow triumphed. His quiet dignity, his force of mind and spirit – such attributes ,drew whites and blacks to him. White government cabinet members and other officials began traveling to Robben island to negotiate with Mandela – a man they thought they had banished forever. He became a leader not by his call to hatred, revenge or revolution – but by his humble yet insistent demands that the black majority be given equal rights. In return, he personally promised reconciliation with whites and a refusal to seek revenge by blacks once they took power. From the the bleak conditions of his prison cell, his stature increased until the African National Congress and other South African black leaders made his plight and his words the rally cry for an international movement. “Free Mandela” echoed around the world.
Mandela will live forever because of his legacy – a prophet and advocate of non-violence equal to Jesus, Mohammad, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. If we are to honor him in any way, I believe it is to live out his ethics in our own lives – to pursue non-violence, to refuse – as he long advocated – to hate anyone, particularly our enemies, and to reconcile with and forgive others. He championed such ideals on the world stage but we have smaller stages on which we can act – with others in this church, with our families and friends, in our politics and how we act in daily life. Banish anger. Rise above our petty demons. Forgive. Act and speak with peace. Work in the cause of justice for all. Mandela was a great man despite white efforts to diminish and eliminate him. His life exemplifies the truth that strength is found in humility and weakness.

I welcome your comments on my message about the Charlie Brown Christmas tree or about Nelson Mandela.

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

 

