Cheers!

This is the text of the reflections I offered at the congregation I serve on Sunday, July 15, 2018.

In the late 80s, early 90s, Sam, Diane, and, of course, Norm, were household names.   They were part of the TV “family” that gathered in a fictional Boston bar, and whose various ups and downs and absurdities formed the content of each episode.  The heart of the show, though, was the idea of a place, “where everybody knows your name.”  It wasn’t an instant hit, though.  Out of the 77 shows in its timeslot on the night of Cheers’ premier in September of 1982, it ranked 74th.  Thirty years later, however, roughly twenty years after the show ended, TV Guide put it at #11 on their list of the “60 Greatest Shows of All Time.”  For many, during the decade it was on, Cheers was the epitome of “Must See Thursday.”

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

And they're always glad you came;

You want to be where you can see,

Our troubles are all the same;

You want to be where everybody knows your name.

[Feeling a little nostalgic?  Of course, the fact that I think of this as bringing a contemporary reference into these reflections shows just how old I really am.]

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”   I come back to this quote from the English novelist Jane Howard over and over again.  “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

Since its inception in 1972, the General Social Survey has gathered data on contemporary American society in order to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes.  Hundreds of trends have been tracked in those years. Actually, since the GSS adopted questions from earlier surveys, trends can be followed for nearly 7 decades.

1985 was the first year that the GSS collected data on the number of confidants with whom Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks, as they’re called, were significantly smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people who said that there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled.  In her article, “The Loneliness of American Society,” Janice Shaw Crouse interpreted the data like this: 

“a quarter of the respondents — one in four — said that they have no one with whom they can talk about their personal troubles or triumphs. If family members are not counted, the number doubles to more than half of Americans who have no one outside their immediate family with whom they can share confidences. Sadly, the researchers noted increases in “social isolation” and “a very significant decrease in social connection to close friends and family.”

This has become almost a mantra:  we are the most connected society in the history of humanity, and also the loneliest.

Dr. Emma M. Seppälä is Associate Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project at Yale University.  She wrote an article for Psychology Today titled, “Connect To Thrive:  Social Connection Improves Health, Well-Being & Longevity.”  In it she wrote:

Social connection improves physical health and psychological well-being. One telling study showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. On the flip side, strong social connection leads to a 50% increased chance of longevity.  Social connection strengthens our immune system […], helps us recover from disease faster, and may even lengthen our life.   [She notes research by Steve Cole, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the UCLA School of Medicine, which shows that there are actually genes impacted by social connection, and that these also code for immune function and inflammation.]

It’s easy to scape goat technology – the rise of social media, in particular – to explain the seeming conundrum of our being connected yet alone.  “All that time spent on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat,” many people say, “and maybe particularly all the MMORPGs, those Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, that “all the kids” seem so obsessed with, look like they’re providing community, yet it’s a very shallow kind of community.”  (I said, “all the kids” are obsessed with these games, yet there are quite a few adults who are massively pumped and have already bought their Season Five Battle Pass in hopes of finding out just what the heck is up with those cracks in the sky in Fortnite.  Or so I’ve heard.  But I digress.)  It’s common to hear people opine that social media offers only pseudo-connectivity, a mere simulacrum of the real thing.

Not so fast, other experts say.  A study carried out at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, reported in Science Daily, observed, “Training older people in the use of social media improves cognitive capacity, increases a sense of self-competence and could have a beneficial overall impact on mental health and well-being.”  And a 2010 study led by Abilene Christian University found that, “students who returned to school after freshman year had significantly more Facebook friends and wall posts than those who didn't return.”  Reporting on it for Wired, Brian Chen wrote, “Rather than being an escape from reality, social media may mirror real life: More actively connected students on Facebook were most likely also connectors in the real world.  He quotes the lead on the research saying, "The study was able to show that these students who are more active on Facebook are also out there getting involved, making new friends and taking part of activities that the university provides for them."

