The Other Side of the Wall

 

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a minister, it’s that a cigar is never just a cigar. I know you’re never supposed to say “never,” but this is the exception. A cigar is never just a cigar. There is always more going on beneath the surface, things always mean more than they seem to mean. There’s nothing that doesn’t mean anything at all. People are complex, there’s a backstory to everything, and a shadow side to everyone. Everyone suffers, no matter how rosily they present themselves. Everyone is scared, no matter how confident they seem. We often don’t really know our neighbor. There’s an invisible wall between self and other. And sometimes that wall can be impenetrable.

 

 

 

David Senesh, a military psychologist who works on PTSD from war and abuse, tells an extraordinary story about the wall between self and other. He was a soldier in the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and he was captured by the Egyptians and taken to Cairo as a prisoner of war. He and the other Israeli prisoners were badly treated. They were beaten and kept in solitary confinement most of the time. After a few weeks of this, he was going crazy. He remembered seeing in movies how prisoners in solitary would communicate with each other by knocking on the walls of their cells, back and forth. So one day, when he heard the muezzin calling Muslims to prayer and he knew the guards wouldn’t be around, he tried it. He knocked on the wall. At first there was silence and then, miraculously, a knock back. His heart jumped into his throat. He knocked again. Another response. And so every day, when they could, he and his neighbor would knock back and forth. And just this little thread of human contact, Senesh says, sustained him.

 

 

 

But the story doesn’t end there. After the war, the Israeli soldiers were released and made their way back to Israel. Senesh was able to talk for the first time with the man who had been his neighbor. The trauma of the imprisonment had worn differently on different people and the neighbor did not look good. He looked frail and shattered. Senesh eagerly thanked him and explained how much that little bit of shared connection had meant to him, how it had saved him. The guy just listened and nodded and then said, “But there’s something you don’t know. You were probably knocking with your hand. I was knocking with my head. I wanted to die.”

 

 

 

Some say we never really know what’s going on on the other side of the wall. We’re trapped inside our own minds. We make assumptions based on what we want to believe about others, and we are so often wrong. Some say that the other is unknowable; that even the people closest to us will, in some ultimate way, always be strangers. They say we’re born alone and we die alone. (Although, I have to say, when my kids were born, I distinctly remember being there too.) Of course, the philosophers who say this don’t mean being physically alone, but that in some existential way, we are alone and unknowable.

 

 

 

I don’t believe this. Because in our Unitarian faith, you on your side of the wall and me on my side of the wall are ultimately one. And that oneness has got to be on some level, somehow, someday accessible. I believe that we can be deeply known. For the most part we aren’t, however, because being known requires us to expose our real selves, which is terrifying. For most of us, our real selves have some dark or at least unattractive sides to them. We’re trained from the time we’re young to be tireless in our PR and spin campaigns, putting on a good face and hiding the hard stuff from public view. But it’s there. Sometimes it’s really deep and ugly and painful.

 

 

 

Imagine the courage it took for David Senesh’s neighbor to confess that he had been hitting the wall with his head, admitting to the catastrophic unraveling that had taken place within him. He wasn’t trying to massage his image at all. Think of the courage it takes to admit that you have a mental illness or a serious physical illness, or that you are an alcoholic or that you were abused or that you were an abuser. There’s an element of shame that often accompanies our places of deepest darkness. And the shame makes it unspeakable.

 

 

 

Or often it’s less dramatic. Often what we need to hide is just that we’re ridiculous. NY Times columnist Tim Kreider has a wonderful piece about this issue of being known. He suggests that deep down, we’re all ridiculous. He writes, “Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating: making the same obvious mistakes over and over, dating imbeciles, endlessly relapsing into their dumb addictions and self-defeating habits, blind to their own hilarious flaws and blatant contradictions and fiercely devoted to whatever keeps them miserable.”

