Delivered by James Kubal-Komoto, Summer Minister

First Unitarian Church of Portland

August 8, 1998

Opening Words:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberatively, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, an not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - - Henry David Thoreau

Sermon:

Life is filled with irony.

Nearly two weeks ago I stood on the Ross Island Bridge with my right arm around my wife Hiromi, holding her close to me and looking at our crumpled car, which had just been rear-ended in an accident. We were waiting for an ambulance that would take us to the O.H.S.U. emergency room where I would receive treatment for a broken thumb. Just before we left, a Portland police officer spotted the Illinois license plate we still had on our car and said, "It’s really hard when something like this happens when you’re so far from home and all alone."

I simply nodded but didn’t tell him what I was thinking. Though far away from immediate family and friends, I knew that we were not alone. Standing there on that bridge, I didn’t know what would happen to our car, I didn’t know how badly my thumb was hurt, but I knew that Hiromi and I could count on this religious community to help us if we needed help, and standing there on that bridge, that thought was very comforting.

And I was right. After receiving treatment in the O.H.S.U. emergency room, I picked up the phone and I called Karl Bach, one of our lay ministers. I told him what had happened, and I asked for a ride home. Karl was there in 15 minutes and later patiently waited for us in the Fred Meyer parking lot after I asked if I could stop and get a prescription for pain pills filled on the way home. In addition to Karl’s help, during the next few days there were many calls and notes, letting Hiromi and I know that people were thinking of us.

I am very thankful for the help and concern I received, yet when I think back on the accident, which could have been much worse than it was, I suppose the thing for which I am most thankful is that Hiromi wasn’t hurt. When our car finally came to a stop and our airbags deflated, I looked over at Hiromi and she said, "I’m okay." I don’t think I’ve ever heard more beautiful words. Though I always try to be thankful for our relationship and the many ways it has enriched my life, I have found myself feeling particularly grateful for her presence in my life these past two weeks, and not only because I cannot tie my shoes by myself.

So life is filled with irony. Why? During these past two weeks the things that have been on my mind the most have been the importance of relationship and community in my life, yet for this morning’s sermon, I had chosen long ago to speak on the gifts of solitude. However, perhaps because of these past two weeks, I stand a better chance of saying something true about the gifts of solitude.

I should also say near the beginning of this sermon that I am a person who has always deeply valued solitude. From the time I was a young child until the present day, I have always occasionally sought to escape from the presence of others to be by myself, alone with my own thoughts and feelings. Though I eventually formed many deep relationships while I was in Japan, I also have come to understand my four years there as an attempt at a kind of prolonged solitude, a time when I could undertake an inward journey of introspection and discovery that would not have been possible while living in the United States.

I still regularly seek periods of time to be completely by myself, though I have learned it is difficult when one is a minister at a church of more than 1400 people. A few months ago I was walking through Tryon Creek State Park with my dog. I was stopped on a bridge, overlooking a creek, enjoying the setting and my own thought, when two joggers appeared and one of them said, "Hey, aren’t you that intern minister at First Unitarian Church?" "That’s me," I said. I know of myself that periods of solitude are necessary for me, but what are the gifts that solitude offers us?

In our culture, we are told that our physical, emotional and spiritual health depends on us being in relationship. We are told our well-being depends on our ability to form satisfying relationships with intimate partners, with family members, and with a community. This is a truth that I have spoken from this pulpit, saying that relationship with one another and with the Holy is what religion is all about, so I do not want to suggest this morning that relationships are not important in our lives, with whomever they may be. I suppose I do want to add some balance to this perspective because, even in light of recent events in my own life, I believe there is sometimes an over-emphasis on relationships in our culture. As the British writer Anthony Storrs has said, "The burden of value with which we are at present loading interpersonal relationships is too heavy for those fragile craft to carry. Our expectation that satisfying intimate relationships should, ideally, provide happiness and that, if they do not, there must be something wrong with those relationships, seems to be exaggerated."

