Finding Your Own Voice

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Cuileann McKenzie

13 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Cuileann McKenzie

We participate in an unending chain of conversations. But despite all this practice talking, I think most of us have trouble finding our true voice, let alone using it. We chatter, but are we really reflected in our words? Often not. Sometimes for necessary reasons – like portraying a particular image for an employer at a conference, or not telling the bride how much you dislike her gown on her wedding day. But holding back or changing our comments to suit the expectations of another can be taken too far. Like too many of us, I have had times in my life when I’ve allowed my true voice to erode to nearly nothing, completely following another’s lead, and all the while continuing to “talk” like there was nothing wrong. It’s a costly trap, for as the voice fades so does the spirit. But I can assure you, from experience, it’s possible to get your voice back.

What about those of us who haven’t found our voices yet, or those who have been categorically dismissed as not having much of value to say? I loved working with one of these groups, high school students, particularly those in alternative education. After some classroom teaching experience, in one of my teacher’s college assignments, I asserted that we should give high school English students an opportunity to write down their personal thoughts and feelings and allow them either to keep the notes or to use a shredder at the end of the class. The intent was to give them a private and safe space to explore their minds, to vent, to ponder, to hope or pray, and through the writing process, to start to find their own unique voices. The idea was received well by the professor, but that was pre-Columbine, pre-911. Things are different now. Today, I doubt there’d be much support for such a suggestion, and I’m not sure I’d chance voicing it. In the current climate of fear, I think we’ve really lost something – without a sense of safety, voices become quieter.

When I first thought of the shredder, I identified more with students and less with adults in the trenches of career and family. But time has a way of shifting perspective. Indeed, it now seems to me that age can bring more restrictions on voice rather than fewer. Before we speak, we consider partners’ feelings, company cultures, and the little ears of children. Perhaps we’re the ones that need some paper and a shredder. Maybe instead of feeding that machine our bank statements, using it to protect our identity, we can use it to help us find one. Writing to purge the mind and heart can be seen as healthy for the spirit as well, for the Dalai Lama ritually writes his concerns down on a sheet of paper each evening and throws it into a fire. Hey, if it’s good enough for him, maybe we should all try it!

A great way not only to begin to find your voice but also practice using it can be found right here at the church. I’ve had the opportunity to be both a participant and a leader of Evensong, and I’ve benefited greatly. I tend to be reserved when it comes to discussing personal matters. That might seem odd since I’m a writer and am also up here speaking right now, but when I’m writing fiction, I get to don a mask and have great fun, and when I’m up here, I fulfill a clearly defined role and follow my script. When on my own, though, in the everyday world, I often become quite shy. In the welcoming atmosphere of Evensong, however, my reservations soon faded away.

The series of eight weekly gatherings is a wonderful place to learn not only how to speak, but how to listen. After having a week to ponder a topic, you are given the chance to set your true voice free and talk without interruptions, without questions, in an accepting atmosphere. Each person has a chance to speak, while the rest of the group silently and supportively listens. And truly listening to another person is valuable — not only is the speaker’s voice strengthened by the acceptance and validation, while listening, we learn that we’re not alone. THE PRECEDING HAS BEEN A PAID PROMOTIONAL MESSAGE FOR EVENSONG AND RELATED just kidding, I’m just a big fan! But seriously, consider joining Evensong. A new group begins on March 23, and you can sign-up in the Gallery after the service.

Of course expressing our voice is not limited to speaking or writing. People caring for those who need their help are saying so much. And expression through music is wonderful – as we hear each Sunday. Some people also show their regard for others by cooking a beautiful meal. Related to that, to the friends I met last fall in Evensong – at our holiday potluck, I swear that my store-bought frozen lasagna was not saying anything! In whatever form of communication we choose, each one of us has the potential to speak with our own unique and valuable voice. Let’s take the time to find it and then, Speak Up!

PRAYER:

Let us listen for voices that bless us, and call us toward a higher kind of humanity.

There are so many voices we do not want to hear. Voices that belittle and demean us. May we let those bitter voices go by like echoes of bad ideas.