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It is an interesting fact of history that the current political animosity between conservative Republicans and Democrats is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, today’s political divide extends back to the earliest days of our nation. It is exemplified in the ideological differences between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams, an ardent supporter of a strong Federal government, was opposed by Jefferson who wanted a weak central government fearing its control over common people.
Both were colleagues and collaborators during the revolutionary years. Both served as a part of the small group who drafted the Declaration of Independence. Both served together as emissaries to France during the war. Both risked life and reputation in their efforts to form the United States.
They also had a unique relationship. They were the best of friends during the revolution. They were the bitterest of enemies soon after the constitution was implemented. They reconnected and, once again, became extremely close in the final decades of their lives. The history of their friendship can be traced through 380 letters they exchanged – numbering as high as 60 one year, to none for almost twelve years when they were opponents. Such a high number of letters between them, at a time when it took weeks for correspondence to travel even a few hundred miles, offers testimony to the intimate and sincere affection they had for one another.
In one of the great coincidences of history, both men died after very long lives, on the exact same day – that being the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – July 4th, 1826. John Adams’ last words before he died were to exclaim, “Jefferson lives!” Little did he know, in that age with no telegraph or telephone, that he had outlived Jefferson by five hours.
As we focus today on the topic of finding gratitude for our friends, we can learn a lot from the friendship between those two men. We can also learn a lot from two twentieth century female friends – two women whom most people never knew were close.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s, Ella Fitzgerald was a rising talent within African-American circles. She was a protege of such jazz greats as Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. But like all African-Americans of the time, she was thwarted in her ambitions and talent by white racism. She, and other black musicians, were limited to performing in small – often secret or underground – black lounges. Access to the wider world and media outlets was limited. Once, while performing with Dizzie Gillespie in an African-American club in Dallas, she and the other musicians were arrested simply for putting on a show. Ella later recounted the indignity of that episode along with the bald audacity of the policemen who arrested her and then, in the jailhouse, asked for her autograph.
During those early years of her career, Ella met Marilyn Monroe. They quickly became close friends. As Marilyn’s fame skyrocketed to superstardom, she and Ella nevertheless enjoyed a kind of mutual understanding and affection that only friends experience.
The Mocambo club in Hollywood was considered the preeminent venue for musical performers in the forties and fifties. Sinatra and others regularly played there. But it, too, had a policy that excluded black musicians. Marilyn Monroe was horrified by such prejudice toward her friend. She persuaded the club owner to hire Ella for a one week gig by promising him she would book a front row table and attend all of Ella’s performances. She and he knew that her superstar status would attract both huge audiences and the press. Marilyn was right. Ella’s performances were sold out and she received tremendous press coverage. Her career took off from that point.
Fitzgerald credited her friend with being the catalyst for her success. She repaid that gesture by regularly helping Marilyn with her singing voice. Anyone who studies Monroe’s movie career, knows that she was a capable singer able to musically hold her own with Hollywood greats. Marilyn gave all the credit to her friend Ella.
My purpose in citing the history of Adams, Jefferson, Fitzgerald and Monroe is not just to tell the story of their friendships, but to find insights from them to inspire us and give us greater reason to find gratitude for our friends.
Both friendships began like most do – by finding common cause and shared experiences that draw people together. Adams and Jefferson were comrades in the revolution and both knew that at any moment they, along with other founding fathers, were subject to capture, arrest and execution as traitors to the King.
Fitzgerald and Monroe were both performers who understood the joys and trials of public fame. They also shared a history of exclusion – not only as women, but as people too. As a white woman, Monroe’s experiences were nothing like those of Fitzgerald and other African-Americans. But, she too had faced derision and roadblocks to her career because of her rural, backward, small town roots. And while she exploited her blonde bombshell persona, she also knew that it stereotyped her as dumb and insignificant. She likely empathized with Ella and the prejudice directed at her.
During the careers of Adams and Jefferson, they extended the greatest of praise to one another while also harboring the petty jealousy that too often infects many friendships. Jefferson resented that Adams was elected the first Vice President and that he later succeeded Washington as the second President. Adams was bitter that Jefferson ran against him in his reelection and won. Just before he left office, Adams packed a Federal court with appointees whom he instructed to nullify Jefferson’s election. The ploy was overturned but Adams was so angry that he departed Washington in the middle of the night – refusing to attend the inauguration of his past friend.
Twelve years later, the two men reconciled. Forged by the common experience of being President and the threats they had navigated the infant nation through, they reunited and forgave each other the bitter and hateful words they had exchanged. They once again became not only friends but intimately close ones – sharing the kind of thoughts, fears and dreams that few people of that time ever shared with others.
As I’ve said, these four people can teach us a lot about friendship. So too can persons described in the Bible. From Moses and Aaron, to David and Jonathon, to Jesus and John, to Paul and Timothy, the Bible models both the value of friendships and how genuine friends should act. David even described his love for Jonathon as surpassing a man’s feelings for a woman. While some commentators mistakenly read homosexual romantic overtones in Biblical friendships, they miss the spiritual lesson we can learn. Friends, whether of the same or opposite genders, can have very real and deep affection for each other – without it being romantic.
Experts report that while having friends is vital to our well-being, like many things in life, we can take them for granted. Many of today’s social ills like poverty, stress or depression can be traced to one sad fact – some people lack close and supportive friends. In a recent Gallup poll of persons who are homeless, overweight or depressed because of an illness or failure of a marriage, a majority cited as one reason being the poor quality or nonexistence of friendships. They feel isolated and unloved.
This Gallup poll suggested that people are five times more likely to eat healthy if they have close friends who do so. Married people said that their friends are more important to them than intimacy with their partner. And a person is twelve times more likely to be productive and engaged in work if they have a close work friend.
The Mayo Clinic echoes those findings and reports that friendships are important for our health. Friendships help reduce stress, they boost our sense of well-being, they improve our self-image, they assist us in coping with life traumas and they help by encouraging change in unhealthy habits. Overall, the Mayo report found that it makes no difference whether one has a few close friends or a large number of social friends. The importance is found in the quality of relationships versus the quantity.
Similar to lessons we can learn from the friendships I’ve cited, the Mayo Clinic suggests that we avoid overwhelming a particular friend with all of our needs. We need to respect appropriate boundaries of time and commitment. We should not compete with our friends but instead cheer their successes. As in all relationships, we should listen more than talk. We should avoid judging our friends in their life choices, personalities and small flaws. We should be as positive as possible when we are with them – sharing our burdens but otherwise adopting a positive and happy outlook. And we should respect their privacy – learning the appropriate boundaries to the friendship – to pry or advise only when permission is given.
The main point of this Mayo Clinic report is that we must take our friendships seriously. That is a recurring theme in my series this month on finding gratitude for families, health and friends. If we deeply value these persons and aspects of our lives, it takes more than an annual holiday of thanks to show it. Gratitude for anything is a continual spiritual practice not only because we derive benefits from a healthy body, from family and from friends, but because these things enrich our lives and help enable our happiness.
Friendships deeply influence who we are as people – often as much as – or more – than do our families. Childhood friendships play an enormous role in determining our values – even if we have lost touch with friends of earlier years. Friends teach us life skills like empathy, sharing, and generosity. They help direct us in life priorities, they help enlarge our circle of friends, they support us in good times and bad, they offer companionship in lonely times, they advise us in our romantic relationships, they offer wisdom that help us see and overcome flaws, and they support us in our social justice and charitable inclinations.
Historical records show that it was John Adams who strongly pushed Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. He admired Jefferson’s writing abilities, his way with words and the respect others had for him. He knew that his friend’s stature would help convince wayward colonial delegates of the wisdom to break from England. Their friendship helped launch our nation as it also helped give the world one of its most eloquent and inspiring documents.
Marilyn Monroe helped introduce the world to one its great musicians – one who will live in music immortality. And she courageously helped break down racial barriers – showing racist white America what it is like to love and respect a person of another race. And Ella Fitzgerald returned the favor with friendship for a woman totally unlike her. Without Ella’s assistance, Monroe would only have been valued as a sex object, and not as a person, actor and singer.
If we think about our friends, we will see similar influences. I have a close friend named David with whom I often speak but am not as close as I once was. He helped push me to attend Seminary and become a Pastor and he has regularly encouraged me in my ministry and my desire to serve others. Indeed, I stand here today largely because of his early influence on me. Ironically, he is a very conservative Christian. As much as I have looked in awe at his breadth of knowledge about faith and the Bible, I have evolved from those beliefs after undertaking my own studies and examination of Christianity.
When I came out over eight years ago, most of my friends quickly abandoned me. It was heart breaking and showed me that friends are not always as reliable or as perfect as we hope they will be. Friends, like any person close to us, can hurt and wound.
But my one friend, David, did not abandon me. While I know he still does not believe homosexuality is God’s ideal, I believe I’ve helped evolve his perspective on the issue. As always, it takes knowing someone who is gay to help a person realize we are as human, flawed, good, faithful, and in need of grace as anyone else. Gays and lesbians are God’s good creation too. David remains a friend despite not agreeing with my evolved views about God and the Bible – and despite me being gay. We are not as close as we used to be. For many years he was my very best friend. But we are still friends, we still care for one another, we still cheer and praise the other. We still totally trust the other. I love David and am deeply grateful for all he has given me and meant to me in my life.
My experiences, and those of many of you, with past and present friends, reminds us what we owe them. Often, they’ve been the wind beneath our wings. They’ve been the one who spoke to us when others bullied us, who laughed at our silly jokes, who held our hands when we were sick, who listened as we poured out our hearts in grief. To be someone’s friend is a great honor. To have a friend is a great privilege.
As that Gallup poll showed, so many hurts in our world are often made worse because people lack friends or have failed to really invest in them. We do ourselves a great disservice if we take a friend for granted – if we fail to notice the small ways they support and love us; if we overlook the sacrifices they’ve made for us; if we fail to appreciate them and love them unconditionally. As we all know, a true friend is one who knows all about us – the dark recesses of our souls – but who loves us anyway.
To show gratitude for our friends, we should tell them what they mean to us. The best way is to do so in person. Another way is to send them a hand written letter. We show gratitude when we spend time with them but mostly when we offer our listening ear – not seeking to advise or judge them. The gift of simply allowing them to express themselves – their joys and their struggles – is enough. We can make something or cook a meal for them – giving them a piece of our love and labor. We can honor them by donating in their name to their favorite charity – even one we might not otherwise support. Most of all, we can value our friends by letting them know in a thousand different ways – a hug, a small gift, a talk over coffee, a phone call, an e-mail – that we are there for them. We are, for them, an ever-ready resource, a 911 call of support, always on standby.
Having an attitude of gratitude for any of life’s blessings is what grounds us as humans. Sincerely felt, gratitude reminds us of the wonder and joys of life. For each moment we live, each morsel of food, each kindness offered us, each person who has graced our lives – we owe debts of thanks. Most of all, gratitude takes us to a place of quiet awe and reverence. We are each the sum of gifts and influences and loving gestures that cannot be counted. We are blessed beyond measure.
No matter if we have one friend or ten, it is the depth of our feelings, loyalty, ability to share and level of support that matters. It does not matter if the friend is no longer close – but once was. Such people are like gold to us. Let us value them. Let us find in our hearts deep gratitude for them. Let us be someone who unconditionally loves, listens, refuses to judge, lifts up, encourages, and shouts with joy at every success and moment of glory our friends experience.

