Being Positive
A SERMON BY REV LINDA HART
The readings for the morning were the poem, Because We Spill by Nancy Shaffer and an excerpt from the short story The Shared Patio by Miranda July, from which the bits of advice came.
When I was training for the ministry, the school held a chapel service every Friday afternoon. The services were taken by students on a first come basis, and nearly everyone took part in a service at one time or another. Each week was different, and some were touching and well done, some were cringe-worthy, some were dull but we all had to endure whatever came. There was the occasional overly exciting one, like when a student from abroad (and I don’t remember where he was from any longer) wanted to share a special ritual that involved sugar formed into a good sized cone that was then to be doused with high potency alcohol and lit on fire. When it wouldn’t light properly, said student grabbed the bottle of alcohol and poured more on not realising fully that there were in fact flames already licking the sides of the cone.
Fire travelled unexpectedly up the flowing alcohol, and once it got into the restricted space of the bottle, exploded outward and shot flames across the wooden chapel. As fate would have it, the student sitting in the very front row was especially fond of polyester fabrics, and his shirt almost immediately began to melt, causing him to panic and scream and stand and begin to run. Tackled by another student and thrown to the floor, he was promptly wrapped in a small carpet that happened to be there. Others were patting out small fires that were threatening to spread in the historic small wood chapel where our services were held. Someone ran for a telephone – this is before we all carried mobiles – and emergency services were alerted. There was much running around and exclaiming. Singed hair was being examined, and injuries assessed by everyone. Thankfully, no one was badly injured, the structure wasn’t harmed, and we had a cracking story to tell for years to come.
Some advice, from the protagonist of our reading this morning, who is trying to perfect her advice-giving for her magazine seems especially appropriate here:
What is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to you? Did it involve a car? Was it on a boat? Did an animal do it? If you answered yes to any of these questions then I am not surprised. Cars crash, boats sink, and animals are just scary. Why not do yourself a favour and stay away from these things.
None of us would stay away from the weekly chapel service, for every week you could expect a moment of grace to enter in, just as I hope it is the case here on a Sunday. But one Friday afternoon, a group of students put together a service that was all about laughs. The hymns were all taken from a collection of parodies that a minister had penned some years before. The meditation had a few laugh lines included and ended with the biggest of them for a good guffaw. The sermon was nearly a stand up comedy routine, and not that good sort that help you to reflect on your own foibles and difficulties, but just one joke cracked after another.
One of the people taking part asked me what I thought. I paused. ‘You didn’t like it,’ he interpreted. ‘C’mon! Isn’t it all right to just be upbeat for once? Can’t we just laugh? Just this once?’ ‘The thing is that I worry that someone might have come in here tonight needing a place to feel a little comfort. How might this have been for someone who had just been bereaved? Or who was struggling with something awful and difficult? Would there have been a place for them in this service?’
He was quiet, and a little stunned. The conversation ended awkwardly, and I largely forgot about it. Two or three years later when he graduated, and I was congratulating him on his accomplishment, he said, ‘I will always remember you, and will never forget to find a space in every service to remember that there are people who feel the brokeness of life in every congregation.’ I was touched that it made such a difference.
Let’s hear some more advice:
If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question, Why are you sad? If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first.
There is something worthwhile about paying attention to what is good and worthy and that gives you satisfaction or pleasure or happiness in the world. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee who writes about knitting and life has a life philosophy that says that you should pay attention to that which you want more of in your life. ‘Don’t feed the crazy!’ she has been known to say. You know what that’s about, I suspect. It’s that moment when the rules that someone else has imposed take you into an Alice in Wonderland moment in your life – like some of the crazy customer service regulations.
Peter rang to find out what had been done about a complaint he made about service on our local bus route, and was told that they couldn’t give him any information about it by the local bunch, so he rang the more central authority and was told that unless he knew if it had been resolved they couldn’t help him with it. The system seems only designed to frustrate anyone trying to work it. We come upon these sorts of situations all the time in our lives, one kind of crazy thing. And it does seem that if you feed them they grow ever stronger. Arguing with the people on the phone will only serve to get you more annoyed, and seems not to take care of it.
More advice:
Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone.
I take Stephanie’s ideas to heart most of the time: pay attention to what you want more of in your life and, I do trust, you’re more likely to find it if only for the common sense reason that you’re looking for it. I don’t like to feed the crazy and avoid it as much as I can. But it has its limits.
There’s a mistaken notion out there, it seems, that the point of it all is to somehow overcome what trouble and worry there is in our lives. Various preachers and inspirational speakers will tell you that all you need do is to recognise what you can accomplish and to keep focused on what is good and all will be well. There’s a movement in evangelical Christianity that says that what God most wants for us is wealth – by which they mean money – and that we have to simply (simply!) align ourselves with God’s plan and he will provide. Prosperity theology, as it is sometimes called, seems to imply that those of us who aren’t yet wealthy have not yet truly found God’s favour, and all we need to do is to get that sorted, and all will flow.
A similar movement is based around what’s been called ‘attraction theory’, an idea that proponents claim has been around for millennia. The book "The Secret" is one of the more popular articulations of it. Like prosperity theology, the proponents tell their audience that they need to stay focused on what they want to bring into their lives, and it will come. We attract what we focus on, they claim. We need only believe enough in ourselves, and we will get what we want: love, success, money. Just for a taste, here’s the promotional blurb from the book:
The Secret book reveals how you can change every aspect of your life. You can turn any weakness or suffering into strength, power, unlimited abundance, health and joy.
Everything is possible, nothing is impossible. There are no limits. Whatever you can dream of can be yours, when you use The Secret.
To be honest, I would guess most of the folks who put this idea forward don’t present it quite as magically as this sounds. They acknowledge that there is hard work involved and planning and putting your plan into action. But it all begins with this notion of belief in yourself, holding this positive possibility. All flows from there.
I don’t want to suggest that anyone who finds this avenue of exploration to be helpful in their lives is misguided or wrong, but I do think that it is not adequate to what I understand to be the fundamental religious task. That task, as I see it, is to be in the presence of that which is most true about life: the beauty and joy that we can find sometimes, the trouble and heartbreak that are inevitable when we love, when we engage life. And, it is to point us toward the possibility that lives always. A new start, a new hope: it’s knowing that beginning again, loving again, trying again is possible. Advice again:
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
The poet, too, speaks to what is required of us:
Because we are imperfect and love so
Deeply we will never have enough days,
We need the gift of starting over, beginning
Again: just this constant good, this
Saving hope.
Our lives spill out so much, and each day we arise with a new day to discover our own secrets, and to live as well as we can. May we arise with praise and with hope, as we open our arms to embrace the fullness of what comes to us.
Amen.
Prayer:
Spirit of love and life
present in each moment,
there in each breath,
open us moment to moment
to all that is present in our lives.
Breathe into us,
awareness,
breathe into us,
hope,
breathe into us,
courage and strength.
Help us to choose
the path that leads us
to deeper and fuller life:
help us embrace what we must,
and ever open our hearts,
to the possibility and promise
of the emerging moment.
May new love be ever breaking into our lives,
may new truth be ever opening before our eyes
and may we have the wisdom to receive it,
and learn to live in it
day on day.
Amen.