Before I begin my talk, I need to ask you a few things.There's
a lot I still don't know about you all. There won't be time for
me to talk to each ofyou individually, so I'm going to do a kind
of survey, to get a general idea of the things you believe in
and the ways you act. I'll give you very careful directions about
how to answer.
First of all, would those who agree with the first principle of
the Unitarian Universalist Association please raise your hand.
(This is the principle which says we believe in the worth and
dignity of every person -- we believe that everyone is important.
If you agree with that, raise
your hand.)
Umm -- just about every hand is up. Well, you can put your hands
down for a moment. The second principle is about justice, equity
and compassion in human relations -- that is, about being nice
to one another. I'd like you to stand up if you agree with that
one and if it's not too
hard for you to stand.
Almost everyone again. Now, if you think the second one is more
important than the first, please sit down. If you think the first
one is more important, stay standing. The third one is about accepting
one another and encouraging spiritual growth in our congregations
-- it's about
being nice to people at church. If you think that's a good idea,
raise your right hand, please. If you think it's even more important
that we be nice to each other here than to people we don't even
know, sit down, unless you're already sitting, in which case please
raise your left hand. (No, I'm sorry, there isn't time to repeat
it; you just need to decide.)
The fourth principle is a free and responsible search for truth
and meaning -- well, that means we think learning is a good idea.
Those of you who're sitting down, if you think this should be
number one, raise your right hand, and if anyone who's standing
thinks the same way, sit down now and raise your right hand, please.
Some of you who're sitting will have both your right and your
left hands up.
Number five is the right of conscience and the use of the democratic
process -- everyone gets a vote. That's exactly what we're doing,
and if you agree with that and you're still standing up, you should
sit down now and raise your right hand. If you're sitting already
and you've got both hands up, you can put one down if you don't
think this principle is quite as important as the others.
The goal of world community, with peace, liberty and justice for
all -- that's a big social action one. Some of you may feel that
should be further up on the list. If you do, stand up now, or
if you're already standing put another hand up.
And the last principle is respect for the interdependent web --
avoiding pollution and all that. Anyone who doesn't believe in
that at all, should probably go to the back of the room, but if
this is your favourite one, cross your arms like this, whether
you're standing or sitting. Of course, that means you have to
give up whatever it was you were voting for by having your hand
up, if you did.
Just one last thing: everyone who thought this was confusing and
it was too difficult to keep up with the instructions, just sit
normally with your hands down. Thank you very much; that was good,
even though I got too mixed-up to keep track of who thought what!
If a Minister (or anyone else, for that matter) has strong convictions
on a matter of personal morality or social ethics, it can make
for considerable tension in relating to those with differing views,
as some of you are well aware. For a Minister, whose profession
involves exploring many moral and ethical perspectives and being
able to explain her reasons for taking a particular position,
and whose work also involves counselling church members about
their ethical choices and dilemmas, the tension can be particularly
difficult. On the one hand, it's part of the Ministerial mandate
to be an advisor on moral matters; on the other hand, in our tradition
respect for each individual's conscience is paramount, and we
insist on the right of each person to decide for herself what's
right in the situations she faces.
For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to talk mainly about Ministering
in the professional sense now, because the expectations which
many people have of a Minister include these tension-producing
elements of moral advice and respect for the individual conscience.
But I recognize that in this, too, things are mixed-up. The roles
of professional Minister and layperson overlap and merge in all
kinds of ways. And the most crucial thing which I want to say
is this (and you may have been expecting it): we're all mixed
up! I mean this in every possible sense.
"Mixed-up" has come to have a psychological connotation;
it suggests neurosis, contradiction, not "having it all together",
not being clear and straight in thought and action. Well, I'd
be very wary of anyone who really had it all completely together,
who didn't have any contradictions or ambivalence in their life,
who was absolutely pure and unadulterated in their character.
I don't think I could relate to them at all. Ministering to the
unmixed-up would be very difficult for me. I not only believe,
I hope that we're all mixed-up in the psychological sense, because
that seems to me to be the state of being that gives rise to growth
-- it's in the difficult process of working through the contradictions
and ambiguities and conflicts in our lives and our feelings that
we develop and mature. When it's said disparagingly of someone,
"He's really mixed-up!" it tends to suggest that the
contradictions are so strong that the person is having a hard
time finding a way through them to some kind of stability, but
while it's good that we feel empathy for someone in that situation,
I think we have no right to be disparaging about it. It's painful
to be acutely mixed-up, but it's also full of potential for growth.