To you and to your friends, I wish you much peace and joy.

Message 148, Finding Gratitude for Life and Health, 11-10-13

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

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When was the last time that you felt truly alive?  When did you last feel energized, aware, awestruck and ecstatic about life?  Such a moment or period of time hopefully came when every part of your body and mind felt the power of “being”.  You were without pain, fear or limitation.  Feeling alive was perhaps a transcendent experience in which you were fully grateful for life and for a body in which to enjoy a great moment.

I have to admit that I don’t feel such truly alive moments very often.  I last felt that way two months ago when Keith and I were hiking near Sedona, Arizona.  We were descending into a canyon when a vista of red layered rock walls, millions of years in the making, loomed to our left.  Huge, billowing white clouds scudded across a blue sky above the canyon wall.  Pine trees framed the scene and softly whistled in the wind.  Off in the distance there were more red rock formations that extended far into the distance.  As we stopped to quietly look and listen, I glanced at Keith and there were tears in his eyes.  “It’s just so beautiful”, he said.

As I’ve thought about that moment since then, I’m both grateful for it and sad too.  Why should it take traveling across the country to experience such an alive moment – when my mind and my body felt both a thrill and a certain peace?  Such moments of transcendence can happen anywhere and anytime.  Indeed, the miracle of the trees lining the street outside, or of all of us in our differences, these are also things to behold in awe.  Even more, the fact that my body walks, talks, breathes, thinks and functions in a thousand different but integrative ways ought to be equally stunning to me – and considered with tremendous gratitude.

Last year, the Washington Post conducted an experiment by hiring Joshua Bell, one of the world’s foremost violinists, to stand on a Washington subway platform at morning rush hour and play some of the most difficult but profound musical pieces ever written.  He played a Stradivarius violin valued at over 3 million dollars.  Thousands of people hustled by while barely noticing him or his music.  He played for over two hours and in that time, only six people stopped to listen and even they did so for only a few moments.  In the midst of a crowded, drab, concrete space devoid of any natural beauty stood one of the world’s great musicians playing music that will be appreciated centuries from now – and yet nobody really listened, nobody stopped to value, appreciate and bask in that moment of pure life.

Unfortunately, the experiment showed how we fail to have gratitude for much of what is awesome and beautiful around us; how we fail to use the gifts of our bodies to listen and feel inspiring moments of life; how we fail to simply be – and open ourselves to how our bodies integrate into, and are not separate from, the wider universe.  Too many moments pass by us without thought, notice or appreciation.  We take them for granted, ignore them and focus instead on mundane tasks, fears, or pains.  Our bodies are largely forgotten unless they shout at us in brief moments of pleasure or in more prolonged times of hurt.  All too often we simply ignore and fail to have gratitude for the world around us, for our bodies that are our real homes and for our essential health that gives us the opportunity to live.

As I contrasted last Sunday the differences in outlook that western and eastern cultures have for families, it is interesting that there are similar differences between the two cultures in how life, the body and overall health are viewed.  Sadly, our western way of thinking – once again caused by centuries old Judeo-Christian ideas – too often sees humans and the human body as separate from the natural world.  Such a notion began with early Christian thinking that the body and its flesh are temporary, dirty, decaying, and unworthy of respect.  It’s our spirits and our souls that have value and that are eternal.  In this respect, our bodies are to be rigidly controlled so we don’t jeopardize our souls.

As modern society has evolved, this perspective has not changed.  Our bodies and lives are still manipulated in ways that seek to control the natural world that threatens us – to conquer bacteria, disease, dysfunction and ultimately nature.  In western thinking, our health and our bodies are separate from and not a part of the universe.

This thinking can lead us to take our bodies and lives for granted.  It’s simply a machine that pumps and breathes and functions almost as an afterthought – unless and until something does not work.  We then react to the disfunction and seek to correct the environmental problems that caused it – a disease, a cancer, a chemical deficiency.

Eastern cultures see the body from an entirely different perspective.  The body is fully a part of, and not separate from, nature and the universe.  The very essence of who and what we are is no different from the wind that blows, the rocks that form a canyon wall, or other creatures that populate the earth.  Much like the universe itself, our bodies thrive when in balance both with itself and with nature.  Instead of seeing illness or disease as a part of nature that attacks and threatens us, easterners see illness as a state of imbalance.

The goal, therefore, in eastern philosophy is to live in deep connection with the world and for our bodies to draw on the peace, energy flow, and powerful natural forces that keep us healthy and in balance.  In other words, instead of making nature adapt to our bodies, which is the western approach, easterners adapt the body to nature.  Our bodies – along with air, water and other life forms – exist in a natural and connected equilibrium.

