Today
we are about half way through our series called “The Gifts of Imperfection.” We
live in a culture where there is a constant striving to be better, faster,
smarter, more beautiful and more successful than everyone else. This often
manifests itself in pressure that we put on ourselves to be perfect. Of course,
we know here at The Village that there are no perfect people, just people
living under the illusion that they can be perfect if they work hard enough. We
all make mistakes. We all suffer setbacks in our lives.
The
researcher, Brene Brown, who wrote the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” studied
this phenomenon of our constant striving for perfection and discovered that the
people who did not get sucked into this illusion had some skills that gave them
what she calls “whole hearted living.” These people are able to be vulnerable,
and accept their imperfections. Whole hearted people are able to deal with the
sense of shame that we all experience – the idea that we are not good enough.
They have had some sort of spiritual epiphany that helped them see they are
worthy just because they exist. We don’t have to DO STUFF to be worthy. We just
have to be.
And
it does us no good to get caught up in judgment of ourselves and all this
comparing ourselves to other people, Jesus told his disciples, don’t judge one
another, just love yourselves, love God and love one another. So, one way for
us to move toward whole hearted living is to follow the teaching of Jesus to
have compassion toward ourselves.
That
is a brief re-cap of the past two weeks. In Brene Brown’s work, she has come up
with the practices that we can cultivate in our lives. These will help us let
go of our shame, (the idea that we are not good enough according to someone
else’s standards), and will help us let go of anxiety. One of them is to be
still and to meditate. So I thought I would start off today’s message by asking
Travis to share with us a little about his personal practice of meditation.
Travis,
can you tell us how you meditate and what this practice looks like in your
daily life?
Travis: I go into a quiet space, usually the bedroom,
and sit on a cushion and let my mind rest.
I rest my hands on my knees and focus on my breath. It isn’t about trying to achieve something,
it is spending some time with the silence of creation. I start to notice my breath and focus on
it. Thoughts start to come back in so I
realize that I’m getting caught up again, so I bring myself back to breathing
again, for about 15-20 minutes. You don’t have to have a designated space, I
do it in my car at a stoplight. Use that
opportunity to appreciate the gift of creation.
You don’t have to make a big deal about it. It’s about being o.k. with God and o.k. with
yourself.
Now,
I’m going to guess that there are seasons in your life when you are practicing
your meditation regularly; and that there have been seasons when you have not
meditated. Can you tell me what the difference is in your life when you are
meditating on a regular basis?
Travis: Lately I have not been meditating as
much as I used to. My mind tends to get
more carried away with concerns. I still
have the same concerns and problems when I meditate, but I handle them
differently. When you come from a place
of stillness, the problems are not that much of a big deal.
Thank
you Travis.
One
of the reasons people meditate is to be less anxious. Anxiety is defined as fear
or nervousness about what might happen, a feeling of worry, or
unease. I believe that anxiety is something we have all experienced. But some
of us experience it more intensely than others. Author Harriet Lerner says that
there are generally two ways that people react to anxiety. 1) overfunctioning –
“Overfunctioners tend to move quickly to
advise, rescue, take over, micromanage and get in other people’s business
rather than look inward” (The Gifts of
Imperfection, p. 109). 2) underfunctioning – “Underfunctioners tend to get
less competent under stress. They invite others to take over and often become
the focus of family gossip, worry or concern. They can be labeled…’the problem
child’” (ibid).
To get more healthy, overfunctioners can
learn to embrace vulnerability when they feel anxious, to be more honest with
themselves about the fear and anxiety they are feeling rather than running
around trying to fix everything. This is the way to move toward health.
Underfunctioners can “work to amplify their strengths and competencies” (ibid,
p. 110). In this way, they are not paralyzed by fear but find a way to move
from fear and claim their strengths.
Let me give you an example, from scripture.
Today’s scripture gives us an example of anxiety.
35 On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, “Let
us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd
behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were
with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into
the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he
was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 He woke up
and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind
ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are
you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled
with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind
and the sea obey him?”
Now,
do you think the disciples here are overfunctioning or underfunctioning? They
are underfunctioning. They are paralyzed by their fear. They become helpless
and pitiful. Like the “problem child” in the family, they wake up “dad” and
want him to fix everything. For goodness sake, some of them have been fishermen
on the Sea for all of their adult lives! They know that storms can come up on
this Sea suddenly. Surely they have seen a thunderstorm before. But they let
their anxiety get the best of them. In fact, they are not only scared, they get
mad at Jesus for not caring about them!