Ministry to the emotionally or psychologically mixed-up is, I
think, largely a matter of being there for them, being someone
who can listen to the mixture of feelings without passing judgment
on them, in the faith that there's a drive towards inner growth
in each of us. Growth will happen, and it may happen a little
sooner if there's someone supportive around to care. Ministering
to those who're mixed up in this way does not involve "sorting
people out" or "setting them straight", which is
often a temptation to try, and can best be resisted by recognizing
how futile it is; it involves providing a space in which they
can work out their conflicts with a caring listener. And when
you tell a Minister about how mixed-up you are, whether it's in
relation to your children, your partner, your career or your sense
of your self and what you really want, remember: chances are the
helper is mixed up too!
Another sense of "mixed-up" applies to our thinking
processes rather than our emotions. I suppose that "confused"
is a good synonym. We get names and directions and facts mixed
up in our minds; we listen to a debate or read two opposing views
on some controversial subject and we feel confused about which
side we're on, because we're not sure we've got all the information
straight in our minds. This confusion overlaps with our emotions,
because what we think affects how we feel. In this area of thinking,
the Minister's role as a teacher becomes important. I think Ministry
to the cognitively mixed-up is to do as much clear thinking as
we possibly can on the many subjects that concern us all, inform
ourselves about them and try to pass on what we've learned. Just
keep in mind that, like everyone else, Ministers have many barriers
to their thinking, including an unconscious screening process
which means we learn selectively, and often not the things we
most need to learn. Things which are already in accordance with
our interests and biases tend to register more strongly than entirely
new facts orideas. In fact, in the area of thinking, it might
be better if we all became a bit more mixed-up, more open to ideas
which clash and conflict and confuse, so that we'd be forced to
spend time sorting them out, because that's when the real growth
happens.
Mixed-up feelings, mixed-up thoughts, and -- yes -- mixed-up ethics.
How do we minister to people who have very different ethics from
our own? As I've mulled this over, I've come to see that (for
me, at any rate) there are two very different situations involved,
although they're areas which meet and overlap and have no clear
boundaries -- they're all mixed up. One is concerned with what
one might call "abstract" or theoretical ethics, of
the kind that's illustrated by the "lifeboat dilemma".
You know: the question is asked, as a discussion starter, "If
six people, of very different ages and skills and needs, were
in a lifeboat which could only hold five, who should be tossed
overboard?" There are many variations on this exercise, but
basically it asks the participants to talk in terms of theory,
because you're not actually faced with having to make the decision
to kill one person for the sake of five others. (I suspect that
if you were, the discussion might take on a rather more urgent
tone.)
One example of this kind of theoretical ethics is "Alligator
River", an exercise which involves hearing a story and making
some moral judgments about it. I saw a videotape once of people
engaged in this exercise, and I could see that everyone enjoyed
ranking the morality of the people in the story -- all of whom
were people you wouldn't especially want to meet anywhere, let
alone at an alligator river. The exercise required that each person
start out by saying who they thought was morally worst of this
miserable group of sinners and work their way up to the ones who
might possibly have some redeeming qualities. It was a good way
of finding out what everyone thought about other people's behaviour
and even their underlying motivations, and it also helped people
to see how complex morality and ethics are. And since the situation
was pretty fantastic it let everyone pass judgment without getting
too close to our own lives -- rather like that movie of a few
years ago, Indecent Proposal -- not many of us have the luxury
of actually having to decide what we would or wouldn't do for
a million dollars, so we can safely praise or blame the behaviour
which takes place on the screen. These things are like the cryptic
crosswords I enjoy -- good mental exercise, but quite unrelated
to how we live. If I have a role to play, as a Minister, in this
area of abstract ethics, I think it's the teaching one that I've
already described -- my role is to help sort through the complexities
of ethical questions, so that we can at least strengthen the intellectual
basis for our moral behaviour.
Just because something's told as a story or made into a movie
doesn't mean it's abstract or unreal, of course. A movie I've
seen several times is Four Weddings and a Funeral, in which the
central character stands at the altar on his wedding day frantically
trying to decide whether he should go ahead and make his vows
to a woman who loves him very much, whom he's already treated
badly in various ways, and of whom he's quite fond -- or leave
her standing there while he takes off with the promiscuous young
enchantress who's just split up with her husband and is now suddenly
available. I felt this man's dilemma as sharply as if it had been
my own. Perhaps it is: what to do, when whatever you do is going
to be hurtful and imperfect and mixed-up?
For the most part, our own moral dilemmas don't involve such high
stakes as that wedding scene. But they're often just as hard to
solve, and sometimes there's the same kind of moral double jeopardy
-- the sense that any decision will have an element of wrongness
about it. A colleague told me about a member in her congregation,
a young woman who was making a serious career choice and had decided
to enter the U.S. military. We can imagine the ambivalence which
that woman herself was experiencing, let alone the ambivalence
of her anti-war Minister who was helping her make this decision.
I'm aware of some acutely difficult personal situations among
people I know, involving just this kind of ethical ambivalence,
as well as some of the more public ones that we know about from
the media. But people's personal struggles are private, and the
only issues I can presume to talk about from any pulpit are the
ones with which I must deal. Let me tell you just three of the
moral dilemmas I've faced at various times, ranging from small
to very far-reaching indeed.
