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Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster

On Being Ourselves Together
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
November 19, 2006

Today I want to talk about transitions -- something in which this congregation is deeply involved at this time. Transitions are often unsettling. It sometimes feels as if things are coming apart at the seams, as if that which has been gained so far is at risk and insecure. In this regard Germaine Greer, one of the leading women's liberationists of my generation, once remarked, "About the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the threat of imminent release." She was talking about men; but I believe her thought applies to everyone. This is true about all of life and its unpredictability; it is especially true about those transitional times when we must move from one accustomed way of doing things to a new and different way.

Matters usually are complicated at such times because of a widespread misconception of what a transition is. Mostly people seem to think that moving from an old situation to a new situation is merely a matter of stopping what you have been doing and starting to do something else. The reality is much different. The reality is that, in order to go from stopping to starting (in a healthy, mature way), many things must happen. At least that's what specialists in personal and organizational change tell us. This morning I want to look at what some of these things are, especially as they have to do with endings and old situations. Transitions can be easy or hard, empowering or enervating. They can enable growth in maturity or they can merely reinforce old, depleting behaviors. They can keep us running with attitudes and behaviors that weight us down to the ground. Or they can bring us new insights that lift us into the higher reaches of our personal and collective missions in life.

This congregation is in the throes of transition. But, so are many of its members - simply because they are human beings. It is nearly always the case in every organization that as a group goes through the throes of change so are many individuals within the group going through their own personal transitions. Your Board of Trustees is paying attention to the dynamics of change as they relate to this congregation's interim situation. However, much of what they have to do in dealing with congregational issues is of value to our personal lives also. Therefore, as we begin this holiday season, one of the most stressful times of the year, I take this to be a good time to give some attention to the dynamics of healthy transition in terms that apply both to groups and to persons. What we have to do as a congregation in many ways is what we often have to do as individuals in order to keep our lives in order.

The title of my remarks today is "On Being Ourselves Together." This is an umbrella kind of title under which you can discuss many things about the way people relate. It is especially a propos when it comes to the dynamics of transition, especially in our UU context where, as we move from one organizational context to another, the object is to create a community where people can be true to who they are individually yet can complement one another. How we get from one set of relationships to another is of fundamental interest. It is the prime challenge of the interim period that we do this well. To do this well requires that we not only begin that which must be begun but also that we end that which must be ended.

Some lines in Little Gidding, one of the poems in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, speak strongly to this issue. In that poem Eliot says, "What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning." Then he concludes, "The end is where we start from .. " His words assert the realization that "endings" have to come to an end before "beginnings" can be begun. When an "ending" fully finishes is when a "beginning" can fully begin. Where I think he is a bit off the mark is that, in real life, there are usually, if not always, little endings and little beginnings that don't always come in chronological sequence but often overlap. Furthermore, many endings can only fully occur after some beginnings are attempted. We see why this is so when we look at the process that makes an ending in the first place.

There is a lot of good literature that describes this process -- certainly there is more now than when I first entered the ministry over forty years ago. One of the most helpful resources I have found is a small book of 170 pages entitled Transitions. Its author is William Bridges, Ph.D. Dr. Bridges used to be a professor of English but he shifted to transition management and humanistic psychology.

What I learned from Bridges about "endings" is that, when something has happened from which we need to move on, it seldom is enough just to say "Don't cry over spilt milk" or "What's done is done," or "Let bygones be bygones," or, in a more benign expression, "It's over. Don't look back." This kind of attitude doesn't do much to help us get used to whatever has changed or to internalize lessons from the change. What is required has at least four different aspects to bring about a "natural ending experience."

One thing that frequently needs to be done is to break with the situation that is ending. As a newly married couple moves out and away from old family and friendship ties, or as a young initiate is taken out and left in a forest or a desert, the persons have to disengage themselves from what has gone before in order to commit themselves to what is to come. This means that not only do people have to disengage on an external level, they have to disengage internally. Not only are we to leave the old context, we are to remove our inner commitment to that context as our central motivation for moving into the future. This is unlearning the old, dis-identifying with the old, in order to find new identity in the new. This is giving up old beliefs and old practices in order to face the new era, the new project. The biblical injunction to "put away childish things" in order to mature speaks to this. However, this unlearning is not forgetting the valid things we have learned; it is opening our minds and hearts, our attitudes and behavior in order to deal more fully with the new by not being wedded to the old. This unlearning, this dis-identifying, is preparation for attaining more mature, healthier, newer modes of belief and behavior.

Another aspect of "the natural ending experience" is an experience many of us have had when we have lost a job, discovered that a friendship was not as caring or as valid as we thought, or when someone close to us has died. At such times we may feel that we are floating free in "a kind of limbo between two worlds". Of course, we know the Florida summer heat will subside somewhat. We know that the hurricane season will end. We know that the world will go steadily on its way. But we are still enshrouded with the feeling that something important about our life is no longer real. We have suddenly found out that something we thought was so is not so: leaders we trusted turn out to be corrupt; even parents sometimes lie; contracts can have hidden clauses that turn contracts on their heads. What we took to be unshakable shakes beneath our feet. And, we become disenchanted.

