You Need a Timeout
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org
May 16, 2010
Reading
Thich Nhat Hanh, “Pillow-Pounding,” from Peace Is Every Step
Expressing anger is not always the best way to deal with it. In expressing anger we might be practicing or rehearsing it, and making it stronger in the depth of our consciousness. Expressing anger to the person we are angry at can cause a lot of damage.
Some of us may prefer to go into our room, lock the door, and punch a pillow. We call this "getting in touch with our anger." But I don't think this is getting in touch with our anger at all. In fact, I don't think it is even getting in touch with our pillow. If we are really in touch with the pillow, we know what a pillow is and we won't hit it. Still, this technique may work temporarily because while pounding the pillow, we expend a lot of energy, and after a while, we are exhausted and we feel better. But the roots of our anger are still intact, and if we go out and eat some nourishing food, our energy will be renewed. If the seeds of our anger are watered again, our anger will be reborn, and we will have to pound the pillow again.
Pillow-pounding may provide some relief, but it is not very long-lasting. In order to have real transformation, we have to deal with the roots of our anger — looking deeply into its causes. If we don't, the seeds of anger will grow again. If we practice mindful living, planting new, healthy, wholesome seeds, they will take care of our anger, and they may transform it without our asking them to do so.
Our mindfulness will take care of everything, as the sunshine takes care of the vegetation. The sunshine does not seem to do much, it just shines on the vegetation, but it transforms everything. Poppies close up every time it gets dark, but when the sun shines on them for one or two hours, they open. The sun penetrates into the flowers, and at some point, the flowers cannot resist, they just have to open up. In the same way, mindfulness, if practiced continuously, will provide a kind of transformation within the flower of our anger, and it will open and show us its own nature. When we understand the nature, the roots, of our anger, we will be freed from it.
Sermon
Here’s a story about anger, this one from Thich Nhat Hahn’s home country of Vietnam:
Ahn was a little boy of six or so who was living with his grandfather. He was building a tower of blocks – the biggest tower he’d ever made. Just as he got it about as tall as he was, his grandfather called him to dinner. Ahn wasn’t ready to quit, though, and when his grandfather had laid the table and called him again, Ahn got furious, smashed one more block on the top, and destroyed his wonderful tower. When his grandfather tried to put his arm around him, Ahn reacted by saying, “Go away! I hate you!” His grandfather told him he needed a time out and that he should go to his room and sit with his anger.
He ran into his room and screamed so hard he could feel it all the way down to his belly. He asked himself, “How can I sit with my anger? I’m just angry, angry, angry.”
“Finally,” said a voice from right beside him. “I was hoping you’d notice me.” It was a little hard to ignore him; he was very very hairy and red all over – sort of like a Sesame Street puppet. Ahn asked where he’d come from and the creature said that he was the part of Ahn that came out when Ahn got angry. “I know just the thing,” Ahn’s anger said, grabbed Ahn’s hand and started a whirling dance all around the room. When they were both exhausted, they sat together silently, breathing in and breathing out.
“I don’t like to say mean things to people,” Ahn said, “but sometimes I can’t help it.” “I can help you,” said his anger. Whenever you are angry, you should come and sit with me; after we spend some time together, you might feel better.” They kept breathing in and breathing out, and with every breath Ahn’s anger got smaller.
His grandfather came to the door after a little to see how he was doing. Ahn asked if his grandfather wanted to meet his anger, but by then it was all gone. Ahn said, “I sat with my anger like you said.”
“Yes,” said his grandfather, “you took good care of your anger and it went away. When I was a little boy, I met my anger, too. That’s how I know it would work for you.”
And they sat down to dinner as grandfather told his own story of how he had met and befriended his anger.[i]
The story of Ahn represents a typical time out; that pause in living that allows kids to collect themselves and return to themselves when they are upset. But the same practice can be beneficial to adults as well. Thich Nhat Hanh offers this summary of the book:
Ahn’s Anger reminds us that anger is a part of all of us and that mindful sitting and breathing can help transform it. Both adults and children will benefit from learning how to change an unhappy situation into a joyful one.[ii]
Usually when we say that someone should sit with their anger, they do something like stewing in it – cooking it up to a fine and spicy offering, hitting walls or punching pillows or just screaming or crying. That’s what I used to do, anyway. But in Ahn’s case it means instead literally “sitting with” – sitting down beside – your anger. That’s an odd notion, but in fact when we treat our anger kindly and try to understand where it really comes from – not just the immediate cause, but the real roots of our anger – then we can be friends with it and help it to dissolve itself as it always does in the end. Of course, that’s the last thing we want to do when we’re angry, but it’s also the best thing.
