First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany

“Theology of Relinquishment”

Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, November 2, 2003


 

Spoken Meditation

Spirit of life and love
Energy that organizes the intricate dance of cooperation
 between muscle fiber, red blood cell, and neuron
Enter into our awareness this morning
 And break open our hearts to the ocean of love that surrounds us.
Far too often, does the urge to resist and to grab
 Influence our feelings and choices.
People who are loud and boastful,
People who pull our chain and flush our goodwill,
People who seduce with charm and power,
People who dangle chocolate cake in front of our noses,
 While hiding a whip behind their back
Too often we feel controlled by the actions of others, rather than
 empowered to follow the guidance of our wisdom and compassion.
Far too often, we are confused by our own pain and suffering
The struggle of diminished health and personal loss,
The difficulty of keeping all the balls in the air and not letting them fall.
The agony of helplessly witnessing the misery of others
The fear of uncertainty before a fickle future.
And yet, and yet, there is always more.
Even in the darkest hour, there is more love somewhere.
The Spirit of Life is restless, a tireless drive of creation
 Ever at our elbow urging us on.
And there is a restorative peace within us as well
 that passes all understanding
 That can be found throughout our lives and
even in our final hour.
May both the Spirit of Life and the Spirit of Peace be with us this day

Leading us to possibilities for new life
And helping us find peace in times of loss.

Sermon

Letting go can sometimes feel like the last thing on earth I’d rather do.Occasionally I feel like I’d rather die than admit to myself I’m in the wrong.Learning to relinquish destructive resistance is very hard … and is worth the effort to learn how.

This feeling of resistance arose in me a couple of weeks ago one evening while Philomena, and I were sitting in our family room.Several baskets of folded laundry were sitting on the floor in front of us.Among other things, I do the shopping and cooking and taking care of the garbage and recycling.Philomena does the cleaning and the laundry.She doesn’t mind the washing and folding.She does however have a strong dislike for putting the clothes away.

I expressed surprise that she didn’t like that part of the job since it seems to me that that might be the easiest and most satisfying part.This wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation.Philomena suggested if I wanted to understand why she didn’t like putting the laundry away, that I should do it myself-- right now.I suddenly felt a strong surge of resistance.

After all, this wasn’t my job and I just wanted to help free Philomena from her resistance.Now, suddenly I was in the middle of my own resistance and trying to escape the situation.I could have cheerfully said, “Yes.”I could have generously offered to do it for a couple of weeks so I could better understand what was so unpleasant about the job.

I didn’t.

Encountering resistance is a daily event for most of us, isn’t it?Resisting consumes a fair amount of our energy avoiding things we’d rather not do, postponing the inevitable if possible.I know how much I’d rather avoid difficult situations or people than deal with them.Even when I know intellectually what the right thing to do is, my resistance can feel like an immobilizing strait jacket.

What is remarkable to me is the power of this elemental force as I’m feeling it stop me in my tracks, usually against my better judgment.Even when I know what I ought to do, what is the right thing to do, the resistance shackles my ankle.If I were not a Unitarian Universalist, I might be tempted to externalize my resistance and to believe the devil was holding the other end of the chain.

If it were only when discussing the laundry that my resistance comes up, I think I could handle it.When I experience this inner resistance struggling with issues of gender, race and class, I become very concerned.Occasionally my inner feelings do not match my outer commitments, my strong commitments to dismantle sexism, racism, and all forms of oppression and build a more harmonious world with peace, equity and justice for all.

Why this is of paramount importance for people like me is because of my sex, race and class.Being a white male professional, society grants me significant power and privilege.What I do with that power and privilege matters a great deal.What I resist doing with that power and privilege can matter even more.

My struggle as a white male fighting my resistance isn’t a traditional story of seeking freedom or liberation.As I read the Exodus story about Moses liberating the Jews from Egypt, if I be honest, I recognize my social position in that story as aligned with the Pharoah.(Andy played Pharoah in the Passover Playlet last year--like father, like son)As I read the Gospels about Jesus struggling against Roman oppression, my social position is watching Jesus with the Romans.The Anglo-Saxon American male rules the American empire.My struggle is not to seize power, I already have it, but rather to learn how to share it and to relinquish it.

