Whoa that hymn was so beautiful, and its message so powerful. Thoughts and prayers are a great start. Usually though, action is required.
Our theme today is making amends. Meredith questioned the positioning of that beautiful hymn immediately before my sermon which I usually start with bad or irreverent jokes. Sorry Meredith, here I go again.
The following are examples of how not to make an apology.
“I’m sorry we always get into fights on things you are totally wrong about.”
“Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to admit that I was right.”
“I promise to do a better job at hiding how much you annoy me.”
“Sorry I was late for work. I was stuck being happy not being at work.”
“I apologize for not doing a better job at pretending to listen to you.”
This one from Lauren Boebert: “Do you know who I am?!”
“I would agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.”
“I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the sound of my own stubbornness.”
“I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, but sorry seems like the polite thing to say.”
“I’m sorry for apologizing incessantly – I think I need to go to apology rehab.”
And this one is from me:
“I would like to apologize to anyone I have not yet offended. Please be patient. I will get to you.”
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Anger is one of the most common ways to sabotage our intention for reconciliation. No matter how we couch it, hostility is hostile. Words matter. Tone of voice and attitude also matter. When we think that we have the truth and they don’t, this comes across. Attempts to educate and dominate rarely bring the quality of connection that we hope for.
Let’s say that we regret harm caused by our words or deeds. We wonder if and how we can make amends. We can propose to do something. Then we need to listen to and carefully consider their responses. Any repair will be built on our caring for how our actions will impact them.
This sermon suggests that making amends can work like magic. How to create that magic?
Many attempts at repair fail. Some do more harm. Why? We may sincerely want to correct our mistakes. We usually have some awareness when relations go awry, when some word or deed of ours results in a loss of rapport and possibly harm to someone we care about. Second to anger on the sabotage list is the assumption that we will be able to control others’ responses.
Another common trap lives in the question, “Who is to blame?” “Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is better? Who is deserving?”
We might think we see the situation clearly, its cause and its solution. Being the spiritually evolved people that we are, we step up to confess our transgressions. We are confident in our plan for correction. But do we hold our solution as only one of many possible ways to repair the harm?
Maybe we expect it to go like this: We admit we were wrong and apologize. The recipients of our apology are moved. They say “oh it’s okay.” Or they tell us that they forgive us. Or they let us know exactly how to repair damage done. And everyone lives happily ever after.
Sometimes it does happen like that. Sometimes it doesn’t.
If our apology isn’t met with forgiveness and acceptance, we might experience hurt feelings. Our remorse may shift to anger or resentment. We may grow impatient. “Come on. Get over it!” Many are the paths that go out from our nice little apology, to move us away from the healing we long for.
Blame is one of those paths. Psychologist Marshal Rosenberg suggested an alternative to the blame game. He called it the game of “What would make life more wonderful?” When we ask this question, we more quickly realize that communication, trust building and collaboration will be part of the answer.
We may quickly conceive of strategies to make life more wonderful; however, if we haven’t listened well to the others, there is less chance that they will embrace our strategies. We may be tempted to force solutions or coerce others to submit to our plans, but force and coercion extract a high cost.
How to build trust? We can ask them what we could do to repair any damage we caused. If we do propose a plan to make things right we best think of it as a gift that the recipient might want to exchange for something else.
At the Dwight Brown Leadership School we learned that church leaders frequently imagine technical fixes for conflict when what is needed is a cultural shift. It’s often hurt hearts that lead to divisions. Quick fixes and technical solutions rarely bring about the change of heart, mind and spirit that is needed for new wonderful creative ideas to
emerge.
Although many of us have been reluctant to embrace anything religious, our congregations are places where people develop faith, and faith is the kind of thing that enables unseen creative solutions to come out of nowhere. Faith might be one of the greatest gifts our UU liberal religious tradition can give the world. UU’s don’t get faith by memorization or assent to doctrine. We get it in a strange combination of ways. We have this strange mix of science geeks, history buffs, nature mystics, eclectic seekers, and peeps passionate about social justice. Faith is living in our tradition. It sneaks into our lives and gets up into us.
We have faith that more is humanly possible than can be seen by humans caught in a thicket of trauma, conflict, and hurt. When society demands obedience to an established order or pattern, our tradition says, “More is possible!” Our tradition has demonstrated faith in possibilities yet untried by society. Slavery was an established system. Male subjugation of females is established. Our faith lifts us up to strive for more because it has nourished our vision of things yet to be.