 

 

 

And he’s right. Even if we don’t have a body buried in our backyard, we are all, at the very least, on some level, ridiculous and trying desperately to hide it. As if we’re the only one. As if there’s something fundamentally and uniquely wrong with us and we can’t afford to let anyone see it. Because we fear that if anyone should see it, if anyone should see our sad and embarrassing selves for what they really are, they wouldn’t love us. That’s the fear. If you were really known, you wouldn’t be loved.

 

 

 

But here’s the paradox: in order to be loved, you have to be known. Because if someone loves your PR spin image, then who is it that they are actually loving? That shiny, happy, perfect person doesn’t really exist. The whole world could be in love with that person and you would still feel lonely. The love wouldn’t even touch you. To be loved, you have to let people see you. You have to be vulnerable and exposed. It’s clear from this context why Biblically “knowing” someone is to have intercourse with them. Your wall, your boundary is penetrated by the understanding of others.

 

 

 

The promise of Universalism is that we are loved, in spite of and because of being known. In spite of and because of all of who we are. None of us will be rejected no matter how shameful our past, no matter how ridiculous our present. The promise of forgiveness and redemption is, in fact at the core of many religions. I’m not Catholic and I’ve never been to confession, but my guess is that confession is about exactly this desire to be known so that you can be loved and accepted for who you really are. You get to share all your most shameful acts and even your shameful thoughts. You turn yourself inside out, and say, “Here I am. Here is the worst of me. Am I still loved?” (You’re literally speaking through a perforated wall. The metaphor is perfect.) And the priest lets you know that yes, you are still loved. It’s a hard thing to do, but I imagine that the sense of liberation is profound. Tim Kreider writes so wisely, “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

 

 

 

And so to each of our new members this morning, Emily, Ben, Ron, Kim, Gate, and Alex, this is my challenge to you: let yourself be known here. Take the risk of coming out from behind your walls. You’ve just joined this new community, some of you don’t know a lot of people yet and you can still make choices about what you want this to be for you. I think we all crave authentic connection, especially here in New York City where we so often cocoon ourselves, especially in the winter when we physically have layer upon layer between self and other. And so here we are: a spiritual community, a sanctuary away from the harsh cold of city life. If there’s anywhere in the world where you could experiment with being vulnerable, this is it.

 

 

 

There are countless ways to do it here. One great way is to join a group in our Small Group Ministry program. These are covenanted, confidential groups where we share and explore our spiritual journeys together. You can join a dinner group, work on a committee, go to brunch with the TNTs. However you do it, I’m challenging you and everyone in this room to decide that that this is a place where you’re going to show your real self, come what may.

 

 

 

And in equal measure, it’s our job to make it safe to do that here. This is a challenge too, because to really know another requires you to approach them with an open heart; to listen undefended, regardless of whether you like what hear. It requires you to be willing to accept a person even if you cannot accept their actions. It requires you to be willing to be changed. David Senesh opened himself by making an authentic connection with his neighbor, sharing his experience, and inviting the same authenticity in return. He got it and I’m sure the truth was painful to hear. If he had known the truth about what was going on on the other side of the wall at the time, he would never have gotten the solace from it that he did. We want people to be who we want them to be. Letting them be who they are can be hard. Knowing one another requires an act of great courage on both sides of the wall.

 

 

 

Many great sages profess that we are only fully human in our relationship to others – that the hermit is not just withdrawing from humanity as a whole, but is also withdrawing from his or her own humanity. The kind of relating they’re talking about isn’t the “hi, what’s up?” kind of casual relationship of the everyday encounter (though there’s nothing inherently wrong with this). They’re talking about the “who are you really in there and how do I resonate to that in here?” kind of relationship. We can’t have that with everyone we meet, but we can make it our goal to seek that kind of relationship with more people, more often, here.

 

So when someone in coffee hour asks you how things are going, tell them. Really tell them. And when you ask this type of question, ask it from your heart. It takes more courage than you’d think. But the reward of all of this courage and hard work on both sides of the wall is immeasurable: we get to not be alone. We get to be seen as who we are in all our success, in all our shame, in all our beauty, and in all our ridiculousness. We get to create a community here that’s a real community – one where bridges are being built and walls are falling, bit by bit, all the time. We bring each other hope in the cold of winter.

