A sermon delivered byRev. Rudi Gelsey,minister, March 17, 1996, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the New River Valley
When we look at issues in our lives, we often focus onoutward factors: the country in which we live; the time inhistory when we grew up: the Great Depression, World War 2, theVietnam era. What is our family history: Did we have analcoholic parent, a nurturing grandmother? How about ourschool or college experiences? What kind of an atmosphere dowe work in?
Amid this complex web of circumstances, we tend to presentourselves to the world with those strands that make usappear in the most favorable light, while suppressing shadesof darkness. We push the less glorious aspects of ourpersonality underground, lock them up in the deep recessesof our being, and throw the key away.
Trouble is that when banned from the light of consciousness,our baser parts may come back with a vengeance. More andmore effort is required to keep matters smooth, while ourwounding secretly festers. There is always the danger ofbecoming, as Scott Peck put it "People of the Lie", victimsof our own unacknowledged shadow. Too many people lead adouble life, outwardly under control, inwardly churning.
When our lives start running into trouble - and I don't knowof anyone who at one point or another, does not find himselfor herself in that situation - one defense mechanism is tolook for excuses, scapegoats, circumstances or people we canblame for our misfortunes. It is the fault of our parents,our spouse, racial discrimination, you name it.
No question, such circumstances figure in the matrix of ourlives, yet we also need to look inward, ward off thetemptation of self-deception.
Take an extreme case, Al Capone, the archetype of a Mafioso.At the end of his career, he reportedly said "My life's goalwas to help people."
Contrast this with Wolfgang Goethe, the universallyrespected German classicist and statesman, confessing "Thereis no crime, however abject, that I might not have beencapable of perpetrating."
Goethe, looking inward, saw his shadow, and was able to copewith it. 101 years after Goethe's death, Hitler came topower. Like Al Capone, Hitler had an idealizedself-image. He was going to save Germany from the iniquitiesof the Versailles Treaty and create a magnificent Reichlasting a millennium. Hitler denying his shadow, left behinda trail of destruction and crime.
Besides the grand scale of world history, one of the verycaring people in our congregation, recently told me that asa child, she tortured an animal, which helped her gain theinsight, like Goethe, that she was capable not only of evilphantasies but of vile misdeeds.
With an assist from depth psychology, religion at its best,helps us to look inward, to recognize our imperfections andnot project them upon others.
Religion, in its immature form, focuses on the antagonist orthe infidel out there, rather than the doubts and demonswithin.
Today, in this country, when fundamentalists fulminateagainst religious liberals, it may be because ambiguity andthe shadow are unsettling to true believers. Fundies, as afriend of mine calls them, adhere strictly to the letter ofbook and law, in the desperate hope it will guarantee theirsalvation.
The shadow, a term coined by psychotherapist Carl Jung, isthat part in us we repress and reject, burying it deep inour psyche, then projecting it on someone else or a groupthat becomes the "identified problem."
How about us? Is there also such a thing as a UnitarianUniversalist shadow? Since our Unitarian and Universalisthistories are different, let us look at them separately.
Universalists have abjured Hell, and what is Hell if not theshadow of Heaven? Universalists, like Buddhists, want allpeople to be well and happy, now and forevermore, a virtualimpossibility, so our waves of idealism break upon the rocksof reality.
We find it difficult to cope with evil, with conflict. Asproponents of love and light, we are hard put to understandatrocities like genocide or on a smaller scale, this week'shorrible massacre of some fourteen innocent children inScotland.
In this country, our antagonists have their favoritewhipping boys, liberals, welfare cheats, gays and lesbians,Blacks, illegal immigrants, to name a few.
Coming to think of it: Don't we have a parallel list ofscapegoats ourselves: the fundamentalists, Jesse Helms andPhyllis Schlaffly, the gun lobby, polluters, racists,sexists. There are lots of people we love to hate. I haveuttered the taboo word: Hate. Aren't we supposed tolove. Well, we have an elegant way out: we don't reallyhate. We only do it in the name of love, just as, in thename of tolerance, we are intolerant of intolerance.
The trouble with this paradox is that our opponents use thevery same argument. During the Inquisition and thewitch-hunts, for instance, the avowed purpose was to savethe eternal soul of misguided unbelievers and victims ofSatan. Nowadays, in the name of saving unborn babies, womenare supposed to bear children of rape and incest.
So here is a chastening insight. What we reject in others,in a different form, is found in us. May I suggest: In lieuof being self-righteous, our religious task is to develop asense of compassion, compassion toward our own shadow, andthe shadow of others. Perhaps, instead of fighting theshadow, we might want to dance with it, establish a rapportwhere we are neither overwhelmed by the shadow, nor seek toeradicate it. The metaphor of the shadow as a dancingpartner also seems appropriate, because our shadow is fullof energy, imagination, creativity.
In Greek mythology we have Hermes, whose characterencompassed both the sublime and the shadow. While Hermeswas a messenger of the Gods, he was also a trickster whocould cheat and steal with panache.
Let us now look at the shadow issue from a Unitarianperspective. Is there such a thing as a Unitarian shadow orblind spot?
Unitarians have a dual historical allegiance. Some, likefounder William Ellery Channing, made reason into theirguiding light, so that feelings and emotionalism wererelegated to a shadowy existence. Religion was to bereasonable, manageable, not at the mercy of emotionaloutbursts, like the Revivalists and the Holy Rollers, ortoday's televangelists.
Other Unitarians, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and TheodoreParker, were mystical and soulful Transcendentalists intouch with tragedy, engaged in a valiant struggle with thepreeminent shadow of American society in those days:slavery.
When I entered theological school in 1959, the rational sideof the Unitarian way in religion was in the saddle, whilenow the cutting edge is spirituality, a religion of theheart. We are rediscovering music, poetry, meditation, evenritual.
Take, for instance, our practice of lighting the chalice.Obviously, in broad daylight, such a ritual makes littlesense, yet at some level it speaks to our hunger for thesacred and reverence for life. And it is better to light acandle, is it not? than to project or curse the shadow.
We stand at the crossroads. It is time to end our exclusive emphasis on reason, our denial of feelings.
It is time to end our denial of hell, which is a way ofdenying evil. The direction of our religious quest is notperfection but wholeness. While perfection forever eludes,wholeness accepts and integrates shadow and light.
Compassion toward our own and other peoples shortcomings is the bridge over troubled waters, the link between the shadow we humbly acknowledge and the light we wish to radiate.
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