{"id":138,"date":"2018-03-18T03:09:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T03:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=138"},"modified":"2019-10-29T01:29:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T01:29:13","slug":"slow-down-be-anxious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"Slow Down, Be Anxious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Change brings anxiety; it can\u2019t be helped.\u00a0 And anxiety brings an urge to resolve the discomfort as quickly as possible.\u00a0 But interesting, creative, thoughtful, and healthy change can\u2019t be rushed.\u00a0 And unsettling times don\u2019t always require instant solutions.\u00a0 How can we take necessary care of ourselves and stay anxious for awhile?\u00a0\u00a0
<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This church has been through a lot lately.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m still hearing the stories and learning about all of the tough circumstances you were asked to go through.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interim ministers, of course, are expected to work with a congregation to resolve issues and feelings surrounding the ending of a previous ministry.  That\u2019s why the UUA recommends interim periods before a congregation begins a search to call a new settled minister.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this congregation had much more to deal with than merely the ending of Rev. Mitra Rahnema\u2019s ministry with you.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were other staff changes and departures, under sometimes sad and difficult circumstances.  And most of those challenges took place during Rev. Rahnema\u2019s sabbatical, so your congregation was asked to deal with those challenges while also dealing with the extra work required of sabbatical coverage.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rev. Rahnema\u2019s resignation did not resolve those issues, of course, rather, her resignation announcement threw you into another set of challenges as your church leaders worked to find new, interim leadership:  first Rev. Tomlinson, and now myself.  Another staff resignation came this fall.  Another new hire.  And it\u2019s a blessing to have new hires to fill staff vacancies, but new staff also require additional work to train them and get them up to speed with the job.  And now with Kendra Frederickson-Laouini\u2019s resignation, fortunately a happy parting, we have one more goodbye to say, and one more break in our hearts we will need to mend.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, I\u2019m sorry to say that my first six weeks with you have not been a time of peace and healing, as I had hoped and you all have needed.  Our congregation has been further stressed by needing to take action concerning a member of our congregation who has been acting in ways that have made church members and staff anxious and afraid, and who has taken public actions that slander me and church lay leaders and damaged the reputation of our church in the neighborhood.  Dealing with that situation has been a challenge of its own, adding emotional toil for the church on top of the actual work required to respond to the situation.  And that work and emotional energy has used up resources that has forced us to postpone the still lingering work required of addressing the past concerns.  The emotions from those past concerns now face the threat of being buried rather than being brought to the surface and directly addressed thus making our healing work even more difficult.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am exhausted by it all, as I\u2019m sure you must be too.  I am troubled.  I move fitfully between fatigue and anger, frustration, some productive work alternating with what feels like spinning my wheels, feeling hopeful and calm, and then stressed and hyper-alert again.  In a word, I feel anxious.  Maybe you do, too.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s talk a little this morning about anxiety.  Shall we?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, I shared with you that I have the kind of personality that when I\u2019m faced with a challenging situation I look to ease my anxiety by going to knowledge and wisdom.  I want to know the facts.  I Google.  And then I try to make sense of the facts by fitting them into a theory of the universe, or a \u201cworldview\u201d that I create in my mind.  In other words, when I feel anxious, I seek understanding.  Understanding a troubling circumstance gives me comfort.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that works for me.  And probably many of you.  My personality type is a pretty common one in Unitarian Universalist churches.  In fact you might say that the personality type of the UU faith itself is finding comfort for our troubles through intellectual understanding.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are other ways that other personality types find comfort.  Last week, I listed:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comfort of community and connecting with tradition
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The comfort of humor and taking it all lightly
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The comfort of feeling our strength and asserting our will into the world.
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The comfort of seeing deeply into the shared values that often underlie surface conflict.
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The comfort of refocusing on the good, the true, the highest, the ideal.
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The comfort of turning away from personal needs and placing oneself at service to the needs of others.
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The comfort of creativity and the ability to invent needed solutions to our problems.