 

 

 

[powerpress]http://www.fuub.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/The-Other-Side-of-the-Wall.m4a[/powerpress]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a minister, it’s that a cigar is never just a cigar. I know you’re never supposed to say “never,” but this is the exception. A cigar is never just a cigar. There is always more going on beneath the surface, things always mean more than they seem to mean. There’s nothing that doesn’t mean anything at all. People are complex, there’s a backstory to everything, and a shadow side to everyone. Everyone suffers, no matter how rosily they present themselves. Everyone is scared, no matter how confident they seem. We often don’t really know our neighbor. There’s an invisible wall between self and other. And sometimes that wall can be impenetrable.

 

David Senesh, a military psychologist who works on PTSD from war and abuse, tells an extraordinary story about the wall between self and other. He was a soldier in the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and he was captured by the Egyptians and taken to Cairo as a prisoner of war. He and the other Israeli prisoners were badly treated. They were beaten and kept in solitary confinement most of the time. After a few weeks of this, he was going crazy. He remembered seeing in movies how prisoners in solitary would communicate with each other by knocking on the walls of their cells, back and forth. So one day, when he heard the muezzin calling Muslims to prayer and he knew the guards wouldn’t be around, he tried it. He knocked on the wall. At first there was silence and then, miraculously, a knock back. His heart jumped into his throat. He knocked again. Another response. And so every day, when they could, he and his neighbor would knock back and forth. And just this little thread of human contact, Senesh says, sustained him.

 

But the story doesn’t end there. After the war, the Israeli soldiers were released and made their way back to Israel. Senesh was able to talk for the first time with the man who had been his neighbor. The trauma of the imprisonment had worn differently on different people and the neighbor did not look good. He looked frail and shattered. Senesh eagerly thanked him and explained how much that little bit of shared connection had meant to him, how it had saved him. The guy just listened and nodded and then said, “But there’s something you don’t know. You were probably knocking with your hand. I was knocking with my head. I wanted to die.”

 

Some say we never really know what’s going on on the other side of the wall. We’re trapped inside our own minds. We make assumptions based on what we want to believe about others, and we are so often wrong. Some say that the other is unknowable; that even the people closest to us will, in some ultimate way, always be strangers. They say we’re born alone and we die alone. (Although, I have to say, when my kids were born, I distinctly remember being there too.) Of course, the philosophers who say this don’t mean being physically alone, but that in some existential way, we are alone and unknowable.

 

I don’t believe this. Because in our Unitarian faith, you on your side of the wall and me on my side of the wall are ultimately one. And that oneness has got to be on some level, somehow, someday accessible. I believe that we can be deeply known. For the most part we aren’t, however, because being known requires us to expose our real selves, which is terrifying. For most of us, our real selves have some dark or at least unattractive sides to them. We’re trained from the time we’re young to be tireless in our PR and spin campaigns, putting on a good face and hiding the hard stuff from public view. But it’s there. Sometimes it’s really deep and ugly and painful.

 

Imagine the courage it took for David Senesh’s neighbor to confess that he had been hitting the wall with his head, admitting to the catastrophic unraveling that had taken place within him. He wasn’t trying to massage his image at all. Think of the courage it takes to admit that you have a mental illness or a serious physical illness, or that you are an alcoholic or that you were abused or that you were an abuser. There’s an element of shame that often accompanies our places of deepest darkness. And the shame makes it unspeakable.

 

Or often it’s less dramatic. Often what we need to hide is just that we’re ridiculous. NY Times columnist Tim Kreider has a wonderful piece about this issue of being known. He suggests that deep down, we’re all ridiculous. He writes, “Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating: making the same obvious mistakes over and over, dating imbeciles, endlessly relapsing into their dumb addictions and self-defeating habits, blind to their own hilarious flaws and blatant contradictions and fiercely devoted to whatever keeps them miserable.”

