Today’s Topic “The Art of Appreciation” is a Valentine’s-themed service.
What did one volcano say to the other on Valentine’s Day? I lava you!
What do you call two birds in love? Tweethearts.
What do you call a very small Valentine? Valen-tiny.
- On Appreciation:
I tried to be an Uber driver… Trouble is, my passengers didn’t appreciate it when I went the extra mile.
The punster wanted this on his tombstone: “Not appreciating puns is a grave mistake”
I bought my wife a book on Mindfulness…but she didn’t appreciate the present.
My girlfriend gave me dirt for Valentine’s Day. I really appreciated the sediment
Just want to show my appreciation to all the staff working in the Intensive Care Units by saying,“I See You”
What did the guitar student say when his teacher gave him advice on how to sound more like Jimi Hendrix? “Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.”
Ok done with todays jokes.
In this sermon I intend to point us in a direction that I think is at least a little different from how most of us were raised. As always, I’m sharing my understanding of UU. I’ll begin with the UU value of inclusivity. This is for all of us, not just couples. From there I will proceed from there with UU practical spirituality.
There was a song lyric written by Harry Chapin, one of my favorites from the 70’s, that stayed with me. “Everybody gets lonely, that’s what it’s all about.” A friend once joked with me that there’s being alone, and there is wishing you were.” I don’t want to diss romance or relationships today. If you have a life partner that you respect and get along with reasonably well, that’s a blessing we celebrate today! Let’s also celebrate the blessing of friends. If you have even one companion, that’s a blessing. Finally, let’s celebrate that we are blessed by the existence of this religious community. It’s a place we share values, hopes, losses, learning, tears and laughter. Y’all are my Valentines!
Barry Neil Kaufman, author of the book Happiness is a Choice, said, “Loneliness is being unhappy about being alone.” His books and work emphasized that we can choose a new attitude on my life experiences to gain more happiness.
I deeply appreciate his work, AND I will offer my own perspective: Longing for connection and support is a core piece of the human condition. Sadness and all emotions are part of our intelligence and our humanity. Let us hold with respect the natural process of grief. We mourn our losses. I regularly find the Holy when I have compassion for someone’s grief.
When I long for support, affection, company, I like to remember the beauty and importance of human longing! I appreciate the precious gifts of human connection and mutuality. Appreciating longing can help us connect with deeply held values.
It can be tempting to turn away from our longing so as to avoid pain associated with it. I hope we will choose to honor human longing, remember the beauty of sweet connection. Similar to what Harry Chapin said, “It’s what it’s all about!”
One meaning of appreciation is “increase in value.” How can we elvate the value of our relationships? And the connections we experience with dear ones? As UUs we have a spirituality that increases our capacity to appreciate nature, the interconnected web of existence of which we are a part.
Our tradition appreciates freedom and choice. We forswear threat and coercion. Our ancestors rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation and the enticement of eternal reward. Throughout our history, we have had conviction to challenge all that keeps human souls from knowing love, dignity and the blessing of being alive. It calls us to resist forces that promote oppression and domination, to learn and promote human cooperation & collaboration, to appreciate the fruits of creativity born of love.
These values have shaped our movement. It began with assertions about the creative force, the intelligence of the Universe, which has often been referred to as “God”. Following the ministry, life and teachings of Jesus, our ancestors proclaimed love as the supreme force. Their faith led them to strive to establish a society reflective of divine order by valuing righteousness, justice and liberation. UU tradition calls us to extricate humanity from a patriarchal and hierarchical paradigm that has justified conquest and domination. It asks us to live together in a way that would help all humans to know divine love, freedom and dignity.
This view of God as a loving force that moves humans towards peace and justice influenced our ancestors to work for progressive social change. Increasingly we have found that it also requires us to learn how to live into these values with each other. UUs covenant, we make agreements, promises to each other to learn together how to be together in a way that honors and expresses dignity and inherent worth that is inside every one of us.
These are spiritual principles. Reading them, reciting them, singing and even swearing to them, doesn’t bestow us with the ability to do them. We must be willing to learn how to practice these values. We don’t get to do it perfectly. We need to struggle together, fail, learn from our failures and keep learning how to do better with each other.
It’s not like school where you read a book, and answered questions on a written test. Although we cherish intellectual learning, it can only takes us so far. How do we learn to appreciate life by loving the Holy with all our heart and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves? This requires experiential learning.
