Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 9, 2003

A Valentine for Relationships

While I was in London this past week visiting family and enjoying that wonderful city, I also was daily reading The Times, London’s premier newspaper. One of the reasons I like planning my sermon topics so far in advance is that I find my eyes and ears drawn to all kinds of bits of information I might otherwise miss, and here is a case in point. In Thursday’s column by Joe Joseph who reviews television programs, he noted that there is a new show called “Made for Each Other?”; the sole purpose is to discover whether the couples are really suited to each other, or if they are on the road to a short and unhappy union. Joseph writes:

[You would] think there couldn’t be much mileage in a TV series about relationships. And watching Made for Each Other?, you might feel you were right. “Would you,” the narrator asked at the start, “be brave enough to allow cameras into your home for two weeks? Meet the couple who, whatever the consequences, were prepared to put their relationship up to scrutiny.

The program consists, in addition to the couple, of the people analyzing this relationship: female divorce lawyer, and a male relationship counselor.

Joe Joseph, the TV reviewer, captured my feelings in saying that what was most disturbing was wondering what sort of couple chooses to have their conversation and sex life broadcast on national television. Do you know couples like this [he asks], whose chief problem is not disharmony but rather incurable exhibitionism?

But the phrase that keeps rolling around in my thoughts is this: Would you be brave enough to allow cameras into your home for two weeks?

Well, of course not, not really, not literally, is my reaction. But just imagine the impact of such a thing.

Sometimes we do have a similar sort of thing happen; or instance, when we stay with friends or relatives for a few days. During even a few days, we begin to see the pattern of family relationships, family interactions, especially a couple’s interactions, that can either be a very positive experience, or leave one permanent troubled about the state of the relationship.

There is an old adage, or proverbial saying, that guests/relatives and fish both start to stink in three days. Meaning, one supposes, that most of us can keep our disagreements, rough edges, and our troubles out of the limelight for around three days, then we get edgy and want our privacy once more. Even people we love, people whose company we enjoy, can become a burden after a few days. Many of us realize this to our horror regarding our own children, who spent years in our home, so one would suppose that we would always feel temporally and permanently welcoming to them all their lives. But it is not so. Once they become adults, not subject to our bidding; once they develop their own ways of being that are separate from our ways as their parents, even they can become irritating after a few days.

When I was growing up we had lots of relatives who came to stay with us for varying periods of time, especially some young uncles who would come to work during the summer fruit season to make some money (my father was a fruit grower). My mother was a fastidious housekeeper, and she would soon get out of sorts about some behavior or another, especially if the uncles were from my father’s side of the family. But, of all the relatives male and female that spent time with us, the ones who gave her the most grief were the helping females who would not stay out of the kitchen. My mother was rather like a ship’s captain regarding her bridge, she wanted to sail the ship of the kitchen her way. I find that I feel this way, too, to some extent.

Now when we have such rubbings like this, we often find polite ways to address them. I have a friend who recently said: I love having my mother-in-law visit, but it will take me six months to find everything. Meaning that her mother-in-law puts things in places that seem logical to her, but do not accord with my friend’s household organization.

As I read about this television program and thought about all that I have read, heard, understood about relationships, it came to mind that if we could televise, metaphorically speaking, our relationships, then we might learn a great deal about how to treat the ones we love, and-equally important-learn how we would like to be treated in return.

Valentine’s Day interactions could provide a mini-series on how we come to be people with happy, healthy relationships, and how we fail.

While St. Valentine was a proponent of love, and sharing our best with those around us, he no doubt would be mystified by the strange holiday that has risen in his name. However, I do not doubt he would be familiar with the impulses that have given rise to this day to celebrate love.

St. Valentine was a Christian priest in Rome who was killed, martyred in about 270 of the Common Era, and it is usually noted that since his teachings did not relate all that much to couples or marriage, but Christian love in general, and that this association probably reflects that his feast day of February 14th and the ancient Roman fertility festive of Lupercalia on Feb. 15th, got mixed up over the centuries following. And, all this focus on cards, be they Valentine or Christmas cards, did not arise until the mid-to-late 1800s first in England, then it spread to this country and now exists around the world. Which, by the way, gives a good deal of grief to some religious groups in other countries who feel this is a kind of Christian invasion into their well-established celebrations of and about love. At the very least, we can credit those Victorians for their clever capitalistic approach to just about everything, and we are certainly worthy inheritors of the tradition.