The power-holding characters in traditional stories usually are the villains not the heroes.We don’t look up to them, on the contrary, we revile them.More often than not, power is pried from their cold, dead fingers, not magnanimously shared or relinquished.Yet, the peace- and justice-making white male also needs support to fight the status quo … from the other side.

So when I feel a separation between my inner feelings and my outer commitments, where can I go for inspiration and guidance?Where can I find a reservoir of spiritual strength and courage to face my resistance and overcome it?What inspired text or character can I learn from?

Well, I think I’ve found a man and a story that can show me the way to overcome my resistance.He may not work for you but he works for me and touches my heart.His name is Ebenezer Scrooge, as portrayed in Charles Dicken’s story, "A Christmas Carol".

I know Mr. Scrooge better than I care to admit.We first meet him, in the story, in his counting house on a cold Christmas Eve with a very small fire to keep warm.I recognize Scrooge’s desire to conserve energy as I turn back the thermostat.I watch my finances closely, cautiously accounting for every expense.I have experienced avarice seeing piles of money ready to be counted.I know the Scrooge impulse within me … and I’d wager a few others here this morning know him too.

Thankfully, love of money hasn’t poisoned my heart as it has Scrooge’s.He is cruel and ungenerous to his employee Bob Cratchit.He rejects the invitation of his faithful nephew who continues to care about him even though other family members mock him.Scrooge refuses to offer charity to the poor.Instead of charity, he supports prisons and workhouses for the poor, which we might also associate with our current state and national strategies for dealing with the poor.

Scrooge has absolutely no interest in changing.This is why he is a good example for those of us interested in social change for ourselves and others.Scrooge fleshes out in the extreme the feeling of resistance I spoke of earlier, a feeling of separation, rejection, and isolation.It takes a visit from the other side of death to begin weakening his resistance.

Jacob Marley, his deceased partner, is just like him.Even though he has been dead for seven years, Marley’s name remains on their business and Scrooge even answers to his name.To see Marley’s suffering ghost shocks Scrooge even as his mind resists the vision, claiming his experience is just “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”His resistance isn’t weakened, rather his denial just gets stronger.

The vision that Scrooge cannot deny is his future suffering carrying fifty or sixty fathoms of chain throughout eternity.He begs Marley’s ghost to know how he can avoid this fate and learns of the three spirits from past, present and future Christmases who will visit him in the night.When Marley departs, Scrooge immediately falls into a deep sleep of denial.One of he ways I recognize subtle resistance in myself is a feeling of sleepiness in the presence of that which I’d rather not see or hear.

Much as Scrooge resists his next visitor, his unrecognized opportunity for salvation, really, the ghost of Christmas Past arrives right on schedule.This ghost takes him back to his boyhood days.This visit animates emotions and feelings we might have believed were dead within Scrooge.The heavy price of his resistance has been the loss of his ability to feel.Yet that loss is not entirely of his own creation.We learn Ebenezer has been rejected by other children and rejected by his own father.A victim of child abuse, the pain of his childhood inclines him toward the direction of his later life.Thinking of poor little Ebenezer alone in the schoolhouse on Christmas Eve abandoned by his father touches my heart.

Not all of his youthful Christmases were miserable.We learn of the happy Christmas during his apprenticeship with Fezziwig.He has loved a woman of modest means.But as he grows older, he walks away from these happier times and his sweetheart.Sadly, penny by penny, he gradually closed her out of his heart, squeezed out by his increasing attachment to security.In his lover’s gentle words:

"You fear the world too much…All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you."

Scrooge’s search for gain has consumed him.Fearing the world, he has chosen security over love.All his other hopes, his nobler aspirations, one by one, were quenched.For me, this is the most sobering part of the story.What am I now serving?Am I serving my fear or am I serving my love?What is my master-passion?

When looking at the world today, it is far too easy to follow Scrooge.It is far too easy to see the prison and the workhouse as the solutions to the problem of poverty, closing our hearts to the aspects of our economic system that intentionally perpetuate poverty to provide a steady stream of low wage workers.It is far too easy to criminalize the social disintegration created by slavery in this country.It is far too easy to focus exclusively on security after an act of terrorism and resist recognizing and feeling the harm the American vision of global economic, cultural and military domination is doing to our planet.

