Apple Eyes

Let me put my cards on the table: I'm one of those sentimental dreamers. I'm a sucker for big dreams and easily pulled into the pursuit of big possibilities. This was something that was ingrained in me early on and it has stayed with me ever since. As a kid - especially as a preacher's kid - I totally bought into the idea that people not only should save the world, but could save the world. The best example of this comes from my favorite imaginary game as a 4th grader - at least I'm hoping it was 4th grade not something like Jr. High because it's already embarrassing enough as it is. This was the game. I'd go out into the barn, set up hay bails into rows and imagine that they were aisles in the hall of the United Nations, with leaders from around the world in attendance. I'd stack two bails on top of each other right up front and pretend that it was a podium - my podium. And there I was talking to them about world peace. No, not just talking to them about world peace, but talking them into world peace. Oh the eloquence of the speech was quite remarkable! But I didn't rely just on that eloquence. No, I gave it a little "somethin' extra"; I did the entire thing in song!! (I can't say how grateful I am that we didn't have video cameras then!)

So why share this not so flattering piece of my childhood? Well, I say all this up front because as we explore this month's worship theme of "What does it mean to be person of possibility?" I don't want anyone to doubt my commitment to the importance of pursuing and remaining open to big possibilities. And yet at the same time, I'm just not sure that this is the struggle we need help with most right now. No, lately, it's the struggle to remain open to the ordinary possibilities right in front of us that's got most of my attention...and worry.

This worry is rooted in the many New Year's essays and reflections that have been swirling around for the past few weeks - essays that usually speak to big possibilities and hopes, but now noticeably don't.

For instance, Mark Shields - one of my favorite and usually upbeat news commentators - recently built his New Year's reflection around the fact that in order for the economy to get back to what it was before our recent recession, we will need to create 200,000 jobs every month for the next 7 years. He went on to stress that this is far more than anything we were able to do during the so-called "boom years" of the Clinton administration. Needless to say, the interview didn't leave one ringing with hope.

Another social commentator framed things this way: "The last decade was tough," she said, "but it's hard to truthfully talk about the next decade getting any better. Forget climbing up the management ladder in our later years, we're into a time when success will be about just staying on the ladder." She went on-shyly and almost shamefully-to say that somebody needs to start talking as soon as possible to the current college generation and being honest with them about how that rosy picture we promised - of them having bigger houses and bigger salaries than their parents - is just not going to happen.

The other New Year's predictions - as I'm sure you've seen too - were just as rosy! War sucking up our national treasury leaving little room for social improvements or safety nets. Global competition from rising economic powers like China and India putting downward pressure on not only blue collar but white collar American salaries as well. Climate change bringing natural disaster, mass migration and thus possible international conflict. Food stamps now at a record high. It all adds up, as one essayist in the New Yorker put it, to "a new era of limits."

Friends, we may not political analysts or economic experts, but I think this focus on and worry about limits is dominating our attention and energy too. And frankly I don't see us handling it all that well. Now I don't mean that as critical or as judgmental as it sounds. I'm just not sure we really understand as a culture what we are caught up in. Or rather, I should say, I don't see anyone helping us understand what we are caught up in.

The big piece I see missing is any discussion of how our cultural heritage has left us completely unprepared for dealing with this new struggle with limits and downsized dreams. Parker Palmer, who was trained as a sociologist but now is known nationally as a leader on spiritual matters, puts it this way: he says, "All our training is now outdated." He goes on to write, "Our problem as Americans - at least among my race and gender (white, male, middle-class) is that we've be taught by our schools, politicians and even religions to resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives. Our national myth is about the endless defiance of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of sound, dropping people on the moon, discovering "cyber-space... We are the people who refuse to take no for an answer."

Now Parker does not say this, but it seems to me that this means, in the future, we are going to see a whole lot of clinging, of holding on so very tight, of clinging so very hard.

That's not, however, what most folks are predicting. Wide-spread depression and anger is what most experts are putting their money on. And I don't so much think that this is wrong. I just don't think it's the most helpful way of framing it. I don't think it takes our cultural heritage of "you can have whatever you want and be whatever you want" seriously enough.