This eastern view of the body therefore translates into how they value health and life.  They are not to be taken for granted.  A healthy body must be daily maintained in balance with itself and with all nature.  Chinese ideas of integrating a yin and yang state of mind, of using acupuncture points to stimulate health, of meditation, of slow movement in Tai Chi are all examples of this thinking.  So too is Buddhist meditation and it’s emphasis on the energy flow between chakra points on the body.  In that regard, the body and its health are valued as a matter of daily life.  The Buddha encouraged this mindset when he said that every person is the author of his or her own health and well being.

While diseases happen, eastern thinking about them is to adapt our bodies and our minds to the natural forces that use illness to purify and balance life.  If balance cannot be restored so that our bodies can function in health, then we must submit to that fact.  Terminal illness and death are a part of nature.  They are to be respected and valued in their own way – as truths to be accepted and integrated into an overall sense of being.

This eastern approach of continual gratitude and maintenance of one’s health was exemplified in Ancient Greek and Roman mythology.  There were numerous gods and goddesses responsible for personal health.  The two most prominent were Asclepius and Hygea.  Temples were built for these gods, people venerated small home statues of them, and frequent offerings and prayers were made to them.  Much like visiting a modern shrine like Lourdes, people visited the Temples seeking a god’s assistance in maintaining or restoring health.  One would sleep overnight in a dormitory adjacent to the Temple during which time the god would supposedly visit the person in his or her dreams.  Priests would then interpret the dreams as a way to prescribe a treatment that the god suggested.

In those pre-scientific cultures, one’s personal health was of major concern.  Even so, one was encouraged to be in tune with the body and offer daily prayers or thanks for its good health.  Faith, devotion and regular religious practice were essential for one’s health.  And the same attitude is clear in the Bible.  Jesus was a master healer whose most frequent miracles involved healing the lame and sick.  But NOT everyone was cured.  He repeatedly told those whom he did cure that it was their faith that had made them well.   Those who sincerely sought God’s healing power were the ones cured.

As mystical and unscientific as that might seem, it nevertheless underscores the eastern mind / body / spirit integration for maintaining a healthy life.  That thinking translates into gratitude for life and health.  The body and its functions are not taken for granted in most eastern cultures.  Indeed, one daily maintains personal health by focusing on a mind / body / spirit balance.

Once again, we can learn from this balanced and integrative approach to health.  It leads directly to a continual appreciation for life.  Without rejecting modern medical science, we can nevertheless incorporate aspects of eastern thinking in our lives.  That means finding balance in what we eat, how we exercise, what we spend our time thinking about and how we spiritually enrich ourselves.

While I am not an expert on diet and nutrition, my personal approach is to find balance in what I eat.  I like fattening foods but I don’t overindulge in them.  If I eat a heavy meal, I limit myself the next day.  And the same holds true for what I believe about exercise.  I try to work out three times a week as well as doing some walking, biking, yard work and taking stairs instead of elevators.  But I don’t think I’m a fitness fanatic.  I spend my share of lazy days.  Experts assert that all people should be more active and they encourage simple ways to do so like walking or swimming.  Indeed, some experts encourage people to take at least 10,000 steps a day – and there are now free smartphone apps that will count them for you.  If mobility is an issue, then water exercises and swiming are suggested.  Such advice comes not just as a way to find better health, but as a means to show gratitude for the health and bodies we’ve been given.  Too often we focus on the care of our houses, cars or computers while ignoring – until something bad happens – the one machine most essential to us.

That lack of deep appreciation for my health symbolically hit me over the head last year when I suffered a knee injury.  Mentally, that relatively minor injury set me back a lot.  I was anxious and upset that the fallibility of my flesh was suddenly upon me.  My knee injury reminded me how much I took for granted my good health and the daily miracles of bodily functions and abilities.  I thought I had eaten and exercised well but I had not spiritually and mentally practiced a kind of gratitude for life and health.  I was indifferent about them.  I meditated only occasionally.  I rarely focused in prayer or in thought about the miracle of my body.

Even more, by failing to really value life and health, I failed to spiritually and mentally process, accept and even appreciate the few times in my l life when my body had suffered.  My mind, body and spirit were imbalanced.  And so when my knee injury struck me, I was not prepared.  I got angry, depressed and troubled about it, my surgery and the long healing process.

Gratitude for one’s health that includes a spiritually positive attitude when our bodies hurt is not only encouraged by eastern cultures, it is ironically now endorsed by western medicine.  Faith, prayer and a positive outlook have been scientifically shown to improve healing.  Experts therefore encourage people to use the powers of faith and a positive mindset as a proactive measure to maintain health as well as to improve it when we are sick.

They suggest, when we are sick, to take a reality check, gather as much information as possible about our individual case, and then avoid imagining worst case scenarios.  We should also manage how we think and find ways to focus not on our illness but on other thoughts, activities and events.  This involves becoming more socially connected with others – being willing to ask for help, for listening ears, and for social companionship.  As trivial as my injury was last year, Keith was a godsend to me in his support.

Overall, experts advise against isolation.  Staying as active and vital as possible when sick – visiting with others, going out, eating out, walking if possible, staying connected to friends and church – these are all important.

But of greatest importance is finding a mind and spirit balance.  Our bodies are likely being taken care of by health professionals.  But our spirits need healing too.  This involves undertaking regular times to reflect, pray or meditate.  In doing so, the goal is to find a kind of inner peace and awareness not only of our bodies but of life itself.  It is often those who are most sick who appreciate moments of great beauty like hearing a master violinist play, viewing a sunset, laughing at a funny show or book, or relishing a great meal.  Such gratitude for life and health, no matter how troubled or full of pain, is not easy, but it is essential.

If we find that we have already incorporated such attitudes of gratitude into our daily lives when we are healthy and happy, they will be much easier to practice when we are not.  Adopting an attitude of gratitude for life, body and health will lead to a positive outlook even in the darkest of times.

