The Next Big Hit

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

1/3/4/09

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” –Carl G. Jung (1875-1961)

Readings

Our first reading today is often erroneously attributed to a 1994 inaugural address by Nelson Mandela.  In fact, this passage comes from the book A Return to Love by the popular spiritual teacher and author Marianne Williamson.  She writes:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
 

 

Our second reading is from a November 13^th, 2008 New York Times recap of a post-election meeting of the Republican Governors’ Association.

 

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who was very nearly Senator John McCain’s running mate this year, told the decidedly subdued, post-election conference…about a revelation he had recently while looking into the bathroom mirror at his home in Minnesota.

Mr. Pawlenty said that after wearily returning from the campaign trail, he looked at himself in the mirror and complained about what he saw to his wife, Mary. “I said, ‘Mary, look at me…I mean, my hairline’s receding, these crow’s feet and wrinkles are multiplying on my face by the day, I’ve been on the road eating junk food, I’m getting flabby, these love handles are flopping over the side of my belt.’

“I said, ‘Is there anything you can tell me that would give me some hope, some optimism, some encouragement?’ …And she looked at me and she said, ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight.’”[1]

 

Sermon

I was at a minister’s retreat just over a year ago, when one of my esteemed colleagues approached me about a new program that she was heading up called “Dreaming Big”.  The program was being designed to train our up and coming UU clergy to be better equipped to serve our movement’s larger congregations.  The method would be to gather 20 of these folks together three weekends a year, over two years, for group learning with experienced ministers and lay leaders in congregations with over 600 members.  She explained that several large UU congregations would be looking for ministers in the near future, and, since ministry in larger congregations has special dynamics for which most ministers are simply not adequately equipped, this program would be an attempt to nurture the very future of our movement.

 

“Wow, sounds great,” I told her.

 

“Oh, I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said. “Because when I suggested we put this together, I was picturing you.”

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit my memory is that she said, “I was picturing you.”  But, she may have said (and probably did say) something more like, “You were one of the people I was picturing.”

 

Disclosure concluded. Now, back to the story.

 

“Wow” I said again.  “I’m flattered that you would consider me for this.  I am very interested in the goals of the program, but I must tell you, I’m not necessarily interested in moving to another congregation.  I really want to help grow the Des Moines church.”

 

“Oh, that’s great,” she said.  “We support that.”

 

Right on, I thought.  So there was an association program being put together that was a more developed version of the very project I was preparing for my upcoming sabbatical.  If accepted, I would get to be with and learn from colleagues and further develop my understandings of what it would take to further grow Unitarian Universalism, which, after all, is one of the primary reasons I wanted to be a minister in the first place. And I wouldn’t be expected to move to the South, or New England, or someplace else I probably wouldn’t want to move to. And the dean of that program pictured me when she thought it up.

 

I was already looking forward to all that I would learn!

 

A few months later (while I was on sabbatical in the Washington DC area working with large congregations…) I received a program application, which was typical in many respects.  It asked for short essays about my history, experiences in ministry, strengths, challenges, and hoped-for-outcomes of my participation.  These topics were easy for me to address.  The most difficult part of the process was a chart, on which I was to “make an honest assessment” of myself in 11 “core competencies” of large church ministry, which included preaching, organizational agility, spiritual maturity, initiative, personal resilience, and so on, and then rate myself based on a four-point scale,

“4” if “I have not shown potential in this area”

“3” if “I have shown potential.”

“2” if “I have demonstrated skills”

“1” if “I have demonstrated mastery.”

 

Mastery.

 

I was intrigued by this concept of “mastery” and decided to consult a dictionary, just be sure I knew what I would be saying if I rated myself a “1” in any of the categories.  To display “mastery”, I found, would be to display “expert knowledge or outstanding ability.”

 

Expert knowledge, huh?  I couldn’t help but think of what one of my most experienced and successful colleagues from here in town told me when I was in my second or third year of ministry.  After acknowledging that I felt unsure of myself much of the time, I asked him when, in my work as a minister, I would know that I know what I am doing.  He said, “It’s an interesting question but I think it is not one I would ask. Ministry,” he explained, “is intentionally going to the places where you can’t possibly know what you are doing.”

 

I’ve held on to my friend’s words ever since and they have, at times, been a life preserver for me as I have tried to understand and fully inhabit this calling in which I have been swimming (if not thrashing about) for nearly a decade.

 

Through the lens of this wisdom, could I rightly claim “mastery” in any area?

 

I wrestled with completing my simple chart assignment over many days.  I read the paragraph-long descriptions of the categories over and over, penciled in, erased, and penciled in again different ratings trying to find the right balance of honesty, confidence and humility, finally settling on what I thought was a representative mix.  Even as I was uncomfortable with the term mastery, I figured I needed to claim some, or else I could be selling myself short.  

 

Once I had settled on my rankings, I knew I needed to get some feedback before sending it in.  So I did what most people would have done.  I shared my chart of ratings with a good friend, in this case, my wife.  Who better to assess my self-evaluation than the person who knows me better than I may even know myself?

