Minding the Gap

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

11/04/01

 

Meditation

Life of our shared life…

Lifted by the balmy breezes

Of a glorious autumn

Not yet past

Our days continue to unfold…

Days not all that unlike those that have passed before…

Days of beauty and blessings,

Days of uncertainty and danger,

Days of perseverance and possibility.

 

This week our evening sky was lit

By a magnificent glow…

A bright disc of craters and moon dust,

reflecting the same sunshine

That was illuminating battles

Oceans away…

battles leaving behind their own craters and dust.

May the skies above that troubled land

And those troubled people

Soon be free of fireworks…

The explosive forces of wealth and will

which seek an assurance of safety

that may never be obtained.

 

With the leaves still falling

And the bombs still flying

Our world continues to be stripped of its color and its candor

May we, in turn, hold on to our commitments

Before they too fall away

Commitments to peace and justice and compassion

Commitments to the preservation and protection

Of a world community

No longer too far away to ignore.

Commitments to the motivating force of love

That can transform our lives
and the lives of those with whom we share this planet.

 

Let us be silent for a time as we breathe the common breath,

The breath of life.

(silence)

Amen.

 

 

Reading

“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz

 

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through the wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

To decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

 

 

 

Sermon

Several years ago, I was attending a Chicago concert of one of my favorite musicians, a singer-songwriter named David Wilcox.  I am quite passionate about this man’s work and always look forward to his performances.  In fact, I have been known to invite car-loads of people to come with me, for I believe Wilcox’s hope-filled music and message are worth sharing.  This night, some years back, was no exception.  Several of my friends and I had gathered in a Chicago bar to hear him play.  Having seen Wilcox perform many times before, I gave up my seat to one of my friends and decided to take in the show from the rear of the house, near the bar.  Through the first few songs, my standing-room-only vantage point seemed acceptable enough.  Sure, I had to tune out the sounds of clinking glasses and the occasional rings of a cash register, but I could see and hear the performance just fine.  Later into the show, however, the bartender and a few apparently regular customers began loudly chewing the fat and laughing.  I did my best to disregard their intrusion, but as the talking and laughing continued to grow in volume, I could feel my blood starting to boil.  I turned around to see what had been so intriguing these folks and discovered something unexpected…a child had been entertaining them.  Yes, a girl certainly no older than seven or eight, was behind the bar, dancing and entertaining her bartender guardian and new adult admirers.  Here is where you might expect this story to turn heart-warming…you know, I get caught up in the magic of this child and I forget about the show and join in the revelry.  Ahhh, but that is not what happened.  Seeing the child behind the bar increased my anger.  This was not a good place for her to be, especially when David Wilcox was playing.  Here is where the story gets embarrassing.  Aghast that this child would be in the bar and disturbed that her presence was stealing my focus, I barked to the bartender, “Hey, would somebody shut that kid up?”  (I told you it was embarrassing.)  Unfortunately, the story does not end there.  After the commotion continued, now propelled by the bartender’s need to explain her position to her allies, I again felt the urge to say something.  An urge I could not restrain.  I angrily turned around and offered the woman twenty dollars to keep it down.  Well, actually my offer was more direct…adorned with a choice expletive…and patently inappropriate.  As the words fell from my mouth, time seemed to be standing still.  I knew that my anger was driving this exchange, but by now it was too late.   My emotions had blown past my reason and I was behaving in a way that I would be hard-pressed to defend once I could see things more clearly.  Soon after my outburst, a bouncer came over to set me straight.  Knowing that I was running the risk of being removed from the place, I quickly apologized.  I had not felt so admonished since I had been caught swearing at my gym teacher during a fifth-grade game of jollyball.  Tail between my legs, I tried my best to enjoy the show that continued, hoping to forget my regrettable actions, a goal that proved impossible for my body chemistry seemed altered by the surges of adrenaline and shame. Besides, a few of the friends I had invited to the show had seen the exchange.  I couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen.  My friends were witnesses…and they remain devoted to reminding me of my behavior every chance they get…especiallly now that I am a minister.  They love that part most of all.  Despite my embarrassment, I appreciate their willingness to remind me of this incident.  One of the blessings of being caught doing something regrettable is that one has good reason to change, to work to see that under similar circumstances a different choice can be made, which will hopefully lead to a more productive outcome.  This opportunity we have each day to learn from our mistakes is one of the greatest gifts of our living.

