I drafted this sermon for this past Sunday's service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville, Tennessee. I was not able to deliver the sermon in person, but I forwarded it to the worship chair to use however he saw fit, and I understand that a member of the congregation read it aloud to the others.

"Telling Someone They're Wrong"

I can't make up my mind about opinionated people. I was getting a haircut a little over a week ago, and the girl in the next chair over happened to be a Vanderbilt student who went on and on and on about the presidential campaign for which she's volunteering, including a string of vehemently dismissive comments about her candidate's main rival, who happens to be the candidate I'm actively supporting. At one point, my stylist actually muttered something about fetching a roll of duct tape, and she laughed when I told her, "That girl's just earned my candidate an extra donation."

I thought about telling the girl herself exactly that, but I do have a sense of self-preservation, and starting brawls in a hair salon, where there are lots of sharp objects and stingy chemicals within reach, ranks pretty low on my list of sensible battles to fight. That said, it feels like I've done an awful lot of non-discussing of things that matter to me this year, ranging from who to elect for president to how to define and handle racism, what it means to be a feminist, the updating of various estate arrangements, why I hate the seventh Harry Potter book, and even the subject of when to speak up and when to hold one's peace. You wouldn't think that someone with my reputation as a mouthy chick would have so much to not talk about, and it's not totally for lack of trying, but as a very successful actor once said, about no longer reading his reviews, "After you get kicked in the face a couple of times, you kinda learn." [*] You learn that no matter how carefully or cautiously you try to say something, sometimes the listener is going to get it wrong, and sometimes you are going to get it wrong. You may eventually discover that part of the problem has to do with vocabulary: it can be easy to assume that we're all speaking the same language when we're all technically using English, but particularly with loaded subjects -- especially anything to do with sex, money, or religion -- there's a lot that can go wrong even when everyone involved starts out with noble or innocent intentions. I've been chewed out for saying things that came across as racist, and I've witnessed other people unwittingly inflicting the last straw upon the proverbial camel's back and subsequently wondering why on earth so-and-so can't "just lighten up." I've cringed at some of the well-meaning "anti-racist" efforts I've observed, and one of my closest friends once declared that she would never again date a self-proclaimed "sensitive" male, because, in her experience, they were far too proud of being enlightened to treat her as an individual. Put another way, they were enthralled with the idea of being supportive of women, but not with the actual work of getting along with an actual woman - one who didn't always conform to their ideal of how a woman would think, act, and speak, and who didn't actually agree with them on how a woman would think, act, and speak. I have to admit there's one of those in my own past as well, and I have found few things more infuriating than being told, condescendingly, "You didn't really mean that" when in fact I actually did, or "No one in their right mind would believe such-and-such" when I happen to be someone who not only believes in such-and-such, but arrived at that position as a result of substantial research, experience, or soul-searching.

Which brings us back to things deeply felt but not articulated, such as who ought to become our next commander-in-chief. I have colleagues, friends, and relatives divided among all three of the major candidates, and there's probably even a Naderite or two keeping very, very quiet. Some people are fervently in favor of a specific candidate, while others are just as fervently voting against someone -- or something the someone represents -- rather than happy about the choices offered. Me, I'm both frustrated and embarrassed. Frustrated, because I keep running into people like the girl in the hair salon, and I keep wanting to shake them and say, "You're not making me like your candidate." Embarrassed ... because I used to be like that. I want to think I was nowhere near that obnoxious, but I do know that I was that dogmatic, and it's still wretchedly, painfully difficult for me to recognize - never mind accept -- that disagreement is not the same as personal criticism. An even more wretched and painful process has been coming to grips with the fact that many, many people will interpret disagreement as personal criticism, even if it's not intended that way. There's a persistent, pervasive zero-sum mentality in our culture where someone has to be wrong if someone else is right -- which is why Unitarian Universalism is not a "real" religion to some of my Christian friends, why Reform Jews run into trouble trying to get married in Israel, why various branches of Christianity consider others denominations non grata, and why there are significant fissures within a number of those branches. I have witnessed more than one Christian clarifying their non-fire-and-brimstone-ness by saying, "I'm a Christian, but not that kind of Christian" ... and, I sometimes wonder if I'll end up saying, "Not that kind of Unitarian Universalist" if our movement ever does become mainstream. As a theist and a capitalist, there have already been times when I've wanted to say, "Let's not be too free with the we-all-thises and the everyone-thats, ok?" and I've talked with other people in my home congregation who have sometimes found themselves in similar boats, where they silently find themselves dismissed or even vilified as part of a demographic their fellow congregation members either mistrust or have bad personal experiences with. There are ideological conservatives who are horrified at what the Republican Party has done in their name but who are conservatives or centrists when it comes to their vision of how government should operate. There are theological purists who feel church and state ought to be kept as separate in the sanctuary as they should be in the federal world, and there are others for whom social and political activism is what religion is good for. When she preached on the topic of gay marriage, my own minister suggested that the traditional stance for preachers has been "with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other" -- and that pretty much jibes with my own understanding of the privilege of the pulpit: it's not my job to tell you what to think. It's not my job to judge what you think. It is my job to share with you something from my own experience or thought that, if I'm lucky, either adds to what you're thinking or encourages you to reassess it. I like to think of it as bringing another candle to the Bible and the newspaper.

