by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together once again in this place

To give thanks,

To ask for forgiveness,

To remember who we are,

To become what we yet can be.

Come, let us worship together.

Norman Vincent Peale, author of the book The Power of Positive Thinking, died on Christmas Eve, 1993, at the age of 95.  Peale was one of the most popular preachers of the twentieth century.  At the time of his retirement in 1984, the church in New York he pastored had 5,000 members, and tourists lined up around the block to hear him preach.  In his 90s he was still giving motivational speeches to about 100 groups a year. His famous book has sold 20 million copies in 41 languages.

Now, for all of you discouraged writers who have sent off manuscripts over and over again, only to get rejection slips, the story of the book’s publication is itself a study in positive thinking—his wife’s, that is.  Peale was in his 50s when he wrote it, and the book had been turned down repeatedly by publishers.  Dejected, he threw the manuscript into the wastebasket and told his wife to leave it there.  She took him at his word, literally, and the next day presented the manuscript, inside the wastebasket, to the lucky publisher who finally accepted it. 

Peale’s book is the first really big self-help book.  Having never read the book, I expected to find it just trite and Pollyanna, but I found that he does give some sound advice for living.  He speaks of making time for silence.  He says to care for our physical selves.  He reminds us that guilt and anger can make us sick.  He was one of the first to tell us, before medical studies began to give us empirical proof, that positive thinking makes a huge difference in health and healing.

It is true, however, that Peale does not much treat the dark side of human nature, and so after a while the text of the book begins to feel a bit shallow.  That perhaps explains the response of a visitor to our country from another religious tradition who was given various religious texts to help him understand Christianity, among these the words of St. Paul from the Bible and Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking.  When he finished his reading, he commented, “I find Paul appealing, but I find Peale appalling.”

Research does show us that positive thinking is good for us.  Donald Cole, a senior scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, examined 16 studies in which researchers looked at the relationship between a patient’s beliefs or expectations about a health outcome compared with the actual outcome.  The medical conditions included heart attack, back pain surgery, mental health problems, and obesity.  In 15 of 16 studies people with the more optimistic outlook had the better results when it came to recovery.  People with negative attitudes, says Cole, should be targeted for support and counseling.

Optimism was linked to longevity in a study reported two years ago by researchers at the Mayo Clinic.  Dr. Maruta reviewed psychological tests that had been given to more than 800 people in the early 1960s and then checked to see how long people had lived.  He found that the pessimists had a risk of death for any given year that was 19 percent greater than average. 

A story.  Jerry was the kind of guy who can be positively irritating, he is so cheerful.  He was always in a good mood, always with something positive to say.  A restaurant manager, he was a natural motivator for his waiters.  As he said, “Life is all about choices.  When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.  You choose how you react to situations.  You choose how people will affect your mood.  The bottom line:  It’s your choice how you live life.” 

One morning, though, Jerry left the back door of the restaurant open, and he was held up by three armed robbers.  While he was trying to open the safe, his hand started shaking, and one of the robbers panicked and shot him.  He was rushed to the local trauma center.  After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.  A friend asked him, “What went through your mind when the robbery was taking place?” 

“The first thing that went through my mind,” said Jerry, “was that I should have locked the back door.  Then as I lay on the floor, I knew I had to decide whether I would live or whether I would die.  The paramedics were great.  They kept telling me I was going to be fine.  But when they wheeled me into the emergency room, and I saw the expression on the faces of the doctors and the nurses, I got really scared.  In their eyes I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’”

“So what did you do?” asked the friend.

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry.  “She asked me if I was allergic to anything.  ‘Yes,’ I said.  The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.  I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’  I heard their laughter—I had told them, in effect, I’m choosing to live.  Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

Well, all this optimism is well and good.  But how do we get it?  Some of us just arrive in this world with a sunny disposition, and others are by nature more dour.  On the other hand, let’s distinguish here—optimism, or expecting the best, is not exactly the same as thing as cheerfulness.  I myself am not what I would call cheerful—in fact, I find excessively cheerful people oppressive—but I am surely optimistic. Let us be realistic, yes—let us look at life as it is and not turn away from all of the richness, all the dimensions of human life, including pain, including evil—and at the same time, we can believe, along with Anne Frank, that people are essentially good, that life is good.  We can be swept away with the beauty of the mountain, or of a magnificent painting.  We can be stunned at the miracle of birth.  We can be amazed at the power of love to heal our broken lives.

I think that optimism is closely connected to self-esteem and self-love, and conditioning for that begins at birth, perhaps even in the womb.  I think it is something that can be learned.  My son told me a story the other day about my little grandson, who is not yet four years old.  It is a bittersweet story.  His name is Kash, and he is the Fourth, named after his father and grandfather and great-grandfather.  He is a much loved child and has run into little that is negative in his life, but recently he ran into a bully for the first time, a first-grader on the playground who said to my grandson “You’re ugly.”  My grandson is bi-racial—his mother is Korean-American.  Now I don’t know whether or not this was a racial comment or not, but I expect it was, as she herself has been targeted on occasion.  (Then again, what does a little first grader know about racial prejudice?  It’s just endemic in our culture.)  “You’re ugly,” the older child said again.  Kash was confused.  He knew he wasn’t ugly.  So he said, “I’m not ugly.  I’m real.”  I loved that answer.  I’m real.  I’m authentic.  I’m who I am.  I’m no other.  I’m real.

