January 7, 2007 UNEDITED
Rev. Barbara McKusick Liscord
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in
Milford, New Hampshire
My Halo: A Reflection
on Self-righteousness
About 10 years ago, my family and I
were returning from visiting relatives in Nova Scotia.
We were on the large ferry that used to run from Yarmouth,
Nova Scotia,
to Portland,
Maine. The boat was
called the Prince of
Fundy. It departed
from Yarmouth
in the morning
and arrived about 12 hours later.
The
Prince docked in Portland
for an hour or two and
then turned around for an all night cruise back to Yarmouth.
We were on that early ferry leaving Yarmouth
for Portland,
where we lived at the time.
It was a dramatic morning on the
sea. Misty fog giving way to break-through sun beams.
Grey green water alternatively gloomed and
sparkled in the fog, then sun. My
husband, Paul, and I were at the railing taking in the drama unfolding
from the
deck. I noticed
that when the sun
diffused through the mist, my shape cast a shadow on the water below. Around my head glowed a
lovely halo- light
emanating around my head. When
I looked
at Paul’s shadow, I saw just the shadow of his body on the
misty water. No
halo.
I asked him what he saw and he said that he saw a
halo around his head. But
no halo around mine.
A physicist or biologist could
probably tell us what it was about the light of the sun lighting up the
water
particles around us…that caused the halo to only appear from
the angle of our
own vision. But
regardless of the
science, the halo in the mist was a vision of the proverbial
“holier than thou”
attitude. How easy
it is to think of our
selves as more righteous than others and therefore more deserving of
the world’s
goods and respect.
I suspect sometimes conceit and
self-righteousness arises from an underlying insecurity. We present ourselves as
more righteous to convince
ourselves as well as the world of our value.
Perhaps
the conviction of our
own righteousness has the same emotional charge of other addictive
behaviors or
substances- as suggested by Roget Lockard’s article. A sense of righteousness
can become an
addiction with damaging consequences to our relationships and the world. He says, addiction is a
“likely outcome of
the intersection of human nature and human cleverness.
We are filled with longings and ingenious at
devising shortcuts.” In
the case of
self-righteousness, we long to be valued and skip to the righteousness
fix as a
shortcut to feeling good about ourselves…rather than doing
both the difficult
inner work of being honest about our own thoughts or the difficult
outer work
of humbly setting our egos aside.
With the benefits of modern
understandings of addiction, the biochemical links between our thoughts
and
bodies, and the long view of history, Lockard is getting at the age old
problem
with pride. Pride
was named by Greeks
and early Christians as a fundamental sin.
It is first on the list of the seven deadly sins. Medieval
theologian, Thomas
Aquinas, identified
pride as inordinate self-love and the cause of every other sin. [1] This is the element of
“human nature” Lockard
was talking about.
Lockard’s
identification of self-righteousness as an addiction offers a subtle
way of
evaluating what is important to us and what will lead to whole lives
and lives
that are a blessing to all the world.
Are we doing enough?
Are we good enough?
Should we be doing more?
Isn’t a little pride or
righteousness…
feeling good about ourselves…. A good thing?
What is an appropriate source of feeling good
about ourselves? How
does this all relate to living well?
Those of
you who have studied Unitarian and Universalist history know that the
Puritans
were the forbears of our faith here in New
England. They
held the view developed by John Calvin…
that our fate after death has been predetermined by God before our
birth. Some are
chosen to go to heaven and some are
not. So you would
live your life righteously. If
you followed the rules and were a good,
good person, that would show everyone… most importantly
yourself, that you were
indeed one of the chosen ones who would go to heaven after death. Both our Universalist and
Unitarian forbears
rejected this doctrine of pre-destination and came to worship a loving
God who
would not condemn anyone to hell for eternity and a Jesus in whose
teachings of
kindness and justice, one could find guidance for living a good life.
Today, the
doctrine of pre-destination doesn’t lead most of us under
this roof to yearn to
lead a good and ethical life. In
our
community, you may believe that God demands right ethical action or you
may
hold a humanist view that right ethical action itself is the center
that holds
and guides you. Indeed
with no one
theological belief holding us together, what does hold us together is
belief in
living our faith in articulated ethical principles.
We believe that what we do matters- how we
behave toward one another and the world beyond these walls.
It does not
seem like such a bad thing to me to feel good about continually
developing
skills and expending our personal energy and resources toward living
more
righteously. Righteousness
is defined by
Webster’s as “acting in accord with divine or moral
law and free from guilt or
sin.” [2] The problem comes when
righteousness crosses
the line to self-righteousness- the conviction of one's own
righteousness
especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others. Then we are blinded by our
narrow-minded
assumptions. When
we wake to our
blindness, we may experience misery… even shame- This of
course doesn’t feel
very good…so as Lockard suggests we may prefer to stay
locked in the addiction
of our own righteousness.
Recently a
friend offered me this story[3]:
There
was a woman who had traveled from New York to Los Angeles
on business.
After an intense day of meetings and difficult
negotiations, she arrived
at the Los
Angeles
airport to catch her flight back to New York. She was
exhausted. She
bought a paper, package
of cookies and coffee and, along with her luggage, juggled it all over
to an
unoccupied table. She
opened her paper
and began reading. Soon
she became aware
of someone rustling on the other side of her table.