You see, because of our 'sky's the limit" heritage, I believe there will be a large component of "stuckness," of "stubbornness," of refusal to accept the answer "no" in our reactions to the many limits we'll face in the coming future. When the "no's" come, I don't think we'll easily set our dreams and preferences down and sink straight away into depression. No, I think we are more likely to cling tight to our preferred dreams and demands and keep banging our head into that limiting wall. And as we are doing that, I don't think we will best be described as depressed, as much as blind and closed.

Which is why I said at the beginning of this sermon that I'm not so much worried about us losing sight of our big social dreams and possibilities as much as I am worried about us losing sight of the many ordinary possibilities sitting right there in front of us. Even with all the coming losses, I believe many treasures and gifts will remain; I'm just not sure we will have eyes to see them!

A great example of what I'm trying to get at comes from a story told by a doctor and writer, Rachel Naomi Remen. She's talking here about confronting the limit of cancer rather than the limit of a job loss or a career dream, but the insight still applies.

"Before I got sick," she writes, "I was very certain of everything. I knew what I wanted and when I wanted it. Most of the time, I knew what I had to do to get it too. I walked around with my hand outstretched saying, 'I want an apple." Many times life would give me a pomegranate instead. I was always so disappointed that I never looked at it to see what it was. Actually, I don't think I could have seen what it was. I had the world divided up into just two categories: 'apple' and 'not apple.' If it wasn't an apple, it was only a not-apple. I had let myself become cursed with 'apple eyes."

It's such a great way of putting it, don't you think? Great, but also tragic. Indeed friends, who of us here doesn't recognize a bit of this "curse of apple eyes" in us or those around us.

"I want to get back to top-level management"...everything else is just "NOT top-level management." "I want that planned dream home"...everything else is just "NOT our planned dream home." "I want to be able to afford our child's first-choice college"... everything else is just "NOT being able to afford our child's first choice."

The list goes on...

The job that feeds my spirit... everything else is just "NOT the job that feeds my spirit." A life without the worry of poverty.... everything else..."An impoverished and failed life." Parents who can care for themselves in older age... everything else "a life spoiled by the burden of aging parents." Life without debilitating illness...everything else..."a debilitated life."

More and more, we all have our apple-eyes-privileged or not, middle-class or working class, young or old. All of us. Apple eyes that divide the world into exactly what we wanted and planned for on the one hand and total failure, total depletion on the other.

And yet, here's the thing: ironically, right here in the midst of this messed up thinking is also our hope! (I know, finally some hope, right?!)

It's an odd place to find it, I know, but it's there. Found right in the fact - as I think Remen does a good job of making clear - that this division is completely of our own making! Let me say that again: this division is completely of our own making! "Not apple" may exist in our heads, but friends, that's the only place it does exist, right?! "Total failure"? "Total depletion"? Yes, no doubt, those exist too, but only as feelings we've created for ourselves based on how we are choosing to look at and frame things.

And since they are of our own making, since they exist because of our own choosing, then that means we have power - we have options.

I'm not saying it's easy, but if we are able to step back from that apple eyes frame-work far enough to realize that it is a just a frame, then suddenly it won't feel so real. And once it feels less real, the odds of us being able to step outside that blinding frame increase dramatically. And if we are able step outside it, well then.....BOOM...pomegranates! REAL pomegranates is what you got! Sitting right there in front of you!

And I hope you hear the playfulness in my voice there. I really do. I know we're talking about serious stuff today, so don't take this the wrong way, but if we are going to develop the ability to step back from and let go of our apple eyes, then I think we're going to have to find a way to be playful with all this - to find what might be called "sacred or holy laughter." Because friends, it is fundamentally absurd right? To be so caught up in what you didn't get that you completely lose the ability to notice all that you still got!

And to honor this holy humor, here's another story - this one is also from Rachel Naomi Remen - told to her by a patient of hers about her husband.

Remen says her patient described her husband as very organized and extremely frugal. The family had apparently just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. The husband had arranged every detail of the trip ahead of time. One of those details was the rental cars.

Months in advance, he reserved an economy, compact car on each of the four islands they planned to visit. When they arrived at the first island they were told that the car they had reserved was not available. The husband's face reddened and he prepared to do battle. But before he had a chance to explode, the clerk added, "I am so sorry sir. But might you be willing to accept a substitute for the same price. We do have a mustang convertible available." Quiet, but still simmering, the husband put their bags in the gorgeous white sports car and they headed off.

