by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

Last Sunday evening was Halloween, one of my favorite times of the year. Each year I have my front porch light on and my basket of goodies ready for the assorted fairies, vampires, ghouls, bunnies and ballet dancers who come calling. The children always seem excited, and they run up on my porch with great high spirits. Maybe they want a chance at least once a year to be somebody they’re not: the stealthy bloodsucker instead of the polite little boy, or the ballet dancer who is usually shy and awkward. "Happy Halloween!" they shout as they leave for the next house. Maybe the masks, ironically enough, have made them a little more real, have brought out hidden desires and potentials.

The problem is that all too soon, children take on other kinds of masks, the masks of perfection, of performance, of correctness. To a certain extent, we all do—all children have to be socialized: it’s all right to have your one-year-old throw food on the floor, but not your ten-year-old. We all take on roles, we all develop a persona. But we should remember that the role—the name, the title, the function—is but a secondary reality, a compromise. The danger is that in taking on a persona, we will begin to believe that the role is the essence, thereby losing our personhood.

Let’s take a look at the word persona. Originally referring to the theatrical mask in Greek and later Roman theater, it comes from the Latin per sonare, which means "to sound through." The term is derived from the way in which ancient masks were fitted with tubes, little megaphones of sorts, so that the actors could project their voices. Greek drama was a religious event, we should note, with an altar up front and special places for priests to sit. It was the place where people experienced in dramatic form the fundamental myths of their society.

As I said, we all have a persona—it is the necessary interface between our inner selves and the various social roles we play. The persona is the articulation of the person in the world. But as in the ancient theater, the mask must fit properly—it must be a faithful rendering of the self, of the integrated personality. When there is a marked discrepancy between the inner self and the social self, we feel false, we feel unauthentic.

Psychiatrists report that they are seeing more and more people these days whose complaints are hard to diagnose. These people come for help because they can find no real satisfaction in work or in love—"I can’t get no satisfaction," as Mick Jagger sings. These people may seem to have everything anyone would want—everything, that is, except knowing who they are and why they’re living. There is an emptiness inside that cannot be filled, no matter how hard they try, no matter how accomplished they are, no matter how good-looking or smart or successful they are. This is not in essence a psychiatric problem—it is spiritual problem.

Listen to the voice of Stewart, who is separated from his wife of 12 years:

"The other night I was at this bar and I was in my "perfect self," I was "on." . . . . I knew the night would turn out the way I planned. . . . . And sure, I scored. But then I wasn’t satisfied. Maybe she wasn’t sexy enough. Or smart enough. I don’t know. She wanted us to get together again, but I got frightened. I can’t seem to stay interested in a woman for any length of time. It’s like tennis. I really like the game but just can’t get motivated to stick with the game and get really good. And if I’m not good—the best—I don’t enjoy it, and I give up. Whether it’s tennis or a relationship, what seems to matter most to me is that it makes me feel on top . . . .

"After <being with a woman a few times>, I feel phony. Sometimes I think I’m basically shy, and when I’m in my "perfect self" I’m cut off from my real feelings. At work, I feel trapped, like I have to constantly be the best, put everything I can into my work just to win the praise of my supervisors and colleagues. If I want to feel okay, I have to be the best businessman, athlete, lover, bridge player—you name it. I just can’t seem to enjoy doing these things in themselves. It’s like there always has to be a trophy waiting with my name on it. Otherwise, it’s not worth it."

So how do so many folks get in such a state, anyhow? Well, every culture has a different psychoenthnography—that is, the way people are supposed to think and behave in that culture. These assumptions are never stated—they are what is. Our culture has arrived at some pretty deadly rules which underlie our socialization. To name a few of these rules,

1. you are worth what you own
2. the body is subversive of the spirit
3. the earth is here for us to exploit
4. the purpose of life is to be happy
5. but if you’re having too much fun, you should feel guilty
6. other people will die, but you will not.

It follows that if we accept these unspoken assumptions, then an emptiness, a deadness will lodge itself in our gut. We will need to look elsewhere for values that are life-giving and cling to these chosen values over the acculturated ones.

How does a child go from being so real in his innocence, so alive and spontaneous, to being watchful and inhibited, to question his heart’s desires? Clinical psychologist Lois Shawver suggests this little story, as a sample scenario (adapted).

Suppose that one afternoon when you were a three-year-old child you are at a gathering. You are sitting in your aunt’s lap while people chat and munch on cookies. You have already had two of these cookies and there is only one left. This beautiful cookie is sitting on a simple white plate in the center of a big yellow oak table. Time passes, and no one takes the beautiful cookie. Your hand reaches out for the cookie, and you thrust it into your mouth. Your aunt says, "Oh, you are selfish! Look at you! You took the last cookie!" Being only three years old, you do not understand what it means "to be selfish," but the anger and the condemnation come through.