Anger is not the only feeling – or state – that can benefit from being befriended; there are also anxiety, discontent, stress, fear, dread, despair, and many others. I often feel as though I’m falling behind in commitments I’ve made to myself, this congregation and my family. My typical reaction is similar to that of the lovable but naïve horse Boxer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: I resolve that I will work harder. Working harder I increase my anxiety and more unresolved tasks reveal themselves at every turn. I could simply give up and do something unproductive instead of the things that stare me in the face. Or I could follow the timeworn advice of the efficiency experts and prioritize, decide what really must be done now, and do what is most difficult or anxiety-provoking first. I could do that, and it would probably help, but I would still feel anxious and pressured because of all the other things I hadn’t gotten around to. A better way is to take time to befriend my anxiety, reflect on its roots, play and dance around the room with it, breathe in and breathe out, and understand how I can show kindness to my anxiety and thus help heal it and myself. And then I should turn to the axioms of efficiency and what I should do, but now with a sense of peace instead of pressure. I don’t do this all of the time, by the way; actually, I do it way too little, but now that I’m suggesting this path to you, I’d better begin to model it more!
I got mad a lot when I was a kid. My dear older brother used to taunt me by calling me a ball peen hammer – my hair was receding a bit on the temples even at that age – and I would get completely infuriated. I would pummel him to the limits of my strength and stamina, not managing to do much damage because he was stronger and he defended himself well, and when I was exhausted he would proceed to return what I had done to him with interest, reasoning – as we all do from time to time – that I had started it after all. Even now the most reliable way to make me angry is to put me into a situation where I have the notion that he would do it better than I could – fixing something, building something, moving something – and I will reliably lose my temper – just a little of course. In truth, my brother is much better than I am at many practical tasks; he’s done wonders to his house in Rockford, IL, adding skylights, adding and removing rooms, making an enclosed porch out of his back deck. But then I reflect on the years on the farm when my father and grandfather taught him the skills of repairing and building that he would need as a farmer, while I was relegated to more humble roles. For example, he learned how to weld with some skill and I never had the opportunity. I never even milked the cows – one of the central tasks on a dairy farm – until I was twenty-one. He would even go so far as to make me do the harder, dirtier task of loading hay on the wagon while he drove the tractor on the grounds that he knew how to fix the baler and I didn’t. He doesn’t necessarily do everything perfectly, but he does it well enough to be serviceable. When I sit with my anger and remember those situations, I realize that I, too, have learned to mend and create things, and that there are roots which give me reasons – but silly reasons – to be angry. The right tools for the job help a lot, too. I don’t always follow my advice, but now that I’ve recommended it to you, I’ll have to be a better example, too.
When anger comes to us at a particular time, we can respond to it by stepping back from the anger and breathing in peace, breathing out love, while we befriend it and help it to dissipate, as Ahn did in our story. Or we can leave the situation and take a walk as a way of befriending our anger and helping it to go away. A man was celebrating his fiftieth wedding anniversary when a friend asked how he and his wife had managed to stay together all those years. “My hat and my shoes,” he replied. “How does that work?” his friend asked. “Oh, anytime we get into an argument I put on my shoes and my hat and take a good long walk around the block until I’ve forgotten all about what made me mad in the first place!” In addition, of course, we have to return to the person we’ve been angry at and resolve matters with them as well. As the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, “[4:26] Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
These techniques are all well and good in the moment of need, and can be applied effectively when a crisis arises, but there is another way, a way we might think of as a path to reducing out tendency become angry in the first place. That way is by praying or meditating each day – preferably in the morning before the upsets of the day begin to arrive in the first place. We can practice breathing meditation or we can take time to pray and in particular to listen to what comes to us in prayer. I realize that these practices can be difficult for us, but perhaps I can do a little re-framing to make it a little easier.
