When the Student is Ready

Charles Dickens—famous author, Unitarian also—once said a curious thing: that “The absence of the soul is far more terrible in a living person than in a dead one.” In other words, you can be alive but zombie-like; you can be breathing but your willpower is nil, your heart and mind are numb. This is the opposite of soulfulness. Soulfulness is richness. Soulfulness is courage, and fullness, and abundance.

But to get there, it takes … one horn to make you strong, another to make you pleasing, a third to make you wise, and a fourth to draw you out of the world. Each horn in Mitchell Chefitz’ story represents a key developmental challenge coming before us, as we learn across the lifespan and grow our souls. Let’s take a look.

Starting with the shiny horn of strength. It reminds me of a time in my own life, in the eighth grade, when the man selling horns came knocking on my door in the form of the public school teacher who led the Gifted and Talented Program I happened to be in. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name, but I will never forget what she offered: an opportunity to do some creative photography. She handed me not a horn but a camera. She said, learn how, investigate, explore. One afternoon, when everyone else at my school was in a classroom, we were outside on a field trip, just the two of us, a beautiful sunny day, visiting fascinating old buildings in the neighborhood so that I could take pictures capturing interesting angles of vision, varieties of light and shadow, stories held within silent spaces and walls. Ultimately, the pictures went into a portfolio which was to be my project for that eighth grade year, but the larger lesson was not nearly as time-bound; it has stayed with me ever since. An experience of being challenged to do something that, for me, was hard. A discovery that I was up to the task—that my “seven dollars and seven cents” was enough. And then this: a memory of a teacher who believed in me, so that I could believe in myself.

That’s the horn of strength. Developmentally speaking, it’s about establishing ego-identity and self-esteem—a sense of being a unique individual capable of willpower, mastering difficulties and making a mark upon the world. The sound this horn makes says it all. It’s a blast that rattles windows blocks away. It’s the sound of “Here I am, I am me, deal with it!”

Yet this is only the beginning of our long journey through life. “Impressive,” says the man selling horns when he hears Gabriel blast away, but he is clearly not impressed at all, and he says, “Let’s see how you do with this.” Out comes the silver trumpet, mirror bright. And Gabriel soon discovers that finesse, not force, is the way to playing this instrument. Just the slightest breath, so soft, so sweet. As for the result—completely different from that of the horn of strength: people come to hear. Friendships form. He marries and has a family. Does he play the trumpet, or does the trumpet play him?

The developmental theme here is relationship, in other words. “I am” becomes “we are.” It is no accident that Gabriel receives this horn in his adolescence, which is a time when one’s sense of individuality (won much earlier) opens up to other people. Paving the way to this is surging hormones: one moment you feel the joy of belonging, another moment you feel the pain of being an outcast. Highs and lows. And then passion, romance: does she love me, does he love me? At this time in life, the elemental power of our emotions is revealed, so no wonder that the key learning here is balance and moderation. Gabriel comes to realize, as must we, that all that’s needed to play the silver horn is the slightest breath. Too much—overkill—disrupts the delicate dance of friendship and love—and even democracy, I would add. You end up with something like the recent town hall meetings on the issue of health care reform: namecalling, ugliness. Not attractiveness. Not the dance.

With public issues that are of such momentous importance, but also private issues, relationship issues, it’s imperative that we learn how to play the silver horn. That we learn to live according to the covenants that we establish with each other. That we learn civility. That we learn how to get the work done and live with it even if we disagree.

For 30 years, Gabriel plays this horn—and then his journey through life moves into yet another developmental phase. Interestingly, it echoes something that the great psychologist Carl Jung once said: that the focus of the first half of life is establishing ourselves in the outer world: forming an ego, finding our proper vocation, creating a family, and the like. But then at mid-life comes the crisis. Perhaps we have been living someone else’s life and values and we are only now realizing it. Perhaps we have been feeling content and satisfied and yet, for unknown reasons, confusion comes upon us, disorientation, boredom, depression, disappointment in ourselves and others, or just general restlessness—and now the focus must shift to that of the inner world of meaning and spirituality. Reconnecting with ourselves and the universe at a deeper level than ever before.

Quite unexpectedly, the seller of horns returns. And this time, he offers Gabriel the golden horn of wisdom, which is strange enough to be a thing out of Alice in Wonderland. Gold on the outside, clear like glass on the inside. Light to the touch, but also heavy. Definitely a horn meant to be used, but closed at one end. Seemingly finite on the outside, but infinite on the inside. “Your task,” says the seller of horns to Gabriel and to us all, “is to paint the inside of the horn.” But the horn turns out to be endlessly capable of drinking up conventional paint. So what kind of “painting” is the seller of horns actually talking about? What kind of horn is this, anyhow?

Clearly, for Gabriel it represents a scientific puzzle. Yet it could also be an existential one, a philosophical one. In particular I’m thinking about Henry David Thoreau, a key Transcendentalist spiritual ancestor of ours, who’s been on my mind a lot lately since I’ve been preparing for this year’s First Sunday sermon series, starting in October, and he’s the focus. Did you know that for much of his life, he suffered from chronic illness, specifically, tuberculosis? This, for more than twenty years…. He was coughing up blood and having a hard time breathing when he wrote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” He struggled with immense fatigue, and he had pain in all his joints, his muscles, everywhere, when he wrote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” All this constitutes its own kind of puzzle. Thoreau’s hopefulness and joy and energy and incredible productivity as a writer—in the midst of his chronic illness. Why do bad things happen to good people? How to live in a world that can be so hurtful and so cruel?

We exist within mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery. And so, the golden horn of wisdom, above all, is a challenge to our minds. If the horn of strength is about willpower, and the silver horn of attractiveness is about feeling, the golden horn of wisdom is about thinking. How to think about something that is a perfect paradox? How to relate to the mystery with all the intimacy of our thoughts?

Gabriel begins to feed his mind, to free his mind. He learns chemistry, mathematics, physics, cosmology, relativity, string theory. You and I can do that, as Unitarian Universalists, as well as draw from the wisdom of all the world’s religious traditions, in our search for truth and meaning. One thought at a time, we make our way. Yet, as the story suggests, this is not an end in itself. What this phase of our developmental journey does is open us up, ultimately, to nothing less than inspiration. Through careful, one-step-at-a-time study, we develop our minds and make them clear enough and open enough to receive all-at-once flashes of genius. Without careful preparation, though, inspiration has nothing to contain it, nothing to land on.

“With a flash and a rush he knew,” says the story about Gabriel; he sighs into the golden horn of wisdom, paints it with his soul, and the horn “proclaims much more than a sound: understanding and redemption, love and acceptance, grace and beauty.” The implication here is profound. It says that the sign of the truly educated person is not cynicism, but wonder. If you are stuck in cynicism, you are not there yet. “The most beautiful thing we can experience,” Einstein once said, “is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Einstein, a prince of mathematical physics, used to have a sign hanging in his office at Princeton, which said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Perhaps this is why, at the end of his days, facing the circle of life and death, Gabriel was able to say with eyes wide open, “I’m ready.” “I would like to trade up.” He was full of not fear, but wonder and awe.

The old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Life offers us one horn after another, and our learnings are cumulative. “I am” leads to “we are” which leads to “we exist within mystery” which culminates in “life is a circle.” And all are to be trusted. All these great teachers of soul. These, and the many human teachers and mentors that have walked with us and supported us along the way, here in this congregation and beyond. We have cause for great gratitude and thanks. Let the congregation say amen.

Divinity With or Without God

Once upon a time, a young Pygmy boy heard the most beautiful song coming from the forest. The song was so beautiful, he had to go and see who was singing. Deep in the forest he found the bird, and he brought it all the way back to the camp to feed it. This deeply annoyed his father; he didn’t want to give any of their food to the bird. But the boy pleaded and pleaded with him, and the bird was fed. The next day the bird sang again; it sang the most beautiful song, and again the boy went deep into the forest to find it, and again he brought it all the way back to feed it. This time the father was even more angered, but once again he gave in and fed the bird. The third day the same thing happened. But this time the father took the bird from the son and told his son to go away. When his son had left, the father killed the bird, the bird with the most beautiful song, and with the bird he killed the song, and with the song he killed himself and he dropped dead, completely dead, dead forever.

Joseph Campbell once said that the purpose of myth is to tell us—in metaphor and symbol—of “matters fundamental to ourselves, enduring principles about which it would be good to know if our conscious minds are to be kept in touch with our own most secret, motivating depths.” The myth of the boy and the bird and the father is clearly once upon a time, but also here and now. Now, there are songs to be heard which trigger experiences of awe and wonder. Now, there is a young Pygmy boy within us who is ready to be deeply stirred and moved. And there is an angry father as well, now, who wants no part of it.

But how so? What might this all look like, in real life? 

