https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf

In
the gospel today, Jesus said that anyone who does the will of God is
his mother, brother, or sister.  He defines his family by those who
do God’s will.  Jesus also taught us that our God is a God of love,
which is the starting point for knowing God’s will.  Jesus reminded
us of the great commandments. “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind”
and “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”  

I’ve
had some very helpful nudgings from this congregation recently.  Many
of them have been in your consistent reminders to take care of myself
since my knee injury, and collectively you’ve seemed to know that I
would need a lot of those reminders.  Being patient with my body
isn’t easy for me.

There
were two more nudgings as well.  One of you asked if I could say more
to  acknowledge the pain people have and struggle with.  That
certainly felt important.   Then came another call, asking me if I
could preach about self-love.  

I’ve
concluded that the Spirit herself has been at work in all of this.
Self-love is a very exciting topic to speak about!  I’ve spent most
of my continued education time during my years as your pastor working
on this for myself, and I think I’ve learned a few things that might
be of use.  Yet, this is also a nerve wracking topic to talk about,
both because it requires great vulnerability and because it is a
tender topic with which I might accidentally do harm.

Nevertheless,
it is time to talk about loving ourselves.  When we say
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” we tend to
ignore the implicit assumption that we love ourselves contained in
the rule.  To prepare for this sermon I asked on Facebook and through
some emails for people to offer definitions of love.  I told them it
was for preaching, I did not share that I was going to preach about
loving ourselves!  

The
answers were, of course, amazing.  A lot of the responses reflected
careful consideration followed by a conclusion that defining love is
very difficult  and perhaps impossible.  I got wished “good luck”
rather a lot!  Some tried to find the words anyway, and I think
you’ll find them useful for reflection.  In order not to distract
you, I’m going to offer some of your definitions words without
attributing them.  

• Love
  is more of an action than anything else. For example, I find making
  the bed in the morning a complete waste of time, my husband loves to
  come home to a made bed, when I make the bed, I do it for him
  because I know it will make him happy, that’s love.
• The
  glue of the Trinity, spilling over into creation.
• I
  feel that love is a choice. It stems from a feeling, but it is a
  solid, daily choice.
• the
  movement of goodness itself…
• Spirit
  is Love and Love is Spirit
• Companionship;  Communication;   Accepting
  each others thoughts and feelings; Reaching
  a hand in church; In
  the middle of the night reaching out to touch
• love
  cannot be defined because a definition automatically puts boundaries
  and love is not bounded

One
can give examples of the affects of love on both the lover and the
object of that love (animate or inanimate) and the effects of
love-Love casts out fear

Finally,
one among you shared a set of profound thoughts, which I cannot
summarize or shorten without weakening it:

Love
can mean many things  depending on the context.
I
think you mean love as it involves people or spirit rather than
things like ice cream or sports.

With
regard to people, love
is a state of unlimited commitment where
two people or even in some cases like a pet dog
become
so in sync with one’s feelings that the object
of love is an extension of the person and
foibles are overlooked or forgiven.

Then
there is spiritual love =the love of God or Jesus which is our rock
of support -it is often recognized in retrospect like in the
expression `If not for the love of God  I would have suffered’.
When one recovers from a traumatic experience or accident  one
is grateful for the love of the Divine.
I
know that  scientists and
engineers
are often tagged as  non-believers unless some measurement standard 
can document the cause of an event.  I don’t agree – there’s more
than mortals can conjure up that is involved.  
So
these are my ramblings – I’ll be interested in the views of others
and
remain
thankful
for all the love I have experienced.

Another
among you has since reminded me to tell you that love is so powerful
as to be very dangerous.  Since I was reminded of that I’ve been
trying figure out if that applies to self love or not.  It seems to
me that romantic love is far more dangerous than self love, but then
again that the world as we know it would fall apart if we were good
at self love.  (At least, the US economy would!)   So perhaps self
love is quite dangerous as well.  

Now,
the logical among you (and there are plenty of you!) are going to
wish that at this point I’d offer a definition of self-love, despite
the fact that I’ve just shown you by example how very hard it is to
define love at all.  I’m going to give this my best shot.  Self-love
is “loving yourself as you’d love your neighbor.”  Or, perhaps it
might be better for some of us to say “loving yourself as you’d
want a dearly loved one to be able to love themselves.”  I say this
because most people I know are far kinder to their loved ones than
themselves.  We speak to ourselves in ways we’d never permit
ourselves to speak to anyone else.  

There
are 4 girls in this world I consider my nieces, including one who is
biologically my niece.  The two oldest are old enough to sometimes be
terribly hard on themselves, and life has sometimes given me the
chance to have heart-to-heart talks with them when they’re in the
midst of self-blame.  Because of my deep love for them and because of
the training I’ve had in listening, I’ve sometimes been able to help
them translate their own self-criticisms.  It turns out that “I’m
an idiot” usually means something else entirely, for instance, “I’m
feeling frustrated that I can’t find my long underwear, and I’m
afraid it is a fundamental flaw in my humanity that I could have lost
them.”  Once translated, it becomes much easier to think together
about whether or not misplaced long underwear are really such an
enormous failure.