So what is this all about, this apparent fact that we, as a society, are increasingly disconnected even in our overly-connected world?  I’m going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that at least part of the reason is that relationships – real, deep, meaningful relationships – are a lot of work.  And I think they’re hard in at least three ways.

First, relationships take time.  Real, deep, genuine, heart-to-heart relationships don’t appear suddenly, out of nowhere, fully formed from the head of Zeus (as it were); they don’t get heated up in a microwave, they need to simmer, to slow cook.  Part of it is longevity – our deepest relationships are often with people who’ve known for a long, long time.  They’re with people with whom we don’t have to recount the details of our lives again and again, because these friends have been there through the good times and the bad.  This means they also take time invested.  Being there through the good times and the bad times requires us to actually be there through the good times and the bad times, and that takes time.

Oh, I know that a lot of folks have friends with whom we’re in touch only sporadically yet with whom, when we are in touch, it seems that we pick up right where we left off as if no time had passed at all.  Of course, usually such relationships were already deep, yet often these aren’t people who’d meet the criteria the GSS uses in their studies.  I once heard the kind friendship the GSS is talking about as people I know I could call in the middle of the night and who would drop everything and get in their cars or on a plane to go from wherever they are to wherever I am in order to be with me.  That significantly lowers the number of people on my list.

A second reason real, deep, genuine, heart-to-heart relationships are hard is because they require commitment.  They require us to hang in there even when the relationship gets strained.  We have to be there for each other “through thick and thin” not only in relation to the world around us, but the world between us as well.  The “good times and the bad times” doesn’t just refer to the promise that you will be there for me when I experience good times and bad times, and that I’ll do the same for you.  It means that we’re there for and with each other when we, together, when our relationship is going through good times or bad ones. To take something I often say to my kids, it means continuing to love each other even when we don’t particularly like each other very much.

And that’s hard, isn’t it?  That’s really hard.  When you think that I’ve offended you; when I think that you’re being unfair and nasty to me.  When I’ve hurt you, and you’ve hurt me.  I’m not talking about obviously unhealthy, abusive relationships.  Let’s be clear about that.  I’m not talking about “sticking it out” through any kind of abuse “for the sake of the relationship.”  There’s a power imbalance there, and can be real danger, and that’s not what I’m talking about.  (I would argue, that’s not really – can’t really be – the kind of deep and genuine relationship we’re talking about here in the first place.)  I’m talking about otherwise healthy, equal, mutual relationships which have stood the test of time yet which are, right now, strained to the point perhaps even of breaking.  I’m talking about taking a deep breath and leaning into that discomfort, knowing that the relationship is, ultimately, worth it.

Because that experience of someone knowing our name, really knowing who we are, and always being glad we came, no matter what’s going on with me or between us – that’s a deep human longing.  More than that, it’s a deep human need.

And it’s one of the reasons for faith communities.  It’s one of the reasons that people come together in places like this – we’re looking for a place in which we feel known, seen for who we are, appreciated, and loved.  We’re looking for a place, and a people, in which, and by which, we feel that we belong.  And think about it – if a real, deep, genuine, heart-to-heart relationship is really hard work between two people, then it’s got to be a whole lot harder among hundreds.  The complexity, the challenges, the opportunities for disappointments and pain, the work of it, is all exponentially increased.

Those of you who have been waiting for me to name the third reason I think relationships in which we’re really known are such hard work, here it is.  Truth be told, they’re scary.  For many of us it is so, so, very, very scary.  Because being known, deeply and fully, requires us to open ourselves up deeply and fully.  It requires me to really trust showing you who I really am, allowing you to see who I really am down beneath what I show to the world; it requires my showing you the truths of who I am that I don’t want anyone to see. 

