November 20, 2005 UNEDITED
Rev. Barbara McKusick Liscord
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in
Milford, New Hampshire
Counting Blessings
This week we
celebrate a holiday set aside to give thanks. Well… we know it is
more than that… and sometimes less than that. We gather with
friends and family. We eat lots of good food, play games…
sometimes face difficult dynamics with family and friends… perhaps
go to a foot ball game… At this time of the year, the days get
shorter and shorter and it can be a time for reflection too… If you
can find a moment between the planning and preparation and all the
doing. The very name of the holiday- Thanksgiving- calls us to give
thanks for all the blessings in our lives. Despite the historical
inaccuracy of the pilgrim story we grew up with, as pointed out our
reading from Jane Rzepka about Pilgrim Winslow’s account. I think
we are lucky that there is a secular holiday in our culture with a
fundamentally spiritual name. The task of spiritual life is the task
of making meaning and creating wholeness from our fragmented days.
Religions around the world speak of the wisdom of gratitude. And
recently there have been studies by psychologists about the benefits
of gratitude. So we’re lucky we have a holiday- yes indeed with
all kinds of trimmings—that has the name Thanksgiving, because the
very name reminds us of the fundamental wisdom of counting our
blessings, giving thanks, adopting an attitude of gratitude, noticing
the good, thinking positively, saying thank you to each other, to
God, Nature and the Universe. Counting our blessings heals our souls
and brings us into harmony with all that is holy… -bringing both
peace and hope in our interpersonal relationships and an internal
sense of well-being.
When I was about 8
years old, I went to my first drive-in movie with my family. It was
1960 and we went to see Haley Mills in the Walt Disney movie,
Pollyanna. You may remember this movie, where the
irrepressibly cheerful Pollyanna brings light and love to the 1920’s
town of Harrington. She came to live with her Aunt Polly Harrington,
after both Pollyanna’s parents had died. Her Aunt Polly sternly
ruled the town named after her family. When Pollyanna arrived, her
positive charm changed all the people around her. When someone asked
her how she could be so happy, she explained that she plays “the
glad game”. Whenever she felt sad, she would find something that
made her glad. In all her relationships, she expected the best of
others. She said, “When you look for the bad in people, expecting
to find it, you surely will.”
Pollyanna’s
father was a missionary preacher, and she “tells how the glad game
was invented after her parents had requested that one of their
supporting churches send a doll for their young daughter. When the
missionary supply package had arrived, however, it had contained a
set of crutches rather than the requested doll. Pollyanna's father
had stood with her, looking at those crutches, and had told her that
they must look for something to be glad about in the arrival of the
crutches - and they had decided that they were glad they didn't need
them! After that it became a regular game for them, and even (or
perhaps especially) after her father's death, Pollyanna continued to
look for something to be glad about in everything that came her way.
Pollyanna explained this game to the Harrington family servants when
they have just returned from one of their minister’s hellfire
sermons - the best thing they can think of regarding that sermon is
to be glad that it will be six more days before they have to sit
through another one!i
Later in the movie,
Pollyanna finds Reverend Ford practicing one of his sermons in a
field outside of town. They sit down to talk, and Pollyanna tells
Reverend Ford how her father, a missionary preacher, preferred to
preach from what he called the "glad texts" of the Bible.
Pollyanna's father had noted over 800 verses in the Bible in which
God tells us to rejoice or be glad or be happy, and was of the
opinion that if the Lord took the trouble to tell us 800 times that
he wants us to rejoice, then He must really mean it. Reverend Ford
takes this lesson to heart, and the next Sunday he announces from the
pulpit that he has personally researched the matter and has found 826
"glad texts" in the Bible, which by his calculation should
provide material for over sixteen years worth of sermons.”ii
Pollyanna’s positive spirit was
challenged when she suffered a crippling injury falling from a tree.
She had been sneaking (in or out of ) the house- I don’t remember
which. She had been forbidden by her Aunt Polly to go to the fair.
She reached out for a doll… in reaching fell from the tree. She
lay in bed, crippled in pain, miserable… absolutely unable to play
the glad game. Her misery was deepened by shame… she had done
something forbidden… and now she suffered from it. But her new
family cared for her… and everyone whose life she had touched
surrounded her and reminded her of how much the glad game had worked
for them… and how much she had done for them…and how much she
mattered in that community. When we have days when we are unable
to play the glad game, it is helpful to have others remind us how it
is done.
The term Pollyanna… has been used
rather pejoratively. If someone is referred to as a Pollyanna… we
might mean someone who is “unrealistic, overly optimistic and
refusing to consider negative possibilities”iii
… who doesn’t see the reality of life or the world. Each Sunday
morning, we affirm that the search of truth is our sacrament…. And
certainly truth includes light and dark and mixed realities. How
are we to play the “glad game” in the face of physical and
emotional pain, loneliness, poverty, torture and environmental
degradation?
There is an African saying, “The
blessing is next to the wound.” This was the title of an article
by Diane Lefer in this past October’s Sun Magazine covering her
interview with Hector Aristizábal. He “was born in
Medellin, Columbia, a city plagued with violence from the drug trade
and from the country’s decades-long civil war. His
poverty-stricken neighborhood was a prime recruiting ground for what
he calls the nations “four armies”: the Colombian military, the
guerillas, the right wing paramilitaries, and the cocaine mafia.”