 

Though the details of your stories may differ greatly from mine, I imagine most of us have experienced moments when our emotions have taken precedence over our reason…moments when we have said and done things we have almost instantly regretted…moments when we have known that we shouldn’t be saying or doing something that was coming out anyway. Incidents of road rage, when we may have been compelled to use hand gestures almost forgotten…arguments with loved ones that may have come out with a force usually reserved for sporting events…parental outbursts of frustration that have surprised us with their fervor.   I assume that we have all experienced moments like these because the design of our brains makes them virtually inevitable. Cognitive scientists have determined that, of all the information the mind takes in, less than one percent actually enters into our awareness.  Less than one percent.[1] And yet, in a kind of optical illusion, our minds send signals that we are aware of all that we experience and do. When I barked at the bartender my mind was leading me to believe that I was seeing the whole picture, encouraging me to follow through with my emotional and self-righteous outburst.  And yet, I was clearly being motivated by a force that had little to do with reason, that was not attentive to the possible results of my actions…a force that was so automatic it must have been enacted before, a force that had become in some way habitual. Several prominent neuroscientists have proposed that our habits begin at the neural level “through the impact of simple repetition on the connections between brain cells.  The more often a particular circuit in the brain is used, the stronger its connections become.”[2] Imagine the pathways of our brain circuits as trails that are worn smooth by repeated travel.  The more we consciously or unconsciously choose a particular path, the more automatic that choice will become. 

 

The technical term that has been given to these habits of the mind is “schemas.” Most schemas are useful shortcuts that enable us to live our lives without the need to pay close attention. However, some emotional schemas can be counter-productive, or maladaptive, leading us to repeat painful patterns of behavior that we may feel powerless to change.  These maladaptive schemas probably served as useful coping strategies at one time, but have now become ruts of behavior that lead us away from our ability to change and grow.  Some of the most common maladaptive schemas are typically rooted in our earliest experiences of our parents and family and are mostly played out in our close relationships. These include schemas that have developed in response to our fears of abandonment, deprivation, subjugation, mistrust, and unlovability.  Other common schemas are rooted in how we meet the demands of our adult lives.  These include schemas driven by our feelings of exclusion, vulnerability, failure, perfectionism, and entitlement.[3]  In our own lives, we may experience these schemas individually or in clusters, but we will almost inevitably experience some of them.  In hindsight, I can see that my reactivity to the situation at the concert was triggered by my entitlement schema.  I felt entitled to belittle the bartender because I believed she was infringing on my right to enjoy the show. While there is no doubt that the events that led to my outburst were untenable…the child should not have been there and the employee should have been more respectful of the audience, my actions overstepped appropriate limits and led to further complications.  My schema warped my response into something that was actually counter-productive.

 

There is a story about a man who visits a neighborhood tailor who has a reputation for crafting suits that can make anyone look handsome.  The man places an order, the tailor takes his measurements and tells him to come back in a week.  When the customer returns seven days later, the tailor brings out the suit, which on the hanger looks wonderful.  When the man tries it on, however, one sleeve is longer than the other, the buttons don’t match up quite right, and the pants are too short.  When the customer complains, the tailor, with great annoyance responds, “It’s not the suit.  The trouble is the way you are wearing it.  If you crook your left elbow just a bit, the sleeves will be perfect.  And if you hunch forward and raise your right shoulder, the buttons match up nicely.  Then, if you bend your knees a bit, you’ll see that the trousers fit just right.”  The customer takes the tailor’s advice and, as predicted, the suit fits like a glove…but only if he twists himself into an unhealthy posture.  Much like the tailor’s advice, our schemas encourage us to twist our perceptions to fit their partial version of reality.  They give us a single way of perceiving the world and provide a habitual way for us to react…limiting our options and our possibilities.[4]

 

