Truth Telling

Kye Flannery
August 12, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

So many people in so many ways have said “the truth shall set you free.” What are the truths that set us free? What sounds like truth but doesn’t liberate us at all? Together we’ll be exploring our experience, how we know ourselves, and how we speak from our deep truth to create better relationships and a better world.

sermon

I must say it’s easy to deliver one’s truth by sermon — pull your argument together, write it out — read it — I get to take 15-20 minutes of your time, uninterrupted — most of the time — 😉 Much harder in real life.

When you don’t think someone will care
When there’s no one to help
When we don’t want to risk a relationship
When you’re low on the totem pole…

as Ashley Judd, one of the actresses who came forward to help start the #metoo movement — in speaking out about harassment she’d faced from Harvey Weinstein, she pointed to this truth: ‘Were we supposed to call some fantasy attorney general of moviedom?’

No. No such person. It can be hard to tell the truth. It can put us in a place that feels dangerous, or is dangerous. But let’s face it. Our Universalism infuses how we view our own lives and the lives of others. We don’t believe that anybody’s condemned, and we believe that everybody and everything is interconnected. The time is ripe for us to get talking, and sharing our truths — with neighbors and law-makers, family members, oil companies and educators.

And I’ll just say there are a lot of grey heads out there that I bet have been telling difficult truths since I was in diapers. So, I’m sharing my truth today, and I look forward to hearing yours. Let’s start by bringing the spirits of other great truth-tellers into the room… who are they, in your life? Who lifts you up with the way they speak truth?

We’ve gathered those brave spirits into the space, a host of angels around us, supporting and inspiring.

One of the strongest voices of truth I know is a woman who spoke it with such courage, and it was so integral to her character, that she gave herself the name Truth — Sojourner Truth.

When I stop to think about that auditorium in Akron, Ohio — the Women’s Convention – May 1851 five male pastors had spoken — one, a universalist — and all had given theological reasons that it was inappropriate for women to have the vote or speak in public to advocate for themselves.

Nobody asked Sojourner to speak — she just stood up and walked to the podium. Organizer Frances Gage ALLOWED her speak, but all around there were rumbles from white women about a black woman speaking at the assembly. 1

If you were striving for respectability, it was considered unseemly for a woman to speak in assemblies or churches… 2 Olympia Brown wasn’t ordained by the universalists until 1863. But Sojourner stands, and she speaks:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne five children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

Just grok for a moment the courage it took to say that to a room full of white folks, confronting us with our stereotypes about strength, and womanhood, and blackness, all at once —

Book Crucial Conversations – I recommend it – I have been enjoying it and have incorporated some of its wisdom into what I bring you this morning. Here’s how I see the process of truth-telling:

We must first know our truths.
Then we must share our truth while staying in connection.
Then, we must find the path forward.
Courage – Listening – Translation – Creation

We must first know our truths.
Sometimes threats to our health, financial stability, physical safety, immigration status mean it isn’t safe to tell a truth that needs to be told. The first rule of caring for each other is believing that we each know what is safest for us, and to honor that.
But within the bounds of safety…

Is there something you really need to tell the truth about…? It’s possible to shy away from truth, even inside our own hearts, because it’s messy, because we suspect people don’t want to hear it, because we’re ashamed of it, because it’s ugly or painful.

And it takes time to transform the things that might be holding us back.
Truth-telling takes connection. Do we really want connection?
Truth-telling takes fairness. Are we willing to be fair?
Truth-telling means working through our fear. Are we afraid?

Buddhist teacher and climate activist Joanna Macy writes about fear of climate disaster, what we’re doing to the planet keeps us from even looking at it. 3 Fear keeps us ignorant of our own motivations and feelings, not to mention the feelings and motivations of others. So, this path to knowing our own truth involves facing fear, being with fear. After all, we can’t ask others to be brave and lay something on the line unless we set the example.

I know I get this *ding* when things fall into place — when I’m seeing from a big enough perspective that both the other person’s truth and my truth can fit there together, when I believe I can see a person’s goodness and good intent while also knowing I have a piece of the truth that they need. 4 And it is my job to walk with them to this truth… starting with what we both want, and showing how I believe we can get there.

