February 2002 Sermons

• 2/3 Sermon -- 
• 2/10 Sermon -- Put a Little Love in Your Heart
• 2/17 Sermon -- Good Marriages/Partnerships/Relationships: How to Have One
• 2/24 Sermon -- Are We Healing: September 11^th and Its Aftermath

February 10, 2002 Sermon

February 17, 2002 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 17, 2002

Good Marriages/Partnerships/Relationships: How to Have One

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a meadow.

The frog hopped into the princess’ lap and said, "Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil troll cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am, and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in yonder castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on a repast of lightly sautéed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled to herself and murmured, "I don’t think so."

Once upon another time, in another equally far away land, there sat a handsome, confident prince who happened to be sitting at the edge of pond contemplating on spiritual things, including the need to keep the pond free of algae, when to his surprise a frog hopped to his side and spoke to him saying: "Great and wise prince, I was cursed by an evil troll and turned into the frog you see before you. Yet, all I need is to receive just one kiss from you and I will become a beautiful princess, rich beyond words. Then we will live happily. I will bestow upon you great lands and wealth, I will give you all my time and attention, indeed you will be my life, and darling one, you will live with me forever as my faithful and adoring companion.

The prince picked up the frog and tossed it back in the water, then got up and walked away. The frog croaked in surprise, "What is wrong, did I not offer you everything?" To which the prince replied, "You offered me everything, but my self, which in reality is nothing at all."

I don’t know who said it first about marriage, but they hit the nail on the head in saying that, all marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.

All the ministers I know will tell you right up front that among all the couples that come before them for weddings and unions, they cannot tell who will make a go of it and who will not. I am in complete agreement. I also know from my own experience, and I would be surprised if this is not your experience as well, that I have seen couples that seemed polar opposite, at least on the surface of things, who appear to have good marriages. The fact is, no one can tell from what is presented to the world what lies hidden beneath in any one person, or in any particular relationship. I always hope that the couples I marry, or perform union ceremonies for, will have long and happy unions, but it would be no surprise to hear that half of them are now divorced or contemplating it.

Each year I perform several weddings (and the occasional union ceremony) for couples who are not part of this or any congregation. I meet with these couples and talk about what they want for their ceremony, how formal or informal, how many guests, location, go over possible elements they might include, give them some sample ceremonies, and so forth. And then I proceed to give my version of pre-marital counseling, and which point I see all kinds of different behaviors than I saw in the previous twenty to thirty minutes. People get stiff, start fidgeting, rush to explain how they have already talked about everything (at which point I extend the session), or listen with intensity, keep their heads down, chew their bottom lips, reach over to touch the other person, or pull away. It would be a psychologist’s dream study to compare the visual footage of these sessions with what might be learned in more in-depth counseling later on.

I start by saying that everyone hears and knows that good marriages come from good communication, the problem is few know what good communication really is. Most people think it is talking, but it is equally about listening, and we are often not very good at either talking or listening.

I like this story for example: Following an especially angry argument, Uncle Ted and his wife went to bed not speaking to each other. Needing to arise early the following morning, Uncle Ted left a note on his wife's bedside table that said "Wake me at six."

An exasperated Uncle Ted awoke at ten the following morning and rolled stiffly out of bed to see a note on his bedside table: "It's six! Get out of bed!"

As a minister, I see both the front and back of all kinds of human experience. The front in the wedding preparation and premarital counseling, and the back when things get troubled in marriages, partnerships, relationships of all manner, from those we have with our children to those we have with friends, bosses, co-workers. This is the important work of pastoral care that I find so important to my calling. I know that sometimes I help people, but I am equally sure that many times I do not. So I do not stand here to claim that I have any perfect knowledge of what will work and what will not when it comes to our human relationships. If I could do that, I would make a fortune in the John Gray-type seminar business. The truth is, is that ultimately what makes relationships work is far too dependent on the vagaries of human beings to ever be able to have a one-size-fits-all formula for success.