Josh Billings, a contemporary spiritual commentator, has said that our health is like money.  We never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.  He perfectly states the point of my message today.  Gratitude and appreciation for life, for our bodies and for our health is not to be taken for granted nor is it a one-time annaul expression at Thanksgiving.  It should be a common attitude.  That means re-oreintiing our minds to notice big and small moments of beauty – to really see the trees and the clouds; to listen intently to the birds, the wind and great music; to appreciate the stunning abilities we have to think, walk, speak and see.  It means doing all we can to live in balance – a mindset I encourage in all aspects of life – in our spirituality, politics, thinking, eating, working, exercising and entertaining.  I firmly embrace the idea that extremism in any form IS a vice.  Extremism upsets the universal order of things that all creation exists in perfect balance.  If we are a part of that universe, then we too must live in balance and shun the extremes.

Today, tomorrow, this Thanksgiving, let us each reflect deeply on what it means to value the mere fact of our existence.  Let us find gratitude for the glorious gifts of our bodies and the wonder of good health that allows us to enjoy transcendent moments of tears, laughter, wonder, peace and pure joy.

I wish all of those to each of you…

 

Finding Gratitude for Family, 11-3-13

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved.

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In a 1993 Florida case, Kimberly Mays asked a court to allow her to sever all ties with her biological parents and family.  Kimberly and another baby girl had their identity tags mistakenly switched at birth and they were sent home to the wrong family.  Both were raised by non-biological parents.  The switch came to light when the other girl developed a heart condition and had genetic tests performed.  Kimberly’s biological parents sued for visitation rights but those visits unsettled Kimberly.  She was forced to spend time with the parents who gave birth to her but who were otherwise total strangers.  She considered her true parents to be those with whom she had no obvious connection other than they had, by the hospital’s mistake, raised and loved her.  Kimberley’s lawyer asked in his opening statement, “What is a family?  Biology alone – without more – does not create or sustain a family.”

It is often claimed that western cultures are confused about how to define ‘family’.  For multiple reasons, westerners define family as any group of people related by blood, marriage or adoption who live in the same house.  Unfortunately, such a narrow definition compels us to see family as comprised of parents and children while excluding many of the diverse intimate relationships that might also be considered family.  Traditional family definitions are rooted in centuries old Judeo-Christian ethics that many sociologists believe originated as a form of economic and social control by men.  Not only could property rights be better controlled with such a family definition, so too could sexual and other behaviors.  Also, the individual and his or her needs are the focus of western thought and families are merely social groups that support the individual.

Our western definition of family affects the feelings we can have about family and family members.  In our culture, families and family members can be taken for granted, devalued and even blamed for a person’s neuroses, flaws and problems.  Ironically, traditional family ethics have led westerners to de-value family relationships and to blame them for causing personal life problems.  By defining family as a relationship based on blood ties and living arrangements alone, we’ve paradoxically given rise to a victim mentality where personal inadequacies are often attributed to genetics and dysfunctional parents.  By relying solely on biology to define family, there is little else to justify affection or deep connection between family members.  We can feel forced to love and support family out of duty as opposed to feeling intimate connection to them.  In other words, western cultures have sown the seeds for disunity, indifferent love and little grace or forgiveness in many families.

A non-western understanding of family, however, is far different and more inclusive.  Families in eastern and non-western cultures are not always defined by biology and household. Rather, they are far more diverse including as members not just of nuclear family parents and siblings but also in-laws, non-related intimate associates, aunts, uncles, and distant cousins.  Family is determined not just blood but by having a deep and supportive social relationship.

In that regard, easterners typically greatly value their families and family members – some of whom are not tied by immediate blood relationships.  Even more, the well-being of an individual is not the purpose for families to exist.  Rather, families exist to support the unit as a collective whole.  It is culturally imperative to not only support other family members but to deeply honor, love and respect the very idea of family.  In this way, connections are usually forged not based on blood ties but on affection.

Throughout much of Asia, this cultural ethic called katannu kataveti is highly regarded and it is constantly taught to children and adults.  It is embodied in Buddhist teachings to show esteem and appreciation for all family members.   It is a practice, Buddhists say, that promotes inner peace, kindness and generosity in all relationships. To express gratitude for family is not the western idea of an occasional but often insincere sentiment.  It is a primary value and way of thinking.  One supports one’s family from birth to death – no matter what.

For us, it is considered appropriate at Thanksgiving to express gratitude for many of our life blessings.  We pay homage for the things we have, for food, shelter, for life itself.  This one time a year, we think of all the good we have in life and give thanks for them.

But our sense of Thanksgiving for blessings does not always extend throughout the year.  Nor it does not often extend to the challenges we face in life.  At Thanksgiving, we express gratitude for the good and pray for the bad to go away.  And we do the same for our our families.  We adopt a western form of indifference about them – they are loved but too often taken for granted.  Our individual well-being is thought of first.  Even more, our family life difficulties are not appreciated and valued.  They are instead blamed.  We see ourselves more as products of our own individual abilities than as persons molded and shaped for the better by our families and by family events – even those that were difficult, challenging and hard.

Indeed, in an ironic twist for modern day so-called family values advocates, Jesus encouraged a non-western definition of family and love for them.   His true family, he claimed, were his followers and close intimates.  He loved his birth mother and brother – but not because of their biological ties.  His closest family members, in his eastern cultural thinking, were the twelve disciples and the many women who loved and followed him – including his mother.  They were his real brothers and sisters.  Even more, this extended family of his was far from perfect.  They were society’s misfits, criminals, prostitutes, and thieves.  They fought, they showed petty jealousies, and they even denied Jesus when they were threatened with arrest alongside him.

But Jesus honored them as his family and he modeled the katannu kataveti eastern ethic.  He loved this unique family of his despite their quirky ways or sin filled lives.  He repeatedly forgave them and called them his own even after many abandoned him.  Above all, he lived within a strikingly modern family unit – persons not just related by blood but bound instead by unconditional devotion, care, concern, support and love – no matter a member’s differences or imperfections.

We can learn from this eastern approach to family.  Family are those around us, intimately connected to us and deeply supportive of us – and we of them – both emotionally and physically.  Each of the members of our particular families may or may not be related to us by blood or by marriage.