A few years ago, when we did the Beloved Conversations program here, quite a number of us took part in the weekend workshop with which it begins.  The last exercise of the first evening had a profound impact on a lot of us, I’d dare say on most of us.  I won’t go through the whole thing this morning, but suffice it to say that it brought us in deep enough to look at, and name, our deepest, most fundamental fear.  We did this on our own, but then we were asked, if we were willing, to share them with one another.  And here, in this sanctuary, with the protective shroud of nighttime’s darkness around us, person after person dared to speak aloud their deepest fear.  These were folks many of us would identify as leaders in the congregation, people we’d identify as those we admire, and some we might say we aspire to be more like.  And nearly every one of these strong, wise, successful people said nearly exactly the same thing:  “I’m afraid that if people really knew me, they wouldn’t like me.”  I’m afraid that if people really knew me, really knew “my name,” really knew me deeply, genuinely, and in a truly heart-to-heart way, they wouldn’t like me.  I wouldn’t be accepted. I wouldn’t be loved.

And that’s the Catch-22, isn’t it?  In our desire to belong, to be deeply known, we hide sometimes great swaths of ourselves for fear of being rejected, being told that we don’t belong.  The third thing that makes these real relationship we seek so very, very hard is that we want to be known, and yet we don’t want to risk actually being known.  We don’t think we can risk it.

So here’s the thing – to the extent that we do risk it, to the extent that we do allow both the good times and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad times to have equal freedom between and among us, to that extent and only to that extent will our relationships be the kind of real, deep, genuine, heart-to-heart relationships we want and which, ultimately, we need (not just for the sake of our immune and inflammation related genes, but for our souls).

This can be such a community, my friends.  This has been such a community for many of us over the years, and hard as it can be to believe at times, I truly believe that this is such a community right now.  Challenges, difficulties, disagreements – even hard and harsh ones – are not necessarily a sign that things are going wrong.  It’s what we do with them that determines what they mean for us.  If we lean into them; if we commit ourselves to sticking with it and each other; if we do lean into the discomfort (while clearly rejecting any abusiveness we might see); if we remember that the relationships that are this community are, ultimately, more important than the transitory happiness and satisfaction of any one of us; if, in other words, we do the hard, hard work real relationships require, we can, we will, prove to one another and to ourselves that even when we do show each other who we really are, we will be accepted and loved for who we are.  This then will be for us – each of us and all of us; you, me, and those who’ve not yet even found this community – this will then truly be a place where everybody knows our name, and really, truly are glad we came.  It is my hope that each of us can find even a taste of that here, and that each of us will do what we can to ensure that this is such a place for others.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Blessing of Belonging

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, May 1st, 2016 at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist.    You can listen to it here.

One of the prized possessions of our congregation in Concord, Massachusetts, is a letter from Henry David Thoreau. I thought of it this week, knowing that today we would be welcoming our newest formalize members. Thing I was thinking of is the letter Thoreau wrote to the Concord church in which he resigned his membership. This champion of the individual said, essentially, that he did not believe in belonging to groups, and that he would resign from the human race if he could.  Luckily the people we recognized today don't feel that way.

There's something I’ve said to every person who has joined any of the congregation's I've served. Two things, actually. First, I say congratulations. Congratulations because you’ve just joined a really cool community.  (I only serve really cool communities so I can always say that.)  The other thing I always say is thank you, because by formalizing your membership you've made this community cooler still.

With all due respect to Mr. Thoreau, belonging is a good thing. It's a necessary thing, actually. Carol Gilligan, the feminist psychologist who first earned notice from her challenge to the developmental theories of Lawrence Kohlberg, argued that the development of identity does not, as prevailing theories even still have it, come from the process of individuation, of separating ourselves from others. Rather, Dr. Gilligan and others asserted, we build our identity through our relationships.

My friend Takeo Fujikura has told me that this is an understanding that's built into the Japanese language. Takeo said that in Japanese there is no first person singular pronoun, no way to say I. More accurately, there's no one way to say I, there are eight. That's because we don't have just one identity -- I am in some very real ways different when I'm with my friends than when I'm with my parents, or when I'm with my child. Who I am depends on who I'm with, if you will, or with whom I'm in relationship.  There is a blessing in belonging -- an affirmational gift.  Belonging helps to make us who we are.

