Beyond Control

Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
March 6, 2005

First Reading:
from The Courage To Be by Paul Tillich

Fear… has a definite object … which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured.  One can act upon it, and in acting upon it participate in it – even if in the form of struggle. In this way one can take it into one's self-affirmation.  Courage can meet every object of fear, because it is an object and makes participation possible.  Courage can take the fear produced by a definite object into itself, because this object, however frightening it may be, has a side with which it participates in us and we in it.  One could say that as long as there is an object of fear, love in the sense of participation can conquer fear.

 

Second Reading:
from Imperfect Control by Judith Viorst

Studies of victimization have found that most of us, until we have been victimized, share three basic, often unconscious, assumptions:

We assume that we are personally invulnerable.

We assume that the world we live in is comprehensible.

We assume that we are essentially worthwhile.

In other words, though we’re well aware of cancer rates, crime statistics, and car fatalities, we don’t live with the fear that we ourselves will be mugged or raped, or will plunge headfirst through the windshield, or flunk our physical.  And though we are quick to agree that life is often unfair and often unpredictable, we tend to behave as if we believe that people deserve what they get—and vice versa.  Victimhood smashes our sense of it-can’t-happen-to-me safety. It leaches order and meaning from our world.  And it batters our positive sense of self with undermining images of powerlessness, weakness, unworthiness, even deviance. Leaving us with the fear:

that there will be another mugging, another earthquake, another malignancy;

that life makes no sense, that it follows no known rules;

that we are fate’s fools, singled out for this misfortune by forces that are far beyond our control.

Sermon:

When a couple scientists puzzled over why tornadoes kill far more people in the South when tornadoes of the same magnitude are much more common in the Midwest, they conducted a study to compare residents of Illinois with the residents of Alabama.  They found that Illinois residents were far more inclined than Alabamians to believe that they themselves, rather than luck or God, controlled their fate.  When tornado warnings signaled a tornado threat, folks from Illinois were five times more likely to take precautions.  The authors identified a difference where people identify the locus of control within reality.  There are “internalizers” who believe that they are masters of their fate and “externalizers” who believe their lives are determined by forces outside of their control.

Do we have control over our lives?  Or are our lives subject to forces beyond our control?  The unsettling answer is yes and yes.  How can we live with the knowledge that sometimes nothing we do influences our fate?  And when our lives lurch out from our control, suddenly and unexpectedly becoming fragmented and broken, what control remains within our reach?

 

Something in the human psyche desperately wants to believe that our misfortune is not random.  When trying to make sense of an awful event in one’s life, many victims find comfort and relief in blaming themselves: “I didn’t wear a seat belt.”  “I should have walked on a street with more light.”  A strange logic is at work.  If I am able to convince myself that my misfortune wasn’t random, then I can console myself that it is possible to be in control of my life and avoid such misfortune.  Judith Viorst says that even in situations where the actions of others clearly caused the misfortune, some victims insist on taking on the blame.  For feeling guilty and incompetent is considerably less frightening than feeling helpless and out of control.

 

Viorst cites a study about how women who have been raped tend to have a quicker recovery from the trauma if they are able to feel somewhat responsible.  This may sound really twisted, but the psyche prefers to rationalize and pin the blame on oneself for a horrific violation than to consider that trauma can be random.  For when a rape occurs in a time and place where one never would have anticipated it, then that woman must deal with one of the most agonizing and terrifying truths for any of us to face: that trauma and suffering are ultimately beyond our control and could descend upon our lives at any time.  And yet, it is precisely this truth, as agonizing as it is for our all-too-human psyches, that is at the heart of religion and is the source of religious awakening.  Coming to peace with this difficult truth about human control, within our bones, is much easier said than done.

 

It’s as if our psyches will do anything to avoid facing the reality that we can’t always be in control.  I know of a woman whose husband’s job is to help cities cultivate a response plan if, God forbid, a dirty bomb was detonated in a metropolitan area.  He informs city leaders of the people that would be killed in a certain radius, how many people would be incapacitated or in need of prompt attention, and how far away from which the nearest help could respond.  This woman is a friend of a member here, Cathy Blanford.  Cathy tells me that she asked her what it's like to be raising a family with three children while your husband is taking steps to provide a response to the worst nightmare we could imagine.  The woman responded that she feels more and more secure as time distances us from the attacks of September 2001.