Love of family and gratitude for it extends beyond a few verbal expressions of appreciation.  It extends to how we serve them, forgive them, honor them and remain close to them all our lives – no matter their flaws or misdeeds.  Indeed, gratitude for family in this sense goes beyond love for a nurturing dad, a supportive sister, or a kind and successful child.  Our gratitude should extend to the parent who is or was distant, to the jealous and resentful sibling, and for the angry, dysfunctional or ungrateful son or daughter.  Our gratitude can also be expressed and felt for family times of rancor, disagreement, denial, and even abandonment.  We are better people because we’ve endured the good and the bad of family life.

We honor and daily show gratitude for family because more than any other influence in our lives, it defines who we are, it molds us, grows us, enlarges us and, through good and bad ways, gives us our identity and personality.  Our families were and are the incubators in which we develop and they grow us into stronger and better people.  To deny our families and their members is to deny ourselves.

As many of you know, I have a challenging relationship with my dad.  Given a choice, I’m not the son he would have picked nor is he the dad of my ideal dreams.  Too often, however, I allow resentment and anger to cloud my feelings and my relationship with him.  He helped create me and so I extend to him a tepid love born more out of obligation than out of genuine affection.

In truth, however, our connections are more than biological.  He helped raise me.  He financially supported me and gave me my start in life with an education.  In overt and subtle ways, he greatly influenced me.  Parts of his personality, his likes, dislikes and thinking are in me.  I am my dad’s son and who I am and what I have become are substantially due to him.  To love and have gratitude for him, I must transform myself, change my thinking, forgive him his shortcomings and foster a real empathy and appreciation for who he is, the forces that shaped him and the choices he made in life.  To do so for me is not easy.  I can remember the hurts too well.

And yet, that is precisely the point.  I must love my dad and have soul deep gratitude for him not just for his sake, but for me, for my mom, for my siblings, and for my daughters.  By honoring him, I honor myself and the very essence of my family – past, present and future.  Love of family isn’t always a bed of roses.  It’s messy, difficult and full of hurt.  But I cannot abandon my work to love my dad just because it’s tough.  Family is key.  Family is central.  Family is crucial.

And experts largely agree.  Barring the kinds of family members or families that are terribly and criminally abusive mentally, physically, or sexually, the reasons to extend gratitude for our families are many.  According to multiple academic studies, persons with close family and social ties live longer.  Their mental and physical health is better because strong family ties reduce stress, promote feelings of happiness and encourage healthier lifestyles.  People in highly loving and supportive families are better adjusted, more compassionate, more generous and more forgiving.  Indeed, it has been shown that family relationships teach us how to be better people to friends, co-workers and complete strangers.  We cannot be decent human beings unless we are decent and loving family members.   Jesus used his family of disciples and followers in the same manner – to help them grow as people and to model to the wider world how to love and support others.

Family, no matter what it constitutes for each of us – blood relatives, persons with whom we are deeply intimate, or both – should be of major importance in our lives.  It is our last refuge, our castle in a scary world, a group of people who deeply know all about us, love us anyway and who will hopefully be near us in the moments we die.  Gratitude for family must reach into the depths of our souls and find there the generosity and forgiving spirit that we each possess.  That kind of love and gratitude sees a judgmental and overbearing parent with empathy – seeking ways to understand how they were raised, how they did their best in raising us and how they, just like us, are imperfect.  That kind of love and gratitude for family sees the good in a rebellious child, an angry sibling, or a judgmental partner.  That kind of love and gratitude understands how challenging family circumstances or difficult family members can help us grow, learn, mature and become better people.  Adversity makes us stronger.  Disagreeable and challenging people teach us grace.

In so many ways, to be called a member of a family is a high honor and a title of great responsibility.  No matter our situation in life, single, married, with children or without, we each have families – persons who are connected to us by concern, support and love.  This Thanksgiving, I pray we might each reflect on the value of our individual families and who are its members.  As that lawyer for young Kimberly Mays said, it takes more than a blood relationship to comprise a family.  It’s your lover.  It’s your closest friend and confidante.  It’s your church friend, it’s your neighbor, it’s your life mentor.   It’s someone you have poured your life into and who has done the same for you.  And whoever is in our families, past or present, let us find deep appreciation for them, for the good in them, and for the influence they have had in shaping who we are.  Let’s not just tell them of our love and gratitude.  Let’s show it.  Let’s forgive.  Let’s understand.  Let’s listen.  Let’s serve.  Let’s reunite with them, if they allow it, in a spirit of grace.  Let’s be near them and with them in good times and bad.  As Michael J. Foxx, the well-known actor, once said, “Family is not just an important thing.  It is everything.”

 

I wish you all much peace and joy.

 

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Mary Latham was an 18 year old woman who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1643 – a time when the Puritans ruled New England.  During her teens and by the standards of that time, Mary was impetuous, wild and a seventeenth century version of a party girl.  She became engaged to a young man who later decided against marrying her.  Hurt and feeling abandoned at the altar, Mary vowed to marry the next single man she met.  He happened to be much older but Mary kept her word and married him.

That was obviously not the context for a good marriage.  Mary continued her wild ways and frequented places where married and unmarried men drank alcohol.  At one of those affairs, she met a young and handsome professor recently arrived from England.  One thing led to another and soon, allegedly, they had sex.  Wracked with guilt and remorse, the young professor later confessed his sin to religious leaders.  Mary was quickly arrested for adultery.

While Puritan laws were harsh, they did stipulate some standards of evidence.  Two witnesses were required for any conviction.  While the professor admitted his guilt and accused Mary of being his accomplice, nobody else could confirm the alleged dirty deed.

Nevertheless, Mary and the professor were convicted.  Mary, feeling remorse at her conviction, later confessed to adultery with twelve other men.  They, however, were never convicted.  Shocked at her serial promiscuity, the Puritan court sentenced Mary to death.  According to John Winthrop, who was the Massachusetts Governor at the time, Mary went to the gallows peacefully, claiming she deserved die.

