Rev. Nancy D. Dean

August 20, 2006

Your Minister’s Biases

I began ministry officially in 1994, including the two prior years of internship, which means I've been preaching and pastoring for fourteen years--though my children say, I've been preaching for far longer.

Today I am indulging myself, with the intention of talking more personally about some of the things that motivate, annoy, and prejudice me. I may be running a risk of letting you know more about me than is good for my ministry. Still, I think it helps for those of you who have known me for quite a while now, as well as our newer members, to get some insight into what both interferes with and supports my work here as your pastor.

Further, owning my own sense of frustration about what it means to be a spiritual leader reminds me that though we live in a mostly very good time, it is also a time that demands, in many ways, that all of us be all things to all people, particularly those of us in liberal religion, and especially those of us who would be leaders and ministers in the free faith movement.

I am an optimist by nature and believe deeply that we see clear evidence that our world is getting gradually closer to being truly civilized. So what I offer today is not meant to be a list of complaints, but a list of frustrations that I believe are typical of the frustrations you also share to a greater or lesser degree. In other words, I want to make it clear that I make no claim to any special dispensation from any force, power, or deity outside myself for being above my own weaknesses and inadequacies.

We here are all seekers who struggle to be better people.

I think all of us suffer from or are plagued by the biases we hold, which can help or hinder our ability to make good judgments or good decisions. Ministers are not super-humans; we are just humans who happen to have a great desire to help others with this lifelong work of finding meaning for our lives. We pastors often fail in our efforts to do that work for ourselves, which causes many clergy to wind up becoming more convicted in making sure the laity does do this moral work.

I hope to not fall into that trap.My motivation for this sermon is to share some of what I struggle with as your minister in doing this important work of pastoring to the needs of the members of this congregation.

To begin, I believe the life of the individual is mirrored in the family which is mirrored in the community which is mirrored in the nation which is mirrored in the world (and probably in the life of the universe about which we know nothing at this time). The microcosm/smaller unit is seen in the macrocosm/larger unit of human existence. The problems of the individual can be seen in each of the successively larger human complexes or organizations. Want to know why the UN is so poorly run, just look at the average household that has trouble developing or keeping to a budget.

I will start with the bigger things that I believe are part of my biases and work to the smaller I see close at hand.You probably won’t agree with me on many of these issues, and you will have an opportunity to say so during the time for discussion following.

My biggest bias on the global front is that governments in general and ours specifically (in our case of the people and by the people) are unwilling to lay down arms and take up the tools of real help and support for people of struggling nations.

I believe that the main world governments are too much controlled by corporations or groups who benefit by keeping a large defense industry in place, and that they prefer the power that comes from being a warrior which they see as a stronger force than the power that comes from being a benefactor.

But I also believe, despite my dearest wish that it could be otherwise, that we must be able to defend ourselves. But having an adequate defense force is a far cry from having a bloated military complex that lead nations to fight unnecessary wars that are in all likelihood unwinable and do more harm than benefit for most of the citizens.

I believe that in this age of modern media the word politician is synonymous with liar. Regardless of party affiliation politicians are trying to be either all things to all people, or whatever to whomever they can get to support them. That was not the hope of our founders who believed good men of good will could emerge from the citizenry to serve for the people of their communities and states. Gerrymandering of voting districts, for example, and such tactics that both of our major parties have engaged in relentlessly in the last few decades, was not part of that founding vision. It is destructive, corrosive, and corrupting.

I believe that both large corporations and our government have come to be interested in short-term gains and not the longer vision that built this nation and much of the great inventiveness and wealth that this country has enjoyed. I also believe that the evidence is overwhelming that the divide between the very rich and the rest of us is growing at a dangerous rate for all of us.

One of the most reliable predictors of economic collapse is when most of the wealth of a nation is in the hands of a very few. In the last thirty years the steadily shrinking middle class has increased its wealth by 11% while the top ten percent have increased theirs by 612%. I am not against wealth, but I am against obscene wealth that is earned by the removing of the little that the rest of have and that is where they have gotten it.

