Listen:
OPENING WORDS: "Lead Me from Death to Life"
Lead me from death to life,
From falsehood to truth.
Lead me from despair to hope,
From fear to trust.
Lead me from hate to love,
From war to peace.
Let peace fill our hearts,
Our world, our universe.
-- Project Ploughshares
READING: "Earth Teach Me Stillness"
Earth teach me stillness
as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.
-- Ute Prayer
SERMON: "But What If You Are Wrong?"
Indeed, there are many perspectives or approaches that people use when we chose how to go about living.
Consider a familiar one for all of us: being wrong.
Now, I know a great deal about being wrong - especially when I refuse to admit that I am wrong! And sometimes, I would really like to tell a minister about these things.
But then I am reminded of what that beloved pope, John XXIII said:
It often happens that I awake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide that I must tell the pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the pope.
No pope am I, but as a minister, I also am at a loss to find a confessor! So this morning, I choose you - with the hope that along the way, you might understand how wrong you, too, can be - and still get away with it! Or not!
Let us turn to the Chinese writer, Chuang Tzu, who can help us understand these very intricate concepts when he reflects on that nature of "nature." He writes:
Thus, those who say they would have right without its (opposite), wrong; or good government without its (opposite), misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe or the nature of all creation.
In thinking about this dance between the polarities of our existence, I would like to ask each person here this morning to do something for me. Please raise your hand if you have never been wrong.
Nobody? Very well, then, let us continue by affirming: Isn't it wonderful to be normal!
And isn't it great to be "nature" itself with its opposites participating in this eternal tug of war within us: to go one way or the other; to say one thing or something else; to take on one task or something quite different; to feel a certain way, or an entirely opposite one.
Truly in respect to this way of thinking, we can affirm that we are sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
And being wrong, making mistakes, facing snafus, blowing it, creating confusion and disaster, strife and mayhem (hopefully these things in small doses), are all a part of the human condition. In fact, most of us do so without any conscious or subconscious intention of doing so.
It is when we consciously, willfully, do something wrong, that what we do separates us from love and puts us in a malevolent category. In Christian terminology, we "sin" - a word from the Greek meaning, "to miss the mark" - as when we fail to hit the target in archery. Expanding this thought, we can say that we miss the mark of human connection, or connection with the world around us.
But being wrong unintentionally - for a day, less or more - just seems to be something we do.
Consider what that biologist-essayist Lewis Thomas says when speaking of our species as a biological reality:
Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules...We are built to make mistakes, coded for error. (The Medusa and the Snail, p. 38)
What a matter-of-fact way of expressing it!
Most days we might judge ourselves as doing at least something wrong. But doesn't it appear that there are those days when nothing seems to go right? Have you ever had a day like that?
In such a somber mood hear my poem of mine written on a day when I was feeling very sorry for myself:
My Day to Be Wrong
Days come, go.
Some stay
deep within -
stubborn;
fixed;
rising to the occasion
of a vindictive mood.
Consider: my day to be wrong.
Begins with cat
out of nip
but with plenty of tuck
atop my once sleeping head;
her eyes speaking
of existential mistakes:
Of my being conceived;
of your being conceived;
of any human's arousal
from the atavistic, boggy
depths.
She growls, not purrs, her displeasure.
Truly, at that point, I needed to recall the prayer of the Ute Indians that I read to you earlier - especially those parts about the earth teaching me to accept suffering, limitation and resignation!
Turning again to Lewis Thomas we learn that to be human is to err, and in our making mistakes, we have the opportunity to grow. Says he:
What is needed, for progress to be made, is the move based on the error. (Ibid)
How wonderful it would be if, in the midst of our day to be wrong, we could think of it as a day to make progress - to learn from our mistakes.
This is exactly the thesis of a wonderful book that I view as a primer on living called When Smart People Fail. The title grabbed me the minute I saw the word "smart" in it because I figured it might be good sermon fodder for Unitarian Universalists.
What the book does is to explore over 150 case histories of famous and not-at-all famous people who have in one way or another "failed" but who have learned from such "failures" and gone on in life.
Of crucial importance is to understand, say the authors Linda Gottlieb and Carole Hyatt that "failure" is just a word, a judgmental word about an event in one's life. And it is important to look at the fact, beyond one's shattered ego, that it is how we deal with what we perceive as failure that really tests us.
I have thought of this particular theme, this "life attitude" a great deal, given the fact that there has been such a very high turn-over of the clergy during my time in the ministry! Experts on the subject say that this is the most stressful time ever for one to be in the ministry. And that reality cuts across denominational lines.
And some of this can be said about other jobs, or about relationships today, or about most anything. It is a stressful time, indeed, a time when one can get into the doldrums about being wrong.
Someone who always makes me feel better when I read his sage and gritty advice is the Catholic priest, Eugene Kennedy. In his series of books that explore what it means to be human, Father Kennedy is able to look at problems as having the potential to help us grow.