And yet, my son said, little Kash has asked about the incident for a week now.  “Why did that boy say I’m ugly?”  His parents have had to tell him over and over again, “No, Honey, you’re not ugly.”  Words can hurt, and words can heal.  Do not underestimate the power of language.  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”?  No, words are more powerful than sticks and stones.  As we speak to one another, in particular as we speak to our children, let us remember the power of words.  Once a word is spoken, it really cannot be taken back; it will be remembered; it becomes forever a part of the experience of the one who hears it.

The passage that Bruce read earlier is from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.  Of all the books that I read to my boys at bedtime, that was our favorite.  Charlotte the spider saves Wilbur the pig by helping him to see himself as the radiant, wonderful pig that he is—some pig!  I can remember all of us crying together as Charlotte dies.  In one of my past careers I was a clinical social worker, and I was asked by one of the professors at the University of Kentucky to teach a class on psychotherapy one day.  I assigned the class to read Charlotte’s Web, and when I met with them, I told them that the kind of therapy I was going to teach them was called “Some Pig” therapy—that they needed to reflect back to the client that person’s beauty and health and wholeness.  When that person leaves your office, I told the students, they need to understand that they have strength sufficient to the task, that they are good, that they have courage, that they are going to be all right.   Pie in the sky stuff?  No, I really do believe this about human beings.  All you have to do is look closely enough.  All you have to do is to be really present, and you will see that what I say is true.

A case in point.  I was away this past week at a conference for large church ministers.  One of the ministers there—an older man who is nearing retirement—told this story one evening at the dinner table.  He started talking about his days as a basketball player in high school.  He talked about his coach.  He said that the coach had told a group of boys when they were freshmen that they showed a lot of promise and that they were going to work hard and win the state championship.  He believed in them—and they began to believe in themselves.  When they won a game, but didn’t do their best, he chastised them.  When they played well, but lost, he told them he was proud of them.  Once when they lost, he figured his coaching was at fault, and after the game, he told them so, and apologized.  He said, “I will try very hard to never let this happen again.”  They adored him.  When their senior year came, they were in full flower.  The coach told them before the first game, “We’ve waited three years for this—now go do it!”  They won the state championship, and in fact were undefeated that year.  Seven of those boys went on to play college ball.  As the minister continued to talk, he got tears in his eyes.  “But our coach came to a tragic end,” he said.  “What happened?” I asked.  “He died at 47, of an aneurysm.”  The minister paused.  “Not only was he a great coach, but a fine middle-school teacher, and a great administrator.  He knew how to make people believe in themselves.”  “Yes,” I said, “and all these years later, you still remember him.  You’re still telling the story.” 

Is that a tragic end, dying at 47?  I don’t think so.  A tragic end is dying at 97, having never followed the real desires of your heart.  Or having betrayed those you should have protected.  Or having taken and taken without ever giving back.  That’s a tragic end.  This coach died at 47, but now almost 50 years have passed since that state championship game, and he’s still very much alive.

When we begin to speak of what a good life is or is not, we begin to speak of theology, we begin to speak religiously.  In some religious traditions, human beings are seen as being born in sin, depraved and corrupt.  Much of this belief can be traced to St. Augustine, one of the early Church fathers who had a problem with his own sexuality, which was out of control during his younger years.  To him, with his uncontrollable desire, sex became evil and so he believed every child was conceived in sin and therefore a sinful creature.  What a weight to carry!  In contrast, the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition emphasizes the good in human nature.  The Unitarian side of our history teaches that we can cultivate our natural powers, that we can learn to live honorable and ethical lives.  From the Universalist side, we might recall the words of John Murray, the founder of Universalism in this country:  he said, “You possess a small light . . . uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women.  Give them not hell, but hope and courage.”  This was at the beginning of the 19^th century, in an age, you will remember, in which hellfire and damnation were the order of the day in most religious life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a Unitarian minister before he gave himself to lecturing, believed that within each one of us is “the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty . . .” Within each one of us is a divine spark that is holiness itself, that emerges and blesses the world in many forms, forms such as kindness, peace, wisdom, love.

While I was at the airport waiting to return home from my meeting this week, another of the ministers asked me over lunch, “What do you like best about ministry?”  There are many ways to answer that question, but the answer that leapt out of my mouth was something like this:  “I love the positive energy at the church.  On Sunday morning, you can just feel it in the air.  It’s palpable.  It’s the Spirit moving among us.  The people are real.  They cry, they laugh.  They can be who they are.  And they are being transformed.  I love that.  Seeing people, including myself, growing and being transformed.”

You’re not ugly.  You’re real. You’re some pig!  And if you ever lose sight of that, if you ever doubt your own holiness, your own goodness, your own beauty, I hope that when you enter this sanctuary, or come to choir practice, or to an adult education class, or attend a meeting, I hope those doubts about yourself just begin to fade and then disappear, like smoke into thin air. I hope you go away from this place knowing the miracle that you are.  Listen, let me tell you something.  We don’t care whether or not you left your kitchen tidy.  We don’t care whether or not you believe in a personal god.  We don’t care whether you make a lot of money or a little.  We don’t care whether you are Republican or Democrat or gay or straight or black or white.  You are here today, asking with the rest of us, love me, accept me as I am.  I’m giving my best.  Help me give even better.  Love me into being.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Beloved, we know that you love us and that you forgive us, even before we think to call your name.  May we be ever more willing to rest in that love, to be confident in the life that we have been given.  We are thankful for this community that we call church.  May it be a place where those who sorrow are comforted, where those who celebrate feel this community sharing their joy, and where all may be affirmed as people of infinite value.  May it be so.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and know that you are good and know that you are beautiful, and let that goodness and beauty bless the world.

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Copyright 2004, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.