This
feeling of resistance arose in me a couple of weeks ago one evening while
Philomena, and I were sitting in our family room.Several
baskets of folded laundry were sitting on the floor in front of us.Among
other things, I do the shopping and cooking and taking care of the garbage
and recycling.Philomena does the
cleaning and the laundry.She doesn’t
mind the washing and folding.She
does however have a strong dislike for putting the clothes away.
I
expressed surprise that she didn’t like that part of the job since it seems
to me that that might be the easiest and most satisfying part.This
wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation.Philomena
suggested if I wanted to understand why she didn’t like putting the laundry
away, that I should do it myself-- right now.I
suddenly felt a strong surge of resistance.
After
all, this wasn’t my job and I just wanted to help free Philomena from her
resistance.Now, suddenly I was in
the middle of my own resistance and trying to escape the situation.I
could have cheerfully said, “Yes.”I
could have generously offered to do it for a couple of weeks so I could
better understand what was so unpleasant about the job.
I
didn’t.
Encountering
resistance is a daily event for most of us, isn’t it?Resisting
consumes a fair amount of our energy avoiding things we’d rather not do,
postponing the inevitable if possible.I
know how much I’d rather avoid difficult situations or people than deal
with them.Even when I know intellectually
what the right thing to do is, my resistance can feel like an immobilizing
strait jacket.
What
is remarkable to me is the power of this elemental force as I’m feeling
it stop me in my tracks, usually against my better judgment.Even
when I know what I ought to do, what is the right thing to do, the resistance
shackles my ankle.If I were not
a Unitarian Universalist, I might be tempted to externalize my resistance
and to believe the devil was holding the other end of the chain.
If
it were only when discussing the laundry that my resistance comes up, I
think I could handle it.When I experience
this inner resistance struggling with issues of gender, race and class,
I become very concerned.Occasionally
my inner feelings do not match my outer commitments, my strong commitments
to dismantle sexism, racism, and all forms of oppression and build a more
harmonious world with peace, equity and justice for all.
Why
this is of paramount importance for people like me is because of my sex,
race and class.Being a white male
professional, society grants me significant power and privilege.What
I do with that power and privilege matters a great deal.What
I resist doing with that power and privilege can matter even more.
My
struggle as a white male fighting my resistance isn’t a traditional story
of seeking freedom or liberation.As
I read the Exodus story about Moses liberating the Jews from Egypt, if
I be honest, I recognize my social position in that story as aligned with
the Pharoah.(Andy played Pharoah
in the Passover Playlet last year--like father, like son)As
I read the Gospels about Jesus struggling against Roman oppression, my
social position is watching Jesus with the Romans.The
Anglo-Saxon American male rules the American empire.My
struggle is not to seize power, I already have it, but rather to learn
how to share it and to relinquish it.
The
power-holding characters in traditional stories usually are the villains
not the heroes.We don’t look up
to them, on the contrary, we revile them.More
often than not, power is pried from their cold, dead fingers, not magnanimously
shared or relinquished.Yet, the
peace- and justice-making white male also needs support to fight the status
quo … from the other side.
So
when I feel a separation between my inner feelings and my outer commitments,
where can I go for inspiration and guidance?Where
can I find a reservoir of spiritual strength and courage to face my resistance
and overcome it?What inspired text
or character can I learn from?
Well,
I think I’ve found a man and a story that can show me the way to overcome
my resistance.He may not work for
you but he works for me and touches my heart.His
name is Ebenezer Scrooge, as portrayed in Charles Dicken’s story, "A Christmas
Carol".
I
know Mr. Scrooge better than I care to admit.We
first meet him, in the story, in his counting house on a cold Christmas
Eve with a very small fire to keep warm.I
recognize Scrooge’s desire to conserve energy as I turn back the thermostat.I
watch my finances closely, cautiously accounting for every expense.I
have experienced avarice seeing piles of money ready to be counted.I
know the Scrooge impulse within me … and I’d wager a few others here this
morning know him too.
Thankfully,
love of money hasn’t poisoned my heart as it has Scrooge’s.He
is cruel and ungenerous to his employee Bob Cratchit.He
rejects the invitation of his faithful nephew who continues to care about
him even though other family members mock him.Scrooge
refuses to offer charity to the poor.Instead
of charity, he supports prisons and workhouses for the poor, which we might
also associate with our current state and national strategies for dealing
with the poor.
Scrooge
has absolutely no interest in changing.This
is why he is a good example for those of us interested in social change
for ourselves and others.Scrooge
fleshes out in the extreme the feeling of resistance I spoke of earlier,
a feeling of separation, rejection, and isolation.It
takes a visit from the other side of death to begin weakening his resistance.
Jacob
Marley, his deceased partner, is just like him.Even
though he has been dead for seven years, Marley’s name remains on their
business and Scrooge even answers to his name.To
see Marley’s suffering ghost shocks Scrooge even as his mind resists the
vision, claiming his experience is just “an undigested bit of beef, a blot
of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.There's
more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”His
resistance isn’t weakened, rather his denial just gets stronger.
The
vision that Scrooge cannot deny is his future suffering carrying fifty
or sixty fathoms of chain throughout eternity.He
begs Marley’s ghost to know how he can avoid this fate and learns of the
three spirits from past, present and future Christmases who will visit
him in the night.When Marley departs,
Scrooge immediately falls into a deep sleep of denial.One
of he ways I recognize subtle resistance in myself is a feeling of sleepiness
in the presence of that which I’d rather not see or hear.
