Who is Your Audience?

18 September 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER:

Jack Harris-Bonham, Ministerial Intern

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, we present ourselves to you in this moment. We acknowledge that life is a lot bigger than any of us. We remember connections; we see familiar faces, smiles and hugs all around, some coffee, some cake. This feeling of being together, this feeling of community reminds us of something.

Some of us come from a hectic week in which being in touch with the presence of the moment escaped us. Some of us feel fine about the week, but we still wait for the other shoe to drop. That nagging feeling that any moment it, whatever we’re attached to, whatever we so desperately want will all go up in smoke.

We let go now of all that has followed us throughout the week. We give it up! Our burdens, helium filled, drift off our shoulders. We watch them as they float toward the clouds, smaller, smaller, and then suddenly … they are gone. We take a deep breath and let it all out. Another breath … another exhalation. We are nearing home. We see it just ahead. It’s that place we know so well. It’s safe there, comfortable. We’re at home and from home all life’s difficulties are simply the scenery of our lives, nothing more.

We know the place. We recognize it when we’re there.

For it is from this place that compassion arises. We can’t be truly home, until we realize that everyone – so-called enemies, those we secretly dislike – they have all come home with us.

Out of this realization, help us unnamed Mystery, to walk the way fully awake. And don’t let us look away, for as surely as we are witness and audience, so too, the world is witness and audience to us.

The Mystery is within us, just as we are within the Mystery. Help us then, unnamed Mystery, to find our home, and to find ourselves.

Amen.

SERMON: Who is Your Audience?

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts…

(Shakespeare, “As You Like It,” Act II, scene 7)

A lot of us learned that bit of Shakespeare somewhere in school, but the language is so lovely it’s easy to forget that it’s also true. I doubt that any of us is aware of all the different parts we play in our lives, or all the different kinds of audiences we play to.

The Greeks had a custom that could make it easier for us to keep track of who we’re being at any given moment, and even though it’s pretty impractical, it’s also pretty vivid.

In ancient Greece, plays were performed in amphitheaters for t housands of people at a time, many of them fairly far from the stage – I’ve heard from tourists who visited one amphitheater that seated 13,000. So the actors sometimes carried large faces of their characters on a stick in front of them, so the audience could see which role they were playing. That’s quite an image, carrying your mask, your persona, around in front of you, super-sized. Can you visualize what your office would look like if everyone had to hold up the mask they were pretending to be at the moment? Or your home? Or your relationship? Or you? It doesn’t take long for this to get a little uncomfortable, does it?

The audiences cheered for the characters, not the actors: they cheered for actors who could play roles well, who could change into the persona shown on their masks. We still do that. One part of playing a role is playing to an audience, and you could even say that each kind of role we play is played to a different audience. Let’s look at a few of the masks we wear:

1. A teen-aged girl, in great physical shape, gorgeous, wearing the coolest clothes (and the right brand names), just the right jewelry, embodying, playing, the right image of a cool, attractive young woman. She’s playing not just to an audience of her peers, but an audience of her peers who know the rules of that role, which clothes matter, the connoisseurs of the young cool look. It’s a performance, and when she wows her audience, she knows it.

2. The older man in a $1,000 Armani suit and Rolls Royce, wearing the right kind of suave look is also playing a role, showing he has won at the game of financial success, he has made it. He’s not playing to the same audience as the girl, but to an audience of his peers, those who know that the car cost a bundle, that the mask he’s holding up in front of him is the mask of a hugely successful man, the hero of that sort of play: the kind Business Week might feature.

3. The hostess welcoming guests into her home, a home just dripping with Feng Shui, caressing you with subtle colors and textures, carefully and tastefully chosen furniture and just the right sort of paintings and sculptures, making the whole house a kind of mask held up to show a complete mastery of a certain kind of style and class. She’s not playing to the teenaged girl’s audience, and while the man could get out of his Rolls Royce and be comfortable in her house, she’s really playing to her peers, too, who know enough about the subtle arts of home décor to realize just how superbly she has done it. And she warms to their appreciation, given not in applause but in awed looks and compliments.

4. Or the child trying to be good, to please her parents, showing off good schoolwork, good art work, wanting her parents to see her soccer game or her middle school band concert. Probably without thinking of it, she’s hoping she plays her role as daughter well enough to – well, sometimes to earn their love, sometimes to earn their respect, sometimes just to do a good job playing this assigned role.

5. Our roles aren’t all positive. Teen-ages gang members, even in violent gang activities, are playing to an audience of other gang members. They wear the prescribed costumes, jewelry, maybe tattoos that mark them as members of this gang rather than others. Soldiers have many similarities. And high school kids who shout that they are radical individuals often wear the right costume, the costume of radical individuals approved by their peers, as they play for their audience’s approval. Those who have been in combat situations know that soldiers aren’t fighting for truth, freedom or the American Way. They’re fighting in front of the audience of their buddies, not wanting to disgrace themselves in the performance of this role.

