Sermon by Dr. David Robins, January 27, 2008
I supervised intern ministers for 15 years when I served a church in Illinois. There was a theological school in Chicago and the congregation was filled with teachers and professors who were used to supervising interns. I want to tell you a story about the intern I supervised in 2004. She gave me permission to use this story, but I’m not going to mention her real name. Let’s call her Cheryl.
Interns arrive in September and leave in June. Cheryl arrived in September with her husband. The church had had a mobile home donated by a member, and that is where the interns lived. Cheryl was kind, generous, compassionate, but was missing some direction and intentionality. One day as we were walking toward a little coffee shop where I took interns for a muffin and a supervision session once a week, I mentioned to her that she seemed unusually distracted and unfocused that day. She stopped in her tracks and burst into tears.
She told me an unforgettable story that seemed to have no end of misfortune. Her husband was leaving her. Her parents were going bankrupt and she didn’t know if she should leave school and return home to help them. Her father had just admitted himself to a psychiatric facility due to mental illness, and her mother was disabled. On top of this, the theological school had rejected her plan of study, and she could not continue studying for the ministry after that year. There were, in addition, two side bars to all this.
The church’s religious education program had just been through its secret friends program, in which one adult picks the name of a child and sends secret letters and small gifts over a three-week period, ending in a lovely lunch at the church with all the children and their no longer secret friend. What we didn’t know was that her daughter had never received anything from her secret friend, and was feeling crushed and left out, and Cheryl was mad at the director of religious education.
The crowning part to this story is that Cheryl had volunteered to campaign for one of the presidential candidates, who had lost the election. She was so distraught over the Iraq war, and the direction of the country, that she told me she was considering moving to Canada.
I have five pastoral tools in my toolbox that I regularly trot out when I find people in such situations. I have to admit, that when I heard Cheryl’s story, I wanted to pack up the toolbox and move on to an easier situation to fix. Her situation seemed overwhelming, not just to her, but to me. Since my conscience would not let me walk away, I took out the first tool in my toolbox…I gave her a hug, in the middle of the sidewalk. This was a story that reminded me of the children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad Day. If you have never read this book, I recommend it highly. Every child has days like that, and every adult has strings of days, months and years as described in this book. Reading it aloud to a child, or simply to oneself, is a comforting reminder that getting a fair shake is often the exception rather than the rule, and that something as simple as some sympathy and a helping hand makes all the difference in the world. Ministers tend to be one of the first lines of caregivers when people’s lives fall apart, both in the church and in the community. I am becoming more familiar with people’s “terrible, awful, no good very bad days” in our congregation, and in my new role as a board member of the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter.
My credentials do not include trained counselor or therapist, so I offer a compassionate listening ear, and a hug, if it is appropriate.
I have a second tool in the toolbox that I pull out occasionally. I read quite a bit in the area of Rational Emotive Theory, developed by Albert Ellis. But Cheryl’s didn’t need my analysis of how her own thinking might be hurting her.
My third tool wasn’t much use either in this situation. Asking somebody who is in the midst of a meltdown, “What did you learn from this?” only invites resentment and a swift kick.
The fourth tool is one that I never know for sure if it is in the toolbox. The fourth tool is metaphor and analogy. Sometimes, I am able to frame a person’s dilemma as an image, or a description that provides a little bit of distance from their personal train wreck. For example, I once heard a family therapist describe a family situation as one in which the children were driving the locomotive too fast, and the parents’ responsibility was to keep applying the brakes in order to avert a train wreck.
