Sermon
Last weekend in church, 45 folks gathered around the work of Anti-Racism as they participated in a UUA workshop, part of their “Journey Toward Wholeness” program. Our Task Force on Racial Diversity sponsored the workshop.
This weekend in church, 200 folks gathered to participate in the Labyrinth Conference 2000, sponsored by our Labyrinth Project Committee. This time the theme was “A Journey toward Healing and Forgiveness."
Last Sunday, one of the workshop presenters spoke to us about Anti-Racism. And this morning, I, too, have chosen the theme of this weekend’s conference as the focus for our worship: Healing and Forgiveness.
The Journey toward Wholeness. The Journey toward Healing and Forgiveness. I wonder how different they are. Both are healing journeys. Both take us through personal interior work, as well as work to be done in relationships.
The interior work on understanding and attitudes can lead to transformational healing; it can radiate out as compassion and action to heal our communities and our world. All spiritual healing is a journey toward wholeness and compassionate action.
And none more so than the journey of forgiveness.
Throughout our lives, parents, teachers, and religious leaders have urged us to – forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones, turn the other cheek, kiss and make up. “To err is human, to forgive divine,” we were told time and time again, until we had no doubt that forgiveness is a clear virtue and the good, honorable, and morally correct thing to do.
But, there’s something definitely disturbing about the prospect of actually forgiving the real people who cause us the real pain.
Because we were the one who was hurt, we feel it is only just to mete out punishment. And the way we do that is by NOT FORGIVING, by continuing to resent the person or persons who hurt us, not speak to them, and generally refuse to readmit them into the human race. If we forgave them, we believe we would be shirking our responsibility to “make them pay.” If we forgave them, we believe we would be betraying ourselves and negating or minimizing the impact of the pain they caused us.
You can think to yourself that forgiving is like absolving or condoning, or letting someone get away with the rotten things they have done; letting them off the hook. Of course there’s such a thing as fairness, and justice, and the reality of another person’s cruelty, brutality, betrayal. Those things shouldn’t go unpunished, should they?
Well, the answer is yes and no. Some things, particularly acts of physical or destructive abuse, should indeed be stopped, and, if need be, punished. And people should be confronted with their own bad behavior. There are indeed clear boundaries each of us, and society, needs to make. But, forgiveness is another matter. It turns out to be something you do for yourself so that the pain, anger, resentment, that someone else made you feel, doesn’t get in the way of your own living. Those negative and hurtful things that were done to you, if left to fester, can, and usually does turn around -- turn inward -- into self-punishment.
Yesterday, during the Conference, I lead one of the workshops. I called it Body Map to Healing and Forgiveness. I had each participant work with her own life-size body outline, which had been drawn on paper. During a guided meditation, using markers, chalks, pastels, crayons, and cut paper, each person depicted, in images, words, and colors, the pain left within them, physically, emotionally and spiritually from earlier hurts, put-downs, neglect, even abuse. They also were asked to depict their resources for healing. And some even attempted written notes, scrawled in the margins of their body maps, forgiving the people who had hurt them. Later in the workshop, the body maps were taped up on the walls and participants talked about them.
One woman’s body map was drawn in pale, soft colors. She essentially drew some lines that indicated a tee shirt and shorts over her body and with light lines, attempted to fill them in with pale red for the shirt and pale blue for the pants. The neck above the tee shirt led to an expressionless “flat” face. When she talked about herself in relation to her drawing, she spoke hesitatingly and was self-negating. There was nothing strong. The body was covered, with no clues. She seemed to be saying, “I’m not really here.”
Some things are better forgotten, right? You can’t change what happened back then. So why dig up the old stuff and risk bad feelings and complications? Why feel vulnerable again?
What feelings have been cut off from your consciousness that are still working their mischief on your soul and psyche? If we dig up the “old stuff,” we’ll be forced to seriously consider the magnitude of old injuries and injustices as well as acknowledge the damaged life we have been leading because of them.
Our keynote speaker related a quip which reminded me of this woman in my body map workshop who did not think too well of herself. The quip was originally told by the comedienne Rita Rutter who is said to be the female equivalent of Woody Allen! Here it is: “When I was young, I had just two friends. They were both imaginary. And they both played only with each other.”
Where do we get such bad feeling about ourselves? -- We internalized criticism and ridicule.
Clearly, some painful past experiences no longer influence our lives. We’ve gotten over them. On the other hand, there are a few hurts that each one of us hangs on to. You know which ones they are by the way you feel when you think of them. The important hurts do not go away on their own. Until we work actively to heal them, they will go on influencing the quality of our lives.
Another woman in my body map class yesterday had a strong and complex drawing. She was the daughter of two fundamentalist Christian missionaries who did a great deal of their work in South America. She was born in Columbia. She said she was often placed in a boarding school when her parents went off on different missionary trips. She felt abandoned by them – their work was more important than taking care of her. She talked about being left by her parents when she was quite young in some kind of boarding place when they were on some of their missionary trips. She talked about being terribly frightened by the religious messages she was taught, and her anger at being left instead of being cared for. As a little girl, she expressed her wish to learn ballet dancing and to become a ballerina. Her parents forbid such a thing, asking her why she would want to display herself, and that such behavior was for heathens. On her drawing – in the heart and gut area – were the cut strips of bright yellow paper indicating the free gestures of a dancer, and over it a cut-out airplane, the symbol of her travels with her stern and zealous parents. Another thing she had drawn was the large background image of a cross, appearing as if she, too, had been sacrificed on it.
