How Can I Keep from Singing? First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia Rev. Abbey Tennis January 8th, :00 AM

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Melissa Dean
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1 First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia Rev. Abbey Tennis January 8th, :00 AM Description: So many of us have been silenced at some point in our lives told our voice isn t good enough to sing, our opinions aren t good enough to share, our experience isn t important enough to matter. As we enter the new year, how can we reclaim those parts of us that have been hushed, or shut down? Sermon: I had planned to preach this sermon titled after the hymn that the choir sang for us earlier way back in August. What better way to start the New Year than worship that draws our attention to the power of our voices, the beauty of song, the meaning of speaking one s truth? This was well before Trump was elected well before we knew how urgently the world would need our progressive religious voices in these coming years. I planned it well before the Christmas to New Years break that many of us, including me, took. And, as luck would have it or some might say fate would have it I lost my voice last week, just in time to be unable to speak fully and clearly to you all this morning about the need for us to speak fully and clearly. Whatever cosmic trick is being played on me, I don t find it amusing. I find this week just about as un-amusing as when I accidentally deleted two-thirds of my sermon late on Saturday night right as we were about to begin our monthly theme of Impermanence. So, while I thought this would be an elegant, lingering, musical sermonic attempt to answer the rhetorical question How can I keep from singing? I have instead found an incredibly concise and concrete answer: Laryngitis. Laryngitis is how I can keep from singing. If you try it, I think you ll find that you too can keep from singing if you are afflicted with laryngitis. I could end the sermon there, and we could all get to the coffee and cookies faster. But that would seem to be a waste of such a hilarious opportunity, so I m going to attempt to preach to you about the voice, without much of a voice. Thankfully, due to an anonymous angel donor supporting our efforts towards expanding our radical hospitality here, we were able to buy a fancy new microphone for me, just in time for support my volume today! I have some backup preachers from the worship arts team ready if my voice tanks out mid-sermon, so if 1

2 my voice gets so bad that you can t hear or understand me, just raise your hand or call out and I ll pass the baton. If someone else ends up preaching parts of this sermon, please know that the experiences and challenges they are speaking about are mine and not theirs. So here we go. ~~~ Because I was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry in Washington, DC while I was living in Oakland California, I had long plane flights in both directions to get to and from my ordination. On the way back, I was silently journaling as I often do on planes. The man next to me was alternating between reading and silently drawing the kinds of things I remember drawing in my junior high mechanical drawing class drawings more like architecture than like life. He was a man from the baby boomer generation, and I soon found out that he was on his way to his condo in Utah to ski. He lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC and worked in the real estate industry once working for a big company and now on his own. He was divorced, with a couple of kids who were somewhere in their teens or twenties. When the conversation swung around to why I was flying westward, I told him that I had just gotten ordained into the ministry. When I told him I was Unitarian Universalist, he told me that he had gone to a UU church for years with his ex-wife, though he had never joined. He liked the sermons liked the way his ministers spoke about relevant topics of the day in a non-dogmatic way. He liked the community. He liked the choir. But he hated the hymns. Now, some of you know I m a hymn snob, so I could resonate with him about hating hymns. Some of them are cheesy, some are plodding, and some have wayyyyyy too many words to carry any cogent meaning. But when I asked him more, he told me it wasn t the hymns themselves, it was that everyone was expected to sing them. He hated singing. I could hear the anger in him as he spat out the words I like to draw, but you don t pass out paper and pens and make everyone draw during a church service, then show their pictures to the rest of the church when they are not good at it. Why do we make everyone sing even if they re not good at it? Oh, I thought. This man isn t really angry he is ashamed. He didn t think he was good at singing in fact, I m sure that at some point in his childhood, someone told him that he wasn t good at singing and therefore he didn t ever want to sing. He wasn t comfortable doing things he wasn t good at. He was ashamed at having a voice that he deemed inadequate, and every time he went to church, being invited 2

