Delivered by James Kubal-Komoto, Summer Minister

First Unitarian Church of Portland

July 18, 1999

Opening Words:

"Plan but don’t plan as if it will all happen as you planned it...expect nothing and live frugally on surprise." - - Alice Walker

In the 1989 film Parenthood, Steve Martin plays Gil, an overly-anxious father of three who has trouble coping with the ups and downs of even a relatively ordinary suburban middle-class life. In the film, Gil quits his job because he wasn’t promoted to partner on the same day his wife announces to him that she is pregnant with their fourth child. However, by the next day, none of this matters as much to Gil because his less-than-athletically-gifted son makes the game-winning catch for the Little League team Gil has been coaching. That evening, he reflects on his feelings of elation in a conversation with his wife, Karen, that takes place in their dining room just before the whole family is about to leave for their daughter’s school play.

"I was [so] high from the Little League game. Isn’t that demented? That a grown man’s happiness depends on whether [his] nine-year-old catches a pop-up? What if he missed?"

"But he didn’t," Karen answers.

"But he could have."

"But he didn’t!"

"But he could have!"

"But he didn’t, Gil. You threw him 12 million pop-ups in the back yard. You cut the odds considerably."

"But there’s three of them, and you want to have four, and the fourth one [could turn out like] Larry, and they’re going to do a lot of things, and baseball is the least of them, and of all those things, sometimes they’re going to miss!"

"Sometimes they won’t."

"Sometimes they will."

"Sometimes they won’t!"

"Sometimes they will!"

"Well, what do you want me to give you, guarantees?" Karen answers tersely. "These are kids, not appliances. Life is messy."

"I hate messy. It’s...It’s so messy," Gil says.

At this point in the scene, Gil’s elderly grandmother enters the room.

"You know when I 19, [your] grandpa took me on a roller coaster...Up...down...up...down..oh what a ride! I always wanted to go again. It was so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together. Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry go round. That just goes around. Nothing. I liked the roller coaster. You get more out of it. Well, I’ll see you in the car," the grandmother says, walking out the front door.

"She’s a very smart lady," Karen says.

"Yeah, a minute ago, I was really confused about life," Gil says. "Then grandma came in with her wonderful and affecting roller coaster story and now everything is great again!"

Karen is now so frustrated with her husband, she picks up something and hurls it at him from across the room. "I happen to like the roller coaster, okay? As far as I’m concerned you’re grandmother’s brilliant!"

"Yeah?" Gil asks, "If she’s so brilliant, how come she’s [outside] sitting in our neighbors car?

I like Gil’s grandmother’s touching and affecting story, and admire his wife Karen’s preference for the roller-coaster-like ups and downs of everyday and not-so-everyday life, but I can’t help sympathizing with Gil. He longs only for a degree of predictability and control over the world in which he lives.

In September, Hiromi and I will return to Chicago for a year while I finish a Doctor of Ministry degree. The year after, that, however, is up in the air. If all goes well - - and this is always open to questioning, especially at about 2 in the morning - - I will have graduated, be ordained, will have received fellowship as a minister, and I will have been called to a church. However, I have no idea where this might be. The process of becoming settled in a church in our tradition is one of mutual selection by the ministerial candidate and the church, so I have some control in the matter, but it is limited and imperfect control. There are only a limited number of openings at any one time, and I may only choose a church that chooses me as well.

Sometimes this lack of certainty is exciting. Hiromi and I will look at a map of the U.S. and dream about different places we might go, imagining what it might be like to live in each place. Other times, this lack of certainty about the future takes on a life of its own and asks me questions in a pointed tone: "Where will you go?" "Will it be a nice place?" "Will you like the congregation?" "Will they like you?" The words of encouragement I often receive from many of you quiet these questions for awhile, but they remain inside of me, unanswered and waiting. Like Gil, I long for a degree of control and predictability over the world in which I live.