All that said, we still can make this holiday, which artificial or not has become a tradition, into something worthy of our deeper spiritual and intellectual motivations.

Now consider this question: What is your first Valentine’s Day recollection? Where or how did you come to understand this Love holiday?

My earliest memories are from my elementary school days when the teachers would provide big square boxes, about one and a half to two feet square, the size of a grocery box for those who remember when our groceries were packed in boxes instead of paper or plastic bags. The teacher would provide the white butcher paper covering, made a suitable slot in the top, then as a class we were put to cutting out cupids, angels, and hearts, all from good stiff red construction paper, which we would then paste on the box. The next class project was to make Valentines for our mothers. Not, you might note, for our fathers; just mothers. I do recall a sad case that came to light every year of my friend Tina, whose mother had died when she was a baby. Tina was allowed to make a valentine, not for her Father, but for her Grandmother who lived with them. I never thought anything at the time about the exclusion of dads-it was just how it was done.

Then we could make any number of valentines for our friends, which got put into the big square box, and by third or fourth grade, we would get our parents to buy us the packets of little valentines that are still prevalent, some with silly messages. The trick for boys and girls alike, was to pick out a suitable valentine message for the opposite sex, so as not to look like you liked any given boy or girl too much.

I realize now what a complicated task we were so innocently learning in those grade school years. How do you show or express how you feel?

On Valentine’s Day, if you had a nice teacher, there might be punch and heart-shaped cookies, or even a cake along with the handing out of valentines. If you had a nice teacher-nothing seemed to be proscribed by the institution at the time-she (mine were all shes until junior high school) would insist that you give everyone a valentine. Some years that did not happen, and some kids got noticeably fewer cards than others.

I always liked Valentine’s Day back then, but I have not always liked it since. If nothing else, it can be a set up for disappointment, if-If is always a factor-if I had unstated expectations that were not met.

Unstated expectations. How often is that the real crux of the matter?

I happened to mention to my husband on our flight back home yesterday that next Friday was Valentine’s Day, to which he immediately responded that we would go out to dinner. He was a bit surprised when I said that I had planned to make a romantic dinner at home. (My unspoken motive was to keep in check my calories that have been out of check for the past week.) Tom expects to do something for me, but I know he is not overly fond of these commercially-oriented holidays; yet, it shows he too has been trained in the modern methods.

My father, nor any of my uncles that I can remember, ever bought a card of any stripe for their wives, nor did the wives in turn buy such things. None of my male relatives ever did anything like take their wives out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. It probably would never have occurred to any of them, being the large frugal rural/agricultural family we were-and Protestant to boot. These adults in my life probably saw this as a children’s day, like Halloween.

Did this mean they did not love their partners? Of course not. It mostly means that the times, the advertising, the education of one group has forever changed February 14th.

It seems like such a common sense thing to tell people that if you want something you need to ask for it. None of us would just stand in a department store waiting for a clerk to figure out why we are there. But at heart many of us are romantics, and even non-romantics can often be romantically oriented when it comes to the Love Days, like Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, birthdays, and so on.

The romantic trait is not to ask for what you want, but to expect that the one who loves you will intuit-guess-mind read what you want. That if the one you love, loves you, they will just some how, magically know what it is that means the most to you. Talk about a set up! If I were just guessing, my best guess is that my children would love a card and some gift from me for their birthdays. I try to recall what they have said they have been longing for, but often it is way out of my price-range. So what to do? But, it is just as likely that they may want something not expensive, but expressive of my love for them.

We each have unstated ideas about what we think are true signs of love. Often they are unstated because we have not thought about them even for ourselves. As long as they remain unconsidered and unstated, we are apt to feel disappointment that the ones we love do not give us what we most want.

In point of fact, what most of us want most has to do with real signs of being thought about at all. A piece of jewelry, a heart-shaped box candy, a trip to a wonderful restaurant all mean that someone can do something, but they do not mean that the person has really given the other much thought.

Most of us want to know that we are truly special to those we love. Often we are, but sometimes we are not. Perhaps the reason we often avoid asking for what we want is that we are afraid that maybe we really are not all that special to the one we think is special. It is a sad but all too true situation.

My belief is that we must take risks in life if we hope to have the most fulfilling lives that we can. We need to risk what seems most fearful in order to subdue that fear.