Voices that say we can never be enough, or that we are damned, or too sinful ever to be acceptable – these are usually the voices of tormented people. Let us move out of their way, as we move toward the light.

The light has voices, but they bless us, and call us into our fullest humanity. They help us become human religiously rather than fearfully.

The voices coming from the light bless us, because they know we are children of God, children of the universe, the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself, and that we are precious.

Let us know that we are precious: that we are precious people called to share our gifts of life with a world that desperately needs to hear life-blessing, life-giving voices. Let us hear those voices, and let us be those voices of life and love, of challenge and encouragement.

If we must hear voices – and we must – let us listen for the good ones. And let us strive to become some of the voices of blessing, affirmation, challenge and empowerment so that we too, as we pass through life, may bless the world with our own gifts of life and of love.

Amen.

SERMON: Finding Your Own Voice

I have a kind of confession to make: I hear voices. Don’t worry; the voices I hear are a comfort to me. And striving to be in their company gives my life much of its meaning and purpose.

Cuileann spoke of finding your individual voice, and when we talked about this service, I told her I was going to use the old Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus to frame it. Now if you haven’t been coming here for long, you might think a “myth” is just an untrue story. But that’s not right. A myth is something that never happened, but always is. The good myths have insights into the human condition that seem relevant even two or three thousand years after the myth was first told. So the truths contained in myths aren’t like those in science. They’re deeper; they last a lot longer, and they’re always symbolic and metaphorical, never literal.

Little Echo was a nymph who was very pretty but couldn’t shut up. And once after talking to Zeus’s wife Hera to distract her while her husband Zeus escaped from another of his many local affairs, Hera got so angry she put a curse on Echo, and said that from then on she could never have a voice of her own, but could only repeat what others said to her. That story is the source of our word “echo.”

Now Narcissus was a beautiful young man who was unkind and indifferent to all the women who loved him. So one of the avenging goddesses put him under a curse. She decreed that he too would have the experience of deeply loving someone who would never return his love.

So Narcissus and Echo will make an interesting match. Echo sees him lying by a stream, but can’t call out to him. He, in the meantime, has seen his own reflection in the stream, fallen madly in love with it, and cries out “I love you!” “Love you” calls back little Echo. But Narcissus loved no one but himself, and gazed narcissistically at his own reflection until he finally wasted completely away. And little Echo also wasted away, with neither a love nor a voice of her own, until nothing was left of her but her voice, still repeating back whatever is said to her.

Boy, there are a lot of keen psychological insights in that story! Narcissists who, no matter how attractive they may be to others, are capable of loving only themselves. And their partners, who are only permitted to echo back whatever Narcissus says until they too waste away.

We really can lose ourselves if we never find our voice. Haven’t we all experienced this at least once? Not having a voice, playing the role of Echo to someone who really didn’t care?

The role of Echo is one with which a lot of women identify, but it isn’t always the woman who is the echo. Family counselors tell me they’ve seen it both ways, including couples where the woman is the narcissist and the man is assigned the role of echoing back whatever she says.

But however the roles are cast, it’s a plot in which nobody can win. Echo and Narcissus each had half the answer, but only half. Echo could only love others from a distance. But she couldn’t love herself, and wasted away without having a voice of her own. Narcissus could love no one but himself, and wasted away because that’s not enough.

Today we probably wouldn’t call her Echo. Maybe we’d say she’s just doing Karaoke: singing words to somebody else’s tune. But spiritual Karaoke is not satisfying, as you know if you’ve tried it. And when we see someone doing it, we always want to say “Oh, just be yourself, will you!”

But you know it isn’t that simple, either for women or for men. There can be something scary about speaking in our own voice, being known. What if it isn’t enough?

This reminds me of a short comedy skit I saw on television probably twenty years ago. It starred Rich Little, the gifted impersonator. It was sort of the opposite of the Echo and Narcissus story. He played a husband, whose wife was angry because he would never show her his true self. He kept talking to her like Humphrey Bogart. And after doing Bogey, he’d be John Wayne or Sean Connery. Finally, she got so frustrated she said if he didn’t start being himself, she’d leave. Then suddenly this whiney, wimpy, snivelling little voice came out of him. She stopped, looked, and said “Is that the real you?” “Yes,” he whined. She thought about it, then said “Do Bogey again.”