3 to sing hymns was a painful reminder of his inadequacy. He was a successful, wealthy, athletic, straight, middle-aged white American man, but singing made him feel like a failure, and that feeling was unbearable. One of the curses of enjoying success and privilege is often an inability to tolerate feelings of failure or powerlessness, as many of us in this room know. I understood how he felt. Despite having a sport for a last name, I am a terrible athlete, and I imagined how I would feel if I were expected to run around, throw, and catch a ball, with everyone watching, during worship. If that were what we did in church, I would hate it. Or I wouldn t participate in that part of worship. Or, lets be honest, I probably just wouldn t come. I am willing to tolerate my own inadequacy and failure at some things, but my shame at my lack of athleticism is something I would prefer not to face in public. I understood how he felt, but I also understood, on a deep level, what he was losing. By only being willing to do what he thought he was good at, he never got to feel the bliss of inhaling a deep breath only to let it out in a loud and joyful noise. He never got to feel the hum of a low note deep in his chest or a high note resonating through his head. He never experienced the joy of his voice joined in the camaraderie of unison with another, in breathtaking harmony with another, in rich tension-filled dissonance with another. He never felt his eyes well with tears when the words he is lifting in song matched the yearnings hidden deep in his heart. I heard his anger, sensed his shame, and became furious at whoever in his life had told him not to sing. I heard his anger, sensed his shame, and became devastated that he internalized their words so deeply that, at this point in his life, he believed the voice that silenced him was his own voice. How many of us can resonate with this man? So many children are told they shouldn t sing, told they are not good enough, told to mouth the words. When we are silenced like this as a child, the silencing voice goes into a primal part of our brain and stays there. Over time, we grow so used to that silencing voice in our head, telling us not to sing, that we begin to think it is our voice. We become the guardians of our own cage. And it s not just about singing. Being shut up or shut down by someone more powerful than us is something all of us have experienced. Sometimes it s a parent telling a child that they should be seen and not heard. Sometimes it s an abusive partner dismissing the experience of the abused. Sometimes men talk over women, sometimes white people ignore the contributions of people of color, sometimes straight people assert their moral superiority over LGBTQ people, sometimes doctors don t really listen to patients, sometimes adult 3

4 children infantilize aging parents, sometimes extraverts don t leave space for introverts. And sometimes it has nothing at all to do with our identities sometimes there is simply someone in our lives who has muzzled us. Being silenced is different than being in outright conflict or disagreement with someone. In a disagreement, each party speaks and is heard; they simply cannot come to resolution. If we can t reach resolution in conflict, many of us pick it back up again at a later time, trying again to get our point across or win the other s agreement. Silencing is different. Silencing taps into our shame. Silencing taps into our insecurity. When silenced, we are less likely to speak up again at all. When silenced, we usually begin to blame ourselves for what has been done to us. As one study said, to speak and be heard is to have power over one's life. To be silenced is to have that power denied. 1 ~~~ Several years ago, I traveled to the city of Konya in Turkey. Konya is the city where the poet and Islamic religious leader Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi lived much of his adult life, and where he is buried. I was there are part of an immersion experience within the Sufi Muslim community that gathered every year to celebrate Mevlana s reuniting with the beloved the anniversary of his death, or the sebi-arus. Some of you have heard me speak about this experience before. We traveled to study Sufism, and early Christianity, and Judaism. We traveled to learn about Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi. But more than anything, we traveled to be immersed in a spiritual experience that would draw us closer to our true selves; to draw us closer to our own union with the holy. One of our teachers there was a woman named Duja- a religious leader in her Muslim community in Mexico city, and a singer. When it was her turn to teach, she taught us about the relationship between the voice, authenticity, and vulnerability. Many people know the quote from Mevlana Rumi to Appear as you are. Be as you appear. Appear as you are. Be as you appear. In Sufism, this transparency is important; it is important to appear as you are, or be as you appear. In the Islamic tradition, Duja taught us, the voice should sound pleasant, or you are considered to be borderline unhealthy. More importantly, though, your voice should represent you well your voice should match who you are. This is one of the aspects of Being Silenced: The Impact of Negative Social Reactions on the Disclosure of Rape by Courtney E. Ahrens 4

