THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
"Coming to Consciousness in Community"
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
Preached October 11, 1998, at
The First Unitarian Church of HonoluluThere is voice inside my head. My Buddhism teacher called it my"drunken monkey." That voice narrates to me the story of my life as it unfolds. Until I learned to sit Zazen I thought that voice was me. I was the storyteller and the story. The voice was there from as early as I can remember. It was my memory. My story.
We come to consciousness with a story. Even before we are born our parents have hopes and dreams for us. Seldom do they keep them to themselves. From how often we kick (Due to THEIR indigestion !) to whether we are birthed at a convenient time (for THEM), they start telling us what kind of person we are. That early, they begin casting our character. At birth--if not before--they give us a name. How different a character in my story would I have been as Hiram or Orville, or Bruce ?
First born or last, fatherless or motherless, a big extended farm family or mom, pop and 1.3 siblings in a nuclear suburban family, sickly or healthy, child of a professional or an out of work laborer, a home where books were loved and read or a home of illiterate couch potatoes ? And on, and on. The story is already scripted, the actors cast, the plot ready for its twists AS WE COME TO CONSCIOUSNESS.
Our sense of personal identity is a story. Who I am is the sum of the accumulating sub-plots of that story launched and already in progress when I am born. I am story, and it is story that creates me, and it is within the limits of that story that I have whatever power I have to transcend that story and then to cast and script my own.
Life changing events usually (always) involve and are expressed in and as a changed story. The life changing event was a twist in the plot or a sub-plot. It was sparked by a new character entering the story line, or one leaving. And sometimes the change dies aborning because we cannot grasp the thread of the tale and turn it into a story that connects to the unfolding drama.
Sometimes our lives are changed by an unanticipated change or twist in the plot. (There are only a few. Some say as few a seven.)
Sometimes it is a change in which character you play. Were you cast as the lead and find yourself in a supporting role ? You've been playing Sancho Panza, while looking unsuccessfully or unsatisfyingly or both, for a Don Quixote to follow. Play Don Quixote your own self ! Were you an extra, suddenly thrown into a situation where you had lines that MUST be spoken, and no time to rehearse or call in the stunt double ?
I had a girl friend in High School. She had been the shadow of a (she thought) prettier gal-pal. Or, perhaps she had used that pretty face to troll for boys, picking up the attractive friend's rejects. But somewhere in there she grew into her own gangly parts, and the roles reversed, ending the game and the relationship. I was the beneficiary. For a while.
If you want to change your life, change your story ! There are no lack of editors, critics and censors who will try to stop you; but you can do it. No one holds the copyright but you.
Warning: IF you change your story, it WILL change your life.
Many a divorce happens this way. Your new character may not fit into your partner's story. He may not have married a mommy for all the fact he SAID he wanted kids. Or, he waited out child rearing, expecting to have his playmate back, and NOW she wants to be a lawyer.
"And, what do you mean, you've found someone who understands you ?"
When you stop playing the expected part, you force a change in the script. The other players in your ensemble have to ad lib. And they hate it !
Don't go back to school.
Don't let your last kid grow up, or else immediately replace him/her.
This is what a so-called mid-life crisis IS.
And then, there are masks. How many roles do you play ? What do you do when one of those masks gets stuck and won't come off ? Grow a moustache or a beard. Change your hair color or your nose. Lose the weight or accumulate it. Get a make-over or a sports car. How much difference does it make and how easy is it to go back ?
A costume. When I was first a minister I did the whole coat and tie thing. After all, I was a professional now. But when I came home I found that my wife didn't want to make love to a minister. I literally had to learn the discipline of ritually changing my costume when I came home so that I could stop being the minister.
A name. The bio-parents of our foster kids often became upset to hear their children calling us mommy and daddy. THEY were mommy or daddy ! But the children knew that these were role labels, and whoever did the job got called the name.
But the bio-parents were right, too. There is power in the naming. It changes the characters, changes the plot, changes the story. Calling it what it is can empower, or disempower. Changing the name can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Call Harry "Bubba" and watch his neck get red.
A religious conversion is a story change. It can change the character, change the plot; sometimes even change the theater ! And vice-versa. What happens when you don't believe in your own story any more ?
"Mothers, don't let your boys grow up to be cowboys." No, and don't send them off to college if you don't want them to know about Darwin.
