Now I Become Myself...

Over dinner at our recent district minister's gathering - conversation turned one evening to the topic of mother's day sermons. Listening attentively I heard my seasoned colleagues explain that very few ministers like to give mother's day sermons. The problem, as I understood it, is that for many folks, when you scratch below the hall mark surface it is hard to make generalizations about the relationships people have with their mothers. For some it is a relationship of deep wounding, for others it is a relationship of great love, and for many folks it is a mixture of both - and as a woman about to become a mother herself - I do not say this lightly.

What we can safely assume though - from my perspective - is that each one of us - whether it's been through our biological or adopted mothers - through our biological or adopted fathers, step-parents, grandparents, mentors, coaches or teachers - we have all had folks along the way who have given us exactly what we've needed - people who have helped us in no uncertain terms to become our selves. We have all at some point experienced the kind of connection that heals - and it is this kind of connection that I want to talk about with you today.

Almost twenty years ago now, at the age of 14, I found myself feeling lost and confused, angry and sad, disconnected and severely depressed. Folks from all areas of my life reached out to me - my family, teachers, ministers and friends - they saw what was happening and tried to stop the slide - but it was hard to reach back - hard to be honest about how I felt and what I needed - hard to care about anything or anyone else when the pain inside went so deep. The thin threads of connection to anything beyond myself seemed to be breaking each day - and as I struggled to rejoin them I often failed and only felt more alone.

During this difficult time a social worker came into my life. She knew that I didn't like to talk about how I was feeling, she knew that I resisted crying at all costs, she knew that I'd sent many others away before her. But as this particular social worker began to work with me she did two simple things. First, she didn't push, she simply sat with me - asking a few questions here and there - making room for me to show up and say talk if I chose to do so. And second, she did a little research. She found out that I had played the piano earlier in my childhood, and over the course of the next weeks she began to teach me a particular song on the piano - perhaps you've heard it - it was Simon & Garfunkel's I am a Rock, I am an Island. The lyrics are quite simple - they repeat in many places - saying over and over things like -

I am a rock, I am an island. -I have my books And my poetry to protect me; I am shielded in my armor, Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.

I certainly identified with that song as a teenager.

On the outside my social worker's approach may not have looked like such a good idea - but on the inside, on my insides - this woman gave me words and music to express my feelings and then she gave me something more - something essential to my and to all of our healing and wholeness - sitting there side by side at the piano keyboard learning and talking together she offered me the gift of connection - she taught me that I did not have to face my struggle alone, that another understood the pain I was in and cared enough to reach out. Together, through the simple gift of connection, we strengthened the thin threads that held me to this world and in time I did heal.

Now I don't know about you - but for me - coming of age in this society in this particular time - I grew up steeped in the American ideal of independence, the tradition of rugged individualism, the myth of individual success. I grew up with the idealization of the lone ranger, the wild west, the admonition to pull myself up by my own boot straps. I grew up believing that the pinnacle of my existence and of adulthood itself would be marked by my total and complete self-sufficiency.

As I went on to college and studied psychology - this understanding of the world was largely reinforced. Become your own mother and father - the therapeutic model of the time advised - take in the wisdom and kindness of your parents and mentors and offer that comfort to yourself in their absence. The model of human development of most of the 20th century centered around the ideas of separation and individuation - insisting that healthy human beings grew to become more independent throughout their lives, that paying too much attention to relationships and connection with other people and the planet was a dangerous thing, that relying on others was a sign of weakness. After all, a truly healthy person could and would stand on their own two feet. They would be a rock, an island.

Now don't get me wrong, there are strengths to this model. The feeling that the poet, May Sarton describes in the singular phrase - Now I become myself - can set us awash with memories of wonderful moments when we have felt as if we have finally arrived - finally become ourselves, finally achieved that pinnacle of adulthood and independence.

But there are limitations to this model of independence as well. Thousands of recent scientific studies prove beyond a doubt "that people who feel lonely and isolated and depressed and hostile have anywhere from three to five to 10 times the risk of premature death and disease from virtually all causes when compared to those who have love and connection and community in their lives." The real epidemic, as cardiac doctor Dean Ornish expresses in his book, Love and Survival "isn't just physical heart disease--it's what I call emotional or spiritual heart disease."[1] The real epidemic among us is disconnection and isolation.

Recently, with the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech we learned all too well the dangers of disconnection. A young man who rarely spoke, who drifted aloof and alone among his classmates - a man who struggled not only with mental illness but also with dramatic isolation from the people and the world around him - went on a rampage killing and wounding so many. Taken to its extreme - our country's model of complete independence and self-sufficiency can foster just this kind of isolation.

I recently attended a lecture on the neurobiology of human connection - and I was relieved to hear that our science -our understandings and models of human development - are now changing - changing to support a model of interconnection, of interdependence - rather than the old model of rugged individualism and independence.

Cardiac doctors, neuroscientists and psychologists stand together behind the recent research showing that feelings of disconnection and isolation harm us both physically and emotionally. Our country's pervasive idea of standing alone on our own two feet, they tell us, is literally crazy making.

Leading neuroscientists now teach that compassion, warmth, and love literally have the power to change the brain for the better. Things that have long been understood in the soft sciences are now taking shape in fact and in our more detailed understandings of how the brain works. After over a century of our country buying into the myth of rugged individualism - change is afoot - and the current movement in neuroscience and psychology is away from the old model of separate selves and toward an understanding of the healing power of relationships.