Scrooge is horrified by seeing his suffering, his lost joy, and the choices he has made to follow gain.He begins recovering his ability to feel and as he does, he feels tremendous pain.Right under the surface of Scrooge’s resistance is enormous suffering. Again and again he tells the spirit of Christmas Past to stop torturing him for what he sees breaks his heart.Or rather, breaks open his heart.

In his pain are the first glimmers of redemption.As he is willing to feel the suffering from his past, he recognizes and regrets missed opportunities for generosity just the day before.Feeling the pain of his past is not fruitless, for it is already effecting a change within him.

If I could just teach one lesson in my ministry this would be THE ONE.Feeling physical, emotional, and spiritual pain is a necessary component of human existence that cannot be removed from a happy, healthy, fulfilling and satisfying life.Learning from our pain and the pain of those around us can shape us in positive and constructive ways that can reduce the suffering in the world.Just the willingness to feel, begins the transformation.

Scrooge continues to learn from his pain as he sees the results of his actions with the aid of Christmas Present.He sees the suffering of the Cratchit family and the joy he will miss with his nephew’s family.The ghost of Christmas Present offers Scrooge the tremendous opportunity to accurately see himself as others see him.

This is a gift I wish for all of us, to accurately see ourselves as others see us.If we could see ourselves through the eyes of the African American community.If men could understand how they appear to women and women could understand how they appear to men.If all of us in America could understand what we look like in the eyes of Iraqis and Afghanis, we would have much richer information from which to act.Not that anyone has the correct point of view, rather, each has a piece of the truth we need that can break open our hearts a little wider.

What finally remakes Scrooge is seeing his future and recognizing the meaninglessness of his existence.Critical to meaning is loving and feeling loved.The only appreciation expressed about him in his passing is by a debtor who gets a reprieve on his loan as Scrooge’s estate is settled.When Scrooge recognizes that he has left not a mark on the earth save his tombstone, he feels compelled to change.He wakes up Christmas morning, a new man.

And how is he redeemed?By relinquishing some of his wealth and sharing it with others.We can argue reasonably about how to help those in need, whether by government programs or by personal philanthropy.What is unarguable in every religious teaching is that those of us who have in abundance must relinquish some of what we have to aid those who are suffering deprivation.

But relinquishing wealth is not enough--the systems of oppression that maintain the status quo must be given up as well.We live in an exciting time in the history of civilization, with the potential to actually make progress toward making that restructuring possible.The tools for grassroots organizing have never been better understood.Social theories for sharing power and reconciling old hatreds are being tested and refined by UN peacekeeping missions around the world.The global environmental movement and the anti-globalization movement are signs of a growing resistance to systemic oppression.Feminist social theorists urge us to give up the social model of ‘power over’ and move to a model of ‘power with’ and ‘power to.’

The ARISE congregationally based community organizing model of relational power gathers the energy of outrage from the grassroots and focuses it to move opportunities for systemic change.You can participate in this revolutionary approach to justice making on Tuesday, November 18th, at the Egg at 7:00pm.Sign up today! (Check my column in Windows for more details.)

The path to social transformation is found in the willingness to engage resistance emotionally, intelligently and relationally rather than obeying its isolating urges to fight or to run away.

That’s what I’m going to do.I’ve already promised Philomena that I will put the laundry away for a month so I can better understand what makes the job unpleasant.I encourage everyone here today to reflect on your resistance and find a way to break open your heart a little wider.You need not wait for ghosts to do it for you.

May we all discover the truth that more life is not to be found in fear, more life is only to be found in love.

Benediction

The bitter taste of cynicism has a false, self-satisfied sweetness

Until the palette is confronted with a taste of reality.
Once the feelings are engaged and the mind and heart are opened,
The flavor of resistance cannot satisfy the spirit that animates our love.
May we take from this service
The Courage to penetrate our resistance,
The Insight to recognize its bondage,
The Will to break its chains and
Open the way to compassion, empathy, and good will and
The Resolve to restore our relationship with the wholeness of life
By sharing
And, at times, relinquishing
our power.
Copyright © 2003 by the Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.