Rev. C. Scot Giles, D.Min., LLC

Over the years I received many requests to post the text of some of the sermons I have given at churches of my denomination. I've decided to go ahead a do that with a selection of my best pulpit work. The text of the sermon will be at the start of the Blog entry, and you will find service details (readings, prayers, etc.) at the end.

My sermon this morning is a “theme” sermon in my ministry. It is a theme I believe in and talk about all the time. Simply put, I think it is important to live one’s life as a Positive Person rather than a Negative Person. Easy to say, but hard to do.

Negative people trouble me. They can bring me down when I want to feel up, and I believe they are hurting their own mental, spiritual and physical health by being negative.

Mostly, they bother me because I know that without constant vigilance over my own mood and outlook, I would be one of them.

I am a man with a melancholic personality. A positive frame of reference about my life does not come easily to me. It is something I work at every day. So this morning I will speak about the power of a positive expectation and the danger of a negative one.

When I speak about Negative People I do not mean people who are suffering a bereavement over a loss or death. Bereavement is a healthy, temporary state in the mind. It hurts, but it passes and often deepens us and brings with it a wisdom.

When I speak about Negative People I do not mean people who are biochemically depressed. Such people suffer from a treatable chemical imbalance in the brain that we have ways to help in most cases. This is an illness, and no one chooses to be depressed.

No, I refer to those people who make a choice to consistently expect things to go poorly. Physician-author July Orloff in her book Positive Energy uses specific names to describe them. Perhaps you will recognize some of the names: ”the sob sister, the guy who is always mad, the blamer, the drama queen, the constant talker and the person who always seems to require endless help.” They are people who always whine and complain but who do not act.

“The fool says, ‘I have no friends’ (Sirach 20:16) and for good reason.

Of the popular shows making the rounds of stages this summer, my favorite is Celtic Thunder, a show composed of five male soloists. They do music with a traditional Celtic flair, performing on a special stage that resembles an old stone pathway.

The song I like the best is “Heartland,” an updating of a traditional hymn. Chanting the words “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy” in Gaelic, they intertwine that chant with a fisherman’s prayer to protect the crew of a ship from the storm and other perils of the “vasty deep.”

It’s a bold song, and when performed well, the singers put on an expression of stoic pride; which is fitting as it is a song sung by men for centuries as they would go out onto the big ocean in little boats, and were in peril of their lives if the weather turned.

I like the song because of it’s bravery and positive energy. This is a song sung by people who know their lives are full of risk, yet who face that risk with a calm mind and a radical trust that they will come through it well. They are not negative people.

Figuring out how not to become negative in our world can be a challenge.

There is no such thing as safety. If the recent atrocity at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has taught us nothing, it has taught us that no place is completely safe. This isn’t news. We all really knew that. But most of us live our lives with the comforting illusion that we’re going to live forever and that bad things do not happen to good people.

We know that’s not true, but it’s comforting to think. And so we think it, and are comforted, except when events show us how foolishly wrong it is.

Yet the knowledge that no one is safe weighs on the mind and burdens the soul. It changes us. Some of us find courage inside to move forward regardless while others find the dark too much handle. They become fearful and negative. As Michael Pritchard quipped, “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.”

The problem with negative people is that they seem to be everywhere. I’ve met them and so have you. They are the people who, no matter what, can always find something wrong with every good idea. They are the people who have a knack for bringing others down, and sometimes it seems like the illumination in a room grows dimmer when they enter.

They are damaged souls. New studies in brain development have showed that the brain is constantly wiring and re-wiring itself all our life long. When we are very young this process goes on intensely. When older, it slows, but still continues. New synapses form. New dendritic linkages fashion themselves as the biocomputer of our brain strives to adapt to changing environments and stressors. Nerve cells pick up and hold a slight biochemical charge so that they will fire on less stimulation than nerve cells right alongside. Over time, these pathways become reinforced and very strong.

The process was named “kindling” by Dr. Herbert Benson of Boston’s Deaconess Hospital. It means that our brain is changing all the time, but it does not always change for the better. Put a human in a painful or stressful place and his or her brain will change to adapt to it. But the more that happens the harder it is to think new thoughts or feel new feelings. The habits of a lifetime etch themselves into the hardware of our nervous system, and some get trapped there.