So when someone takes the step of formalizing their relationship with our congregation -- or any group, really -- we are saying something about who we are and who we want to be.  And as we change our relationship with that community, what we can say about who we are changes.

Last week we celebrated this beautiful planet on which, as a part of which, we live.  And we lifted up those who are committed to her health. Yesterday a number of us joined with UUs from something like five or six congregations in our area to talk about spiritual resources for doing anti-racism work. At the beginning of the service I highlighted the work of our Emotional Wellness ministry, and in a moment I'm going to steer this sermon toward the topics of addiction treatment and elder care. Ours is a congregation that's involved in working for justice in a whole lot of areas, and many of us have no doubt looked at all there is to do in this world and wished that we could resign from the human race. I know I have. Stop the world, I want to get off.

A few weeks back at IMPACT's pre-Action rally, the Rev. Brenda Brown Grooms offered the reflection. (Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I'll be offering the opening reflection at the Nehemiah action itself in two days.). One of the things that Pastor Brenda used as part of the scaffolding of her talk was actually something said by a Unitarian. The Unitarian preacher Edward Everett Hale. I've said it here so often that some of you could no doubt say it with me:

“I am only one,
but still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
but still I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
(And sometimes that last line is remembered as “I must not refuse to do something that I can.”)

So this was part of the tapestry Pastor Brenda wove that night. I can't do everything, but I can do something, and I really ought to do that something that I can do.  But then she added a nice touch. "But oh,” she said, “how much sweeter it is when we do that thing together.”  And isn't that right?  One of my heroes, and a friend of my mom’s actually, the woefully under-celebrated Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray liked to say that one person, plus one typewriter, constitutes a movement.  And there's truth I that. Dated, perhaps, but absolutely true.  No question about it. And yet ... and yet … isn't it better when we're not alone, if we're writing, and marching, and teaching, and working for justice together with others?  There is a blessing -- an affirmation all gift -- in belonging to a community working for justice together.

In two nights, on Tuesday May 3^rd, the largest public gathering in the Charlottesville area of any kind, and the largest interfaith gathering in central Virginia will take place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center. (Doors open at 6:00, by the way.). Roughly 2000 people from 27 faith communities will join together to experience and to be the blessing that comes from belonging. Mennonites, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Methodists, Muslims, Lutherans, United Church of Christ, Episcopalians, non-denominational Christians, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and …well … us -- folks who might well not come together for any other reason but for our belief in justice. And there is most definitely a blessing in our coming together – a blessing for each and all of us who create this faith community of faith communities, and through that blessing – that affirmational gift – we are able to be a blessing to the larger community.  The blessing, the gift, for us is the affirmation that together we can do great things, and that the distinctions that so often divide us are nowhere near as important as those things that unite us.  The blessing for the wider community is the affirmation that the struggles any one of us face are struggles for us all, and that no one will be left out of the Beloved Community.

This year IMPACT has been continuing the work begun last year to create a local residential treatment option for women struggling with addictions to alcohol and drugs. Last year this was an identifiable need, an aching need, yet it just didn't seem possible that the will for this solution existed among those with the power to make something like this come about. By joining ourselves one to another at last year's Nehemiah Action, there are now plans, commitments, and the cash needed to build and operate a local center that should break ground this fall and be completed in the summer of 2017, serving up to 20 women a year without the need to travel long distances and be separated from their children.  Think of all those lives that will be touched by this.

Each year a new theme is discerned through a process involving listening circles in each of the member communities, with the ideas and concerns named in each being sifted and weighed until one rises to the top. This year it is the out of control cost of long term care for elders that became our focus -- a cost that averages 1 ½ times their average annual income.   This is unconscionable. Unbelievable, though, is that none of the agencies that are working to provide help to elders can say, specifically, the extent of the need – none knows how many people are in need of services yet are also unable to afford them. 

