Radical Acceptance

Martha Hodges - 2006-05-21

Let me request your indulgence this morning. This is not going to be a sermon so much as an experiment in participatory imagination. Now, don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to do anything embarrassing. I won’t even ask you to say anything. Close your eyes, if you will, and follow along with me…

Think, if you can, of someone you find really annoying. Maybe not always, but at least some of the time, they just set your teeth on edge. Not some actor or politician or other celebrity, but someone you know personally. When this person walks into the room you feel your muscles tighten up. Sarcastic remarks start whirling through your thoughts. Their walk, their voice, their laugh, their driving habits, their opinions, the way they chew… It all just drives you absolutely nuts. Can you think of someone like this? Take a minute, and if you can think of someone you feel this way about, at least on occasion, raise your hand. Now, no one’s looking. It’s safe to admit it. Anyone come to mind?

Okay, now put your hands down. If you’re fortunate enough not to feel this way about anyone, try this one. Keep your eyes closed. Can you think of someone you’re a little bit afraid of? Who makes you uncomfortable? Maybe you’re not sure why. Or maybe this is someone who you can’t talk to without feeling small or stupid or incompetent or unattractive or uninformed or inarticulate? Surely there is someone like this in your life. If you can think of someone who fits this description, raise your hand.

Okay, you can open your eyes. Now choose your person – the one who annoys you or the one you fear – and imagine this. Imagine that this person is six years old and getting ready for their first day of school. And you are this person’s parent. As you help them choose their clothes and pack their lunchbox, you look into their eyes and you see hope and excitement and anxiety. Will they like me at school? Will I make any friends? Will my new teacher be mean? Will I know where to go and what to do? What if I get lost or have to go to the bathroom?
You think back to the day this child was born, how helpless with love you felt in the face of their own helplessness. You remember the first step, the first word, the first tooth. And you think of all that you want for them. You wish you could protect them always from pain and rejection, but you know you can’t. You wish that you could help them to be brave and kind, that you could keep them always secure in the knowledge that they are wonderful, that they are spectacular, that they are loved. That they will grow up to be happy adults, creative and courageous, people of convictions and compassion.

Now consider this: this six-year old child you are imagining once existed. The person who makes you crazy or who you dread running into? He or she was once this little kid, so full of potential, so vulnerable…

Okay, here’s another one. Close your eyes and think of someone who has hurt you – seriously hurt you. If this is too painful, think instead of someone you’ve heard about. Maybe the parent of a friend, or someone you’ve read about or a figure from history. Someone you have strong feelings about. Maybe it’s someone you hate, or someone you love, or both. They have attacked your character – or someone else’s -- and your worth as a human being. They have betrayed your trust, let you down when you needed them, taken advantage of you at a vulnerable time in your life or abused you. If you are thinking more theoretically, of someone you know about but do not know personally, that’s okay. Either way, this person has said and done things that you cannot forgive. Take a few moments to think about this person and to summon up the feelings that you have about them. Hurt, rage, fear, disgust, bewilderment? All of these?

Now, I’m not going to ask you to forgive this person. Some acts are unforgivable. Truly.

Now, take a few moments to let this person recede into the background of your awareness. Imagine them growing smaller and dimmer and farther away. Take a few deep breaths and remember that you are safe here. You are an adult and you know how to protect and take care of yourself. This person cannot hurt you here, cannot hurt you now. When you are ready to, open your eyes. Look around you. You are among people who care for you. If you would like to, take a couple more calming breaths.
How are we to deal with memories like this, let alone present realities? How can we go about the business of our lives free of fear, free of hatred and pain? Let alone free of irritation and resentment? Well, we probably can’t. We can, though, refuse to let these feelings imprison us. We can refuse to allow these feelings to define us, to tell us who we are, to tell us that we can never be anything else.

The theory of radical acceptance in something I learned in a form of therapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. In fact, I learned about it quite against my will. I had gone before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee at the end of my training for ministry. This committee of the UUA grills you not only on your knowledge of Unitarian Universalism and the various skills that a minister is supposed to have – preaching, leadership, teaching, and counseling – It also examines you for character flaws and self-awareness. Especially self-awareness. One of my advisors at the time warned me about this. She said, it doesn’t matter what faults you have as long as they know you’re working on them. You can say, Yes, I know I’m an ax murderer, but I’m really working on it.
Well, did I listen? No.