6. Or a preacher, trying to invoke and evoke the presence of an attitude of seriousness, depth, trying to convince people he’s got a handle on what’s sacred and what isn’t – he’s also playing to an audience, and hopefully it’s one larger than the one in front of him. It’s the audience, probably in his mind, of those who know that worship services are meant to be a combination of reverence and relevance, challenge and comfort, done with the right kind of voice, body language and attitude.

I included my own role in the list because I want you to know that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing many roles to many audiences. They provide the background and the context for how we play our lives. Most young girls want to feel pretty, attractive and sexy, want to know that they can grow from the girl role to the woman role without feeling geeky. Those roles, in the right clothes and hairstyle, can ease them into some of the roles they’ll play as women.

The successful businessman might not know how to act like a successful businessman without the sense of a role, and might not know how to communicate his status to those who don’t know him. He worked hard for it; you can’t blame him for wanting to flaunt it a bit.

And if you’ve been in homes decorated by gifted hostesses, you know it feels great, and you’ve probably been among those in their audience who applauded the setting they created. I think such homes are almost magical, and a wonderful environment to be in.

The child – well, all children play these roles, just as we did. I had my “Little Man” role to play around my father, a different flavored role when I wanted to impress my mother, and still different roles with my brother, and my friends. It’s how we build our repertoire of moves in life, how we learn to steer our way through social circles as though we know what we’re doing. We couldn’t do much in many areas without having mastered a lot of those parts Shakespeare talked about.

With gang members, warriors, it can take on a dark and dangerous aspect, as they also want the approval of the audience that knows just how tough guys are supposed to look, talk and act. This often includes a toughness, even an indifference, to the suffering the cause others.

And I think you’re glad that I mostly act like a preacher when I’m up here, rather than fumbling around, slurring my words, looking down at the manuscript all the time and so on. All these roles are important. They’re part of how we try to please our several audiences.

And we know, or should know, that we’re playing roles, that we are an actor playing an appropriate role for the occasion. And once you get the feel for the many parts we all play, you can spot them just as though we were all carrying those big faces on sticks, like the Greek actors did.

If we don’t know the difference between the actor and the role, then we may not know the difference between what we do and who we are. I know that the movie “Batman Begins” says that “It’s not who you are deep down; it’s what you do that defines you.” But when you’re doing what you should do to be defined as a decent and honorable person, you are playing to a different audience than when you’re just fighting bad guys. And then it isn’t the character that matters, but the actor: who you are deep down.

There’s an old Jewish story this, told many ways. Rabbi Schwartz was taking a ribbing from his friend Smith, who was a great surgeon, Roberts, a distinguished scholar, and Rubenstein, a great musician. “Don’t you think you should have done more with your life?” they would ask. “You could have been a surgeon, or scholar, or musician instead of just a rabbi. Doesn’t it feel inadequate to you? Rabbi Schwartz said that no, it didn’t feel inadequate to him – though it felt inadequate in front of this audience. But he said that when he stands before his Maker, he will not be asked why he wasn’t a great surgeon or scholar or musician. He will be asked whether he was the best Rabbi Schwartz he could have been. And that, he said, is the audience he’s really trying to please.

There’s the distinction between the actor and the roles, and the distinction between the “B” level audience and the “A” level audience. In Western religion, most people think of this ultimate audience as standing before God, as they think of living as God would want them to live. The Greeks didn’t put it in God-terms in their Golden Age, but in terms of owing obedience to the highest ideals of the culture, which they relied on to help create the noblest kinds of people. The Romans didn’t put it in God-talk either by the end centuries of the Roman Empire. They said you should live “under the gaze of eternity”: as though all the greatest, noblest people who had ever lived or would ever live were watching you. Then, they said, do only what you would do in front of that kind of an audience.

There’s another story about this, a parable collected by a man named Anthony de Mello, one of the great collectors of spiritual stories from all over the world.

A woman in a coma was dying. She suddenly had a feeling that she was taken up to heaven and stood before the Judgment Seat.

“Who are you?” a Voice said to her.

“I’m the wife of the mayor,” she replied.

“I did not ask whose wife you are but who you are.”

“I’m the mother of four children.”

“I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are.”

“I’m a schoolteacher.”

“I did not ask what your profession is but who you are.”

And so it went. No matter what she replied, she did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, “Who are you?”

“I’m a Christian.”

“I did not ask what your religion is but who you are.”

“I’m the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy.”

“I did not ask what you did but who you are.”

She evidently failed the examination, for she was sent back to life. When she recovered from her illness, she was determined to find out who she was. And that made all the difference.

– Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight, p. 140

She answered questions about who she was with answers about the roles she played, the collection of masks she owned. But here, she was playing to a higher kind of audience, asking about the actor, not the roles wanting a higher kind of authenticity than just that of her being a wife, mother, teacher, Christian or the rest of it – even though those can all be good and important roles.

Friday night, about seventy-five of us watched a wonderful movie called “The Movie Hero,” about a cast of characters who hadn’t found the right audience to play to, and the lead character who had found his audience, but couldn’t find the right role to play before this audience who wanted him to be the hero of his story. After the movie, the discussion lasted for about forty-five minutes, because everyone there could recognize some dimensions of their life and the lives of those closest to them in this cast of characters.