From behind her paper, she was flabbergasted
to see a neatly dressed young man helping himself to her cookies. She did not want to make a
scene and was just
too tired to deal directly with the situation, so she reached her hand
under
her paper and took a cookie herself.
A
minute or two later. More
rustling. She
glimpsed below her paper and saw that he
was helping himself to another cookie.
She grew angrier, but reached out and took another
cookie. By the time
they were down to the last cookie
in the package, she was very angry but could not bring herself to say
anything. Then she
saw the young man’s
hands break the cookie in two. He
handed
half across to her and ate the other half and then left the table. She was really annoyed
that she didn’t get to
eat her whole package of cookies.
Sometime later, the public address system called
for her to get ready to
board her flight. She
was still fuming
over the cookies. When
she opened her
handbag to get her ticket, she found her package of cookies. She had been eating his
cookies.
Of course,
this feeling of being superior or right or self-righteous over and
above others
is not true for everyone. In
the last
few decades, with the growing recognition of the benefits of
psychological
reflection there has been an understanding that negative feelings about
one’s
self can lead to self-destructive behaviors that have their ripple
effects into
the lives of others. In
Maine,
I served on the
board of directors of Crossroads, an alcoholism treatment center for
women. Counselors
there told me that
women seeking treatment often had suffered physical, sexual and
emotional abuse
as children and adolescents. They
abused
alcohol and drugs to anesthetize themselves from those memories. Pride was not their
problem. Their
problem was having no ego or identity
to call their own. Low
self- esteem was
their problem.
I think
many of us walk the line between being feeling good about ourselves and
not so
good about ourselves. So
how are we to
live in the balance between the two?
Personally, my feelings of self-righteousness are
tempered by the
knowledge that I am going to die some day.
Death is a great equalizer- a great teacher. In the stressful details
of daily living and
in our lives buffeted by complex emotions, it is easy to live life
forgetting
our deepest intentions. In
his book, “A
Path with Heart”, meditation teacher Jack Kornfield says,
…when
people come to the end of
their life and look back, the questions that they most often ask are
not
usually, “How much is in my bank account?” or
“How many books did I write?” or
“What did I build?” or the like.
If you
have the privilege of being with a person who is aware at the time of
his or
her death, you find the questions such a person asks are very simple:
“Did I
love well” “Did
I live fully?”…
Last night,
my husband, Paul, reminded me of the cartoon we saw during the time we
were
attending support group meetings after his cancer diagnosis. A man was praying,
“God, how much time do I
have left?” and the answer came back, “Enough to
make a difference.”
You might
wonder how you’ll know when you are giving and serving to get
that hit of
righteousness… or when are you giving, just because it needs
to get done. Are
you spending your time and money in ways
that help the world most… or give you
the most gratification.
There is a lot of work that needs to be
done in the world. It
is hard to figure
out what is the best use of your resources… so many problems
need to be worked
on simultaneously. But
it seems wise to
choose a path where you feel enlivened by your giving.
You’ve seen the bumper sticker
“grace
happens.” I
think grace and joy do
happen when your passion and the world’s needs intersect.
But I am also
realistic enough to believe that saving the world also takes each of us
stretching
beyond ourselves and our limited perspectives, if we are to live whole
lives
and save this precious planet. In
our
reading this morning, Lockard illustrates damages caused by the
righteousness
fix. He also points
out that “sober
addicts have shown us the recipe for sobriety.
He says, “Our addictions are resolved as
we seek, in fellowship with
others, to abandon our control-based mentality, and to develop our
capacities
for personal humility, indiscriminate compassion, and responsible
participation
in the many layers of community in which we are nested.”
We need
each other as companions along the way—brave friends willing
to live the
questions together- not toward the end of agreeing on
everything… but toward
the end of nurturing relationships within this community for the good
of our
families and other relationships beyond this circle. Here we build the
fundamentals
of peace and justice …beginning in our hearts,
so that we may carry that light into all our
personal relationships and
into the world that needs the blessings of our reflection and
dedication.
In all
my experience with you, I am continually struck by how good everyone is. I don’t mean
that we are perfect in our
relationships with one another. But
I
see that everyone yearns to live good lives… indeed to be
good. I am grateful
that we are companions in this
endeavor to learn how to live fully and love well.
As the poem by Carolyn Keizer says…
I believe in you.
I believe that every day
in every way
you're getting better and better.
And if the world can be saved
it will be saved
by the likes of you.
Now I can be still and know
that Good is
because so clearly Good
is in you.
Whether you are here or not
I hear your summoning
to work and prayer
in the throb of your indominable hearts.
Next time,
we look over our ship’s rail into the sunlit mist of the
gray-green choppy sea
let us see the halo of light around each one of us…as well
as the light of our
own halo. Let us
see the light within
and around each of us, as we do the best we can to learn from each
other how
best to live in joy… in love… and in making a
positive difference in the lives
of all beings on this precious planet.
So may it be.
So let us sing
together.
[1]
http://deadlysins.com/sins/pride.html
[2]
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/righteousness
[3]
From a
conversation with Judy Gross, who received this story from a workshop
with Tara
Brach, author of Radical Acceptance. A version may have
originally been published
in Reader’s Digest.
Unitarian Universalist
Congregation
in Milford