Consider this story from a colleague of mine, the Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons. She says, “As a young Unitarian Universalist in the 1960s, I was educated about human sexuality in a relatively open fashion; human religious experience, in contrast, was a closed book. I discovered my spirituality in much the same way that my peers raised in more conservative faiths discovered their sexuality—accidentally, furtively, without guidance, moved by overwhelming inner tides, and with some sense of shame. I longed for the white organdy First Communion dresses and the menorah candles of my neighbors. I secretly memorized Louisa May Alcott’s ‘My Kingdom’ prayer, written when she was thirteen, and sang myself to sleep with ‘For the Beauty of the Earth.’ I was fascinated by the hidden life of nuns. I yearned for someone, anyone, to take my childish capacity for devotion seriously. But seeds planted in paper cups on the Sunday school windowsill, the dead bird discovered in the backyard, the calligraphic hymns in We Sing of Life, and the annual flower communion were the scant resources my liberal religious education offered. To my parents and teachers—almost all of whom had grown up in other religious traditions—the absence of texts, rote prayers, sacraments, holy objects, and moralistic picture books represented freedom. But without any language for my emerging sense of mystery and wonder, I came to feel the contrary: deprived of the tools with which to understand or express those experiences. I floundered in a kind of guilty yearning until I became intellectually mature enough to claim the rich heritage of humanity’s religious cultures for myself. I did so greedily, with none of the literalism that afflicts fundamentalists, whether orthodox or humanist. As a student of religion in college, I read the Christian women mystics, Zen teachers, Taoist poets. I studied the art and architecture, music and mysteries of the world’s religions, and discovered how each constructed the landscape of spiritual experience. What I sought was some way to bring order to what had always been going on inside of me. And I encountered a whole universe of souls, across every culture and tradition, who knew all about it.”

That’s Kendyl Gibbons’ story, and in it, she is just like the boy ready to be deeply stirred and moved, who goes out far into the forest. As for the bird with the most beautiful song—how about the things to which Kendyl found herself drawn in reverence: initially the white organdy First Communion dresses, the menorah candles of her neighbors, a prayer from Louisa May Alcott, a song with which she would sing herself to sleep. Then, when she got older: the world’s religions, their literature and art and architecture, the whole universe of souls across every culture and nature who had heard the beautiful song. But then there is the religion she grew up in, in which spirituality was seen as regressive, cliché, lowbrow, not progressive enough. In her judgment, this reflects a kind of pridefulness. “There is nothing so petulant,” she says, as to throw away what our ancestors have tried to pass on to us, in stories and stones, in scriptures and songs, in rituals and prayers, because we think that we in our adolescent hubris know better now. Who can stand in the shadow of the great pyramids, or the radiant light and soaring stone of the cathedral at Chartres—who can listen to the deep cadences of the Book of Common Prayer fall sonorous on the ear—and not realize in the very fiber of being that our wonder and our hunger and our terror and even our most valiant ‘yes’ to life are not ours alone, but echo down the ages of the whole human race?” Whatever the reason, people in her congregation did not provide language and symbols of reverence that would have helped her give voice to her emerging sense of awe and wonder. Neglect threatened the bird with the most beautiful song with death—but somehow Kendyl had the resilience to outlast this, only to become one of the leading Religious Humanist ministers in our movement…

This is but one example of the myth unfolding in real life, and here is another, coming to us from Jonathan Haidt, author of our study book for this year, The Happiness Hypothesis. In it, he shares an experience he had while reading The Sacred and the Profane, by the great historian of religion, Mircea Eliade. Jonathan Haidt reads this book, and it tells him that the perception of sacredness is a human universal, and that regardless of their differences, all cultures have had sacred places and sacred times and sacred activities, all meant to allow contact with something that is larger than oneself, something which inspires reverence and awe. The book goes on to tell him that the modern West represents the first culture in all of history that has managed to strip space and time of sacredness and render it completely profane. But then he reads this passage: “Even a person committed to a profane existence has privileged places, qualitatively different from all others—a person’s birthplace, or the scenes of a first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in his youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious person, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the ‘holy places’ of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other than that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life.” This is the passage that Jonathan Haidt reads, and as he does, he gasps. The realization is powerful, visceral. “Eliade,” he says, “had perfectly pegged my feeble spirituality, limited as it is to places, books, people, and events that have given me moments of uplift and enlightenment. Even atheists have intimations of sacredness, particularly when in love or in nature. We just don’t infer that God caused those feelings.” In other words: the bird with the most beautiful song never stops singing, though its song can be drowned out or denied by the culture surrounding it. The bird with the most beautiful song never stops singing, though its song may be different from how common stereotypes portray it. 

The myth unfolds in Jonathan Haidt’s life, in Kendyl Gibbons’ life, and perhaps by hearing their stories you are on the way of drawing your own connections with it. For myself, at this point, above all, what I’m trying to figure out is why the father would want to kill the bird. Why a church might make spirituality a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of thing. Why an entire culture might try to deny or drown it out the bird’s song.

We’ve already heard one possible theory about this, coming from Kendyl and her musings about the church she grew up in: the father is prideful, arrogant, imagines nothing significant can come from the bird. Or perhaps this: the father wants to kill the bird because he thinks it is a phony and the most beautiful song a fake. Perhaps he refuses to give time to the bird because he imagines himself just too busy. Or perhaps he has never himself found a bird like that—perhaps it reminds him of one he once found but lost—and so, in his shame, he turns into a bully. So many possible reasons for why the father does what he does.

Each reason would take significant time to trace out, so here (in the spirit of this science and spirituality sermon series) I will look at only the second one: the father kills the bird because he thinks it is a phony. A delusion caused by chemical misfiring of nerve cells in the brain, with no positive purpose. Why should I take my precious food and give it to a useless delusion? Ever heard this objection before?

It’s fascinating how neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili speak to this in their book Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. One of their experiments involved injecting radioactive material into people practiced in meditation as well as in prayer, and using a high-tech imaging tool to scan blood flow patterns in their brains. The radioactive material would be injected only when subjects indicated that they were deep into the flow of their experience and close to a sense of interconnection with all life (or, alternatively, a mingling with God), so that the scientists could see what was happening in their brains at the climax of their meditation or prayer. And what they—Drs. Newberg and D’Aquili—saw was significantly decreased activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, or the part of the brain responsible for orienting people in physical space—helping people know the difference between up and down, here and there, and above all, “me” and “not me.” Block activity in this part of the brain, through damage for example, and even a simple task like lying down becomes an impossible challenge. You can’t locate yourself. You miss the chair, hit the floor, don’t even know how to lie down. But this was not at all the case with the people meditating or praying. They maintained control of their bodies just fine; it’s just that they had these deep experiences of oneness with the Universe or oneness with God. In this, Drs. Newburg and D’Aquili did not see any nerve cells misfiring or anything manifestedly contrary to what our bodies are meant to do. They did not see anything that would smack of delusion.

Their ultimate conclusion? Our human capacity to hear the bird with the most beautiful song is a valid product of natural selection. It is primal. Evolution put the neurological mechanisms responsible for the experience of self-transcendence in our brains, because when we are able to escape the limited bonds of our narrow selves through love and trust and openness, we become stronger. We become able to accomplish things that otherwise we could never do. This is a “neurobiological need” we see in all living beings, expressed in various degrees of sophistication, from the ritualized behavior of animals to the most sophisticated of human ceremonies. In animals, think headbobbing, think vocalization, think grooming: all these and more enabling members of the same species to recognize eachother as such, enabling communication of various kinds, enabling most importantly mating and reproduction. And as for humans: think this morning: our singing together, our lighting of the chalice, our responsive reading, one event after another unfolding in our midst; and soon, the ringing of the bell, the time of meditation, the offering, the benediction. The rhythm to all of this, so that we can feel opened up, connected to each other and to the larger values we serve. Turn of those cell phones so that we’re not jarred out of our dance together… Underneath all of it is a naturally selected-for neurobiological need to reach out, connect beyond oneself, unite. Underneath is the reality of what poet Rabindranath Tagore spoke when he said, “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.” 

This is nothing less than divinity, with or without God. Rooted in our biology and in our bodies, it is no wonder that people experience sacredness in some form or fashion regardless of theological belief. “The holy is nothing but the ordinary,” says Kendyl Gibbons, “held up to the light and profoundly seen. It is the awareness of a creativity and a connection that we do not control, in a universe that is always larger, more intricate, and more astonishing than we imagine. It is the acknowledgment that we are formed by the earth from which we arise, and in which we live and move and have our being; and that we are, finally, not alone.” Whether or not God exists, we need this awareness, and we can have it.

And it can happen in surprising ways….. I’ll close with a story from Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili in their book I mentioned earlier, Why God Won’t Go Away. 

“At midnight, in the shadowy choir loft of a candlelit gothic cathedral of the Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, a fifty-four year old businessman named Bill sits in a crowded pew enjoying a concert by the innovative jazz ensemble known as the Paul Winter Consort. It’s a hallmark of Winter’s group to set their stage in unusual and atmospheric venues—canyons, beaches, old stone barns—to reflect the moody, reverent spirit of their music, which often blends their own live performances with the recorded songs of nature. Tonight’s concert … has included a lyrical duet with a school of singing humpback whales and a haunting serenade build around the keening of eagles. Now, as the evening draws to a close, Winter and his group are providing the instrumental accompaniment to the tape-recorded singing of a pack of free-roaming wolves. The rhythmic, otherworldly wolf serenade echoes eerily in the monumental quiet of the cathedral’s soaring spaces. The wolves raise their voices in raw howls of sheer animal power, then let them soften to haunting, melancholy cries. [With Winter’s moody soprano sax in call and response fashion, the effect is] to lift listeners out of their everyday lives, and into another world. And as the wolf serenade reaches its emotional crescendo, that’s exactly what is happening to Bill. […] He feels deeply, serenely at peace. Then, suddenly, he is seized by a surge of excitement. It rushes up from the gut in a burst of joy and energy, and before he can think twice about it, Bill is on his feet, with his head thrown back, and he is howling from the bottom of his soul. Remarkably, at the same moment, other people have begun to howl. At first it’s half a dozen, scattered throughout the church. But in moments others follow their lead and soon the entire cathedral is alive with joyous noise, as hundreds of people joyfully join in the primal song of the wolves.”

