First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
January 6, 2002

Habits of the Heart

Prelude

Words of Gathering:

We arrive out of many singular rooms, traveling over the branching streets

We come to be assured that our brothers and sisters surround us,

to restore their images upon our eyes.

We come together to remind one another to rest for a moment on the forming edge of our lives,

To resist the headlong tumble into the next moment,

Until we claim for ourselves awareness and gratitude,

Taking the time to look into one another's faces,

and see there communion; the reflection of our own wondering eyes.

We enlarge our voices in common speaking and singing.

We try again that solitude found in the midst of those who, with us, seek their hidden reckonings.

We take courage from one another in the work of building a better world.

Our eyes reclaim the remembered faces; their voices stir the surrounding air.

The warmth of their hands assures us, and the gladness of our spoken names.

This is the reason of cities, of homes, of assemblies in the houses of fellowship,

of the covenant community of memory and promise.

It is good to be with one another; it is good to know that we are not alone.

May the light we kindle here today inspire us to use our powers

To heal, and not to harm,

To help, and not to hinder,

To bless, and not to curse,

To serve with faithfulness the spirit of freedom.

Song: Think Truly

Greetings and Announcements

Children's Focus -- Matthew

Children's Song

Reading: The Journey Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Habits of the Heart I: Clearing the Ground

It is true, of course, that new years day can be any day of the year; any day when you awake to what always seems like the startling revelation that this -- whatever day it is -- is in fact the first day of the rest of your life. That realization also makes it the first day of the new year, the day when the intention came, when the new era started. Mary Oliver speaks of such a new year experience in her poem -- "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began..." We can always begin, we can begin at any time, to do what we finally know we have to do. And yet there is something about that clean new calendar, that first January page, that is challenging and troubling in its possibilities.

We are uncomfortable with complete open-endedness; the human mind needs some amount of structure in time and in space in order to function, and we will create that structure if it isn't there otherwise. I suspect that the tradition of new years resolutions has something to do with that discomfort; it is intimidating to see that whole year stretched before us in its newness and infinite possibility, and so we seek to make it manageable by resolving to make use of the time, to accomplish some of those distant goals that haunt us, and above all, to remedy those faults that seem to hold us back from the success and peace of mind that we ought to have achieved by now.

Such resolutions have a famously short half-life. By March, most of them are forgotten, or if they are remembered, it is with a sense of frustration and shame. The diet, the savings plan, the half-cleaned closets, the health club membership, all testify to our abandoned attempts to coerce ourselves into carrying out our own good intentions. This, I think, is no recipe for better lives; it only increases our sense of exasperation with ourselves, and makes it easier to give up at anything, since we have such practice in doing exactly that. I also think that these kinds of resolutions are a spiritual mistake, for underlying them is a rejection of the selves we already are, a kind of inner comparison to the older sibling of our more perfect self image, to whom we can never measure up. Just as a child will quite properly and healthily resent comparison to an actual sibling, there is a part of our psychic health that will unconsciously resent, and sabotage, those resolutions aimed at 'fixing' the 'imperfections' that we would consciously like to eliminate from our personalities.

And yet I think that awareness of the beginning year, with its offer of a fresh start in the patterns of our living, is a good thing, and potentially powerful, if we come at it wisely. It can help us, if we let it, to give form to the yearning for good and the impulse toward health that are always within us. But I submit that this will work better if we start by remembering that our growth as human beings, and the unfolding of our personalities, is an organic process. Like the unfolding of a flower, it has its own pace, and like the forming of a carrot, much of it takes place underground and out of sight, and must be trusted for a long time, before the harvest is seen. In order to make our new years resolutions fruitful, we must give up the notion of imposing a kind of mechanical perfectionism on ourselves, and instead ask how we might cultivate our lives, and support the process of personal growth which is always a part of us, just as much as our breathing.

This more gentle and cooperative approach to our new years resolutions has two dimensions, which is why the service this morning is divided into two parts. In a few moments, I will explore some of the qualities that we might choose to nurture in ourselves, but first it is important to consider how we may begin the year by letting go. This letting go is different from the 'giving up' by which you attempt to deprive yourself of something that part of you actually wants, like cigarettes or gambling or sugar. The perfectionist approach to self-improvement for the new year is really just a power grab by the defensive super ego that wants to control everything; it is far removed from the organic unfolding of our better, stronger and more authentic selves. Letting go is not about self-restraint and will power; it is about making space in our lives for what we love by releasing that which no longer serves us, and is getting in our way.