In one of the most intriguing essays from his book The Pain of Being Human, he asserts the fact that as we get older, we might very well have more problems rather than fewer ones, but that this reality, too, is a way to grow into the fullness of our humanity. (Okay, I can see some of you smirking as you think: "Don't I have enough problems already?) But listen to what Kennedy has to say:
...a (person) might ask, isn't there a place where life levels off after all the uphill struggles of growing up? Does not a (person) who has done (one's) best deserve at least a little quiet time to enjoy the fruits of having grown up successfully? The answer to all these musings is negative...For these are the symptoms of maturity: not fewer problems but more of them, and more responsibility for solving them; (not) a time of reflective contemplation on a race well run, but a steady grind marked by a few frenzied pit stops...Mature people...are distinguished from immature people in the way they handle their problems...mature people don't get out of trouble, they just get into more of it...when they are truly mature, they do cope with trouble more effectively. (Pp. 268-269)
In other words, we ALL have days to be wrong. We all have troubles. But the mature person knows how to deal with them better - and can turn them into assets.
And so, attempting to be mature on that early morning when I wrote about my cat growling in anger because of the fact that I was even conceived, I was able to work through my sense that the day was going wrong. That is to say, by attempting something creative (the very act of writing about things going wrong), I was doing something to correct that very sense of "wrongness."
Yes, that is one way to get out of an "It's My Day to Be Wrong" attitude: do something to correct the situation. But don't wallow in your wrongness too long, or you'll sink and perhaps take others with you. To wallow too long seems to me to be a kind of self-centeredness. Still, some wallowing is okay. Wallowing for a time can be part of the healing process. It can be an incentive to climb out of the bog, dry off in the sunlight of possibility, and move on to a more positive place in your journey. Each of us must decide how long we shall wallow before we begin to re-create our lives.
As Taoist literature tells us:
In the face of the world's myriad opportunities, we try to discern what is advantageous to us and avoid the detrimental. We do not move in the world without discrimination... (Everyday Tao by Deng Ming-Dao)
Along the way of recognizing that we all do get things wrong (some of us more often and in bigger ways than others), and understanding that it is okay to beat up on ourselves for our mistakes - at least for a while, at least as long as the process can start to give us the impetus to move on in life, comes the reality that it helps to get the support and understanding of others. That can mean at least one very important thing: a non-judgmental attitude from those around us.
Here is where we sometimes fail - even though we might be attempting to help. Consider those who take longer to heal from their mistakes, and from the self-recrimination or guilt they give themselves. Friends, let your friends go through the process at their own pace, especially when it comes to bereavement issues; for surely, when we lose a loved one, each of us reacts differently and at a different intensity. There might be a general timeline for healing as established by the so-called "experts," but again, each of us is a different personality and faces life's dilemmas in different ways.
Another bit of advice in dealing with someone who has faced the wrongness of life and is attempting to be healed: be gentle with your criticism. Take a situation where the person who has failed in one venture and is trying to create something new and fresh. This very act of attempting to be creative is a tenuous one. The words of Alex F. Osborn ring so true when he suggests:
Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud. And of us will put out more and better ideas if our efforts are appreciated.
So, err on the side of gentleness if you are trying to help someone else - or yourself - rather than being rough and thinking you are being helpful.
There is another aspect of being wrong - not recognizing that you are! You know anyone like that? He or she sticks to his or her guns, that's for sure! Third-stage alcoholics are like this; so are playground bullies; shortsighted politicians; religious and philosophical fanatics; abusive spouses; knee-jerk liberals or conservatives; and all those who write those abusive emails to others.
Their mantra goes: "I'm right! You're wrong!"
"I'm right! You're wrong! There is no compromise!"
Sometimes it helps to sit down at the table and eyeball the other person. It is easy to heap coals of rejection on one's opponent, if the opponent is a group, a nation, an ideology, a political party. How much harder it is to do so face to face.
As Judy Chicago says in her poem "And Then":
And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
So, in this state of having my day to be wrong - or even a minute - it is important to admit that you are either blaming yourself too much for being wrong by taking upon yourself all the misfiring of the world, or by lifting yourself too high because you fail to see that you might just have a fault or a dozen of them. Either way is to fail to be humble.
So, may you and I know that we are not responsible for the entire workings of the universe, but should take responsibility for some of it.
Listen to these thoughts from a "Meditation for Kaddish" taken from Jewish literature:
I came into the world without being asked,
And when the time for dying comes
I shall not be consulted;
But between the boundaries of birth and death
Lies the dominion of choice:
To be a doer or a dreamer,
To be a lifter or a leaner,
To speak out or remain silent,
To extend a hand in friendship
Or to look the other way;
To feel the sufferings of others
Or be callous and insensitive.
There are the choices;
It is in the choosing
That my measure as a person
Is determined.
My friends, in considering these sentiments, may we make the right choices, instead of the wrong ones. And may we forgive each other when we get things wrong, or even at the outset be in a state of forgiveness, knowing that the world is yet to be perfected.
CLOSING WORDS: from the Bible
Do not be conformed to this world,
But be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
-- Romans 12
Keep alert, stand firm in your
Faith, be courageous, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love.
-- I Corinthians 16