 

The thought of such a scenario occurring is so terrifying that I empathize with those who simply seek to ignore it.  Yet, the potential destruction is so awful that to ignore it is tantamount to abnegating control.  In the face of the terrifying possibilities of today, we human beings are prone to feel helpless and become passive.  But here’s the problem: Living in denial leads to relinquishing what control we can have.  Why can’t we be masters of our fate, to embrace the Illinois propensity for locating the locus of control within ourselves?  We can, to a point, if we accept and live out of our own vulnerability. 

 

I know what it's like to feel invulnerable, and I sometimes question my self-sanity when I remember how enthusiastically I bicycled through the streets of Berkeley, California, often darting across busy streets or riding without hands through stop signs, night or day. In hindsight, it was blind foolishness, but then it was exhilarating freedom and a refreshing sense of invulnerability.  I was lucky.  Following my one serious accident, the only thing that was broken was my helmet.  Sure I had road rash, but my illusion of invulnerability was stoked even further. I came of age believing the world is here to meet my needs and conform to my deepest wishes.

The trauma in my life that has elicited the greatest agony—or at least the most crazy behaviors—may seem inconsequential to you, but for me sheer anguish.  After two years of dating the woman I truly thought I would marry, she made plans to meet up with a lover in a far away city—and stay in the same hotel room.  I went berserk.  I lost it.  I cried.  I screamed, mostly when alone.  Now she didn’t go on that trip due to my reaction, but she said she would need to do this at some point for her personal growth.  I couldn’t understand, and I desperately wanted her to change.  She told me all her friends thought I was being unreasonable.  And my friends felt the same about her.  The simple truth of the situation was that I wanted her to be something different than what she was at that time.  I simply couldn’t bear to realize that the future of this significant relationship was beyond my control.  I began breaking pencils.  Then I was ripping up paper.  During the darkest moments, I resorted to self-inflicted pain and destroyed a chair by crashing it over different parts of my body.  Thankfully that was the turning point for me—I finally relented, accepting that reality was beyond my control.  Later a parishioner of my former congregation said to me something I’ve never forgotten, “None of us lives the life we intended to live.”

Moving to the Chicago area has been a significant challenge for me.  Every day the newspaper informs me about local violence and loss that causes me great pain.  At least once a month, a broken man or woman shares with me life events that are so beyond their control.  I feel helpless as all I can do is sit and listen and be present to their pain and anguish, and then hold them in my prayers.  Recently, a man came in who repeated time and again in an anguished voice that his windows had been shot out during a drive-by shooting.  With two teenage sons, he beseeched me to ask God to keep his two sons safe and then showed me the memorial service cover that held the photograph of the friend of one his sons. 

I typically bottle up this helplessness.  People here tell me that I am unflappable, but I can assure you that at times, I am the opposite on the inside.  Every now and then, a newspaper story evokes tearful convulsions within me and I am uncorked.  Such is the case with the horrific murders of Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother.  The assassinations defy my assumptions of human decency and civil society.  Worse, nothing likely could have prevented the cold, calculating intention of destroying the Lefkow’s family.  Members of this congregation have shared with me the traumatic memory of the fatal shooting of Jim Piszczor, an Oak Park lawyer, who was killed along with Henry Gentile, in Gentile’s courtroom.  A wheel-chair bound former cop became disgruntled with the divorce proceedings and in a fit of passion pulled out the gun he brought in with him. In that situation, a clear action could defray people’s fears—simply banning handguns altogether from the courtroom.  In the Lefkow murders, we are collectively faced with the harsh reality that sometimes tragedy strikes, and there is nothing we can do other than reach out for solace and comfort.

When Martin Luther King was 27 years old and living in Montgomery, Alabama, the phone rang late one night.  The voice said, “Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now.  And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”  Years later, King recalled that phone call and his thoughts as he sat in his kitchen. He agonized over comparing the lovely smile of his newborn daughter with the prospect of someone killing her.  He couldn’t call upon his parents in his distress, he did the only thing he could do.  He prayed and summoned up the power that would guide his way.  In his words, “I had to know God for myself.  I bowed my head over that cup of coffee.  I will never forget it.  I prayed…and I discovered then that religion had become real to me. … I could hear a voice saying, ‘Stand up for peace.  Stand up for truth.’”

