Two steps forward, one step back...

       I posted about a month ago in my article entitled "Value, Worth, Esteem" that I've been in a period of time where my own sense of self has felt more solid.  I've been in a time of greater confidence, less self-attack, less struggle with esteem.  I wrote in that essay that I thought the primary reason for this change within me had to do with the way I'm choosing to see other people, viewing others with less judgment and more compassion, and that I felt the decision to see others with eyes of love was affecting how I saw myself as well.  I also stated that a secondary cause of this change might be that I am more carefully choosing who I associate with: I am no longer seeking out people as companions who make me feel small, less worthy, less valuable.  I have been choosing my friends and companions better, and have surrounded myself with people who see me, value me, and treat me with respect rather than disdain.  They treat me as equals, not superiors or inferiors, and that has been both affirming and grounding.
         This grounding, this re-centering has also allowed me to make some choices.  I've thought more about who it is I want to be in the world, and I've been able to step into that with more courage, strength and compassion.  I choose to be a person of reconciliation.  I choose to be a person of courage.  I choose to be a person who is kind.  These decisions about who I want to be and who I choose to be have allowed me to step into some actions and behaviors with a strength that I have not previously had.  They have also allowed me to feel good about my actions and my choices, regardless of how those actions and choices have been met in the world.  One example: as a person who is choosing to be a reconciler, I have stepped out and reached out to several people with whom there had been a breach.  In one of those cases I was basically blown off.  But what is interesting to me was that it was okay with me.  I was clear that who I wanted to be in the world was someone who reached towards reconciliation.  This is who I choose to be.  The response of the other is up to the other, and is, frankly, about the other.  I feel very clear about that.  I understood that the other person would have to choose what was best for them.  And that I knew I would be fine regardless of their response, as indeed, I have been.
        But all of that is leading up to the place I am today.  Today has been a different week.  I have been thrown back into spending significant time with people who do not value me in the same way, who certainly don't see me.  I have been spending time with those who do not know me as well, but who have specific ideas of who I am in the world and who judge me as "other," and (more importantly) as "less".  And what has surprised me is how easily I, too, then stepped back into that place of being the person struggling to be grounded, struggling for esteem, struggling to be accepted and acceptable.
       I share this, but not from a place of wanting sympathy or pity or even compassion around this.  Because there is a difference this time.  This time I see it for what it is.  This time I am aware of it happening and I'm aware of the effect of it on my self-esteem.  I am watching it happen, and I'm choosing to stay with it for a short time, to see if I can reclaim who I am, even as I stand amidst those who do not see it and do not value it.  Next week is a different week and I will be in a different place again.  But for now, I am watching, observing, learning, and doing the things that I know help me to stay grounded in its midst.  I'm breathing.  I'm walking.  I'm contacting those who do know me and love me.  I'm taking care of me, even as I struggle to remember who that is at times.  All of this is a gift of learning, a gift of faith that what life hands me is an opportunity to grow, and an invitation to go deeper.
        Thank you for your "listening" ears as well.  I am grateful.

It's all about the other.

