Sermon_2011_10_09 Much Obliged by Rev. Bruce Sanguin

            Jesus heals ten lepers. Only one returns to give thanks. There is something in human beings that resists gratitude.  One of my colleagues, Rev. Barry Morris, gave a little meditation on gratitude that helps me understand the source of this resistance. While In Portugal, he learned that the way you say thank you is “obligado” (to a man) and obligada (to a woman). The English language carries this meaning in a particular expression of gratitude, “much obliged”.  It’s perhaps a bit more formal than “thank you”, but it does have the advantage of conveying the truth that gratitude binds you to the person who has done something for you.  In some way, I have entered a relationship in which I am obliged: minimally, I am obliged to acknowledge that this person has given me something which I could not, at least in that moment, have given myself; and possibly, beyond acknowledging my need of this person’s grace, I may also feel that I must either return the favour or pay it forward. Their gracious gesture draws me into a circle and cycle of reciprocal grace. I am obliged to do so. Much obliged, in fact. But some part of us resists. We don’t like to feel obliged. Nine refuse to return thanks.

             At a psychological level gratitude brings up unresolved issues related to dependency and vulnerability. At a cultural level, it brings up gender issues, particularly in men, around our socialization to be strong and independent. And at a spiritual level, it challenges us to transcend the myth of the separate self and find our core identity in a relational unity with All That Is. Let’s begin with the psychological issues related to dependency.

            At pre-verbal level, an infant or a toddler feels a kind of gratitude. They don’t have words for it. But they feel it (and therefore we’ve all felt it). This gratitude is accompanied by an intuition that without this caring “Other” life would not be possible. Ours early lives literally depend on the love and competence of our mothers, initially, and then both of our parents. It is literally a life and death relationship. This is true, not just on a physical level, but also a psychological level. Without the presence this empathic “other”, validating that I exist, by mirroring back my attempts to show up in the world, and attuning to my needs and wants, I would have to give up on life. There would be no hope. I would feel as though I came into a universe in which I do not actually belong. My life would be perceived as a mistake. As I say, this is a pre-conscious feeling. At these stages of life I cannot articulate it, because I am identified with the feeling—I am this feeling of dependence and vulnerability. 

             If all goes well, I come through these stages of life with a relatively uncomplicated relationship to dependency. If it’s uncomplicated, I actually love the feeling of gratitude because it deepens intimacy. At these early stages of development, being “much obliged” is to fall into the arms of trust, and to rest there, in the mutual pleasure of giving and receiving. Life is gracious and abundant in providing for my needs.

            If it does not go well, life gets very complicated. I will learn to deny my needs and wants because I will not risk rejection. I will learn to deny my need of others, because “others” are not trustworthy to give me what I need. And one of the places that this lack of trust will manifest is that I will not allow myself to feel gratitude.

Authentic gratitude reminds me of the rocky shoals of dependency and vulnerability that once threatened my existence.

            All of us somewhere on this continuum of dependency complication—I just made that up, but it will do for now.  One simple thanksgiving practice that has some depth to it is to monitor your own ease or dis-ease with expressing gratitude. Does it come easy? Or do you have to drag a simple, heart-felt thank you out of you kicking and screaming?

            I recall being confronted by how complicated gratitude is for me in my relationship with my therapist. Before any words could come, tears started flowing. The tears and the words got all bunched up in my throat. It took five minutes for me to say, “I guess this is what gratitude feels like”. It’s what you feel like when somebody has given back a part of your life that you thought you had lost forever. It’s realizing that vulnerability is a strong and beautiful way of being human, and not weakness. It’s being able to feel from the inside what you need to be alive, and to not be afraid to ask for it. And then, finally, the words that came from my heart popped out. Thank you. A single leper in me returned to give thanks.

            On the cultural level of the social construction of gender, I think that men have a particular challenge around gratitude. Gratitude, as we’ve seen, implies comfort with connection. You can’t be grateful without deeply connecting and feeling an organic—not an externally imposed—obligation to reciprocate.

Even the simple act of verbalizing gratitude—saying thank you—flows from this recognition that we have been given something that we couldn’t give to ourselves. But for many of us men, this recognition—even celebration—of interdependence is, again, complicated. I’ve spoken before about how the Self’s impulse to evolve is driven by this dialectic swing between autonomy and connection. Healthy development is based on the capacity to maintain deep connection when we’re taking action as individuals, and to remain an individuated self when we’re deeply connected.  But men have been historically socialized to privilege autonomy, and to be threatened by connection—which is the domain of gratitude.

             It goes a little deeper than this actually. Up until a couple decades ago the institution of patriarchy—the privileging of the male that has been entrenched and expressed in social, political, economic systems (and this includes families)—engendered in men a sense of entitlement. An unconscious belief in one’s own entitlement and the feeling of gratitude are mutually exclusive. I said “until a couple of decades ago”, but my sense is that we are still living off the fumes of patriarchy.

            When you combine the way in which we have been socialized for autonomous functioning with 10,000 years of the assumption of entitlement built into us, gratitude gets buried. We are wired as men to walk the path of the nine lepers. We take all that is on offer and then go merrily and unconsciously on our way, whistling a happy song about how lucky we are. Ok, so this is a bit of a caricature of the Marlborough Man, admittedly. Nevertheless, I challenge the good men here this morning to ask themselves what impact this privileging of autonomy and sense of entitlement has had on your expression of gratitude.