I want to share words from a woman who is masterful at this.

Rigoberta Menchu — 1992 Nobel acceptance Speech… “Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples… We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism… It is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods. It occurs to me to ask: How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of Capital in the last five hundred years?”

It’s clear she’s done some very hard work – figuring out what’s in her heart, and also how it doesn’t fit what the dominant narrative said about her people. 5

I hear her facing fear — here’s what they say about us — they say we’re animals, savages — and I don’t accept it.

I hear her walking people along the path, from the end goal – peace – back to its roots — respect for the cultures and identities of all peoples…

There’s something so strong and undeniable in our words when we face our fear.

I really believe that we can’t connect with others on the issue racism unless we’ve connected to our own racism… I want to tell you a story about that.

There was a man I met at a church where I worked in Boston. He did cleaning in the office. We became friendly over time and I learned that his family was from the Dominican Republic. He’d had some brushes with the law, but was now doing better. He had a lovely little boy who I met once or twice. I was just getting to know him. I liked him, he was soft-spoken — eager to learn new things — One morning he came into the office late and he… I couldn’t figure out what was going on with him. I asked him the regular questions, how are you, how was your weekend, how’s your son — but he didn’t seem to comprehend my questions, he was barely able to answer them. I let him be and went about my day. I started to wonder in that moment if … maybe he wasn’t very smart. Did he not understand my questions?

There was a listening circle that happened later that month, talking and listening facilitated circles on the topic of race. I learned what happened that morning. That morning he had been driving a green car, and there had been a call about a crime, they were looking for “a black man in a green car.” He’d been stopped by the police in his car, put face-down on the pavement in the rain in front of his 1.5-year-old son, who was in the back seat of the car.

Suddenly I felt that grief and horror WITH HIM — anger — such a sense of loss — what would it have been like if I had been a trusted person for him to talk to —

Him telling his truth was me Claiming sorrow that had been mine all along, I just didn’t know it — Cultural grief. And we need to be able to both share this and hear this from our people.

Francis Weller, therapist, grief counselor in California 6

He writes about grief and conducts grief rituals, encouraging us to get in touch with the grief we are all carrying. He writes: “We send into the shadow the parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable to ourselves or to others, hoping to disown them… The lack of courtesy and compassion surrounding grief is astonishing, reflecting an underlying fear and mistrust of this basic human experience… We must find the courage, once again, to walk the wild edge of grief.”

If we don’t even know how to feel one another’s pain when they’ve had a death in the family, how can we grapple as a culture with the effects of slavery, of failing refugees and asylum seekers, how can we willingly get into the imaginary space of truly GETTING what we’re doing to the planet, minute by minute? There’s that courage again —

We shape our lives to get away from discomfort! But as Pema Chodron puts it: “That’s the definition of Ego, just trying to get away from our experience, which never adds up to inner strength…it just makes us more scared and more uptight. And saddest of all, it isolates us and cuts us off from each other…” 7

We actually move away from each other because we’re afraid we can’t handle the things others bring up in us.

BOTTOM LINE:
When pursuing truth, we must do those things which cultivate our courage.

What gives you courage?

Jumping in the springs gives me courage. Everytime, I dread it, and everytime I do it, I’m glad I did.

This leads us into sharing our truth, while staying in connection.

(Translation)
WHEN I TELL THE STORY I just shared with you — about my friend who was harassed by the police because he was a man of color driving a green car– it becomes easier for people who haven’t understood how racism functions in our society to understand how deep it runs — how much it hurts — both of us — him, and me — and how UNTIL I KNEW ABOUT IT, he was carrying all the grief and heaviness of that experience. He was the only one who knew. One of us was living in a police state, the other wasn’t.

So I’m not often going to tell someone the “truth” about their own racism. But I will tell them the truth of my racism, and that’s opened up more than one conversation. Because that is MY story, my vulnerability, my shame and grief.

