John Mercer & The Rev. Rebecca Bryan

Stories are not only healing and necessary, they also hold risks. How do we know what story is real, or helpful? Is there a time to let go of a story? If so, why?, and how do we do that? Through the lens of Buddhism and social science research, Rev. Rebecca will offer practical insights into the more challenging aspects of stories.

My grandmother and I were gardening together when I asked her a question. Her answer stayed with me and affected me for nearly three decades. Sadly, its effect was less than beautiful. I was fourteen when the conversation occurred.

“Do you think I will get married?” I asked my grandmother as we knelt together in her front garden bed. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, she answered, “I’m not sure.” My heart sank.

You see, there was the surface conversation, and then there was the interior conversation that was happening in my soft, vulnerable and still forming teenage mind and heart.

I asked, “Do you think I will get married?”. What I was really asking was, “Am I loveable?”

My grandmother, one of my biggest champions and role models, took me at my word and answered, “I’m not sure.” Though I said nothing in reply, my mind expanded her sentence. In a nanosecond, it went from “I’m not sure” to “I’m not sure if anyone will love you.”.

I carried that misunderstanding faithfully. It took its rightful, and harmful, place among my other false core beliefs. Twenty-six years later during one of our last visits together, I asked my grandmother about that conversation. To my surprise, she remembered it. When I shared with her how it had affected me and what I thought she had meant, she was flabbergasted. “My goodness, no!” She said. “When I said, ‘I don’t know if you will get married,’ I meant, that you were so talented and had so many interests; I wasn’t sure if you would want to be married.”

False core beliefs—we all have them. We generally try to ignore them, rarely do we question them, and sadly, they often have a much greater influence on our lives than we care to admit or even realize.

A false core belief is a story that does damage. It is a story that has either run its course or was flawed from its inception. We tell ourselves these stories are unequivocally true.

They are do not help us to be our best selves. They lead us away from our true selves and into the morass of low self-esteem, pleasing other people and acting as we think we “should.”

Paul Tillich, one of the great theologians of the 20^thCentury, understood sin as a state of being in which we are separated from our true selves, from other people, and from what he called The Ground of our Being, or God.[1]One can just as easily understand the Ground of our Being to be goodness or compassion.

From this one could say that false core beliefs leave us in a state of sin. Separated from who we are and our inherent dignity and worth, we rob the world of our gifts. Disconnected from others and any sense of something greater than ourselves, be it nature, music, or mystery, we are prone to depression, loneliness and despair.

The good news is that we are the keepers of our stories. No one else. We own our stories. Thus, we are also the ones who can become consciously aware of our stories, examine our stories and choose to change our stories.

We are human. We do not have the power to change reality. Returning to our story in the Moment for All Ages, the initial incident happens; that is fact. The stories we tell ourselves about it, the second, third, fourth and following arrows are what we can change. To use my meditation teacher’s phrase, “They are just extra.”

I have come to believe that underlying all false core beliefs there is one that is pervasive, and that is the false core belief of perfectionism. This is particularly true in normative white culture.

Tema Okun writes about this norm of perfectionism in great depth. She tells us that symptoms of this norm of perfectionism include, among other things, “mistakes are seen as personal…making a mistake is confused with being a mistake…little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned…the perfectionist fails to appreciate her own good work…the person works with a harsh and constant inner critic.”[2]

Social Scientist and author, Brené Brown writes about the price we pay for buying into this false core belief of perfection. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, she writes, “Perfectionism is not the same thing has striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It’s a shield. It’s a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from flight.”[3]

Yes, perfectionism is prevalent in white culture, and it is not new. We see this story over and over again. It is one of the primary themes of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known written story in history.

To be more precise, The Epic of Gilgameshis the oldest known epic poem. It was written on thousands of clay tablets in cuneiform, one of the earliest systems of writing, invented by the Sumerians. This hero’s journey was written approximately 1,000 years before the Iliad or the Bible.