Having said that, I do believe that there are some things that are fairly reliable predictors of success or failure in relationships, but it still requires that people be willing to examine their own motivations and their own willingness to give of themselves. And, while I am not fond of the idea that good marriages are "hard work," I do believe that good relationships require attention and do not happen without the occasional adjustment.

On my bookshelves in my office at home (I anticipate joyfully that they will reside in my office at the new building this time next year!), are books that talk about relationships from every angle, especially the triangle. I have books by authors who say no one ever need divorce, and books that talk about how to have a "good" divorce; books that talk about the need to examine our past relationships if we are to develop good future relationships. Books by sincere authors who have some very valid points to make on this tricky business of putting two different people together in one relationship to live together "’til death do us part." If you just think about that concept, it seems mind-boggling that many couples not only do that, but then have the added complications of children, aging parents, friends.

In the days gone by most marriages were essentially contracts, and the parents of the couple did not overly concern themselves with whether the couple would be happy together. Later, couples came to be the primary decision makers, but a bad marriage did not result in divorce, except in very rare cases. Divorce was long, ugly—especially for women—and likely to brand the couple for life.

Some people harken back to those days as something better than what we have now. You still hear preachers from the religious fundamentalist sects saying that women should be submissive to their husbands and just be nicer, even if the husband is not such a nice guy and punches the wife and kids a bit.

I well recall the first young woman I met with when I was an intern at the Unitarian Church in West Newton, MA, who was wanting to join our congregation and just spilled out years of hurt and fear resulting from an abusive father who regularly beat his wife and children, enough that the wife would wind up hospitalized from time to time. The girl’s mother would go to the priest who would tell her to be more like Christ, to remember she owed it to her children, and that suffering was the lot of some, and other such nonsense. Her mother was like a mouse, was the girl’s description, trying to be quiet and not raise the ire of her husband. I sat there listening, imagining many of the mouse-like women of my own growing up years, when this young woman told me that her mother was a well-educated woman, a master’s degree graduate of Smith College, and of some means. I was shocked, and just beginning to learn the reality that women and men of all walks of life can be victims of abusive relationships.

I remember just as well the first man who came to talk to me about his abusive wife, her bouts of rage, the throwing of skillets and lamps, and his equally confused upbringing that made him feel that he should be able to be the "man of the house," take care of his family, do the right thing.

We all operate out of varied and challenging personal histories and personal expectations. So the first thing, I believe, that we must come to terms with is to know who we are, where we come from (in terms of family behaviors, etc), what we really expect of ourselves and other people. This was Socrates dictum that remains for me the greatest of all spiritual teachings: "Know thyself."

What I have come to in my understanding of what makes a good marriage, relationship, partnership, is a product of a lot of reading and a lot of living; so, I do think that I can offer some sound thoughts that you can then place in your own well of ideas and beliefs we call wisdom.

I mentioned earlier the term triangle. We learned in school that a triangle is the strongest shape, indeed Buckminster Fuller (a Unitarian, I will add) developed the geodesic dome, a construction that is all made of triangles to demonstrate this principle. My more homely notion of that triangularity is the milk stool. A squat three-legged stool used in days gone by to sit next to the cow and milk, with the bucket between your legs. When I was growing up in rural Idaho, I had relatives who were in the dairy business, and many of my relatives in the fruit growing business, as well as my grandparents, always had a milk cow. My grandmother always had her own favorite milk cow, a jersey, that she like to milk herself, and did this until she died. I think she found it soothing in some way, a kind of meditation to sit with her head against the warm side of the cow. She would take me with her sometimes and let me milk a little into my own child-sized bucket that she made for me from a 1# Folgers’ coffee can to which we added a bale. She would always caution me to walk wide around the back of the cow and to sit so that you could protect the bucket when the cow would occasionally kick her foot forward. This was not malicious on the cow’s part, more a matter of shifting around while munching feed with her head locked in the stanchion.