So, now that I have come to understand that my reactivity at that Chicago bar was the product of a maladaptive schema, what next?  What are any of us to do when we find ourselves in the midst of a schema attack?  Well, the first step is the recognition of the schema, and perhaps most importantly, the situations that trigger it.  In her recent book Emotional Alchemy psychotherapist Tara Bennett-Goleman writes, “Since every schema has distinct identifying elements….becoming familiar with these parts of our schemas gives us a powerful tool in recognizing when we are caught in a schema attack.  We can use that familiarity as a cue to ourselves that the schema has been activated again.  Recognizing, for instance, “Oh I’m having those feelings again,” or “Here come my schema thoughts,” gives us the freedom to wake from the schema trance.”  Goleman suggests that through the Buddhist practice of mindfulness—the ability to observe our experience without being swept away in it—our recognition can be enhanced and the possibility for a different, more productive response is increased.[5]

 

Mindfulness is sometimes misinterpreted as a means to avoid painful thoughts or emotions, to let them go or to push them away.  However, the true mission of mindfulness is not suppression or repression but honest engagement…staying with our emotions long enough to see them change into something else.  Mindfulness is tool that can lead us to let go of habitual assumptions in exchange for increased awareness.  Being mindful of emotions as they occur can change our relationship to those emotions…and in turn, change our reactions.

 

This is not to say that mindfulness is something that is easily achieved.  If it were, there would not be so many books on the subject, or meditation classes where the concepts can be practiced. To approach mindfulness is to change the filters through which we see the world, some of which have been in place so long we may not believe they can be changed.  To begin viewing our lives mindfully is a shift that can be unfamiliar and uncomfortable.  Let me show you what I mean.  Fold your arms as you normally would.   Feels comfortable, familiar, normal.  Now, reverse the positions of your arms.  Take your time, I know it’s not easy.  Notice how different it feels.  This is what it can feel like to shift our reactive patterns of behavior, to realize that we have other ways in which to respond to the schemas of our living.

 

One of the ways to change the patterns of our schemas is to stay mindful of what neurosurgeon Benjamin Libet determined was a gap between our awareness of an intent to move and the movement itself.  Because the brain has no nerve endings, neurosurgeons need to communicate with patients during surgery to keep from straying into the wrong area.  Patients experiencing brain surgery, therefore, are not given full anesthesia so that they can remain awake and aware.  Taking advantage of these unique circumstances, Dr. Libet would ask his patients during surgery to move their finger.  By monitoring the electrical activity in the patient’s brain that regulated the movement of the finger, he could then record with accuracy to the thousands of a second, the amount of time between the beginning of the brain’s activity and the culminating movement of the finger.  He repeatedly discovered that there is a quarter-second gap of time between impulse and movement…a quarter-second window of opportunity between emotional impulse and action...a quarter-second between the activation of a schema and our physical and/or emotional response.  Recognizing this magic quarter-second does not insure, of course, that we will be able to change our maladaptive habits of reactivity, but it does suggest that we do not have to feel imprisoned by our schemas.  We do have an opportunity for our schema thoughts to be caught before they turn into emotional reactions.  This discovery was long ago described in Buddhist psychology as the Chain of Dependent Origination, the symbolic cause-and-effect sequence that can lead us to self-centered cravings, but that also provides a crucial choice point where we can break the chain by weakening the link between a feeling and the impulse to act on that feeling.[6]

 

Both cognitive science and Buddhist thought encourage us to see beyond our maladaptive habits to more constructive positions of awareness and clarity. They both point toward the possibility of freedom in our lives, freedom from the self-imposed limitations of our fears and thoughts, freedom that arises from our ability to mindfully observe our impulses and reactions, and to change accordingly.  In these times of uncertainty and reactivity, the ability to train ourselves to more mindfully view the world may be as important as ever.

 

 I close this morning with a classic Zen story that makes this point well.

Once a samurai came to the master Hakuin and asked, “Master, tell me, is there really such a thing as heaven and hell?”

                The master was quiet for some time while gazing at the man.  “Who are you?” he asked at last.

                “I am a samurai swordsman, and a member of the emperor’s personal guard.”

                “You a samurai!” said Hakuin doubtfully.  “What kind of emperor would have you for a guard?  You look more like a beggar!”

                “What?” the samurai stammered, growing red in the face and reaching for his sword.

                “Oho!” said Hakuin.  “So you have a sword, do you!  I’ll bet it’s much too dull to cut off my head!”

                The samurai could no longer contain himself.  He drew his sword and readied to strike the master.

                Hakuin responded quickly, “That is hell!”

                The samurai, understanding the truth in the master’s words and the risk he had taken, sheathed his sword and bowed.  “Now,” said the master, “That is heaven.”[7]