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Spirituality Sermons "Amazing Jane: from Addiction to Wholeness"
Spirituality Sermons "Amazing Jane: from Addiction to Wholeness"
| "Amazing Jane: from Addiction to Wholeness" |
| Written by Rev. Megan Lynes |
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AMAZING JANE
Lyrics by Sonia Dada
Amazing Jane, she lived
On the corner of the street,
In a doorway on the street right
Right next to me.
As I would leave my house nearly everyday
She would go on about her way.
She would go on about her way and I’d go mine.
People would say that she’s crazy
But she would say, “ah—If they only knew.”
Oh, there ain’t no redemption—no redemption
Oh, when you are stone cold sane.
Crazy is just another point of view.
From a house on a hill by the waterside,
She’d been working for a family
With a young boy, always feeling all alone.
They would go by themselves to the lake
To try and stay afloat.
They tried to catch the wind and sail a boat away,
To sail away.
People would say that is crazy.
But of everything said, they only know what is true:
Spent all his time, all his time in a sand box
Writing nursery rhymes, nursery rhymes.
Crazy, is just another point of view.
Crazy in this world—just another point of view.
She’d walk in circles, talk in tongues;
People would fear and sympathize.
They believe she sees the world
Through an angry eye.
Amazing Jane…she died…
Sleeping in the rain.
She was sleeping when the angels came to take her away.
She was in the arms of a saint, flying to the sky
When I looked up to say good-bye. Good Bye...
Laughing awhile I cried
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, yeah...
People thought I was crazy, - baby...
But, if I ain’t crazy, you know I will be soon.
There ain’t no redemption, no redemption when
You are stone cold, stone cold sane.
Crazy, Crazy, Crazy--Just another point of view.
Crazy is just another point of view.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah Providence has come.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah Kingdom come.
Amazing Jane may have been all alone,
But she went beholden to no one.
Amazing Jane may have been all alone,
But she went beholden to no one...
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah, Providence has come.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah, Kingdom come.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah, Providence has come.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah, bright through the sun.
Hallelujah Sister, Hallelujah, providence has come...
Three Readings:
If you cannot do unto others what you would that they should do to you, at least do not unto them what you would not that they should do unto you.
If you would not be made to work ten hours at a stretch in factories or in mines, if you would not have your children hungry, cold, and ignorant, if you would not be robbed of the land that feeds you, if you would not be shut up in prisons and sent to the gallows or hanged for committing an unlawful deed through passion or ignorance, if you would not suffer wounds nor be killed in war, do not do this to others. All this is so simple and straightforward, and admits of so little doubt, that it is impossible for the simplest child not to understand, nor for the cleverest man to refute it. It is impossible to refute this law, especially because this law is given to us, not only by all the wisest men of the world, not only by the Man who is considered to be God by the majority of Christians, but because it is written in our minds and hearts.
- Leo Tolstoy 1895
“…there is no being neutral for a church. South African Bishop Desmond Tutu said it this way: “When the elephant has his foot on the tail of the mouse, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” And the elephant these days has his foot on the tail of the mouse—the elephant has his foot on the single mom who is working but can’t earn enough to both pay the rent and feed her children; the elephant has his foot on the Muslim fellow, because of his name and color and place of origin; the elephant has his foot on the mentally ill man who has lost coverage for his medication; the elephant has his foot on children whose school days have been cut and cut and cut. There is no neutral here. There is only witnessing or failure to witness. There is only responsible citizenship or apathy.”
- Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell
To the Occupiers on Wall Street:
“Moneyman”
Hey Moneyman the crowd is outside. The past, the future and the now is outside. The teachers and cooks and the drop-outs too. Word on the street is they looking for you…
Hey Moneyman they saying what’s the score? And how much blood have you spilled on the butcher shop floor? War and debt numbers keep running, don’t tell me they’re true. Yeah, the crowd is outside and they asking of you…
Hey Moneyman Moneyman the mayor’s on the phone. He says he wants to know if all those people went home. Those momma’s and poppa’s and students and cooks. Those teachers and preachers, one second I’ll look…
Hey Moneyman Moneyman the tents are still up, the songs are still singing and the coffee’s in cups. The night’s due to fall and the sun’s going down, but there’s still a whole mess of good folks hanging ’round…
They eyes are wide and their voices are loud. Its white and black and colorless proud. The signs are big and the smiles are bright. By heaven I reckon its gon’ be one hell of a night!