My son Adam, a C17 air crewman, is off on a deployment, most likely in preparation for an Iraq invasion. I have found myself saying things like, I don’t want him killed in a meaningless war. Or some such thing, to which my husband always responds with a rational statement about how safe this newest cargo airplane is, how Adam is one of three skilled airmen who fly and operate this airplane, etc. He in undoubtedly right, for he knows a lot more than I do about the Air Force, airplanes, and military thinking from personal experience. But, I keep saying how I don’t want Adam killed senselessly. (I don’t say this to my son, of course.) Well, I don’t want him killed in anyway, regardless, so why have I had this impulse regarding his military duty? After some real examination of my beliefs, I think it has to do with prayer, voicing my greatest fears and greatest needs. Maybe if I think it or say it out loud, then, just maybe then it won’t happen. But what if it does? Will I have cursed him in some way? I do not think so, but these are the thoughts that rush around the mind of a well-educated, spiritually oriented minister who also happens to be a mother of a USAF airman.

We have to take risks in life. Risks just to live. Of all the risks that we take willy-nilly, like driving anywhere, then should we not be willing to take risks for what and whom we love?

This is my Valentine for relationships: that we be willing to risk for love. We have everything worthwhile to gain in this risking of who we are in our heart of hearts, and who we want most to be. Loved, and loving.

So be it.

February 16, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

February 16, 2003

No Love Lost: When Hate Dominates

In a point-counter point strategy I talked last week about the evidence and virtues of the emotion we know as love. A good theme for the Valentine’s Day week. This week I am talking about another emotion we also know, but that is hate. But, I am not talking today about the word in the way I hear it used all too often, which is occasionally an aspect of hate, but is in reality the absence of respect. For instance, I have heard over the years of my life that someone hates this or that politician: I hate Eisenhower. I hate Kennedy. I hate Johnson. I hate Nixon. I hate Reagan. I hate Bush. I hate Clinton. I hate Bush. So both the Democrats and Republicans seem to hate pretty evenly. And the Libertarians hate them all! Like W. C. Fields, who said: I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.

Generally, Independents seem to be the least likely to hate any given politician, but have a healthy mistrust of all of them-a position Will Rogers certainly encouraged.

My feeling about this is, if you really hate the president, then you either know him personally, or you hate too easily. My belief is that when most of us say we hate any given politician, what we are really saying is that we do not agree with his or her political positions, or we do not respect them for the positions they take. The word hate, though, is like a curse word, meant to convey more than is necessary in order to make a point. But here is the rub: If we use words of strong emotion too much or incorrectly, they have either the effect of losing their emotive power, or we begin to change the way we think. There seems to be a growth of hatred in the world that is very disturbing, indeed frightening, and I want each one of us here to think long and hard about what we really love, and what we really hate.

I think the worst case of this flagrant hating is exemplified by the hate-filled preacher, the so-called Rev. Fred Phelps, the Topeka, Kansas, preacher who routinely pickets with harsh anti-gay signs at the funerals of AIDS victims with signs that state in large letters: GOD HATES FAGS. He was at the funeral of the young gay man, Matthew Sheperd, who was so horribly murdered in Wyoming in 1998. Undoubtedly, many such hate crimes, and the Sheperd boy’s murder can be laid at the feet of Phelps and his ilk.

The other worst case of this that is most immediate in our minds is the hate of a small group of Islamist fundamentalists, those in al Quaeda who orchestrated the terrorists acts we remember now by the date 9/11. They have been at the foundation of many other terrorist attacks already, and if we take the latest bin Laden tape seriously, they are planning others around the world, and certainly directed toward the U.S.

What causes a person to hate that much? Perhaps, though, the better question is: What is the point or gain to be had from that much hate?

Here are two quotes in stark contrast:

I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man. Booker T. Washington, a black educator and writer born to parents who had been slaves.

Hate is more lasting than dislike. Adolf Hitler

If one only had the two statements and nothing more, it would be clear which was the better, nobler person. One who could have hated, instead directed his emotions toward helping and teaching. The other, who had no valid reason for hate beyond the desire for power, caused the greatest amount of death and destruction that the world has known to this point-the current voices of hate may easily take us further.

As Matthieu Ricard says:

Hatred is the deeply felt wish to harm someone else, to destroy their happiness. It is not necessarily expressed in a burst of anger. It’s not expressed all the time, but it will manifest when meeting with circumstances that trigger one’s animosity. It is also connected with many other elated emotions, such as resentment, bearing grudges, contempt, animosity, and so on.