Something like that is what I hope for each of you, too. To join in with some primal song. In fact, right now I want you to feel the young Pygmy boy within—feel how he is ready to be deeply stirred and deeply moved. Now, from that, howl!

*** 

It’s the neurobiological need for self-transcendence we sense, as we sing that primal song and feel the shivers run up and down our spines … as we feel wonder. That’s what evolution has done for us. Put a capacity for wonder in our hearts. Divinity—with or without God.

Only Connect: The Power of Touch

“As a pediatric intern,” says medical doctor and holistic health pioneer Rachel Naomi Remen, “I was a secret baby kisser. This was so flagrantly ‘unprofessional’ I was careful not to be discovered. Late at night under the guise of checking a surgical dressing or an I.V. I would make solo rounds on the ward and kiss the children good night. If there was a favorite toy or blanket, I would be sure it was close and if someone were crying I would even sing a little. I never mentioned this dimension of my health care to anyone. I felt the other residents, mostly men, might think less of me for it.

One evening as I was talking to a patient’s father in the corridor, I glanced over his shoulder and saw Stan, my chief resident, bend over the crib of a little girl with leukemia and kiss her on the forehead. In that moment, I realized that others too might be struggling to extend themselves beyond an accepted professionalism to express a natural caring. Perhaps there was a way to talk about these things, even to support one another. 

One night when we were waiting to be called to the operating room for a C-Section, I told Stan what I had seen and that it had meant something important to me. Although we were alone in the doctor’s lounge, Stan denied the whole thing. We dropped the subject in embarrassment. For the rest of the year we worked together, thirty-six hours on call and twelve hours off. We became trusted colleagues, good friends and even occasional drinking buddies, but we never mentioned the incident again. 

Stan’s integrity was almost legendary. He would never have fudged a piece of lab data or said he had read an article when he hadn’t. But he would have had to step past our entire professional image and training to admit his heartfelt reaction to that little girl. It was impossible then. It is barely possible now. Expressing caring directly rather than through a willingness to work a thirty-six hour day or spend long evenings keeping up with the medical literature and the newest treatments transgresses a strong professional code. It was just not professional behavior. I stopped kissing the babies then. It did not seem worth the risk. 

In some ways, a medical training is like a disease. It would be years before I would fully recover from mine.” 

That’s the story from Rachel Naomi Remen, and it’s heartbreaking. The complete opposite of happy. Healers, wanting to obey a natural impulse to extend a caring touch, blocked by an ideology of professionalism. Don’t kiss the babies. Don’t sing to them. It’s shameful. Unmentionable. Against code.    

Meanwhile the children in hospital wards are touch deprived. The lonely and crying, uncomforted. Babies needing kisses, unkissed. 

As for the healers themselves—the doctors and nurses and other medical personnel, women and men—touch deprived as well. Hugs not given are hugs not received. Human beings denying their physical and spiritual wholeness in, as Rachel Naomi Remen says, “the mistaken belief that this would enable them to be of greatest service to others.”      

Today we are going to take a look at the struggle in medical science to recognize and affirm the role of physical touch in human wellness. Through this, we will be reminded of the larger struggle we all share, in one way or another. Touch deprivation is a reality in American culture as a whole. It’s just not babies needing to be touched in caring ways, or the sick. It’s not just doctors and nurses needing to extend it. It’s all of us, needing connection, needing to receive it, needing to give it, with genuine happiness at stake.   

Perhaps one of the most suggestive evidences of the basic human need for affectionate touch comes from the work of psychologist Harry Harlow in the 1960s and 1970s. Fellow psychologist Robert Hatfield describes it as follows: “Harry Harlow’s studies involved taking newborn monkeys from their mothers and raising them in isolation. The young monkeys were deprived of maternal and social touch…. In every other way the monkeys were very well cared for. They were well fed, their cages kept clean, and their medical needs attended to. They were “merely” isolated from any physical contact with their mother or other monkeys. Even physical contact with the researchers was severely limited. [Now, in one classic study, which has come to be known as his "wire mother" study,] Harlow placed the touch deprived monkeys in a large cage that contained two crude dummy monkeys constructed of wood and chicken-wire. One dummy was bare wire with a full baby bottle attached. The monkeys had been regularly nursed from similar bottles. The other dummy was the same as the first except that it contained no bottle and the chicken wire was wrapped with terry cloth. Placed in this strange environment, the anxious young monkey very quickly attached itself to the cloth wrapped dummy and continued to cling to it as the hours passed by. The infant monkey could easily see the familiar baby bottle no more than a few feet away on the other dummy. Many hours passed. Although growing increasingly distraught and hungry, the infants in these studies would not release their hold on the soft cloth of the food-less dummy. It was soon apparent that the young monkeys would likely dehydrate and starve before abandoning the terry cloth surrogate mother.” That’s what Harry Harlow discovered, and from this he concluded that, in infant and young monkeys at least—in all human beings, by implication—there appears to be a hunger more powerful than the craving for food: a craving for skin contact with something that feels comfortable and soft, something you can nuzzle and cuddle up to, something to hold and be held by.   

It’s hunger for touch—“touch hunger”—and Harlow’s findings helped shift the official scientific paradigm regarding basic human needs. Science’s eyes were just beginning to be opened. But it took a lot to get things to this point. Science’s eyes were firmly shut back in the 1930s, for example, to the work that Dr. Joseph Brennemann was doing in Bellevue Hospital in New York. He saw how the mortality rate of infants under one year of age was way too high. He acknowledged that ensuring sanitary conditions, plenty of food, and careful attention just wasn’t enough. What was missing was loving physical contact. So Dr. Brennemann established the rule that every baby should be picked up, carried around, and hugged and nuzzled and cuddled several times a day. The result? A mortality rate that fell from 35% to less than 10%. He had found a way to heal a disease that had been hounding American hospitals throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, called “marasmus,” which means “wasting away”—infants dying for no apparent reason, dying in the best of hospitals, dying under sanitary conditions, dying with all the food they could ever want. Dr Brennemann had done something of staggering importance, yet it didn’t fit in with the official scientific paradigm of the time. It didn’t translate. 

It’s because science in the 1930s was still very much in the grip of a perspective that had no room for something like “touch hunger.” This perspective (called “behaviorism”) said that the best way to understand human beings is to pay attention only to what can be observed by one’s five senses—which means that you ignore wishes, you ignore needs, you ignore feelings. You ignore all that and focus instead on creating environments which condition people to behave in optimal ways. Humans are like all other physical objects, and the art of happiness is reduced to a kind of hypermasculine physics. Thus it was that one of the key figures of the behaviorist movement, John B. Watson, dreamed that one day children would be taken away from the chaotic environments of their parents and raised in carefully regulated baby farms. Until that utopian day came, parents and all others responsible for the care of children needed to follow behaviorist principles. Avoid anything that smacks of unconditional love—don’t hold children or cuddle them or nuzzle them for no reason, because if you do that, you are ruining their training. Affection will make them lazy, spoiled, and weak. It’s unscientific. Stick with the training regimen. Take a hint from the “Dog Whisperer”… Sentimentality is to be avoided at all costs. Maintain a sophisticated aloofness. Keep them at arms length. Feed them by the clock, not on demand. All for their own good. 

This was the prevailing paradigm when Dr. Brennemann was working at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and this paradigm was still influential when Rachel Naomi Remen was a pediatric intern, being a secret kisser, wanting to talk about the power of touch with fellow colleagues but facing denial, even by those who were secret kissers themselves. Official scientific paradigms take a long time to fade away. At this point I am reminded of a quote by Max Plank—someone who witnessed the twentieth-century revolution in physics and saw, first hand, how such things happen. The messiness involved. He said, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Perhaps it has been exactly this way where “touch hunger” is concerned. Passionate commitment to particular theories drive scientists to do the work they do, and they are as subject to group dynamics as the rest of us. In science as in religion and other fields of inquiry, facts and evidence only go so far. Sometimes progress takes the turning of many seasons, and new generations are required to get to the tipping point. 

Rachel Naomi Remen was and is part of this new generation. So was Harry Harlow with his primate studies. The tipping point is now. Now, scientific studies of touch hunger are on overdrive. Let me share a just a few main findings, and then we’ll turn to the practical question of what to do with all of this in our own lives. 

One finding has to do with the long-term effects of touch hunger. What Harry Harlow saw in his isolated and touch-deprived monkeys was truly disturbing. Fellow psychologist Robert Hatfield reports some of the findings: “Harlow’s primates over-reacted to most situations and engaged in a depressive withdrawal to the others. Almost none of their responses to common stimulation and situations were normal. These pathetic touch deprived primates demonstrated a high level of aversion to any form of touch from others. Their usual response to appropriate touch by other monkeys vacillated between fearful and aggressive. They were hyperaggressive and unable to form adequate relations with other monkeys when reintroduced to their group. Highly unusual sexual responses were typical. They were unable to perform sexually and found it exceedingly difficult to locate a receptive partner for their inadequate attempts at quieting their sexual impulses and drives.” Robert Hatfield goes on to summarize the findings by saying, “The review of all touch research to date leads to the inescapable conclusion that Harlow’s primate research has provided us with a highly useful human model of the behavioral impact of touch deprivation.” 

