They Will Not Let You Fail
It was early on in my ministerial internship - the first Sunday, in fact, that I was to be a part of the service - and I was as nervous as I'd ever been in my life. I'd been up in front of people before, sure, but I'd never before stepped into the role that I'd both dreamed about and feared since I was a young child. I'd never actually been a minister before - even with all of my past experiences and preparations - and that moment of walking out in front of the congregation and taking my place beside my supervisors, the ministers of the congregation - well, it filled me with both hope and dread.
My supervisors must have sensed my anxiety, and as we prepared to walk together through the doors at the back of the chancel and take our places, Rob put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in close to my ear - "they will not let you fail," he said, "they will not let you fail" - and the clock struck nine and in we walked, together.
Of all of the important moments in my internship and in my preparation for the ministry - that single moment and that simple phrase have stuck with me in a way that few others have. They will not let you fail, he said. In the midst of my fear and self-absorption, a good colleague reminded me that the work of ministry is never done alone - and that any success or failure I might face that year would be as much the result of the combined love and effort and support of the congregation as it would be of my own hands and efforts. The work in front of us was ours to be done together - and as I stood shaking behind the chancel that morning, it was not just me, but everyone present in the congregation that morning and on all the mornings to come that were standing on the threshold of a new endeavor - we were standing there together whether we knew it or not, standing there with hands outstretched and held tightly between us full of the weight of the future - sensing the fleeting movement of hope as it settled among us, quieting my nerves and drawing us forward into a yet undiscovered possibility not only for me, but for all of us.
Because whenever there is one among us who is brave enough to face in the direction of their dreams and start walking, whenever there is one among us who has listened to the quiet calling of their heart and emerges determined to align their life with their values - whenever there is one among us who sets aside the illusions of property and prestige that our society shoves down our throats and takes up instead the greater quest toward wholeness and fulfillment not only of themselves but of this world - then the rest of us cannot help but sit up and take notice - feeling our hearts catch in our own throats as we sense both the danger and the possibility that this dear brave one is facing and lifting up our own thoughts and prayers and hands almost reflexively in support.
Because we all have it in us - we all have it in us to listen to those dreams and lean in their direction. All of us have dreamed our dreams of who and what we might be as children and adults - and even though those dreams may fall quietly to sleep during the busy-ness of our days - they never do disappear entirely - and they can be remembered and reignited with the fire of hope and possibility when we see others living into theirs.
There is a man, lately, who has been doing a lot of talking about dreams. He's a Unitarian Universalist from our congregation in Pittsburgh, and his name is Randy Pausch. Perhaps you've heard of him recently with his Last Lecture. Now the last lecture has been a tradition at different universities for years, a time where favorite professors are invited to consider their demise and think and speak on what matters most to them. And in this particular case, Randy Pausch brought to his last lecture not only his experience as a computer science professor and favorite instructor, but he brought an additional perspective as well. You see, Randy was dying.
He described his situation this way - "I have an engineering problem," he reported, ever the scientist. "While for the most part I'm in terrific physical shape, I have ten tumors in my liver and I have only a few months left to live. I am a father of three young children, and married to the woman of my dreams. While I could easily feel sorry for myself, that wouldn't do them, or me, any good. So, how to spend my very limited time?" - he asked. Of course, first by doing as much as he could to take care of the endless logistical problems that his death would cause for his family, and then second by giving his Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon and writing a book - all of which could be passed on to his children in his absence.
As I read his book and listened to the lecture though, it became clear to me that Randy's dream - and his calling, I believe - was much grander even than the original goal he articulated - to pass on his life lessons to his children. Throughout his reflections, Randy tells us about his childhood dreams - dreams like painting his room with images and ideas and jokes that were important to him as a teenager, dreams like working at Disney land as an imagineer, playing in the NFL, authoring an article in the encyclopedia Britannica, and meeting Captain Kirk from Star Trek - many of which he achieved - throughout his lecture and his book, Randy tells us about his childhood dreams but he also goes on to tell us about the other important work that he has done in his lifetime, too, work that centers around his desire to give back to all those who helped him to achieve his dreams by in turn enabling the dreams of others.
This theme of enabling the dreams of others is woven throughout Randy's work. He talks graciously not only about the dreams he himself has achieved, but he talks at length, too, about the folks who helped him to do what he did, and he reminds us that it is not only achieving our own dreams that matters - but what we do to help enable the dreams of others that matters, too.
"Enabling the dreams of others can be done on several different scales," Randy explains in his book. "You can do it one on one...you can do it with fifty or a hundred people at a time (like he did with his original lecture)...and, if you have large ambitions and a measure of chutzpah, you can attempt to do it on a grand scale, trying to enable the dreams of millions of people."[1]
And this, I believe, is where Randy exceeds his own original expectations. In sharing his own experiences and reflections, Randy is putting his large ambition and definite chutzpah into action - passing his life lessons on not only to his children, but to all of us as well. In sharing his lessons of loyalty and dedication and faith in his fellow human beings, Randy fuels the fire of our imaginations- reminding us by his example - by stepping out in front of the crowd - that achieving our dreams is possible, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves living within.