So part of finding our own voice lies in believing that we have a voice that’s worth finding, and that anybody even wants to hear it.

One of the problems is that we all have more than just one voice, and sometimes have to choose which of our voices to use. The Greeks really made it easier for us to understand that we have many voices. They had all these gods and goddesses, and Greeks understood that several of them resided within them, often giving them conflicting advice. Several years ago, I read a book by Arianna Huffington on The Greek Gods, and learned that she also grew up thinking of her competing voices as the voices of goddesses. She has said that her adult life has been a balancing act between following the voice of Demeter the mother to her two daughters, and Artemis, the ambitious and driven woman.

Maybe you think it’s odd, talking about having several voices. But everyone in this room has done it. You’re on a first date, or cruising a bar or party, and meet someone you want to impress. A woman might decide whether she wants to come across as strong Artemis, sexy Aphrodite, mother Demeter or Hera, the archetypal wife. Meanwhile, the man is choosing between being sexy Dionysus, cool and competent Apollo, tricky little Hermes, or Big Daddy Zeus.

We all hear voices. Sometimes our voice needs to be a blend of the several things that are most important to us, and we gain our integrity through integrating our different voices into complementary expressions of our core, or soul. So finding our voice is less like a discovery and more like an achievement.

It is so important for us to do this work, to find our voice and offer it to others, to our world. Because we are the only ones who can do it. And what a shame it would be if the world never got to hear our voice because we forgot about them while we were singing spiritual Karaoke. Finding and using our own best voice is how we are born into our adult roles.

Now let’s take it up a level. Once we find our voice, it’s clear that what really matters is what our voice is serving, what it represents. You know if it’s a whiney sniveling voice, nobody will want to hear it. And if we can only focus on ourselves, nobody wants to hear that, either.

One point of religion is to help us find voices worth serving with our own; to help us find ideals worth following with our lives. That’s what I meant when I said that I hear voices, that they are a comfort to me, and striving to be in their company gives my life much of its meaning and purpose.

You know some of this. In fact, you make judgments on it every week. You don’t really come here to hear me. You come because you hope I’ll be a voice for something beyond me, beyond us, for a perspective big enough to give you something to take home, something you can use in your own life. If you think back on it, I’m betting you have judged every preacher you’ve ever heard on what they served with their voice. Did their words just draw attention to themselves, or were they serving a perspective and a spirit big enough to give some life to you?

Christians say – and I do love this saying – that it isn’t so much who we are that counts, but whose we are. That’s what they mean: what are we serving? What gods are we incarnating, what spirits? Are they spirits that bless our world, or bore it, or even curse it?

Abraham Lincoln once said that we seek “the better angels of our nature.” The word “angel” means “messenger,” a messenger from the “gods.” Any Greek would understand that he means we want to serve the better gods. And like the Greeks, Lincoln knew we have many angels in our nature, both good and bad, and that they all come calling on us from time to time – as you know, too. But we should just listen for the better angels of our nature. They need to be the tune our voice is singing, if we’re to have a voice that blesses us and our world, a voice the world needs to hear.

So spiritual Karaoke is using your voice to sing someone else’s tune, like little Echo. And religion is using it to sing God’s song, to put it poetically. It’s the voice of God we’re seeking. Or if you’d like that put into other words, it’s the voice of wisdom, insight, compassion, love, and connection. That’s what the symbol “God” stands for. That’s the tune we want to sing, the tune that gives our voices the power to give life to us and to others.

Where do you find that voice? The voice that can give grounding to your own voice: the good gods, the better angels – where do you find them? From politicians? Beer ads? Movies? Soap operas? They’re all trying to sell us voices and roles to play, you know. Do you listen for the strongest voice, the loudest voice, the scariest voice? Where do you find the voice that’s most likely to be coming from those better angels of our nature?

