Umbrella

INTRODUCTION: Someone has estimated that in a 24-hour period, we probably have million of thoughts. But there's another fascinating component to that observation: 95% of those million of thoughts are probably the same as the ones we had the day before. So despite thinking million of thoughts, we keep thinking the same thoughts as the ones we had yesterday. Which is another way of saying, that most of our thinking, despite how significant the quantity, is focused on the past.

But as we well know, it is not the past, or thinking of the past, that enables opportunity, and encourages vision. It is the ability to look to the future, to focus on tomorrow. In fact, a summary of Dutch sociologist Fred Polak’s book about the history of civilizations concludes that a positive image of the future is the single most important explanation for a society’s cultural evolution.^[2]

So how do we turn our face to the future, while also thinking of the past? Like the ancient Roman god Janus, from which the word for the month of January comes, how can we have both a face to the past and the future? And in so doing find the contentment which that might hold?

I want to suggest that it starts with one small concept: appreciation. And yet it’s more than that: It’s words that affirm the importance of others in unique and special ways. Let me give you some illustrations:

My first college experience was at a Pentecostal Holiness bible college in Oklahoma. And even though we had some wonderfully caring and academically prepared faculty, that was not the perception that most people had of Pentecostals according to most sociological studies. We were at the bottom of the socio-economic level: Pentecostal…holiness…from the other side of the tracks. That was also how I thought of myself and my Bible School education.

So after attending bible school, when I went to Oklahoma City University, a United Methodist institution, I did not think of myself being on a par with everybody else. I was Pentecostal Holiness. They were up here: Methodists. I was down here: Pentecostal and holiness.

While there, there was a religious emphasis week, with a leading bishop, Gerald Kennedy, as the speaker. He had a new book out, entitled, His word through preaching. I bought it and then waited in line to get him to autograph it. When it was my turn, since his book was on preaching, he asked me if I were planning to enter the ministry. I answered that, “Yes, I was – as a Pentecostal Holiness minister.”

He then wrote inside, “To Wayne Robinson, with best wishes and great expectations! Signed Gerald Kennedy.” I glowed for days. He had said nothing negative about my background, even though he knew I was Pentecostal Holiness. In fact, he had said just the opposite. He wished me: “Great expectations!”

Now I never saw or heard him again, though I did read of him many times, especially when I became a United Methodist minister. It didn’t matter what the content of the stories I read were, when I thought of Bishop Kennedy, it was always with a positive slant, because of an innocuous statement he had written to me, but which was genuinely affirming nonetheless. They were words of appreciation.

Another example. This one I’ve shared before with some of you. It was my very first English class at the same university. We had a writing assignment in which we chose a topic from the chalkboard to write an essay on. One of the topics we could choose was “The Protestant Reformation,” which was the one I chose.

In my paper, and out of my ignorance, I gave the Catholics hell. Popes and infallibility, the inquisition, you name it and I savaged them. To my freshman mind, what I wrote was the final word on the Protestant Reformation 400 years before.

When my paper came back, it was like blood had been spilled all over it. Red marks and comments on every paragraph. And questions like, “Who said?” “Where did you get your information?” “How do you know this?”

And then quite graciously actually, the professor had given me a C+. I was crushed. A C+? For those jewels?

But then down at the bottom, she also wrote, “You have a wonderful way with words.”

Wow: “a wonderful way with words.” And when I went to choose a major, it was one of the factors influencing my choice of journalism and communications. Her positive words, in the midst of a very honest and critical analysis, had been personally important. Even in the midst of a necessary negative critique, she had found something to affirm and to appreciate.

Another example: Amanda shared with me a story she read from one of the texts she uses at Florida Gulf Coast University as a professor of social work. Its title is Current Psycho-Therapies. It seems that the psychiatrist who edited the text was having a book signing when a young man came through to have his copy signed, and he said to the psychiatrist, “I want to thank you for changing my life.”

The psychiatrist was slightly taken aback, because he could not recognize the man facing him. He did know they had not been in any long term therapy or analysis that would have yielded such a testimony, and to such significant transformation. He queried the person a little further, who then related this story.

He said he was in prison when the psychiatrist came to the prison to administer a battery of intelligence tests to the prisoners. When he was evaluating this particular prisoner’s test and reporting back to him, he made a somewhat casual statement to the effect, “There’s nothing wrong with your intelligence. You’re certainly bright enough.”

The psychiatrist left and went on about his career. But the prisoner heard those words and grasped on to them. Even though he was in prison, a very important person had told him there was nothing wrong with his intelligence…that he was bright enough to be performing just like others on the outside. It transformed his life: one statement of appreciation of a person’s native abilities.