It remained buried in the ruins of Nineveh in a part of the world that is now known as Iraq. The tablets were discovered by Englishman, Austen Layard in 1850 and subsequently began being deciphered in 1861 by another Englishman, George Smith. The analyzing continued for decades. As recently as 2015, The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq discovered 20 new lines of the poem.[4]

The story, or poem, is about a king named Gilgamesh who ruled the Mesopotamian city of Uruk in 2750 BCE. Gilgamesh was a demi-god, two-thirds human and one-third God. His mother was the goddess Ninsun, and his father was Lugalbanda, also the king of Uruk.

Gilgamesh was an evil ruler who finds his heart and compassion only when he befriends Enkidu, who is the mirror image of Gilgamesh. One-third god and two-thirds human, Enkidu was a wild man until civilized by Shamhat, a complicated character who is a combination of priestess, goddess and prostitute.

The condensed version is that Enkidu dies as a result of his being an accomplice to Gilgamesh in killing the great monster, Humbaba. Enkidu’s death leaves Gilgamesh inconsolable and sets him off on another journey. This time his journey is to discover the secret to immortality, which, not surprisingly, he discovers not only is infeasible, but also would not bring him the happiness he desires.

Returning to his city of Uruk at the end of the story, Gilgamesh is a changed man. He no longer seeks perfection through having brute strength, great power over others, or the ability to live forever. He realizes the foolishness of his ways. “I have worn myself out through ceaseless striving, I have filled my muscles with pain and anguish…And what in the end have I achieved?”[5]Nothing, his friends remind him, other than to have lessened the days of his remaining life.

It is an amazing saga. In fact, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke called it “stupendous.” He wrote in 1916 that it is “…among the greatest things that can happen to a person.”[6]It is amazing because it is our story, the human story, the story of being led astray by false core beliefs, stories that do not serve us, “the extras.” It is also the story of hope, that we will come to know the truth and that we are mortal, we are lovable, and we are loved.

The lie of perfectionism is that it is what people want and love. Think again. Remember the Pink House that John Mercer spoke about this morning. People from near and far lovethat house! It is an old house painted an unusual color, in need of much repair, holding guests captive some days at high tide. It is a perfectly imperfect, beloved, icon. Its imperfections are what make it so endearing. The same is true for all of us, my friends.

The time is now. Let’s drop the stories that no longer serve us. We do not know how much longer we have. We know that we have this moment. Let’s live into the truths that bring us all alive and will allow us to bring our most beautiful and helpful selves into this world

RITUAL

I would like to invite you into a ritual of release. This is an invitation to lay down a false core belief, a story that is not serving you.  Our children are doing the same thing downstairs right now! In fact, the words I’m about to share were written by Julie Parker-Amery for our children. With her permission, we will use them too.

*[7]I’d like you to sit and think for a moment about what stories you’ve been led to believe about yourself that are holding you back. If this is hard to imagine, maybe think about it this way: Do you ever hear a voice inside that tells you not to do something because you probably won’t be good at it? That voice is the voice of this story, and that voice will keep you from living your life with all the joy you’re meant to live it with.

Perhaps someone once said something mean about you, and you believed it, and that became a story you tell yourself. Or maybe you’ve failed at something,and you’ve turned that into a story that you’re a failure.

Now I’m going to invite you to whisper the story—or that niggly little voice—into the stone that you got going into church. Whisper quietly; this is just for you. And then I invite you on your way out of the sanctuary this morning to drop the stone —along with the story—into the bowl of water as a way of letting them go.

I’ll give us all a moment.

Amen and Blessed Be

[1]Tillich, Paul, The Shaking of the Foundations, Chapter 19, “You are Accepted”, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY, 1948.

[2]https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/White_Supremacy_Culture_Okun.pdf

 

[3]Brown, Brené,The Gifts of Imperfection, Hazelden, Center City, MN, 2010, page 56.

[4]https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epic-of-gilgamesh-new-verses-discovered-worlds-oldest-story-180956844/

 

[5]Mitchell, Stephen, Gilgamesh, Atria, New York, NY, 2004, pg. 176.

[6]Mitchell, Stephen, Gilgamesh, Atria, New York, NY, 2004, pg. 3.

[7]From Julie Parker-Amery, Director of Religious Education, First Religious Society, Unitarian Universalist.