Life Force: Shaping Our Lives, Fulfilling Our Mission

Rev. Kathleen Ellis
January 16, 2005 Live Oak UU Church

How well are you doing on your New Year’s Resolutions?  Okay so far—or have you broken one already?  Have you given up on Resolutions altogether because you know you won’t keep them anyway?  That’s generally true for me.  The good news is that any day begins a new year and a new opportunity to make good choices.  And if I fail today, there’s still hope for tomorrow, for as long as I’m able to try.

There are books on my shelves—perhaps shelves full of books—that speak to my desire for and interest in self-improvement.  Stephen Covey on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People; Julie Morgenstern on Organizing from the Inside Out; and Gilbert Brim on Ambition: How We Manage Success and Failure Throughout our Lives  are just three of the titles.  All of them have been useful and practical in helping me think differently about getting my life in order and on track.  And although part of me wishes I could be as good as these three writers, at least I have learned from them and have a new standard for myself.

Perhaps the meaning of life is to grow and develop for as long as we can – to the extent we can – with the abilities and talent we have at the moment.  From moment to moment we have a range in our ability to cope, as Don Miguel Ruiz points out in The Four Agreements.  What, then, keeps us going?  Ambition depends on numerous factors, including internal and external expectations.  These expectations pile up on us from the time we are very young.

When I was a kid, I once drew a box of tissues—a line drawing of a box and an outline of the piece of tissue that reached up, ready for a sudden sneeze or a tear. No one could identify it.  The closest guess was that I had drawn a sandbox.  To me as a 6-year-old, that meant total failure.  Clearly I was not an artist.  That self-image stayed with me to the point that I avoided art and stuck with words.  I could spell those.  Grammar was pretty easy.  Diagramming sentences was a fun challenge.

In the developmental scheme of things, success is a powerful motivator.  We like to do those things we can do well.  We like for people to recognize our efforts—or recognize our art—and tell us what a good job we did.

My friend Wayne Walder, who is minister of Neighbourhood UU Church in Toronto, ON, told the story of a new staff person who had worked there just three months.  At the interview she was exciting, engaged, and energized about the possibilities in this new position.  For the first three months they planned a special program—the purpose, the publicity, the participants were all lined up and just about ready for launch, when something went terribly wrong.  She came in to a planning meeting filled with despair—she wouldn’t be able to go through with it; nothing was working out; it was a bad idea in the first place.

Wayne had a decision to make.  Would he be able to hold her to the promises she had made?  Would he have to fold the project and essentially start from scratch?  He thought back to her enthusiasm when they first met and decided to hold her in her despair and find a way through to the ambitious goals they had set forth.  As calmly as he could, he scheduled extra time to listen to her concerns and help her find solutions without telling her what to do.  Together, they were able to divide the project into manageable portions and generate a reasonable timeline for the available volunteers.

It’s like one of the songs we used to hear a lot, known as “The Gambler.” Sing it with me!

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table;

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Hold ‘em or fold ‘em?  Hold on to your dreams and aspirations or cash in your chips while you’re ahead?  Sometimes we are the ones who have to hold ourselves as we struggle toward some ambitious horizon.  As we get older some options diminish and others become possible.  Dr. Gilbert Brim is the author and editor of a dozen books on human development from childhood through old age.  His father’s life provides a good example:

Mr. Brim grew up on a farm in Ohio.  He was the only one of seven children to leave farming.  He found his way through Harvard and Columbia and studied with John Dewey to get a Ph.D. in rural education.  He taught at Ohio State University until he was sixty.  Then he and his wife bought an old farm in northwest Connecticut, remodeled the house, and retired there.

First he set about cleaning the fencerows and clearing the woods as he had been taught to do as a youngster in Ohio.  For many years he took pride in trimming trees, clearing underbrush, and roaming the mountainside.  As he grew older, his stamina diminished, so he would get a friend to help or hire someone to keep up the place.

Gradually the upper part of the mountain was no longer in his range and his attention came downhill, into the trees and garden closer to the house.  He operated a  power tiller until it got too hard to handle.  He bought a riding tractor at age 90.

One year he didn’t plant the rows of asparagus, raspberries, and flowers.  Instead, he worked in the raised flowerbeds and window boxes.  When his eyesight began to fail, he started listening to books on tape until his hearing got too bad.  He would still go out to the window boxes and feel the soil for watering needs.  He would pick flowers to bring to his wife, and file his garden tools, which he could do by touch. 

He lived to the age of 103, having adjusted to circumstances time and again.  He kept growing and changing—just as each of us continues to grow and change. 

Our own member Ruth Chatfield has explored a variety of artistic media.  Concert violinist, artist, potter—no matter what health problems arose, she has continually found new ways to express her creativity. Texas State University will feature her work in an art show this June.

Gilbert Brim writes about the range of ambition in human beings in three respects.  First, we all have a basic drive for growth and mastery from nursery to nursing home.  I have watched many a baby reach for a mobile and play with dust motes in the sunlight; I observed my sons mastering successive challenges.  Now in their 30s, they both have interesting lives with years of opportunity before them.  I know from personal experience that my ambitions ebb and flow according to particular circumstances. I noticed how my father adopted an older man at the nursing home and looked in on him regularly.  Daddy also arranged flowers into smaller bouquets for staff and residents throughout his wing.  Our goals may vary from person to person and from time to time.  Goals like productivity, creativity, health, relationships, investments, raising children, serving others, seeking justice, and many more—indicate humanity’s distinctive trait of ambition.

Second, our ambitions are modified by a quantity of “just manageable difficulties.”  We want to be challenged, not bored.  If life’s challenges are too great, we try to ease back; but if life is too comfortable, we take up a new project or expect a better outcome.

Third, we are typically happiest when the work at hand is neither too hard nor too easy.  The amount of success or failure in any area of life moves us toward a comfortable level of difficulty.  Whether we are young or old, healthy or not, rich or poor, happiness depends more on confidence and competence in our life tasks.[1]

It is true that some among us have been thrown into an arena where we are neither qualified nor confident.  On a personal level, I became a mother before I knew a thing about it other than my own upbringing.  As a seminary student, I became a chaplain, complete with nametag, then set about learning how to minister to patients and staff, how to pray, and how to live up to the name “chaplain.”

It’s also true that not everyone can be a “success” as defined by society.  My younger brother was not quite normal at birth, and emotionally disturbed after a seizure at age 3.  He was dismissed from preschool; expelled from elementary school; barely managed in Cub Scouts.  At age 17 he was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and for the rest of his life (another 14 years) he was in and out of mental hospitals because he couldn’t ever make it on the outside. 

But I must say that his spirit remained intact.  He could live by his wits in ways that I could not imagine for myself.  He taught me unexpected things about the world.  My own failures have been equally instructive and have at the very least developed compassion for others, and reinforcement that I should try something different. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we are celebrating this weekend, was one well known for his reluctance to enter the Civil Rights leadership.  He was young and untested, yet he rose to the challenge set before him.  He was eventually labeled an extremist, as he acknowledged in a “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 

 Though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." [2]

 Let us not be over-satisfied with the status quo. “Ah,” wrote Robert Browning, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a heaven for?”  And Zora Neale Hurston reported that “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”

Reach with me for Browning’s heaven and Hurston’s sun, and King’s extremism.  When some of us are too tired and overburdened, let us lend a hand and a word of encouragement.  Yes, hold on to your dreams and aspirations.  Take courage in our common vision of community, spiritual growth, and enthusiasm for life.

Amen

Copyright ©2006, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church.
Last edited Friday, September 21, 2007 08:41 PM by webmaster@liveoakuu.org