So, why do we hate, and who do we hate, and how do we hate?

People often think that hate is the opposite of love, but this is absolutely not true. Indifference is the opposite of love. To simply not have enough interest to give the other person/people a thought. As George Bernard Shaw wrote: The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity. (Indifference has its own set of problems-that will have to be another sermon.) Hate is closer to love than to true indifference. The only thing I will say now about indifference is that those who hate depend on the indifference of the people they would use or hope to mobilize to their negative ends. Most common German people in the 1930s were indifferent to Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and therefore did not feel moved to any compassion for them as they began to be hunted down and murdered in wholesale genocide. They were easy targets for the hate filled Hitler and his circle.

For a current example: If we do not care about the people of the Middle East, if we are indifferent to them and their common humanity with us, then we are more easily led to support programs that would mistreat them-though few of us would actively engage in injuring or hurting a Middle Easterner ourselves.

Theodore Roosevelt stated very clearly the dangers of hatred when he said:

Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainly that class’s own worst enemy.

If we bring this closer to home, though, and it was the people of Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia being killed for no good reason, as when the sniper (at the time we thought is was just one) was on the loose and randomly killing people, and might kill people we know, or even us-then we get much more engaged. We cease to be indifferent. All efforts were made to bring this senseless killing to a halt.

Up to this point I have talked about hate on a grand scale, but now I want to talk about hate as you and I know it, on a personal level.

Even the topic of hatred deserves at least one humorous story:

A woman testified to the transformation in her life that had resulted through her experience in conversion. She declared, ‘I'm so glad I got religion. I have an uncle I used to hate so much, I vowed I'd never go to his funeral. But now, why, I'd be happy to go to it any time.’

No doubt many of you have heard this line from humorist Tom Lehrer: I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!

The question of why we hate is a plant with many roots. We hate for reason too numerous to even outline, much less name, but here are some of the most obvious: We hate because we are hurt or neglected by someone. We hate because we are humiliated or ridiculed by someone or some group. We hate because we want a person to do what they cannot or will not do. We hate because of what some other person may lift up in us; that is, when we see something in another person that is disgusting in ourselves to ourselves. We hate because we love someone who will not return our love. This last is one part of why hate is not the opposite of love.

When we hate we are emotionally invested, as my psychologist friends would say. We care a lot! You have to care a lot to carry around a burning hatred. Just like any fire, hatred requires fuel to feed it. The more you hate, the more you need to find ways to nurture it, feed it, keep it burning bright in your soul.

Thank goodness, most of us hate for moments, not years. Generally hate is short-lived, of short duration, but sometimes people have hate that lives with them for most of their lives. This is a true shame, a real sorrow, for no one who is spending large chunks of emotional energy nurturing a grand hate has much time for any other grand passion-like love.

What, then, do we do with our hate? Again, generally we think about the bad things we might wish on the other person, but rarely do we act on hate to any large extent like murder. But even a short, hot hate can do long-term damage as was the case for the woman who ran over her adulterous husband, in the news in recent months, and this past week was sentenced to twenty years in prison. That is prime example of how destructive hate is to the person who is hated, but also to the one who hates.

All but the most virtuous of us experience those short term feelings of hate that over time fade into indifference. While hate is strongest in a person, the piece of hate that most of us hold on to is the desire to destroy the happiness of the person we hate. Even if only just a little, for I doubt few of us would hate enough to want to destroy all happiness for another person. Let me be clear on this point, if you or I hate that much, we should get ourselves to a psychologist post haste. There is no love lost when hate dominates our lives, precisely because we have no emotional energy left over for love. And, a person without love is a pathetic creature-worse, are barren, for like the parable that teaches that a seed dropped on stony ground cannot grow, nothing worthwhile, nothing good can live in a soul consumed by hate.

Children, and us sometimes childish adults, hate in spurts that are driven by the desire to destroy a little bit of happiness for the person we are hating at the moment. Sue says to her parent: “I hate Jenny!” The parent inquires and learns that Jenny went off to play with Kelly. Thirty minutes later, or whenever, Sue is playing with Jenny again, and love reigns once more. It is the daily drama of the playground. Boys and girls alike. It is also a part of the daily drama of adult life with variations. Jim’s boss gives him a reprimand, and for a short time, the boss is dirt. Jim thinks or says: I hate the S-O-B. Next day, upon reflection, Jim sees the boss’ point, the boss is once again an OK guy.

