Loving the Reflection
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
9/28/03

 

Reading         “Under One Small Star” by Wislawa Symborska 

 

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.

Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.

May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.

My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from the depths.

I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.

Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,

Your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,

Forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.

My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.

Dignity, please be magnanimous.

Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.

Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.

My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.

My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.

I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,

Since I myself stand in my own way.

Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

 

Sermon

In a movie from the 90s entitled Fearless, Jeff Bridges plays a man who walks away from a crash of a commercial airliner that has few survivors.  In the immediate aftermath of the plane’s mostly unsuccessful emergency landing, Bridges is surprised to find that he is still alive.  As emergency crews arrive and begin attending to the wounded and dead, Bridges walks out of the cornfield where the plane has gone down without attracting any attention. Understandably shaken by what has happened, he chooses not to speak to anyone. He crosses over to the nearest highway and gets a ride to a local hotel from an onlooker who has stopped to see the wreckage.  After checking in, Bridges takes a shower.   The director Peter Weir, takes great care with this scene, letting it unfold in the noisy silence of the hotel room, a silence layered with the sound of the shower, the hum of the bathroom fan and the buzz of the fluorescent lights.   As Bridges washes away the grimy residue of the crash, he moves in slow motion, hyper-aware of every sensation his body is experiencing.  He feels every part of his body, his legs, his chest, his hands, as if to make sure that he did, in fact, survive.  When he gets out of the shower, he stares into the mirror for a long time, fascinated by the miracle that he made it through the crash, even when so many others, including one of his best friends, did not.  He is mesmerized by the existential reality that he is alive at all.  The circumstances that landed him in front of that hotel mirror against great odds, enable him to see himself anew, and the audience knows he has been changed by what has happened to him. 

 

A plane crash is a dramatic episode, for sure, an event that most of us, thankfully, will never experience. Still, the scene in Fearless could be interpreted as an apt metaphor for other kinds of calamities we may endure, times in our lives when we are forced by circumstances to see the world differently, when we cannot help but be changed by the things that have happened to us. For example, who could forget the feeling of emptiness upon learning of a loved one’s sudden death or illness, or the lonesome longing when a love relationship in which we have invested our hopes and dreams has crumbled before our eyes?  How about the disappointment and anger we encounter when we believe that a friend or family member has betrayed us in a significant way, or the deep regret or despair that may result from a decision we made that didn’t pan out the way we planned? These are all times when we may find ourselves emerging from the wreckage that is our disillusionment or disappointment, stumbling through our confusion toward some unknown destination.  These are times when we have reason to look anew not only at the world around us, but to look anew at ourselves.  These are times when our assumptive world—the way we always thought or hoped life would be—may need to be re-examined and altered if we are to keep going. These are times when we are called to stand before the mirror of our lives and reacquaint ourselves with the reflection we see before us, to account for our own standing in the world and to choose how we will participate in it.  These are emotionally intense and challenging times that we would never wish on anyone, and certainly not on ourselves; and yet, they are some of the most sacred moments of our lives, worthy of honor and respect because they provide us with opportunities to reclaim our humanity, to humbly recognize once again that we are all fallible and finite creatures, destined to make mistakes and suffer disappointments, no matter how much we may try to avoid them. 

 

In the Jewish calendar, the High Holy Days offer an annual invitation to these sacred times by encouraging Jews to take an honest look in the mirror, to reacquaint themselves with the reflections of their lives, particularly the reflections they would normally wish to overlook:  the events of the past year when they may have missed the mark in their relationships…when they have turned a cold shoulder instead of offering a warm embrace…when they have closed their hearts in fear rather than open themselves to the possibility of love and understanding through connection with others. By setting aside these ten days for intentional introspection and relationship mending each year, the Jewish faith teaches us that we don’t have to wait for outside events to change the course of our lives.  We can change them ourselves.  The High Holy Days remind all of us that we can make the choice to unload the baggage of grudges and misunderstandings that we so often carry around.  We can make the choice to obtain our freedom…freedom from the heavy burdens of the past and freedom from the unrealistic expectations that will torment us until we can learn to let them go.  We can make the choice to forgive.

 

The Hebrew Bible verb for forgiveness is “shuv” which means “to turn, to return.”[1] How appropriate, then, that we should talk about forgiveness during a time when our corner of the earth is preparing for some spectacular turning itself.  Soon the trees that stand guard over our lives will be streaked with color, their leaves turning from summer-weary gray-greens to brilliant hues of red, yellow and orange in a grand display of life that precedes their inevitable death.   Likewise, we each have the opportunity to finish our time on earth in a blaze of glory (whether the years we have left number more than fifty or less than a few) by opening ourselves to change, by choosing to let go of the grudges and regrets that keep us from fully inhabiting our lives.  Each of us can decide that clutching to old animosities only holds us back.  Each of us can forgive, not so that we may forget what has happened in the past, as if we even could, but so that we can move forward into the future without regret. 