One might suppose that the next time there is a last cookie on a plate within your reach, you will hear an internal voice whisper, "Taking that cookie would be selfish." This is the birth of your Other. Once the Other is inside you, your desire has become converted into the desire of another. You go forth with the hidden concern that you are a selfish person.

Imagine now that it is a year later. This time it is a different house, and there are other children at the table. This time the plate that holds the last cookie is a fancy bright blue one with a ring of yellow flowers around the edge. You watch the cookie, and the voice inside you says, "If you take the last cookie, you are selfish," so you simply stare at the cookie, but leave it there. Then you watch in horror as another child’s hand reaches unselfconsciously across the table and grabs the cookie. You look into your mother’s face, as good little children do, and you say, "Look, Shirley is selfish! She took the last cookie! But I’m not selfish. Isn’t that right?" You do not critique your aunt’s voice—you took it as your own, and now you are involved in a whole new project of turning yourself in a selfless person. You need confirmation from a real person, in this case your mother, so that you can quiet the haunting power of the Other that threatens to expose the truth of your selfishness.

Just at that point, someone says, "We saw you staring at the cookie. You wanted it, too. You were just afraid to reach for it." And everyone laughs. And what do you do? You go ever deeper into deception. Now you hear yourself say, "I did not want that cookie. I was just looking at it." Even now, you want the cookie, but there is a part of you that wants to be a person who would never take it.

It’s all there, isn’t it? Innocence turned into self-condemnation, desire into denial, joy into judgment. Your real self has been taken over by the false self, by the self that you hope will please others, will make the vulnerable child that you are, you hope, lovable. As an adult, that voice is still there. As you reach toward the real, the person you are meant to be, you have to decide, metaphorically speaking, whether you want to risk someone’s thinking you are selfish—or whether you prefer to protect yourself by avoiding the last cookie forever."

I have to say that as a minister, I often avoid the last cookie. I have a role that asks me to leave my real self behind much of the time. Although in my sermons, I try to encourage you folks to understand that I’m human, I know that I haven’t succeeded most of the time. Some people think I wear my red robe all the time and never leave the church. Thursday I was having lunch in a neighborhood restaurant with a couple of friends, and the waitress walks up and gives me a big smile and says, "Well, Dr. Sewell, hello!" "You must be one of my flock," I answer. And she nods her head and says in great surprise, "You have a social life! And you eat!"

There are lots of things I just can’t do as a minister. I can’t use bad language—or what I prefer to call "earthy language." A minister friend of mine was at a church work party when she accidentally hit her thumb with a hammer. Before she thought, she said the F word, and the whole work party stopped in their tracks and stared at her. Other things I can’t do include drinking too much at a party, which I have never really wanted to do anyway. And then anger. I can’t be angry, ever, because it’s not just me being angry—it’s a combination of Mother and God. I can’t go out with unworthy men—that is, men who might be found unworthy by virtue of age or class or profession. And that, my friends, cuts down the list quite a lot.

But even as a minister, I am so much more my true self than when I was a young woman, trying to play the role of doctor’s wife, for which I was really not suited. I was married to a surgeon, and in that day and time the way surgeons got referrals was for their wives to have dinner parties and invite other doctors and their wives over to eat. I didn’t realize that this was part of the contract when I married, but I tried to be a good wife, the way I had always been a good girl.

So I plunged in and invited three other doctor couples to a dinner party. It took me three days to prepare for this party. Everything had to be perfect. I got out my sterling silver and my good china, which I had not used before, and set a beautiful table. I thought I would light the room by candlelight, because I had not really had time to dust. So everybody came, and I served h’ordeurves (sp?) and we chatted. Chatting, I’m not good at, so we soon moved to the dinner. I served buffet style and invited the wife of the most prestigious surgeon in town to begin. She took a plate and put the cornish hen and the wild rice and the gravy on her gold-rimmed plate and just as she plopped a spoonful of the brocolli casserole on her plate, she screamed. I of course ran over to see what the problem was, and discovered that in the dim candlelight I had left the protective foam pads on the plates, and this rather goopy meal had soaked into her sponge. She was very embarrassed and started apologizing. I was mortified and started apologizing, too. Then I said, let me get you a new plate and she insisted, no, I’ll just scrape this food off the sponge, and I said, oh, no you can’t do that, and she said oh, yes, we don’t want to waste this food, and there we were in the dining room struggling to see who could pull the plate out of the other’s hands. I think she won. That was the last doctor dinner party I ever gave.