Many of us have read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter about a similar Puritan conviction.  As judgmental as what happens to Hester Prynne in the novel seems, her punishment was lenient.  The majority of Puritan trials were for sex offenses since it was illegal to engage in any sexual activity that was not procreative and was not between a husband and wife.  But, since sex is a private activity, eyewitnesses were rare.  The standard requiring two witnesses was thus conveniently overlooked.  Persons convicted of illegal sex were occasionally executed but most were sentenced to a public whipping either at a stake or while being dragged behind an ox drawn cart.  Those whipped were often permanently maimed and some died.  After their punishment, men were required to wear a noose around their necks and women, like Hester Prynne, were to forever wear a scarlet “A”.

It seems ironic that the Puritans practiced harsh judgment of sex acts given the admonition against that by Jesus in the story about a woman caught in adultery.  That story describes how the legalistic Pharisees tried to test Jesus and his fidelity to standards of Jewish law.  They brought before him a woman they said had been caught flagrante delicto – in the very act of intercourse.  Jesus does not say much at first, but after hearing the accusations from the men, he began to write in the dirt.  It is unknown what he wrote.  Many surmise he detailed sins committed by the accusers.  Reminded of their misdeeds, some of which may have been sexual, the men are visibly shaken and deeply embarrassed.  Knowing the punishment for adultery was stoning to death, Jesus then uttered his famous words that only those without sin should cast the first stone at the woman.  The men, however, quietly slink away.  Jesus rhetorically asks the woman, “Where are your accusers?”  Seeing that there are none, he assures her that he does not accuse her either.  Showing empathy and compassion, he tells her to go and sin no more.

There is abundant controversy surrounding this story.  Many Christians who struggle with Jesus’ non-judgmental attitude, question its authenticity or its meaning.  They argue that some early Bible manuscripts do not contain the story, although some do.  And, several early church leaders referred to the story in their writings.  As such, the story is deemed sufficiently a part of the established Bible canon that almost all translations include it.

But the story is still unsettling to many.  Adultery is a sin listed in the 10 commandments and Jewish law is clear about its punishment.  Why did Jesus protect the woman?  What did Jesus write in the dirt?  Perhaps the woman was innocent or a victim of rape and Jesus knew that.  He would therefore have been condemning not only hypocritical attitudes but also the rush to judgment and the illegality of an impromptu trial since, despite Jewish law, the man involved was not also accused.  Perhaps the story was far more nuanced than was presented to Jesus.  Maybe the woman was a prostitute and desperate for money to feed herself or her family.  Maybe she was a rape victim, maybe she was from a broken family or, perhaps she was legally married but abandoned by her husband.  We do not know all of the details since such facts are not presented – only that she was caught in a compromising situation.

Whether or not the story was a part of the original Gospel of John, it does not matter.  Nor does it matter if is actual history.  The story resonates because of its universal teaching about judgment.  It was included in the Bible for a purpose and it legitimately reflects other teachings by Jesus against hypocrisy.  It echoes his teaching and that of the apostle James that only God is to judge moral character.  It also deeply reflects Jesus’ views on forgiveness and redemption.  Many interpreters see a direct similarity of the story with Jesus’ trial and execution by a group of self-righteous accusers.

What the story does do and what the history of the Puritan trials also do are to highlight the scary mask people often wear – that of a judgmental attitude.  Within a few minutes of meeting someone, almost all of us have not only formed an impression of him or her, we have often judged that person to be good or bad.  Learning of a behavior we disapprove by a friend, family member or stranger, we are quick to judge the person – pronouncing a sentence much like a mob of stone wielding men.  He or she is immoral, indecent, unkind, lazy, bad, unworthy.  We apply labels.  We demean.  We condemn.  We arrogantly presume, all by ourselves, to act as policeman, judge, jury and executioner for any person, action or situation we disapprove.

These stories which I have recounted offer us insight, however, to the scary mask of judgment that many of us wear.  By understanding problems with being judgmental, we can better see how to instead live.

When making any determination of another person or situation, we must operate with as complete a set of facts as possible.  Mary Latham was convicted solely on the testimony of her partner in crime.  Other Puritan convictions for illicit sex were based on innuendo, no eyewitnesses and few facts.  The woman dragged before Jesus was said to be observed in the act but even such visual confirmation does not prove willful adultery.  She could have been raped or coerced as a young, immature and impressionable female.  There could be mitigating factors for her actions or for the action of Puritan women – their poverty, their lives as powerless women in cultures where single women were lower in status than slaves, or their being abandoned physically and emotionally by husbands.   What we see are judgments rendered with few facts, no compassion, no empathy and no desire to understand the background and context.  When we judge another, that is a primary clue to the evil we have perpetrated – we don’t have all the facts!

Herein lies the challenge not to judge others.  Judgment of other people involves an emotional response and rush to conclusion about perceived flaws and misdeeds.  We render an opinion about an action or situation that derives from anger, jealousy, insecurity or fear.  We view a person or situation with tunnel vision.  We are narrow minded, intolerant and anti-intellectual.

Discernment, however, relies on an accumulation of facts and evidence.  It does not rely on emotion but rather objectively determines the truth.  Judging another, for example, labels a person convicted of a crime as a bad person.  Discernment, on the other hand, simply concludes that a bad action was committed by another. It is the crucial difference between the discerning actions of our sober, lengthy and deliberate justice system versus mob anger and rush to judgment shown by the men who confronted Jesus and the pious courts of Puritan Massachusetts.

Our call is to practice discernment in our thinking.  Refusing to judge others does not mean we abandon rational, reason based thought.  We have unique intellectual abilities to marshal facts and arrive at close approximations of truth.  We’re asked to seek a complete set of facts BEFORE we form an impression and thought.  And that takes time.  It cannot be immediate.  There is no malice, condescension, dislike, jealousy or anger in objective discernment.  Emotions cloud our thinking.  Calm reasoning offers clarity.