There are several categories of things that we might wish to release from our lives, that might be standing in the way of our happiness, our relationships, the work we are meant to do. Have any of you seen the desk top paper weight engraved with the challenge, "What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" This is a new years message that invites us to release fear, especially fear of failure, from our hearts. All fear has its origin in the attempt to protect us from harm, and that is a good thing. Yet how often do we carry forward, for years upon years, anxieties that no longer make sense for our lives, and fears that, rather than keeping us safe, keep us isolated and mediocre, with much of our potential unexplored? Such fears take up the space that might be occupied by learning and achievement and zestful living; they should not be judged harshly, for they had a job to do, but if that job is done, and the fear no longer helpful, then they should be gently released, so that we may cultivate more satisfying ways of being.

Regrets, too, we might want to let go of; the regret of failure in the past, when your plans came to nothing, or your hopes were disappointed. Especially worth releasing may be the regret that flavors relationships with resentment and grudges. Several recent mental health studies have found that holding onto anger is a kind of psychic poison; the ability to forgive has its roots in the recognition that the energy people spend to hold onto their grudges against others is energy they do not have to engage in the kind of growth that makes for a truly meaningful and happy life. When we let go of our attempt to judge and punish others for whatever they did to us, we open the door to our own maturity and the possibility of joy.

Fear, regret, and resentment are ways of being that we usually recognize as painful, and desire, when we think about it, to let go. But even good things, things that once sustained and satisfied us, can become roadblocks, and may need to be released from our lives. To grow is to change, and this cannot be done without leaving some aspects of ourselves in the past, as we move toward the future. I remember very clearly the realization that if I wanted to continue the process of maturing into an adult and a professional, I was going to have to let go of my identity as an excellent student. There was nothing wrong with that identity; I was good at it, and it had served me well -- many of its gifts are with me still. But I needed to lay it by in order to move into the next chapters and the new, more challenging and more gratifying roles of my life. Knowing this, I was able to release that concept of myself with affection and gratitude. Not all letting go is of bad things; it is clearing the ground of what is no longer needed or wanted or helpful, so that new and larger possibilities may find room to take root.

What of you? What old pain, what toxic thoughts, what habits of the heart that no longer work might you choose this moment to release? What permission might you give yourself; what ground might you clear in your inner life? I invite you to reflect on this opportunity for a few moments now. Look for the small sheet of paper attached to the back of your song sheet, and if you wish, write on it a word or a phrase indicating what it is that you choose to let go of. No one will read them; you can say as much or as little as you wish, be as explicit or as cryptic as you choose. We will collect them at the offering, and then make them disappear altogether, in a symbolic gesture of freeing our lives from these impediments of the spirit.

========

Reflection

Offertory

Now, as this morning's offering in support of the work of this society is received, I would invite you to fold your words of release, and drop the paper into the plate that will be passed along with the usual offering basket. When the collection is completed, would the ushers bring those papers forward to the platform, please?

Ritual of Release:

We know that the world in which we live is a place of wonders, more vast and beautiful than we can hold in our minds and hearts. We know, too, that there is no special pleading that can excuse us from the consequences of our actions. What we have betrayed or neglected must be redeemed through effort and sacrifice; what we hope to see, we must bring to pass with our own labor and creative thought. Reason, cooperation, and confidence are our best allies in the struggle toward better lives and a better world. Yet we have also found that when the past lies heavy on our hearts, in grief or anger, in regret or nostalgia, we are not free to move into the future we might yet create together. Today, on this threshold of the year, we seek not absolution from the gods, but newness of mind and heart, as we release to this cleansing flame the hurts and burdens and outgrown habits that have encumbered our lives. By this act of letting go, we would prepare ourselves for a future of larger freedom, deeper conviction, and more authentic meaning and joy. So may our hearts be left untroubled, and open to new life.

Interlude

Reading: Modern Declaration Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having wavered

In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these loves;

Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of these loves;

Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink

Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of their alert enemies, declare

That I shall love you always.

No matter what party is in power;

No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied interests wins the war;

Shall love you always.

=======

Habits of the Heart II: Planting the Seeds

It is what we long for, is it not? That kind of clarity of heart, that intensity of intention -- not least of all, that ability to say that you have never been untrue to your deepest loves, and who among us can genuinely say that? The knowledge, and the regret, is what stymies us; it does me, anyway, for I know that I have wavered in these affections. Befuddled by drink, or anxious to land a job, or to appear sophisticated in front of the cynics or the self-righteous or the rich, in little, subtle ways, so many times we let the disparagement of what we believe and what we love go unchallenged, and that is why new year's day often comes more as an atonement than an opportunity.