As a career educator, I am biased against the use of education as a perennial political smokescreen issue that has done little to change the nature of education in this country. Parents have always been most reliably the people who make better schools. In every state in this country you will find great schools where parents are more affluent and are active in the schools, while within a few miles are decaying schools without working toilets, adequate supplies of textbooks or other necessary materials, because the parents do not have the same resources nor the same clout.

This pattern has not changed very much with few exceptions across the land for the last fifty years. No child left behind is only the most recent in a long line of catch phrases meant to mobilize that important voting base of parents. I have no doubt that we are still having many children left behind. As far as I’m concerned, testing is just another word for wrong tool to fix all the many problems facing modern educators.

Teachers are not miracle workers, nor are students all equally capable, nor all parents equally committed. The rhetoric attached to much of modern education makes me think of Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, all the men good looking, and all the children are above average.

I am also biased when religion is misused as a political tool to mobilize voters around single issues that may rarely touch them, while ignoring the manifold misdeeds of local, state, and federal government that ignore the poor, the disenfranchised, the uninsured, the unemployed, the retirees whose pension plans are stolen by corporate shenanigans, and given in massive, even obscene salaries to a handful of top executives who act like it is all their due and just the nature of business.

I believe in capitalism as the best system for a democracy, but a fair and balanced capitalism; not a free-for-all for a few. And I am offended by a great paternalism that suggests that because the wealthiest people will give much of their wealth to worthy projects they chose, that we should overlook the fact that often their business practices destroyed companies who sought to compete fairly.

Do our lovely Carnegie libraries, for example, serve as adequate compensation for the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered with pitiful wages, twelve-hour days and 6 ½ day work weeks, who died unnecessarily young and left no legacies for their child while working for Mr. Carnegie?

I believe the era of the 1950-60s when average wages were good for working and middle class people, and great numbers of families for the first time where able to own their own homes and have security for their old age, and often be able to leave something for their children, and together we still built great works for the public.

To the biases that are closer to home that reside in my fevered brain: those regarding the religious institutions, the local community, and the family.

Religion, that is the institution of religion, is about supporting a way of understanding human ethics and morals. Each of our religious institutions has the right in this country to teach and practice their faith as they chose, so long as they do not seek to harm other religious institutions. Sadly, there are those who seek power, seek to convince their followers that they have all the truth and righteousness and that all the rest of us are wrong, dangerous, unworthy of existence. That is obviously not healthy in a religiously pluralistic country such as ours. Religion should be about supporting the welfare of all people, not just some select group.

Communities likewise should be about the public welfare, which does not mean just some of the people. While we will always struggle with disparities, the goal seems to me to be clear enough. Some communities do this well, but sadly they are more often exceptions. Bating racial and ethnic groups against each other is just one way that community leaders often create disharmony.

Families, also have ways of garnering power so that some members are heard while others are not, when some needs are met while others are ignored.

Now to the more personal sorts of biases that often get in my way. One has to do with language, how we use and misuse it to diminish one another. As a former English teacher I hear lots of distortions of standard usage, but I try to be mindful of what an English professor once told my class of graduate students: You can be sure, she said, that when you find a flaw in someone else’s usage, they can probably find one in your’s as well.

The old problem of finding a speck in some else’s eye, ignoring the stick in one’s own, which relates to almost all these issues.

Still, I am bothered by so much casual vulgarity in everyday speech, especially on television and in movies, which are not to say that when I stub my toe I say, gosh darn it. I think our children deserve to have some period of relatively clean speech before they get blasted by the words George Carlin once reminded everyone you used to not be able to say on TV.

But for all I get offend by gratuitous vulgarity, I am much more offended by disrespectful, petty, or downright mean language that takes place in schools, faith communities, playgrounds, and homes. I believe this is has been steadily increasing.

For example, there is a word that has come to mark a whole generation, and that word is whatever.

But, young people are far from the worst offenders. I have noted the increasing number of times someone has given me a complaint, either at church, a business, or in my family, and when I attempt to explain my position, I get a whatever back in my face. This is very dismissive, and furthermore it is intended to be.

