The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Plan B

A Sermon by The Rev. Connie Yost

UU Congregation of Salem

August 30, 2009

Last January I went on vacation with a friend to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico .  I have been going there every couple of years since 1979.  It is an old colonial city, always popular with Americans, though in years past it was the artists and beatniks and hippies who hung out -- or dropped out -- there.  The last ten years has brought an explosion in the North American population, and new housing developments now cling to the hillsides like brightly colored caramels.  And the prices -- oh my!   My fantasy of possibly retiring there someday ran headlong into this new economic reality.  So I decided that maybe I won't own a house there, but rent a room from a Mexican family.  Or maybe I'll live further out of town, where the properties are cheaper.  Or maybe….   My companion had tons of ideas for me, and her enthusiasm was contagious.  Seeing San Miguel through her first-time visitor eyes helped me focus less on what I feel has been lost over the years, and more on the charm, graciousness and resilience of the Mexican people, which never seems to change.

I don 't know why change is always difficult, no matter how welcome or beneficial it turns out to be.   How are you doing on your New Year's resolutions?  Do you even remember what they were?  If the research is correct, you would have aban don ed most, if not all, of your New Year's resolutions by the end of January!  I know that I make -- and break -- the same New Year's resolutions year after year.

I've been doing some reading and thinking about what it takes to handle change, both change that we want to effect, and change that is thrust upon us.

New research shows that the change we want to effect -- like losing weight, exercising and eating healthier -- is often thwarted by forces within us.  In the book Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lehey propose that our problem isn't lack of willpower.  We resist making the changes we truly want to make because we are protecting ourselves in areas where we feel vulnerable.  They theorize that when we try to make a change, the anxiety that always hums as low-level background noise in our brain revs up, and we instinctually seek our old ways in an effort to deal with the anxiety.  So, if I want to lose weight, Kegan and Lehey would ask me to think about what would happen if I actually ate less and exercised more to achieve my goal.  My anxiety is that I might feel hungry, and I might be embarrassed at the gym.  After identifying my anxiety-producing assumptions, I next test them in small steps.  Can I eat less and not be hungry?  Can I find a gym where I feel comfortable?

Kegan and Lehey point out that most of us don't realize we have this anxiety, as we tend to think of anxiety as something dramatic like panic attacks or stage fright.  But their research found that we are hard-wired to have this low-level anxiety, though most of us have found ways to manage it in everyday situations.  For example, are you a people-pleaser?  Do you need everyone to like you?  Are you fearful that people may not think you are a good -- or good-enough person?  Then likely you have adapted behaviors that give people what they want.

But while you are managing your underlying anxiety by giving people what they want, you may be thwarting your own goals.  I may fear confrontation with my boss, but if I never speak to her about what I want to happen in my work, I will never achieve what I want.  And if I look hard at why I have this particular anxiety, I may realize that I have a number of assumptions about The Way Things Are.  These assumptions are often learned in childhood, but they aren't necessarily true in adult life.  My boss is not the stern disciplinarian authority figure I grew up with, but a supportive, open person.

As hard as it is to consciously effect a change, it is even harder to have change thrust upon us.  I don't know why change comes as a surprise so much of the time.  It doesn't take too long into adulthood to realize that we don't have control over most things that go on in the world, in our bodies, and in our relationships.  I think we know this, but we seem to have an overwhelming need to pretend it isn't true.  Maybe this is one way we keep that low-level anxiety under control, by pretending that we can analyze, control and change things to suit us.  Well, obviously the universe has other ideas.

I remember spending quite a bit of time in seminary pondering whether the universe was inherently flawed.  Whether there is a God or not, I worried, why is everything so impermanent?  Why isn't every day 80 degrees, sunny, no humidity, no wars, no earthquakes, and no death?  I guess that was what the authors of Genesis had in mind in the creation story with the Garden of Eden.  Why can't we live in a perpetual Garden of Eden?

After coming up with absolutely no answers, I abandoned the question as a waste of time.  I decided to stop worrying about something that has no answer and start grappling with the true Way Things Are. 

I like the way psychotherapist David Richo[1] sums up reality:

            1.         Everything changes and ends

            2.         Things do not always go according to plan

            3.         Life is not always fair

[I have a joke for you:  What is fair?  It's a place pigs compete for ribbons.]

            4.         Pain is part of life

            5.         People are not loving and loyal all the time

Simple statements, yet hard to fully accept. 

I find it difficult to understand why pain is part of life.  I know it is true, but I want to know why.  All faith traditions affirm that meaningful growth comes out of pain.  But why?  That is a mystery.  Best to spend my time managing my reaction to the pain.  Buddhism affirms that life is difficult, that suffering is part of the human condition.  We all go through this many times in our life.  How do we deal with the pain?  Do we simply feel it as it is?  Or do we make it worse by giving in to fear, blame, shame and attachment to a certain outcome?

[I have another joke for you.  Why don't Buddhists vacuum in the corners?  Because they have no attachments.]

