By Reverend Rebecca Bryan

​

When someone you haven’t seen in ten years 
appears at the door, 
don’t start singing him all your new songs. 
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. 
Know you could tumble any second. 
Then decide what to do with your time.

 (Some of the final words of Naomi Shihab Nye’s The Art of Disappearing)

The first time my spiritual director read me that poem, some eleven years ago, I was breathless. “Read it again,” I said to her, sinking back into the deep cushioned wicker chair on her porch.

Similar to the practice of Lectio Divina, I’m going to read it again to you, three times. After each time, ask yourself what word or words stuck out to you.

By the way, for you introverts (or all of us) if you think better while your hands are occupied, we’ve included a PDF to a hand labyrinth in your Order of Service. You may find it helpful or meditative to use as you listen.

When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

++++

When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

++++

When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Deciding what to do with our time is one of the most important decisions any of us make. We all have constraints that we must deal with: a demanding job, health concerns, or caring for children. It’s all the more important how we spend the time we have, how we make our decisions, and how we approach the circumstances in our lives.

The idea to preach a sermon on introversion came to me when we were preparing for this month’s ministry theme: action. “Great,” I thought to myself. Some people will be all over that theme, thinking “Yes! Let’s do it.” Maybe even, “It’s about time.” And there are others who will shrink when they hear it, and perhaps not even come, unless of course they saw the topic of today’s sermon is introversion.

I’m offering this sermon for three reasons. First is to speak up for introverts and to help us all understand introversion better—its role in our own lives and the lives of those we love. I also thought it was only fair to those of you who need some quiet to consider the idea of your pledge this year and what that might be. Second, I offer this sermon as an antidote to the fear some of you may have that we are forging right ahead from love into action and more action. And third, I offer this as an invitation for us to use the powers of introversion, which we all have, to make sound, wise, and inspired decisions.

Andrew Harvey calls this Sacred Activism. He writes, “A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions.”[1]

When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, a holy force—the power of wisdom and love in action—is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.”^[2]

We live in a world of reaction. Fear breading fear, stress layering on top of more stress, speed at a dizzying speed. Much of what we hear about on the news and elsewhere is important. However, we must know how to weed the true from the false and pay attention to what isn’t the latest hype, but needs our care, attention, and resources. The ways we will best discern what matters to us, what our priorities are, and what actions we are called to take in any situation will vary based on many things, including our propensity for introversion or extroversion.

You may have been taught, as I was, that introverts are in the minority, making up 25% – 30% of our population. These figures come out of the early research in 1998 at the start of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. It’s now clear that closer to 50% or 57% of the US population are introverts.

That means that more than half the people you know are introverts. So, it can be helpful for us to understand introversion, because whether we are an introvert, we live, love, and are in community with introverts. And as I said earlier, all of us have some degree of both introverted and extroverted tendencies.

There are other misconceptions about introversion, in addition to its prevalence. Misconceptions may be that introverts are shy or don’t like people or don’t enjoy public speaking. Those things may or may not be true, but not because a person is an introvert. I love people and speaking in public. I am shy-ish and I score higher on introversion than extroversion.

Sadly, there are damaging biases against introversion. I wrote about the gifts of introversion on Facebook recently. Someone wrote to thank me, saying she always considered her introversion a prison from which she needed to escape. “It is such a gift,” she told me, “to appreciate its gifts and stop trying to be someone I’m not.”

How do you know if you are introverted? A common litmus test is that introverts garner energy internally, while extroverts are energized from things external to them. This is true, but there are other indicators too. Authors and bloggers Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo identify 29 characteristics of an introvert. They write: You enjoy spending time alone. You would rather hang out with a few close friends than a large group of people. You have a vivid, rich inner world, you can “network,” but you feel like you’re faking it. You dive deep, both in your relationships and interests. You seek meaning. Your inner monologue never stops. You do your best thinking alone. Talking on the phone does not sound like a fun way to pass the time. You shut down after too much socializing. You can concentrate for long periods of time. And, you alternate between being social and being alone.^[3]

Carl Jung theorized that we develop our natural inclination in our younger years and turn to developing the other in our older years. That may be the case, unless of course, your natural inclinations are not encouraged, understood, or allowed.