My most profound bias is against unkindness in any form. One of the biggest forms of unkindness is sarcasm. Much of what I find offensive about the reality programs that are so popular these days has to do with this. Sarcasm, unkindness, all of it just makes me so very uncomfortable.

I can hear my grandmother saying: Don't get sarky. Sarcasm strikes me as the closest thing to being disrespectful that you can get in, what we might call civilized communication. When we talk down to somebody, we demean their intelligence, but we also demean their dignity, and our first principle as Unitarians is to respect the worth and dignity of all people. So whenever somebody says whatever they are bordering on sarkiness. It’s first just bad manners, which is also a bias of mine. Good manners are about respecting one another.

To a lesser degree these are versions of the bullying tactics that have come to be recognized as an unhealthy and even dangerous reality of the school environment. But the real issue is that this kind of speech and behavior is symptomatic of ego-centric behavior. In pastoral counseling the number problems I see always can be traced to egocentrism; that is, self-centered behavior that ignores all but one’s own position.

We are all guilty of some ego-centrism, but hopefully we are aware enough to recognize this demon when it raises its ugly head.

Too often in relationships of all kinds--parent and child, spouses and partners, brothers and sisters, and friends—people find it acceptable to throw mean and hurtful words around to gain a momentary advantage. The sad fact is that in the long run they cause an erosion of respect, sometimes to the point that the relationships are marred permanently, or even destroyed.

My friends, the Ego is in fact the root of all evil.

If you grew up in a Christian religion, you may have learned that the love of money is the root of all evil, but I believe that this is only one of the symptoms of the ego that is bent on gaining an advantage. The advantage may be in wealth and its related power, but it is just as likely that goal is power over another or several people.

The worst offenders in my book are people I can only label as control freaks.

Control freaks are not happy unless everyone around them is doing what they want, and since this rarely happens, they are never happy for very long. Control freaks are bane of every family, every church, every volunteer organization, every business, every branch of government, every nation. The egoist. The individual who is absolutely convinced of his/her infallibility. These people live, work, and act at every level of human society.

If I were God, this would have been the thing I would have rooted out of the Garden of Eden; unfortunately the God of the Genesis story is a classic control freak.

I also believe that nearly all our problems are made worse by the fact that so few people do most of the work. You have probably heard about the 80-20 Rule, which states that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. This does not apply just to congregations like ours, but to every, every, group, every level of human activity.

We are all inclined to let others do the work and enjoy any benefits that might result, or blame the do-ers when the benefits fail to materialize. This is just one of the places where magical thinking takes place in human affairs, religion or beliefs in any supernatural or otherworldly forces are also symptomatic of our desire to avoid the real work of human existence.

These are some but by no means all the biases that I’m willing to claim publicly. I try to keep them in mind as I function as a wife, mother, minister, teacher, voter, caregiver, and citizen. Sometimes I see the bent in my thinking, sometimes I’m motivated by passions around them, but the one thing I do recognize is that we all live with these kinds of biases that can both serve and hinder us in our various roles. We are imperfect creatures, and our control over anything or anyone is less important than the control we have over ourselves.

As your minister, I would be doing you a disservice to give you the impression that I have unbiased judgments, though I try to listen carefully in spite of them. In fact, I think the surest way to be undone by one’s biases is to fail to recognize them.

Not one among us is free from various racial, ethnic, cultural, class, or some such bias that is the ego trying to protect itself from all manner of perceived assaults.

Whether it is a fear of immigrants or terrorists of a certain religious persuasion; or jealousy or envy of another person; or desire for anything or anyone; all these are related to certain biases that have in them biological, protective origins gone can go awry. To believe in respecting the worth and dignity of others as the strongest of the principles we promote and proclaim as Unitarian Universalists. All the great religious leaders have told us that this.

Respecting, that is loving our neighbors as ourselves, is the most important way to salvation or happiness; not doctrinal beliefs, not dogmas, not following this or that ritual, not following any particular spiritual or political leader. Our spiritual work is to recognize the logs in our eyes as we condemn the specks in the eyes of others.

