Peg Duthie
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville
8 June 2008



A little over five years ago, an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly called "Caring for Your Introvert." It was available online and became one of the magazine's most-visited articles of all time. For many introverts, it was a high-profile validation of their struggles to cope with extroverts, and for a number of extroverts, it was a revelation that many introverts like being introverted when it doesn't require coping with pushy extroverts.

I've seen several other "introvert manifestos" since then; depending on the skill and stance of the writer, my reactions have ranged from "Oh good, someone's explaining how we work," to "Dear lord, please please please don't let the world assume this jerk and I belong to the same tribe." One of the inherent challenges of manifestoes -- and sermons -- is finding the right tone to use when preaching outside of the proverbial choir -- and, truth be told, there is no one "right" tone. The most carefully-weighed, painstakingly-calibrated phrases can come across as careless, condescending, defensive, or even offensive to someone who's not in the same headspace as the speaker. The concept of a "right" tone has become especially fraught because it's often been used as a justification for trivializing or ignoring legitimate grievances - that so-and-so would have been listened to if they had only been more polite, or less shrill, or more reasonable, or less angry, and so forth. (We've seen quite a bit of that during the presidential primaries -- and that's regardless of which candidate or party you favored.)

I confess I go back and forth on this. I don't deal well with people raring for a fight, or with people who automatically assume the worst about everyone else -- I frankly have little patience for proud-to-be-cynical cynics -- but at the same time, I do know what it feels like when someone is determined not to hear you, or to take you seriously, and it is soul-destroying when it happens over and over again. I've been called "too emotional" and "too sensitive" by some people, and criticized by others for "not caring enough." I struggle to set and to decipher boundaries: I don't want to appear stuck-up or remote, but there are plenty of things in my life that are no one else's business, and life's too short to cater to emotional vampires. At the same time, finding out that someone's worn very similar shoes to yours can be a comfort beyond telling: as powerful as imagination, simulation, and empathy can be, direct experience tends to inhabit a level more powerful still. One of the joys of meeting someone who shares a similar demographic feature or experiential background is the pleasure of tribal recognition - the "hey, here are my people!" feeling -- and the corresponding luxury of not being expected to explain things - which, if one is a minority of a group, can be something that's grown very tiresome indeed. I'm not talking only about racial ancestry or sexual orientation; I'm talking about any sort of social situation where something integral to your core self is treated by the majority of your companions as offbeat, exotic, or inexplicably and sometimes dangerously, unforgivably different. This can range from being bookish, or quiet, or academically instead of athletically inclined, to being vegetarian, pacifist, or Unitarian Universalist. There are times when one can get tired of feeling like a standing exhibit or "learning opportunity," and where it becomes a relief to be among people who already "get" the nuances. My husband's a mensch, but it's nonetheless very much a stretch for him to "get" why I'm a lot more protective and cautious about my physical space than he is, or why I'm ancy when there's an unlocked door anywhere there isn't a person, monitor, or dog keeping an eye on it, or why I don't give rides to strangers in distress, however harmless-looking he thinks they are, even though he understands that there's a physical component -- I'm shorter and slower than he is -- and he understands that there's a history he doesn't share: I was attacked by a stranger when I was twenty-one -- in a library, of all places -- and while I got away unharmed, it does make me twitchy when I'm in a place with too many human-sized nooks, and it does affect my willingness to explore or linger in strange places alone, however safe they appear to be.