 

As I recall, Susan stoically pondered the chart for a few minutes, as I sat off to the side, trying to pretend not to be looking for her reaction.  Finally, she handed it back to me, dryly saying something along the lines of A little impressed with yourself, aren’t you?

 

I knew she was being playful, but I was sensitive about it all, too, so I began to (in the words of another recent sermon…) defend, justify and explain.

 

I spoke of how the word “mastery” was difficult to claim, but that I thought there really were a few areas in which I do excel…certainly more than just “I have demonstrated skills.”  Susan kindly listened to my defensiveness and then pointed out her belief that it didn’t matter whether or not I believed I had accurately ranked myself.  What mattered, she explained, was how my rankings would look to those who would see them.  She suggested that a more humble appearance might do me good and that I consider mixing in one or two “3” rankings, which I didn’t have in the draft she had seen.

 

She went on her way, leaving me to ponder her counsel.

 

One of the most important lessons I have learned about married life, a lesson I often share with the couples I marry, is that when your partner shares honest impressions with you, particularly when those impressions are about your behavior, it is in your best interests to listen.  You don’t have to ultimately agree with the assessments, but you would be a fool to not consider the truth of what your partner tells you.

 

So, I meditated on her reaction. Was I a little too impressed with myself?  What is the right balance of confidence and humility? 

 

I set to work again, considering a more humble approach to the task.  In the end I kept two categories as 1’s:  Preaching and Worship, and…

 

Ego Strength.

 

For the rest I gave myself 2’s, except for 3’s in the categories of conflict management and decision making (even if I thought I was at least a two in each of those, too).  Was I showing false humility or was I being politically savvy, or maybe a bit of both?

 

The next step in the application process was to request references from a few people familiar with my ministry, people who would also be asked to fill out the chart that gave me fits.

 

When I called member Charlotte Shivvers, a retired UU minister herself, and asked her to be one of the references, I told her about the chart and how I had struggled with it.  I described Susan’s reaction, and we shared a hearty laugh.  “But you know,” I confessed to her, “I have thought a lot about this and I really do think I am pretty good in a lot of these areas.”

 

“You may be,” she responded.  “But,” she continued, “at least you know where your next big hit will be.”

 

I laughed deeply, as I instantly knew what she meant.

 

Her comment reminded me of a concept described by Carl Jung, a founder of analytical psychology, who wrote a great deal about the shadow side of the human psyche, the personification of everything that we refuse to acknowledge about ourselves which one way or another will be thrust upon us anyway.[2]   In Jungian psychology, our shadow is the hidden aspect of our personalities, which, if brought out into the open, might fill us with shame.  So when the shadow makes an appearance, we will likely attempt to ignore it, to pretend that our true, often dark, selfish, and/or arrogant, thoughts don’t exist, to try to bask in the glow of our ego, a glow that while providing the illusion that the shadow does not exist, is actually providing an even starker contrast for when the shadow does emerge.  It is for this reason, he suggested, that we should most closely question ourselves precisely at the point when we are feeling most self-righteous…most on top of the world…most in control.  Chances are good that at these moments, our shadows will be already at work, ready to remind us of some real truth of our lives, that our conscious perceptions and understandings are limited, revealing any feelings of being in control we might have as the illusions they always are.

 

So, in her simple response, Charlotte set my mind to work again.  Could my overly positive assessment of myself be coming from an over-emphasis on my ego?  Was I intentionally avoiding my shadow, which was, perhaps, being expressed via a posture of ultra-confidence, and, if so, wouldn’t my next big hit come, just as Charlotte and Jung suggested, at the expense of this ego-inflation? Mostly I heard in Charlotte’s talk of the “next big hit”, an acknowledgement that life can be unruly, some would say cruel, and therefore I would do well to temper my exuberance for my own excellence with some humility…even if I do believe my ministry tilts more toward mastery than not.  My previous life experience has certainly shown me over and over again that anytime my self-assessment starts to lean a little too far into the land of hubris, something will happen to knock me back again, back, you could say, where I belong…with the rest of my fellow humans, imperfect every one.

 

And yet, I also acknowledge the wisdom of the popular Marianne Williamson reading we shared earlier, the one that encourages us to embrace how brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous we really are.   She challenges us to “shine,” to not “play small,” to bask in the glow of our own beauty. 

 

Now, I have to admit, I have in less generous moments critiqued this passage, finding its encouragement to be nauseatingly simple-minded, if not downright deceptive.  The fact is, inherent worth and dignity accepted, not everyone is brilliant.  For example, when I was an instructor of English composition at Chicago State University, the most difficult thing I had to do was to balance one of the primary goals of my job, which was to prepare mostly non-traditional (meaning older) students for competency exams they had to pass in order to take college courses for credit, with the reality that some of them might never, for a variety of reasons, be able to pass.  I didn’t share my lack of confidence in their abilities with them.  What good would that do?  I just kept on tutoring and cheerleading and holding their hands when they failed once again.  And every time I had to tell them they didn’t pass, my heart would break a little bit more.  I wanted to believe that they could do it, and I definitely wanted them to believe they could do it, even if it was abundantly clear that they probably wouldn’t. So, perhaps you can see why Marianne Williamson’s advice has, at times, felt dubious to me. 