Jesus
calms the storm. (Okay, that is something that does not happen in every
situation). But even if the storm had not calmed down at that moment, I think
Jesus could have said the same thing to them: “Relax. Why are you so afraid of
a little rain? Have you no faith in this boat? Have you no faith in yourselves
and your ability to swim? Have you no faith that God loves you and that no
matter what happens you will be okay? Don’t be so excitable.”
I
can’t read Jesus’ mind. But we have all read more than just this scripture
about Jesus. He was, I believe, the King of calm and cool. He did not get
anxious and riled up much. Jesus knew about meditation as a practice to keep
himself on an even keel.
There
is another story of Jesus and his disciples being out on the water. He sent
them ahead in the boat and he went up on the mountain to pray and meditate. A
storm came up and Jesus walked on water to get to them in the boat. They were,
once again, afraid, and he had to calm their fears. He was able to do that, I
believe, because he had been praying. Jesus had a rhythm to his life. It was a
rhythm of work and prayer.
We
can do that, too. We can find a rhythm to our lives. We can take time in our
lives, as Travis and I talked about. I try to do this every morning. I read
some scripture. I write in a journal. And then I just sit in silence and breathe.
Sometimes I pray one word: peace. Sometimes I breathe in peace and breathe out
anxiety. In the midst of the work day if I find myself getting anxious,
sometimes I just close my eyes and take a few deep cleansing and calming
breaths. It’s a way to find my calm center and to remember that I belong to God
and I am enough.
When Brene Brown was doing this
research project, she figured out that her perfectionist-wound-too-tight life
style was not working. She also realized that she had a high level of anxiety.
She was so anxious that she was literally starting to feel dizzy at times. She
told her therapist that she thought she needed to try to figure out how to keep
standing in the midst of this deep anxiety.
Then it hit her: “I don’t need to
figure out a way to keep going with this level of anxiety – I need to figure
out how to be less anxious.” (106) Duh!
She says that the people she studied
who were living in what she calls whole-hearted living were aware of their
anxiety. They did not live under the illusion that they could avoid all
anxiety. But they were committed to recognizing anxiety “as a reality but not a
lifestyle.”
She isolated a couple of practices that
she says help people manage our anxiety. These practices are cultivating both
calm and stillness.
Brown says that calm means “being slow
to respond and quick to think” (ibid). When we panic we just increase the panic
and fear in the people around us. Psychologist Harriet Lerner says: “Anxiety is
extremely contagious, but so is calm.” (ibid, p 106-7).
One of the best ways to practice calm
is simply to breathe. Take some deep breaths. It is really hard to be anxious
when you are breathing deeply and slowly. Another way is to count to ten
slowly. Calm yourself down by counting to ten.
The other practice that people reported
to Dr. Brown that related to whole-hearted living was stillness. Some describe
it as prayer, others meditation, and some just being quiet. They all spoke of
this: “quieting their bodies and minds as a way to feel less anxious and
overwhelmed” (108).
Stillness is creating open space. It is
“clearing.” It is not about emptiness but about making space to dream and
listen. We would say to listen to God. We may encounter fear when we are still,
but if fear is there, then we need to make space for fear. We need to honor our
fear, breathe through it, and invite it out to have less control over us.
Jesus knew about stillness. He knew
about taking time to be still and be with God, to listen to God and to allow
God to speak to him and to soothe him. Jesus was all the time going to a quiet
space to be still and rest in God.
When we are anxious, we have a choice.
We can ramp up our anxiety by becoming a whirling dervish of activity; thinking
about all the possible things that can go wrong, dwelling on all the possible
bad outcomes, blaming those around us and just stirring up more anxiety, like
the disciples did in the boat.
Or, we can de-escalate our own anxiety
by moving toward calm and stillness. We can meditate, take a slow walk around
the block. Or simply breathe in order to create some space for God to still our
anxious hearts.
Let’s try that right now.
Breathe in calm, breathe out anxiety.
Whatever it is, isn’t going to get any
better with us giving into fear and anxiety. Jesus said: Why are you so
anxious? Trust God.
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