March 16, 2003
“ The Joys of Not Judging, or,
The Discipline of Understanding”
Matthew 7:1-5, Luke 6:27-38

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you….

Judge not, and you will not be judged; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap……

Children’s Story -

A Native American friend told me this story from his childhood and I’ve never forgotten it.

Hasa Brown grew up in the Adirondacks, close to his grandfather,
a Kiioni, or medicine man; a healer.

When Hasa was about eight years old he got to travel with his grandfather to perform a healing, about 40 miles away.

They were poor, and so they walked all 40 miles. And they camped along the way, catching fish and cooking them over the fire at night.

Sitting by the campfire the last night, his grandfather said to him:
“ Reach into the fire and get a hot coal take it down by the river and start me a new fire.”

Hasa looked at the river, thirty yards away, looked at the fire,
looked at the river, looked at his grandfather, and said
“ Grandfather, that won’t work I’m going to be burned.”

And his grandfather said “That is true,”
and they sat for a while in silence.

A little while later, the grandfather said:
“ Take a leaf and attach it to two twigs: put a hot coal on it and take it to the river and start me a new fire.”
Hasa thought about it and replied:
“ Grandfather, by the time I get to the river the leaf will burn through and I’m going to be burned.”

And the grandfather said “That is true,”
and they continued to sit in silence,
while Hasa puzzled over how he could move some coals
down by the river to get a new fire started.

As the embers died down, the grandfather reached into the fire with a stick, and with it, picked up the cast iron beanpot by its handle.

And Hasa jumped up excitedly and said
“ That’s it! I can put coals in the pot and carry it to the river with a stick!”

And the grandfather said this:

“Exactly! Also remember this:
fire is a warm friend or a consuming enemy,
all depending on how you handle it.
The fire of the spirit is hotter than all the campfires ever burned.
Before you let the spirit enter you,
you must build within yourself a cast iron pot to hold the fire;
you must build yourself a cast iron pot with these four legs:
discipline,
understanding,
forgiveness, and
love.

Without discipline there can be no understanding,
without understanding there can be no forgiveness,
without forgiveness there can be no love,
without love there can be no discipline...”

I’ve never forgotten that story Hasa told me.
The picture of the four-legged pot is burned in to my memory.

And in my life I’ve found it true what Hasa’s grandfather taught:

Without discipline there can be no understanding,
without understanding there can be no forgiveness,
without forgiveness there can be no love,
without love there can be no discipline...”

And so, this sermon series on the discipline of prayer & meditation,
on understanding, on forgiveness, and on love.

Last week we looked at the first leg of the pot -
the spiritual discipline of prayer and meditation.