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And the comfort of appreciating the inherent beauty in existence even in times of trouble.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are all good, as is the comfort of wisdom and understanding.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s another approach to dealing with our feelings of anxiety.  And that\u2019s the recommendation that sometimes it\u2019s OK to simply be anxious.  Sometimes it\u2019s even good to be anxious.  To live permanently in an anxious state would be too much.  That\u2019s not the goal.  But some anxiety, for some time, is good.  In fact, sometimes, deliberately holding on to anxiety, carefully managed, for as long as we can, leads to better outcomes than rushing away from our anxiety.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In organizational theory there\u2019s a concept called the productive zone of disequilibrium.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me explain.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you\u2019re baking a cake.  And I am not a cook so forgive me if I get this totally wrong.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you\u2019re making a cake (you not me) you combine all the ingredients into a bowl and then you mix it.  Mixing the ingredients is what I mean by anxiety.  Doesn\u2019t anxiety sometimes feel like someone is taking a mixer to your insides?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you turn on the mixer too high then all the ingredients simply go flying all over the kitchen and you have a mess.  But if you turn the mixer down too low then maybe the ingredients don\u2019t get broken down and recombined in the way they must in order to become cake batter.  And of course, if you don\u2019t turn on the mixer at all than the ingredients just sit there; there\u2019s no transformation at all.  There\u2019s no anxiety, but there\u2019s no batter either, and there will be no cake.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same thing happens when the batter is made and poured into the pan and put into the oven.  The baker needs to introduce anxiety into the system in order to move through the process that transforms the batter into cake.  In this case, introducing anxiety means turning on the oven, adding a little heat to the system.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now if the baker turns the heat too high, the cake burns, smoke comes out of the oven, the smoke alarm goes off, and the cake is ruined.  But if the baker turns on the heat too low, or forgets to turn on the oven at all, then the batter just sits there and no transformation ever takes place.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the baker turns on the heat just right, then we get to have cake.  The proper temperature, the temperature that allows transformation to happen, without creating a mess or a ruin, that\u2019s the Goldilocks zone.  That\u2019s the productive zone of disequilibrium.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A better analogy might be cooking a stew on the stovetop.  With a stew, a chef has to constantly monitor the cooking to keep it simmering just so.  Turn up the flame a little, watch what happens.  If it starts to boil, turn down the flame.  Stir, watch, adjust the flame, add a little salt, adjust the flame again.  Keep the stew cooking, which means keep the stew anxious, but keep the cooking in the productive zone of disequilibrium where the right kind of transformation happens, making our careful way between the missed opportunity of raw ingredients that stay exactly as they were, and the disaster of exploding the whole dish into a giant a mess and we never get our meal.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the goal of navigating through this interim period.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You want to make a change.  In fact you have to make a transformation because the change has already happened.  Rev. Rahnema has resigned.  The next settled ministry will be good and bad in different ways than Rev. Rahnema was good and bad.  In any case you will not have Rev. Rahnema again, so a change has happened.  Now we are in a transition period:  an interim.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change is unsettling. What was firmly planted has been uprooted.  The support structure of the church has been dismantled in a few places, and the remaining supports are being asked to serve in new and different ways.  Will the structure stay up?  Or will the whole church come crashing down?  You feel anxious.  Of course you do.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do too, frankly.  I\u2019m also anxious.  Not because I think the church is in danger of crashing.  It isn\u2019t.  The church won\u2019t crash.  In fact, the church structure is a lot stronger than you think.  It\u2019s a healthy system.  A lot of resilience.  We will get through this.  We will be fine.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019m anxious, because, and this is what I said earlier, I don\u2019t know what the future of this church will be, and not knowing something produces anxiety for me.  It\u2019s not my job to know your future.  That\u2019s your job.  My job is to help you dream then name then create your future, which will happen with your new settled minister.  I\u2019m not anxious for your future.  Your future will be fine, no problem, one way or the other.  I\u2019m anxious because I don\u2019t know and not knowing creates anxiety for me.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not a bad thing, right?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s my message for today.  Feeling anxious is not always a bad thing.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety is the heat in the oven that transforms the batter into cake.  Anxiety is the mixer that transforms ingredients into batter.  We need to be anxious, a little.  We need to be mixed up, and unsettled.  That\u2019s how cakes get made.  Now we\u2019re cooking!