(“The Movie Hero” is among the films our church owns through our subscription to the Spiritual Cinema Circle – http://www.spiritualcinemacircle.com/. We show spiritual movies on the third Friday of each month, and have an “Uppity Movie Night” on the first Fridays, where we feature films about society, the economy, the war and so on.)

This isn’t about blaming ourselves for not being perfectly noble people. It isn’t about holding up one more yardstick that will find us wanting. It’s about reminding ourselves that the actor is more important than the roles we play, and if we forget that for too long, the roles may take over the actor, which can give our story a very sad ending.

Rachel Naomi Remen, a gifted physician in the San Francisco area, has written two books filled with stories about what matters most in life, and I want to share one of her stories with you – a true story from her own experience.

She attended the retirement dinner for a medical school faculty member while she was in medical school. He was internationally known for his contributions to medical science. “Later in the evening,” she writes, “a group of medical students went to speak to him and offer him our congratulations and admiration. He was gracious. One of our number asked him if he had any words for us now at the beginning of our careers, anything he thought we should know. He hesitated. But then he told us that despite his professional success and recognition he felt he knew nothing more about life now than he had at the beginning. That he was no wiser. His face became withdrawn, even sad. “It has slipped through my fingers,” he said.

“None of us understood what he meant. Talking about it afterwards, I attributed it to modesty. Some of the others wondered if he had at last become senile. Now, almost thirty-five years later, my heart goes out to him.”

(Kitchen Table Wisdom, pp. 205-206)

Wearing his doctor mask, he had played to appreciative audiences his whole career. Only when he looked back on it, he realized it had been the role that had been developed, not the actor, and life had slipped through his fingers.

And sometimes, when people feel like personal failures, like it has slipped through their fingers, they get bitter, and try to poison the hopes and dreams of others. We have all known people like this, and they can be quite destructive. The people who delight in bursting others’ balloons, mocking their hopes because they are so empty inside and the emptiness hurts because they never found their audience, never found the right audience, never grew into the kind of person who knew who they were and were proud of it.

We all know cynics who tear down everything hopeful and good anyone puts forth, and use that destructive little role as an identity. But it’s the screaming lack of an adequate identity, not a real one. It’s the painful cry masquerading as a self. It’s the painful and dangerous cry from the forces playing to an audience drawn from the Dark Side, from the minions of Lord Sauron, from Voldemort, and those who are held in thrall by them.

How and where do you find an audience that cares whether you’re true to your best self rather than giving in to the trolls and demons that haunt you? What will lead you to a life you’ll be glad to have lived? What if you develop talent, succeed, and identify with your success rather than with your character, your soul?

We are born into a world that always tilts toward life and hope, and our deepest challenge is to adopt that tilt toward life and hope, to become eager servants of the best kind of life, the life that serves and heals the life within and around us, so that we won’t look back after many years and say “It slipped through my fingers.”

Where to find the kind of audience that expects the best from us? If we serve the gods of our culture, we will live to succeed, gain wealth, power, and seek the endorsement of our society as a sign that we’ve won in the rat race. Most of us do that, at least in part, and it mostly works, at least in part.

But as that great American philosopher Lily Tomlin said, “Even if you win in the rat race, you’re still a rat!” Even if you win at the game, is it enough? If you please an audience of rats or functionaries or repressed people, is it enough?

When you stand before the mirror at those times of your life when honesty invades and makes the rules and you must take account of yourself, it will not matter a great deal whether you played this or that role well. It will matter whether you were the best you possible, not what you imitated. It will matter whether you played yourself well. And the only audience finally worth playing to is the audience that believes there is something precious and singular in you that needs to be offered to the world.

Because there is. You are the only person in the world with the unique combination of quirks, gifts and style that you have: the only one. What a loss it would be to the world if you never put the mask down long enough to find the actor inside and bring him or her to light and to fruition. What a shame it would be if we focused so hard on the roles we must play that when we reach the end we realize that life slipped through our fingers. The audience that matters most dearly hopes you will do it, because they want you to be the hero of your unique story.

Don’t waste your “A” game on “B” audiences. At its best, this church is one of those better audiences that will prefer the actor to the characters. I try to preach from and to those places that listen for the better angels of our nature, that help us find the Buddha-seed, the God-seed that’s within us.

Because I don’t want, and you don’t want, life to slip through your fingers. You want life to be all over your fingers, all over your body, soaked deep into your mind, warming the very depths of your heart.

You want this, so that when the person whose opinion means the most asks “Were you true to your best self? Were you animated by love rather than envy or hate, by compassion rather than condescension, by understanding rather than prejudice” – and the other questions that will come up on that sort of existential exam – you want to be able to raise your head and say “Yes. Yes. I was not perfect, but I tried as well as I knew how to be a person of integrity and character, and a small blessing to the people whose lives I touched as I passed through life. I tried to make, and to be, a positive difference. And it was enough. It was enough.”

The applause won’t come from outside. It will come from the opinion that is finally the most important in your world. It will come from inside, because it’s your own most honest opinion that matters so deeply. It will be a silent kind of applause; but the noise from that silent applause can be deafening.