In an essay titled "Self-Storage," Andre Aciman explores the relationship between the our relationships and the need for solitude.

"What I want, more than anything now," Aciman tells us, " is a solitary corner to put myself back together again before life picks up where I last left it. But there’s never enough time for that, and next weekend and the next after that are already spoken for. I need an extra day; yet the earliest possible one shimmers dimly from faraway October.

"...I open our door and barefooted take the garbage to the chute at the end of the hallway. Only then does it hit me that this the first time since Thursday that I’ve had a moment to myself. Five days, and aside from shaving, I haven’t even had time to look at my face.

"...Walking back from the chute, I know I’ll stop and wonder about 9-I again tonight - - 9-I, an apartment that does not actually exist. Relishing every step of this precious walk, I’ll feel as you do in the countryside when a cloud passes in front of the moon and you let every muscle in your body slacken as you beg the clouds to still their course, to hide the moon a while longer, and in that instant suddenly realize how wonderful it is to be so thoroughly alone.

"With imaginary stealth, and imaginary keys, I’ll enter my imaginary 9-I. The place is a mess, of course, because house rules are entirely mine. An old couch has miraculously turned up from my undergraduate days, and next to it are piles of Russian novels I’ve been meaning to reread, some of them standing partly opened in upside-down formation like tents bivouacked on a weather-beaten rug, the whole room cluttered with things that don’t mind the dust, the mess or the crackling patter of an old recording of the "Goldberg Variations’ on perpetual replay.

"This is my universe, no one else’s. And in this stupor, I’ll lift the curtain, look our onto an emptied side street in Manhattan and, staring blankly at the moon, seek out the one person whose friendship I always neglect and take for granted: me.

"With that self, I want to spend an entire day each week, an imaginary eighth day that begins when I take out the garbage and ends when I’ve returned - - no one even suspecting that if I look so chipper or am whistling something by Bach or am dying to discuss Russian masters with my wife, it’s because, like the moon, I temporarily vanish. I spent a whole day in a sealed, air-conditioned bunker where I’ve slept late, vegged out, paced about, reread Oblomov, brewed coffee, downed all manner of high cholesterol snacks, though of no one, missed no one, caught up with the paper, my life, my work, my self, and am now ready to return from an imaginary day off....because, for a few imagined seconds, and just when I thought that Monday was almost upon me, I was finally able to run away from those I couldn’t be more grateful to love."

The message that I hear in Aciman’s words is that in any relationship, there is a danger of us losing our selves. There is a danger that as we take on roles of spouse, parent, friend, worker, or church member that one day we will wake up and be a stranger to ourselves, not knowing at the deepest levels of our existence who we are, what we like, what is our passion. There is a danger of being out of touch with what is at the core of our being.

Yet, when we spend time alone by ourselves, even if, as in Aciman’s case it is mostly imagined, we have again the opportunity to discover what we like and do not like, what interests us, and what our deepest needs, feelings and impulses are. We should not see this necessarily as a selfish activity, but rather a necessary one, because our greatest gift to others and to the world is not what role we play in other people’s lives, but what unique pieces of ourselves we bring to others.

In addition to adding to the quality of our relationships with others, though, solitude most of all gives us a chance to rediscover and explore our relationship with ourselves. Yet before talking about this particular gift of solitude, I think it is important for us to recognize that even in our overly-individualistic culture, the solitary individual with suspicion. Consider the connotation of the words that are used to describe the solitary individual: Withdrawn, lonely, separate, isolated, deserted, detached, aloof, remote. There is a tendency in our culture to view someone who sometime prefers his or her own company as suffering from as pathological condition.