 

And he’s right. Even if we don’t have a body buried in our backyard, we are all, at the very least, on some level, ridiculous and trying desperately to hide it. As if we’re the only one. As if there’s something fundamentally and uniquely wrong with us and we can’t afford to let anyone see it. Because we fear that if anyone should see it, if anyone should see our sad and embarrassing selves for what they really are, they wouldn’t love us. That’s the fear. If you were really known, you wouldn’t be loved.

 

But here’s the paradox: in order to be loved, you have to be known. Because if someone loves your PR spin image, then who is it that they are actually loving? That shiny, happy, perfect person doesn’t really exist. The whole world could be in love with that person and you would still feel lonely. The love wouldn’t even touch you. To be loved, you have to let people see you. You have to be vulnerable and exposed. It’s clear from this context why Biblically “knowing” someone is to have intercourse with them. Your wall, your boundary is penetrated by the understanding of others.

 

The promise of Universalism is that we are loved, in spite of and because of being known. In spite of and because of all of who we are. None of us will be rejected no matter how shameful our past, no matter how ridiculous our present. The promise of forgiveness and redemption is, in fact at the core of many religions. I’m not Catholic and I’ve never been to confession, but my guess is that confession is about exactly this desire to be known so that you can be loved and accepted for who you really are. You get to share all your most shameful acts and even your shameful thoughts. You turn yourself inside out, and say, “Here I am. Here is the worst of me. Am I still loved?” (You’re literally speaking through a perforated wall. The metaphor is perfect.) And the priest lets you know that yes, you are still loved. It’s a hard thing to do, but I imagine that the sense of liberation is profound. Tim Kreider writes so wisely, “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

 

And so to each of our new members this morning, Emily, Ben, Ron, Kim, Gate, and Alex, this is my challenge to you: let yourself be known here. Take the risk of coming out from behind your walls. You’ve just joined this new community, some of you don’t know a lot of people yet and you can still make choices about what you want this to be for you. I think we all crave authentic connection, especially here in New York City where we so often cocoon ourselves, especially in the winter when we physically have layer upon layer between self and other. And so here we are: a spiritual community, a sanctuary away from the harsh cold of city life. If there’s anywhere in the world where you could experiment with being vulnerable, this is it.

 

There are countless ways to do it here. One great way is to join a group in our Small Group Ministry program. These are covenanted, confidential groups where we share and explore our spiritual journeys together. You can join a dinner group, work on a committee, go to brunch with the TNTs. However you do it, I’m challenging you and everyone in this room to decide that that this is a place where you’re going to show your real self, come what may.

 

And in equal measure, it’s our job to make it safe to do that here. This is a challenge too, because to really know another requires you to approach them with an open heart; to listen undefended, regardless of whether you like what hear. It requires you to be willing to accept a person even if you cannot accept their actions. It requires you to be willing to be changed. David Senesh opened himself by making an authentic connection with his neighbor, sharing his experience, and inviting the same authenticity in return. He got it and I’m sure the truth was painful to hear. If he had known the truth about what was going on on the other side of the wall at the time, he would never have gotten the solace from it that he did. We want people to be who we want them to be. Letting them be who they are can be hard. Knowing one another requires an act of great courage on both sides of the wall.

 

Many great sages profess that we are only fully human in our relationship to others – that the hermit is not just withdrawing from humanity as a whole, but is also withdrawing from his or her own humanity. The kind of relating they’re talking about isn’t the “hi, what’s up?” kind of casual relationship of the everyday encounter (though there’s nothing inherently wrong with this). They’re talking about the “who are you really in there and how do I resonate to that in here?” kind of relationship. We can’t have that with everyone we meet, but we can make it our goal to seek that kind of relationship with more people, more often, here.

So when someone in coffee hour asks you how things are going, tell them. Really tell them. And when you ask this type of question, ask it from your heart. It takes more courage than you’d think. But the reward of all of this courage and hard work on both sides of the wall is immeasurable: we get to not be alone. We get to be seen as who we are in all our success, in all our shame, in all our beauty, and in all our ridiculousness. We get to create a community here that’s a real community – one where bridges are being built and walls are falling, bit by bit, all the time. We bring each other hope in the cold of winter.