But it is hard to break our old habits and it is hard to let go of that illusive image of arriving at some finished state all on our own resources. We forget often that becoming ourselves happens in each moment - that it is not a finished state we can aspire to - but rather it is an on-going integration and connection that happens throughout our lives - made so and rooted so by love - the poet reminds us. The challenge that lies before us is just how to put this new science, this understanding about the importance of connection, the deep knowing we share about the healing power of relationships - into action in our lives.

In his book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path, meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells the story of a fourteen year-old boy confined to a rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders in the District of Columbia. The boy had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. As Kornfield tells the story, throughout the trial, "the victim's mother sat impassively silent until the end, when the youth was convicted of the killing. After the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him and stated, 'I'm going to kill you.' Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in the juvenile facility. After the first half year the mother of the slain child went to visit his killer. He had been living on the streets before the killing, and she was the only visitor he'd had. For a time they talked, and when she left she gave him some money for cigarettes. Then she started step by step to visit him more regularly, bringing food and small gifts. Near the end of his three-year sentence she asked him what he would be doing when he got out. He was confused and very uncertain, so she offered to help set him up with a job at a friend's company. Then she inquired about where he would live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. For eight months he lived there, ate her food, and worked at the job. Then one evening she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and waited. Then she started. 'Do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you?' 'I sure do,' he replied. 'I'll never forget that moment.' 'Well, I did,' she went on. 'I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That's why I started to visit you and bring you things. That's why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. That's how I set about changing you. And that old boy, he's gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if you'll stay here. I've got room, and I'd like to adopt you if you let me.' And she became the mother of her son's killer, the mother he never had."[2]

Compassion, warmth, and love literally have the power to change the brain - to change all of us- for the better. We've all had people like this woman in our lives - whether it be our mothers or fathers, family or friends, teachers or students - we've all been the recipient of such a gift of undeserved kindness - and it is this compassion, this connection I believe that makes us whole. We are born into the world deeply connected - each of us formed in our mother's wombs cradled and rocked to the heartbeat of another. We come into this world intimately connected to another - and this, I believe, is our natural state. Connection, compassion, warmth and love heal us and make us whole.

And this, for me, is exactly where the church comes in to this conversation. Each and every day our society and our fears urge us to push one another away. Violence, war, discrimination - all of these things cause us and those around us chronic stress and pain - moving us toward a state of isolation and disconnection.

Our church - in its daily and weekly and yearly activities - calls us into connection with one another. It challenges us to live into our belief in the interdependent web of which we are a part - it asks us to reach out to one another, to share our thoughts and feelings, to come together for the significant moments of our lives - fostering healing relationships and compassion between us. And this is not all that our church calls us to do. In addition to caring for ourselves and for one another inside these walls - our church asks us to care for those outside of our walls as well. While our church challenges and cheers us on our journey as we become our selves, it also challenges and cheers us to put our faith into action in the world - creating the conditions here and now in which all people might live into their true potential.

Writer and religious scholar, Karen Armstrong, reminds us that all the great religious traditions agree on one central point. "The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion."[3] Our churches and synagogues and mosques and temples must call us to engage in acts of practical compassion - acts like caring for our families, our students, our elders, our enemies, and ourselves - if they are any true religion at all. But "I have noticed," she tells us, "that compassion is not always a popular virtue. In my lectures I have sometimes seen members of the audience glaring at me mutinously: where is the fun of religion, if you can't disapprove of other people!"[4]

No matter what we believe - we can all stand together with the great religions of the world - with the truth that science is now teaching us. Compassion and kindness - even in the most difficult of situations - have the power to literally change us all for the better.

Showing compassion when rage pulses through us, offering a hand of kindness when we feel hurt or scared or lost or confused, becoming a mother or a parent or a life-line to a person in need, working to change the conditions of our culture and our world that push and pull us apart from one another - this is spiritual work. Most of us will not be called to show courage and compassion at the level that the mother in Kornfield's story was called to do - but all of us are called to do something. Our free faith asks us to start right now right where we are - in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our congregations - it asks us to start right now offering the warmth and compassion and connection that can literally heal us all.

"Perhaps this is the best we can do," Kornfield goes on to write, "to help when we can; to witness to each other with kindness; to offer our presence; to show the trust we have in life. Spiritual life is not about knowing much, but about loving much."[5]

As we become ourselves, as we stand connected to all that has been and all that will be, we are called then to take up the challenge that this church offers us - to love much, to help others on their journey, to create the conditions in this world, in this lifetime, that allow each of us to reach our fullest potential. May we be willing to live counter-culturally - striving to show compassion, warmth, and love to all those we encounter, offering healing, together, to this bruised and broken and beautiful world.

May it be so, and Amen.

Jen Crow, Associate Minister
May 13, 2007

"What's Love Got to do with It? By Suzanne Gerber. Vegetarian Times, March, 1998 - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0820/is_n247/ai_20380033/pg_1
Jack Kornfield. After the Ecstasy, The Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path. (Bantam Books: New York, 2000), pp. 235-236.
Karen Armstrong. The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness. (Knopf; 2004) p. 293
Ibid. p. 297
Jack Kornfield. After the Ecstasy, The Laundry. p. 220