A recurring one: whether to declare on my income-tax return the
honoraria I've received for weddings, funerals, and the occasional
talks and workshops in various places. Honesty is a high value
for me, and I believe that people who cheat on their taxes are
cheating you and me, in the end, not some abstract entity called
"the government". But solvency is a high value, too,
and so is maintaining a fairly casual attitude towards money,
in which I simply don't keep track of every penny, because I don't
want money to have too big a place in my life. Also, I try to
keep a sense of perspective, which sees that the sums of money
we're talking about here are very small and probably don't justify
the paperwork and calculations.
Another dilemma, much longer ago and more serious, I think. My
children had a cat. It had been made very clear to them that one
cat was the limit of their parents' tolerance. One of the children
brought a kitten home one day and actually managed to hide it
for several days before I was aware of it. I didn't know what
to do with the issues of responsibility and compassion and authority
that were involved here.
And the third, also way in the past, but still very much in my
awareness. It involved something a bit like that movie with the
wedding scene, except that I'd been in my marriage a long time.
The dilemma was whether to stay in it, with its difficulties and
unhappiness for me, but with stability for the children -- to
honour my commitments, in fact, -- or to leave for the sake of
a rather romantic dream of some greater self-fulfilment. I knew
at the time, and we've found out even more since then, that separation
and divorce are hard on children, even when the
circumstances warrant them.
I chose these three situations because in none of them do I have
any kind of confidence that I made the morally right decision.
And I mention them here because it's important for a congregation
to know that their Minister has made some grave ethical mistakes
and will quite likely make more. But I made the best decisions
I was able to make at the time, and I trust in a spirit of forgiveness
pervading the universe which enables some good to come out of
even the worst choices. It's in that spirit that I try to minister
to anyone faced with moral choices, knowing that there are no
perfect answers, only the best we can do at the time. Absolute
right and absolute wrong are concepts which slip further and further
away from me. Caring for one another is probably the closest I
can come to an absolute value now.
In Four Weddings and a Funeral, when Charles stands at the altar
trying to make his decision, his brother tells the assembled guests
that he thinks Charles loves someone else. The minister, who's
already asked the question, "Do you take this woman to be
your wedded wife?" must be absolutely thrown for a loop by
this. I could imagine the excruciating feeling of every Minister's
nightmare come true, a ceremony turned into a fiasco. What a temptation
it would be to tell Charles that of course he must go ahead with
the marriage, fulfill his engagement promise to his fiancee, regardless
of whatever fleeting and frivolous feelings he might have for
some other highly unsuitable foreign woman.
The Minister doesn't succumb to this temptation. When the brother
suggests that Charles loves someone else, the Minister looks at
him earnestly and long, a close look as if there were no-one else
in the huge, packed church. "And do you, Charles?" he
asks. "Do you love somebody else?" I hope that all of
us who minister can live up to that standard of ministry. I hope
we can be more concerned to help clear people's vision than to
impose on them our own vision of what's right. And I think we
can be helped by yet another sense of what it means to be mixed-up.
I mentioned the situation in which a pacifist Minister was involved
in counselling a military parishioner. The two positions seem
like polar opposites, but I suggest that they have much more in
common than might be supposed. We're each more complex than simply
a dove or a hawk, right or left politically, authoritarian or
permissive; we always have some element of the other in us, too.
More than that, we don't live in isolation from one another but
in a world that mixes us up together in a million ways. The pacifist
Minister pays taxes which support the dropping of bombs, the killing
of civilians by accident or design. The soldier participates in
peacekeeping duties which save the lives of whole populations.
The vegetarian wears leather shoes. Meat-eaters rescue injured
birds and care for them. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who's credited
with fueling the Civil War by writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, couldn't
have done so without her black servants, and Thomas Jefferson
had slaves.
There's impurity in our best impulses, and all our actions are
mixed up with the causing of pain as well as the doing of good.
Once we've recognized how mixed-up we are, as individuals and
as a world, in our feelings, our thinking and our ethics, ministry
becomes a much more compassionate matter. When we take a stand
politically or ethically, it will be in the knowledge that on
the other side are people as mixed-up as we are, in their thoughts,
their feelings and their being in the world. And for those in
the throes of a moral dilemma, our ministry will be less like
an instruction than a question -- a question like that of the
Minister in the movie: "Do you feel this way, friend? Do
you believe you should act this way?" And then we'll help
them work through their answer, not ours.
The more mixed up we are, the more human. Our lives become integrated
and enriched as we stop pretending that we're clear and sure and
straight. Only a "higher power" is all those things,
and the grace of that Power is sufficient for us; that strength
can be made perfect in our weakness. So may it be, and let's be
grateful for our mixed-up lives, our mixed-up selves.