Jungian psychologist James Hillman 8 — INDIVIDUATION — “Transparent Person, who is seen and seen through, foolish, who has nothing left to hide, who has become transparent through self-acceptance; her soul is loved, revealed… she is just what she is, freed from paranoid concealment… her transparency serves as a prism for the world….”

I like this idea. When we have courage to be seen and seen through, we become prisms. You know how being around a truthful person is like being around a clear light, when they use their power for good and not evil? I think that’s what he means. Sometimes, a truth is simple — that doesn’t mean it’s easy to say.

“I don’t like the way this conversation is going”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s at all fair to say that Muslim people are dangerous, I don’t see evidence that this is the case.”
“If you want to talk seriously, we need to talk in terms that are serious and respectful.”
“I see the changes happening in our environment and I’m afraid for us… I see our planet and our species in danger.”
“I don’t feel that you’re doing your share of the work, and I’m tired of picking up the slack.”
“I know you’re a spiritual person, and I expect more compassion from you.”

For me, this is the hardest part — engaging with another person’s truth without resorting to SILENCE or VIOLENCE.

Silence
Purposely withholding information from the dialogue, to avoid creating a problem.

Masking – understating or selectively showing what you actually think
Avoiding – not addressing the real issues, shifting the focus to others
WIthdrawing or even exiting

Violence
Convincing, controlling or compelling others to our view

Controlling: Cutting others off, overstating facts, speaking in absolutes, dominating the conversation
Labelling – stereotyping, name-calling
Attacking – belittling or threatening the other person

As truth-finders, we run into our own discomfort, As truth-tellers, we are likely to run into our own AND OTHER PEOPLE’S cognitive dissonance – ” The discomfort experienced when we simultaneously hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.”

For instance,

How could we be walking through everyday life like things are normal if our planet is in crisis?
How could a man I’ve been friendly with cross the line into assault or harassment? How could it be that I have been a predator for 40 years?
I always thought other people were racist. What if I am too!?

AT THAT POINT our work is three-fold: not to get hooked on our own emotion, not to get hooked on other people’s, and to help them try to disentangle if they’re stuck.

Creating safe space
Those who are terrible at it: Ignore the need for safety, express without regard for how it will be received
Those who are good at it: May sense that safety is at risk, but do the wrong thing — water down content, which avoids the real problem
Those who are best at it: Step out of the content of the conversation, make it safe, then re-enter
Stepping out of content and then moving back into the content of the conversation.
When someone (including ourselves) begins to move into silence or violence, we recognize it.
Say, hey, what’s happening for you right now? Address the kind and generous soul in front of you who’s not feeling safe. How can you help to reduce this, without stepping away from truth? 9

I’ve done this with my mom — Ha, this was a pretty funny conversation, if you have a daughter or a mom you can probably hear how this went in your head 😉
Mom, can we talk about what this is bringing up for you?
“Don’t you chaplain me!!”

I didn’t stop chaplaining though. In a really defensive place, a person is wanting to be able to relax and trust, but can’t. We have to establish — sometimes over time — that our approach is loving and dependable — Marge Piercy: “fight persistently like the vine which brings down the tree”

Being aware of the other person’s emotions and our own emotions!! Being able to hold both of those at once! 10 Tonglen Practice. This is breathing in what’s difficult, and breathing out something lighter. Breathing in what’s difficult, breathing out something lighter. Breathing in what’s difficult, allowing it to open our hearts and wash over us and the situation, lightness and peace.

In that spirit, we find the path forward.
The examples of this peaceful courage are in this congregation and all around us

Isabel Pascual is a 42-year-old strawberry picker, She was interviewed in Time Magazine , when Time named the #metoo ladies their Person of the Year. Isabel is not her real name. Isabel was harassed in the workplace by a man who threatened to harm her and her children. “That’s why I kept quiet,” Isabel said. “I felt desperate. I cried and cried. But, thank God, my friends in the fields supported me. So I said, ‘Enough.’ I lost the fear. It doesn’t matter if they criticize me. I can support other people who are going through the same thing.”