Now in each of these examples I’ve given, it’s the words that were transforming. But I submit that there was something more than words going on…more than a casual statement or two from a psychiatrist to a prisoner…more than a glowing sentence on a freshman paper from a university professor to her student, or more than a trite phrase written in a book from a bishop to a young minister to be. Those words were positive statements that transformed the way the ones who heard them had thought of themselves. They were the kind of statements that tap into the very heart of who we are and how we function in the world.

Simple, seemingly insignificant statements, had life changing outcomes. The reason being was that they were appreciative words to people who needed them. And in the process they were transforming. Words and affirmation go together to make a difference.

Doug and Dianne Cartwright gave me a beautifully framed statement of variations of the Golden Rule as viewed by all the different religions of the world. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” says Christianity. “None of you is a believer until you desire for your sister or brother what you desire for yourself,” says Islam. And so on.

But it’s a fundamental plank of them all. Appreciation and affirmation of others in the way that we want to be treated is transforming.

That kind of transformation happens in other arenas as well. Those of you who have worked in the medical field are well aware of the placebo effect, which is when one to two-thirds of patients show marked physical and emotional improvement in their symptoms, simply because they believe they’ve been given an effective treatment – even though they were only given a sugar pill – a placebo! Something happened in the mind that was incredibly transformational in the body because they believed it was so.

Another arena: Many of you are familiar with the Pygmalion Effect, which was an experiment on a group of students and teachers who had been chosen at random. But both groups had been told they were selected because they were the brightest in the system. Because they thought they were bright, they functioned that way – both teachers and students. Something in the mind clicked to enable them to be brighter and smarter than ever before. Teachers were told that and students were. Wonderfully, they in fact became what they were told.

And here’s the most amazing dimension of the concept of praise and affirmation: the impact on those dispensing those words of appreciation. It makes them feel better as well. It’s like a mirror that bounces back the image before it. When we offer words of praise and affirmation to others, whether it’s a child, a partner or spouse, an employee, a clerk at the store, a waitperson at the restaurant, we can make a difference.

Last night, Amanda and I had a late dinner at Cracker Barrel Restaurant. The young woman waiting on us, had the most wonderful personality, but she was evidently new to her task. Since Amanda’s daughter is working at a restaurant while going to college, I’ve developed special appreciation of the task waitpersons face. When this waitperson came to our table, we asked how she was doing and how her work was going.

Later, as she was serving the food, I had asked for some hot pepper sauce for my beans, which she forgot. I gently asked her again. Later, she filled my glass of Sprite with water, and I gently asked her again later for some Sprite. She laughed and said it was the second time she had done it.

Later, she came back and asked me a very politically incorrect question. She said: “Are you a Christian?”

Well, I didn’t think it was a time for a discussion about the pluralistic theological stance of Unitarianism, but I gathered that my response was not what most had given her that day. And maybe the fact that I was going to preach on appreciation and contentment had made a difference in me. But it seemed clear that instead of being put down for her slips in waiting on her customers, she felt affirmed as a person.

And as each of us would testify, when we make mistakes it is sometimes difficult to accept that we’ve made them. But how much easier it is, if in the process we are also affirmed as persons as well.

APPLICATION

Consider life as a gift to be appreciated. A gift is not something we have earned; it’s something we’ve been graciously given…which is truly what life is. A gift from our parents…a gift from the Universe…a gift from God.

And one of the ways that we express appreciation is not only to express appreciation to the source from which it came…but we pass it on. In fact, you’ve all heard the phrase that we can never repay a parent’s love…except as we pass it on. The same is true in relationships to others. Those words of appreciation and caring that we’ve been given, we give to others!

I would like to suggest that in 2005, to become gifted in appreciating others means we have to learn to think differently.

For example, what if we have a child with whom we’re having difficulty: What if, instead of spelling out the rules and pointing out where she or he has failed, we instead identify together, the things the child is doing well. What if we tried to build behavior guidelines based upon positive core practices?

CONCLUSION

I still remember one time when one of my kids brought home an outstanding report card: all A’s and one B. And you know what I did: I said more about the one B than I did about the four A’s.

Afterwards when I realized what I had done, I felt like a sheep-killing dog. Why had I not focused on the four A’s, and how proud I was of them? Why did I feel it necessary to put my child down in one area instead of affirming the whole?

The same is true in life. Why not find a way to appreciate rather than un-appreciate? If we truly begin to think appreciatively, it means we have to get rid of a whole lot of problem-focused, unappreciative vocabulary. We have to erase from our vocabulary putdown phrases, negative and destructive words.

But equally important, when we interact with other people, we must relearn to do so based upon our appreciation of them. Saying words of affirmation, positive statements, appreciative words, can make all the difference in the world.

[1] First in a five-part series given at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Foulds Theater in the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Minister.

[2] Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, by David L. Cooperrider,