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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
September 26, 2010
Reading:
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water,
Yet nothing can better overcome the hard and strong,
For they can neither control nor do away with it.
The soft overcomes the hard,
The yielding overcomes the strong;
Every person knows this,
But no one can practice it.
Tao Te Ching
Sermon:
This morning I would like to offer some thoughts about our
strengths, our weaknesses, and the relationship between them. We
tend to celebrate our strengths as good while we lament our
weaknesses as regrettable. But it’s more complicated than that. In
this sermon I would like to consider the paradoxical relationship
between what we do well and what we don’t.
Over the years I have learned that there are some things I am pretty
good at, that come easily to me. I see people struggling to develop
skills that I just kind of know how to do. But there are other
things I am not good at. I notice people cruising along in an
activity or project that I have no idea how to even start—not a
clue. That is to say, I’m good at some things, not at others.
I think we spend the first part of our lives trying to identify
those things we are good at: pursuing them, developing these
talents, seeing how far they might take us. But then we might begin
to look at the other side: our weaknesses, that which we struggle
with. The psychologist, C.G. Jung said that the essential project of
the first half of our lives is to develop our strengths. During the
second half, we pursue our weaknesses: the things that do not come
easily.
But it’s probably not that neat. We are always evaluating strengths
and weaknesses: what we’re good at, what we’re not.
● ● ●
When I was in junior high school, a teacher noticed that I expressed
myself well in writing. She identified writing as a skill I ought to
develop. When the time came for choosing courses for the next year,
and I was all set to leap into advanced placement math and science,
she took me aside and said, “um, that might not be your best path in
life.” She convinced me to sign up for creative writing instead,
thereby setting me off on a very different path. Looking back—given
the way I think, given what I am naturally good at—I am sure it was
it was the right choice.
A few years ago, I happened to make contact with this teacher again.
By then she was 101 years old, living in nursing home in another
part of the country. I wrote her a letter, telling her what I was up
to, thanking her for the interest she showed in me when I was an
overweight 7th grader who almost never said anything in class.
Later, a mutual acquaintance conveyed her comment that it was
best-written letter she had ever received from a former student.
She’s still a fan.
Now I have to say that my talent as a writer is relative. There are
many people who are much better than I am. But on the field of
capacities I have been given, this one rises taller than others. So
that given the right set of circumstances and a lot of effort, I can
turn out good work. Occasionally, I can be quite effective. It is a
strength.
How about a weakness?
Well, in this past week’s theology class, we considered the work of
the Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams. I noted
that in person Adams was lively, engaging, articulate, compelling.
But you would never know that from his writing. It plods along,
never quite getting off the ground. I read a sentence of his, and I
read it again, and again—and I still don’t know he’s trying to say.
I am the opposite. Maybe I’m a good writer, but as far as in person,
on the spot, articulateness: it’s not there. I don’t think fast on
my feet, and I’m slow to figure out what I want to say. People
comment that I’m often quiet in meetings. It’s true. I am not at my
best in small groups. By the time I realize what I’ve got to
contribute, the conversation has changed topic several times, and I
don’t usually have the courage to say, “You know, when you were
talking about this thing like five minutes ago, well, here’s what I
think about that.”
Verbal articulateness on the spot is not a strength of mine. Let’s
call it a weakness. I listen to people who can just talk, come out
with perfectly formed sentences, one after another without so much
as a pause, and I am in awe. I don’t know how they do it.
And yet: many have been the times when I have been so grateful for
this weakness. Because if I had been able to find the words to get
out what I had been thinking, it could have gotten me in trouble.
Being slow to speak my mind has given me kind of a delay switch,
like they have on a live radio broadcast in case something
inconvenient is said. My own built-in delay gives me an opportunity
to be more considered about what I say. So that what finally does
come out tends to be of better quality. That weakness also contains
a strength.
On the other hand, I have learned to be careful about how I use my
strength, that is, my ability to state things clearly in writing.
You know when you write an email and send it off with the
satisfaction of having said something really well that this person
really needed to hear? And then later you realize that, oops, that
was too strong. Well, I have to be careful about that. Well-tuned
prose has gotten me into more trouble than inarticulateness ever
has.
Apparently, we are not constructed to be all strength, no weakness.