I’ve mentioned before that I live with clinical depression. Have done it for years. And, having years of experience with it, I know my depression pretty much inside and out, know the danger signs, how to deal with them and how to take care of myself. I’ve had good therapists and bad ones, medications that didn’t help and those that did. Part of my spiritual journey has been learning to live with this illness and learning how not to inflict its symptoms on others. So when the committee asked me how clinical depression might affect my future congregation, I glibly replied that it would not. I should have known better. I should have said I was working on that. (As, in fact, I am.)

The upshot was that the committee, in its wisdom, directed me to enroll in group therapy with the goal of better understanding how others perceived my illness.

I was furious. I felt demoralized and humiliated. I set about finding the quickest way to jump through this hoop that the MFC had thrown my way, and I found a twelve-session program of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. And this is where I learned about radical acceptance, a practice that has its roots in Buddhism. Conveniently, for I had some serious accepting to do.

Acceptance, in this sense, is not the same as approval. I didn’t have to like the decision of the committee or even believe that it was correct. I simply had to accept that this was my present reality. To learn to stop fighting this decision that could not be undone, learn to stop re-hashing what I saw as my own failure and simply acknowledge that yes, this is what I said, this was the consequence, and this is how I felt about it.

The second part of the practice of radical acceptance was to view my unwise answer, the decision that, at the time, I saw as an injustice, and my anger and disappointment – to view all of these from a distance – a distance that was possible only when I had come to accept them as a present reality I could do nothing about. This allowed me to understand that I was not my failure and I was not my disappointment and hurt feelings. What’s more, the committee members were not their actions, their perceptions of me or what they saw as my shortcomings. Only then could I free myself from the paralysis caused by my resentment and do what I needed to do to take the next step in the process of realizing my dearest wish – to become a minister.

Buddhism teaches us many things, not least of which is something called loving-kindness. This is the practice of compassion for oneself and for others based on a deep understanding that we fallible humans – all of us – are in need of love, acceptance, a sense of belonging and of being valued, a belief that we matter. Even our worst enemies, even those for whom these needs are pushed so far into the past that they are no longer consciously felt – even these were once six-year old children, full of hopes and fears, vulnerable and open-hearted.

We may never overcome our fear and hurt, our pettiness, selfishness, intolerance and anger, but we can learn to look upon them tenderly, with compassion. Not complacently, but with understanding. We may never learn to enjoy the company of those who annoy us, to appreciate their finer qualities, but we can teach ourselves to be mindful of their neediness and to remember that they are more than their irritating behaviors, just as we are more than ours.

As for those who have hurt us deeply? Who have left scars on our souls? We may not be able to forgive them. We may not want to forgive them. But we can learn that even these are more than their bad acts, their cruel words, as we are more than ours. It is possible to feel compassion for these and for ourselves, these former children, broken by the cruelty of others, acting out of ignorance or their own unmet needs, their own pain, even as we cannot forgive their actions. And it is possible to feel compassion for our own inability to forgive.

Painful rifts can occur in any family, in any group of friends, and perhaps inevitably, in any congregation -- and this one is no exception. Decisions are made that we may not agree with. People say hurtful things and behave in bewildering ways. Resentments sometimes fester and occasionally flare up into open conflict in any group of people, even this one.

The trick is to remember that we are all trying, the best we can, to do the right thing. To remember that each of us is so much more than our mistakes, our occasional meanesses. Each of us is so much more than our single emotions, so much more than our resentments and grudges. The trick is to acknowledge our mistakes and our anger over the mistakes of others. Not to deny them, not to shame ourselves or others, but to accept them in this truly radical – this fundamental -- sense. To acknowledge their reality, to separate the central identity of the person form his or her actions, to view them with all the compassion we can muster, and then to move on from there. Together.

Out beyond ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. May we all meet each other there.