This week, the second leg - understanding.

~~~

How hard it is, I think, for most of us to get outside of ourselves
to understand another.

We see the world out of our own eyes, of course,
and, as Jesus pointed out, our eyes are often filled with logs.
It’s difficult to see out, let alone, to see the log.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out our tendency to go easy on ourselves, while holding others to tougher standards.

Which makes sense- we can generally understand our own motives, yes?
But it’s not so easy to take the time and effort to understand the motives
behind the actions of another.

For instance, I’ve noticed that I generally drive just the right speed;
not too slow, not too fast.

On a bad day, its easy to get frustrated with people driving, no, poking,
slowly down the road; and to be appalled by those people whizzing by me who are in way too big a hurry.

Many years ago a London newspaper held a contest in conjugating irregular verbs. For instance, this entry from Bertrand Russell:
"I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig headed fool.”

Here’s another:
“ I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed;
he is making a fuss about nothing.”

Or:
“I have reconsidered it; you have changed your mind;
she has gone back on her word.”

And my favorite:
"I have about me something of the subtle, haunting,
mysterious fragrance of the Orient; you rather overdo it; she stinks."

We so often fail to grant the same grace to others that we
tend to offer ourselves. And it’s not far down that road
to a place of criticism and a spirit of judging.

Has that kind of attitude brought happiness to anyone you know? Has it brought more wisdom and joy to the world? The other night I was in the car, scanning the radio stations, and overheard part of a current issues talk radio show. I can’t remember the topic, but a caller phoned in with a fairly mild question that disagreed with the host.

The host responded with:
“ You’re such a jerk! What have you been smoking?"

Not that this this level of attack new:

Andrew Jackson had this to say about Henry Clay:
“ He is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of God, nothing is too mean or low for him to condescend to.”

Henry Clay said this about Andrew Jackson:
“ He is ignorant, passionate, hypocritical, corrupt and easily swayed by the basest men who surround him.”

Harpers Magazine described Abraham Lincoln this way:

“Filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”

Language likes this has a way of making people defensive,
and hardening personal positions, and thus blocking out positive options.

Without even attempting to understand the other, the opponent, the enemy, it becomes easier to make assumptions about the other that aren’t true. Consider this classic joke:

A man is driving down a road. A woman is driving down the same road from the opposite direction. As they pass each other, the woman leans out the window and yells "PIG!!"

The man immediately leans out his window and yells, "idiot woman driver!" They each continue on their way, and as the man rounds the next curve, he crashes into a huge pig in the middle of the road.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Look what happens when we don’t try to understand each other...

We’re headed for trouble not only when we have hardened our positions and cannot hear one another, but also when we fear to risk hearing or being heard out of a sense of politeness.

Last week investor Warren Buffet wrote a think piece on the recent failure of large corporate boards. "Why have intelligent and decent directors failed so miserably?" he asked. The problems comes from “boardroom atmosphere " he says.

It is "almost impossible," he said, for a "well-mannered" board to debate the firing of a chief executive. This same paralysis of politeness also applies to critical looks at deals, or executive pay, Buffett argues. (1)

Of course, that never happens in a church!

But I have seen it happen the other way. I’ve told you about the experience that got me started reflecting on the possibilities of trying to understand, deeply and actively and attentively, those whose opinions differ from mine

Three examples:

1. I’ve shared with you the experience I had at the first annual meeting I ever attended in the Central Pacific Conference. We were debating abortion. My first annual meeting in this conference:
We were debating abortion. Now, understand that there were delegates there from Idaho Falls to Ashland, from places as divergent as Lake Oswego, Mountain Home, and Ione.

The meeting held all the ingredients for a rancorous debate.
Or for none - that “paralysis of politeness.”

But instead...... we engaged in a process of active listening, in which we listened to those on the opposing side not with the intention of figuring out how to argue back, not with the intention of figuring out how to get them to change their minds, but with the intention of listening until we could understand why they thought and felt why they did. And only when everyone felt that they had been heard and understood did we finally put the issue to a vote.

What happened that day was simply extraordinary. We didn’t come to an agreement on the issue, but we came to understand and respect one another deeply. And that changed the climate among the churches in this conference for years, I thought.

2. A group of six women in Boston have been meeting regularly for years over the same topic: abortion.

Their dialogue began after the December 1994 shootings by John Salvi at two Brookline women’s health clinics. Mr. Salvi killed two clinic staff members and wounded four others. In the wake of the murders, then-Governor William Weld and Cardinal Bernard Law of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston called for talks between abortion opponents.

The more than 150 hours of private dialogue, facilitated by the Public Conversations Project in Watertown, were these six women’s answer to that call.

Their goal was not to reach compromise, or even common ground, but instead, according to their statement, “to communicate openly with our opponents, away from the polarizing spotlight of media coverage; to build relationships of mutual respect and understanding; to help de-escalate the rhetoric of the abortion controversy; and, of course, to reduce the risk of future shootings.”

One participant, an Episcopalian priest, said that the stereotypes that she held of pro-life activists as shrill extremists were dismantled. “Instead I found these women to be very smart and thoughtful, and for people in this movement, quite moderate. I came to have a lot of respect for them as people. They have changed my life. They have changed the way I approach argument and changed the way I approach people with whom I disagree.” (2)

3. I heard a presentation this week by a group called “Climate Neutral Network,” (3) a national organization with ardent environmentalists on its board; people like Amory Lovins, representatives from the National Resources Defense Council, and the Nature Conservancy.

CNN has been working with – hold onto your hats - British Petrolium and Arco, collaborating to help motorists offset the greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming.

How exciting is that?

Before the year is out Portlanders will be able to take part in a pilot project where, by purchasing a prepaid fuel card, at no added cost to the value of the gasoline, BP/Arco will invest in an equivilent amount of C02 reduction.

Together they’re looking at things like
converting school buses to bio-diesel fuel,
traffic light synchronization,
cleaner ways to heat trucks at truck stops
without needing to idle their engines all night.

These offsets will remove the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that our gasoline usage puts in the air. In return BP & Arco will get increased customer loyalty and market share,
we all get a slower pace of global warming, and everyone wins.

All because someone had the audacity and imagination and courage to sit down together and listen and seek to understand. Energy companies and environmentalists! Imagine that!