Each strength has a shadow side. Each weakness conceals a
possibility. Maybe you have strengths that sometimes turn against
you. And maybe you have weaknesses that have proven beneficial.
I am usually good at connecting with people, with having a sense for
what the world looks like through their eyes. But sometimes I have a
hard time separating from that other person’s view of the world. I
lose perspective. So my strength is that I am good at connecting
with people. My weakness is that I am good at connecting with
people.
I am not a good driver. I know that I am capable of making stupid
mistakes behind the wheel—or of just losing track of what I am
doing. Thursday night, after our Board meeting, I was driving
home—it was just about the full moon, by the way—and I looked up and
realized I had no idea where I was. I was in a completely strange
neighborhood. So I thought about what to do, decided to turn
around—because I must have gotten there from somewhere—and pretty
soon I spotted a sign that took me to the Beltway. I still don’t
know where I was or how I got there.
My skills at driving a car are not great. I am very aware of that,
and so I am careful. I have learned to be very attentive. This has
made me a safer driver than a lot of people who have more confidence
behind the wheel. And so even though I have had my share of
fender-benders, I have—thus far—managed to avoid a serious accident.
This weakness has become a strength.
● ● ●
Strengths contain weaknesses; weaknesses conceal strengths. It’s a
pattern that appears in many contexts.
In teaching, for example. I have had some teachers who have been
really smart, people for whom their subject has come easily. It’s
been their strength. But these teachers sometimes have not been very
effective because they didn’t know what it took for the rest of us
to learn what they already knew. On the other hand, some of my best
teachers have been those of probably average intelligence who have
had to work hard to get where they have got. They know what it takes
to learn this material and so they are able to bring the rest of us
along, step by step. Their weakness has become a strength.
The Titanic: it was a great ship. Its strength was that it was
massive and powerful. That strength, of course, became a liability
as those driving it did not take normal safety considerations into
account. The current mayor of Washington D.C. is a man of many
talents. But he’s young. Perhaps too young to understand that his
strengths could become vulnerabilities. The United States of
America. Despite our various problems, we dominate the world. We are
ultra sensitive to any suggestion that we might be weak. But
weakness is not what will defeat us: it’s strength. That is to say:
what will defeat us is our failure to realize that power has limits.
What will defeat us is the arrogance that so often accompanies
strength. What will defeat us is our reluctance to pay attention to
the rest of the world, failing to listen to their aspirations and
hopes and fears.
A few weeks ago, I was reading a novel called The Girls Guide to
Hunting and Fishing. Since I was already thinking about this sermon,
the following line jumped out at me. “Sometimes you’re loved because
of your weaknesses. What you can’t do is sometimes more compelling
than what you can.”
That is to say, “Your weaknesses become your strengths.”
● ● ●
In an essay originally published in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell
examined the career track of two famous artists: Picasso and the
French post-impressionist, Paul Cézanne. You know Picasso. Cézanne
might not be as familiar, but he preceded Picasso and produced works
that anticipated the development of modern art. Picasso once said,
“Cézanne is the father of us all.”
Picasso and Cezanne followed quite different career tracks. Picasso
was a prodigy. He produced his first masterpiece at age 20; by the
time he was 26, he was a celebrity in the art world. But when he hit
middle age and then old age, he seems to have been kind of done.
Picasso’s later work did not have the impact or the quality of what
came before.
Cézanne is another story. His early years provide an unrelenting
story of failure: time after time, he came up short. It wasn’t until
middle age that he found his stride. In the years before that, a lot
of his paintings ended up in the trash, ripped apart by the artist
himself in frustration . Today, the paintings he produced at age 60
sell for 15 times the price of those from his earlier years. He was
far more productive and creative in his later years than he was in
his youth.
Malcolm Gladwell comments, “Prodigies are easy. They advertise their
genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require
forbearance and blind faith. (Let’s just be thankful that Cézanne
didn’t have a guidance counselor in high school who looked at his
primitive sketches and told him to try accounting.) Whenever we find
a late bloomer, we can’t but wonder how many others like him or her
we have thwarted because we prematurely judged their talents.”