A family has a story. Mine did. We were Po' White Trash. And my mother worried when I wanted to marry the Beverly Hills college professor's daughter. She told Nancy all about the skeletons in the closet. The brothers who swapped wives, then swapped back, then all moved in together, and all.
Two cousins and I were the first people in our family to go to college. It changed our respective stories. None of the three of us ever truly fit our family story again. And I, at least, forever after felt like I was just "sitting in." Sometimes I still catch myself expecting to be found out and sent back. But I have no where to be sent back to.
A church has a story. Sometimes they replay the same plot again and again. Sometimes I think you could fire all the members, recruit a whole new batch, hire a new minister, and they'll fire that minister all over again and for the same reasons as they did the last 10. Others can survive an inept clown now and again and go on to greatness, willy-nilly.
A country has a story. Ours certainly does. We are always the good guys and cannot seem to do without an enemy. If they go and die on us, we'll either rehab 'em or replace 'em. Fortunately for us, there seems to be an endless supply of volunteers. Our problems are always their fault, and we are at our best overcoming them. (The enemies, unfortunately. Seldom the problems.)
An ethnic group has a story. It will be interesting to see how this story works itself out in Hawaii. Here, the fastest growing ethnic group is hapa. What will happen to our stories, our characters, our identities, when ethnicity acted out or discriminated against is merely quaint ? Will we discover or invent new colors and new brushes with which to paint each other "other ?" For our families, churches, countries, ethnic groups have stories only in relationship to another family, church, country, ethnic group. The earth's most diverse species (us) appears to be the most xenophobic (afraid of difference). How will it change our stories ? What lost ? What gained ?
Much (Most) (ALL) conflict has to do with one or both participants failing to or refusing to play their assigned role.
When I first started studying the Japanese martial art, Aikido, my Sensei said, "If you ever have to use what I am teaching you, you will already have made at least one mistake." What did he mean ? He meant that I had already let someone cast me in the role of adversary. We were taught to avoid and escape first of all by keeping clearly in mind that we are no one's adversary. If the other thinks we are, it is their problem. One that we do not have to buy into.
Who's the Casting Director here ? Is it part of my story that I have to accept every role thrust upon me ? I am a Minister. Many people come to our religious community because we are different from the ones they left. Then they turn around and expect this minister to play the same role as the minister in the tradition they didn't like and left. When I fail or decline to do so, they become angry with me. A part of MY story is that I play the roles I choose to play. I try to be clear and gentle about that, but if it angers someone, I know whose problem it is.
One place to see how story defines and shapes social institutions as well as people is our out of control News Media. What do they look for ? The story. Even the concept of News is story. Old story + new info = New Story. It isn't News until it can be portrayed as New Story.
What does it take to turn narrative into STORY ? It requires conflict. And extremes make the best conflict. A story exists only in relationship. Two or more points of view. Two or more characters; even, as in Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea," if one of them is a fish.
An individual has a story only in relationship !
The isolated individual HAS NO STORY. Only one character, one role, one point of view, one narrator and narrative. No story, no interest, no attention, NO CONSCIOUSNESS.
The result, when one approaches the condition of isolated individual, is dissociation; the internal split, schizophrenia. What consciousness there is is truncated, split.
The isolated individual has only the story teller for audience.
The story is told to oneself. The story is always an incomplete representation of reality. Enter the split between reality and illusion. A complete--or more complete--representation of reality requires multiple stories, multiple points of view, multiple people.
The person subsumed in the mob has no personal story; therefore, as above, no consciousness.
Only in the tension between the personal and the communal is there story, is there individuality, is there consciousness. Individuality, consciousness, REQUIRES the "Other" ! As T.S. Eliot has it, "Even the Anchorite praying in the wilderness, does so in terms of the Church."
We come to consciousness in community BY MEANS OF STORY.
Somewhere in the tension between the lonely "i" and the mob lies the rich potential of human consciousness. Either extreme is something less than--other than--fully human. Just where between those poles we shall live is negotiable; and it appears that we quite naturally oscillate between them in succeeding stages of life.
So, will you be an Extra all your life ? Or will you try Director, Producer, Scriptwriter ? Or, maybe Author ?
We come to consciousness in and as Story, and we shall not escape story.
But we can become our own author-ity.