In a rabbi’s story a troubled soul had died and gone to Heaven. Taking pity upon him, a Guardian Angel told him that as he was now in Heaven, he could have anything he wanted. All he had to do was ask. The man thought and asked if, please, he could have a hot roll with butter every morning. It would be so good to be able to have a hot roll with butter every day.

And, said the Rabbi, all the Angels in Heaven wept that a human spirit had become so worn and tired that this was the most it could ask for; that this was all it could dream.

Negative people become negative because they discovered it was a way to adapt to the stress in their lives. As we live in a stressful world, over time the negative people become legion.

And sometimes, they are us.

Have you ever had a time of negativity? I have. It’s almost the default setting for the human brain. Of the 200 or so chemicals your brain uses to regulate its functioning only about 60 are critically important. Of those 60 chemicals, 45 can create the experience of fear. Any experience you have that is not accompanied by fear is the work of the remaining 15 chemicals.

Think about that. Only 15 out of 60 neuropeptides account for anything other than fear and negation. Your brain has a strong biochemical predisposition to favor fearful and negative expectation. So you do it, and so do I.

Negativity is the default setting of the human brain. Every one of us looks out at the world through smoke-colored glasses and every one of us sees the world in a distorted way. The only way to get a clear view of the world is to adopt a discipline of putting a positive spin on incoming data. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s not optimism. It is merely coping for the biochemical predisposition of the brain we have inherited. A decision to expect positive things instead of negative just gets us back to the baseline of a clear view of the world.

It’s not hard to imagine why the fearful brain has evolved. Fear makes a creature cautious. Cautious creatures tend to survive and reproduce, passing on the fearful gene. At this point in evolution fear is the easiest emotion to experience. If we are not careful, it will keep us from getting anything done.

As a helping professional I’m tempted to quip that “I like negative people because they insure my financial future.” The trouble is that isn’t true. People who are habitually downcast are not good candidates for therapy and seldom respond. In order to benefit from a helping relationship one must agree there is the possibility of improvement. Negative People seldom agree with that.

These days I’ve been reading the work of Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author who now lives in Paris. Some of you may have read his book The Alchemist, which was on the Best Seller List some years ago. Coelho writes well and his books translate readily from his native Portuguese. But while his words are simple; the ideas behind them are complex. In one of his lessor-known books, called The Valkyries, he writes about a concept I find helpful.

He calls it “The Pact with Failure.” Coelho believes that there is a part of human consciousness that is intrinsically self-defeating and self-destructive. This part of our minds gets formed the moment someone told us as children that we were a “bad” boy or girl. The brain hears the parental authority telling us that we are bad, and begins to re-wire itself so that thinking we are bad becomes easier to think. Over time that idea becomes “kindled,” and part of our own mind is out to get us.

The only way, Coelho believes, for us to become happy is to find a way to break our “Pact with Failure.” We do this by self-examination and discovering how we unconsciously “mess ourselves up” and make a decision to choose a different path. At first that feels strange, but over time we break the Pact and move into a happier way of understanding ourselves and our lives.

I loved this idea because it helped me reframe part of my own story. I’ve been open about the fact that as a young man I was a violent person. I was always furious about things that had happened, and that fury manifested itself in ways I now regret. My “Pact with Failure” was my anger. It always appeared when I would have been better served by a calm mind and strategic thinking. Deciding that I would no longer act in anger took practice. It was hard. Many times I walked away from situations, despite the laughter of others, because I’d promised myself I would wait until I was calm before I acted.

Over time, I changed. The quality of my decisions improved. I began to have success where formerly I had failure. I still don’t always get it right. I’m working at it.

I don’t know what your particular “Pact with Failure” is, or even if you have one. But I think Coelho is on to something and I suspect a lot of us do. That “Pact” will lead us directly to fear, failure and negativity is we let it. It’s a good “Pact” to break.

In classical theology, being a negative person was considered a sin. God was good, and so was the world God had created. If you were “right with God” you were supposed to be confident that everything would work out for you. To doubt that was to doubt God, and doubting God was sin.