He says, “I buried most of the kids with whom I played soccer.”
… He assumed his own life would be short too, but he escaped into
books and theatre and …won a scholarship to (the) University.iv
In 1982, while Aristizábal was studying for his master’s
degree in psychology, his family home was raided by soldiers… A
priest had reported Aristizábal’s younger brother having
overheard him talk politics. When the soldiers found “subversive”
literature, both Aristizábal and his brother were taken into
custody. His brother went to prison, but Aristizábal was
eventually released after being subjected” to a mock execution,
beatings, electric shock, hog tied (which is tying from a pole and
stretched), and being held underwater again and again to the verge of
drowning. He stayed in Columbia another 7 years, working as an
actor, human rights activist and psychologist, until he escaped into
exile in the United States. He married an American and settled down
in Pasadena… earning a second master’s degree in marriage and
family therapy. As a therapist he works with torture survivors, gang
members, prisoners, AIDS patients, and low income immigrant
families.”
Aristizábal often quotes the
African saying, “The blessing is next to the wound.” And the
interviewer asked what blessing he could possibly find in torture.
Aristizábal responds that it is up to that person. “Each
person must create meaning from the experience. Why did I survive
when other people didn’t? We seek meaning by creating narratives
about our lives. The dominant narrative for torture is about
victims. But I don’t believe in victim hood. People have tried to
place me in the category of victim, and I won’t allow it. Those of
us who’ve been tortured need to see it as simply one more event in
our lives, not a defining characteristic of who we are. And any time
you go through a difficult ordeal, it can awaken inner resources.
Instead of being a victim, each person can learn the lesson his or
her spirit needs to learn. This is very hard to do, though,
especially immediately after the traumatic event. First you need
medical doctors to treat you physically and psychologists who will
help you find emotional release.” The interviewer asked
Aristizábal if he had any sort of therapy after the military
released him. He said he didn’t, but he had people who listened to
him and friends who hid him and protected him from himself.
For Aristizábal, he began to
see the torture experience as a kind of initiation experience. He
talks about it this way, “in a traditional society, initiation
marks the end of your old life and the beginning of something new.
And when the initiation ordeal is over, if you survive, you are
welcomed back. Perhaps you come back with a gift of knowledge to
share.”
He points out that
this can apply to “many kinds of ordeals- not only torture- but
accidents, illness, depression, divorce, imprisonment, (death) and
even adolescence.” Aristizábal talks about the importance
of ceremonies to reintegrate people back into life. He says this is
particularly important for someone who has been tortured. Maher
Arar, the Canadian citizen who the U.S. sent to Syria to be tortured
was quoted in the New Yorker as saying, “the pain was so great, it
makes you forget the taste of your mother’s milk.” “Someone
who has been tortured has been isolated alone in a room with the
torturer- you lose your community, your language, your relations.
All these connections are broken.” For Aristizábal,
joining with others to work for justice was a way to break out of
isolation and reconnect with community. He was working for human
rights and social justice before he was arrested. But the blessings
next to the wound came in his greater intensity of focus. He says,
“For a long time, during the dirty war in Columbia”, when my
friends were being shot dead all around me, my goal was just to
survive. But after I was tortured, my goal changed. It was not just
to survive, but to live a meaningful life. Sometimes in the ordeal,
we find the seeds of our identity.” Then he quotes a poem by
Miguel de Unamuno, translated by Robert Bly “Throw yourself like
seed… From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.”
Aristizábal
has struggled to learn to love being in the United States. But he
would be killed if he went back to Columbia. Here he works on
campaigns to raise awareness of what American businesses like
Coca-Cola, Occidental Petroleum and Drummond are doing in Columbia.
For years he hated being in the U.S. but he fell in love with an
American woman, has American children and he has now become an
American. He says, “It would be easy to hate this place, but also
very useless. Who cares? I have realized that there is no point in
simply acting in opposition to others. I have to live my own desires
instead of just opposing theirs. This is what we all have to do:
find our own style of living and working and making love, and do it,
I hope, with some beauty and grace.”
Aristizábal
works out of devastating experiences, but has found a positive view.
Can we also learn to see the blessing near the wound? I was moved
and humbled to read of Aristizábal’s positive energy in the
world. It may seem strange to talk in one sermon about an old Walt
Disney movie with Haley Mills and a remarkable man who has survived
torture and loss of a beloved land and culture and beloved family
members. But it is all of the same cloth. Through goodness,
friendship and love, the town of Harrington reinvented itself into a
fellowship of happiness and community.v
Pollyanna made a difference, but it was the internal change in each
of the characters that together transformed the town into a community
of caring and wholeness. Aristizábal said there are many
ordeals we all go through… just meeting the challenges of every day
life can be difficult. But if we notice the blessing next to the
wound. --The blessing next to the difficulty… the difficulty is
surmountable. We bless others and when we make a point of noticing
and giving thanks, …we are blessed in return.
i
http://www.rollanet.org/~bennett/faith/polly.htm
ii
http://www.rollanet.org/~bennett/faith/polly.htm
iii
http://www.rollanet.org/~bennett/faith/polly.htm
iv
October 2005, The Sun. The Blessing is Next to the Wound:
A Conversation with Hector Aristizábal About Torture and
Transformation. Pages 5-13.
v
http://www.hauntnut.com/reviews/P/pollyanna.html
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
in Milford