Hey Moneyman poor Moneyman you should slip out the back. Cuz’ the forces of greed are under attack. No bombs or bullets or rocks or guns. Just hashtags and voices at the tops of their lungs!
And Moneyman Moneyman I wont need a ride. But if you need me…
You can find me outside.
- Wasalu “Lupe Fiasco” Jaco (adapted)
“Amazing Jane: From Addiction to Wholeness”
The First Parish in Bedford
Rev. Megan Lynes
Oct 23rd, 2011
“Starve the addiction. Feed the love. And don’t try to do it alone.”
These words were given to me by a woman who was over 400 pounds. She couldn’t walk without a walker because her knees could not hold her. Her ankles were like stacked inner tubes. Her fingers seemed so tiny on the ends of her arms that they reminded me of blown up latex gloves. I met her on the gastrointestinal ward at the hospital, where she lay in a special bed, which was double wide, and double strong. In the hall outside her room, the nurses were laughing about how they’d have to call in everyone on duty to roll the bed down to the O.R later. As I entered the room, the person in the bed near the door rolled her eyes toward the curtain dividing the roommates, “you can’t miss her!” She said, “ha ha.” Her cutting voice filled the room. On the other side of the curtain the quiet was absolute.
“Knock knock,” I said at the edge of the curtain. When my eyes met with the woman in the bed I could see in how she held her face that she’d been sneered at, ridiculed, and looked down on for a long long time. An outcast, a loser, a weakling, a waste. I’ll call her Amazing Jane. We all know an Amazing Jane. One couldn’t tell from looking at her, that she had raised 13 foster children single-handedly, that she’d written books about helping kids with learning disabilities, that she’d won awards for her poetry, or that she’d lived through one of the worst abusive childhoods you could ever imagine.
When we look at someone who struggles with addiction, it’s so easy to judge them. What most people saw when they met Jane was her enormous body, and it sickened them. Where was her self control? Why couldn’t she just stop eating? What a disgusting habit.
But to be honest, most of us know what it feels like to struggle with an addiction of one form or another. Our own disapproval of others comes from our own hurt places.
- Addiction is like a tangled fishing net trapping a dolphin ten feet below the surface.
- Addiction is the quiet place in the loudest of bars, where no one knows anybody’s name.
- Addiction is the hollow pit within the body, waves crashing through all the emptiness, till only standing still will do.
- Addiction is when the sidewalk ceases, and the exhaust of the highway goads and guides the lonely hitch hiker on.
- Addiction is the taste of rum and coke.
- Addiction is the fear of the last cigarette.
- Addiction is a whole loaf of Wonder bread eaten slice by slice, standing up.
- Addiction is the magazine hidden, then found by mom, and the shattering shame.
- Addiction is the need for approval, as real as a flower needs the sun, soon pulsing like solar panels craving more and more and more...
- Addiction is the way we believe the rumors - that to be someone notable we must be smart or rich or funny or beautiful.
- Addiction is the longing to be revered after we are gone, for more than just the love we left behind.
Addiction takes a thousand forms, hiding out secretly in the privacy of our own hushed lives, or masked as a social norm. We know it when we feel it personally, but lest we ever feel alone in our individual battles, we might remind ourselves that addiction worldwide is at an all time high. The American economy has become rooted in materialism. Our culture honors a false standard of values that puts short-term profits over societal health, and measures human success by personal income instead of character, integrity, and generosity.[1]
One definition of an addiction is an uncontrollable dependence on a substance, habit, or practice. Children and adults are addicted to violent TV. Corporations are addicted to wealth and power. Our government is addicted to war. Our country is addicted to oil. In our own lives we may feel alone and misunderstood in our struggles, so it’s important to notice that there are often underlying systemic reasons that individuals end up with their own versions of private pain.