Last fall's rapid decline of the stock market was a shocker for many of us.  I certainly felt a lot of pain when I finally had the courage to look at what had happened to my investments.  I felt intense loss and grief.  But then I heard people talking about how they knew it was going to happen, so they had gotten out of the stock market months before.  I felt so stupid that I didn't know it was going happen, and blamed myself for the mess I was in.  But then I realized that nobody really could have known exactly what was going to happen.  Hindsight is always the only way to be certain about anything!  I worked my way through the pain of the loss, let go of beating myself up about it, and got busy formulating a new investment stategy.  I finally adjusted to this new economic reality, trying not to think of "what was," instead choosing to live each day in "what is."

Sometimes people say that we are never given more pain than we can bear.  I think it is more accurate to say that we have the capacity to bear tremendous pain, depending on our inner strength and resources.  Holocaust survivors like Victor Frankl are a testament to the possibility of surviving pain and finding meaning in even the most horrendous conditions of suffering.  What is key is how we draw on our inner resources, strengthened by our spiritual practices. 

Frankl wrote that "If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life – an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival."[2]

Spiritual practices are what keep us connected to a coherent sense of ourself and our place in the universe.   They can be anything that draws us into a sense of passion, creativity, love, or peace.  Meditation, prayer, gardening, nature, exercise, art, music, poetry, and humor can be spiritual practices.  Relationships that nurture us are crucial to developing our inner resources. 

In Christian contemplative tradition, prayer is thought of as looking at things with a "third eye."  Our set of two eyes tends to fear and wants to judge, analyze, fix, control, and complain about things, seeing things as either/or.   This type of seeing and thinking cannot comprehend concepts such as love, suffering, death, God, and eternity.  It is only with higher level thinking, using the "third eye" are we capable of synthesizing the whole picture, and therefore able to see God and Mystery.

In my work as Hospice Chaplain, I support many family members as they work through their grief during their loved one's final days and death.  I've found that one of the most difficult things any of us experience in life is processing our intense feelings of anger and resentment.  We are instructed that we must forgive, and while I think that is a fine goal to shoot for as an end result, too often people feel guilty or uncomfortable with their anger and rush to forgive without really exploring what the anger and resentment are all about. 

I am struck more and more how often we get angry when we feel our inalienable rights have been violated.  Somehow it doesn't seem fair that our loved one has died when others are still living.  It isn't fair that they got sick and needed care for years and years.  It isn't fair that they were an alcoholic and made life difficult for everyone in the family.  I agree.  It isn't fair.  But maybe life isn't fair.  Maybe life is difficult.  And maybe rather than trying to reconcile why these bad things happened -- thinking -- Am I being punished?  Did I create this? Maybe instead of that, we can listen to what our anger is trying to tell us.  What do we wish had happened differently?  What are our fears?  What can be affirmed in the midst of this difficult situation?  Where is there a glimmer of light, love, creativity, hope? 

Life may not guarantee us inalienable rights, but it always offers us new possibilities. I think it is in facing adversity that we get a chance to get clear on our priorities.  Resilience lies in being able to accept not knowing what might happen, and to find hope in the uncertainty.

I think that hope comes in many ways -- by remembering the strength we had in the past, by seeking support from others, by finding meaning in what has happened, by regaining our sense of humor, by reaching out to others, by moving our body, by experiencing nature, by the arts, by our faith, and by embracing paradox:  I can be sad about the state of things and hopeful about my future.

James Yorke said that the most successful people are those who are good at plan B.   When my own life went into freefall a couple of years ago, I found a lot of truth and comfort in the bumper sticker saying "life happens while you are making other plans."  I'm a firm believer in planning, but I also know that more than likely, I will have to change my plans.

One of the most powerful coping mechanisms that I have learned is just to accept whatever is happening as what needs to happen right now.  Enlightened people in all faith traditions and eras have practiced this kind of acceptance, and turned to their higher power for sustenance and guidance. 

Byron Katie spent years debilitated by clinical depression and discovered many spiritual truths in her forays into the California desert.  She tells the story of being held at gunpoint, and in that moment she felt compassion for the man holding the gun, for the suffering that she observed in him.  She wasn't worried about what was happening to her, because she had come to know that the heart of the universe is love, which never changes.   She knew that what was happening to her right now was reality.  She says it's crazy to argue with what is.  What we call "bad" and what we call "good" both come from the same place, the source of everything.  It embraces everything.  Its nature is love.[3]

Physist Stephen Hawking says that scientists are trying to find a complete theory of how the universe works, because, he says "we want to understand the universe and feel we are not just the victims of dark and mysterious forces.  If we understand the universe, then we control it, in a sense."  But scientists are still a ways away from figuring all that out.  He writes that "The loss of particles and information down black holes meant that the particles that came out were random. One could calculate probabilities, but one could not make any definite predictions. Thus, the future of the universe is not completely determined by the laws of science.  God still has a few tricks up his sleeve."[4]

Whether you believe in God or not, I think it's a good idea to greet the day with a sense of humor.[5] Who knows what will happen?  Just be ready with Plan B, C and D.

Amen and Blessed Be.