Most of us parents have had our children scream at us in a moment of rage that they hate us when we exact some restriction or discipline. We cringe when that happens. The child is absolutely acting on the urge to destroy a little bit of our happiness, and it works. As sweet a little girl as anyone could want to know, child of a friend of mine in Texas, had her daughter scratch I hate you on the front of her sewing machine. The child is now a grown woman, but the my friend still uses that sewing machine, and sees those words every time. That childish act had longer term result for the grown up daughter also, for she occasionally sees those words, though she has long since forgotten what stirred her to such an act of anger.

We all see multiple shadings of this point, and for the most part, most people do not see hate as a very serious thing. At least, not their own hate. My Uncle James was a farmer who had fields of crops that certainly had a few weeds in them, while he used herbicides to keep most of them out, he still carried a hoe with him when he inspected his crops. There is no such thing a field of grain with no weeds. The object is to have few weeds. In ourselves, we too should be less concerned with perfection than being pretty good. But we cannot even get to being pretty good if we do not spend time and be deliberate in keeping the soul as weed free as possible. The weekly hour you spend here on Sunday morning can be thought of like the herbicide (sinicide!)-but you and I still need to keep vigilant for the straggling sins (or weaknesses if you prefer) like hate.

The Dalai Lama, who could have all the reasons for hate any one could-he must live in exile from his people and country of Tibet because the government of China will not allow him to live freely in his home. Still, he teaches that hate is destructive and that for all the destructive emotions, hate being one, the only antidote is altruistic love. Altruistic love is that which reaches out to help others. Love as kindness, love as healing acts, love as giving. Ricard states: [A]lthough one can alternate between love and hatred, one cannot feel, at the very same moment, both love and hatred toward the same person or the same object.

The message is clear. Either you are hating or loving (read also caring about) the other person or people for whom you are not totally indifferent.

Turn the tables and think about what is must be like to be hated, truly hated. How many people do you think hate you? People who would like to take away your happiness if given a chance? That is pretty scary. What would it be like to know that our neighbor hated us, enough maybe to do harm to us or our property? It is a stifling thought. The point is, do you want to be a person holding onto that hate for someone else?

One of my old friends was dumped by her boyfriend, and for a couple months she really hated him. Hated him for rejecting her. Fortunately, she is a person who is naturally of a sweet disposition, and had no real intention of acting on her hate other than sending him a couple of pretty nasty letters. She talked to family and friends who all loved and comforted her, and encouraged her to look forward, which she did. Now she is going to marry a great guy, a much better “catch” in dating vernacular, and considers the old boyfriend did her a favor.

Do I say she should have never hated the jerk who dumped her? Nah-we are allowed a few weeds in our person. But she nurtured the good soil in her spirit, the love and intelligence, and all that good stuff we have working to help us overcome the moments when we are weak.

Believe this my beloved congregation: hate takes up room that we could fill with love in our hearts and minds. Do you really want to give over any of your spirit ground, your soul, to such wasted endeavors as hate?

We are sometimes told that hate is really self-hate. I do not buy that for all situations. Probably more often hate is about power and control. Perhaps it is all a matter of semantics, but self-hate or self-loathing is tricky. Can we hate ourselves? Tibetan Buddhism doubts this unless it is a point of comparison, that we want to be so much better than we think we are, but they suggest that it is more about ego, attachment to what we want. Hating people who have more than we do. Hating people for their fame or riches. That is more likely. We hear often of the negative results of that, like the young man who killed John Lennon.

What can we do to help dampen the fires of hate? Practice love is the easiest thing. Love others. There are always people around you who need your love. Live with your thoughts focused on the well-being of those people. All of this is guaranteed to improve your life and dissipate hate. When we are busy loving, we do not have much time for hate.

I respect the teachings of the Dalai Lam around this, who says of his form of Buddhism, that focuses on spiritual practices that explicitly aim to transform hatred and aggression (as well as craving and attachment) rather than simply countering of suppressing them. . . .