Each of desires control. Over our present lives and over our future. Over our bodies. Over our minds and emotions. Over our health. Over our illnesses and deaths. Over the lives of those for whom we care and love. Each of us desires control.

It is a natural longing. Our natural development from our births to adulthood can be interpreted as attempts to gain control. In watching an infant, we can observe the delight it takes in learning it can control its own arms and hands and fingers. We contribute to its sense of control over its world when we respond to its cries to be fed or held and loved. In interactions with toddlers, we can see how they delight in imposing their control on the world around them through the use of language, naming and demanding, and we can experience mutual frustration when we try to set limits on those wills. As has been often said, the difference between a two-year-old and a terrorist is that you can negotiate with a terrorist. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, we attain knowledge and skills that allow us to control the world in which we live.

If learning to control ourselves and our world is part of our natural development, it is something that our culture also encourages. The motto of American culture could be summarized in a few lines from the children’s author, Dr. Seuss: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go."

I do not want to suggest that our natural longing for control is bad. In fact, I believe it is good. We should try to take control of our own lives. While we are affected by our genes and our upbringing, I believe much of our happiness, our well-being and our satisfaction with life, is up to us. Even if this isn’t true, however, we will be happier and better off if we believe it is. People who believe they control their own lives more than God, fate, or luck does are healthier and happier than those who do not. As George Bernard Shaw said, "Hell is to drift, heaven is to steer."

Of course, there is a story of a Presbyterian woman who so believed that all events in the universe were predetermined by God that when she slipped and fell down the stairs of her home, she stood up, saw she was unhurt, and exclaimed, "Well, thank God that’s over with!" Such an attitude will help us cope with some of life’s events, but will ultimately lead to a passivity that is unhealthy, what one psychologist has called "learned helplessness" and a likely factor in causing depression.

On the other hand, in our longing for control and predictability, many of gone to the opposite extreme. As one cultural critic has said, "In the United States, mainstream assumptions about how the world works tend to be mastery oriented. We believe we can master our own destinies because we assume that the world is a fair and logical place where effort matches outcome. Good things happen to good and hard-working people - - and conversely, bad things will happen only if we have done something wrong or failed to put in enough effort." Not only does such a stance lead us to be unsympathetic to people for whom bad things have happened, such an attitude causes us a great deal of stress when we ourselves face problems that cannot be solved.

Is a balance between these two extremes of wanting to control everything and giving up control over everything possible? Is there a way that we can learn to like the roller coaster? Is there a way that we can learn to let go, at least a little?

Well-known to many of us are the words of the Serenity Prayer, written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,

Courage to change the things we can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

If there is an answer to the question of dealing with control in our lives, it surely lies in these familiar words. The secret to a happy, somewhat-less-stressful life must be in knowing the difference between what we can control and what we cannot, accepting what we can’t, and doing something about what we can. It is an answer that is so simple, and there is a beauty in its simplicity, but like all simple answers to life’s most perplexing problems the question that always remains is "How?" How is that we accept the things we cannot change? Knowing that we cannot change something does not always keep us from worrying.

Niebuhr’s prayer suggests we must wait until God grants us this serenity. While this is one answer, it is a frustrating one for those of us who want to...take a more active role in becoming serene. In answering the question of how we accept things we cannot change, I want to share with you two perspectives, one Native American and the other Buddhist. They both deal with coping with illnesses which cannot be controlled, but are similar in other ways as well.

Let’s begin with the Native American perspective, which is found in Pauline Boss’s book, Ambiguous Loss. Boss is a counselor who lives in Minnesota. She works with many families in which one of the family members has Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to working with many Euro-American families in the Twin Cities, Boss also has worked with some Native American families in Northern Minnesota. Boss found that the way in which many Native American families cope with this illness was very different.