There are many examples of those whose early work was not strong—but
that contained seeds that would later develop into something fresh
and innovative. The classic rock group, Fleetwood Mac, produced 15
albums over a period of 10 years until finally getting a hit with
number 16. On the other hand, the movie director Orson Welles
produced his best and most famous film—Citizen Kane—when he was 24
years old. But he wasn’t able to come close to repeating that
achievement throughout the rest of his life. While another movie
director, Alfred Hitchcock, didn’t produced his best work until he
was well into his 50s.
Weaknesses shown early in life can become strengths—can become the
source of innovation—when people stick with them, refusing to give
up. While early strengths can fade over the years. I wonder if you
have noticed that pattern in yourself.
● ● ●
Let’s turn to this congregation: Davies Memorial UU. We have some
weaknesses. We have some strengths. The patterns I’ve been
considering this morning might also apply to us.
Such as, our weaknesses. We’re a little too small for what we want
to do. We have a hard time filling some of the volunteer positions
in the church. Our location here in Prince George’s County is not
one that easily grows Unitarian Universalist congregations. Bethesda
has two of the largest UU congregations in the country. The whole of
Prince George’s County has three UU congregations: two small, one
medium sized. We could fit the congregations of all three in the
sanctuaries of either Bethesda church: Cedar Lane or River Road.
But perhaps there might be strengths in these weaknesses. Such as,
the sense that the congregation is too small to do all that we want
to do. Sure seems a weakness, doesn’t it? But maybe not. Because one
implication is that there is room for new people here. After all,
that’s the question on the mind of most people who visit a church:
is there room for me here? Is there a place for me here? Is there
anything I have to offer that this community might value? We can
honestly answer those questions, “Yes.”
Or our location in Prince George’s County, traditionally not fertile
ground for Unitarian Universalism. That’s a weakness. But it’s also
a strength as it compels us to reach out to a wider and more diverse
audience. UU’s are fond of boasting about the people of influence
who have been and are Unitarian Universalist. That’s promoted as a
strength, but it’s also a weakness, limiting us to a thin stratum of
the population. Unitarian Universalism will not reach its potential
until it learns how to address more diverse populations, until it
figures out how to grow churches in places like Prince George’s
County. Our location then becomes a strength, puts Davies in the
forefront of congregations pointing the way into the future of
Unitarian Universalism.
Such are weaknesses here at Davies that could prove to be strengths.
How about strengths that might be weaknesses? Here’s one: our sense
of family. Our sense of Davies as an extended family. That’s a
strength: the relationships that are built here, the personal
support we can offer, the sense of being “home” at Davies that many
report. What’s the weakness in that? Well, families can be hard to
break into, they run by unwritten rules, they tend to shrink over
time. All these make Davies vulnerable.
My point is not that we should abandon the sense of family here at
Davies, but that we recognize the drawbacks that come with it and
make adjustments. That is, to be attentive to the delicate balance
between maintaining a sense of family and being open to strangers.
● ● ●
I started this sermon with a section from the Tao Te Ching, the
classic text in the tradition of Taoism. I’ve always like this one,
drawing upon the image of water. Water presents a paradox. On one
hand, it is weak: soft, pliable, it does not resist. As it is said
in this text, “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as
water.”
And yet, the text continues. “Nothing can better overcome the hard
and strong. For they can neither control nor do away with it.” Its
weakness becomes its strength. While the apparent strength of rock,
of mountains, of big buildings we construct to show the world how
important we are: all are vulnerable to water that slowly,
persistently, wears down the rigid and the hard.
So cherish your weaknesses, see where they might lead you, remain
open to the paths they might present to you. People who make
significant contributions are often those who draw upon their
weaknesses as resources, who keep trying to address them even after
failing, and even after failing again. That’s one message I want to
convey.
Another: be wary of your strengths. Approach strength with humility,
with understanding that strengths can make us rigid, can make us
vulnerable. Our strengths are more likely to defeat us than our
weaknesses.
And one more: none of us does everything well. But all of us have
special gifts, something we are meant to share with each other, to
share with the world. And so: we need each other. We need each other
to complete ourselves, we need communities of people with our
talents and flaws, things we do well, things we don’t.
It’s put this way in the New Testament, Book of Romans.
We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's
gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If
it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if
it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the
needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let
him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it
cheerfully
That is to say, we each have something to bring to the feast. It
takes the efforts of all. None of us can do it alone.
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