You are here--that is good spiritual practice. Further spiritual practice is to read or listen the works of such spiritual teachers. Meditate on what you really are feeling when you are very angry or even hate someone or something. Pray to God or to the eternal stars for the change that you know will give you the greatest good. Talk to your minister, to a therapist, to your closest family or friends. Do some of that very healthy self-talk; that is, talk to yourself as you would to someone you care about, advise yourself as you would advise them. Then you have the tools to build a stronger spirit, and you keep adding to that toolbox of strengths, which give us an ever-growing and stronger sense of what is right and wrong, all of which will come to your aid in times of pain and strife.

And practice open, generous, visible, knowable acts of loving kindness every day of your life.

So Be It.

February 23, 2003 Sermon

Nancy D. Dean

February 23, 2003

Dark Night of Day: Mental Illness Touches Everyone

A Candlelight Service for Healing

There is no subject but that often humor can illustrate it better than either academic research or erudition of the highest order. So one finds, even with the subject of mental illness, or what even constitutes mental health, this is also the case. Just to prove the point I offer the following:

Psychiatrists have discovered that the manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities. Which method best describes your favorite approach?

1. The Whole Thing in One Bite

2. One Bite at a Time

3. Slow and Methodical Nibbles, Examining the Results of Each Bite

4. In Little Feverish Nibbles

5. Dunked In Some Liquid (Milk, Coffee . . .)

6. The Inside First

7. The Inside Only

8. The Outside Only

9. Just Lick Them, Not Eat Them

10. Don't Have a Favorite Way Because I Don't Like Oreo's.

Your Personality:

1. The Whole Thing in One Bite

This means you consume life with abandon, you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you.

2. One Bite at a Time

You are lucky to be one of the 5.4 billion other people who eat their Oreo's this very same way. Just like them, you lack imagination, but that's okay, not to worry, you're normal.

3. Slow and Methodical

You follow the rules. You're very tidy and orderly. You're very meticulous in every detail with everything you do to the point of being very irritating to others. Stay out of the fast lane if you're only going to go the speed limit.

4. Little Feverish Nibbles

Your boss likes you because you get your work done quickly. You always have a million things to do and never enough time to do them. Mental break downs run in your family. Valium would do you good.

5. Dunked

Every one likes you because you are always upbeat. You like to sugar coat unpleasant experiences and rationalize bad situations into good ones. You are in total denial about the shambles you call your life.

6. The Inside First

You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though you're not always able to put them back together, so you destroy the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong.

7. The Inside Only

You are good at business and take risks that pay off. You take what you want and throw the rest away. You are greedy, selfish, mean, and lack feelings for others. You should be ashamed of yourself. But that's okay, you don't care, you got yours.

8. The Outside Only

You enjoy pain.

9. Just Like Lick Them, Not Eat Them

Stay away from small furry animals and seek professional medical help-immediately.

10. Don't Have a Favorite Way Because I Don't Like Oreo Cookies.

You probably come from a rich family and like to wear nice things and go to upscale restaurants. You are particular and fussy about the things you buy, own, and wear. Things have to be just right. You like to be pampered. You are a prima donna. There's just no pleasing you.

We see then that even the simplest of human activities has both the positive and negative aspects. What counts in the realm of mental health is how far we go with our human characteristics and peccadilloes.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, stated in May, 2000 following the release of Dr. David Satcher’s report on mental illness: The Surgeon General's [1999] report makes two basic points. Mental illness is a national crisis and our treatment of the mentally ill is a national disgrace. Tipper Gore, wife of then Vice-President Al Gore, who like many of us here today has suffered a serious bout of depression and as a result made it a priority to encourage the Surgeon General, and our congressional leadership, to finally pay some attention to the wide spread nature of mental illness in this country, and to encourage adequate funding and attention to the sorely lacking dollars in health insurance designated for mental health problems.

On the one hand we might say: It’s about time! Why has it taken so long to even get some attention directed toward this pervasive problem, especially around medical insurance?

On the other hand, we might also say: The time has finally come. Our wandering in the desert of mental illness issues is over. Now we are beginning to recognize what has been with us all along, but was heretofore simply too frightening to examine closely.

Both points of view are valid, but neither addresses the emotional toll that mental illness takes on all our lives.

The hardest part in some ways is to recognize mental illness in the first place. Perhaps the simplest, easiest to understand definition is that mental illness is the absence of mental health or mental well-being.