Most of us don’t live under the shadow of death threats.  Most Americans don’t live under the daily threat of violence as those who live in many parts of the Middle East or in a crack neighborhood just miles away.  But we do live in a world that constantly tells us to live in fear. Periodically I can’t help but spiral into fear. I don’t know exactly what triggers it, but I suddenly become haunted that life is meaningless, that there’s nothing I can do to make a difference. Recently a recurring vision came to me of a conch shell, and I was stuck inside, only able to see in the direction of the shell’s opening.  It was as if I couldn’t exit without prying the shell open with a vice, but such a vice could be leveraged only from outside the shell—and I couldn’t get out.  The more I try to ignore or run away from the discomfort of the vision, the more fearful I found myself.  When I intentionally sought to be present to that horrible feeling, with the help of a mentor, I noticed how fearful I was of simply breaking the shell for fear of injuring myself.  And then, it became clear.  As terrifying as it is, we human beings are called to break the shell of our fear.  For it is better to live bruised and hurting than to live cooped up and cowering from insecurity.  We are called to live amidst our brokenness in our broken world with the clarity that is ours if only we move into our fears and release their agonizing grip.

Breaking the shell of fear means accepting one’s vulnerability.  It means living outside of the well-protected, highly fortified compounds we could erect for ourselves.  It means choosing to live with an openness even though one could get hurt.  It’s hard work to live without the assumptions of invulnerability and without fear, but that is our religious task.

I can imagine someone asking, "So, Alan, would you say this to Judge Lefkow who is now bereft of her beloved husband and proud mother?  Shouldn’t she have erected greater levels of security and defense to prevent such a horrific incident from occurring?"  I cannot imagine the utter darkness into which Judge Lefkow and her daughters have been plunged and now must endure for years and decades to come.  And as horrible as this week’s events have been for the Lefkow family and community, they know their lost one’s lives have been well lived, lived with integrity and courage.  They didn’t retreat into a fortified compound when an agent of hate made threats against her life.  Instead the couple sought to make peace with their vulnerability. Should they have?  My answer: is it not better to have a life that is vital and cut short than to live in cowering fear for as long as medical technology can sustain you?

If you have gone through profound loss, I want to challenge you to consider the words of David Gelernter, a Yale computer-science professor: "In the long run, being a victim is ultimately a choice you make."  In June of 1993, he opened a package containing a pipe bomb, sent to him by the Unabomber.  The explosion blew two fingers off his right hand, damaged his hearing and eyesight, and left scars all over his body.  He says that many reporters and TV producers urged him to “step forward and take my rightful share of victimhood”.  But he declined to be someone who “assumes disgraceful and pathetic spiritual stances” and insists, “Any morally healthy person would rather bash in his head with a cinder block than choose to call himself a victim.”

Gelernter refuses to view the attack on him as out of the ordinary.  He got injured in a dramatic way, but points out that thousands of innocent people are injured in auto accidents every day. Even though he’d never have exchanged it for a healthy, whole body, he says he has come to know the “extraordinary kindness of our various communities…and even strangers all over the world.”  He says, “Getting seriously hurt and pulling through has a salutary effect on the clarity with which a person looks at his own life.  In my case, I’ve shaken the tendency to assume I’d eventually get around to the important stuff.  As the Talmud asks, what if there never is an ‘eventually’?”

No matter how fragmented one’s life becomes, there remains a longing for wholeness, as well as the capacity to find a way of integrity within the brokenness.  It is precisely when living authentically in the agony of ambiguity and brokenness, that clarity and conviction may emerge as a foundation from which to live.

This was a central teaching of a Jewish peasant that lived 2000 years ago and a core realization of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Each was a young man among an oppressed people who saw that his people had limited control over the worldly aspects of their lives.  Each found a clarity that despite the world being full of forces over which we human beings have little or no control, there exists within us and within the heart of reality a power we can depend upon.  This power won’t protect us from physical injury or death.  This power won’t help us get ahead in the world or pay our bills.  This power gives us no tangible assurances other than the discernment of what it means to live with integrity, for each of us has a personal dignity, or, if you will, a spiritual clarity, that no one can take away.  Each of us can turn toward wholeness, moving our lives from fear by grounding our lives in that mysterious and so commonly misunderstood reality of love.  This love always remains beyond our control and yet is ever within our grasp. 

Blessed be.  Amen.

© Copyright 2005 Rev. Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.