The same thing, says the wife, happened on the rest of the islands. Each time they were told that the car they had reserved was not available and they were given a replacement. After the mustang, they got a Mazda sports car, and then a Lincoln Town Car and finally, a Mercedes. The vacation was wonderful and on the plane back home the wife turned to her husband and thanked him for all the work he had done to arrange such a great adventure. "Yes," said the husband, "It was really nice." And then he added, "But too bad they never had the right car for us."

It's a story that speaks largely for itself. All that's left is to apply it to us, which I think boils down to simply saying, Friends, let's not be that guy! Or more to the point: Friends, we don't have to be that guy!

And as I say that, two phrases ring through my head:

"Note it with interest"
and
"What else is here?"

Both of these phrases are taken directly from the world of cognitive psychology. Both of them great tools for us to take home with us today.

And here's how they work:

The next time you feel yourself hooked by apple eyes, the next time you feel yourself caught in anger, hurt or pain over the fact that life is saying "no" to what you wanted and hoped for, work as hard as you can to take a deep breath and instead of reacting, simply "note it with interest" - note what is happening to you with interest.

It sounds silly almost, but it works. "Oh look at this," you will say to yourself, "I'm standing here without the thing I've longed for and planned on and my head and heart is telling me that life is empty, it's all ruined...hmmm, isn't that interesting!"

You see, I warned you it will feel a bit silly, but, darn it, that's the secret. It's precisely that playfulness - again, that sacred or holy playfulness - that will enable you to step back.

And once you feel yourself being able to step back, don't stop there; the next step is the important one: challenge it. Once you are looking at the feeling rather than caught up in it, challenge it! Take a deep breath and ask yourself, simply, "It this true? Is it true that it's all empty, that it's all ruined?" And to get at that best, you simply ask yourself over and over again:

WHAT ELSE IS HERE?
WHAT ELSE IS HERE?
WHAT ELSE IS HERE?

Now I know a minute ago I said I took this from the world of cognitive psychology, but let me also be clear that the reason I took it from there is because I believe with all my heart that this question of "what else is here? is quintessentially Unitarian Universalist. We are a people who have faith in the fullness of life. From the start, we've declared that the idea of a fallen world is bunk. We declared that grace and gifts don't come to life by confessing or believing the right things; we believe that grace and gifts and fullness come right along with life!

And so when you ask "WHAT ELSE IS HERE," you will most assuredly get a positive answer. No, it won't be the apple, but it will be something, something that will save you, something that will pull you back to joy, back to gratitude, back to the possibility that was sitting right in front of you all along!

And to get at the feeling of that, I can't think of a better story to end on than this:

It's a story from psychologist, nationally-known writer and also Unitarian Universalist, Mary Pipher. It's about a patient of hers named Wanda.

Wanda introduced herself to Pipher as shy and plain. But as she got to know Wanda, Pipher found her to be rather remarkable. Wanda's childhood was hard. Her mother died early and her father was largely absent after that. But Wanda found the courage in the midst of it to make her own way through school, joining clubs and making a family out of friends and neighbors. After high school, she pushed herself to move from her small town to a big city. Again, she carved out a family of friends and co-workers. She became close with her bosses family, watching his children and, over time, becoming known to them as "Aunt Wanda."

But never during this time had she been in a romantic relationship. No one had ever asked her on a date. Pipher says that this was the first time Wanda broke down in their sessions. She bawled.

And Wanda went on to share that she worried if she'd ever be loved. More than that, she worried that she may not be ever be loveable.

Like a good therapist, Pipher listened with interest; she helped Wanda look at it and simply hold it up - Note it with interest we might say today.

And then, when trust was built between them, Pipher challenged it-she challenged Wanda by simply asking her to list all the people she loved. The list was long - so long it surprised Wanda. And then, Pipher asked pointedly, "Do they love you back?" To which Wanda answered with what I can only imagine was joyful and sacred laughter, "I guess I'm already lovable."

Now I realize that Wanda's story doesn't speak directly to the economic and social struggles that I've been focusing on today. But it can nevertheless be directly applied: No matter what our apple eyes tell us, no matter what limits life asks us to accept, friends, we can always ask "WHAT ELSE IS THERE?"

And the answer will always be...plenty. Yes, plenty.

You can count on it.

Amen.

Scott Tayler, Parish Co-Minister
January 17, 2010