~~~~
Surely this is not an idea limited to policy debates and raging public controversies.

I’ve seen friendships, marriages, families, churches, schools, entire communities founder on the rock of rigidity and judgment. Haven’t you?

Let me offer some hints to help us all along:

1. Pray

Henri Nouwen said:
“ To pray for one another is, first of all,
to acknowledge....that we belong to each other
as children of the same God.
Without this acknowledgement of human solidarity,
what we do for one another does not flow from who
we truly are. We are brothers and sisters,
not competitors or rivals. We are children of one God,
not partisans of different Gods. (4)

2. Listen for understanding (not to find weak points in the
argument)

3. Repeat back - do I understand you correctly?

4. Share your own feelings and beliefs;
feel free to disagree if you do.
Using ”I statements” is helpful,
as in “I feel afraid for the future when I think about CO2 depletion”, as opposed to “I can’t believe you’re such a loser!)

A family friend who was renowned for her ability to debate with my father shared her secret with me. She said “I can get away with saying almost anything if I preface it with ‘It seems to me.’”

5. Pray some more

The outcome?
The shared truth of our human experience has a chance to emerge.
Richer deeper relationships become more possible.
In our friendships, our marriages, our families, our churches, our nation, our world.

{And,
once we understand and our understood,
then forgiveness becomes possible.
Not forgiveness that is the quick application of a bandaid,
but forgiveness that is real and restorative.
But I’m getting ahead of myself: that’s next week.}

****
I know that as we come ever closer to going to war that
beliefs are strong and emotions are running high.
Within this church,
they are not the same beliefs or the same emotions.

I have been listening
and I know there is dread and angst and fear,
there is both shame and pride,
there are people who think that this war is unthinkable,
and those who view Saddam Hussein as a budding Hitler
who must be stopped, by us if by no one else.
And a whole gamut of views and emotions in between
and probably beyond.

After I wrote my last newsletter column about the subject
of listening to one another,
someone commented
“What’s the use?
Everyone’s already made up their minds.”

But we’re not about changing each others minds.
I trust that we’ll be a healthier community if we try to
share what is in our minds and in our hearts
and what is troubling our souls.

A member of my last church gave me this poem which I had displayed on the bulletin board of my office for years and years:

Home Sweet Home

If this is not a place where tears are understood,
where do I cry?
If this is not a place where my spirits can take wing,
where do I fly?
If this is not a place where my questions can be asked,
where do I seek.
If this is not a place where my feelings can be heard,
where do I go to speak?
If this is not a place where you will accept me as I am,
where do I go to be?
If this is not a place where I can learn to grow,
Where can I just be me? (5)

Amen.

(1) Buffett Lays More Heat on Boards,
by Brendan Intindola,
Reuters News Service March 14, 2003, 8:13PM

(2) Abortion Dialogue Becomes Profound Experience for Six Women, Tracy Sukraw, Episcopalian Times Online, www.diomass.org/EpisTimes/Abortion.htm

(3) Climate Neutral Network, www.climateneutral.com

(4) Renewed for Life, Daily Meditations for Lent, Henri Nouwen, pg. 9

(5) William J Crockett, author

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