We all have roles we play—but the question is, how closely do those roles approximate who we really are. Do you have to be tough and competitive? Subservient? Do you have to be nice to people all day? I think about flight attendants and their perpetual smiles. That mode of living must be quite stressful. It’s really important that we have some places in our lives where, in an atmosphere of love and trust, we can reveal ourselves in our fullness.

We also need to think about who brings out the best in us. With some people I have absolutely nothing to say. With others, I begin to articulate ideas I didn’t even know I had. With some people, I feel enlarged; with others, I feel diminished. With some people, I seem to have not an ounce of humor in me; with others, I’m laughing all the time. When people try to control me, I turn from Dr. Jekell into Mr. Hyde. When people act like victims, I walk away. We have not just one persona, we have personae. Which ones do we want to develop and which do we want to leave behind? I just don’t have time and energy to devote myself to what is not life-giving. Time is going by all too swiftly. I want to become as real as I can become, to have the inside me and the outside me be healthy and whole and together.

One might ask the question, why is it so tempting to leave the authentic behind? Like the little girl with the cookie, we all want to be loved—quite literally, we need love to survive. So the temptation to please, to show others what we think they want to see, that’s always there. To get along, you go along. And then there is the fear that our deepest, strongest feelings might overwhelm us if we acknowledge them. We tell ourselves, "My anger will overcome me if I let it out." Or "My sadness would envelope me, and I couldn’t function. It’s just too painful to be real." So we make a trade-off--we say to our psychic selves, "OK, I’ll give up being my real self, if I never have to experience the pain of being alone with myself, if I never have to experience the fear of abandonment."

In order shore up this psychic protection, we compulsively pursue an idealized self, and then we begin to believe the glowing persona we have created—we begin to believe our own P.R. We convince ourselves that we are very, very good, very ethical, very unselfish, very whatever. Under this guise we can do all manner of evil and simply not see it. I’m sure Eichmann congratulated himself daily on his efficiency. If we dare to be real, then we will have to look at the ugly as well as the beautiful in ourselves. We will have to realize the complexity of our ethical choices and tolerate the freedom that we have to make those choices. Freedom is not easy.

Perhaps you are wondering at this point, "How real am I? How do I know if I’m real—or a real phony?" Well, of course, it’s not an either/or for any of us—it’s a continuum. But here are some guidelines. This is a test—as yourself these questions:

1. Do you have the capacity to experience a wide range of feelings?
2. Can you be spontaneous?
3. Can you identify your own unique wishes, dreams, goals?
3. Can you make and stick to commitments?
4. Are you creative—that is, can you replace old patterns with new ones, rather than remain rigid?
5. Do you have the ability to be alone?
6. Do you accept pain and grief as a part of life?
7. Are you inner-directed? Can you assert your own thoughts and wishes?
8. Can you be intimate—do you have the capacity to express your real self fully and honestly in a close relationship, with minimal fear of abandonment or engulfment,

(10) And finally, do you experience a continuity of self—do you have a core that exists through space and time.

The good thing about being real is that we can relax a little bit—we do not have to shuffle between defensive pride, in which we are never wrong, and the abyss of self-contempt when life confronts us with our very real imperfections. We don’t have to constantly be earning points just to justify our existence. And we can give out of the fullness of the whole of ourselves, without holding back, fearfully. We can live life courageously. Listen to these words of Martha Graham, the great dancer and choreographer:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening

that is translated through you into action,

and because there is only one of you in all time,

this expression is unique.

If you block it,

it will never exist through any other medium

and <will> be lost.

The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is;

nor how valuable it is;

nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,

to keep the channel open."

This, quite simply, is what life calls upon us to do: to keep the channel open. The real, the soul, will never really desert us; it is always trying to break through—in strange dreams, in the sudden call of a crow on an autumn day, in tears that appear when least expected. When the channel is open to the real, it is open to the sacred within each of us. You see, underneath the frustration and the anger and the sadness, underneath those scary certainties of human life, we will find a ground of love and of joy. And if we choose to live there, if we choose to move from the shadow of the false self into the real, we will be living our own lives and not some one else’s. We will be giving our very special gifts. And as we climb into bed each night, we will say to ourselves, "Well, today was a day that I lived. I was there." And as we drift off to sleep, we will take with us a deeper peace than we have known.

So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we are thankful for the unique beauty of each life here today. We know that we deny our beauty and our strength in so many ways and fritter away our days escaping our real selves. We pray for courage, that we might be your people in the world. We pray that we might not fear to become the person we were meant to be. So be it. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now and know that you are beautiful and whole as you are—you need no mask. Go in love, and go in peace. Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning! Welcome to this place of worship. Here we ask that you bring your whole self—your sadness, your joy, your longing for the good. Come, let us worship together.

Copyright 1999 by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.