Which can be a pain in the neck when you're an introvert, because I physically and mentally crave lots of time alone. Many of my best vacations have involved meandering around some other city on my own, and some of my happiest memories involve visiting museums, theatres, and restaurants by myself. That said, a number of my friends will testify that I'm a compulsive postcard writer. I'm worthless on the phone -- my IQ drops fifty points whenever I'm near a headset -- and if I wasn't currently getting a house ready to sell, I'd turn my mobile off and check it once a week at most -- but give me a stack of paper and a panel of stamps and I'm as happy as a clam. I enjoy feeling connected to people and knowing what's going on in their lives, but to be at my best for them -- to keep myself centered and grounded, and to practice those things I promise to do -- the writing, the preaching, the technical and the musical stuff -- all these require giving myself enough space and privacy to hear myself think, and it frankly often means being physically and emotionally unavailable to people who want me to show up to a potluck or party or reception or rally. I have had cause to regret this, especially when it's meant saying "no" to a friendship or a cause that matters to me, and sometimes the cost of saying "no" or keeping people at a distance is a friendship or alliance that I later envy other people for enjoying. I don't have easy answers for striking the right balance, because I haven't managed it yet. I do know that self-awareness and a corresponding amount of selfishness is in fact healthy: it isn't good for an alliance, friendship, or community when people deny or ignore their own needs and boundaries. It's not fun being around someone in the throes of martyr syndrome, be they a parent or colleague or committee chair, and I have been Not Fun myself with embarrassing frequency. Resentment is not a good ingredient for fellowship or charity, and one of the things I've learned from experienced church leaders is to reassess my priorities whenever I start feeling like "no one else cares" about how much work I'm putting into a project, or what I've personally sacrificed or set aside in order to make it happen. It may still be something that needs to be done, and helping take care of such things feeds into my need to be needed, but I've found that I'm more likely to tackle so-called "thankless" chores with a stout and joyful heart if I'm indeed clear in my head on why I care that it gets done, and whether why I care is in alignment with the larger organization. As one minister put it, church communities sometimes get caught between what they've been told their goals ought to be and what they actually find compelling or urgent. It's not unlike a kid who gets told on their birthday they ought to be wishing for world peace instead of a puppy.

It isn't a zero-sum equation, of course -- as far as I'm concerned, raising a puppy and working towards world peace are hardly mutually exclusive endeavors (unless you're a diplomat who just isn't home enough to own a dog). But the point remains: what you believe and what your community values is something that expresses itself in what you are willing to pay attention to, no matter how mundane or superficially "un-spiritual" the activity may be. If a community doesn't seem to support a task you've been performing on its behalf, there are several questions to ask: the first is whether the community actually has the resources to make that priority a priority, and to what degree does it have to be performed by a specific person or in a specific manner, if at all. Mind you, there are all sorts of complicatedness to this, and the older and larger a congregation becomes, the more you'll get into issues of history and territory and necessary compromises. If something that "ought to be done" keeps falling through the cracks, however, it's worth asking if it's something that has to be done -- like paying the rent -- or something that's for some other time or even some other congregation. At the same time, one also has to ask if it isn't a priority because it isn't a good fit, or if because it's hard, difficult, and scary.

And that's why this sermon is titled "Introversion and Community" rather than "Introversion vs. Community." Because for all I've said about tending to one's own boundaries, introversion or shyness is not a excuse for shirking one's potential. What that potential is, that's something every person has to negotiate with themselves and theirs -- and who they are vs. people wanting them to be someone or something else -- that can be a huge, dire struggle, and that's beyond the scope of this Sunday morning. What I'm talking about are those moments when inexperience or fear get in the way of innate generosity -- when people don't step up or reach out because they're terrified of being laughed or sneered at or otherwise rejected, or of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or of being taken for granted or taken advantage of. It's a real, sizable fear, and if you've ever been smacked down or sniped at in the course of trying to do the right thing, it can be even harder to feel like the risk is worth it, no matter how small the stakes. But the message that I want to leave with you today is that it is worth it, making such efforts, whether it's greeting someone you haven't spoken to before, or volunteering to read a story, or some other contribution of your gifts to a community that matters to you. It's important not to let other people impose on you beyond your limits, but it's equally important to assess how your comfort zones are defined and whether they still fit who you are now and what you want your communities to achieve. For many people, it takes a crisis or a loss to propel them out of zones they'd outgrown years before, or, alternately, to enforce boundaries they'd yearned to establish much, much earlier. For others, choosing to participate in a spiritual community -- such as a UU congregation -- is how they discover gifts and develop powers they hadn't thought of themselves as possessing.

Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, or some combination of the two types, my hope and prayer for you is for your communities to provide you with faith, regardless of whether they're spiritually-centered or not -- the faith that you matter; the faith to give different personalities and priorities the benefit of the doubt; the courage to serve without applause when needful; and the love to speak aloud encouragement and support. These are not glamorous acts in the everyday scheme of the world; they won't get you on the cover of Time or onto CNN or the front page of the Tennessean. But these are the things that transform lofty visions into actual results; they are how the individuals of a community truly set its priorities. Amen and alleluia.