And yet, and yet... when we have cleared the ground of what we need to let go, of the regrets and resentments, the dead ends and ignorant convictions, the clutter of old identities and guilt, those weeds of the spirit -- then, amazingly, something opens up; there is a spaciousness in our lives and our hearts; integrity becomes possible again. And with integrity comes the chance for so many of the precious gifts of life; creativity, leadership, growth, intimacy. Does anyone here remember the didactic little childhood poem that included the line, "...for where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow..."? I have forgotten the rest of the verse, but that line stays with me, and its opposite is equally true. Where we cherish the thistles of our lives, the hurts and the humiliations, our own failures of nerve and betrayals of conviction, there the soil is choked and depleted, and nothing joyous or fruitful can ever take root.

The question posed by the blank pages of a new calendar is not What do we need to fix about ourselves? as if we stood in the garden of our spirits, distractedly waving a pair of pruning shears at all our bad habits and imperfections. Indeed, we all know what happens when you cut back a weed at the leaves and the stems, right? Most often it grows again, stronger and more deeply rooted than ever. Instead of that urgent and exhausting and in the long run unproductive cosmetic improvement, I think we need to ask a deeper question, the question What might I open myself to, in the year that lies ahead? What do I consciously choose to make room for in my life; how can I tend my own being so that it may blossom more fully and satisfyingly? What seeds do I choose to plant?

Of course, this does not mean that we can make any arbitrary wish and have it magically granted -- no good humanist thinks that new years day excuses us from the constraints of logic or the laws of consequences. Nevertheless, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that what we set before ourselves in the realm of imagination, and allow to occupy our attention and become the focus of our yearning, is likely to show up in our lives in one way or another. There was a program for homeless young mothers here in the twin cities a few years ago, designed to help these women find jobs and apartments, and move into mainstream society. Each of them was invited, as part of the group process, to create a posterboard collage of images, drawn or painted or cut from magazines, illustrating some of the things that she wanted for herself and her children. Their wishes were surprisingly humble; a vase of flowers on a table, a closet, a swing set. Yet they treasured those pictures; even in the chaos of homelessness, when everything else was lost or left behind, they clung to their collages. For many of them, it represented the first time that anyone had asked them to identify what they wanted; it was a tangible symbol of their dreams. We are no different; if we will give a name or an image to what we seek, we are far more likely to find it. There is nothing magical about the power of imaginative suggestion to work in the subsoil of consciousness, nourishing the roots of our growth in spirit, sensitizing us to opportunities that might have been there all along, or might have come and gone unseen, but that seem to spring up all around us once we know and affirm what we want.

I find that this principle is true of material things -- I am more likely to see a dress or a bookcase I like if I have said that I want one; you are more likely to notice a certain model car on the road if you are hoping to buy one -- but its greater power operates at the level of personal qualities and experiences. Always it is easier to criticize and to find fault, than it is to envision, carefully and thoughtfully, a better way. And it is far easier to pick out our own flaws and inadequacies, and try to reject them and distance ourselves from them, than it is to identify the genuine satisfactions that we might add to our lives. No matter what stage of life you are in, there is something that might yet unfold within you, some blossoming that awaits the sunshine of your intention. In her popular book The Artist's Way, author Julia Cameron describes some of the methods by which we can invite more of our creativity to flourish in our day to day lives. She offers a helpful model, for many of our best gifts, like creativity, cannot be forced. Few of us can sit down and say, "I am going to be creative right now, whether I want to or not." Similarly, it is hard to practice intimacy, or leadership, or spiritual depth, as an act of immediate will. Anyone who has ever said to a child, or to a partner or a friend, "We're going to have an intimate discussion, right now!" can probably testify as to the general effectiveness of this approach.

Rather, as Cameron demonstrates, we can only cultivate our own delight in life with the same careful gentleness and subtlety that we would use in pondering how to make someone else truly happy. In the end, our new years resolutions ought to be the last, best gifts of the season; the gifts we give ourselves. Not some leftover items from the after Christmas sales, but plans that we construct for inviting more of the joy and meaning of life into our own days. In part, it is a question of discernment; what possibilities stand pleading at the edges of your routines, awaiting only the nod of your permission, the empty space cleared of some ancient habit of thought, to bring wonder and newness to your world? In part it is a challenge of listening to the desires of our hearts, of hearing beyond our cynicism and our fear and the demands of those around us and the familiar ambitions of what we thought we wanted ten years ago, the true yearnings that now might point the way to gladness.