           I wrote some time ago that hate connects you more deeply to the object of your hate than apathy ever could, that we care more deeply about those we actively dislike than we do about those we rarely think of.  I said that one of the most painful comments someone made to me was that they didn't care enough to hate me. That was years ago.  But a few months ago I had another similar encounter with a person out here.
           I was at a large meeting of colleagues when I ran into a woman who has actually made a point of not liking me.  We went to school together, sang in a choir together for two years, have served on committees together, been on retreat together many times, and have been in many of the same collegial groups together.  She has always been cold and distant.  More, she has sometimes been blatantly unkind, saying things that are pointedly mean or dismissive, and even blocking my participation in one group.
          In this particular instance, she was with someone who came over to talk to one of the people in the small group that I was with, and one of my friends said to her, "Do you know Barbara?"  Her response was, "Oh, I think I've seen you before once at a meeting of x."   At first I found myself just staring at her.  Really?  We were once at a meeting together?  It is not possible that she could not remember me as someone who sang with her every week for 2 years in a small 16 member choir.  It is not possible that she has forgotten that we served on a small 5 member committee together.  It is not possible that she doesn't remember that we have been to 25 person three day long retreats on a regular basis together.  It is highly unlikely, even, that she forgot we were at school together when the school was a very small, intimate community of people learning and worshiping together.  Does this mean the nasty comments she's made and the decision to block my participation in a group of colleagues was aimed at someone she doesn't even see?  No, her comment of "Oh, I think I've seen you before once in a meeting" was the same comment as that other person made years ago who said he did not even care about me enough to hate me.  It's the same comment.  But this time I don't think it was an honest account of her feelings.  In this case it was another intentional slam.  "You are not important enough for me to remember."  It was an attack.
          But interestingly, it had exactly the opposite effect of what I imagine was the intention.  The pettiness of the comment was just great enough to really help me let go of the discomfort and wonder around her unkind behavior towards me all these years.  I no longer care.  She has moved herself through this behavior into a place where I see her more fully than I have before, and I realize at a heart level that her thoughts, feelings and actions really and truly are about her and have nothing to do with me.  She doesn't know me.  Her dislike has been a gut reaction.  But for a long time I've helped her carry that by worrying and wondering what I could do to fix it.  That's no longer the case.  Now she can carry it all on her own.
         Whenever someone is unkind to us, it is about them and not about us.  Always.  But it can be hard for us to see this, difficult for us to hold, and sometimes it can feel impossible to put that into our hearts in such a way that we can feel compassion for the other rather than pain, hurt or anger.
          When Youngest was about three years old she and I were in a Trader Joe's grocery store, doing our daily shopping one day.  She was skipping and singing along beside the cart, very happy, full of life.  We were coming to the end of an aisle when a woman zoomed around the corner and almost hit us.  She snapped at Youngest, "Watch where you are going!  Stop playing around!"  I was stunned and upset.  But Youngest, my three year old Youngest, looked at the woman like she was a curiosity.  She stared at her with interest, but without any guilt or bad feeling, or shame.  As soon as the woman zoomed down the aisle, Youngest turned to me and said, "Poor woman!  She must be having a bad day!" and then she returned to skipping, singing, playing.  My heart filled with joy and pride to see that my three year old understood that the woman's bad behavior was about the woman.  It had nothing to do with Youngest.  I also felt some envy: I wished I could feel that same way when attacked.
          It is a worth while goal to learn to separate the behavior of someone else from ourselves.  It allows us then to choose our responses.  It enables us to find compassion, even, for those who may be having a hard time, a bad day.  It can encourage more honest interaction as we search for what is going on underneath the behavior, rather than just reacting out of our angst to what has been said.  It stops the escalation of anger and allow a person to respond instead to unkindness with empathy and care rather than revenge and retaliation.
         I am grateful for the moments in which I see the other as the other, someone who is complicated but whose behavior is truly about them.  I pray for more moments of such grace.

Coming into our True Natures

Exodus 34:29-35,

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Luke 9:28-36

I’d like to invite you to take a moment to think of a situation in which you weren’t seen for who you really are: a situation in which someone completely mis-understood you, didn’t get what you were saying or refused to see you as you really are and made assumptions about your motivation, or your personhood that were just plain wrong.  I think for most of us these situations have been painful or unpleasant, though it can also happen that someone thinks of you as better than you are, misunderstanding you in a way that puts you higher in someone’s esteem than you might deserve.  Can you think of a situation where you were judged or misunderstood?

When the kids were young, we read together a series by Noel Streatfield that begins with a book called Dancing Shoes.  And in the book, the little girl, Rachel, whose mother has just died, is seen as a sulky, cold, jealous little girl because she is adamant that her adopted sister, Hillary, not be part of the Wintle’s Little Wonders dance troupe.  The reader in the story is let in on to the fact that Rachel does not wish this for Hillary because she loves Hillary deeply, feels responsible for Hillary’s well being after the death of their mother, and believes that Hillary is capable of being a real ballet dancer with a professional ballet company.  But the adult characters in the book universally mis-understand Rachel and believe that she is an awful, unfeeling, jealous child.  This creates the tension or drama in the story which is only resolved at the end when she is finally seen and heard for who she is and finally treated as the loving child she is.  I found this story very difficult to read because of the pain central to this mis-understanding, and the pain of Rachel at being mis-treated because she was so terribly mis-understood.