From my own experience, I know there is a slight awkwardness in going up to a ticket window at a movie theater and saying, "One please," or of walking into a restaurant - - not a fast-food restaurant but a nice one where one goes to enjoy the food - - and saying "Table for one." The looks one receives from others suggest that one should either be pitied or feared because - - isn’t it obvious? - - no one would choose to be alone. I think the belief underlying these looks is that one cannot sit down and enjoy a movie by oneself or enjoy a gourmet meal by oneself, that one’s own company can never be sufficient, that without some other person to witness one’s pleasure it is somehow less real.

Of course, there have been times in my life when I have been glad that someone was also present to share an experience with me and there have been times when I was by myself and wished that someone else was there, too. But there have also been plenty of times when my own presence was enough and I did not need another to confirm for me that the sunset was beautiful. I, by myself, was enough.

If there is a tendency in our culture to believe that we cannot experience any of life’s joys without the presence of another, there is even a greater tendency to believe that we cannot deal with any of life’s sorrows without another’s presence. This tendency was well described by Sally Satel in an article that appeared in the New York Times shortly after the shooting in Littleton, Colorado.

"Shortly after the police, paramedics and television crews screetched onto the scene at Columbine High School, the grief counselors arrived," Satel tells us. "Coming in by the busload, such experts are now a fixture of tragedy’s aftermath in America.

"Many people, including President Clinton, who spoke of dispatching teams of counselors, assume that they are essential in traumatic situations. Trained in a technique called grief work, which says the healthy response to trauma is to ‘work it through’ and ‘find closure,’ counselors urge the victims to take several steps. First, they must focus on the awareness of mental pain. Second, they must express their emotions. And third, they must talk about it. And talk. And talk.

"The problem is that this doesn’t always work. An emphasis on experiencing psychic pain can make some people feel even more vulnerable and out of control. Forced ventilation makes little sense for those whose ordinary coping style is to remain calm, maybe too calm for some people’s taste, and spring into purposeful activity, like organizing fund-raisers for victims’ families.

"Other, like Susan Cohen, who lost her only child in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, just want to be left alone. Writing in Time a few years ago, Mrs. Cohen called grief counselors ‘ambulance chasers.’ She said that the man assigned to the Cohens showered them with cliches about hope, quizzed them on their daughter’s hobbies and simply wouldn’t go away, even when her husband insisted on their privacy."

As a minister of this church, I have learned how important another’s presence can be in time’s of trouble and of grief. I have also learned, however, how much healing can take place when people are given the space to be alone.

When we over-emphasize life’s relational aspects, we not only deny that we can experience joy or deal with sorrow by ourselves, we necessarily our relationship with our own selves and what may come out of exploring such a relationship more thoroughly, the paradigmatic example of this being artistic creation. "Without solitude, no great work is possible," Pablo Picasso said. For all the talk of synergy, no truly great works of art were ever created by a committee, but only when an artist retreats long enough from the world so that he or she may step back from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and explore the depths of his or her own soul. As Virginia Wolfe noted in her famous essay, a "A Room of One’s Own" is necessary for any kind of artistic achievement.

Now one could say that even in isolation, an artist is constantly keeping in mind his or her intended audience, but for many artists, especially later in life, the fact that others may someday see or listen to their creation is incidental to them. As one critic said, "That is, the artist is looking into the depths of his own psyche and is not very much concerned as to whether anyone else will follow him or understand him." So the value of the creative act is not that it will produce something that will later be appreciated by others, but that it is a process that allows the artist to delve more deeply into himself or herself.

The experience of solitude does give each of us the opportunity for greater self-discovery, whether it be through artistic creation or some other solitary activity. On the other hand, this is not always an opportunity that is welcomed. I believe there is a fear within each of us of being alone too long with our own thoughts. I can think of many times when I have been alone and have flipped on the radio or the television, picked up the telephone, logged onto the Internet, or picked up a book to distract myself from myself.

The journey inward that the experience of solitude allows is not always an easy one. Thoreau said, "It is easier to sail many thousands of miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred persons to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone."

And I think I understand the source of the fear.