We cannot live into our dreams alone, of course - and this is exactly what my dear friend and colleague, Rob Eller-Isaacs reminded me of on that first day of my internship so many years ago when he leaned in close to whisper his secret message of love and support. They will not let you fail, he said, and I know now that he meant not just me - but all of us who live here, in this place of liberal religious community - we will not let one another fail - those words were meant for all of us - all of us who bring our hearts and minds and dreams and hopes to this place of healing and wholeness - to this place that takes shape in this church - this place that asks the best of us, that calls us back, again and again, to deeper connection with ourselves, with each other, and with this beautiful and broken world.
And when we dare to listen to and live into our dreams, even when we are at the very beginning of the journey hesitantly taking our first few faltering steps - while we certainly need an inward conviction to draw us forward we cannot and will not go far unless there are others nearby who can offer their love and support and gentle challenge along the way - we will not and cannot go far without others standing by, standing ready, to enable the dreams of others.
And this is where each and every one of us comes in to the picture this morning. As we welcome our ministerial intern into our church home, it is up to her to bring her own inward convictions, to bring her own dreams and gifts and challenges and willingness to learn to the table - and it is up to us to open our hearts, it is up to us to bring our love and support and gentle challenge to this relationship of growth and possibility, that we too might do the holy work of enabling the dreams of others.
Enabling the dreams of others is not always easy, though, and this is true not only in our relationships with our children and parents, our friends and neighbors, our students or partners or fellow congregants on the journey. Enabling the dreams of others takes love and support, of course, and in some cases it would be easier to just stop there. But enabling the dreams of others asks even more of us at times - it asks for our love and support and sometimes, our gentle challenge, too.
I find myself turning back to our friend and fellow journeyman, Randy Pausch, again, as we consider this idea of the gentle challenge. Throughout his last lecture, Randy peppered his talk with references to a particular person in his life - Coach Graham, his first football coach, who molded him from a self-described wimpy kid with no skills, no physical strength and no conditioning into a football player with a stance that any NFL lineman would be proud of. Thinking back on a pivotal moment in his football career and in his life - Randy remembers this:
"Coach Graham used to ride me hard. I remember one practice in particular. 'You're doing it all wrong, Pausch. Go back! Do it again!' I tried hard to do what he wanted. It wasn't enough. 'You owe me, Pausch! You're doing push-ups after practice.'
When I was finally dismissed, one of the assistant coaches came over to reassure me. 'Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?' he said. I could barely muster a 'yeah.'
'That's a good thing,' the assistant told me. 'When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you.'
That lesson has stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process."[2]
It's a different approach than many of us talk about - and it certainly isn't always a comfortable one. But long ago I heard a phrase that brought it home to me clearly - if you want to build self-esteem, a dear friend told me, then stop thinking about it and start doing esteem-able acts. If we want to live into our dreams, if we want to be in that place that our hope calls us to inhabit, then there are steps we must take along the way, steps that are not always comfortable, but steps that take us where we need to go all the same.
Luckily, we do not have to take these steps alone. Each one of us is blessed with the gift of this church community - with this community of seekers striving to align their actions with their values as best they can in this crazy culture of ours. And this is good news, indeed, because we simply cannot travel the road of hope and possibility - the path toward wholeness and healing on our own. Our spiritual growth requires a community - whether it is the community of a church or congregation or whether it is a community of our peers or our family and friends that comes together for intentional conversation and support - we simply cannot grow and change in the direction of our dreams in a vacuum - we cannot see all that needs to be seen through one set of eyes - and it is exceedingly unlikely that we could keep on our spiritual path for long without the encouragement and direction of those who are walking alongside and ahead and behind us on journeys of their own.
It takes a community to lift us up, to call us back to our better selves, to remind us of the dreams we once carried that so often slip away amidst the dust and dirt of the road. We need one another to offer that love and support and gentle challenge - and we need one another if we are to see that living into our hopes and values is not just a pipe dream but something that is truly possible - an actual achievable goal even in a society that tells us otherwise - if only we will work together - bringing what we can to the table.
And this journey will take all of us. It will take the fancy glaziers - as the poet told us this morning - the fat bishops in their warm boots - the small beers and cold suppers and displaced swallows - the winches and pulleys and the cathedral builders on their ladders with children at home and rheumatism invading their backs - it will take each and every one of us to put the stones in place and stand back, together, years later amidst the crowd at the consecration, looking up with a squint eye and declaring - I bloody did that.
When we dare to step out from the crowd of our culture - when we dare to dream our dreams and move in their direction - distancing ourselves from the mass of men living in quiet desperation - it is then that we are helping not only ourselves - but others as well. When we do the spiritual work of aligning our lives with our values we are living not just into our own singular and self-absorbed dreams - but when we do this in community - when we allow others to share in the struggle and the success of our journey - it then that we are offering fuel for the flame of their hearts as well - and it then that we feel all of our hands extending almost reflexively in support if we will let them - lifting one another up and bringing us all closer to the lives we long for - creating then, as we not only live into our dreams but as we enable the dreams of others, too - a legacy that goes further than our own individual lives and moves us to the real restoration of this world - to the creation of the beloved community here on earth.
May we take up this worthy challenge that lies before us, hearing again the dreams of our own hearts and leaning in close - offering one another the love and support and gentle challenge we all need, that we, too might live out our own dreams and play a part in enabling the dreams of others. It is holy work that we are charged to do.
May it be so, and Amen.
August 17, 2008
- Randy Pausch. The Last Lecture. (Hyperion, 2008), 126.
- Ibid., 36-7.