It was this image of the three-legged stool from my background that immediately came to mind when my son, then aged fifteen, asked me, "How do you know when you are marrying the right person?" This question came upon learning that his father and I were divorcing after a very long marriage. I realized that I really had an understanding of what made for a good marriage after nearly thirty years of adult living that I had not had when his father and I got married. This is what I shared with him, and what I continue to share with couples I counsel before weddings.

To have a good relationship you need three basic things and when marriages fail, it is usually because one or more of these was neglected or non-existent.

The first leg of the stool is the physical. We need to like being with the other person, like to touch them, hug and kiss them, be in their presence. We are kinetic beings, touch is important. This physical realm is usually what brings us together in the first place. We like the look of the other person, we want to be with them, we are drawn to them, want to be physically closer with them than with others. This is usually the easy part, initially. We have a strong biological urge toward connection. Even when consummation of these feelings is not possible for some reason, we still will want to connect in some way. They remain important all throughout marriage.

The second leg of the stool is the realm of values, ethics, morals. We need to look at the world through a similar moral lens. This is not a good-bad issue, so much as it is a similarity issue. If I find my partner is a crook and I am an ethical, law-abiding person, then there is conflict. If I am a crook too, then we share a common ethical, or lack of ethics, bond. Another example is that one person may have a strong work-ethic, and the other a more laissez-faire approach to life. These issues of values and ethics are most obvious, become most apparent, when a couple have children, or one wants to have a religious life, and the other does not. What we want, or do not care about, will come sharply into focus when we have children or feel the need for religion. So it is important to think about, discuss with our partners, what we value. Divorce attorneys, and many surveys, say that money, issues related to finances, is the main cause of divorce. This is true, and it is certainly part of the values realm.

The third leg of our sturdy milk stool is interests. If we plan to live a life-time with one person, it would be a good idea to like and want to do things with that person. A young cousin of my husband’s had dated a young man all through college, and a couple of years ago, following their graduation got married in June. Very traditional. They had the church wedding, invited friends and family from the four corners, had a huge and lavish reception at the country club. After a marvelous honeymoon on some tropical island, they moved into their new home, and just about six months to the day, separated and got divorced shortly thereafter. All the family was agog, and questioning. What was reported was that she was devastated to find that her new husband did not want to spend time with her, and went out with his friends every night and on weekends as if he were still single. I do not pretend to believe this is the whole story, but I do know that it is an all too common story, that one or the other partner wants to live his or her life as if there was no other person to consider.

To grow together, couples have to spend time together, have some common interests—not everything mind you. It is important for each person to cultivate his/her own interests as well, but there must be common threads that continually pull a couple together, or they will soon grow apart. This is often the innocuous part of a marriage, that couples progressively do less and less with each other, give less and less time to one another (especially when children come along), and find less and less to talk about.

There needs to be all three legs of that stool if the person sitting on it is to be secure from the occasional kicks of that old cow. You can balance on two, but you are far less stable, and you can even stay upright on just one leg, but chances are that one day the cow will throw out her leg, and over you go, milk bucket and all. The ups and downs of life are like the kicks of the cow, and it will depend on how sturdy we are in our relationships whether or not we can withstand the blows.

What I witness in relationship troubles of my own and others is that often we have neglected one or another of these important areas of human interaction within marriages or other relationships. Remove the sexual elements, and there is little difference in the common elements for all other relationships.

With few exceptions, most of us want to have happy relationships. We want fulfilling marriages, growth in our unions that keeps on making us feel happy and glad to have the other person in our lives. When I was young, I used to believe in the adage that good marriage is a 50-50 proposition. I do not believe that now. Someone else wrote that a really good marriage is 75-75, that is each person sometimes gives more than fifty percent to the relationship, but that does not mean you only get 25% in return, it means that you sometimes have to make extra effort, and sometimes your partner must do the same. All without resentment for expending that extra effort.

As I look back on my own life, my relationships with my family of origin, my first marriage, my children, I now can see where the problems have arisen in one or the other of these realms. I also know that sometimes we cannot fix the problems, and sometimes we have to move away from them. My grandmother had a cow that was bad tempered once; she sold her to my uncle who owned a dairy.