Couple this with the particular lack of touch in American society, and the implications are sobering. In one study, American, French and Puerto Rican friends were observed in a coffee shop over the course of an hour to determine how frequently physical contact occurs. American friends tended to touch each other an average of only twice an hour, whereas French friends touched 110 times, and Puerto Rican friends touched 180 times. Add to this the sharp observation of anthropologist Ashley Montague of Americans waiting for a bus: “Americans will space themselves like sparrows on a telephone wire, in contrast to Mediterranean peoples who will push and crowd together.” 

One scientist who has put two and two together is neuropsychologist James W. Prescott. Looking in particular at the aggressiveness of Harlow’s touch-deprived monkeys, Prescott hypothesized that cultures which lavish touch on their infants and children should be the least violent societies on earth. Conversely, societies that are most touch-deprived should be the most violent. After analyzing data collected from over 400 world cultures, he discovered that his hypothesis has great predictive value. The evidence supports it. And guess where America comes out? Our country, which has less than five percent of the world’s population but almost a quarter of the world’s prison population…. You can fill in that blank yourself. 

It’s disturbing. 

You know, today is Superbowl Sunday. Some of us could care less, others of us can’t wait. But I’ll tell you, the real “unofficial” national holiday we should be mindful of happened back on January 21. National Hugging Day. Created twenty years ago by an Episcopalian pastor, it’s all about permission to give free expression to our basic human need for warm fuzzies. “We need four hugs a day for survival,” says family therapist Virginia Satir. “We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” National Hugging Day is meant to help us remember this. Bring us back to our senses. 

Which takes us to three things I’d like to recommend. Three invitations, as you and I hold our touch hunger with compassion and learn better ways of meeting it. 

One is to be on the lookout for lingering behaviorism. The message still lingers in our cultural atmosphere, despite all the current science that has flat-out debunked it. Worries about holding people (or being held) too often or too long. Worries about how hugging and cuddling will make people lazy and spoiled and weak. Not just regarding children, but people of all ages. The message is still out there, though it is wrong. Be on the lookout. 

That’s the first invitation, and here is the second: embrace the hug. Make it a habit. See it as fundamental justice work. See it as a central part of your spiritual practice. Consider the top ten benefits involved:   

Costs nothing

Boosts your immune system

Builds self-esteem

Fosters self-acceptance

Alleviates tension

Reduces aggression and social violence

Saves heat

Is portable

Requires no special setting or equipment

Feels incredibly good! 

Having said all this, I do want to add one caveat. Hugging is not as easy as it sounds. So many of us have experienced touch deprivation and, as Harlow’s primate studies suggest, the long-lasting result is a discomfort with touch. It’s so ironic. Touch being a basic human need, and yet, we can find ourselves uneasy with the hunger, we can find ourselves struggling with it, we can sometimes even find ourselves misunderstanding it and giving it the wrong name. Hungering for touch, but thinking that this necessarily means sex. The wish to be cuddled legitimated only if it is accompanied by sex. 

A lot more could be said here, but the basic point is this: to feed our touch hungers, we may have to first build up a tolerance for it, get used to it. And then there’s the need to be appropriate. Make sure the person you desire to touch gives their consent first. Ask, Can I give you a hug? A hug, a handshake, a hand on the shoulder, a comforting rub on the back are all examples of appropriate touch. 

Finally, there is this. My third and last invitation to you today. It’s about anticipating miracles when we extend love through a caring touch. Sometimes the people we hug—because of that hug, because of a connection through which, somehow, all the lost parts come together and we experience a wholeness and a knowing that transcends language—sometimes those people stay with you forever, and you are never the same again. You can never underestimate the power of a hug to change lives. “Reflections of grace in every embrace.” The Spirit of Life in all its fullness coming through. 

Go back with me to another hospital. Not the one where Rachel Naomi Remen was doing her pediatric internship, where she wandered about as a secret kisser. This other hospital is in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and the medical professional in question was a young nurse who was not a secret kisser, but openly affectionate. Unafraid. One day, she spotted a young boy, miserable-looking, anxious and fretful because he was scheduled for surgery, and it was coming up soon. She just came and sat down beside him, quietly comforted him. Took him in her arms and loved him. His name was Anthony. The experience was so powerful for this young nurse that she walked away thinking to herself, “If I ever have another son, I’m going to call him Anthony.” 

That young nurse was my mother. This is the story of how I got my name. 

Never underestimate the power of touch. 

MLK Jr.: Lessons in Leadership

Tomorrow is a special day in the life of the nation. We celebrate the man who said, when civil rights marchers were facing the dogs and clubs and fire hoses of Birmingham, “We must face the forces of hate with the power of love.” He said, “All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” He said, “I have a dream.”

Monday, we celebrate this great man, Martin Luther King, Jr. And then comes Tuesday. On Tuesday–not far from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, site of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he said back in November, on the night of his historic election, “If there is anyone out there who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. […] It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.”

What celebrations are before us. What high points in our nation’s history. The dream of racial and social justice unfolding. Though much more remains to happen, still—how wonderful to be alive in this time, to witness the parts coming true!  

But the journey has in no way been easy, or straight. Messy all the way, in America’s larger social life, but also in the personal lives of the leaders we are celebrating. The man who now says “Yes we can” once, as a sophomore in college, ridiculed such idealism, disbelieving that he or anyone else could make a true difference. Long before his political opponents charged him as all flash and no substance, he said, “Pretty words don’t make it so.” “That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me.”

Can you personally relate to this irony? See in your own leadership story a time when you believed something couldn’t be done—or it could be done but by anybody but you—but then it WAS done, and the person who had done it was YOU?

“We are made for community,” says liberal Quaker and activist Parker Palmer, and so “leadership is everyone’s vocation.” That’s our focus today—exploring what this means, and doing it with the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. in the room, drawing on a messy moment in his leadership story to help us understand our own.

Here’s the story. Has to do with the time he was invited to become a part of the Montgomery bus boycott. As you may know, first there was Rosa Parks—her refusal to obey the bus driver’s demand that she give up her seat. What followed, as King’s biographer Marshall Frady describes it, was this: “That ‘No,” and Mrs. Parks’ arrest, quickly set off a spontaneous combustion among Montgomery’s black citizenry to boycott the city’s segregated bus system. Almost immediately, mimeographed leaflets calling for the boycott were coursing through the city’s black neighborhoods. But when, the night of Mrs. Parks’ arrest, [a local social activist by the name of E. D. Nixon] phoned [the young Martin Luther King Jr.] to ask him to join in the boycott movement, King, out of some uneasiness beyond just his absorption in his multiple other duties, seemed curiously reluctant: ‘Brother Nixon, let me think on it awhile, and call me back.’” Marshall Frady goes on to say that, “Concerned at King’s hesitation, Nixon called Ralph Abernathy…. Abernathy then called King to exhort him about the elemental importance of cooperating in this boycott effort. King finally agreed to lend it his support if it would not entail his having to aid in any of the organizing.” And that’s the story, with three things of note to lift up: the initial call to leadership, King’s hesitation to accept, and Ralph Abernathy’s intervention.

Starting with the call. What might it look like? As it did for King, sometimes the call takes the form of widespread social crisis, like the spontaneous combustion of the Montgomery bus boycott, against the larger backdrop of the burgeoning civil rights movement. This crisis gripped our congregation as well; we too were swept up in the civil rights movement, and in 1954 we affirmed desegregation, becoming the very first multiracial religious community in all of Atlanta. It represents one of the high points in our collective leadership story, here at UUCA.  

And may more highs ever be before us. Tomorrow, megachurch pastor Rick Warren will be the keynote speaker at Ebenezer Baptist Church as part of the MLK Day festivities. No doubt this is connected to his being invited to deliver the invocation at Tuesday’s inauguration, and both decisions, frankly, have been enormously controversial. Warren doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, he’s compared it to incest and pedophilia. He doesn’t just want to ban abortion, he’s compared women who terminate pregnancies to Nazis and the pro-choice position to Holocaust denial. Now Obama strongly disagrees with Warren here—he’s clearly said so. He’s invited him to deliver the invocation as a way of symbolizing his commitment to building bridges to parts of America he may strongly disagree with on some things but yet, on other things, there’s plenty of common ground—and right now, emphasizing common ground is the way forward. This is classic community organization strategy. Yet I would hate to see, because of this high-level emphasis on common ground, a tendency at the grassroots level towards apathy. You and I to stop disagreeing with Warren’s point of view because we’re afraid of being disagreeable. You and I to stop speaking out and letting people know who we are, what kind of place this is. People, our commitment to civil rights here at UUCA cannot merely be historical. It must be ongoing, and I believe that protecting abortion rights, as well as working for full social rights of GLBTQ people, constitute a key part of the civil rights movement that is here and now. Consider yourself called. Monday at 12:30 in the afternoon, the official MLK march will begin. Join us as we demonstrate our commitment to civil rights for ALL.    

