“Releasing
Resentment”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 3, 2015
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Genesis 37:3-8, Mark 11:22–25; HS 4681
Heavenly Secrets 4681
The phrase, “And they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him,” symbolizes
contempt and aversion. “Not being able to speak peaceably to him” symbolizes aversion,
because speaking peaceably to someone requires wishing that other person well. When the earliest peoples heard the word
“peace” they thought of the Lord Himself—for this is the meaning of Peace at
the highest level. An angel’s state of
peace in heaven, which is also called “salvation,” is the next highest meaning.
The lowest and most obvious meaning for the ancient peoples was the comparable
state of a peaceful person on earth, which is a state of spiritual well-being. Being “unable to speak peaceably to [Joseph]” symbolizes
that they were in a state which is opposite to “peace” and includes not wishing
the other well. Emanuel Swedenborg
This write-up is based on an extemporaneous
sermon which included an interactive portion.
My sermons are rarely extemporaneous, mainly because the congregation is
used to having a printed copy to consult while I deliver it. This also makes it easier to share with
friends and send out via email.
But from time to time I will do an interactive service that invites
deep self-reflection—maybe once or twice a year. These often include a call to self-reflection
that serves rather like a spiritual spring-cleaning. I think these worship services loosen things up a little bit and shake the dust out of our spiritual thinking. I recognize that they are not everyone’s cup
of tea. Today was one of those.
Resentment.
We all know what
it is. We all live with it.
But think about this saying:
“Resentment
is like eating rat poison and expecting a rat
to die.”
Resentment eats us up
inside. It does nothing to hurt the
other person or to resolve the cause of the hurt.
So what do we do when we are hurt by or angry at a person or group,
or some ideology, and cannot let go of it?
So long as we harbor resentment, it is as if acid is eating us up inside, no one else. Why do we feel like we are accomplishing
something by feeling resentful?
Today I am going to teach you a tool for tackling resentment. I learned it from my experiences with the Twelve Steps.
In the twelve-step program, a very important and transformative
step is the Fourth Step which is: “Made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves.” A fourth step
is intended to be as comprehensive a self-examination as possible. It is to be written down. (It is no coincidence that the Twelve Steps
embody all the elements of Swedenborg's “repentance, reformation, and
regeneration.” Bill Wilson, one of the
co-founders of AA was married to Swedenborgian, Lois Burnham Wilson, who also founded Al-Anon.)
If you want practical, down-to-earth tools to help you on the path
to personal reformation, look no farther than the Twelve Steps. You don’t have to have an addiction for them
to transform your life.
A key reason so many of us avoid a thorough self-examination is that
we are afraid of what we will find. It
is rather like inviting a deep home inspection.
What if the inspector finds that the foundation is rotting, the roof is
leaking, and the electrical is about to short out? What if we will be expected to fix it all
immediately and we can’t afford to? What if everyone finds out what a mess we
are and we feel terrible shame? Who wants to look in the mirror and see that we are much more
overweight than we hoped, or that we have lost more hair than we realized, or
that our saggy bits are saggier than ever? Shame and self-loathing can be insidious, and it is no wonder we avoid them. But they are not ever the intended outcome of self-examination, nor God’s plan for our eternal happiness.
Maybe one of the things we will discover when we examine ourselves is that we are far too
harsh with ourselves?
Think about someone you love and admire. Go ahead.
Close your eyes. Who comes to
mind? Who comes to your heart? Now ask yourself, do you love them because of
how they look, or because of how they love? When you see a photograph of that person,
do you pick apart their appearance with a critical eye, or do you just feel
happy to see someone you love?
Now, how do you respond to most pictures of yourself? Unless you are unusually gifted in
appearance or are remarkably unattached to your appearance, (or are a narcissist,)
you would be like most of us. Most of us
do not respond to pictures of ourselves with the same enthusiasm we do to those
of someone we love. We can be pretty hard
on ourselves. Can we learn to do unto ourselves as we do unto those we love?
So when you do your self-examination, do it with
the eyes of love. Be open to seeing the
areas that need work, but know that you don’t need to be afraid of them and that everything can be repaired and healed in time. Everything.
And so now I invite you to do a mini fourth step. It will be specific, and you are free to
meditate, or look like you are thinking, or daydream instead. But I do encourage you to give this a
try. This particular fourth step approaches self-examination by looking at our resentments, and I have found it a powerful
and transformative tool. No one will see
what you write. There will be no
“sharing” or “soul-baring” following the exercise. This is for you and you alone.
If this process stirs up something that you wish to talk about
later, I am available to listen to and support you in a private setting at some
future time. But at this time, this process is just for
you.
So take your paper and mark it into four columns. At the top of the first column write “I Resent.” Now, take some time and pick the top three
that come to mind. If you were doing a
full fourth step you would list and list and list every possible resentment you
could think of from your whole life. It
might be pages and pages. It could take
days. I know for me, thinking of things
I was mad about was easy. I had no idea just
how resentful was until I did this fourth step.
For this morning just pick two or three. They might be related to a person, or an
institution, or even an ideology. It can
be from the past or be quite recent.
All done?
Now at the top of the next column write “Why? What Happened?” Answer
this in the column below in relation to the items you listed in the first column. Be sure to be as specific as you feel you
have time. This is a time of championing
yourself. I know I tend to find this
column easy to fill in too.