These are not always easy or intuitive practices; a commercial culture teaches us to seek our satisfaction in what is trivial, and the needs of others press us for priority. The opportunity of the new year is to stop for a time -- for an hour, for a day -- to set aside the temptations to buy your way to happiness, or to let someone else define it for you, to examine the habits of your heart, to look with clarity and tenderness at the quality of your life, and to ask what you might release, and what you could make room for. Much that will happen in our lives in the course of the coming year will not be within our control; jobs will come and go, relationships will thrive and wither, pipes will burst and planes will be delayed and biopsies will come back with bad news, lilacs will bloom and the new beaujolais will arrive and children will grow; the whole show will go on as it always does. But what will unfold within us in response to the turning of the world is to some extent a function of what seeds we have planted in the garden of the spirit, whether we have cultivated the roses or the thistles in our hearts.

And so I offer you this second challenge, and these few precious quiet moments of reflection, as we move into the cycle of a new year. In the psychic space that you have cleared, or might yet clear, by releasing that which stymies the fullness of your life, what would you now choose to open to? What possibilities of greater being call to you; what joy might flourish in the sunshine of your permission and attention; what neglected aspect of your personality might blossom this year? Numerous possibilities may present themselves, once you start to think this way; I invite you to select one of them, and after a brief time of quiet, I will show you how to hold it in awareness over the course of the year.

Reflection

Ritual of Intention:

Now, if you wish to carry this intention with you through the coming year, you can begin by selecting one word to serve as a cue for the thought of what you want to make room for in your life. It will work best if this is a positive word, one that attracts or excites you, and makes you feel good. Perhaps a word like Closeness, if you want to make room for nourishing relationships, or Music, if your intention is to explore the creative dimension of sound -- whatever will activate your recollection of seed you want to plant for this year. The next step is to select some simple bodily gesture or posture; something you wouldn't do by unthinking habit, but that isn't going to be extremely noticeable to others. Some people use folding their hands, or just steepling their fingers together. Some find that touching an earlobe, like Carol Burnett used to do, works. Some people feel comfortable and centered by folding their arms across their chest. Any simple, unobtrusive movement will work. You can try something here, and if you later come up with a gesture that works better for you, switch to that, but the process will be more powerful if you find one movement and stick to it over time. Make that motion, and say in your mind, "I choose to make room in my life this year for X, whatever it is."

Once you do that, you have already begun the process of making yourself subliminally aware of opportunities for that experience or quality to enter your life. You can reinforce your intention and your openness whenever you wish, by making that gesture, and repeating the word you have chosen. This reminds you, on a bodily and subconscious as well as conscious dimension, of that choice. Some people find it helpful to do such a reminder as they fall asleep, or first thing on waking in the morning. Then it is important to observe what comes up in your life, and how you actually respond to it. If you discover that you feel anxious or fearful, say when you actually get time to sit down at the piano, and so you wander away to eat something or read the paper instead, the idea is not to pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck, and make yourself go back to the piano. The point is to notice; "Isn't that interesting? I am asking for musical creativity in my life, but really sitting in front of the piano makes me uncomfortable." Once you have that paradox in your conscious awareness, you may be able to respond to it in various ways. Maybe what you really want is a different instrument, like drums. Maybe you really want to listen to more music, rather than play it yourself. Maybe you need the resource of a helpful instructor. Stay open to the possibilities; your heart will guide you, once you are paying attention.

Chances are, these paths will take us in directions we did not know we were headed, to unexpected places; and that's okay. The object is to unfold the organic truth of your own unique and precious life, not to achieve a coercive perfection. We have for too long taken the wrong connotation for new years resolutions; it is not the 'resolve' of unyielding determination to impose our will that we need, but the 'resolution' of a musical chord, in which the natural progression of a tune flows into a harmony that satisfies and fulfills. Of such resolutions may a life of graceful beauty, fruitful service, and authentic happiness be composed.

Let us join together in our closing hymn, #128

Benediction:

May our wisdom help us to be always hopeful gardeners of the spirit,

Who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth,

As without light nothing flowers.

And may the year now beginning be one of deepening wisdom, joy and generosity for us all.