If we are to have the fullest lives we can; that is, lives that are spiritually rich and rewarding, we will need to become surveyors of our personal relationships. Cultivators of human interaction, interested in other people if we want them to be interested in us. You reap what you sow is all too true a maxim.

Unlike the fairy tales with which I began this sermon, life is not a fairy tale, but a reality tale that each of us helps create. What part we play has everything to do with whether or not we get a happy ending.

February 24, 2002 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 24, 2002

Are We Healing: September 11^th and Its Aftermath

We are fortunate today to have sharing the pulpit, Dr. Wes Bowman. We are further fortunate that Wes and his wife Dawn Granquist-Bowman are members of this congregation.

Wes is a Counseling Psychologist and co-director of Delaware Family Center in Wilmington. He is also the Employee Assistance Consultant to W. L. Gore and Associates, Inc. Wes grew up in Louisiana in a "very" Southern Baptist family. He realized he was a Unitarian in the late 80’s and joined 1^st Unitarian Church in North Wilmington and was rewarded for that by discovering, courting and marrying Dawn Granquist-Bowman. He has been further blessed with daughters, Delia, age 8 and Olivia, age 4.

Wes has worked with business and industry in a training, consulting and counseling role for the past 15 years, including intervening in traumatic and tragic situations toward the prevention of symptoms of Critical Incident Stress and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders. Since September 11^th, Wes has worked with a number of individuals, families, work groups and professional organizations to facilitate healing

After September 11^th, we as a nation felt a profound array of emotions, and no two people felt precisely the same emotional impact from this shocking act of terrorism. It is never more clearly obvious that we are indeed unique individuals than when catastrophe happens in our lives, even when that catastrophe is a shared experience with the whole nation.

We are often reminded by the media, ministers, and psychologists that we have had a common, shared experience, which is true. Still, we each have a particular reaction that depends a great deal on that whole realm of previous experiences that make up each of our lives, and clearly too on our proximity to the disaster that was Sept.11th, and certainly our relationship to the people who were injured or died.

Today we are some distance from that tragedy, a bit over five months, which both seems a short while, and a life-time away. It is clear that the country is moving on, even though we are still engaged in the military war on terrorism, and life is resuming its sense of normalcy. This is both a necessary part of living, to move onward, to continue the daily stuff of our existence, but it is equally problematic, for if we are rushing in our efforts to "put it all behind us," we may succeed in only covering up our fear and finding that life is less than whole.

Wholeness is the goal of healing, not to be as we were before, for likely, as in the childhood scrapes, we will have life-long scars; my knees today show the evidence of bloody childhood mishaps of the sidewalk roller skating I remember fondly, in spite of the injuries I obviously suffered. Wholeness is to be aware of one’s being, including the damage that will be inflicted by the course of life. It is when we are hiding something from ourselves, inevitably fear, that we are likely to feel a disconnect between the self and the world around us.

Albert Einstein, that premier scientist, also named Man of the 20^th Century by Time magazine, was profoundly aware of the need for wholeness. In 1972, he wrote in response to a rabbi who had shared with the scientist that the rabbi’s nineteen-year-old daughter had been unable to be consoled (to "get over" as we often put it) the death of her younger sister. Einstein responded:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.

Our healing, then, is this work of finding freedom: "our task must be to free ourselves." We are not free when we are fettered by fears. We are not free when we do not feel we can turn to others for comfort. We are not free when we are unable to talk about our fears, or our hopes.

We know if we are healing, in part, by our willingness to talk about tragedy, and our willingness to hear others talk about it. As Wes put it so well, we heal, even as we suffer, by and through connecting with one another. And, we keep on being willing to share and to listen; this is love as much as will. The will is a powerful spiritual tool, both for bad and good; but, healing is an on-going effort, a process, for we are not only healing from the tragedy of September 11^th, but from all the injuries to body and soul.

I like this story to illustrate our misunderstanding of the will:

"How do you account for your longevity?" asked a reporter on the day Harvey turned 110.