Much
as Scrooge resists his next visitor, his unrecognized opportunity for salvation,
really, the ghost of Christmas Past arrives right on schedule.This
ghost takes him back to his boyhood days.This
visit animates emotions and feelings we might have believed were dead within
Scrooge.The heavy price of his
resistance has been the loss of his ability to feel.Yet
that loss is not entirely of his own creation.We
learn Ebenezer has been rejected by other children and rejected by his
own father.A victim of child abuse,
the pain of his childhood inclines him toward the direction of his later
life.Thinking of poor little Ebenezer
alone in the schoolhouse on Christmas Eve abandoned by his father touches
my heart.
Not
all of his youthful Christmases were miserable.We
learn of the happy Christmas during his apprenticeship with Fezziwig.He
has loved a woman of modest means.But
as he grows older, he walks away from these happier times and his sweetheart.Sadly,
penny by penny, he gradually closed her out of his heart, squeezed out
by his increasing attachment to security.In
his lover’s gentle words:
"You
fear the world too much…All your other hopes have merged into the hope
of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler
aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses
you."
Scrooge’s
search for gain has consumed him.Fearing
the world, he has chosen security over love.All
his other hopes, his nobler aspirations, one by one, were quenched.For
me, this is the most sobering part of the story.What
am I now serving?Am I serving my
fear or am I serving my love?What
is my master-passion?
When
looking at the world today, it is far too easy to follow Scrooge.It
is far too easy to see the prison and the workhouse as the solutions to
the problem of poverty, closing our hearts to the aspects of our economic
system that intentionally perpetuate poverty to provide a steady stream
of low wage workers.It is far too
easy to criminalize the social disintegration created by slavery in this
country.It is far too easy to focus
exclusively on security after an act of terrorism and resist recognizing
and feeling the harm the American vision of global economic, cultural and
military domination is doing to our planet.
Scrooge
is horrified by seeing his suffering, his lost joy, and the choices he
has made to follow gain.He begins
recovering his ability to feel and as he does, he feels tremendous pain.Right
under the surface of Scrooge’s resistance is enormous suffering. Again
and again he tells the spirit of Christmas Past to stop torturing him for
what he sees breaks his heart.Or
rather, breaks open his heart.
In
his pain are the first glimmers of redemption.As
he is willing to feel the suffering from his past, he recognizes and regrets
missed opportunities for generosity just the day before.Feeling
the pain of his past is not fruitless, for it is already effecting a change
within him.
If
I could just teach one lesson in my ministry this would be THE ONE.Feeling
physical, emotional, and spiritual pain is a necessary component of human
existence that cannot be removed from a happy, healthy, fulfilling and
satisfying life.Learning from our
pain and the pain of those around us can shape us in positive and constructive
ways that can reduce the suffering in the world.Just
the willingness to feel, begins the transformation.
Scrooge
continues to learn from his pain as he sees the results of his actions
with the aid of Christmas Present.He
sees the suffering of the Cratchit family and the joy he will miss with
his nephew’s family.The ghost of
Christmas Present offers Scrooge the tremendous opportunity to accurately
see himself as others see him.
This
is a gift I wish for all of us, to accurately see ourselves as others see
us.If we could see ourselves through
the eyes of the African American community.If
men could understand how they appear to women and women could understand
how they appear to men.If all of
us in America could understand what we look like in the eyes of Iraqis
and Afghanis, we would have much richer information from which to act.Not
that anyone has the correct point of view, rather, each has a piece of
the truth we need that can break open our hearts a little wider.
What
finally remakes Scrooge is seeing his future and recognizing the meaninglessness
of his existence.Critical to meaning
is loving and feeling loved.The
only appreciation expressed about him in his passing is by a debtor who
gets a reprieve on his loan as Scrooge’s estate is settled.When
Scrooge recognizes that he has left not a mark on the earth save his tombstone,
he feels compelled to change.He
wakes up Christmas morning, a new man.
And
how is he redeemed?By relinquishing
some of his wealth and sharing it with others.We
can argue reasonably about how to help those in need, whether by government
programs or by personal philanthropy.What
is unarguable in every religious teaching is that those of us who have
in abundance must relinquish some of what we have to aid those who are
suffering deprivation.
But
relinquishing wealth is not enough--the systems of oppression that maintain
the status quo must be given up as well.We
live in an exciting time in the history of civilization, with the potential
to actually make progress toward making that restructuring possible.The
tools for grassroots organizing have never been better understood.Social
theories for sharing power and reconciling old hatreds are being tested
and refined by UN peacekeeping missions around the world.The
global environmental movement and the anti-globalization movement are signs
of a growing resistance to systemic oppression.Feminist
social theorists urge us to give up the social model of ‘power over’ and
move to a model of ‘power with’ and ‘power to.’
The
ARISE congregationally based community organizing model of relational power
gathers the energy of outrage from the grassroots and focuses it to move
opportunities for systemic change.You
can participate in this revolutionary approach to justice making on Tuesday,
November 18th, at the Egg at 7:00pm.Sign
up today! (Check my column in Windows for more details.)
The
path to social transformation is found in the willingness to engage resistance
emotionally, intelligently and relationally rather than obeying its isolating
urges to fight or to run away.
That’s
what I’m going to do.I’ve already
promised Philomena that I will put the laundry away for a month so I can
better understand what makes the job unpleasant.I
encourage everyone here today to reflect on your resistance and find a
way to break open your heart a little wider.You
need not wait for ghosts to do it for you.
May
we all discover the truth that more life is not to be found in fear, more
life is only to be found in love.