Moving From Negativity to Creativity

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Genesis 4:1-9

Mark 7:14-23

For the next two weeks I’ll be talking about moving from negativity to creativity.  This week I’ll focus on dealing with the negativity in ourselves.  Next week we’ll look at how to deal with the negativity of others and our surroundings.

I’d like to begin today with two examples from my own life that I hope will illumine what we’re talking about.  The first one is a failure, and the second one more of a success.

 

On one of our regular walks through downtown Main Street last fall, I noticed a dilapidated building with an awning that was frayed.  The entire front window of the storefront was colored in with shoe-polish.  It looked terrible.  It looked to me like an unly infection that might spread.  And it made me angry that a downtown business owner was projecting such a run-down, ramshackle vibe on our city’s Main Street.

And so, I pulled out my iphone, took a picture, and tweeted it, along with a negative remark about how terrible it looked.  I walked further downtown, saw yet another shoe-polished window, and tweeted another picture, again with a negative comment.  I was thinking, “If your windows look terrible, you should at least have to suffer for it on Twitter!”

Rather than finding a way to help, rather than seeking a more creative solution, rather than asking questions or starting a conversation, I chose to tweet a snarky, mean message that made me feel temporarily better.  So that was a failure.  I encountered a problem, and I turned negative.

Now an episode where I fared a little better.  One of the joys of my life is reading and talking about books, culture, art, and ideas.  Yet that gets harder as you get older.  Life gets busy.  People work hard.  Family obligations mount.  But rather than complain, I gathered a group of readers together.  Just this past month, Jo Anne Meara led a wonderful discussion on a book I probably wouldn’t have read, Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt.  So in this case, rather than complaining or becoming sour about a challenge, I came up with a creative solution and started a book group.

What about you?  Have there been periods in your life when you became negative?  Have there been challenges you’ve faced that left you feeling frustrated?  Do you sometimes find yourself engaging in complaint or gossip that aims not at making a difference but simply at making you feel temporarily better by venting?

Every one of us faces challenges that come in the form of negativity, and from all of us this requires a kind of creativity to move past the negative challenge.  So when I talk about moving from negativity to creativity, I do not have in mind some specialized brand of artistic creativity.  Rather, I have in mind the simple creativity available to each of us in our daily lives as we become problem solvers.

The truth is that it takes enormous amounts of energy to be negative.  And one of things God is doing in us is taking that energy and turning it in a new, creative direction.  But this is not an easy issue to deal with.  It’s a matter of the heart, and it might even require Jesus to free you from some harmful demons.

Before we go any further, let me clarify what I’m NOT talking about.  I’m NOT talking about the experience of feelings like anger and sadness and grief.  Those are normal emotions that all of us experience.  And emotional health calls us to slow down enough so that we can really feel what we’re feeling.  I’m NOT talking about the very real struggle with depression, which is often chemical and physiological and should be treated as such.

And I’m not talking about pessimism.  Pessimism is healthy.  The capacity to doubt others, plans, causes, organizations is healthy.  Jesus was pessimistic in many ways.  The Christian faith encourages a certain kind of pessimism – about ourselves, about others, and about possibilities in the world around us.  The Cain and Abel story was included in the creation story in Genesis for the purpose of cultivating a healthy pessimism in us.

Our reading from Genesis 4 about Cain and Abel functions within the Biblical story to cultivate pessimism in faith communities.  The fact that Israel included this violent episode in the founding creation stories of sacred Scripture is testimony that we are capable of doing great harm to one another.  By confessing our sins together every week, we are learning a kind of in-built, ongoing pessimism about our own failures of love.

I am married to a teacher.  She loves what she does.  But it’s been a long year.  There have been some challenges.  And towards the end of the year there has been some uncertainty about leadership – who will become the new superintendent, HS principal, MS principal?  And, just speaking as an outsider, it looks to me like it would be difficult in an environment of stress and fatigue and uncertainty to stay positive.  Am I getting this right, those of you who work in our schools? 

I was discussing all these challenges with friends by email.  And a friend of mine whose parents are teachers, and whose spouse is a teacher, wrote this email about teaching in public schools.  It looks like a terrible job, he said . . .

“At this stage my idealism is out the window. The romanticism of molding young minds, shaping the future, etc. is gone along with it. They're cutting public school funding right & left. The teachers don't make **** for salary and it's getting worse all the time. There is little to no personal freedom; most teachers can't even leave the school grounds during the day. Teaching to standardized tests is a fatally flawed system., yet that's what every district has to do or risk losing even more funding. Etc., etc. Seems like a career of beating your head against a brick wall. I'm obviously glad people want to do this as a profession, and also glad I am not one of them.”

Stephanie had experienced a challenging week as a teacher, and so I thought it would be funny to forward the email to her and get her response:

Thought you would enjoy this email about why public school teaching is a terrible job.  Despair not!  Or despair if you wish, whatever works.  Love, Jared.

She responded that it had been a stressful day, then added:

Today, it might be despair.  He’s right.  This is hard.  What are the alternatives?

Now on one level, I was trying to be funny and playful, and that didn’t really work.  On another level, I was unwittingly enticing her to become negative, to complain about her work, and she did something wonderful.  She refused to take the bait.  She admitted her job is hard, basically told me to shut up, and went back to work.