Buddhists suggest an additional method to discern and not judge.  We practice mindfulness when we allow thoughts and observations to flow through our minds without focusing on them and allowing them to dominate.  We can observe other people, their actions and other situations without taking the mental energy to analyze and form conclusions.  Buddhists find inner peace not by closing themselves off from people and the world but by simply and gently observing what goes on around them – and refusing to judge.  Observations without analysis can thus flow in and out of the mind in an endless but peaceful stream of simple awareness.

A second concern with judging others, as Jesus implicitly points out in the Bible story, is that nobody is morally equipped to render an opinion on the goodness of another.  Who among us is free of wrongdoing, misbehavior or so-called sexual sin – the standard being any form of sex outside of marriage?  Even more, as Jesus taught at other times, the sin of adultery need not be one of action.  Jimmy Carter memorably confessed to adultery of the heart – calling attention to Jesus’ teaching that simply thinking about and desiring sex with another – whether or not it is acted upon – is a sin.  There are very few people who are absolutely pure by such a standard.

As Jesus taught, real sin lies in our hearts and not just in our actions.  Lust is lust whether it is in our minds or our behavior.  Hate is hate whether it is in our hearts or in how we act.  The point is crystal clear.  We are all flawed.  We have all misbehaved.  We are all adulterers.  How dare any of us presume to render moral judgment on another, therefore, when our accusing finger points menacingly back on us.

Even more, who among us should act like God or any other universal force for goodness?  I have not been elected or appointed the God-like judge of anyone’s innate character and morality.  I doubt very much that you have either.  I also don’t have the ability to see the totality of other lives.  Someone who appears to me as a good person may well be full of inner hatreds and prejudices.  The opposite is also true.  I know many people whom the world might judge as sinners, criminals or bad people but who, in their humble speech, compassion, generosity,  kindness and redemption are not perfect but are far more moral and good than any self-righteous soul who believes himself or herself the determiner of who and what is moral.  As one anonymous commentator once said, “Even God does not judge a person until their death.  Why should we?”

A third warning is also implied in the stories I’ve told.  What motivates the accusers and the judges?  Why did Mary Latham’s alleged lover confess when he knew full well the severity of punishment for adultery?  Was he angry at Mary for turning down his sexual advances?  Was he disturbed with his own inadequacies as a man – and thus taking them out on she who had tempted him?  Why did the group of angry and self-righteous Pharisees drag a poor girl before Jesus?  What were their attitudes toward women?  Were they protecting one of their own in his adultery?  Were they really concerned about morality, or were they motivated by a desire for vengeance against Jesus and women in general?  Were they motivated by an all too common subconscious compensation for their deficiencies as men, husbands and moral persons?  While we can speculate forever about their motivations, the facts as presented leave us in doubt.  The same is true in ANY judgmental situation.

We must therefore ask ourselves what really motivates us in our critiques and opinions of others?  So often judgment of others reflects more about ourselves than it does the other person.  We subconsciously dislike something in us and so we project that self-condemning thought on another.  Many psychologists assert that those who are overly critical and judgmental of others are symbolically acting and speaking as if in front of a mirror.  As examples: If we are shy and dislike it, we condemn those who are extroverts.  If we are secretly gay, we condemn homosexuality.  If we ourselves have acted improperly in the past, we viciously condemn others who do the same.  If we live in fear, we decry those who don’t.  If we feel inadequate and insecure, we hate those who succeed and achieve.  What we do, in reality, is judge others with the same critical spirit we subconsciously have for ourselves.

We also project our shallow attitudes, prejudices and stereotypes about wealth, race, gender, power, status and appearance on others.  An overweight person is judged less competent and less intelligent.  One who is friendly and seems flirtatious is promiscuous and immoral.  An African-American man has criminal intentions.  A woman is weak, overly emotional and unstable.  A conservative is uncaring.  A liberal is a sentimental sap.  A poor person is lazy.  A rich person is greedy.

We must ask ourselves, what biases lie in the recesses of our hearts that lead us to judge and critique others and their lives?  If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that our critical opinions are ego strategies to make ourselves feel better, salve our fears, or soothe our jealousies.  Instead of confronting issues inside of us, we lash out, condemn, and maliciously judge another.  Indeed, as Jesus teaches with his skillful use of symbolic analogy, it is the log in our own eyes that we willfully ignore when we point out the tiny speck in someone else’s eye.  Wayne Dyer, a contemporary social commentator, has said, “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

That calls us to not only examine our motivations but also our moods and emotional outlook.  Those who are frequently critical of others often operate according to a rhythm of how they feel.  When tired, stressed, fearful or insecure, they can respond with judgment and criticism of others – most often with those closest to them.   When we feel the bile of judgment and condemnation rise within us, we can ask ourselves, how am I feeling right now?  Should I take a rest, should I take a deep breath, read a book, go for a walk or seek some form of finding inner peace?

My topic and messages this month on scary masks people wear – hate, indifference, judgment – are ones to contemplate this Halloween.  None of us want to be hateful, indifferent to the suffering of others or judgmental in attitude.  And yet, most us often are.  I know I have hated and can hate.  I have been indifferent and still am.  I have judged others and still do.  They are the most evil masks I could possibly wear.  I pray your help in taking them off.

We see so much pain around us – people who are lonely, hungry, depressed, poor, afraid, hurting.  Why would we ever wish to add our hate to that mix?  How can we be indifferent and fail to do what we can for such suffering?  Who are we to judge anyone based on false, incomplete or hypocritical thoughts and facts?  Our families, our friends, the people in our communities desperately need, instead, our compassion and our understanding.  We have been blessed with intelligent minds.  Let us use them with wisdom and discernment.  But let us also use our hearts and the grace they’ve been shown, the compassion that causes them to beat, and the love that makes them larger.

 

I wish you, and those listening online, much peace and joy.