Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.
Rev. Lee Legault
June 26, 2022
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Life requires us to make sense of difficult times, large and small. We have all been through a collective trauma with the pandemic. Victor Frankl Austrian psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor offers a framework for making meaning constructively in the most difficult of circumstances. Let’s reflect on how our thinking can transform our reality and set us free.
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
The prayer of our souls is a petition for persistence not for the one good deed or single thought, but for deed on deed, thought on thought until day calling on to day shall meke a life worth living.
– W.E.B. Duboise
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Meditation Reading
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him–mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom–which cannot be taken away–that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
– Viktor Frankl
Sermon
The second source of wisdom in our faith is words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. Dr. Viktor Frankl was such a prophetic person. He belonged to the Jewish faith and he started practicing medicine–neurology and psychiatry–in Austria in 1930. He quickly made a name for himself in those fields. In parallel Hitler’s regime was rising.
Frankl’s prominence kept him and his family safe for a time. He tells of being summoned to the office of an SS officer, but instead of being arrested–as he had feared– the SS officer asked if Frankl could give him some advice–for a friend, because of course SS officer’s have their lives totally together and do not need therapy. But the SS officer’s “friend” apparently had lots of issues, and Frankl offered services for about a year–which Frankl credits as buying some time for his family. But it did not buy enough time, and Frankl ultimately spent years in four concentration camps and lost all his family members, except for a sister who lived on another continent. He survived and wrote Man’s Search for Meaning immediately afterward in nine days in 1945. A 1991 Library of Congress survey found Man’s Search for Meaning to be one of the ten most influential books in America. [MSFM 125] Victor Frankl died in 1997 at 92 years old.
Frankl’s life in the concentration camps is perhaps the most extreme example of finding meaning through the attitude taken towards unavoidable suffering. The problem of meaninglessness, though, arises in the everyday. It exists perhaps more often than it does not. Frankl knew this before he spent time in the camps. He had been studying what drove people to existential despair and suicide before his incarceration. After his liberation, he returned to this theme having catalyzed the heart of his theory from his own experience.
Frankl explains his term for meaninglessness–the existential vacuum– like this: There is a double-fold loss that comes with humanity in the 20th century. First, people have lost much of their animal instincts that used to regulate behavior, and now people have to make choices. Second, traditions with embedded values are rapidly disappearing. “Now no tradition tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he doesn’t even know what he wishes to do. Instead he wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).” [MSFM 86]
According to Frankl, we can discover meaning in life in three different ways:
1) Through our creative gifts, such as by creating a work or doing a deed. Your vocation, work raising a family, or your effort cultivating a relationship would all fall under this category.
2) through our experience of the love for or from someone else, or our wholehearted appreciation and joy in the good and the beautiful, such as nature and art.
3) most importantly, by the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering. When we can’t change a situation, we can transcend it and find meaning in it through our response to it. Frankl called this attitudinal shift “tragic optimism.”
I want to be careful to call out that Frankl did not glorify suffering for suffering’s sake. He said, “let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering–provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological, or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic, rather than heroic.”
Major places where you come against some unavoidable suffering are in aging and illness. In other times and places, elders have been given honor and asked about their late-in-life experiences as revered fonts of wisdom. Not so much in our time and place. Aging, illness, and end of life are minimized and or little discussed. Our elders are not honored for what they are going through so much as they are made to feel embarrassed that they are going through it.
How different would it be if we honored the person’s suffering itself as a fertile ground for meaning, encouraging the person to feel purposeful in the ways they may be able to respond to the unavoidable situation. I see Frankl’s philosophy applied in my work at the hospital. I learn much about the world when I ask hospitalized people what has been hardest for them, what has surprised them, and what they take away from their experience.
Frankl’s approach also honors aging through its emphasis on the “granaries of the past.” “For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured [:] . . . the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with dignity and courage.” [MSFM 121]
From this perspective, our elders lead more meaningful lives than young people ever could because elders have abundant granaries of the past–potentialities they have actualized, meanings fulfilled, and values honored and lived. And nothing and no one can ever take those things away.
You may be thinking, Reverend Lee, uum, I’d like to have meaning in my life without going through intense unavoidable suffering. Weren’t there two other ways to do it, like by creating a work or doing a deed or by wholeheartedly appreciating something? Tell me more about those paths.
Well, that’s a whole other sermon really, but here are some questions that can point the way to those two other doors to meaning:
–what brings you joy?
–what strengths and skills flow easily within you?
–Putting those ideas together: What are you good at that you love so much you would pay to do it?
–If you had only 6 months to live, what would you do with your life?
–If you had all the time and all the money in the world, what would you do?
–If you were guaranteed to succeed and knew you could not fail, what would you do?
–Imagine it is your memorial service. What do you hope will be said in the eulogy? How do you want to be remembered for giving your gifts in service to your family, your community, and to the world?
If this exercise is evocative and you want more, know that I got these questions from my very favorite–and free–website called Optimize by Brian Johnson.
If the answers to these questions point to things already present in your life–like your relationships, your deeds, or your pastimes– then you are likely already actualizing meaning. If the answers point to deeds, experiences, or people not present in your life, then explore those answers because they are probably tied up with your purpose. In either case, take action–a little every day–in line with your meaning and purpose. Be not anxious. Purpose and meaning are big words. You don’t have to figure it out once and for all today–or ever, explicitly. You want to be working on it, working towards it. Embarking on missions that you sense may be on the right track. You don’t have to solve the world. Your meaning and purpose will be unique to you and does not have to make sense to others.
And, clutch Frankl’s tragic optimism to your heart. Even if the pleasant parts of your life never give you the tiniest twinge of meaning or purpose, there is always that Door Number Three that we talked about first: unavoidable suffering. Hard things have happened to all of us. More hard things are coming. But “there are no tragic and negative aspects [to life] that cannot be–by the stand one takes to them–transmuted” into meaningful experiences, beacons of dignity, or kickstarters of purpose.
Amen and blessed be.
Benediction
My wish for each of you is that you find the unique meanings of your lives and rarely experience the existential vacuum. I also charge you to witness to the meaning you see in others lives, mirroring for others the inherent worth and dignity– the meaningfulness–you see in them.
Most sermons during the past 22 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.
Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them by clicking on the podcast link above or copying and pasting this link. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776