But this theme, of mis-seeing someone, mis- understanding someone’s true character is a very, very common theme in our literature, in our television, in our movies.  In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s misunderstanding of Darcy (and visa versa), Jane’s misunderstanding of Bingley’s sisters, and everyone’s misunderstanding of Wickham make up the drama of the story line: all of which, again, are only resolved at the end.  In the movie Run Away Bride, the Julia Robert’s character is misunderstood by everyone, herself included.  Many of our stories involve someone being lifted up as a hero who really isn’t. Others involve judgement and condemnation on someone who doesn’t deserve it.  It is everywhere.  I’m sure you can think of many stories in which people are simply misunderstood, their motives and their actions read wrongly.  Their personhood or identity is read as something other than what it is.  And I believe that this is so central in our books because it is a very common experience that all of us have.  I am certain that everyone here could tell of at least one time in your life when your actions were completely misunderstood or misinterpreted, and undoubtedly this had results for you, many of which were probably unpleasant.

We experience the damage of these misunderstandings in our own lives, and yet I think we still tend to act on our own mis-interpretations of others at a smaller level on a daily basis.  We determine that the person next to us who made a mistake driving in the car is a jerk or an idiot.  We decide the sales person on the phone who can’t give us a lower price is greedy.  We see a person with their shirt half untucked and we decide they are a slob.  We assume a pregnant teenager is loose.  On a daily basis we all make snap judgments of others that do not allow us to really see who people are. 

I think this is common for two reasons.  First, we try to understand people by putting people into categories, setting up images of each person in our minds about who they are and what they are like in an effort to understand our world and to relate to it in a way that makes sense.  We all do this.  From a scientific perspective, we can’t make sense of the many images and bits of information that come at us all the time unless we somehow categorize and sort through the information, and we do this with the characters of the people we meet as well.  That person is a care-taker or that person is a cynic or that person is a little off their rocker.  These are ways in which we make sense of our world, try to gain a handle on who the people around us are, and determine how we want to interact with them, respond to them, engage them.

Second, despite our efforts to understand and box people, the reality is that people are very complex.  So, it is easy to get our judgments about people’s motivations for certain behaviors wrong because people rarely do anything for only one reason, or for a simple reason that can be easily understood and summed up.

Putting together that we are quick to make judgments about why people do what they do alongside with the fact that there are usually multiple reasons why a person does what they do, and we end up, in many instances with a false understanding of the people around us.

We’ve all been a victim of this at one time or another.  And chances are, we’ve all been mistaken in our understanding of others at one time or another.

This is about identity.  And so now I’d like to ask you to think about your own identity again for a moment.  Who are you at your basic core?  Who is it that God has called you to be?  When are you most fully yourself? 

Can you think of a moment or a time when you were most fully yourself: when you were the most whole, most God-following person, most you at your deepest core?  What did that feel like?  As you journey through your life do those moments come more or less often for you?  Are there certain situations that bring this out of you? 

One of my favorite movies is the Edward Norton film, Keeping the faith.  I shared with you last month a scene from this movie between the young priest and his mentor in which he was struggling with his call and whether or not he should stay a priest.  But there is another part that precedes that scene that takes place between the young priest and the woman friend he fell in love with.  She does not return his affections, but he still struggles with what it means for who he is at his core to love her.  He said to her, “I don’t know which feels worse: having my heart-broken, or starting to doubt myself because of what that means for me.”

She responded, “Don’t you dare doubt yourself because of me.  You have a gift and you know it.  If you start to doubt that because of me, I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

And then Brian answered, “I don’t doubt myself because of you.  I feel like the best version of myself around you and that makes me doubt everything else.”

Where are we the best versions of ourselves?  When are we the best versions of ourselves? What does it mean to be the best version of your?  Who is it you, at your core, feel called to be?  This is different from the question of what you are called to DO.  This is about identity.  This is about who God has made you to be in your core, in your private moments, in your thoughts and your feelings as well as your actions.  Where do you feel most centered, most whole, most true to yourself and to God?  Do you pay attention to where and when and with whom you feel most yourself?  Most whole?  Most real?