 

Still, we all know that granting forgiveness to others or to ourselves does not always feel like the most natural thing to do, certainly not as natural and involuntary as a change of seasons.  To forgive we must overcome the inertia of the status quo; we must rise above the revengeful temptations of our pride; and we must abandon what often feels like a key storyline of our lives. Our identities are formed by the stories we have lived and the stories that we tell to others and ourselves.  One of the primary means by which we make sense of our lives, then, is by replaying our memories of when we have been the victims or perpetrators of wrongdoing.  To forgive others--to forgive ourselves--to turn away from the pain of these stories and toward the redemptive possibilities of forgiveness, can feel like the removal of a foundational element of our identity.  But, in fact, to forgive is to return to our inherent innocence, to our true identity…to forgive is to lighten the accumulated burden of our living so that we can move more freely through the remaining days of our lives.  Forgiveness then is not the abandonment of our lives…it is the ultimate act of returning to and embracing our lives.  Forgiveness is the means by which we can love our reflection after all.

 

Loving our reflection, learning to accept and move beyond our own flaws and foibles, can be an even more difficult form of forgiveness than when we pardon the mistakes of others. For when it comes to our own lives, no one knows as well as we do how often we miss the mark or fall short of where we think we should be.  To truly examine our lives is to be reminded of all the promises we have made and broken or to recall every relationship we have started and abandoned. Many of us have very good mental records of every person we have wronged or disappointed.  We can too easily remind ourselves of when we set lofty goals and didn’t even come close to achieving them.  We are oftentimes painfully aware of the times when we haven’t given our best.  We may be able to cite several examples of when we have hurried through our lives during times we should have paid closer attention.  We may have running tallies of all the mistakes and all the missteps we have made.  Most of us can easily recite a litany of our lapses in judgment or times when we have abandoned our principles, a litany that might include questions like:

Why did we stay in that abusive or adulterous relationship? 

Why did we work so hard at our job when we could have spent more time with our family? 

Why did we allow ourselves to get pregnant when we weren’t ready for a child? 

Why can’t we get out from under our addictions? 

Why are we so often led by our emotions instead of our reason? 

Why didn’t we stand up for what we truly believed? 

Why don’t we exercise more, eat less, get more organized or less uptight, get serious or chill out, stay in better touch with our loved ones or stop being so controlled by our families?  No matter what the topic, many of us can recall times when we have fallen short of our expectations.  And these are just our own expectations.  Of course we are bombarded every day with messages that we are missing the mark in other ways as well. Why don’t we have more money or a better house or car?  Why are we not better parents, lovers, friends, or citizens?  Why are we not more accomplished in our career or better read or more respected by our peers?  Why can’t we fit more into our busy day?  Why don’t we do more for the causes we believe in?

 

When faced with the myriad of reasons why we are never going to be good enough, how can we ever learn to forgive ourselves, to move beyond all that we have not, will not, or may not ever do right? How can we look in the mirror and truly love our reflection?

 

Of course, we all have to answer this question for ourselves.  I will tell you that I talk to people all the time who are very hard on themselves…people who see their own flaws and mistakes in ways that I can’t begin to see…people who are so sure that they are not good enough that they do all they can to remain mired in their own unworthiness. 

 

I rarely dispute their claims of all the ways they have been betrayed, or all the ways they have let themselves or others down.  Who am I to question the things they have experienced?  I do, however, tend to ask them a question I think we all must ask ourselves whenever we are being overly judgmental of ourselves or others.  Instead of asking ourselves why are things the way they are, or how could this have happened, I think we should ask ourselves what comes next? 

 

Focusing on why or how could this have happened does not take us anywhere; it merely keeps us entrenched in the past and doesn’t acknowledge that life has much to teach us.  On the other hand, asking what comes next is a hopeful step towards the future.  It is a means by which we can welcome our inherent resiliency to work its magic, to remind ourselves that we do have choices, that when we are ready, we can rise up from the ashes of our misdeeds or despair. Asking what comes next leads to forgiveness because it assumes that, as long as we are alive, there is another step to take, another opportunity to improve our relationships with others, with ourselves, and with this life we share. 

 

The value of focusing on what comes nextis expressed in one of my favorite Sufi proverbs, one that I think fits well with the idea of  learning to love our reflection, despite the flaws we might find there.

 

Mulla Nasrudin decided to start a flower garden.  He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of many beautiful flowers.  But when they came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers but was also overrun by dandelions.  He sought advice from gardeners all over and tried every method known to get rid of them but to no avail. Finally, he walked all the way to the capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik’s palace.  The wise old man had counseled many gardeners before and suggested a variety of remedies to expel the dandelions but Mulla had tried them all.  They sat together in silence for some time and finally the gardener looked at Nasrudin and said, “Well, then I suggest you learn to love them…. I suggest you learn to love them.”[2]

 

Much like the dandelions in Nasrudin’s garden, all of the things we have done wrong--all of the mistakes, missteps, and misdeeds--can threaten to overrun our lives, especially if we try to pull them up, or till them under.  But, despite our efforts, we will never be able to eliminate them, nor should we, for they are a part of who we are. They are the lessons of our past that, with a little forgiveness and compassion, can help us create the fertile ground of our future.

 

So I invite us all to follow the lead of our Jewish brothers and sisters this week, and allow ourselves some time to gaze into the mirror of our lives, to look honestly and openly at all that we see, and to love the reflection we find enough to ask ourselves “what comes next?”  And may our answers help us rediscover within ourselves a curious gladness we may have forgotten.  A curious gladness that enables us to proclaim, “I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.”[3]