To work at knowing our weaknesses so that we can grow stronger in mind and spirit despite them.

So be it.

August 27, 2006 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

August 27, 2006

Giving the Mind a Vacation

What is vacation: holiday, break, trip, rest, retreat, leave, escape, or all the above?

What places/activities place your mind in vacation mode? Why do we even value the idea of vacation: for children from school, for families, for couples, etc. I didn’t grow up with the modern understanding of vacation-a post 50’s development for middle/working classes. Originally children got school breaks which were geared to gathering fruit-vegetable crops; for working, not for vacationing.

It is no accident that most people think of summer as time for vacation--or going to someplace sunny - since getting a lot of sunshine releases endorphins in the body. So getting sunshine can mean the beach or from high mountain ski slopes, which probably accounts for the growing popularity of skiing over the last 30 years.

Clearly, there is more than one kind of vacation. For some of us, we can be busy learning, traveling, visiting family, etc. I have come to value them all, and while they cannot all mean time away from home or work, we can find ways to have vacations for the mind. Time when we turn off the workaday wheel of thought and place ourselves into a more meditative, calm state of mind. In fact, that is what Sunday morning is expected to do: to remove us from one frame of thought, into another. The understanding we have inherited from the ancient Hebrews of taking one day in seven for rest and worship which was enjoined on them by in the Ten Commandments.

Professors and clergy--sabbatical from Sabbath, or once in seven; again, from the Hebrew scriptures. Sabbatical has come to be understood as a time needed for renewal, be it through study, travel, other forms of learning, or exploring one’s discipline or work. Sabbatical is unlike vacation for it is a deliberate time usually with a specific focus which requires preparation and planning if the experience is to truly disconnect the minister or scholar from the work.

Sunday morning is the first line of this experience, for it is the Sabbath which we all can experience, and indeed I believe most people need this experience.. The day we ostensibly turn from our work lives and turn to the spiritual. That need is sadly being overlooked by many in our society. But we all need time for reflection on other things, for learning that there is more than one important way of being.

I once read that play is really just work you like to do. That is generally true. So if vacation is, as it so often is, about play, then we are not talking about idleness. Art-music-sailing-golf-surfing-fishing; all these are work we like to do, and the reason we think of these as play or respite from work is that we like to do them, they give us that vacation for the mind we all need at times. A time when we do not worry, agonize, fuss, fume, schedule, etc.

Vacation can be mindless lolling on the beach, and that has its own virtue, but for most of us, vacation is really more about doing something different. A time for doing things we don’t usually get to do. My husband and son-in-worked physically far harder on our family vacation this summer than during their normal work days, playing 36 holes of golf each day, coming back tired and sweaty as if they had been farm laborers. This would not have been my fruit grower laboring Dad’s idea of play!

Chuck Martin, a university professor who teaches business wrote:

Years ago, I asked a top executive in a multi-billion dollar corporation why he had been so successful for so many years. The executive was a highly educated and skilled leader in his early 60s. Without hesitation, he told me it was because he always took the month of August off. He took no other vacations during the year. For him, it took weeks to totally recharge and give him the energy and perspective needed for the next year. So, for that month, he was out of touch with the office. No one ever called him and he didn't check in.

The main thing is not what he did, but that he knew what he needed in the way of resting his mind.

This is the beauty of being human, as Ashley Montague pointed out in our reading, that unlike the insects, reptiles, or most other animals, we can continue to value the nature of play, vacation, Sabbath--all these ways of understanding the spirit’s need for joy however that manifests.

Humor is also a kind of vacation for the mind. How about the kid whose teacher told him to write a hundred-word essay on what he did during summer vacation? He wrote, "Not much" fifty times (H. Aaron Cohl).

