Sermon given by Taffy Jervey, March 12, 2023.

I was thinking recently about how much people are like transformers, like we saw during A Time for All Ages.   As kids we come into this world without baggage, fresh beautiful whole selves full of love and curiosity.   Then as we grow, we start to encounter life situations that start to change us.   We have all encountered the teacher, mentor, boss, parent who has made us feel dumb when we asked a question– well up goes a shield and a lesson or is it really a story we tell ourselves – maybe I should not ask for help again – certainly never ask that person.  There are a lot of these “lessons” that we learn that make us put up our shields.   Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about – crying is bad - shield up.   A death happens and no one talks about it; don’t talk about death and your feelings about it – shield up.   You are not good at that - stop doing it and never do it again, even if it was bringing you joy, it does not matter – shield up.      

And in some cases, don’t we expand some of these comments to be much larger?   You’re not good enough at that may become you are not good enough period!  Our reading by Francis Weller illustrates this when his son says “I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”    As we have more of these encounters and some get expanded, more shields go up.  

Eventually we have lost our true selves and hidden away our innate goodness behind the shields.  We may not even be able to recognize ourselves anymore, just like these transformers that were once a car – there is no way of seeing the car under the warrior!  And over time, the shields seem to be stuck in place, don’t they?  And as Justin Michael Williams said, we have shut down our authenticity.  

The odd thing is that we have put up our shields and we may think we have made ourselves into warriors too.  Is that really true?   Do we feel good about ourselves?   Is something missing?   Can we only be our true selves in private or maybe with a few safe people?  Do we even remember who we really are or have we replaced it with so many stories and shields that it is not even visible to us?   

As kids and even often as adults we do not recognize that the issue that caused the shield to go up was not about us at all and often did not intend for us to make that change.  For example, teachers, parents, mentors and bosses do not generally intend for you to never ask for help.     Don’t cry or I will give you something to cry about is not meant to never ever cry.   Not talking about death is usually because people are uncomfortable about talking about it themselves.   It does not mean we should not talk about death, it often means we are not always properly equipped to discuss the hard stuff and may need more practice and tools. 

But it takes time to learn this stuff doesn’t it?  We often spend most of our lives trying to find ourselves.  We do therapy, coaching, reading, courses, meditation, retreats.  Are you on this same search? 

 There is an interesting exercise in “The Artist Way” that asks you to remember something you loved to do as a child and go do it again.   I recommend that exercise to everyone.  When I read that book and did the exercises with a group of you here at church, I think we all got real benefits from it.  It brought us some joy and taught us some things about ourselves that we have forgotten or shielded.   It is with books like this that we search for what is missing in our lives.   And luckily for us they are useful tools.

 I think a lot of us are seeing that something is missing or doesn’t feel right anymore.  Listen to pop radio and you can hear Pink singing ‘I wish someone would have told me that this life is ours to choose,’ in her song ‘All I know so Far’ or the song Headlights by Alex Warren when he opens with “I’m in the backseat of my own life!”   Look at the great resignation that started in 2021 with about 47 million people resigning from their jobs because they want something different.  Millions of us in a journey to find something more.

And what is it that we are missing?   That are we trying to find?  There is a story some of you may have heard called The Golden Buddha.   In Thailand centuries ago, there was a large Buddha made of solid gold.  The community of monks heard about armies coming to their temple and were concerned about losing the Buddha so they covered it with mud and cement.   The armies came and saw the cement Buddha and left it where it was, but they were there for quite some time occupying the area.  By the time the armies left, everyone had forgotten about the Golden Buddha.  One day a young monk was worshipping  at the foot of the Buddha and a piece of the cement fell off exposing a small portion of the gold.  The young monk ran to bring back the older monks and they chipped away at the mud and cement until the gold Buddha was fully uncovered.   This story while historical true is also used as a metaphor for our lives.   Instead of shields and transformers, they use mud and cement, that we have to slowly chip away to get to the gold that is inside.   The gold that is inside all of us, our true selves.   

 Our true selves that we have hidden behind the shields.   We are trying to transform back, but the shields are often stuck in place after years of practice and or neglect.  We have created stories from our life lessons and then we spend years trying to replace them to get back to ourselves.   Maybe everyone does not do this, but I expect most if not all of us have shields up that we would like to figure out how to remove and many that we do not even know we have.

A very good friend of mine has a way of making me cry so I sat with the question of why it is so easy for her to do this.   She has a way, without even being aware of it of poking holes in my stories and shattering my shields.   With each one, it is like peeling an onion and with each peel of the onion come tears.   We break into the story and realize it is wrong and something gets released and we can lower a shield.  Sometimes it is a good friend or words in a book or a song and sometimes it is the small still voice you hear or your awakening senses.  Over time if we are lucky, we learn to be ourselves again, without the shields.  The person who as a child was not afraid or ashamed of themselves or parts of themselves and was full of love and curiosity.   And once you have starting seeing that authentic self, the gold within, there is no going back.  We can’t live the old way anymore.  

I learned this after my late wife Joanie died, when I tried to go back to work and I thought that I would bury myself in work, but that did not happen.   I went back to work and it just did not fit anymore.   The job and work environment had changed over the years and I had changed and it was time for me to move on to something new that fit me better.  

Even before then, I was beginning to unearth my authentic self by taking piano lessons and doing art work.   Bronnie Ware writes about the Top Five Regrets of the Dying and I do not want to have the number 1 regret – “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”; or for that matter the number 5 regret – “I wish I had let myself be happier.”   As she says in her book, “It takes a bucket full of courage”, but I am strapping on the bucket, taking the drivers wheel and seeing what happens.   I listened to the small still voice that said this would be a good sermon and the rest of the voices pointing me to books and references for the readings and hymns and story, so this chapter I am trying out a church service.   I will keep listening and see what comes next.   I figure if I am still on this earth, I still have work to do and more to chip away.   

I am sure many of you are on this same journey.  It is why we participate together in many of these ways of belonging to this church.  To be vulnerable around safe people so we can chip away at some of our shields to find our own gold inside.  Isn’t that what we are all looking for really?  Isn’t that gold what we were born to be?   What is your small voice telling you?   Are you listening?   

Amen and blessed be.