5 appearing as you are sounding like yourself. It may sound overly simplistic who else would I sound like other than myself? but it is not. Think about it for a moment. Though all voices resonate, that resonance changes with sickness or stress, depression or trauma. We can often tell someone s emotional state by listening to their voice. If someone feels the need to talk over everyone else, or fill up all moments of silence in a conversation with unnecessary words, we can tell that they are anxious. If someone speaks quietly, in a monotone, or in short minimalist sentences, we can tell that they are sad. If someone speaks with a pent-up energy or overconfidence, we can often sense that they are experiencing an adrenaline rush from fear, and we know they are lying or withholding something important. One can say the exact same words in a different tone of voice, and mean wildly different things. For example: I love you (sarcasm) I love you (defensive) I love you (happy) When someone s voice resonates with the words they are saying, we feel that they are telling the truth, and something in us relaxes. Our voices convey who we are, not just through our words but through our emotional resonance. In Konya, Duja spoke about the fakeness or falseness that sometimes creeps into our voices. When we are not exactly lying, but we are not being fully authentic. You know what I m talking about when someone sounds overly casual when they are actually trying to be very impressive, when someone adds a wise tone to their voice in order to sound like they know what they are talking about, when someone is speaking compassionate words when they are acting distracted. Even in those moments, Duja told us, we are in fact conveying our truth. Our voice will somehow sound fake or false to those around us, and our truth at that moment is that we are acting fake. The problem is not that we sound inauthentic when we are being truthful, it is that we authentically sound untruthful, when we want to be honest people. The key to moving away from this inauthenticity in our voices is vulnerability, Duja told us. Being fully authentic is frightening. Telling the truth is uncomfortable. Because voicing the truth does not always make the people around us feel good. Voicing the truth does not always make us feel good. It is hard to find people who can understand and accept all of us, even those parts of us that are imperfect, even those parts of us they would prefer didn t exist. 5

6 I used to have a spiritual life that was very separate from my secular life and career. I hid my spiritual life from many of my friends, fearful that they wouldn t understand me, or that they would leave me. Fearful that, if I was my full self with them, and they couldn t meet me, I would realize how anemic those relationships had become. I hid my spiritual self even from most people in my Unitarian Universalist communities because, even here, it is often more comfortable to rest in the secular to pretend that church is only about the community, the music, and the justice work and not about the transcendent that permeates all being and gives meaning to the community, the music, and the justice work. For years, I hid this part of myself from most people in my life, and denied the importance of this part of my life denied it even to myself. I hid because I was afraid of rejection. I hid because I was afraid that being fully authentic would leave me alone. I hid because people I cared about had shamed me when I had been honest before, and I had internalized their shaming voices so deeply that I thought they were my own voice. It took years of building up courage and the resiliency. It took years to feel strong enough to be willing to be vulnerable. It took years before I could honor the fullness of myself enough to talk about it. And yes, many of the people in my life didn t understand me fully but that will always be true for all of us. And yes, some people left my life, and I left some people in my life but that will always happen if we are to grow. Our voice always tells our truth, whether we are living and authentic life or hiding. Our only choice is whether we choose to live authentically or not. Appear as you are. Be as you appear. ~~~ The man on the plane s words sounded angry, but they arose from shame. His silence when the hymns began wasn t the absence of a story; his silence wasn t him remaining neutral. His silence told the story of a man afraid of failure, a man who could not bear doing something for pure joy if he could not be good at it. His silence told a truth that is true of so many of us the truth of hidden shame buried deep in our psyche. What would it mean if, instead of telling the silent truth of hidden shames, we told the truth of who we really are? What if we were able to trust our vulnerable hearts to each other s gentle hands? What if our culture rewarded authenticity more than the mask of success? When we are the guardians of our own cages of silence, the only way out is to speak. The only way out is to sing. 6

7 Appear as you are. Be as you appear. In closing, I want to share words from the poet and activist Audre Lorde s The Cancer Journals. Lorde wrote these as she wrestled with breast cancer in the late 1970s. She writes: I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. 2 The great Unitarian Universalist folk singer, Pete Seeger, once said: The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be. 3 Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. Our lives flow on in endless song, above earth's lamentation. We hear the clear, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, we hear that music ringing. It sounds an echo in our souls. How can we keep from singing? 4 Amen. 2 The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980) 3 How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981), p Hymn: My Life Flows On in Endless Song 7

CONTENTS. Much Love and Thanks... 9 A Place to Breathe 11 Part I: Exhaling 15. Part II: Inhaling 57. Free to Breathe 177

CONTENTS. Much Love and Thanks... 9 A Place to Breathe 11 Part I: Exhaling 15. Part II: Inhaling 57. Free to Breathe 177 CONTENTS Much Love and Thanks... 9 A Place to Breathe 11 Part I: Exhaling 15 Chapter 1: Getting Real 16 Chapter 2: Talking It Out 29 Chapter 3: Finding the Right Road 42 Part II: Inhaling 57 Chapter 4: