5776 High Holiday Sermon
The Spirituality of
Imperfection
Once again, I thank Rabbi
Hammerman for giving me this opportunity to share with you. He is generous to share his pulpit.
While many clergy who lead
congregations have to write sermons on a weekly basis, this is my one big
opportunity to offer a sermon each year.
As such, it occupies a fair amount of my attention from about the
beginning of the summer. First, I need
to think about what subject I want to focus on, and then I start thinking about
what I want to say about that subject.
This year, I decided that I was going to write a sermon on prayer, and discuss
how I prayed in my heart to a God that I didn’t believe in with my mind. Sounds like an interesting topic, right?
But I had a hard time with
it. My first efforts felt very detached
and intellectual, and I want to share with you from my heart and soul rather
than being some kind of lecturer. But
when I tried to make the sermon more personal, I got stuck because I couldn’t
find a happy ending. My personal prayer
and meditation practices seemed so inconsistent and sporadic that I felt
embarrassed to offer a sermon about prayer.
I had the ‘before’ part down; it was the ‘after’ part that was escaping
me.
What to do? Not long ago my wife and I were coming back
from the supermarket. It was a beautiful
day, and we were discussing whether I would work on my sermon or possibly go to
an art gallery with her. I was feeling
mulish. I knew time was getting tight,
but I didn’t feel at all inspired. I
told her that this might be one of those sermons done late at night under
pressure of a deadline, and she, having seen me go through this, asked, “Is
this really what you want to happen?”
Then she made a wonderful remark that opened the door of creativity for
me. She said, “Are you sure that this is
what you want to talk about? Just
because you’ve been thinking about prayer for months doesn’t mean that this is
the right subject for you. How about
looking at where you are right now and what you want to talk about?”
And when I did think about
this, including my concern that my prayer practice wasn’t ready for prime time,
the subject that I wanted to discuss with you came to me almost instantly. That subject is the spirituality of
imperfection – how do we, how do I reconcile my inability to be my best self on
any kind of a consistent basis with my ideals and standards for myself? How do I tolerate the reality of my
self-centeredness, desire to escape reality, avariciousness and especially my
desire to look good and have people think well of me compared to what I think I
would be if I could consistently live from my highest self?
As I looked back over my life,
the answer to this question, which I reframed as “How have I lived with my own
imperfections?” was “poorly.” Since childhood I have been someone who
frequently got trapped in a tar pit of shame. I often got depressed, sometimes
for weeks at a time, and during these periods I would have a profound feeling
of worthlessness and struggle to find anything good in myself or in life, which
sometimes seemed not worth living.
Fortunately, many years of
psychotherapy, spiritual direction and appropriate medications (some of you
know that I am a sober alcoholic, and I hasten to add that these are not the
type of medications that would end my sobriety) have helped me and diminished
the intensity of these patterns. But I remained an expert at self-criticism and
self-denigration. I sometimes treated
myself the way that a rider might treat a balky horse. To get the horse to move in the right
direction the rider might yank on the bit, kick the horse’s side or even whip
the horse. That was frequently how I
managed myself, and I can tell you that it is painful, tiring and not very
productive.
I have started to approach
this question of living with my imperfections differently, and this is what I
would like to share with you today. Over
the past few months, I came to see a pattern that I acted out consistently with
my spiritual director. A spiritual director
is an individual that a seeker sees monthly, and the subject of the meetings is
to examine the seeker’s relationship with, or perspective upon, or practices
regarding the Holy – or God if you prefer.
It is a very different relationship than most because its primary focus
is the seeker’s experience of God and how that is manifesting in his/her life
at this time.
What would happen when I met
with my spiritual director was that I would invariably tell him about aspects
of my spiritual practice that seemed to me to be unsatisfactory, such as my
difficulty establishing a regular morning meditation practice or my failure to
journal, etc. etc. At first I didn’t
think I was bringing up these items so that he would reassure me that I was
still a valid spiritual being and that they wouldn’t have to revoke my
ordination as a Rabbinic Pastor. But I
also realized that I was not looking for him to agree with my negative
self-assessment of my spiritual practices.
So what was I trying to do and
what was I looking for? I knew that when
I kept doing this our sessions seemed “juice-less” and this pattern got really
old and unsatisfying. As I look at it now
I think I was keeping myself stuck and avoiding change, because change –
particularly changing into a fuller, richer, deeper, more giving self – was
very frightening. So if I stayed stuck
in the negative, consistently recounting my shortcomings to him, I wouldn’t
have to grow larger. At the same time
his tacit reassurance that I was okay kept me from feeling so awful that I
might have tried to change despite my fear.
So I pointed out this to him
(he saw it too) and told him that I was going to make a new rule – I wasn’t
allowed to put myself down when I talked to him. For someone as shame based as I was, this was
a major change. He thought it was a
terrific idea (I think he was also was tired of this pattern) and I instituted
it. The difference in our sessions was
immediately apparent. Instead of my
lamenting about my recent past, we were able to talk about teachings of different
Hasidic and other masters and how their wisdom might be applicable to my
spiritual life now. So far, my sessions have
been livelier, more fun and far richer.