This is like asking where do you find the voice of God, isn’t it? So where do you find this “voice of God”? Do you find it in the shouting bible-thumping preachers or the self-righteous politicians or arrogant friends who have made God so simple that they have him all locked up and want to tell you what to believe? No. No, I don’t think you ever find the voice you need in the loud and arrogant places. Listen to this wonderful poetic passage from the Hebrew scriptures:

“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:11-12)

A “still, small voice.” That’s the kind of voice our better angels have, I think.

I had an experience like this that always comes to mind when I read this passage, and which you might find useful too. I have never liked public spectacles much, and have avoided almost every graduation ceremony of mine that I could. I didn’t attend the ceremony for my undergraduate degree, or for the Master’s Degree, and had no intention of going to the ceremony to get my Ph.D., either.

But a classmate told me I must go. “Why?” I asked him. He just said there was a line there that would be spoken by the president of the university, that I must hear it and would never forget it. All right, that’s pretty seductive.

So for the first time, I rented a gown and hood and bought the hat, and took part in the graduation ceremony. I was sitting right next to my classmate, and kept wondering when and what this great line was. It came near the end.

After all the undergraduate degrees and Master’s degrees had been granted, she called up onto the stage all of us who were receiving our Ph.D.’s. After some brief introductory remarks, she turned to face us, and said – this still chokes me up! – “I welcome you into the ancient and honorable community of scholars.” I’ve never heard such empowering and intimidating words in my life. We weren’t just students who finally got through the grueling degree program. No, we were now and forevermore members of an “ancient and honorable community of scholars.”

I hadn’t even realized that such a community existed. I’ve spoken with others who got their doctorates at the same university, and the line has kept its power for all of us. One woman told me that sometimes, when she’s preparing a lecture, she want sto cut corners because the class is only for freshmen.

Then she’ll hear voices. At least that one voice, reminding her of the ancient and honorable community of which she is a part. And she says it feels like Aristotle is there looking at her, saying “You don’t really intend to cut corners on this lecture, do you?” Like me, she hears voices, and those voices are a comfort to her. And striving to be in their company gives her life, as it gives mine, meaning and purpose. You realize that this is the same message religions give in their different ways. It is like saying “You are a child of God, and God loves you,” or that your soul is part of the whole universe’s soul, or that you are made of stardust.

So when you serve a transcendent ideal, can you really say it’s your voice you have found? Yes, it’s just a voice that you cared enough about to educate, to let it rub up against others who aspired to high ideals. And the ideals we serve with our lives – those ideals bless us. And people around us can tell. They may not know just what inspired us, but they know we are trying to be true to something important, something enduring, perhaps even something eternal. And it makes all the difference.

For we have heard the voices of the better angels of our nature, and they always bless us, by initiating us into that ancient and honorable community of people trying to come into their full humanity. And there is no higher or more ennobling aspiration.

I don’t mean only for us as individuals, but also for groups of people. This was what happened with black people in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s: they found their voice and claimed their place at the table of humanity.

It is what happened in the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the gay rights movements since gays fought back against police harassment at the Stonewall bar in 1969.

These moments were among the miracles of the past half century: miracles, because new life was born, as new groups of people found their voices, connected those voices with timeless tunes of freedom, equality and justice, and raised their voices to bless both themselves and the world around them, whether the world was ready for that blessing or not.

Those people heard voices. Not the voices of the loud bigots around them, not the loud voices of abusive policemen, not the voices of everyone telling them to get back in their place and be little Echoes again. They heard the “still, small voice” that contained the voice of God, the voice of the better angels of their and our nature.

This is a sermon that can’t really end, because it’s a sermon about beginning to take ourselves seriously, trying to become fully human, religiously. So here’s how I want to begin. I want to begin by welcoming you, all of you, into the ancient and honorable community of people seeking their full humanity. You are all part of it, and I hope when you leave here, you hear voices too: voices that know your name, know your soul, voices that give you the power to speak, to bless yourselves and to bless your world, our world.

Perhaps nothing in all of life is more sacred than hearing those voices, and knowing how to answer them.