Of course, part of our identity does involve what we do.  Our choices in thoughts, words and actions, who we choose as friends, how we treat those who have less power and resources: all of that says a great deal about who we are.  And what we do for a living, as well as in our daily life are an important part of that.  If our jobs are a real vocation for us then that is a prime part of our identity.  If our relationships are central to who we are, then that is central to our identity.  If our words and what we produce come from a place of call, then that is central to our identity.  For many of us we are defined by our roles as workers of whatever kind, also as parents, as a spouse, as a Christian - whatever it is that tugs at your heart and calls from you all of your being.  But then, what happens when something changes?  What happens to someone whose primary identity is as a parent when a child dies, or someone who is first and foremost a husband or wife when a divorce happens, or to someone whose identity is so connected to their work when they have to change a career or even when they retire?  These things can be devastating not only because they are stressful, but because they challenge our very identity.

All of today’s scriptural passages talk about identity, though it may be hard to see.  In the story of Moses talking to God, Moses’ face is changed by the conversation he has with God.  It becomes shiny, we are told, in a way that scares the people around him enough that he finds it necessary to hide his face behind a veil.  To me, this is a story that emphasizes that when we are closest to God (and I believe that the closer we are to God, the closer we are to our true selves, to our true identity) people around us see that.  It changes how we look, changes how others see us, changes how we present ourselves and how others perceive us.  I think about how many women glow during pregnancy: the joy of carrying another life can change how we move in the world.  Also when someone is passionate about something, it is not uncommon to see them glowing with that excitement, or radiating enthusiasm while they talk about it or while they live it. 

The passage from Corinthians talks about the veils we put on our own hearts, the ways in which we hide.  And to me, this is a hiding not only from others, but from ourselves as well.  We are called to work on removing those veils so that we can be most genuinely ourselves.  Those veils are sometimes easier to see in other people.  The ways people put on speech patterns for particular jobs, for example, is often a way of “veiling” who they are.  Without any real words at all, I am certain if I were to mock the speech patters of newscasters for example, or flight attendants giving the safety speech, you would know what profession I was acting out.  My daughter wrote a scene for her school musical theater performance in which she substituted colors for real words and gave an entire dialogue in which there was no question what she was saying because of the way she said it, the way she used her words, the tone of her speech.  In that case it was just a conversation.  But we have affected speech patterns in many of our professions.  Many pastors, for example, have very specific preaching or speech patterns.  Some have particular phrasings or words that put a person in a specific category.  You can tell where a pastor stands theologically, for example, when their prayer beings, “Father, we just want to thank you, Lord…”  You can assume a whole mess of stuff about the person when they begin that way.  But is any of it true to the base identity of who someone is?  These recognized speech patterns or phrases: these are veils: They are things we put them on.  They are not who we are.

And finally we have the scriptural story of Jesus’ transfiguration: a moment, a time, when Jesus was completely seen as he was, like Moses, with the glory of God shining from him and on him.  For just a moment, he is seen in his greatness by his closest friends.  They are given the gift of seeing who and how Jesus truly is.  And their reaction is to be afraid.  Why?  Partly because when a person is seen as they really are, they can’t be completely boxed, which means they can’t be completely understood.  The disciples don’t understand what they are seeing, and that is scary for them, and would be scary for any of us.  Of course, the other part of this is that Jesus’ identity was so far beyond what they expected, that it was scary in this way as well. 

But real identity is scary.  The core of who we are, I would say, not just for Jesus, but for us too, is something difficult to present, something difficult to claim, difficult to comprehend, something we are constantly working towards, journeying into.  More than that, our true identities, below all the social niceties and roles, are powerful.  They are close to God, they lack fear, they can speak truth, and do what is necessary to make changes in the world.  God calls us to make that journey into being our genuine selves.  God wants us to be the most “us” that we can be; the most true to ourselves, the most real.  God wants us to be the us that God intends us to be.

But for today, as we think about Jesus and as we think about who we are called to be, my challenge for you is not just to intentionally walk that journey, but also to remember that when you talk to someone, when you drive next to someone, when you interact with anyone, strive to remember that you are not seeing all of who they are, you are not getting the full picture, and that helping someone else to walk towards wholeness involves looking deeper, for who they really are, while knowing you won’t see it all, looking for the best in them.

I think coming into our true natures is something like recognizing that our real natures can move mountains.  Our real beings, through love, kindness, grace and compassion can make a difference.  We don’t have to fight to change the world when we are whole.  Just being the people we are intended to be can and will change the world.  Amen.