Isabel spoke out about sexual harassment while working without documents. Her courage gives me chills.

Part of the creativity of finding the path forward is going where we don’t normally go, where others reside, (#metoo is a movement of both movie stars and migrant workers) — people continuing to put themselves on the line for others — courage and creativity go hand-in-hand.

When finding our path through truth together, we pratice courage — listening — translation — creativity — and, I believe, we must cultivate cheerfulness —

In Shambhala Buddhism there are several sources of energy and power for the self — different sources of life force. The one they call Windhorse: “gallantry, cheerfulness, upliftedness, gentleness” (Thea!) “Primordial confidence” — Let’s just breathe with our windhorse right now — deep breaths, bringing up that primordial confidence, gallantry, cheerfulness — 11

Taking up the path of truth doesn’t mean we are perfect In fact, if we are perfect, we probably aren’t practicing very much. 12

Another favorite mystic: Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul “The soul becomes greater and deeper through the living out of the messes and the gaps — this is the negative way of the mystics”

COURAGE – Listening – Translation – Creation

What’s the worst that could happen? What do the voices tell you? That we won’t be liked or respected? That we’ll lose our words? And there is a voice inside me that says if I speak out I’ll die — for some people that may be true.

But for me, in most situations, it isn’t. So if that voice speaks to you, too, I leave you with some words from sister Sojourner: “I’m not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star! ”

Benediction

(are you holding a truth that needs to be told that will bring healing?)

In the tradition of UU ordination, we lay hands on ministers to offer them strength,e energy, courage. I say, let us join our hands right now and bless one another as we move forward into the world as ministers:

We bless each other as seekers of truth. We start with the courage to listen. In the words of John O’Donohue:

To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence…
Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos,
Where you find the peace you did not think possible,
And see what shimmers in the storm.

We bless each other as sharers of our truth — It is in us to offer safety for ourselves and others in our words. In the words of Audre Lorde:

…when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

Let us bless each other as finders of the path forward — in the words of Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

May it be so, Amen.

1 There are only a few accounts of this speech, version I’m going with was shared by Ms. Gage, 12 years later, in her autobiography. So take it with a grain of salt.

2 Though there are some itinerant women preachers from this time who were supported by specific communities… three of them left behind autobiographies… Sisters of the Spirit, Indiana Univ Press

3 She created an activist community to check out online: “The Work that Reconnects”

4 “Every time God’s children have thrown away fear in the pursuit of honesty, trying to communicate, understood or not – miracles have happened.” – Duke Ellington

5 International Indigenous People’s Day was this week — August 9 — gratitude for Rigoberta, the water protectors still doing the work of protecting the earth and our water supply here in the U.S.

6 Francis Weller “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”

7 Staying with Discomfort From Fear to Fearlessness

8 “Myth of Analysis”

9 It’s totally possible to do this badly! I remember speaking directly to a man who shouted at me and cut me off once in a board meeting — pulling him aside when we took our break and asking him what was going on, and saying that I didn’t feel that was appropriate, asking if we needed to talk about what feelings I was bringing up for him. Unfortunately, this set him off again — my tone, rather than helping him to feel safe, threatened his sense of calm and safety, which he was keeping by dominating the conversation. I think this made him feel shame and anger to boot.

10 When deepening engagement, we must cultivate Tolerance/Patience/Khsanti – Tonglen practice

11 Windhorse energy “Warrior’s gentleness: this is elegance, not arrogance. This is fearlessness, not heavy-handedness. Genuineness is not trying to convince ourselves something is there when it doesn’t exist. Gentleness is not being polite… Windhorse could be described as a bank of energy, which is the product of genuineness…” –Chogyam Trungpa

12 Joanna Macy’s 5 vows of a leader in the climate movement. Mix of our own growth and courage and engagement:

Committing to the healing of the world and the welfare of all beings. To live in Earth more lightly and less violently
Drawing strength and guidance from the living Earth, from our brothers and sisters of all species.
To help others in their work and to ask for help
To pursue a daily spiritual practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart

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