I need only think of the book Angela’s Ashes[2], to call to mind how the poorest of the poor in Ireland in the 1930’s and 40’s, became a society entrenched in alcoholism. Poverty and starvation in Ireland was greater than ever. Fathers who could not face the shame of having no work and no food to bring home to their children, ended up in bars drinking on a tab they could not pay, trying to ease away their pain. In major cities across America today, poor mothers buy their children burgers off the dollar menu at McDonald’s because that’s what they can afford. According to new statistics on childhood obesity, the number of adolescents who are overweight has tripled since 1980 and the prevalence among younger children has more than doubled.[3] In the Chicago Sun-Times this week, I read about how the recession and a poor economy are linked to a rise in child abuse.[4] People are shaking their babies!
One problem begets another. America today is caving under the stresses caused by, among other things, the disparity between rich and poor. We’ve been hearing that 14 million Americans today cannot find work. Many of them, us, have been looking for work for more than six months. Taking into account inflation, minimum wage has not gone up in 50 years.[5] 1% of Americans own 42% of the financial wealth in this country. The top 5%, own nearly 70%.
As ordinary citizens we take part in a democracy that is not even pretending to treat everyone as equals. Many of us feel disempowered about the way things have turned out. We’d rather not think about how bad it’s gotten. Others of us are ready to fight, but until now it wasn’t easy to tell what to do. Well hats off to Arab Spring, and let us call what has just recently begun, an American Autumn. This year’s signature tactic is the sustained occupation of symbolic public spaces.
How many of you have made your way down to Occupy Boston, or know someone who has? Keep your hand up for a second. If you haven’t yet, see if you can find one of these people who’s hand is up and ask them what their experience was like. Today’s lyceum focuses on this movement, so I urge you to attend. I hear the Peace and Social Justice group is organizing a bus to head into Boston together. Getting involved in an initiative this significant is like adding fuel to your engines. You can go a long way on a little fuel. Even half an hour spent among people who are fighting for something important, will fill you up with some hope. We’ve all been running on fumes for quite some time.
At it’s core, Occupy Boston is an anti-apathy movement. It’s a “get connected, and find all those other activists who’ve been out there all along” movement. This movement is homegrown, it’s ours. The whole thing is a big experiment, and there’s room to try things. Cities all over the U.S are filling up with activists, ordinary people like you and me. Boston is not far away, but even if you don’t want to make the trek there’s a lot you can do by posting hashtags (which are computer links to important information) on your Facebook page, or signing petitions to our legislators, or sending tent pegs in with Brown Pulliam so that all those tents crammed in at Dewey Park won’t keep blowing over on the protestors.
I grew up in a generation that was envious of the sixties. We know that those who protested then, and many of you are here in this room, brought an end to the war in Vietnam, brought more equality for women and fought against the intolerable injustice of racism. People my age, and some of us are here in this room, long to have been a part of that. We know we stand on your shoulders. Yet rather than find ways to link arms with you, societal messages have confused us. We were told that sexism has ended, that war is necessary to wipe out the “axis of evil,” and that racism is just a natural part of being human. None of that is true.
How can I tell you this without showing my heart? I want to be a part of a people’s movement today. I want to radically alter the fate of the world with all of you. I don’t care if you’re 62, or 81 or 17. This is our aching and beautiful world. As June Jordan, the Caribbean American feminist poet said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”[6]
The people in Boston’s tent city are all races, all classes, they come from all walks of life. On Friday night there was a huge event created by people of color called “Occupy the Hood.” It was a marvelous affair. Preachers, civic leaders, teenagers in community colleges and Ivy Leagues, men just out of prison, social workers and factory workers, all made brilliant impassioned speeches. This movement is the place for everyone’s voices to be heard. People hungry for good fresh visionary leadership listened. Starve the addiction. Feed the love. And don’t try to do it alone.
For a society to perpetuate myths and inequity, it must be convinced that those who stand up against it are not only misguided but crazy. Author Ray Bradbury once said, “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
I am reminded of the great German philosopher Nietzsche, who mid way through his life removed himself from the world of people, and became ever more distrustful of others. The author Milan Kundera writes: “Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin, witnessed a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip. Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when it was said Nietzsche’s mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason... his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse... His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.”[7] Standing up against cruelty earned him society’s dismissal.
Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, is another figure both revered for his brilliance and at the same time repeatedly subject to scrutiny. Many people of his time called him insane, and he was labeled a “wild boar” by the pope himself. Luther did indeed have a “unique” personality. For much of his life he suffered from anxiety and was known as a hypochondriac. He was also prone to colorful commentary; once he described the Renaissance Humanist, Erasmus’ writings on free will as ‘dung served on gold plates.’ Yet his determination to change the beliefs and actions of those of his time made a lasting effect on all of Christendom, and secular society as well.
In his 95 theses posted on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, Luther strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment of sin could be purchased with money. Luther taught that salvation was not earned by good deeds or bought with “indulgences” but received only as a free gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus as redeemer from sin.[8] Thus his statement of faith ultimately fought against classism. He did not believe that the wealthy were more beloved by God. The fact that they lived lives of luxury was not proof of their future redemption, but rather their greed.
So call us crazy, but the time has come to stand up against the powers that be. This weekend John and I signed a petition created by the UU ministers of our Mass Bay District. We’re sending it to the Boston Globe and local papers. It reads thus: “As clergy and people of faith, we applaud the Occupiers in Boston and elsewhere who are reigniting American democracy from the grassroots. We join them in the vision of a society where all people enjoy a fair shake, with equitable access to education, healthcare, housing, and other basics necessary to achieve a dignified life. We are appalled that the nation’s poverty rate today is higher than when Martin Luther King Jr. organized the “Poor People’s March” back in 1968.
Dr. King inspired people of all races and classes to walk for “Jobs and Justice.” The national Occupy movement asserts the same goals. These protests are occurring for a reason. In the more than four decades since King’s death, middle-class incomes have stagnated, the jobless rate has soared, and the super-rich have managed to manipulate financial regulations and tax rates to claim an ever growing share of the nation’s wealth. The richest 400 people in the country now have more assets than the poorest 150 million of their fellow citizens combined.
The vast majority of Americans--the 99% and many of the other 1% -- are angry when some of the biggest businesses in the country pay no taxes. We see banks that brought the country to the edge of economic ruin being bailed out with public money, while millions forfeit their homes in the mortgage meltdown these same banks created. We feel increasingly powerless when mammoth corporations, invested with all the rights of “persons” to spend limitless amounts of money in electoral politics, hand-tailor legislation to benefit shareholders and CEOs at the expense of citizens and workers.
Has Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” now become government of, by, and for the specially privileged? In order to restore our democracy, ordinary people must rise up to restore control of their own lives and economic destiny. We call on all to join in supporting the Occupiers closest to you, logistically, politically, faithfully. Now is the time.”
If the first step to recovering from addiction is admitting that we have a problem, then at long last, we as American citizens are willing to own up to the truth about who or what we’ve become. We live in a culture of addiction, and we face it in our personal lives, and as a nation on a monumental scale.
Standing beside Jane in her hospital room that day, she told me of her upcoming surgery to physically shrink the size of her stomach. She also told me of the years she’d spent, and the hope she’d found in the Recovery Movement. She’d been learning how to think differently about what her body needed, change her habits, and become vulnerable enough to ask for help in the times she felt the worst. She had found people to trust who understood how the abuse in her past affected her sense of self worth and determination. Looking at the big picture of her life with honesty was her recipe to wholeness. “Starve the addiction. Feed the love,” had become her mantra. “And I cannot do it alone.”
This month, nearly five years post surgery, I reconnected with Jane on Facebook. Though she is now a third the weight she once was, her fierce kind mama bear eyes are the same. They shine with proud conviction and joy. “My kids helped me, and my support networks, and my faith, and my own gosh-darn stubborn willpower. I just knew I couldn’t stay the way I was. I absolutely had to change. And the best part is, I didn’t do it alone.”
People like Jane, and people like you, give me courage. When we stand together for a society that works for the health of the whole, we become stronger in character, integrity, and generosity. We are a recovery movement at work.
When we stand together for justice as a people of faith, some may stop and stare.
People will say we’re crazy, but crazy’s just another point of view.*
Amen.
*Note - “people will say we’re crazy, but crazy’s just another point of view” is a line from the song “Amazing Jane” by Sonia Dada, which was performed by First Parish dancers prior to the sermon.
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