 

Still, in many ways, I have premised my very ministry on the idea that we would be best served to fully inhabit our lives and our relationships, to live out our talents and our callings, and even our shortcomings, for all they have to teach us.  We have this one precious life to live and there is no extra benefit offered for holding back.  As poet Mary Oliver has famously put it

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.[3] 

 

So, even in the midst of my occasional argument with the “If you can dream it, you can achieve it” philosophy, I am concerned that without our tapping into some innate confidence and hopefulness, very little would be possible for any of us.  We would spend most of our lives “just visiting” this life, “playing small,” risking very little, always choosing realism over possibility, living out a kind of self-fulfilling worst-case scenario prophecy that also leads, relatively speaking, to nowhere.  In fact, my experience suggests that most of us are far more challenged by our fear and lack of confidence than the other way around.  Moreover, I think we are often more held back by our humility than not.  We tend to believe that everyone holds secrets to life and success that we couldn’t possibly access, even though the possibilities for a more fulfilling life are typically right in front of us, mostly available to those with the courage to try, fail and try yet again.  That’s why if I ever get around to writing a book, I already have my title and topic selected.  I will call it, The Bar’s Not That High.

 

Speaking of failure and big hits, I need to tell you about something truly unexpected that happened in my life over the past couple of weeks.

 

One of my closest college friends, someone with whom I walked through some of the more challenging moments of my transition from adolescence into adulthood unexpectedly died on December 15th, of pneumonia of all things.  I hadn’t connected with her in over three years.  She wasn’t very good at correspondence, and, as our lives had taken very different directions over the years, her lack of initiative towards our fading friendship had made it easy for me let go of mine.  I am ashamed to admit I had even basked a little bit in my stubborn refusal to fall into my familiar role of communication initiator.  I was confident that my stance was appropriate, if not righteous.  More than once, the thought crossed my mind, “This will show her.”  I had even Googled her name not too long ago, only to find that both her parents had died within the past year.  I had meant to send her a card but I wasn’t sure I even had the correct address.

 

And then, she was dead.

 

It felt like a whole chapter of my life, not the most important chapter mind you, but a significant one nonetheless, just vanished.  Poof.

 

My refusal to see beyond my own limited perceptions of what was happening in our relationship led me to take a stance that ultimately did not serve my friend or me.  Instead of confidently reveling in my stubbornness, I would have been better served to see how I was merely inviting “the next big hit.”

 

Upon hearing the news of her death, I spent the first week or so feeling sorry for her and her family and for me, but then I realized this “hit” was teaching me something important.  I needed to reconnect with people from my past or else be prepared to face the consequences of my negligence when it was too late to act.  So, I spent some of my down time this holiday connecting, touching base with people I had been avoiding, some for good reasons, some not.  And I can honestly say, this was time very well spent, time I may not have spent so well had I not, so to speak, experienced my latest “big hit.”

 

Bear with me now as I turn this sermon back around to where I started, you know, back to my application and my confidence and the likely location of my next big hit.

 

Should I have been less or more confident in my application evaluations?  Well, I have decided that I answered as honestly as I could with as much appropriate humility as I could muster, which is good enough.  More important than how I ranked myself, however, was my willingness to accept that I could be off-base in my assessment and that the places where I believe I excel the most, could very well be the places where my next challenge may come.  Knowing this fact was possible made it far less painful when it became reality.

 

You see, as you might expect from the fact that I wrote a sermon about all of this, I was not accepted into the Dreaming Big program. My internal quibbles over my category rankings meant very little in the end when I had to come to terms with the fact that at least twenty ministers were chosen before me.

 

An e-mail I received from the colleague who had invited me to participate in the first place, declaring her outrage with the decisions of the admissions committee helped a little bit, but mostly I was just bummed out.  My ego kicked in, assuring me with justifications for my failure, such as others needed the program more than me, Midwest congregations (and their ministers) can be easily overlooked, and perhaps political connections outweighed competency (I didn’t rate myself a 1 in ego strength for nothing you know!). But lurking beneath it all was the message, “Well, Mark, maybe you aren’t as good as you think you are.”

 

Not such a bad message to get, you know, as long as I don’t take it too much to heart…so much that I stop being amazed at my life, my life in all its messy glory…so much that I begin to think my failure has to define me, rather than propel me to the next big challenge, and, in turn, the next big hit.

 

As it turns out, several months later, this apparent setback has been cause for celebration for me.  What seemed like a great idea while I was on sabbatical—six intense weekend trips out of state over two years—now seems impossible with all that my family has going on at home and all we have going on around here.  Even if I am not in the “Dreaming Big” program, I am finding ways to connect with congregations and colleagues who have much to share.  And, my highly developed ego has been given the kind of shock that can be very useful, especially when I am fortunate (or is it balanced?) enough to expect it and even embrace it.  Some would call a shock like this (and all that it has brought) a healthy dose of reality.  Others would call it a kind of twisted luck.  And others, still, would call it grace, the amazing grace of being a participant in this beautiful and wretched life we share, a life with all its blessed joys and triumphs…and all its big hits, too.