It’s clear that there’s a problem, and it’s clear that there are some extraordinarily caring and committed people working to address this problem, yet maybe in part because they are working so hard to address the problem none of them know exactly how large the problem is.  So IMPACT – which is, after all, us and those other faith communities working together – is proposing the creation of an entity to study the depth and breadth of the unmet need.  This, it seems to us, would of tremendous benefit to those already hard at work, and would provide a first step in developing new and creative ways of ensuring that all of the elders in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area can access the assistance that they need.

Why do the folk in our congregation who are most involved with the justice ministry of IMPACT try so hard to get you to turn out for the Nehemiah Action (on Tuesday, this Tuesday, May 3^rd, at the MLK Performing Arts Center with the doors opening at 6:00)?  Simply because there is a blessing in belonging to a great assembly gathered to see that The Good prevails.  It’s not much to ask – one evening of our time – yet to those women, their children, their partners, their friends, to all those whose lives will be immeasurably improved because of this treatment center, its importance can simply not be overstated.  And I could decide to stay home, thinking that my presence in one of those seats doesn’t really matter much … aren’t we hearing a lot these days how about wrong, and potentially seriously problematic, such thinking can be? 

Others have already done the heavy lifting.  Our presence – yours and mine – (this Tuesday, May 3^rd, at the MLK Performing Arts Center with the doors opening at 6:00) – is our declaration that we have not resigned our membership in the human race, that we do formalize our membership with those whose voices often go unheard and whose needs are so often, all too often, unseen.  During the offering we’ll have someone passing out tickets to those who are both feeling inspired and are able to come to the Action.  If you take a ticket, please swing by the IMPACT table in the Social Hall after the service so that they can know to expect you.

My friends, I really hope that I have not guilted anyone this morning, yet I know that this is one thing I can do.  This is one thing you can do.  This is one thing we can do.  I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday night.

Pax tecum,

Revwik

What Do We Reveal?

This is the text of the sermon I preached on Sunday, August 31, 2015 to the congregation of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.  You can listen to a podcast if you'd like.

"I tell passer-bys what I have eaten, how I feel, what I've done the night before, and what I will do for the rest of the day."  Sounds about right, doesn't it?  I know that there are a number of you all who have made a conscious decision not to join the Facebook society, but it's estimated that worldwide more than a billion of us are active at least monthly. Over 1 billion people. That's only a couple of hundred thousand less than the population of India, and roughly one-seventh of the population of the entire world!  Facebook reports that last year there were over 1 trillion "likes" and 219 billion photos uploaded to the site ... mostly of cats. (I made that last part up.) It's interesting to note that this phenomena seems to cross racial and ethnic categories. According to data from a Pew Research study, people who identify as Hispanic or Latina use Facebook at a rate of about 10% higher than those who identify as White, and they use it about 5% more than people who identify as African American or Black. (That'd be, respectively, 85%, 75%, and 70% of their total population in the U.S.)

We live in an age when it is routine, even expected, that people will, as we heard before, "[Share] their opinions on every subject that interests [them] ... whether it interests [the people around them] or not."  I’ve  heard this, what I’ll call “FaceBook phenomenon,” blamed on an inherent narcissism. I've heard it said that our obsession with the smallest details of celebrities' lives makes it only natural that we should come to think that such details of our own lives might be important to others. I've heard it suggested that as the number and depth of real-world relationships are declining-- which they demonstrably are, at least within the dominant culture and those most affected by it -- I've heard it suggested that as real-world relationships are in decline there is a growing hunger for a feeling of connection ... even if only with that kid from high school that you don't really remember but who will "like" your posts because they're hungry for connection, too.


Yet whether we  use social media a little, a lot, or none at all, things like Facebook and Twitter only amplify and exacerbate an issue that we humans have always had to face -- how much of ourselves is it good -- safe, wise -- to share with others and how much ought we to keep private?  Perhaps even more important for us to consider, what does what we reveal reveal?