Now,
clearly, misplacing one’s long underwear does not an idiot make.  We
all have the capacity to assure a beloved child of that.  I’m less
confident about our ability to remember that when dealing with
ourselves.  We jump from a small infraction of our ideals to an
enormous overstatement of our failures.  We keep the self-criticism
tightly wound inside, most of us keep it so tightly wound that we try
to pretend it away even to ourselves.  

The
jump from small infraction to utter failure is the work of an
internal “self-critic.”  We all have them.  These are parts of
ourselves that manage to jump to strong, universal, and nasty
criticisms at lightspeed.  They sound like this:  “I’m lazy.”
“No one really likes me.” “I’m stupid.” “I’m selfish.”
“Everything is wrong and it is all my fault.”  “I’m going to
fail.”  “I’m fat.” “I’m going to get fired.”  “I’m ugly.”
“I’m unlovable.”  “I don’t deserve to be here.”   Most of us
have a lot of them, and they’re powerful.  While they all sound more
or less alike, each of us have our own set with their own  particular
refrains.  Self-critics within say things we’d never allow others to
say to us – and would never say to others – and they say them
regularly.

The
most shocking thing I’ve learned this decade is that self-critics are
TRYING TO HELP us.  They’re just really, really bad at it.  They
actually want to protect and support us, but they have bad
communication skills.  They think yelling at us and shaming us will
motivate us to do better.  Instead, it can cripple us at times, it
keeps us afraid, and it doesn’t give us any sense of freedom.
However, it is possible to learn how to TRANSLATE the criticism!
Under the ugly words is a loving intention, and if you listen to that
self-critic the way you might listen to a beloved niece, you can find
it.  The best part is that once you hear the loving-intention
underneath the criticism, the critic often stops yelling and gives
you some peace!

Listening
to our self-critics is terrifying.  However, in my experience, it is
more frightening to contemplate than to do.  Because the self-critic
always has a loving intention, and because that loving-intention
hasn’t usually been heard, it is actually sort of lovely!  It is far
worse to hear the criticisms regularly yelled from within than it is
to hear the loving-intention!

One
of the harshest critics I’ve had in my life used to tell me quite
often that I was “too much.”  This was extended to include, “too
loud, too big, and too pushy.”  I heard it MANY times a day.  With
the guidance of a loving teacher, I was able to hear beneath it.  The
self-critic was still feeling the pain of being an unpopular
elementary school student, and was trying to help me control myself
in ways that might make me more like-able.  The self-critic hadn’t
meant to hurt me!  It really did want to help, it was just scared!
Once I heard the loving-intention, it toned down. I still hear from
her once in a while, but only in fairly extreme circumstances (when
maybe I should be keeping my mouth shut after all!).  Even then, the
bite that once sought to control me isn’t there anymore.  

There
is a quote I’ve always loved, “Love me when I least deserve it
because that’s when I really need it.”  This applies to others when
they’re not able to behave well, and it applies to ourselves when
we’re not able to behave well, and it applies to our self-critics!
, Now, I don’t want to send you off to face your self-critics
without a bit more guidance.  If you are ready to live without quite
as much internal yelling, then I suggest a few things.  It helps a
lot to write things down.  “I’m too much” was a terrifying,
almost heart-stopping thing to hear inside myself, but in black and
white on paper it looked a lot smaller.  If you have a person you
trust, they are often quite helpful in working on translating with
you.  (Including your pastor.)  The process takes some time, so be
patient with yourself.  It may sound silly, but it requires actually
listening to the self-critic in order to get to the loving intention.
And, as loud and hurtful as self-critics can be, they’re also sorta
shy. This is a good time to remind you of the “feelings and needs”
list found here: https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wc_needs-feelings-inventory.pdf.  It helps to remember that we
all have needs, the needs are universal, needs do not make us weak –
AND most self-critics are trying to help us meet a need!!  A very
difficult to internalize reminder:  we can actually get along without
self-critics.  They are not the only reason we get anything done, we
are able to function and even thrive without internal yellers.  

I
started this conversation with the precious moments I’ve had when
I’ve been able to help translate my niece’s fears.  I started that
way on purpose.  Our inner critics are a lot like hurting children,
and they respond best to patient, gentle, loving attention; and they
sometimes need some affirmation that we know they’re hurting before
they can trust us to work with them.  The ways we seek to help
children when they’re hurting are the same skills we can use to be
more loving to ourselves.

Doing
the work to love ourselves is a part of God’s will.  If God loves us,
then God doesn’t want us spoken to in hurtful and abusive ways.
Thus, the time it takes to find the loving-intention is time well
spent.  Furthermore, love itself is a cool thing.  Every time it
stretches out in a new direction, it expands its capacity.  As we
love others more, we can love ourselves more.  As we love ourselves
more, we can love God more.   As we love God more, we can love others
and ourselves more.

Love
is the will of God.

Including,
self-love.

May
we do God’s will.  Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 10, 2018