From that basic point we all can come to appreciate that every person has times when we deviate from the road of mental well-being. Tragedy can divert us, as one case in point. Others are: Long term or chronic illness. When too much stress from work, family problems, the grind of daily living make a person take to his or her bed for a day or two or more. When we obsess over some project or unfulfilled wish or expectation, our children, our health, our future-whatever the focus, but obsession becomes the driving force in life. Addictions of all stripes: drugs, food, sex, alcohol, are also deviations from good mental health.

We usually can spot great or large deviations from good mental health, those mental illnesses that take the form of neurosis, psychosis, like schizophrenia. The movie last year about the life of mathematical genius John Nash was a vivid depiction of the delusions of paranoid schizophrenia.

This is one of the most common kinds of mental illness, also one of the most frustrating since it can be so hard to get treatment for the afflicted person.

My goal today is not to go into great depth about what is mental illness, how to get treatment for the mentally ill, all that is best left to the real professionals. We now have wonderful access to psychiatrists and psychologists who can help make diagnoses, and direct patients and families to the help they need. My goal is to help us recognize the true scope of the problem, and to realize that turning a blind eye is the worst thing we can do.

Years ago, there was the mistaken assumption by many people that mental illness equated with low intellect. Of all the progress made in the last century, perhaps this is one of the greater, that is, we now know that mental illness comes just as often to people of great intellectual gifts, like John Nash. Artists--poets, writers, painters-the realm of the artistically gifted, has also been a group that has shown us through their art about their own mental struggles with diseases such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Just a sampling shows us for example that writers Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, painter Vincent van Gogh, and musician Kurt Cobain all committed suicide. Painters Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe, and musicians Cole Porter and Charles Mingus suffered from depression.

It was from the brilliant poetry of Sylvia Plath that I borrowed my title today. She wrote in her journal and her poems about the dark night of the soul, the dark night even in the daytime, when all is bleak and without hope or promise. In a recent New York Times book review, Erica Wagner put succinctly the tragedy writing: Forty years ago, Sylvia Plath put milk and bread out for her children and killed herself.

But mental illness is not a disease or problem of the other. It is not a problem only of artists, or the poor, or the weak. It is a disease or problem we all are touched by, it is a disease or problem that can afflict anyone.

Based on a similar service I was part of ten years ago, an eye-opening day for me I must admit, it became clear to me that very few people have not been touched by some aspect of mental illness. Be it one of our children, or a parent with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. Be it as one who has dealt with an addiction personally, or with a family member. Be it as one who had watched the struggles of all the varieties of known and unknown illnesses and disorders that can afflict those we know and love.

Ministers meet more people with mental health issues than most people, outside professionals like psychologists. We see many who deal with short-term struggles with depression, and those with the major illnesses, so we understand the mental and spiritual implications for our lives if we do not find some way to open up and look for help and healing.

This is a service to honor this reality of our lives. That we are close to the frightening aspects of mental illness far more than we know, and it is to know that I ask you to participate with me today in uncovering this truth.

This is an opening to see how much our lives are impacted by what we do not share, because shame is too much a part of what mental illness means in our culture. Shame is not the road to change, only sharing and healing will lead us to a better place.

You can see over here a table filled with candles that I invite you to come up and light and name, in one or two sentences, the mental health issue that has touched your life either in your own person or someone you know or care about in some way.

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Let me now share my most heartbreaking experience with mental illness. My mother-in-law, my children’s paternal grandmother, died from neglect. Self neglect, medical neglect, mental health system neglect. Neglect despite the fact that she had her son, myself, our family caring about her, but we could do little. She suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, coupled with hypochondria. She died at the age of 56, convinced that we wanted to lock her up to get her money-she was poor, by the way. When we cleaned out her tiny apartment, we collected a garbage bag of medications she was taking. We had to sort through every little thing because she tucked twenty dollar bills in toilet paper rolls, magazines, stocking. It was one of the saddest times in my life.

I was angry we could not find any help for her, angry with her, angry with doctors who prescribed all that medicine, and pharmacists who filled them. And, most angry that we could not get her admitted to a facility for her own protection. It was a time of great could not find a way to save her from herself.

The human spirit is not made of steel, it is made of fragile materials, far more easily damaged by biochemistry gone awry, or the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare wrote so well of life’s struggles.

For us as spiritually directed people, who also are directed by reason and science, let us remember that the spirit needs the truth and the truth needs the spirit. Our struggle throughout our lives is find the balance between these two.

So be it.