Those who were here last week heard the Rev. Jamie McReynolds cover some of this same ground, although from a slightly different perspective and along a somewhat different trajectory.  You might say that this morning is "part two" of what Jamie began last week.  I even want to hold up one of the same illustrations he used.  He noted that perhaps the most common moment in which we are called on to decide what and how much to reveal is that moment when someone asks, "How are you?"  
I found a website for the Instituto Interglobal that has information about culturally appropriate greetings from around the world. (It's really kind of cool to see them all laid out there.)  Here's what it says about the United States:

"Americans typically greet one another with a handshake. It is common to ask, 'How are you?' or 'How's it going?’  But most people don't take the question seriously, or answer it with sincere honesty. It's basically a greeting that comes without expectation."  The entry concludes, "You should not answer the question 'How are you today?’ with a list of problems. The proper response is, 'I'm fine, how are you?’"

The "proper" response is, "I'm fine," with the clear implication that this is the "proper" response regardless of its veracity. There was a great guy who worked at the UUA when I did and with whom I almost always rode the elevator in the morning.  His response to that "typical" greeting?  He'd say, "I'm above ground."  My neighbor, a man in his 90s, simply says, "vertical."  These are both non-specific, yet totally true, answers, and neither of them reveal ... anything.

Or do they?  My neighbor’s answer of “vertical” tells me that he has a sense of humor, and also that he’s well aware of how, at his age, he might very well not be able to get out of bed in the morning.  Many of his friends can’t.    His seemingly non-revealing answer tells me that his physical functioning is important to him and that he knows it won’t last forever.  (He’s also said to me, “any day I’m upright is a good day.)

And the guy on the elevator?  The guy who’s “above ground”?  Maybe I’m reading too much into all of this, but I get a message from him too – a message of resignation.  An African American man in his mid-60s, working as a custodian in a predominantly white institution I can hear in his response, perhaps, an acknowledgement that he doesn’t greet each day as a plethora of new possibilities.

It is, of course, quite possible that I am entirely wrong and that these people don’t intend to be sending those message at all.   It could be total projection on my part.  Even so, though, it points out that even when we are trying to be neutral in our exchanges, even when we are trying to be non-committal, we do, nonetheless, communicate something.  Whether we choose to reveal ourselves or choose not to, that choice reveals something.

So the real question we all need to wrestle with – dance with, if you prefer – is not so much whether to reveal ourselves but, rather, what we are going to reveal.  And I’ll repeat something I said earlier:  “whether we use social media a little, a lot, or none at all, things like Facebook and Twitter only amplify and exacerbate an issue that we humans have always had to face.”  I think discussion and debate about the “FaceBook phenomenon” really obscures the thing that’s harder for us to deal with.

You may not know that our Worship Weavers actively collaborate with me in shaping these sermons.  Our work together is kind of like a sermonic writers’ workshop.  And in looking at an earlier draft of this sermon one suggested that we focus so much on whether or not FaceBook or Twitter are good or bad things because they are still relatively young tools, and not always used well. Specifically, he said, we dwell way too much on the "media," and not enough on how we want to use it to be "social."

And that’s really it:  our desire – actually, our need – to connect with others.  We human beings are social creatures by nature.  (Yes, even us introverts!)  We need connections, we need relationships, as much as we need air, food, and water.  These modern media are really just new tools to facilitate this connection.  In one age you could really only connect with the people you could physically interact with.  Then it became possible to have relationships over great distances through mail (if you had patience).  Then came telegraphs.  Phones wired into our homes.  Mobil phones.  Facebook and FaceTime.  As one Weaver put it, “Social media has us connecting with people from across the decades and across the country, and around the world.”  Whether those connections are superficial or are deep is not dependent on the media – it’s dependent on how we use it.