She talked about the plans she was making for a healing intervention with her parents – scheduled for early November. Several people will be part of the meeting, including her psychologist. Her parents had agreed to participate and said they want to help. She was obviously working hard on her journey to healing and forgiveness. We all told her that our caring thoughts would be with her, as we supported her courage and strength to survive and find peace. I was encouraged by the strong and detailed backbone she drew centered within her body. Her inner strength was apparent.
Hers’ was a touching and inspiring picture of the healing process.
We face our denial, self-blame, labeling ourselves a Victim. None of us deserved the injuries or injustices we received. As Virginia Satir put it, “you are not responsible for the rain that falls, but only for your reaction to it.”
To stop being a Victim, we begin to understand that we have choices, and we can take some control over our lives. We can face feelings of indignation over what has been done to us, by learning that we can’t have our hate AND our peace of mind at the same time. The choice is ours to let go of anger and begin to heal our wounds at last.
We learn that we can survive, gradually letting go of guilt, shame, and regrets. Linda Ronstadt said, “I’m a survivor. ... being a survivor doesn’t mean you have to be made out of steel, and it doesn’t mean you have to be ruthless. It means you have to be basically on your own side and want to win.”
The way to forgiveness is paved by facing painful past experiences, putting them into perspective, and letting them go. Forgiveness is a discovery over time. It is like a gift we receive.
It is an attitude, a stance inward and outward that grows naturally and inevitably from confronting our hurts, discovering our strengths, and understanding and accepting not only ourselves, but the others who have hurt us as well.
Here’s a little autobiography, written by a woman named, Portia Nelson. She calls it “Moving On.” It’s an “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.”
I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…I am helpless…It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
II.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place again, but it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit.
My eyes are open…I know where I am…It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
The Journey to Healing and Forgiveness is really a journey through healing and forgiveness. It continues on. And, if the journey were to end somewhere, which I’m not sure it does, it might end with the attainment of compassion. The Forgiving Heart becomes the seat of compassion.
One arrives at compassion through an understanding that everything in the universe is connected, and beneath diversity is profound connection and similarity.
We arrive at compassion through understanding that the obstacle to our own happiness is within ourselves. That makes the task clearer – we must try to unburden ourselves of self-centered and destructive dissatisfaction and pain, and free ourselves for loving, generosity, and peace.
I can’t tell you exactly how a person comes to that revelation; to that decision. It is individual, it takes patience, and it takes time.
It is what the spiritual journey is all about.
An anonymous writer has left us these observations:
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure …
That you really are strong,
And really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn
(In the following, Peggy McGrath read the quotations.)
Now we are a little more conscious of our journey to healing and forgiveness.
Kahlil Gibran
?“Let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.”
We are turning our days into a growing space and time, we are dedicating them to the flowering of our hearts in peace and love.
May Sarton
?“Help us to be the always-hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, as without light nothing flowers."
We are here to take responsibility for our own feelings, our own choices, however hard that may be.
Lao Tzu
“Always we hope
someone else has the answer.
Some other place will be better,
Some other time
It will all turn out.
This is it.
No one else has the answer.
No other place will be better,
And it has already turned out.
At the center of your being you have the answer;
You know who you are and you know what you want.
There is no need
To run outside
For better seeing.
Nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at
The center of your being;
For the more you leave it
The less you learn.
Search your heart
And see…..
The way to do
Is to be.
And, we must always remember that we are not alone. We are in a community of caring. We are in a Universe that responds to us with what we need.
From the Book of Matthew, Chapter 7, Verses 7 and 8
“Ask, and it will be given to you: seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and she who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”The Universe doesn’t expect perfection. The human condition is imperfect, and it is resilient. To err is human; to forgive divine.
May Sarton
“(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.
It is light that matters,
The light of understanding.
Who has ever reached it?
Who has not met the furies again and again?
Who has reached it without
These sudden acts of grace?”
But, the journey to forgiveness is a strange path. Old resentments, wounds, pain remain to whisper to us in a hoarse and cracking voice, that there is evil in the world that cannot be overcome, and all is hopeless. The journey to forgiveness means to trust ourselves and love ourselves enough to step boldly up to what seems impossibly shattered.
G. K. Chesterton
“Love means to love that which is unlovable,
or it is no virtue at all;
forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable,
or it is no virtue at all;
faith means believing the unbelievable,
or it is no virtue at all;
And to open means hoping when things are hopeless,
Or it is no virtue at all.”
And, the truth to be learned is that each of us is strong, courageous, and surprisingly compassionate.
Dom Helder Camara
“Do not fear the truth,
hard as it may appear,
grievously as it may hurt, it is still right
and you were born for it.
If you go out to meet
and love it,
let it exercise your mind,
it is your best friend
and closest sister.”
We come together with unresolved feelings of bitterness, disappointment, abandonment, abuse. We must be patient toward all that is unresolved in our hearts. All of us here, now, are engaged in a healing process, even though we may not be aware of exactly what we need to do to become whole again.
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way some distant day into the answers.”What we need to do is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. What we need to do is to let go of the pain.
Achaan Chah
“Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect any praise or reward. If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom. Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”Going forth requires some trust in our own ability to live well; to begin to make conscious and careful choices; to practice significance.
Dawna Markova
“I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.
I chose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid, more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.”
Let us be still an instant and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose it.
Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for – for we do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.
May we become, as Ram Dass has written, “hollow reeds for the healing music of life.”
Denise Levertov
“Marvelous Truth, confront us
at every turn
in every guise.”
The Closing Hymn is #89, Come My Way, My Truth, My Life.
Benediction
Please join hands.
This prayer was written by Macrina Weiderkehr:
O God
Help me
To believe
The truth about myself
No matter
How beautiful it is!
Amen and Blessed Be.