Laurie Helgoe writes in Introvert Power that there are gifts for all of us in developing the skills of introversion including valuing solitude, protecting our boundaries, and fostering our imagination.^[4] I would add that we learn to have better awareness and control over our mental chatter, or monkey mind, we learn to trust our inner knowing, and we nurture our connection to our emotions, and desires.

Harkening back to the story I told last Sunday about studying in Wales for my Junior year of college, do you know what the hardest adjustment was for me in returning to America? It was the volume, speed, and relentlessness with which everyone spoke. I remember turning to my mother at dinner my first night back and saying, “Please make everyone stop or, at least, quiet down.” Gosh, Americans are loud, or at least the ones where I was from were.

I thrived on the conversations in Wales, in hushed tones in the library or hallways. Even the decimal level in pubs was lower, though filled with laughter and camaraderie. Even more was the content of the conversations, with little to no small talk. I was relieved to learn I wasn’t antisocial or snobbish, I was simply introverted. “Let’s clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people,” said Laurie Helgoe, author of Introvert Power.

Some of our best leaders, thinkers, and activists are or were introverts. In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ll share some of the women on the list: Georgia O’Keefe, Rosa Parks, JK Rowling, Marissa Mayer, and Oprah Winfrey. You might think that I have something against extroverts. I do not. My daughter is one of the most extroverted people I know and one of my favorites too. Because these things are on a scale, it’s also a matter of degrees. Compared to our staff team, I am quite extroverted.

The art and gifts of solitude and internal contemplation need to be learned and practiced, like any other skill. It can feel uncomfortable to begin when we have fallen out of practice or maybe are just beginning to practice. Helgoe writes about this in her book, too.

We crave time to ourselves, and then when we have it, we can’t sit still. We sit, to read a book, relax, or mediate, and the mental chatter begins. “I have to do this. Oh, gosh, what about…” Often we jump up to attend to the thought we’ve just had, fooling ourselves into thinking that responding to one thought will stop others from coming. Or we get quiet, and then our feelings begin to bubble up. Tears, anger, or discomfort, connected to memories, projections, or apparently nothing at all. “This is no fun,” we think to ourselves, as we begin to move again. “Why would I be still if it leaves me feeling that way?”

In moving at the first thought, twinge, and feeling, or even the fiftieth, we also walk away from the gifts that come from settling down. We don’t have the insight we long for or the relief we are seeking. We remain anxious, tired, or confused. For most of us, however, the benefits start to come fairly quickly, even as we work through our discomfort and resistance.

There are many ways to engage with our introverted nature, which, again, we all have to some degree. You can arrange flowers, be in nature, or take a bike ride, as FRS member Lance Hidy does when he takes the beautiful photos like the one on the cover of this week’s Order of Service. People walk, write, even fold the clothes in silence or in the company of their thoughts.

We all have a certain amount of time and energy with which to approach our lives. The key is to know what is essential and put that into our life first. Then fill in the rest. If you are an extrovert, that means ensuring you have adequate external stimulation, through friends, activities, and interaction. If you are an introvert, that means creating time, space, and ways to engage with your rich inner landscape.

We all have a life – if we put all the nonessential things in first, there won’t be space for the life-giving essential things. (pours sand into vase, then tries to put the stones in)

If we put the few essential things in first, somehow the rest can fit as well. (puts in stones, then pours sand in the other vase)

May your life be the beautiful expression of who you are, filled with authentic ways to meet your needs and replenish your soul.

And then, may we meet again, together, the better for having been apart.

Amen and blessed be.

[1] Andrew Harvey, The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, Hay House Publishing, Carlsbad, California‎, Sept. 2009.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] www.introvertdear.com

^[4] Ibid. xxii