All done?
At the top of column three write: “How This Affects Me Today.”
In this column you will continue answering according to the resentments
you listed in column one. Again, be
specific. Do not put, “I am fine,” or
“It doesn’t affect me.” If it didn’t
affect you and you are fine, you wouldn’t have listed it. It wouldn’t even have crossed your mind. There is something dark still lingering in
connection to it or you wouldn’t have picked it as one of your top three
resentments. Believe me when I say, no
matter how big or old or hopeless it may look, every hurt can be “cast down and thrown into the sea” with good support and
tools, with God’s help and being kind to yourself.
Finished?
At the top of column four write: “My Responsibility Then and Now.”
Now this is important: You may have shared in the hurtful dynamic
of what happened. But depending on how
old you were and the power dynamic at the time, you may have held no
responsibility (even if the ones in power tried to blame you). It is a completely legitimate response to
fill in that you did nothing to invite what happened. For example, if you were harmed as a little
child, you cannot in any way be responsible for what happened to you. If you are not sure, leave it blank. It will become clearer later, if you wish to
understand and are open to it.
While there are many ways in life that we might have been hurt and
did nothing to deserve it, the lingering anger and resentment can follow us and
eat away at us long after the event. Someone
who lost a limb or a loved one in the Boston bombing could understandably feel ongoing
anger and resentment, and they did nothing wrong to deserve what happened to
them. Such losses are permanent and
catastrophic, and one does not “get over” them.
One has to find a way to go on with life despite them.
And here is where the second part—My Responsibility…Now—is especially important. Our responsibility now is about seeing where we have choices now.
When I did this exercise, I realized that though I had been hurt
deeply as a child, I was still harboring the resentment forty years later. I was continuing to hold the hurt inside me
and I missed no opportunity to bad-mouth the one who hurt me. I was not approaching that person nor
attempting to express my hurt or ask for an apology. There was even, I admit, a kind of pleasure
in feeling so angry and … self-righteous?
I certainly felt better than that
person, and I felt entitled to stick little pins in her back whenever I could.
It was uncomfortable to realize that I was now keeping this negative cycle going. Yet it was a relief, too. The child in me needed to hear that it wasn’t
her fault and she didn’t deserve what happened.
But the adult in me needed to see that I was behaving badly and hurting
myself and others now. I was certainly not treating her the way I would want to be treated—according
to the Golden Rule. While I was feeling
spiteful and superior, she was oblivious.
This gave me a feeling of power. While I was gossiping and spinning
negative stories about her, she had no idea.
It was not pretty.
I have been on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour and it
feels awful. However I cannot judge when someone
does this to me, because I definitely
have done it too.
And as hard as it was to see that truth about myself, I was grateful
to become aware of it and start to change it.
I did not want to be “that person.”
I had had no idea I was “that person.”
I was too busy being a martyr and a victim. Was I victimized? Yes.
Was I now handling it in a mature and spiritually responsible way and owning
where I was at fault? Not until that
moment. And even after that moment, it has
taken considerable time and effort to change that long-standing habit of
back-stabbing that particular person.
I have been told I’m brave.
But stabbing someone in the back is not brave. Creating a safe space and talking it out with
her would be brave. I have yet to do
that. I might never actually get that brave. But I am shifting how I see her and am coming
to release the emotions that are eating me
up inside. I am biting my tongue when I want to say something mean about her,
because that is something I can do that moves me into forgiveness and greater
integrity.
So I will give you time now to explore in that final column the ways
you might be part of the ongoing pain. This is not about blame. This is about realizing ways we can
become free of hurtful emotions that we hadn’t seen before. Be very gentle with yourself. Or, just meditate and breathe. I will give you several minutes to complete
this final column.
Forgiveness is a funny thing.
It doesn’t mean that what happened is okay. It does mean we are releasing all the ways something
might continue to hurt us, and that takes time.
It can take years and years.
There is nothing wrong with you if it takes years for you to release all
your resentments. I doubt any of us do release
them all in this lifetime. But do know that with each one truly released, life
gets lighter, clearer and more peaceful.
You now may have a potent paper in your hand. It is yours to do with
as you wish. It might be a valuable new
friend and reveal a path to a much more peaceful soul. God go with you.
Amen
Inventory columns
Column 1: Resentments.
“I resent” List
all people, places, things, institutions, ideas or principles with whom you are
angry, whom you resent, or feel hurt or threatened by.
Column 2: “Why? What
happened?”
The Cause. Be
specific as to why you were/are angry or hurt.
Column 3: How It Affects
Me Today”
How did it make
you feel? How does it still make you feel? Be specific, detailed, and thorough.
Column 4: “My
Responsibility Then and Now”
Where was your
responsibility at the time? What is it now?
What might you have done instead? What might you be doing instead today?
Where might you be at fault?
The
Readings
Genesis
37: 3-8
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any
of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old
age; and he made a special robe just for him. When his
brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated
him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Joseph had a dream, and when he told
it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them,
“Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in
the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves
gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to
reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the
more because of his dream and what he had said.
Mark
11: 22-25
"Have faith in
God," Jesus answered.
"I tell you the truth, if you say to
this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and do not doubt in your
heart but believe that what you says will happen, it will be done for you.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for
in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
And when you stand praying, if you hold
anything against anyone, forgive that one, so that your Father in heaven may
forgive you your sins."
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