It’s the call. We can hear it in the various crises and issues that trouble the larger world; but we can also hear it closer to home, when there is a crisis is our congregation, or a crisis in our family. A crisis of personal health. Even a crisis of spirit. You can feel two wolves inside you, in your heart, circling round and round, snapping at each other; one represents hatred, the other represents healing, and the one that you feed is the one that prevails. Something happens or does not happen in our congregation, for example, and you have an instant negative reaction—right here is a call to leadership. So what do you do next? Do you indulge your suspicions, cultivate your disgruntlements, insist on “my way or the highway,” believe that the rules don’t apply to you, perhaps even divide people into US vs. THEM, spread a spirit of war around rather than of peace? If you do this, you did NOT answer the call. You fed the wolf that destroys, not the wolf that heals. The leadership moment was missed.

We’ve got to be there when the moment comes. So much is at stake in how we use our influence. And it’s not always a matter of responding to crisis. Parker Palmer puts it this way: “I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do. If you are here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort.” Even just to smile across the room at someone you know—just to acknowledge their existence—can be a kind of leadership, an exercise of influence that is truly important. Just by smiling across the room, you are living into a larger vision of a community that strengthens and encourages. Someone was talking about this just the other day—how horrible and withering it feels to notice someone looking at you but they don’t smile, they don’t acknowledge your existence…. Leadership is about making the vision real, in acts both big and small. You see a piece of trash on the floor, and you pick it up even if you aren’t the sexton, even if you aren’t part of the paid staff, even if you hear a voice in your head that says, “Ahh, this is a BIG congregation—surely someone else will do it.” No. YOU do it, and as you do it, your simple act of leadership is helping to create the Beloved Community vision that says, We are all in this together. It’s up to all of us. Pull together and not apart. Everyone chip in. The ministry here involves every friend, every member, because that’s what it takes to live out our mission of changing lives. That’s what it takes. 

Leadership is everyone’s vocation, expressed through acts both big and small. It’s about how we use our influence, towards the direction of some larger vision. It’s about how we respond to the call, when it comes.

Which takes us to the second thing of note in Martin Luther King’s story: his hesitation to accept. It represented a momentous crossroads in his life, although he could not have known it at the time. Ultimately he did accept the call, and in this way achieved great visibility and respect as leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which in turn led to his role in founding (with others) the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and then to his leadership in civil rights campaigns in Albany, then Birmingham, then Augustine and Selma, and then the March on Washington and his soaring “I have a dream” speech. It all got started with Montgomery, and King’s ultimate answer of yes. But what if he had said, instead, NO? What then? Without Montgomery, would there ever have been “I have a dream”?

Hindsight is 20-20. “We live forwards,” said philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur, “but we understand backwards.” With only the knowledge that is given us in the moment—already full of the pressures of existing responsibilities and anticipations of future work we already know of—it is truly understandable and fully human to hesitate when a call to something new comes before you.

King was only human, and this is something we need to be reminded of, so that we can be confident leaders in our own right. Here’s why I say this. We take a hero figure like Martin Luther King Jr. and we lose touch with his story. Soon enough, someone who had just as many flaws and complexities as the rest of us becomes transformed into a superperson, untouchable. A change agent who leapt from the womb holding a protest sign. He was fearless, but we feel fear. The work came naturally to him, without any effort or awkwardness, but as for us, we endure setbacks, mistakes, trial-and-error. He was bottled lightning, but we have to pinch ourselves to stay awake. The perfect snappy comeback was always on his lips, but as for us, it’s usually only 12-24 hours later when it pops into our minds.   

We lose touch with our heroes’ stories, and in this way we lose touch with our own powers and potentialities. We hear a call to leadership, but our response can be, Who, me? Yet the message of the life of every hero who has ever gone before us, or who may be in our midst right now, is that you don’t need to be perfect to have a dream. You don’t need to be perfect to make the world a better place. You don’t have to already know how to preach if it is your dream to preach. You don’t have to already have the right credentials or know everything there is to know to step up. And if you are feeling the need to do something in your life to make the dream real, you don’t have to wait to start until the circumstances are absolutely ideal, as in: I am the right age (not too young, not too old), the kids are grown, the job is secure, I have enough money, my relationships are all better, I even have all the big questions of life figured out, related to God, immortality, the meaning of life, the existence of extraterrestrial beings. Just do it. I am so grateful for a hero like Martin Luther King Jr., a man who, at a critical juncture in his life, hesitated. The world did not need a perfect person to do what he did. The world did not need that. The world needed him. And the world needs you and me.

Leadership is everyone’s destiny, in some form, big or small. And now we turn to the third and last part of King’s story: Ralph Abernathy, talking King into accepting the call. His intervention.

This represents another aspect of the hero story that is easily passed over. Often the message put out there (or the one received) is about rugged individualism. One person acting alone. Nothing or not much about family, the larger supportive community, the worship services, the committee work, the coalition building, the flurry of letters and emails and phone calls, and, in the midst all of it, above all, key sustaining friendships. People whose judgment you trust, so that even if all the world is criticizing you, if THEY believe in you, you believe. People who will lift you up when you need it; people who will bring you back down to earth, when you need that. Nothing about any of this. Just one person acting alone. Rugged individualism.

It’s just not true. You can’t get to Martin Luther King Jr. without his parents and family and teachers, the black church community, liberal communities like this one, all the committee meetings, all the worship and prayer and hymn singing, all his friends and colleagues. You just can’t get to him without Ralph Abernathy—the man who reconnected him to his sense of call and purpose when he hesitated. The man who was with him throughout, until the very end and beyond.

I’m asking you this morning: Who is your Ralph Abernathy? Who believes in you, so you can believe?

This place—this community—can itself be a support to you. But you’ll get out of it only as much as you put in. So, how much are you putting in?

We need our communities of support. We need our Ralph Abernathys, to grow into the leadership that is naturally ours.

On Tuesday, when Barack Obama is up there with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, being sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States, using Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Bible, I want you to think of a person named Regina, whom Obama knew in college. He had just delivered his very first political speech, about apartheid in South Africa and the need to stand up for social justice. He felt swept up in this; he was feeling the call. Yet at the same time, he was full of self-doubt, and cynicism. At a party that evening, Regina congratulated him, calling his speech wonderful, but he cut her off, said, “Listen, you are a very sweet lady. And I’m happy you enjoyed my little performance today. But I don’t believe we made any difference in what we did today. I don’t believe that what happens to a kid in Soweto makes much difference to the people we were talking to. Pretty words don’t make it so. That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me.”

Barack Obama, hesitating….. But what happened next was this. He shares the story in his book Dreams from My Father: “Regina stuck a finger in my chest. ‘You wanna know what your real problem is? You always think everything’s about you. The rally is about you. The speech is about you. The hurt is always your hurt. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Obama. It’s not just about you. It’s never just about you. It’s about people who need your help. Children who are depending on you. They’re not interested in your irony or your sophistication or your ego getting bruised. And neither am I.” That’s what Regina said. Right words at the right time.

“Strange,” says Obama, “how a single conversation can change you.” ‘What was she asking of me, then? Determination, mostly. The determination to push against whatever power kept [a person] stooped instead of standing straight. The determination to resist the easy and the expedient. You might be locked in a world not of your own making … but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”

Godspeed, Barack Obama. Keep on pushing. We too, in our own lives, whatever our situations happen to be, as we realize the leadership story that is uniquely ours, and our destiny to fulfill. Undaunted by obstacles both within and without. Determined. Always before us … the Dream.

READING BEFORE THE SERMON

Our reading for today comes from Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father. The time is 1981, and he’s a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, protesting the apartheid system in South Africa.

It had started as something of a lark, I suppose, part of the radical pose my friends and I sought to maintain, a subconscious end run around issues closer to home. But as the months passed and I found myself drawn into a larger role—contacting representatives of the African National Congress to speak on campus, drafting letters to the faculty, printing up flyers, arguing strategy—I noticed that people had begun to listen to my opinions. It was a discovery that made me hungry for words. Not words to hide behind but words that could carry a message, support an idea. When we started planning the rally for the trustees’ meeting, and somebody suggested that I open the thing, I quickly agreed. I figured I was ready, and could reach people where it counted. I thought my voice wouldn’t fail me.

Let’s see, now. What was it that I had been thinking in those days leading up to the rally? … I was only supposed to make a few opening remarks … [but] when I sat down to prepare a few notes for what I might say, something had happened. In my mind is somehow became more than just a two-minute speech, more than just a way to prove my political orthodoxy. [I thought of how powerful a speaker my father was.] If I could just find the right words, I had thought to myself. With the right words everything could change—South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.

[I spoke passionately that day, but after other speakers took my place on the stage, I found myself] on the outside again, watching, judging, skeptical. Through my eyes, we suddenly appeared like the sleek and well-fed amateurs we were, with our black chiffon armbands and hand-painted signs and earnest young faces. […] When the trustees began to arrive for their meeting, a few of them paused behind the glass walls of the administration building to watch us, and I noticed the old white men chuckling to themselves…. The whole thing was a farce, I thought to myself—the rally, the banners, everything. A pleasant afternoon diversion, a school play without the parents. And me and my one-minute oration—the biggest farce of all.

At the party that night, [my friend Regina] came up to me and offered her congratulations. I asked what for.

“For that wonderful speech you gave.”

I popped open a beer. “It was short, anyway.”

Regina ignored my sarcasm. “That’s what made it so effective,” she said. “You spoke from the heart, Barack. It made people want to hear more….”

“Listen, Regina,” I said, cutting her off, “you are a very sweet lady. And I’m happy you enjoyed my little performance today. But I don’t believe we made any difference in what we did today. I don’t believe that what happens to a kid in Soweto makes much difference to the people we were talking to. Pretty words don’t make it so. That’s the last time you will ever hear another speech out of me….”