Based on this, I changed my Elul
practice this year. Often it is customary
during the month of Elul leading up to the High Holidays for people to think
about what they have not done well, any persons they may have harmed and to try
to redress or make amends for anything hurtful they might have done. This is a wonderful practice; if we could be
like that all the time perhaps we wouldn’t need to have the High Holidays at
all – but that’s a different discussion.
But when Elul came around this
year, based on my experience with my spiritual director, I decided that my Elul
practice would be to refrain from voicing any negative self-talk aloud. You might think this is entirely at odds with the
purpose of the month of Elul – namely to look at where one has done harm to
others and practice t’shuvah (repentance
or turning). But in fact you will see as
I describe what this practice has been like for me, that it has been entirely
consistent with Elul and the deep intentions of the High Holidays.
It’s been a very interesting
month. I saw how frequently I think
negative thoughts about myself. However,
by not saying them aloud, I had to find new ways of talking about certain
issues. Not putting myself down was
empowering. It meant that I had to spend
time talking about the solution rather than talking about the problem. It also encouraged me to utilize the energy
that would have gone into negative self-judgment to actually try to change the
situation I was engaging in self-judgment about. Often I found that it actually took less energy
for me to change than I used to spend putting myself down and not
changing. I needed to find ways of
coping with my anxiety about change (without putting myself down for having the
anxiety) but compared to being depressed and immobilized, this was a great problem
to have.
A concern I’d had was that if
I stopped putting myself down, I would become lazy, unmotivated and slothful
and I would not be interested in change or constructive action. But this has not been the case. It was the
dreary times I spent condemning myself that made me sluggish. It is actually easier and I am more available
to look at my shortcomings and how I might have injured others when I am not
judging myself.
Another benefit of this
practice was that as I stopped saying self-judgmental thoughts aloud, I started
to think them less frequently. Maybe
they were less prone to speak to me if they knew I wasn’t listening.
I know that not everyone has
the same issues with self-criticism that I do.
But I also know from my work as a spiritual director and a teacher
training chaplains that there are many people who are perfectionists and who consistently
struggle with low self-esteem and/or self-hatred that manifests itself by
negative self-judgments and a consistent internal stream of negative
self-talk.
I can be very inventive in
finding ways to criticize myself.
Sometimes, even if I do something right, my mind will make judgments
that I should have understood how to do it sooner, or quicker, or without
having to ask for help or look at the instructions. For me, and for others like me, when we are
caught in that conditioned brain pattern, we can’t win. The attempt to live up to our unrealistic and
frankly impossible standards invariably fails. I know that I will never
persuade my negative voice that I am different from what it suggests. Moreover, that voice is a liar – the things he
says about me are just not true. If you
are also someone who struggles with self-acceptance, that voice is lying to you
as well.
This brings me back to the
spirituality of imperfection – how do we live with ourselves when we are not
our highest and best self? For me, part of the spirituality of imperfection
involves not giving that voice credence – not repeating it aloud to others and
not repeating it internally within myself. If I stop beating myself up about
the times that I am not perfect, then I am more open to connecting to that
which is good, affirming, healing or even joyful. And when I try to accept that I’m not being
the ‘perfect’ self, it is easier to resume whatever behavior it is that I’ve
been avoiding – whether it is emptying the dishwasher or avoiding a confrontation. Or, even if I continue to avoid that
behavior, even if I continue to read my science fiction story, I can better
enjoy it and eventually let go of it more easily when I’m not beating myself
up.
This is not hiding from my
problems and trying to avoid changing – this is t’shuvah to myself. I am
healing the wrongs that the voice I inherited from a difficult childhood
inflicted with its misguided attempts to keep me safe by keeping me small and
isolated.
I invite you to have one of
your new year’s resolutions be to stop speaking aloud or listening to your
negative self-talk. To the best of your ability, don’t repeat those negative
judgments to others as if they were true, and try not to give them an attentive
audience in your head. Try it for one
thought, one conversation or one day at a time.
If you pray, ask for help in not listening to that negative voice and
for help in finding ways to grow without beating yourself to a pulp.
I have no happy ending here in
the sense of ‘and they all lived happily ever after.’ This is about starting
and maintaining a process of healing.
Healing within the context of a spirituality of imperfection takes
place… imperfectly. That’s okay with me because I am moving in the direction of
wholeness and receptivity to God and others.
Many mindfulness and spiritual
teachers talk about the importance of accepting what is in this very
moment. I don’t think it is only the
reality outside of ourselves that we are being asked to accept; I think we are
also asked to accept our inner reality, flawed as it may be.
Leonard Cohen sang ‘the crack
is where the light gets in.’ Wendell Barry wrote ‘the impeded stream is the one
that sings.’ My New Year’s resolution is
not to become perfect, but to accept my imperfections with compassion and love,
that I may have more compassion and love to give to you and everyone else I
encounter. May each of you also be able
to hold yourselves with caring and tenderness during 5776. If we are all b’tzelim elohim, in the image of God, may we exemplify the God of
love and acceptance for ourselves as well as for others.
L’shanah tovah.
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