In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we are told that before beginning his ministry, Jesus went to the wilderness for forty days, and during this time he was tempted by the Devil. Similarly, we are told that after meditating underneath the Bodhi tree and soon before attaining Enlightenment, the Buddha was tempted by demons and devils, the sons and daughters of Mara.

We do not have to take these stories literally to understand their truth. Both of these stories suggest to us something that many of us know already, and that is that if we spend significant periods of time by ourselves our own devils and demons will appear to us. They are kept at bay in our daily lives by the multitude of distractions, personal or impersonal, we face each day, but when we are truly alone, we can never run from them. It is only when we hide ourselves from others for a while that we can no longer hide from these devils and demons, these fears and anxieties, that otherwise only quietly interfere with our daily lives.

Yet it is only when we face them that we can overcome them, and it is this face down that Albert Camus had in mind when he said, "When a man has learned - - and not on paper - - how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to fell, then he has little left to learn."

One woman, who had just suffered a loss in her life but had been able to face it, committed herself to spend 24 hours in a motel room without any distractions and learned that she could tolerate the isolation without panic. In the journal she kept, she wrote, "I’m still amazed at how together my head must be - - perhaps it’s too soon for me to decompensate, but it’s been nine hours so far, and I don’t think I’m going to crash." Toward the end of the 24-hours, she wrote, "It is obvious I am not going to go berserk...The sadness is becoming a part of me, and I doubt that it will be so easy to run from it again!"

And one of the biggest devils that the experience of solitude forces us to face is that we are ultimately alone. In other words, the experience of solitude forces us to recognize our existential aloneness. We are born alone, and though we may have others in our company, we die alone, and during our lifetimes, no matter how well we come to know another person, there is always an inseparable gulf between us. No matter how well we know another person, our knowledge of how that other person thinks or feels or experiences the world is somewhat always a guess, and similarly, no other person can know us.

This awareness first creates anxiety within us yet also provides us with the opportunity for religious understanding. It is what Alfred North Whitehead had in mind when he said, "Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness...and if you are never solitary, you are never religious."

For some, this greater religious understanding may result from reaching out to God. For others, it may result from coming to terms with one’s aloneness in the world. Robert Hobson has said: "To be a human being means to be lonely. To go on becoming a person means new modes of resting in our loneliness."

And paradoxically, as many thinkers have suggested, it is only when we have learned to be alone, to use the words of Hobson, to "rest in our loneliness," that we are truly able to love another person. As Eric Fromm wrote, "The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love." Otherwise we do not encounter the other person as a person - - whether it be a lover, a child, a friend or a family member - - but only as a shield against our anxiety about being alone. We don’t love the other person because of who they are, but only for what they can offer to us. To use the words of the theologian Martin Buber, we don’t have an I-Thou relationship with the person, but an I-It relationship. On the other hand, when we are able to be content with our own aloneness, we can say to another person, "I need you because I love you," not "I love you because I need you."

At the beginning of this sermon I spoke of the irony involved in extolling the value of solitude while in my heart holding tight the values of relationship and community. Yet perhaps there is less irony here than first appeared, for perhaps, it is only when we realize, as the comedienne Lily Tomlin said, light-heartedly but truly, that "we’re all in this alone" that we can come together into authentic relationships and community.

What are the gifts of solitude? In solitude, we rest when the world is too much with us. In solitude, we grieve and heal. In solitude we explore and discover the richness of our true selves. In solitude, we create. In solitude, we face our own devils in demons. In solitude, we discover that though alone, we can still love.

Prayer:

Spirit of Life,

Deep within us and amidst us all,

May we be thankful for all of the relationships in our lives,

But may we also be thankful for those times of quiet, times to discover who we really are,

Times to listen to that still, small voice within.

Amen.

Benediction:

Go from this place and find a quiet place, and while you are there, listen to the song of your own heart, and when you come back, we will sing it together. Go in love. Go in peace. Amen.

Copyright 1999 by James Kubal-Komoto. All rights reserved.