"I began meeting with some Anishabe women in northern Minnesota," Boss tells us, "who lived in families where an elder had dementia. As we sat in a circle with the sweet smell of burning sage, I listened to their stories...The Anishabe women took charge, making sure that their parents saw the right doctors and took their medication, but at the same time, they accepted the challenge that nature had given them...The Anishabe women were able to cope with debilitating illness because they believed that life is a mystery that they must embrace and give themselves to willingly."

"This belief," Boss says, "is clearly illustrated in an Anishabe morning prayer. ‘I step into the day; I step into myself; I step into the mystery.’"

Before saying anything about this, let me share with you the Buddhist perspective, which is found in a book called Tuesdays with Morrie. The book is a true story about a sportswriter, Mitch Albom, who returns to visit an old college professor, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of A.L.S. During there meetings, Mitch always records Morrie’s words about what he has learned about life with a tape recorder.

"The small horrors of his illness were growing," Albom tells us of one of his visits, "and when I finally sat down with Morrie, he was coughing more than usual, a dry, dusty cough that shook his chest and made his head jerk forward. After one violent surge, he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a breath. I sat quietly because I thought he was recovering from his exertion.

"‘Is the tape on?’ he said suddenly, his eyes still closed.

"‘Yes, yes’, I quickly said, pressing down the play and record buttons.

"‘What I’m doing now,’ he continued, his eyes still closed, ‘is detaching from the experience.’

"‘Detaching yourself?’

"‘Yes. Detaching myself. And this is important - - not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach?’

"He opened his eyes. He exhaled. ‘You know what the Buddhists say? Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent.’

"‘But wait,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?’

"‘Yes.’

"‘Well, how can you do that if you’re detached.’

"‘Ah. You’re thinking Mitch. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.’

"‘I’m lost.’

"‘Take any emotion - - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - - if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them - - you can never be detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

"‘But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head, even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’"

In both Pauline Boss’s account of her conversations with Native American women and Mitch Albom’s account of his conversation with his dying teacher, we hear similar words. Accepting things we cannot change, letting go, detaching, learning to ride the roller coaster - - however we want to say it - - this does not involve passivity or a stoic withdrawal from our worries, our fears or even our need to control. In fact, it involves the opposite. Listen again to the words that Boss and the Anishabe women used: "Embrace." "Give themselves willingly." "Step into." Listen again to the words that Morrie Schwartz used. "Penetrate." "Go all the way through." "Throw yourself into." "Dive in, all the way, over your head."

Their words suggest to us that in order to let go, in order to accept the things we cannot change, we must not only realize with our heads that we can’t change the situation, but we must fully enter into with our hearts our feelings surrounding it. It is only then we can let go of our need for control.

And paradoxically, perhaps, letting go is necessary for us not only when we are experiencing life at its worst, but when we want to experience it at its best. When we fall in love or make love, when we surrender ourselves to a piece of music - - on a dance floor or sitting quietly - - when we allow ourselves to be moved to tears of joy, when we give ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves, we must let go for any of this to be possible.

Let me end by returning to the final words of our reading this morning from the poem "Flight" by Jorge Guillen. By analogy to a gull in flight, Guillen suggests it is only when we are able to let go fully of ourselves, of our hold on the world, that we are able to experience life at its fullest and most pure. Listen again to his words:

And suspended, its wings abandon themselves

To clarity, to the transparent depths

Where flight, with stilled wings,

Subsists,

Gives itself entirely to its own delight, its falling

And plunges into its own passing - -

A pure instant of life.

So may it be for each of us.

Prayer:

Will you pray with me?

Spirit of Life,

Deep within each of us and amidst us all,

Give us the courage to step into life, to embrace it, to give ourselves to it willingly,

And as we experience life in its heights and its depths,

Grant us the wisdom to understand that the experience of both is what makes us human.

Amen.

Benediction:

May you learn to love riding on the roller coaster. Go in love. Go in peace. Amen.

Copyright 1999 by James Kubal-Komoto. All rights reserved.