Let’s begin with the challenge of receiving appreciation. I want to acknowledge that I still have much to learn in this regard. In previous congregations I’ve served, some people expressed displeasure with the way I received their praise. Vicki is one person here who has helped me to see that I have a habit of deflecting praise. Many times she has come to me after service wanting to express appreciation for my leadership of worship. I’ve often responded by talking about things that didn’t come out the way I hoped or things I forgot to say or do. Well, we all need space to work through our frustrations and disappointments. I guess I could find a different time to do that, instead of blocking or rejecting the gift of appreciation that she or anyone wants to give. Vicki has assertively instructed me: “This is where you say thank you, and leave it at that.”
I know I’m not alone in this. It is standard fare. When someone offers a compliment, it often gets followed by things other than “thank you.” We react by put ourselves down, by objecting, arguing or give excuses. We react with knee jerk reciprocation: “you too.”
Have you ever tried to appreciate someone and you came away with a sense that your gift was rejected or anyways not received?
Often when we wish to express appreciation, we praise people. We tell people what they did well or we tell them they are brilliant, talented, etc. There may be a problem embedded in our offering an evaluation. It sets us up as an authority that gets to decide whether others are worthy of our approval. We give them a grade. We give them gold stars or demerits. We tell them what we think about them, their service or performance. Obviously, the same process that gives 5 stars can alternatively leave only one or two. There is power in the review for the reviewer.
This kind of appreciation offers only veiled expression of what is important to us. It places all the vulnerability on the recipient. In effect it asserts a power over them.
We UUs have chosen to do the hard work of building a world of equity and compassion. We are learning together how to establish mutuality in relationships, how to affirm inherent worth and dignity, how to create communities that nurture a quality of connection that illuminates our interdependence, builds trust, cooperation and mutual empowerment.
Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg developed a means for people to learn to express appreciation that reveals inner desire for fulfillment of needs that are personal as well as common to all of us. When we can reveal what’s underneath our speech and behavior we decrease the chances for disconnection, and we increase the chances for fulfillment based on mutual respect and cooperation.
Expressing appreciation in this way focuses on honoring and sharing the sacred energy that moves in and through us. The basic mechanism for this kind of communication runs through 4 steps; observations, feelings, needs and requests. First we observe something that was spoken or done by a person that stimulated feelings inside us. Then we connect with the emotions stirring inside us. Next we go deeper to connect with needs, qualities or values that the feelings are directing us toward. Lastly we make a request based on a strategy to connect or fulfill the deeper needs in our heart.
This is not a script for communication. It is a process to help us connect to the beauty of universal needs and establish a quality of connection that makes giving from the heart more likely. Rosenberg’s mechanism is a tool. He also emphasized that compassion requires that our intention, attitude and spirit are crucial for true cooperation.
I offer this introduction with hopes of advancing our own journey of learning the art of appreciation. When we take the time to notice what we and others might be feeling and needing, a new world of possibilities opens. If we are attempting to get our way with another person and we don’t place much value on what is important to them, this can hardly be called appreciation.
When we take the time to consider what people might be feeling and needing, we’re more likely to be able to really appreciate them. When we experience a quality of connection, we are more likely to find ways to make life more wonderful for us and those we live with.
Suppose someone said or did something that stimulated pleasant feelings in us. This is the starting point of our education and effort to experience and express more appreciation. We did this earlier in the guided meditation. Why did our world suddenly become delightful? What is important to us about what they said or did? When we make the effort to become conscious of the qualities we cherish, we tap into power.
We can share this power by revealing to someone how they have contributed to our enjoyment. Instead of telling another person what they are, we tell them how they have enriched our lives. In time we will find more ways and grow our capacity to express what is important to us. Once we’ve identified a value, we can make a request. In other words, after we have tuned into something we cherish, what do we want to do about it?
We probably think of ways to further our fulfillment. For example, after realizing the significance to us of what someone else did or said, we might feel a desire to let them know about what their gift means to us.
Requests are strategies for connection and fulfillment. We will be more likely to experience fulfillment when we care to connect with what’s important to the people we are talking to.
We humans have a need to know that our needs matter and that we matter! (pause) When do we allow people to matter to us? When do we show this? When and how do we show what’s sacred to us? When do we fulfill our need to contribute? When do we assist others to fulfill their need to contribute?
Perhaps the key is curiosity about what might make life delightful combined with an intention to respect and honor the sacredness that lies inside us and others too.
There is a strong correlation between outward expression of appreciation and our inward experience of appreciation. By seeing ourselves and others as worthy of respect, we come to appreciate people and life itself.
Blessings! May each of us grow in the wonder of life as we appreciate some people this week!
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