I happened to find two tools in the toolbox for Cheryl the intern’s situation. I told her that was smack dab in the middle of her own “perfect storm.” I f you read the book or saw the movie, The Perfect Storm, you may remember that the title described a situation off the Northeastern seaboard of the U.S. in which an Arctic storm came barreling down from the north. A blast came in from the Great Lakes in the West, and a hurricane came screaming up the east coast. The three of them collided off the Northeastern seaboard, gaining the meteorological title, “The perfect storm.” The story was about a fishing boat caught out in the Atlantic Ocean, and never seen again. I told Cheryl she was caught in the center of her own ‘perfect storm’ of bad events, and it was important for her to call the Coast Guard for help. And by “Coast Guard”, I mean anyone and everyone who might be able to cast a lifeline to her and her daughter, to help keep them afloat, and headed for safety.
The other metaphorical tool I found in the box was one I had obtained from the family therapist, Virginia Satir. Satir was one of the country’s first family therapists. She wrote at least two books, Conjoint Family Therapy, and Peoplemaking. In the latter book, she describes a metaphor that she used with her family counseling. “When I was a little girl,” Satir wrote, “I lived on a farm in Wisconsin. On our back porch was a huge black iron pot, which had lovely rounded sides and stood on three legs. My mother made her own soap, so for part of the year the pot was filled with soap. When threshing crews came through in the fall, we filled the pot with stew. At other times, my father used it to store manure for my mother’s flowerbeds. We all came to call it the ‘3-S pot.’ Whenever anyone wanted to use the pot, she or he was faced with three questions;
What is the pot full of now?
How full is it?
When can I empty it?”
Now try to overlook the unhygienic quality of using this pot, and go with the story.
“When people would tell me of their feelings of self-worth---“ Satir continues, “whether they felt full or empty, dirty or even cracked---I would think of that old pot. I once told a family in therapy about that old pot, and soon they were talking about their own individual ‘pots,’ whether they contained feelings of worth or shame, usefulness or not, and ability to cope or not.” (Somewhat adapted).
She told this story to more people, and they began to use shorthand for how they were doing, whether they felt ‘low-pot’ or ‘high-pot’, ‘full-pot’ or ‘empty-pot.’
Cheryl, the intern minister’s pot was definitely empty of stew or soap, and full of the other ‘S’.
I let Cheryl talk, tried not to interrupt, and when we returned to my office, I took the fifth tool out of my toolbox, newsprint and marker. When all the confusing, unpleasant, bad stuff fills one’s mind and feelings, it is useful to empty it onto paper or newsprint. We got all of her stuff onto newsprint, and I drew circles and squares, straight lines and dotted lines. And then I asked her which pots were the fullest, and who were the people to help her empty the pots that needed emptying and help fill the pots that needed filling. Her ‘coasts’ were vulnerable to danger, and she needed lots of coast guards.
In these situations it is important to:
- Trust that you will not only survive, but find a way to thrive
- Find a grief partner
- Ponder aloud if holding onto past disappointments cheats you out of present blessings.
Consider the annoying wisdom in getting over it and moving on. I once had a therapist tell me to “get over it!” I held a grudge against him for only ten years, but he was right. I find it useful to remember the book of Job. Job loses all his possessions and his house, he is afflicted with boils and all manner of illnesses, and his friends pick on him. He sits in the dirt and cries out to God, “Why me? I’ve been faithful and good.” God finally appears and basically says, ‘Get over it. Start again.”
Do the hardest things—ask for help, assistance, guidance, and compassion. Connect with others who can provide support.
Stop kicking yourself for wrong choices. You wouldn’t let anyone treat a child that way, so don’t treat yourself that way. I once called a groom by the wrong name in a wedding ceremony, not once but twice, until he gently corrected me. The family laughed about it afterward, but I was mortified, and hard on myself until I stopped b eating myself up about it.
Make a plan. Pick up what is useful and begin again.
Ponder the wisdom in the AA serenity prayer, “god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Turn a loss into a project. Christopher Reeve became a quadriplegic after a riding accident, and started a foundation to help others who were so disabled. He had attended a UU church in Connecticut, and spokes fondly in his book of the spiritual nourishment he found there.
Find, develop, adopt, and create a spiritual practice that will help you keep a spark alive in your soul in the hard times to come.
