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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 5, 2021
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Are there difficult people in your family? At work? Do you have any suspicions that you might be the difficult one? Here are some thoughts about what to do.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.
– Paul Robeson
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Learn more about Beloved Community at this link. – The King Center
Meditation Reading
Transcendental Etude
by Adrienne Rich
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
-And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.
Sermon
How to deal with difficult people. And how not to be one.
I had just met another young mother who went to my husband’s Presbyterian church. Her two year old and mine liked playing together in Sunday School, and we had set up a play date for ten that Saturday. Ten came and went, ten thirty came and went, and I was mad. She finally showed up at eleven-thirty, casually laughing about how she’d been in her yard and had lost track of time. I had called Miss Minnie, my OA sponsor, to talk to her about how angry I was getting at the lateness of this new person in my life.
“Everybody knows that you show up on time for appointments you make.” My indignation was righteous.
“This is your fault,” she said.
“Did you tell her it was important to you that she show up on time?”
“No, I shouldn’t have to tell anybody that. It’s common knowledge.”
“Well, you just have a choice to make now. If you are going to be friends, you need to tell her that it’s important that she shows up on time. Or you can choose not to be friends with her.”
When she finally showed up I told her that I was pretty upset at how much time I’d wasted waiting for her. She apologized, and the next time we made a play date she would tease me.
“Do you want me to show up at ten fourteen or at nine forty-six?”
“Nine forty six, ” I would say.
And we’ve been friends ever since. I know how she is, and she knows how I am.
Here is the question for this morning. Which one of us is the difficult person?
We all have at least one difficult person in our lives, at home, in the larger family, at church or at work. Here is one list of qualities that make for a difficult person.
Signs that You Might be a Difficult Person
- You hardly listen to others. You have fixed & rigid ideas.
- You are quick to criticize.
- You focus on the negative and draw-backs to an idea.
- You are easily irritated by others.
- You lack patience and tolerance.
- You are very competitive in all aspect of life.
- You are in love with your ideas
It could be that all of us are difficult in one way or another, and some point in our lives or even in our day. The twelve step program says we are not at our best when we are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. So we can all be difficult from time to time. More easily irritated, more rigid in our ideas, more competitive in some areas than in others, in the habit of criticizing more that of praising.
It is important to have compassion for ourselves when we get into the state of being a difficult person, and for others when they are in a stage (however long it lasts) of being difficult. Compassion is something that, as spiritual people, we commit to. Compassion can feel dangerous, though, when the difficult person we’re dealing with is actually doing harm.
“Feeling compassion toward a dangerous person will not lead you to submit to them or put yourself at risk or condone their actions. What it does simply, is relieve your anxiety – which immediately makes you stronger and more resilient.”
Laurie Perez, Breakthrough: How to Have Compassion for Those Who Do Harm
She says our compassion for ourselves (a foundation of healthy compassion) will guide us in our choices about whether to remain engaged with the difficult person.
The I Ching, a book of ancient Chinese wisdom, says that, if someone is behaving incorrectly, you detach from them until they begin behaving correctly.
Yoga teaches a concept called “Idiot compassion.”
This is when your compassion for someone else’s pain makes you hurt yourself. Sometimes you just want them to be happy, so you do things to make them happy that won’t really work for long, and they cost you too much. So with difficult people, it’s good if you have a choice about whether to deal with them or not.
Sometimes, though, you don’t have a choice. Then you have to put your shields up and try to shift your inner world with the resentment prayer. Shields first: You imagine a force field around you and make it as porous or solid as you need it to be. Then you are giving your brain and heart the signal that you don’t want to let it in all the way, the things they say and do. This takes practice. Some people make their shields out of flowers. You start at the top of your head and just weave an imaginary blanket of whatever flowers feel good to you all the way around yourself.
You can also do the resentment prayer, another idea I got from the 12 step program.
It’s where you wish or pray for the other person everything you want for yourself. This changes you inside, and that shift can help you if not the whole situation.
Last, if you are the difficult person just try to be a little more flexible. Your ideas are fabulous, but there is more than one way to do things, and you might meditate on that. You can practice praising a bit more and seeing the good in things. We talked about that some last week. When you mess up, make amends as you can and try to do better. You don’t have to go into a shame spiral and condemn yourself as a bad person. Just try to aim to do a little better next time.
These holidays give us lots of chances to practice focusing on relationships over ideas. Relationships are where health and happiness lie, as long as they give us something as well as taking something. Choose to enjoy them if you can. Just make sure you are on time for everything.
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SERMON INDEX
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