Something Christine said is so good I want to quote it at length:

While there are real life in-person support groups, and while there are professional networking groups both online and in person, there can be something really special about disclosing something about yourself and learning that someone you have already developed a relationship with "gets" this aspect of your life.  If you use Facebook, etc., to sometimes share authentic – and not so perfect – aspects of your life, you can go way beyond the superficial “highlight reel” experience. [You know, that sense the lives we see our friends living on their Facebook pages are so much more fun and interesting than the day-to-day, minute-by-minute lives we live.  That’s because, it’s been said, Facebook often functions as a kind of “highlight reel” of a person’s life.]  You may find that the connecting that you do on social media can actually be quite rich and rewarding. Of course, to do that requires the risk taking of exposing the NON-highlight reel. Real, rather than reel. 

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?  Really exposing ourselves is a risk.  I know that other people have a certain perception of me, and I absolutely know that there’s a perception I want people to have of me.  And I know that if I reveal too much of those parts of me that don’t reinforce these views … well … that that can be dangerous.

Here’s a personal example.  Over the years I have been intentionally very open about the fact that I have a mental illness, that I live with depression.  Many people in the congregations I've served have been tremendously grateful to me for doing so -- especially those who have mental illnesses of their own and know the stigma and isolation that often come with it.  I even heard recently about a group of Unitarian Universalist seminarians in California who were talking among themselves about their worries that their mental illness might affect their careers.  At one point, I’m told, someone lifted up my name as an example of someone who has modeled open, honest, and appropriate self-revelation.  As Jamie reminded us last week – you never know how what you do here might have impacts unimagined over there.

I am also aware, however, that in each of the congregations I've served there’ve been people who treated me differently than they would have if I hadn’t been so open: people who hesitated to reach out to me when in need of some pastoral or spiritual support because they didn't want to "burden" me; people who’ve tried to shield me from negative things for fear that my depression might get triggered and even push me to suicide.

But here’s the thing:  my Unitarian Universalist faith tells me that I have inherent worth and dignity just as I am.  Just as I am.  All of me.  Not just the “acceptable” parts.  My Unitarian Universalist faith tells me that I don’t need to earn it; that I don’t need to conform to some image or other to deserve it; that I don’t lose it if I struggle, or fear, or fall down, or fail.  In fact, our faith says just the opposite – that it’s in sharing our whole selves with one another that Beloved Community can be formed, and only in sharing our whole selves.  Anything else is pretense, and the pretense of sharing is not really sharing; the pretense of connection is not real connection.  Just like, I suppose, junk food isn’t real food – it tastes good, and it’s awfully well packaged, but it doesn’t really nourish.  Same here.

Now … am I saying that we should share everything with everybody?  Absolutely not.  Let me be clear – there are people in our lives with whom it could be particularly unsafe to share much of anything beyond, "fine, and how are you?"  What I am saying, however, is that each of us have things we are currently keeping to ourselves which it might be good both for ourselves and for the people around us if we shared them.  I am saying that when we only share our “highlight reels,” we aren’t really sharing our true selves.  Don’t forget:  even our choice to avoid revealing ourselves does, in fact, reveal things about us.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know that what we are revealing to others is the truth?  The truth about who we are?  Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when we feel someone else’s acceptance of us we can be confident that they are accepting us – as we are – and not just the pretense of who we think we should be?

The Sharing of Joys and Sorrows is coming up.  What would it be like to open up a part of yourself you’ve been afraid to show?  In the Social Hall after service there are sign-up sheets for a new year of our Covenant Groups – our small group ministry in which people gather twice-monthly with just a few others to share about their lives.  If you haven’t experienced the magic of a Covenant Group yet, why not sign up?  (And if you have and are returning this year, why not commit to going into it even more deeply than you have before?)  The Social Hour stands before us … could you dare open up a real conversation with someone?  Maybe even someone you don’t know well?  Don’t know well … yet?

The questions comes back to you, to me – What do we reveal?  What should we reveal?  Do we dare reveal who we really are?  I can promise you that if you do you’ll still, as we say, “have a place here.  [Because we all] belong here.”

Pax tecum,

RevWik