Which is how I've started trying to think of people who rub me the wrong way, or who insist I'm wrong about something, or who've been driving me crazy because they're wrong, wrong, wrong and won't shut up about it. It's taken me years to grasp that these people really do believe they're right. I mean, yeah, on the one hand, "DUH," -- but having been - and being - so convinced that I'm right, it's been extraordinarily hard to comprehend that there are intelligent, compassionate individuals striving to be good people who somehow don't share the same priorities. Somehow, they weighed and interpreted the available evidence into a different conclusion, and they're as invested in that conclusion as I am in mine. I have not found it easy to give other people the benefit of the doubt in that regard - and, judging from a lot of the rhetoric I've seen and heard over this past winter, it's not an uncommon problem. There is a very strong tendency across our society to characterize people with different beliefs as either mentally or morally deficient, and it is as pervasive as kudzu on the left as well as on the right. I've seen friendships crash to an end over incompatible priorities; my own church perennially struggles with the priority of maintaining a "safe" space for all worshippers vs. the priority of freedom of speech. Perhaps the most visible form of this conflict has been when we altered the format of "Joys and Concerns" several years ago due, but it pops up again in terms of what gets printed in the newsletter, what gets taught in RE, and what gets displayed on our bulletin boards, among other things. People who favor an "anything goes" approach are often very quick to cry "censorship" when something is deemed incompatible with church policy, but the policies were developed precisely because there's a censorship that happens regardless in an "anything goes" environment. When people don't feel safe - if they feel they're not truly going to be heard, or that their concerns are going to be dismissed with a "oh, lighten up already," they tend to shut up or go away rather than subjecting themselves to conflict, which in turn reinforces the majority's perception of itself as the majority. Many of us have dealt with this with relatives - the ones whose goals aren't really to have a "discussion" but to get us to concede that they're right.

So, how do we go about telling other people they're wrong? I couldn't give you a one-size-fits-all prescription even if I wanted to; there are multi-volume books and CDs devoted to communicating across gender, race, class, and other divides, and it's still a struggle even for the multimillionaire gurus and the ordained pastors. Because it's not just a matter of something being right and something being wrong, it's also a matter of why you think you're right, what's at stake if you can't persuade the other person to consider that, and how the other person arrived at their priorities. It involves being aware of how your own priorities can appear to others as a threat, a nuisance, or an imposition, no matter how fair, considerate, or careful you are trying to be. I am not telling you that you have to walk on eggshells 24/7, nor am I telling you that it's all up to you. That said, it is up to you -- to each of us -- how we speak to others and how we speak of others, and I do believe that the more we strive to do so with respect and compassion -- in spite of the many temptations to indulge ourselves otherwise -- the closer other people will allow us to bring our individual lights near their Bibles and newspapers, and that it's at that personal level - someone who's real to them, rather than a grand, mysterious "them" - that we have our best hope of building steps toward concord and grace.[**] Amen and alleluia.


[*] David Tennant, on "Chain Reaction" (BBC Radio 4), 21 February 2008 [partial transcript]
[**] From the closing hymn: "Open our lips, / open our minds to ponder, / open the door of concord / opening into grace." ("Let There Be Light" by Frances W. Davis)