Here ends our reading for today.

 

Four Spiritualities

Personality types. They’re like masks. They reveal and conceal at the same time. Products of nature in combination with nurture, they give us something to see the world through, and to be seen. They grant us a particular means of communicating; they incline us to care about certain things and not other things; they represent a vital avenue for experience and learning. Which leads to an irony. For to the degree that our personality masks settle on our faces and seem completely and utterly natural, we forget that we are, in fact, wearing a mask, or that others may be wearing different masks leading them to see the world in very different ways, to communicate differently, or to care differently. It gets us into trouble.

Consider the following incident, in which two people, Sheryl and Steve, are going to a meeting here at UUCA, and Sheryl asks Steve a very simple question, “What time is it?” What follows is like an episode of Abbot and Costello, a comedy of miscommunication. Steve replies, “It’s late,” but Sheryl has the kind of personality which prefers concreteness and exactitude of detail, so she responds, “No, I mean, what time is it?” Which confuses Steve, because he thinks he IS being to the point, although given his different personality, being to the point is a matter of clear imagery and intuitive vision. So he says back to Sheryl, “It’s time to go!” but with even greater insistence than before, thinking that will do the trick. It doesn’t, and now Sheryl is getting frustrated, and she says, “Hey, read my lips, what time is it?” When Steve replies, in a miffed tone, “It’s past three,” all heck breaks loose. “Listen,” says Sheryl, “I shouldn’t have to ask a simple question four times to get an adequate answer. How MUCH past three? What time is it EXACTLY?” To which Steve replies, “You are so picky. The time EXACTLY is 3:12pm, Eastern Standard Timezone, planet earth, solar system, outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy!”

It’s a comedy of miscommunication. Two people hearing exactly the same question—“What time is it?”—but each approaching the answer differently. One prefers down-to-earth exactitude and specificity, the other prefers evocative imagery and future-oriented metaphors which can float above the ground. Personality types are real—vital avenues of expression and experience—but we can lose sight of this undeniable reality and fail to accommodate for the masks we wear in our relationships. The result is high drama. The stuff of soap opera.

It happens at home; it happens at work; and you better believe it happens in congregations like this one. Of course, when clashes and conflicts happen in congregations, we get extremely nervous. We think something has turned terribly wrong, since isn’t religious community the one place where we’re all supposed to be singing Kumbaya together, and all is spontaneous mutual understanding and peace and harmony?

It’s an unexamined expectation that so many of us bring to a place like this, and it can’t be farther from the truth. This is a home for the human spirit, and the human spirit brings with it variety and diversity, of all kinds. Meaning that, in the course of our taking this diversity and uniting it to serve common goals and common purposes, things heat up. That’s what happens, if a congregation is working right. If it’s NOT working right, things stay cold and clammy. Sluggish. People stuck in their usual sense of who they are, and what’s possible. No risks. No enthusiasms. No one united by a transforming cause. People entirely justified in saying “it’s not worth it” and walking away. But if a congregation IS working right, it heats us up. Takes us to difficult places. Takes us deeper. Causes us to care, to discern a higher calling. Gives us something worth fighting for. Charges us full with the electric charge of the soul. There is no better symbol of how congregations that work do this than our Flaming Chalice. The flame is the heat and the fire of our life together. Things are supposed to get hot, in a place like this. No wonder conflict can happen.

It’s just a natural consequence of being in a vital spiritual community. Natural, normal, necessary, and also this: neutral in value. What matters is not so much that we can disagree and feel frustrated by eachother as how we manage these disagreements and frustrations. How we respond.

Today I want to talk about personality types as they impact congregations. Different personality types give rise to different spiritual styles—so what are the different styles? How is each a valid way of connecting with the Sacred? And, when they clash, what can we do to respond in a manner that is creative and constructive? That’s my message today.

Beginning with the basic spiritual styles. Historically, there are many sources of insight about this we could look to—astrology being one of the oldest, together with the four classic temperaments (phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine). We could also look to the Enneagram, as well as to Carl Jung’s system of psychological types. Of the theories I’ve studied, one of my favorites continues to be Hinduism’s system of the four yogas—thousands of years old and yet still influential and credible. Very much worth a closer look.

Now when I say “yoga,” what might immediately come to mind is certain distinctive physical postures. But the word as I’m using it—its original sense—has a far larger meaning. Literally, it means, “to bring under disciplined training,” and right there we have an inkling of what we’re getting ourselves into. Each of the four yogas incorporates activities and practices that are uniquely effective for a particular personality type, in its quest for spiritual fulfillment. We’re not talking about a casual stroll along a garden path, in other words, and the thought of this is in itself significant, for there are times when life, completely without warning, challenges us to run a sprint, or a marathon. On the spur of the moment, it can require us to lift 300 pounds of deadweight. It can throw all sorts of stuff our way, and unless we are already actively developing our spiritual muscles, how can we expect to last or cope effectively? How are we gonna run our race, or lift that weight, if we aren’t actively training for it right now? 

“Yoga” means “spiritual workout,” and the first one to consider is the Yoga of the Rational Mind. Here, the central discipline is intellectual adventure. If you are a follower of this way—if you are a Rational Mind yogi—then you seek out all the wisdom you can find: in scripture, in science, in philosophy, in history, in literature, in the arts, and on and on. The marketplace of ideas must be free, for you; scholarship is your true love; study is your cup of tea; and your core spiritual practice may very well be … underlining. You are the kind of person who’s always asking questions, doubting, challenging conventional understandings, and always game for looking into a new idea or a new way. But with a main purpose. Not to parrot the wisdom of others, but to use conscience and reason to separate the good from the bad and fashion a worldview that rings true for you, makes sense of your experience. Gives order to the complexities of life. 

The Yoga of the Rational Mind. It stresses step-by-step logical reasoning as well as conceptual clarity and linguistic precision. Rational Mind yogis are the people who would rather stand outside of heaven and talk about it than step on in. In fact, that is their heaven. Realizing through critical discussion and thought the truth that sets us free. 

That’s the first Hindu yoga, and now here is the second: the Yoga of Transcending Mind. It’s very different. People on this path are generally active types, and they tend to be impatient with the theoretical and abstract. As far as they are concerned, head knowledge distorts rather than clarifies. Language does to the world what a funhouse mirror does to reflections. Others might pride themselves on their intellectual scholarship and be right at home with that, but not Transcending Mind yogis. They want something more body-centered, practical disciplines that calm “monkey mind” down and connect them to a peace that is above and beyond all words and theories. I’m talking about a capacity of awareness that is like a calm eye over the storm of our thoughts and feelings, an eye that’s always there, always, but we have to learn how to see through it, we have to calm “monkey mind” down to do that.

If this resonates with you, then more reading and more speculating are beside the point. No more talk. Action. So, as a Transcending Mind yogi, you will practice “asanas,” or physical postures that cleanse the body and develop the mind’s ability to concentrate. You will say a “mantra” or a sacred sound over and over again, throughout your day, to keep you centered and focused. You may meditate on your breathing or focus on a visual form like a candle flame, or a picture of a saint, or a mandala. Note, again, how all of this emphasizes a form of spirituality that is body-centered, image- and sound-centered, all to the end of experiencing first-hand the reality beyond all distinctions and difference, the bliss of no-thingness. You don’t want to just talk about heaven. You want to do heaven, be heaven!

That’s the Yoga of Transcending Mind. But now let us turn to yet another spiritual style: the Yoga of Service. If this is your preferred style, by now what you might be saying to yourself is this: something like, “Good Lord! What’s up with how Rational Mind yogis are constantly challenging the status quo or living in their heads? And as for Transcending Mind yogis—why would I ever want to twist up like a pretzel or chant all day OM? Seems totally beside the point. I mean, I just want a way of being at peace while I’m trying to be a good parent, or a good employee, or a good friend, or a good citizen. Nothing fancy. I want to work within the world, not outside of it. I want to work within the system, not buck it. I want to find the sacred right here, in the ordinary.”

That’s what Service yogis say. Stability and structure are their watchwords; they’re the ones paying attention to detail and rolling up their sleeves to make our communities happen. So naturally, for them, the central discipline is everyday work done with the right intention and without any expectation for certain results. Selflessness while paying the bills or commuting to the job or doing the laundry. One of the most popular scriptures of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, says it like this: “He who does the task dictated by duty, caring nothing for the fruit of the action: he is a yogi.” This is how, in the midst of life’s wear and tear and busy-ness, the Service yogi attains peace.  

And now: the last of the four yogas: the Yoga of Love. Short and sweet: if this is your spiritual style, you are a people person. You are on a search for authenticity and uniqueness, and you want this for everyone else as well. You want to make everyone feel important and cared for, and you just want there to be harmony in the world, you peacemaker you.

People are so central to your path that, when you imagine the sacred, it must have a face. Your God is a personal God. And so your central spiritual practice is devotion. You will choose an image of God which is right for you. Perhaps an image of the Goddess like Kwan Yin, perhaps Jesus, perhaps Krishna. Some concrete image—and whatever it happens to be, you will open your total heart to him or to her. You want to fall in love. “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That is the discipline precisely. Out of this love, you will study, you will practice asanas, you will chant, you will care for the hurting, you will do the work of justice, you will fulfill your everyday duties selflessly. But the motivation is, first and last, love.

Same motivation goes, even if you don’t believe in a God per se. Fact is, the Yoga of Love, like all the yogas, cuts across theological categories like theism and atheism. If there is no such thing as a God for you, then the face of the sacred will be beloved family and friends, a hero like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. who has inspired you, people who belong to your chosen spiritual community (like UUCA), or the living earth. Out of love for these, you live fully and freely.

And there they are, the four yogas. Rational Mind, Transcending Mind, Service, Love. Four spiritual styles, for four different kinds of personalities. Each equally valid, as a way of connecting with the Spirit of Life. Keep in mind that the idea here is not that one and only one yoga will appeal to you—just that you will feel most at home in one, and make the most progress working in one, even if at times you might borrow some ideas and practices from the others.

Let’s take an even closer look. Worship preferences are extremely concrete and practical, so let’s see what each yoga might bring to this. Beginning with Rational Mind yogis, who might say, “Boy, I love intellectual-type sermons with lots of vocab words that get me thinking and give me something to talk about over lunch! I love the purity and complexity of classical music. But what’s up all the rituals, or the prayer? I don’t get it when the music for the day is drumming, or folk, or rock. I don’t like it when things feel too fuzzy and gooey and emotional and ‘spiritual.’ Makes it harder for me to focus. Makes it harder to read the song lyrics ahead of time so that I can be sure to sing only the words that make sense to me…”

As for Transcending Mind yogis, this is what they might say: “It’s just not worship if I don’t feel immersed in something larger than me. Give me spirituality, give me ‘smells and bells.’ Give me more ritual—I love getting out of my head and into the flow of an experience. Love our annual Water Communion and Moravian Love Feast and Flower Communion. Loved the Breaking Bread Ritual from this past Thanksgiving. Even something as small as getting up and greeting each other feels good. More meditation, though—I wish it lasted a lot longer than it usually does. How about five minutes? Ten minutes? And, have we ever thought about doing some chanting? Sometimes I think we could learn a thing or two from the Episcopalians down the road….”

Service yogis, for their part, might say this: “I love all the rituals too. Classical music is beautiful, but I feel more moved by drumming, or jazz, or folk, or rock. I just feel more at home in worship when we play music that’s similar to what I already listen to. As for sermons: honestly, the artsy-fartsy intellectual ones just don’t turn my crank. I like the ones that focus on life skills instead, on how to be a better partner, or parent, or citizen. Show me how! Finally—have we ever thought about regularly incorporating multimedia in our worship? I was at another church that projected the hymn lyrics on big screens in the sanctuary—they even showed a film clip from a popular movie where we would do a straight-ahead reading. At first I was skeptical, but I walked away amazed at how powerful the effect was—even more amazed at how my kids loved it….”

And then there’s what Love yogis might say: “I need a worship experience that really gets my blood flowing. Give me inspiration. I can do a sermon that is intellectual, I can do a sermon that is practical, but don’t forget to elevate it into poetry, and use lots of stories. As for clapping: I know it bumps some people out of the flow of worship, and I totally respect that, but for me it works. It makes me feel warm and good, and gets me into the flow of things. Finally, I love it when we all stand up and hold hands to close out our service!”

This is just a bare sketch of the different preferences the four yogas bring—and you can already see the potential for disagreement and conflict. Things heating up into our Flaming Chalice. While a Love yogi, for example, is perfectly comfortable with language that is evocative and poetic, a Rational Mind yogi insists on clarity. “What does ‘spirituality’ mean, anyway? Define your terms! Stop being so fuzzy and vague! How can I wrap my mind around things when I’m having a hard time perceiving a hard core there?” To this, a yogi of the Transcending Mind will say, “Come on! You’re just stirring up a tempest in a tea pot! Ultimately the sacred is a more-than-what’s-before-the-eyes-Mystery—every word and name is just like a finger pointing at the moon. So let’s not argue about our fingers. Let’s focus on the moon!” To which the Love yogi replies, “I agree where you say that ultimately the sacred is a Mystery, and all words and names for it fall short. But when you suggest that it is OK to be casual with words and names—especially traditional words and names—I can’t go there. As imperfect and fuzzy a word like God might be, I still need it. I can’t grow spiritually without it.” To which a Service yogi will say, “Would you all just get your act together and make up your minds? How are we gonna fulfill our mission in the world if all our energy is tied up in fighting?”

And that IS the central question. It brings to mind a personal story from my seminary years, when my colleagues and I were studying worship—what it’s all about, how to craft it. I found myself admitting to my class that I’d always been a bit cranky about the worships I’d experienced. Rarely had I experienced a service that satisfied me completely in all ways and didn’t leave me grumbling on the way out. There was always some element or other that struck me as pointless or irritating or not as good as what some other church was doing. To this, my worship professor at the time—the saintly Rev. David Bumbaugh—said, “Anthony, nothing can live up to your kind of standard, if you feel entitled to being satisfied completely by everything that happens in a given service. Instead, I would have you define success like this: If a worship service has touched you in at least one deep way, that is enough to have made it a success. Be positive and look for the one thing that will feed your soul; let all else pass. And know that the parts which are unimportant to you—perhaps even offensive to you—may very likely be feeding the souls of others.”

I continue to think that this is a wonderful attitude to have—one constructive way of responding to the disagreements over worship that are inevitable and will never end, given the different spiritual styles in the room. Stepping back from a sense of entitlement and stepping up to a sense of generosity and a willingness to be OK with something you might not prefer exactly because you know that it could very well be beautiful and meaningful for the person sitting right beside you.

Besides this, another thing to keep in mind as we face disagreement and conflict together is this: the idea that personality differences, while deep, are not absolute. People with different styles can learn to understand and even to sympathize with each other; people on different yoga paths can learn tremendous things from each other. It’s just like being right-handed—you’ve been using your right hand all your life to write and wave and do so many other things. But with conscious effort and patience, you can learn to shift over to using your left. It’s awkward. It takes time. But it can happen, and the result is a good thing: you’ve just multiplied your power in the world. Now you can do things with both hands, not just one. Similarly, when a given personality type learns to walk in the shoes of another personality type, what happens is greater wholeness. We grow towards greater wholeness in our lives. We become less one-sided, more compassionate, more complete.

Conflict comes with the territory. In spiritual communities like this one, it’s natural, normal, necessary, and neutral in value. What matters is how we respond. “Do not teach your children never to be angry,” someone once said. “Teach them how to be angry.” That’s what our Congregational Covenant of Healthy Relationships is all about. That’s what the Healthy Relationships Team is all about. Helping us face down the challenge of life in community as it does its proper job of heating things up, charging us full with the electric charge of the soul. We need to learn how to stand in this fire. We need to assume a stance of curiosity towards both ourselves and the other person or the situation. Not self-righteous certainty. But curiosity. “I wonder what my spiritual style is, that I would have such a negative reaction to that?” “I wonder what spiritual style she is speaking out of?” Asking questions like this. Valuing questions like this, as a necessary part of what it means to be Unitarian Universalist.  

I’ll close with a story told by Anthony de Mello, Catholic priest and psychotherapist:

In ancient India, water used to be drawn out of wells by means of the Persian wheel, a convenient device whose only drawback was the great noise it made when in operation. One day, a horseman happened to pass by a farm and demanded water for his horse. The farmer gladly put the Persian wheel in motion, but the horse, unaccustomed as it was to the noise, wouldn’t come anywhere near the well. “Can’t you stop the noise so my horse can drink?” asked the horseman. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, sir,” said the farmer. “If your horse wishes to drink, he will have to take the water with the noise, for here [HERE], water comes only with noise.”

 

Letter to Mary

December 21, 2008. Dear Mary: It was two thousand years ago in a stable, surrounded by oxen and donkeys and your husband Joseph, when the main event was supposed to have happened: your giving birth to Jesus. The image of it is one I have known all my life, from Christmas cards, paintings and works of art, outdoor manger scenes, and even from some Canadian and American stamps I used to collect as a boy. The image of you holding the baby Jesus; the strength and protection of your arms. To this my eyes would always go, even if there were other amazements to look at, like wise men, or shepherds, or the Star of Bethlehem. There’s something special about you. 

 

And I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Through the ages, and around the world, feeling for you has always run deep. Catholic, Orthodox, and some Anglican Christians out-and-out venerate you. In your honor, Mary, they compose poems and songs; they paint icons and carve statues; they kneel before your image; they even pray to you for intercession with your son. I know this personally, for my own grandmother was Ukrainian Catholic, and I can still remember her fervent prayers, the depths of her reverence.

 

But it’s not that Catholics like my grandmother, or Anglicans, or Orthodox are setting you up as some idol. They don’t see you as God. It’s just that honor is being given where they feel honor is due—you, after all, are supposed to be the bearer of a God. Even Muslims, who deny that Jesus is God, honor you. You are the only women in the Koran who is directly named; and along with Jesus, you are said to be Ayat Allah, or the “Sign of God,” to humankind.

 

That’s what I call special. You are important for so many people around the world. Hunger for you is great. And that’s what this letter is about, Mary. The comfort and protection of your mothering arms. Your strength. People can’t seem to get enough of it. It all begs for a closer look.

 

Though right at the start, I need to acknowledge that opinions differ about the exact nature of the strength I’m talking about. Perhaps it boils down to a question that Christians have had from almost the very beginning: what you needed to be like to give birth to one who was supposed to be without sin. To raise a person like this. Did you have to be without sin, too? Or was your ordinary, imperfect humanity good enough? Exactly what kind of strength are we talking about?