I was on a retreat with the other ministers from our Ballou Channing District a few weeks ago, and we were addressed by Bill Sinkford, the president of our Unitarian Universalist Association from 2001 to 2009. He told us that the only way he had survived the pressures and tensions of his office was to spend half an hour each morning in prayer, mostly listening as he raised up his biggest challenges and prayerfully considered how they related to his highest aspirations for that very big job. This wasn’t necessarily easy to him. He came from a background of agnosticism when he entered seminary some years ago; at the time, he was the only African American student at our Unitarian Universalist seminary in California, Starr King. So for fellowship, he joined a group of African Americans from other local seminaries and churches. Their weekly meetings always started with a prayer. After about six months, the leader of the group announced that “Next week Brother Sinkford will lead the prayer.” Sinkford panicked; what could he as an agnostic say with integrity to these Baptist students and ministers who were so accustomed to praying spontaneously? He wrote and discarded a number of drafts in the course of the week and finally mumbled out some words he no longer remembers as the opening prayer. And then something wonderful happened: the ministers took his feeble efforts as an invitation to start praying in their own manner; all it took was opening the door for them.
Early in his presidency, he preached a sermon in Fort Worth where he said that we Unitarian Universalists ought to return to what he called a “Language of Reverence.” Predictably, the atheists and agnostics and humanists in our movement reacted with horror. Was he going to force us all to accept God-talk again? Of course, no one can force Unitarian Universalists to accept anything, but his goal was to call us back to language we can share with other people of faith without denying any of our own commitments to truth and integrity of belief. That’s why I’ve adopted his invocation in in the pastoral prayer: “Spirit of Life, known by many names, dear God.” In this way we acknowledge the many ways in which we invoke the divine, the sacred, that which is holy to us.
One way of embodying that reverence – which we so often forget – is by taking time to be in nature, observing what is around us with our utmost attention. He read this passage from Barbara Brown Taylor’s Altars in the World:
The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate. You might even decide not to kill anything for twenty minutes, including the saltmarsh mosquito that lands on your arm. Just blow her away and ask her please to go find someone else to eat.
With any luck, you will soon begin to see the souls in pebbles, ants, small mounds of moss, and the acorn on its way to becoming an oak tree. You may feel some tenderness for the struggling mayfly the ants are carrying away. If you can see the water, you may take time to wonder where it comes from and where it is going. You may even feel the beating of your own heart, that miracle of ingenuity that does its work with no thought or instruction from you. You did not make your heart, any more than you made a tree. You are a guest here. You have been given a free pass to this modest domain and everything in it.[iii]
Then he invited us to try it doing it ourselves; we each found a three square foot spot outside where we could spend 20 minutes just looking, concentrating on what we found in that tiny stretch of the vast earth. The first things I saw as I sat on my rock were dead leaves, and I decided that after all this was a very unproductive choice on my part; lovely material for the later development of life, but hardly an ideal spot for life in the present. But as I simply concentrated my attention, my three square feet began to come alive. There were, of course, the ants, scurrying about on their urgent business. Then there appeared – or rather, I finally noticed – a tiny green caterpillar, slowing, ever so slowly inching her way up a leaf. I watched her closely but only noticed that she had moved when my gaze returned to her. There were mosquitoes, but they proved to be quite easy to shoo away. There were, of course, all of the sounds of the woods on whose edge I sat. Suddenly this seemingly dead spot was alive with life and sound from all around me.
In this way I began to fine myself in this world I’m privileged to live in, much larger than the ants, about the size of the rock I was sitting on, and so much smaller than the fields and forest around me, not to mention the whole earth itself, teeming with life in each square foot.
Such a practice increases our resilience when turmoil comes into our lives, gives us peace of mind, makes us more content and opens the way to better health. It gives us the means to befriend our anger and all those other trials we face each day and to help them go on their way without harming us or others. If we do, we can sometimes deflect the need for time-outs by preparing ourselves in advance. Thus can we live in peace with all that is and all that can be.
May it be so, and Amen.