SERMON: Frustrated Guy…

TRINITY SUNDAY 2009

I hate email. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are good things about it. I enjoy its speed and ease of use, BUT there is something about it that I really hate. It, like no other medium, brings out my bad side.

Just the other day I had received a book cover revision from a designer. Now, about a month ago I had received the first draft of the cover and had sent back my requests for fixes. So when I opened my email and saw the “revised” cover, I was…annoyed. Almost none of the changes I had requested had been made. It still looked amateurish. Without bothering to count to ten first, I hit “reply” and let loose.

Now, I do not consider myself to be a typically immoderate man in temper. No one could accuse me of being a rageaholic. And indeed, by the time I finished the email I had cooled off some, and combed back through the letter, removing every “hot spot” I could identify.

Was there, I asked myself when finished, just a hint of snarkiness left? There was. Just the smallest bit. But I WAS annoyed, yes? Is it such a bad thing to allow a whiff of that through, so long as I am not lashing out? I hate spending a half hour massaging two paragraphs–it eats up SO much time. I glanced at my TO DO list, said, “Enough!”, and sent that puppy off.

Almost instantly I panicked, rushed to my OUT box and reread the note. Yes, all of my frustration was clearly apparent, despite my editing efforts. And indeed, when the designer replied, his annoyance was on full display as well. (Sigh…)

I hate acknowledging that I have Frustrated Guy inside me, I hate it even more when he pops up, takes over, and embarrasses me. Some people simply should not be allowed to come out and play, especially if they don’t play well with others.

Fortunately, Frustrated Guy isn’t the only personality I have going for me, but I sure struggle with him. Perhaps you know what I mean. I always WANT to put my best foot forward, I always WANT to come across as patient and kind and helpful. It’s who I consider myself to really be, on the inside. And then boom! Frustrated Guy takes over and mucks everything up. Frustrated Guy…FRUSTRATES me. Now THERE’S a vicious circle for you.

The Poet Rilke once said, “We contain multitudes,” and that certainly seems to be accurate in my experience. I have certainly observed it in my friends as well. We’ll be sitting there, having a lovely conversation, and then all of the sudden, Angry Girl shows up out of the blue. Was it something I said? And that, of course, is when Victim Guy makes and appearance. It’s enough to make you schizophrenic, except that it’s happening to all of us, all of the time. Sometimes when I think about how hard it is to surf my own emotions and those of the people around me, it makes me appreciate the relative stability of animals, and it is tempting to run off and live in a cave.  A cave with cable…

This multiple personality phenomenon even seems to show up when we encounter God. Christian tradition has even named these personalities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I say, why stop at three? But there’s no quibbling with the Nicene Council, and I’m getting too old for the banishment thing, anyway. The early church fathers even divided history into dispensations during which one of God’s multiple personalities held sway. The long stretch before the coming of Christ was the Age of the Father, the relatively brief Age of the Son lasted only thirty years while Jesus was kicking up trouble, but the Age of the Spirit has had a good long run, starting at Pentecost and continuing on to the present day.

Sounds like the Son got the short end of the stick, there, but I’ll let Jesus fight his own battles. My point is that, if scripture is any witness, we might rename these three periods the Age of Angry Guy, the Age of Wise Guy, and the Age of Mostly Absent Girl. The point is that even God “contains multitudes,” and indeed, these three simply do not exhaust our experience of God. There’s also Hero Guy, Mr. Faithful, and Comfort Lady in there, among many others. I think the Hindus have it right. For them, God has a million faces, each of them a valid personality, an expression of the divine that is somehow both unique and true.

A transpersonal psychologist by the name of Roberto Assagioli made the identification, awareness of, and integration of subpersonalities an important part of his therapeutic method. So long as we are unaware of our subpersonalities, they can “take over” and control us. But once we become aware of them, name them, recognize them when they surface, then we can give them permission, or not, to come to the fore and direct us. All of us have them, these subpersonalities–apparently even God. The question is, do they have US? Do they control us, or do we control them?

We aren’t born with all of them in place, either. They develop–some of them as a result of healthy and nurturing relationships, some emerge as coping mechanisims. Too many emerge as the result of trauma. Others can emerge as a result of epiphanies, experiences of wonder, or spiritual awakenings.

In both our readings from the Sutra and from the Gospel of John this morning, we are told something very similar. That as a result of religious instruction, a person can be “born again.” As Jesus tells Nicodemus, this is not a physical rebirth, but a spiritual, metaphorical rebirth. A new personality is engendered as a result of a spiritual awakening. The question is, will this new personality flourish, or will it be stillborn? St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, speaks about the Old Man–the personality of the person we used to be before we had our spiritual awakening–and the New Man–the new spiritual personality. Paul talks in a very similar way that Assagioli does about controlling these competing personalities, and he exhorts his readers to be aware of the struggle that is happening within them, to reject the impulses of the Old Man and to encourage the growth and strength of the New Man.

This is a lot of work, though, as most worthwhile things are. It requires diligence. It’s tedious to always be aware of what personality is driving you at any given moment, and exhausting to always be questioning and editing them. But unless we want to let Nasty Guy rule the world, that’s what we’ve got to do.

We’re heading into a very difficult time as a parish. We have some hard decisions to make, and it might mean we will, at times, feel scared, or insecure, or angry. It will be tempting to leap to conclusions about what so-and-so said, or what they meant, or what their “real” motivations are. It will test our ability to be a loving community, but it’s precisely when times get tough that we discover whether we are a REAL community or not. If we are going to navigate these waters safely, we’ve got to be aware of when Fearful Girl and Angry Guy are taking over. We can listen to what they have to say, of course, but then we should discern carefully whether they are the best representatives to communicate our thoughts. It might be that Compassionate Guy and Patient Chick may present your case with much more diplomacy and efficacy. It’s not going to be easy, but it will go much more smoothly if we can all discern and monitor the multitudes that are swarming inside us all.

There is an old Indian story that says that there are two wolves inside each of us–one wolf is a lone predator, prowling about thirsting for blood, and the other wolf is noble, nurturing to those in its pack and extremely loyal. The two wolves are constantly contesting with one another. It’s hard to tell which one will win. On the other hand, it’s not hard to predict at all. The one that will win is the one that gets fed.

Let us, in the months to come, carefully discern the personalities within us. Let us not reject those personalities that we dislike, the ones that embarrass us or make trouble for us. Let us make a place for them at our inner council table, and let us listen carefully to their wisdom. But let us also be careful about who we allow to speak for us, who we allow to take over. Let us be conscious of who is being fed, and how much. For we all contain multitudes. But we DON’T have to be controlled by them. Let us pray…

God, you know us inside and out. You know all the personalities we harbor within us, and you love every part of us. Help us to likewise love ourselves, but to cultivate within ourselves the kind of discernment, awareness, and self-control that will enable us to be the kind of people we want to be, the kind of people you call us to be. Help us to love one another, even when it gets hard, even when we are angry or frightened. Help us to recognize when Angry Guy is taking over, and to hand things over to Compassionate Girl when it is appropriate to do so. And we WILL need your help in this. Empower us with your Holy Spirit to be your loving presence, both to the world, and to one another, and perhaps especially, to ourselves as well. For we ask this in the name of Wise Guy, your Son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.