 

The question is one of perfection vs. imperfection, and Catholics in particular have opted for perfection. That’s the official position, anyway. They see you as having a miraculous kind of independence from sex and death. This is what gives you your perfection and your strength. All sorts of doctrines laying this out. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, according to which God directly impregnated you. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which says that you yourself were the product of a miraculous virgin birth. The doctrine of Perpetual Virginity, meaning that all of Jesus’ brothers and sisters had to have been cousins, or they had to have been children from a previous marriage of Joseph’s. And then the doctrine of the Assumption, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, which says that you never physically died, and that you ascended bodily into heaven at the end of your days. All of these are doctrines Catholics have discerned over the years, as ways of articulating your strength and explaining how you were able to be the kind of mother you needed to be, to nurture and support the perfection of your son. Your miraculous qualities made you strong. 

 

Mary, my own mother’s family believed this, being the good Catholics they were. But I myself grew up Protestant and eventually became Unitarian Universalist, and both influences lead me to balk at all these doctrines. I never grew up thinking that life in a body and all that it implies is tinged with sinfulness. As a Unitarian Universalist, I absolutely do not. In being born, in sensuality and sexuality (whether gay or straight), and also in dying, all people possess inherent worth and dignity. I believe it.   

 

I also believe that you did not need to be perfect to meet the challenges of raising your son. Your ordinary, imperfect humanity was good enough, and gave you the strength you needed. In fact, there’s a sense in which it’s to everyone’s advantage that you were imperfect, since the idea that God could be born through someone living just an ordinary life is scandalous in a wondrous sort of way. The thought that people could be used by God for great things despite any and all limitations is wondrous. A source of great hope.

 

Mary, I really resonate with this idea. That you could be strong despite your flaws and imperfections. That you could be strong exactly because of your flaws. The Unitarian Universalist in me loves this, and every day, I walk in trust that the universe will receive whatever I offer up to it, however flawed, and turn it to some good, somehow. This is the core of my religious faith, and above all, it’s the core of my faith as a parent. As a father, the responsibility of parenting would be unbearable if I didn’t believe that being good enough was good enough. Know what I mean? This belief is sometimes all I have to go on, to get me through the times when I feel I’m totally screwing things up, and there won’t ever be enough money in the proverbial therapy jar my daughter will draw on to set things right. I just have to trust that being good enough is good enough.

 

I don’t know. Did you have to be perfect to do true justice to your child Jesus? To be strong enough for him? What’s clear is this. I’ve read stories in the Christian scriptures that hint at your parenting style, and I’m impressed. You really knew what you were doing. Here’s one story that springs to mind. It’s the story of Jesus turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. There you are, at the wedding with Jesus, who by now must be around 30 years old. He’s never performed a miracle before, and let’s assume that he’s wanting to be very careful about choosing the right first miracle, since the first of anything can be a predictor of everything else to follow. The first miracle has got to be special. It’s got to be right. And Mary, you know this. You also know that people can get so anxious about getting things right the first time that they might never even allow for a first time—to them, no time will ever seem special enough, nothing will ever seem good enough. So when you learn that the wine has all run out at the wedding party, you see that this is your opportunity to do a little mentoring. Light a little fire under your son, the brilliant rabbi. So you go to Jesus … and nudge him. “There’s no more wine,” you say. Jesus catches your drift, senses the pressure you’re putting on him, and he replies, rather testily, “Woman, what concern is that to you? My hour has not yet come.” In other words, Mom, stop trying to rush me! Stop pushing, already! Jesus is not very nice as he says this—calling you “woman” is just not nice—but you know that the bark is worse than the bite. I’ll bet you even rolled your eyes. You are the Mom, after all. And the rest is history. Jesus turns the water to wine, and this really was the perfect first miracle. It really was. It couldn’t have happened at a better, more joyous time (during a wedding party)—and the central message it telegraphs, essentially, is that the power of God (or whatever Mystery that that word “God” stands for) is everlasting abundance. Everlasting abundance that people can tap into even in the midst of moments of scarcity and loss. Even after the worst has happened. Even after all that, the best wine can still come. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give in to despair. Mary, this is a great message, and you are the one who nudged Jesus into making it. You helped get him unstuck. You were part of a great mentoring moment.

 

That’s got to be one of the reasons for why people can’t get enough of you. It’s about your awesome responsibility as a parent, and the great job you did, perfect or not. There’s also this: the way other people have experienced your parenting and protection, long after your physical death (or, as the Catholics would have it, long after your bodily ascension into Heaven). Here’s what I mean. I was reading the other day about the history of a country named Portugal and its political struggles, particularly in the early 1900s. The country’s monarchy had been ousted and replaced by an almost totalitarian regime, and this regime was determined to eradicate the country’s Catholicism. Religion, it thought, was pure superstition, and destructive, and wrong. Tolerance towards religion is just part of the problem, and only makes things worse. So this regime closed the churches down, and it confiscated their property. It banned religious holidays, as well as the teaching of religion in schools and colleges. Its actions were so aggressive that even people in rural areas—people who are usually unaffected by the quicksilver fads of urban sophisticates—took notice and went underground with their spirituality. Things got very, very bad. This is when you came in. The story goes that, in 1917, you appeared in a vision to three children from the rural village of Fatima. You encouraged them to stay hopeful in their religious faith, to pray for sinners, to keep on saying the Rosary. You appeared any number of times, and it is said that in your final appearance, on October 13, 1917, the crowd was far more than three children—something like 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters and photographers. Eyewitnesses said that it rained heavily that day, but at one point, the clouds broke and the sun took center stage, at which point it spun like a disk, radiated flames of scarlet, yellow, and purple, and then plunged towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, finally returning to its normal place, and leaving the people’s once wet clothing completely dry.

 

That’s the story. And whatever the reality happens to be, at least one thing is clear: religion in the hearts of the people is irrepressible, and it’s going to break through the walls put around it, every time. Whatever political or intellectual regimes do or plan to do, you, Mary, are not going to allow them to carry the day. You are a defender. People hunger for your presence, and you show up. And not just in Fatima, but all over the world, over the course of centuries. That’s what the record shows. I’ll grant that all we might be talking about here is some kind of communal hallucination—many explanations presuming nothing supernatural have been put forward—but what’s definitely real as real can be is that you are in people’s hearts and minds. You are there. And when the threat to religion or to life is great, they draw on you for strength, they take comfort from you, their imaginations soar with and through you.

 

Dear Mary, again and again, people go to you for strength. Some people might say that you were docile, and compliant, and weak, but I don’t believe it. You were strong enough to parent Jesus and give him good guidance and mentoring, and you’ve been strong enough in the hearts and minds of Christians through the ages to appear to them as a protector in times of tribulation. That’s what I call strong.

 

Yet there is one more thing that comes to mind when I consider people’s fascination for you, and it has to do with a different kind of strength. The strength it takes to step into the unknown. The strength it takes to be vulnerable and let go. The strength it takes to step back from broken dreams, and let them die, and still know that you are OK. Mary, you understand all about this. Blessed among women, you were condemned to witness your son’s execution on the cross. That’s what I call a broken dream. You know all about broken dreams. You know all about what it takes to step back from a dream, and let go.

 

This is the real reason for why I am writing this letter to you today. Perhaps the influence of my Catholic grandmother is stronger than I knew, and really, this letter is a prayer. For, you see, I’m praying for the strength to move into the second half of my life, and to let go of all my sadness and regrets. I know it’s not as dramatic as the death of your son on the cross, and yet there it is. I’m firmly into mid-life now, and with this has come a strange pressure building and building in my life, one that is pushing me to perform what I guess is itself a kind of miracle. Forgiving the fact that my body is changing and is not like it used to be; forgiving the fact that I was not able to accomplish everything I wanted to; forgiving the fact that all the brilliant, beautiful Christmases of my childhood will never come back again; forgiving the fact that precious people have died out of my life, and I will never be able to share with them who I am as an adult. This miracle of forgiveness. Water into wine. I need to perform it. I need to. It’s so I can make peace with my regrets. It’s so I can draw from my past in a healthy way. It’s so I can truly appreciate all the wonderful things I have right now: my family, my friends, my job, my health, my future. It’s so I can move forward, and keep on moving forward. It’s so I can believe that the best wine of my life will indeed come last, never fear.

 

Mary, I need a nudge from you, just like you once gave your son. I need you to light a fire under me, I need you to help me know that there’s no perfect moment for forgiveness, that there is no better time than now. Mary, in this Christmas season, I am praying to you for strength, for myself and also for so many others who are where I am right now, in one way or another. Whatever the age. Whatever the situation. Experiencing life changes. Facing the unknown. Feeling vulnerable. Strengthen all of us. Nudge all of us. Light that fire. And if we should snap back at you like your son did, and say, “Woman, what concern is that to you?” I know you’ll understand that the bark is worse than the bite. Just roll your eyes. You are the Mom. You’ve been there, done that. You know. Just show us the way to the most amazing kind of strength there is: to be hurt and yet come back; to be broken and yet to be whole; to endure ruined dreams and yet still dream; to give up so much, and yet, in the end, find more than you ever used to have. Water into wine. The best wine saved till last.

 

Mary, I thank you for your life, and I bless your name. Be with all of us this Christmas time.  

 

I am yours, sincerely,

 

Anthony