Disenchantment is an almost inevitable prerequisite to unlearning the hindering aspects of the old in order to learn the enlivening aspects of the new. Disenchantment is what helps us empty the vessel before pouring in new wine. The point is that disenchantment is a sign that things are moving into transition. It helps us see past the enchantments with "the way things were" that prevented us from seeing deeply into ourselves and others. This aspect of transition prepares us more ably to assess when we have found a true friend, or an able leader, or a higher perception of that for which our lives -- and our groups -- strive.

Along with the disconcerting effects of disenchantment during a transition, there is another, often disturbing, experience. As change progresses, we sometimes lose our moorings. As we move into unfamiliar territory, landmarks on which we once depended seem to disappear and we can become disoriented. We can get the empty feeling that we don't know where we are going. Sometimes this feeling of emptiness makes it seem that there is not much point in going anywhere. However, one of the realities of moving from the known into the unknown is this emptiness. It is natural. It is even necessary if we are to be truly open to the new -- for it is into the emptiness that the new must go.

There are these four different aspects of the natural ending experience: disengagement, dis-identification, disenchantment, and disorientation. I see some of them in some form almost every day. There is a lot of "ending" going on here at UUCS.

However, going through these aspects is only part of the transitional process. These aspects only enable us to move on beyond the limits of old commitments -- to be free of old dreams. Equally important is what happens between the ending and the beginning - or where ending and beginning overlap. This time may seem like a "gap" between the old and the new. It turns out that T.S. Eliot left something out. And, although chronologically a gap may not exist, it very often is there as an existential experience because it is where we consolidate and internalize our endings. I am talking about what can be metaphorically called "a time between dreams" -- a time in which we enable or allow a transformative experience to infuse and redirect us even while events are swirling around us.

This is a "neutral zone" and as one specialist in transitions has put it, it is "a place without a name -- an empty space in the world and the lifetime within which a new sense of self could gestate." Such a concept is not usually part of our thinking about transitions. At the most it is usually taken to be only a temporary sense of loss to be endured -- something to be surmounted so that we can get on with the business of beginning. But, to think like this ignores or makes light of the pain and distress that accompany most of our endings. Unless we give positive attention to what can best go on in the neutral zone -- this "place without a name" -- we risk our fears of change (our estrangements and alienations that often accompany change) going underground to plague us with doubts and difficulties as we try to make sense out of new beginnings.

The reality is that, whether the transition is taking place within a group to which we belong or within our private lives, transition always has personal, internal effects. We, individually and personally, must relate to the changes, whatever they are. There is always at least a little bit of trauma associated with the sand shifting under our feet -- which is what transition often feels like. There is almost always the experience of emptiness with which we must cope -- and for some very good reasons. For one thing, coming to terms with endings is essentially a process of transformation -- a death and rebirth process, to put it metaphorically. Some things simply disappear from our lives and cannot be restored. Gone, perhaps completely out of our lives, are persons on whom we relied. Gone, too, may be treasured assumptions of how things are to be done -- as the things to be done are changed or lost and new things to be done take their place. These and such things disappear from our lives and we have to adapt to their absence.

How are we to deal with that which cannot be restored? Obviously, we must accept the reality that it is gone. We can do this by acknowledging that the past is past and irretrievable -- then by recognizing that we are involved in a process of disintegration and reintegration whose outcome can be (and, it is to be hoped, will be) a renewal of either our self or our group -- or both. In our age of stress, alienation, and burnout, this affirmation is surely necessary to healthy functioning. Besides, isn't it out of life's complexities and stresses that new, healthier life evolves? Furthermore, isn't it through our ups and downs, our optimisms and depressions, that we get a realistic and trustworthy perspective on life itself? The reality is that, through the disappearance of that which has been familiar and useful, the seeds of new hope appear.

When all this hits us is when we most need time for self reflection -- time to be alone, to ponder our experiences, to visualize ourselves as we truly believe ourselves to be. It is the time to come to terms with what we really want out of our relationships and our groups and of our life itself. It is the time to ask ourselves what would not be lived were we to disappear from the scene and how would that affect those around us and our own sense of self. That is, it is time to ask ourselves what we really want.

Once we have done all this -- once we have gone through the disengagement, dis-identification, disenchantment, and disorientation of endings; once we have experienced the dynamics of the neutral zone (the intensely personal overlappings of the between-dreams time) and have opened ourselves to renewal -- we finally are ready for a real beginning. If we have not been through the whole process, our beginnings will be only qualified beginnings. We will still have lots of leftover issues rattling around inside both us individually and the group collectively that may hinder becoming what is both healthy and possible.

The picture on the order of service cover was chosen to depict the difference between trying to keep everything in one package (one balloon) and finding ways to fit a lot of old and new things together - a lot of old and new values, new and old ways of doing things, old and new relationships. The one boy has a single balloon inflated with comfortable customary attitudes and behaviors. He is running around, earth-bound, without enough lift to carry him upward. The other boy is that same boy after adding new and more pertinent attitudes and behaviors. He is soaring into the sky. He has made a full and profound transition.

I chose these images because they suggest to me that, as we can add new notions and behaviors and perhaps let go of some old delimiting ones, we can soar to new heights. Any person or congregation in transition has these two possibilities before them. This year I hope that we, together, can find those new balloons that are necessary to this congregation's soaring into the future.