"You might call me a health nut," Harvey replied. "I never smoked. I never drank. I was always in bed and sound asleep by ten o'clock. And I've always walked three miles a day, rain or shine."

"But," said the reporter, "I had an uncle who followed that exact routine and died when he was sixty-two. How come it didn't work for him?"

"All I can say," replied Harvey, "is that he didn't keep it up long enough."

 

Some of us do not just "get over" our sorrow, grief, anger, and fear. We need more time to heal, some of us use different Band-aids to accelerate our healing, others no Band-Aids or have fewer resources to draw upon.

What matters is that you know for yourself what you feel and if you are lacking the wholeness we recognize as a part of good mental health, and good spiritual health. My hope is that we will never be ashamed or afraid to keep seeking that wholeness, for without it we will have lives that are, as Einstein noted so well, that are more like prisons. To look to others for help, be it psychologists, ministers, friends, or family, is a sign of strength, a sign we are actively seeking that wholeness. To be healing is to be seeking; may it be that we each, throughout our lives, see ourselves in the role of seeker looking for healing and for wholeness.

Prayer-Meditation by Wes Bowman

The Towers Behind Bagel

Until they were gone, I never really noticed them

Now gone, I see them everywhere.

Until my mother died, I rested peacefully in the knowledge that she was somewhere in the world

Until my body forsook me, I gave no thought to the running and jumping it gifted me

Did you know the twin towers are just behind the word Bagel on a sign in Lantana Square?

Did you know the twin towers are on the horizon framed in an arch in the movie When Harry Met Sally?

(And, of course, in the intro scenes for The Sopranos!)

Is it true that when a bone heals properly from a break, it is stronger at that spot than before

Maybe if I can see what is real and awesome and of utmost importance now, before it is gone, I, too, will become stronger…stronger than before.

Now, for those who would choose, please join me in prayer:

Spirit of all life,

Bless us completely,

Live through us,

Keep us from evil,

Let us do no harm,

May we seek healing and purpose daily

For ourselves and all others.

Amen

ARE WE HEALING? by Wes Bowman

From the moment we take a breath, we know how to heal. Infants and toddlers don’t need a lesson in healing. When the hurt, the healing process just kicks in.

Last Spring, Olivia, our 4 year old ,fell and skinned her knee when I was outside playing with her. As some of you well know, she is not shy about expressing her emotions so she shook the world (or at least the development) with her reaction! I sat with her and held her with the crescendo and decrescendo of her crying and anger (it was all my fault, of course!). Soon, she was up and running again. She appeared to be finished with the emotions of this brief, powerful trauma.

Then, some interesting things happened:

As soon as she saw her mom, she began crying again and ran to her for hugs and comfort, showing and telling the details of her trauma.

Olivia needed to tell her big sister, Delia and grandparents and aunt the story of what happened. She needed the people she loved to listen. Over time and from telling to telling, her mood shifted from sad, hurt and angry……to excited and urgent……to calm and neutral.

Soon after the accident, she began to create fantasy and play situations involving cuts and injuries. Her dolls and beanies and imaginary friends all seemed to hurt themselves and need hugs and kisses and medicine and band aides. She went back and forth from being the patient to being the doctor to being the mommy. This went on for a couple of days.

By the third day, she seemed done although she did reference the event when we passed the scene or when she experienced something that reminded her of her trauma. By the next month, it was hardly even a memory. She knows how to heal!

Some years ago a man who had spent all of his life living on a farm in the country came to see me at my practice . His employer sent him to Manhattan for training where he was promptly mugged. Though he was not physically injured, he had…in the months to follow…experienced nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, sleeplessness, startle reflex to any unexpected noise or movement, depression, loss of motivation, irritability, embarrassment and shame, and social isolation.