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the most common mistake that a congregation can make during the interim time, is really the same mistake that any of us are tempted to make every time we feel anxiety in our lives.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety is uncomfortable.  It\u2019s scary.  Maybe it even feels painful.  We identify anxiety as the problem, and then we rush to get through the anxiety as quickly as possible.  Anything goes, as long as it relieves our anxiety.  How quickly can we get back to the status quo, we ask, rather than recognizing the gift we\u2019ve been given of an opportunity to transform.  The productive zone of disequilibrium.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it isn\u2019t the anxiety that\u2019s the problem.  The real problem is the underlying situation that caused the anxiety.  Sometimes our work to relieve the anxiety allows us to ignore the deeper problem, which only sets us up for greater problems in the future.  Let\u2019s not do that.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know about the phenomenon of the rebound boyfriend or girlfriend.  A person who is used to being in a relationship is so uncomfortable finding themselves single after a break-up, that they quickly pair up with a new person, who quickly turns out to be not a good match at all.  The new relationship re-made the status quo, and so, relieved the anxiety of being single, but didn\u2019t really fix the problem that led to the break-up.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The better strategy for most people is not to get partnered again right away.  Instead, be willing to be anxious for a while, tolerate the anxiety of being single, and use the opportunity to learn the lessons of the past relationship, to figure out for yourself again what you really want to do with your life (your \u201cmission\u201d in other words) and to name for yourself who you really are for yourself rather than who you were in relationship with your old partner (your \u201cidentity\u201d in other words).  And then having really learned the lessons of the past, with a clear sense of your true mission and identity, go out and search for that new minister, excuse me, I mean new partner, who really serves your goal of a healthy and satisfying, long-lasting and productive relationship.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t do that if you aren\u2019t willing to be a little anxious for a little while.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\u2019t do this, if we aren\u2019t willing to be a little anxious for a little while.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By accepting an interim you\u2019ve already stated your willingness to not immediately re-create the status quo.  And we\u2019ve got a good long interim period to work with, two and a half years, or a little less now.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s agree that we have been given the gift of an opportunity to transform, to turn flour and eggs and butter and milk and sugar into batter, and batter into cake, but only if we willingly step into and carefully preserve, the productive zone of disequilibrium.  Let\u2019s slow down and be anxious.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, if I were a chef, peeking into the kitchen of this church for the last several months, I would say that we have the oven turned up a little high.  Wouldn\u2019t you agree?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019m not suggesting that we need to stay at this level of anxiety for the entire interim period.  We\u2019re about to boil over, I\u2019m feeling, or burn the cake, or burn out.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s see if we can turn down the flame a little, without letting it go out.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worship is one way we can turn down the flame.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s sing some songs like \u201cComfort Me\u201d because we need some comfort.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s breathe in peace.  And breathe out love.  And let\u2019s remember to keep breathing when the stew starts to feel a little over-heated.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come to worship on Sunday, we need to be together and walk this journey together.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come to the special worship I\u2019ve planned for the afternoon of Easter Sunday when we will have a designated time to address the stressful circumstances we\u2019ve experienced over the last several months.  I\u2019ve called that worship service a Chalice Circle, deliberately building on the work that Rev. Tomlinson did with her Healing Circle back in December.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re feeling anxious, remember that in a church community we\u2019re all on the same side.  We\u2019re all feeling anxious.  Everyone else here is struggling just like you are and doing the best they can.  We need each other to turn down the heat a little.  Give ourselves a break.  Practice some forgiveness; we\u2019re just human.  Practice compassion; it\u2019s a tough time for all of us.  We need not think alike to love alike.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will get through this time of anxiety.  We will get through, quickly, I hope, this time of unhealthy, overheated anxiety.  We will come together into a place of peace, and there I will release you to your future.  But we will come to our best future if we are willing to be a little anxious for a little while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Change brings anxiety; it can\u2019t be helped.\u00a0 And anxiety brings an urge to resolve the discomfort as quickly as possible.\u00a0… Read more Slow Down, Be Anxious<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}