Harvey Jackins, Founder of ReEvaluation Counseling said that “there is always a policy that is better than the ones that we used that didn’t work.” He taught his students to wait for the emergence of “an elegant solution.” Our job as counselor was to trust in the client’s inherent power to uncover hidden elegant solutions for themselves.
Many times those elegant solutions arose from the quagmire of accumulated pain and distress. We were encouraged to take courageous steps to move out of control patterns we carried to cope with old pain. Once a client decided to release such a pattern, the unhealed pain would emerge to be healed. With support to feel and release the pain while continuing the new direction, surprising and sometimes spectacular new creativity emerged, time after time.
I’ve witnessed similarly surprising creativity during Restorative Circles. I was trained by Restorative Circles founder Domonic Barter. I gave myself a sabbatical year in Seattle, and with support of colleagues and mentors there, I co-facilitated classes and workshops in Washington prisons, working with an organization called Freedom Project. The women’s prison in Gig Harbor was rated as one of the most violent. We
were invited to bring nonviolent communication and restorative justice classes.
The classes were experiential rather than academic. Week after week I witnessed little miracles when women brought us the gift of their conflict. The outcomes of these circles, the path to restoration could never be predicted beforehand. When women were heard about their own pain and they were helped to be able to hear different perspectives in a conflict, the result was insight, mutual expansion of responsibility, creativity and generosity. Positive outcomes were the norm. It was one of the most amazing and meaningful experiences of my life.
In these and other situations I have seen new ways emerge where no way had been possible before. Different modalities and methods produced the same effect: connection enabled healing, insight, understanding, and solutions. Education, coupled with faith, allows us to bring hope into seemingly hopeless situations and to witness little miracles.
Earlier in the service Meredith played and sang “Be Thou With Us.” The hymn invites us into a spirit of prayer that can transform us and enable us to be agents of healing. Our multicultural religious tradition encourages many ways to access the power of transformative love.
It’s probably not difficult to imagine a theist embracing this hymn. We recognize its language as prayer, and perhaps we think that prayer is the property of theists. Singing this hymn, a theist expresses their desire to feel the presence and the guidance of a creative force referred to as G*d – or Creator, Jesus, Hashem, Allah, Krishna. Connection with this transcendence – this “Thou” enables us to approach challenges with a new consciousness.
Theists praying, no big deal. But in this sanctuary, you will find pagans, Buddhists, humanists and atheists entering into a spirit of prayer. Take the person whose spirituality is felt most intimately in nature. Take also, the religious humanist. These two will use different language describing a powerful connection. Many Indigenous cultures
begin prayers by addressing “all my relations” or they call upon their Ancestors.
When UUs sing “Thou be with us”, Thou might refer to Mother Earth, or the cosmos. Meredith likes to sing “Spirit of Love be with us”. An atheist can certainly, if amenable to poetry, call upon the spirit of wisdom, courage, justice. I see these as essentially the… same religious experience, one that empowers us to enter into a difficult situation
like attempting to make amends and have faith. Prayer is reaching out and connecting to something larger than ourselves.
If the word “prayer” is too large a hurdle to get over, we can substitute another word that refers to a practice we use to experience humility and empowerment.
When does making amends work like magic? When our hearts are in a holy place. Diverse religious traditions and secular processes give instructions for making amends. In each case inner transformation leads to new attitudes, new behaviors, and new results.
How to be effective in making amends? Begin with humility. Acknowledge and accept the pain you feel about what you did and the loss of closeness you experienced. Acknowledge your desire for connection, healing, and repair. Accept that alone you do not have the power to bring about what you seek. Respect the power and the right of the other to choose their own way to pursue fulfillment.
Remember that you have come through pain before. Have faith and remember that new possibilities may emerge which are greater than you can imagine. Remember that your integrity need not be subject to another’s response. They may remain hurt, distant, skeptical, armored. *Faith informs us that even in estrangement, connection remains.
When you make amends, give thanks for how your intention and action has restored you to integrity. If repair comes to the other person and to the relationship, let that be an added gift.
Affirm your action as one step in an ongoing journey of self-awareness and spiritual growth. Ground yourself in self-acceptance. Feel your connection to all that it is. From the peace that is in you, offer blessings in your own way. Lastly, let us acknowledge that we are in this together!
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