He had kept the mugging experience a secret from his wife, friends and coworkers, only telling his son. He was ashamed of letting it happen and of his emotional reaction. I had him tell the story (including Zen-like details) of every sensation and thought and feeling from time just before the mugging to the moment he finally felt safe. His homework assignment was then to write it and to pick a few safe people to tell. Toward the end of the session, he stated, "I really feel a lot better, almost normal but I don’t know why." So I explained by telling him this story:

About 13 years ago I was sitting on the wall of a stone monument in the town square in Carnafan, Wales, waiting for my parents to return from shopping. I heard screeching tires and looked up to see a little boy about 4 lying on the street in front of a car. He stood up quickly and ran to his mommy, evidently unharmed but terrified. She swept him up and held him for about 5 minutes while he shook and cried (and she shook and cried). She then had him tell her the details. He shook and cried some more. She then had him tell the story to a friend and then again to a shopkeeper and finally to a police officer. Each telling came easier and he was relaxed and animated as he told the policeman what had happened. She then put him down and they walked off hand-in-hand.

As my client left my office, he said, "I never knew how important it is to tell someone this kind of thing."

We are all reminded how important it is to "tell our stories" of the past few months. Not since Pearl Harbor and WWII have the American people and people throughout the world simultaneously been traumatized so severely as Sept. 11. For over a century, people have dreamed of coming to the U.S. to escape poverty, war, ignorance, terrorism and other oppressions. That illusion is gone! There is no escaping!

Thus, everyone is changed. We will now remember all events from this period of history in terms of before 9/11 or after 9/11.

So, ARE WE HEALING? Are you healing? How do we heal from this global trauma? Based on what I‘m seeing in my practice and my life, I would say we heal from it the same way we heal from everything else:

We acknowledge the pain;

We find the love and attention of those around us and we allow ourselves to be held and comforted while we cry and yell and shake and laugh and cry some more;

We face the existential crisis--let the experience remind us of what we prefer to ignore because it is so frightening: that life is fleeting and fragile and illusive, and that the only things we are guaranteed is this very moment, our memories and our feelings. Nothing else is guaranteed! (This brings up feelings… so we begin again!)

Then we continue to work through the memories and the feelings, consciously and unconsciously, seeking the sense of peace and connectedness only found in the process of healing.

Finally, with some clarity and purpose, we can seek and regain a sense of what we can say and do for others and for the world, leaving us powerful in the only ways that we can truly be powerful--healing, connecting with others, and then looking around and doing something each day to offer healing to others.

It is a daily phenomenon for every living thing to experience pain and healing. When the pain is overwhelming to our nervous system, things go wrong. Our "fight or flight" response "short circuits" and these PTSD symptoms arise. Because today’s form of terrorism is really just beginning in the U.S., the people I know and work with are healing but we won’t really find a point in time when we are healed. We read about terrorist attacks in the paper daily, we see that 20,000 security personnel guarded the athletes and spectators at the Winter Olympics. We hear reports from government officials that "they will hurt us again."

It’s as though we are being harmed and healing and being harmed and healing--on and on……But isn’t that life? The difference in this cycle since 9/11 may be that we are being forced to be harmed and to heal together more than ever before. Usually, if we are sufficiently blessed, we have one or two people to suffer and heal with. Since 9/11, it can be a stranger in an elevator or in the grocery line……we have a world of others to join with in the process of surviving, healing and finding purpose and meaning. And isn’t that a comfort? It’s just possible that the global economy, the internet, and in some ways terrorism will leave us no choice but to come together in peace and connectedness or simply self-destruct.

A friend of mine admitted to me recently that he has trouble hearing the Star-Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace without crying now--in my view, this is his mind, heart and spirit………attempting to heal. Wouldn’t it be a great world where connectedness and healing take precedence over everything else? Most of you know the story of the man walking along the beach where tens of thousands of starfish have washed up. He sees a little girl picking them up and tossing them back in the ocean and says, "There are so many, you can’t save all these starfish. She looked at him as she tossed another one in and said, "No, but I can save this one!"

Anything you experience that leads to safe expression of feelings, love and attention to and from others, and a sense of peace and purpose……is healing. From skinned knees and muggings to a gaping hole in the skyline of Manhattan or in our hearts, we are wounded and we are healing…together.

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