Laughter is often the best mini-vacation for the mind, and here’s a story to illustrate both why we need such a vacation from the tough stuff of life as well as the petty or routine or trivialities of life:

There was a nice lady, a minister's widow, who was a little old-fashioned. Back in 1940, she was planning a week's vacation in California at a church campground near Yosemite National Park, but she wanted to make sure of the accommodations first, especially the bathroom facilities, but she couldn't bring herself to write "toilet" in a letter. After considerable deliberation, she settled on "bathroom commode," but after the first page of her letter, she referred to the bathroom commode as "BC."

"Does the cabin where I will be staying have its own BC? If not, where is the BC located?" is what she actually wrote.

The campground owner took the first page of the letter and the lady's check and gave it to his secretary. He put the remainder of the letter on the desk of the senior member of his staff, without noticing that the staffer would have no way of knowing what "BC" meant. Then the owner went off to town to run some errands.

The staff member came in after lunch, found the letter, and was baffled by the euphemism. He showed the letter around to several counselors, but they couldn't decipher it either. The staff member's wife, who knew that the lady was the widow of a famous Baptist preacher, was sure that it must be a question about the local Baptist church. "Of course!" the first staffer exclaimed. "'BC' stands for 'Baptist Church.'"

The staffer was quite busy, so it took him a few days to answer the woman's letter. Finally, he sat down and wrote:

Dear Madam,

I regret the delay in answering your letter, but I now take the pleasure in informing you that the BC is located nine miles north of the campground and seats 200 people at one time. I admit it is quite a distance away if you are in the habit of going regularly, but no doubt you will be pleased to know that a great number of people take their lunches along and make a day of it. They usually arrive early and stay late.

The last time my wife and I went was six years ago, and it was so crowded we had to stand up the whole time we were there. It may interest you to know that right now there is a supper planned to raise money to buy more seats. They are going to hold it in the basement of the 'BC.'

While it pains me very much not to be able to go more regularly, it is certainly no lack of desire on my part. But, as we grow older, it seems to be more of an effort, particularly in cold weather.

If you decide to come down to our campground, perhaps I could go with you the first time, sit with you, and introduce you to all the folks. Remember, this is a friendly community.

Sincerely, . . .

 

From Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, in “How to Plan a Vacation of the Mind” asked a group of women in a therapy group to imagine a vacation. She writes:

It was fascinating to see [the] vacation ideas . . .. One woman wished to go to Mexico and South America to view the ruins and lie on the sun in beautiful beaches. Another woman wished to go to Greece and see the ancient ruins there and then slowly make her way through Europe. [and]. Another also wanted to go to Europe but to do other things, such as take gourmet cooking classes in the South of France and become somewhat fluent in several languages. Another woman opted for spas and other experiences to bring vitality to her body and ultimately her spirit. One person was in reality making plans to go to several meditative retreats over the next few months.

I was fascinated as each woman spoke and realized two things. First, I would have been a happy companion on any of the presented vacations. Each one sounded fulfilling, energizing and provided a change that would be good for me, as well as the person who thought of it.

Secondly, I realized how much each woman, no matter what her background or problems, yearned for change, adventure, getting to know strangers and other places, no matter how burdened by daily problems of relationships, children, money, etc.

Vacation is about wholeness; how to reconnect the parts of oneself. Reconnecting with people you care about. The best time of my recent family vacation was sitting up late with my two children just talking about this and that, for this kind of interaction rarely happens nowadays. In families with adult children, we more often are talking about each other than talking to each other, as just family without other influences of in-laws, grandchildren, etc. None of those influences are necessarily bad, but they shift the nature of the dialogue. I found it so refreshing and insightful to listen and exchange thoughts with my adult children.

The spiritual gifts, the mind gifts, we all desire come not so much by accident as by intention. As Montague reminded us, the gift of youthfulness is the first gift of the spirit, our infancy, and what we experience in youth if we are cared for; and what we tend to lose as we grow up. This is why we love puppies and kittens, and especially our small grandchildren, for they remind us of that time of carefree exploration of the self and our world.

May it be that we will all learn to find that youthfulness in our lives, and remember that one way to do that stuff of the spirit is to take time for the spirit.

So be it.