Scripture provides us with a story about our lives that assumes the reality and power of negative forces.  So no one who reads the Bible should be caught saying, “I didn’t think life would be this hard.”  Life is incredibly hard.  That’s not all it is.  It’s full of wonder, beauty, mystery, pleasure and delight too.  But life is incredibly hard.  And if you want to move forward you’ll have to come to grips with the reality of many kinds of negative forces in your life that have the potential to wound and harm you, to stymie you, to stunt your growth, to stop you from making progress, to ruin relationships. 

In Mark 7:14ff, Jesus is engaged in a debate with fellow Jews about kosher dietary laws.  And Jesus teaches a little lesson about the body’s plumbing.  Food doesn’t defile you.  When you eat food, it goes in your mouth, down your esophagus, into your stomach, and then out your backside.  That plumbing works just fine.  It’s the plumbing that runs from your heart and out your mouth that is the real problem. 

The faith that Jesus teaches to his followers is a way of life connected to the heart.  It’s heart-religion.  He invites us to pay attention to our own hearts.  And the life of faith involves a gradual softening and opening of the heart to the work of God’s grace in your life.

Jesus teaches that all negativity, all poison, all filth and hatred – flows from the fountain of the heart.  This means that all of our negative speech, all our negative complaining, all our gossip and mean-spirited talk – all of it is really just a projection of our frustration and hatred of ourselves.  We engage in negative talk when we do not like ourselves.  Remember this when you catch yourself being negative.  Ask yourself, “I’m clearly frustrated with myself, what is it?”  And remember when you encounter negative people to be merciful.  It is a hard thing not to love yourself.

At the center of this message was really a series of questions that swirl around in my heart.  I don’t know that we’ll answer them right now, but it’s important to be asking them.

What can we do as a congregation to change the tone of conversations and community life in our place?  How can we create more positive, creative energy in our families, our work, our congregational life together, in our neighborhoods and the wider community?

How can we begin to love ourselves, love those around us, and love our place, when there is so much wrong?  How can we be honest and realistic about the challenges surrounding us but not become enslaved to a life of fear and complaint? 

How can we make our hearts beautiful places, filled with light and love and courage and hope?  How can our homes, our work, our congregation, and our community become beautiful places?  After all, there is so much inside us and around us that is unlovely.

Several months ago, Anne Emerson had an idea to solve a problem.  She got people on board because it turns out that lots of people are attracted to creative energy; lots of people want to participate in something meaningful.  The garage sale was a ton of work, but it was a huge success and raised $3,000 for Senior Transportation.

I could give you plenty of other examples from our own congregation of folks who are creatively making a difference by directing their energy in hopeful directions.

I could talk about families working together to redevelop houses on this very block.  I could talk about families investing in downtown properties.  I could talk about families starting and expanding businesses that make life better in our community.  But I’m not going to say much, because all those projects take extra money and time.  And not all of us have that.

We have people who have chosen their line of work because they want to make a positive contribution to the community – teachers, a sherriff, those working in government roles, social workers, business owners, farmers, health-care workers, and on and on.  We have people devoting energy as volunteers on boards like CASA, Presbyterian Village, School Board, Young Life, the Chamber, and many more.

So how is it that so many of you have been able to move from negativity to creativity?

You have opened your heart to God’s grace, made room in your heart for the good news of God’s love to move in and take up residence and rearrange the furniture.  You have invited what you already believe begin to move down further into the center of who you are.  And your heart has become a place of grace and love.

The first skill we acquire in the movement past negativity is simply noticing.  We begin to notice our own negativity – complaint, gossip, slander.  And we begin to see this negativity as a matter of the heart. 

Next, that personal renewal in your own heart enables you to see and hear the damaging effects of negativity all around you.  You’ll notice and be saddened by any expression of hatred or jealousy or unkindness or gossip.  And you will find ways to politely decline to listen to it or be involved.  You will even find ways to encourage others to find the good in themselves, others, and the community.

And once you’re enjoying your increasing freedom from negativity, you will begin to make decisions to have less of it in your life.  If there are circles of friends who cannot get free from the poison of negativity, you’ll opt to spend less time with them.  If there are any sources of negativity affecting your spirit – you will begin removing them from your life.  It might be watching cable news shows designed to make you anxious and angry.  It might be too much time on Facebook.  It might be video games that leave you feeling less peaceful. 

Finally, you begin reaching out and forming circles of friendships aimed at some productive, creative goal.  You will begin to fill your time with projects that feed your good energy. And your energy and creativity will begin to flow in those new directions, making your life, the life of those around you, and your community, a more beautiful, more loving, more joy-filled and peaceful place.

At the deepest level, the only way to become the kind of person whose life is dominated by kindness, generosity, and creativity is to come to understand yourself as radically and amazingly loved by God.  You and your past; you and the problem areas of your life; you and the mistakes you’re ashamed of; you and your areas of weakness and failure and embarrassment – all of that, all of you, is loved and accepted by God.  There just isn’t any part of you that God hasn’t seen, known, accepted and loved.

When that reality sinks down into the deeper layers of who you are, you will no longer need to take your self-hatred and project it out onto others.  My dream and prayer is that this congregation becomes a school for dreamers, for difference-makers, and for creative problem solvers – people who become a blessing to our place and our community.  Amen.