            The cost to men, let alone women, has been enormous. I agree with Warren Farrell’s[1] critique of some feminist scholarship that doesn’t take this cost to men into account—costs such as the assumption that men will be the societal scapegoats in times of war, and that men must be the ones to sacrifice family and intimacy to be the providers. I would add to these costs, the loss of deep gratitude that can only come from a place of comfort with vulnerability and intimacy. For men, it is only the transitory stage of  “being in love” that lasts maybe six months to a year, which provides a potent enough hormonal cocktail to break us out of the prison of autonomy. When we “fall” in love, it is quite literally a fall from the socially constructed tower of isolation that is called “masculinity” into the sea of interconnection that is the real world. Perhaps serial monogamy in men is as much about the grief of living with so much disconnection as it is about our testosterone levels.

            When we expand out from the psychological and cultural factors that go some distance to explaining the mystery of why only one of nine lepers return to give thanks, we move into the spiritual realm. Here, the resistance has to do with acknowledging in an ultimate sense that our very existence confers upon us an obligation to a Source of Creativity, Wisdom, and Love that has come to be called “God”.

            And this also gets complicated, because when most people hear that word in secular society, they head for cover. It conjures up a Male Sky God who demands obedience, praise, and gratitude. But who, in their right mind, if they had a choice (which we do in the modern world) would want anything to do with this Divine Monarch? In the parable, Jesus doesn’t demand that the lepers return to give thanks. He simply observes their behavior and asks the question, “Why has only one returned to give thanks?” It’s not a judgment, but rather a question intended to expand awareness.

             If we update our image of God—as the Font of Love, Creativity, and Intelligence from which a universe emerges and is an evolving expression of this Source—then gratitude seems to be a natural response. We are that part of the evolving universe that is able to consciously feel “much obliged”.  We enjoy the privilege of being able to express gratitude consciously on behalf of all creation. The bible poetically imagines the trees, the hills, the rivers, and the animals  praising God. But only we are able to reflect on the mystery of existence, return thanks consciously, and allow gratitude to realign our way of living. 

            Offered from the level of spirit, being “much obliged” is a natural, joyful response to the gift of life. It feels right. It may be expressed in a spontaneous desire to say thank you to “God”, however we understand God. But more importantly, it is expressed in how we live our lives. The ancient prophets long ago got that our elaborate rituals of gratitude meant nothing to God, if they weren’t backed up by how we lived our lives. “I hate, I despise your festivals…I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:21-23).

            The religious sensibility flows from a felt sense of unity with Spirit, Earth, and humanity. An evolutionary worldview confirms this unity. Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, describes this feeling as “inter-being”. The universe is as much in us, as we are in the universe. There is quite literally an interfusion of reality. We are in all things, and all things are in us. This weekend, as you’re making your apple pie, pause a moment to realize that 13.7 billions of evolutionary history is required to make the pie. The universe is quite literally in that pie, (and in the maker).

            Similarly, God, the Source and the Future of all, is in all things, and all things are in God. This inter-beingness is offensive to the part of us that believes itself to be a separate, autonomous creature. It offends the sensibility of the modern illusion of the self-made man and woman. Paul called this part of us “the flesh”. This part of us does not feel, from within, the radical interconnectedness of us with life, of life with God, and of God with All. It makes decisions, and constructs reality based on this unconscious assumption of separation. It interprets freedom as the right to do whatever is in my best interests, without realizing that every thought, feeling, every action, and decision reverberates through and impacts the whole of Reality. The “flesh”, this disconnected self-sense, rails against the Reality of radical interconnection, because Reality obliges us to act aligned from within an ethic that flows from inter-being.

            Occupy Wall Street has been going on for the past few weeks, and seems to be picking up steam. It is a leaderless, spontaneously generated,  protest against an economic system that is “of the flesh”.  It has built what David Korten has aptly called a “phantom” economy.  It is not based on the exchange of goods and services, but rather trading phantom financial products. This is not the capitalism of a Warren Buffet who invests in companies that make real products, creates real employment, and is pleading with the White House to increase his taxes.  This is not the capitalism of a Steve Jobs, whose innovative products served the world, and who wasn’t in it for money, but was happy to redistribute it in ways that served the whole. This is the capitalism of 1 % of the male population who have lost a felt sense of connection to the whole and yet believe it is their right to possess 40% of the world’s wealth.[2] The actual economy, built by and for the citizens, and accountable ultimately to the people and to the natural capital of Earth’s resources, has been hi-jacked by greed and foolishness. This greed has also hijacked the state.[3] But ordinary people are waking up. It is not sustainable because the whole system is generated and sustained by a worldview of autonomy and disconnection. The time of reckoning has come. [4]

            This unjust system and those who try to perpetuate it are the nine lepers who will not return to give thanks, precisely because genuine gratitude evokes an organic, internally generated, obligation to the Whole Earth community. Corporations and their obscenely paid CEO’s would need to find a new way of conducting business if they were truly “much obliged” to Earth, to human beings, and to the Source that generates all true wealth.  Genuine gratitude thrusts you to the ground, out of your corporate towers, as it did with the one grateful leper. “He fell on his face, at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.” This falling back to Earth, back to the Source is the very definition of humility. The word is derived from “humus”, the dark, rich, soil which gives us life, upon which we depend. It is time for all of us to fall back to Earth. 

            I invite you this Thanksgiving to revel in our inter-being, our radical interconnectedness, and to feel the sweet obligation that Lovers naturally feel toward one another—to foster this ecstasy of reciprocal giving and receiving, to act with tenderness and humility, and to know that a single, genuine  “thank you” can change everything.