There is even a section in the Book of Deuteronomy where the writer comes right out and says that provided we do what God says we should do, only good things will happen to us:

"If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the LORD your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors; he will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, in the land that he swore to your ancestors to give you. You shall be the most blessed of peoples, with neither sterility nor barrenness among you or your livestock. The LORD will turn away from you every illness; all the dread diseases of Egypt that you experienced, he will not inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you." (Deut. 7:12-15)

The problem with this belief is that it is manifestly and obviously untrue. Bad things happen to good people all the time. This mistake by the writer of Deuteronomy was so obviously wrong that the Book of Job and the Book of Eccelesastes had to be written to correct it. In the Book of Job, the belief that bad things only happen to bad people is specifically refuted, and the Book of Eccelesastes comes right out and says that the world is an unjust and unfair place.

But, said the writer of the Book of Eccelesastes, while the world is unfair, it is still good. Happiness is not guaranteed, but it is possible. We have some control over events, even if that control is not absolute. That’s wisdom. Otherwise being a Negative Person would be the only reasonable kind of person to be.

I see this in my professional work all the time. My ministry is one of spiritual healing, especially with regard to cancer.

The primary tool I use to do that healing is hypnotism and I’m known for my work with the more difficult medical cases. I’m affiliated with two Chicago-area hospitals as well as the University of Chicago Medical Center, and at this point there is a high degree of acceptance of the power of the mind by the mainstream medical community.

We know and can demonstrate that negative people tend to have worse medical outcomes, and positive people tend to have better medical outcomes, even when all other variables are controlled. This isn’t too surprising as emotions are, in addition to everything else, biochemical states in the body. If we characteristically feel one way we have a different biochemistry going in our body than if we characteristically feel a different way.

There is no surprise in discovering that biochemical changes affect medical outcome. Everyone already knew that.

Therefore, a lot of my professional work is the task of helping people move from a negative disposition to a positive one. When they do that they are changing their body as well as their mind, and things simply go better. Resilience to illness improves. The human body is stronger when the thoughts in the mind are positive.

In my work, being a Negative Person can translate into being a dead one, and so breaking the “Pact with Failure” is an imperative task for the people I work with.

As the writer of Proverbs puts it, “a downcast spirit dries up the bones.” (Prov. 17:22)

I am a martial artist. I’m a multiple black belt in taekwondo karate and a swordsman. In fact, I have spoken from this pulpit on the spiritual aspects of the martial arts and even displayed Fenris bane Vitar, my sword, which was made for me by Master Daniel Wilson of Angel Sword in Driftwood, Texas.

The martial arts are at least 50% mental. You have to be fit and flexible, but it really is all about controlling your mind.

I’ll never forget my first black belt test. In my Federation a Master cannot test his or her own student for black belt. The test is always done by someone you do not know. The task before me was to break four boards with a single punch. That’s about three inches of solid wood.

To do this task requires a lot of focus. You have to control your instincts. You focus on a point on the other side of the boards, just behind them. That imaginary point is your target. You focus until the boards cease to exist for you, and all you see if the target as if the boards were not there.

You can have no doubt. No negativity. If you can do this your hand will pass right through the boards on its way to the target. However, if you do not achieve the proper focus, if you doubt yourself even a bit, or are the smallest bit negative in your expectation, it will not go well.

As you deliver the punch your unconscious mind will see the boards as “really there.” Instinctively, you will pull the punch before your hand reaches the target because your mind will “flinch” with the expectation of a painful impact. By pulling the punch you sacrifice the power you need to break the boards. Your hand will shatter, not the wood.

That is why all marital artists do board breaking as part of every martial arts test. It is an absolute test. If everything isn’t correct, the board will not break. If the mind isn’t focused and positive, everyone will see that in a very dramatic way.

It quickly taught me the power of positive expectation and the foolishness of negative expectation.

So far today I’ve talked about why I believe it’s so important to be a Positive Person and why being a Negative Person is unwise. Is suspect many of you agree with me. In fact, if we took a poll most people would probably agree that it is better to live life as an optimist than a pessimist; if only because it’s less stressful.

If that’s so, why are there so many Negative People around? Why is it so easy for us to become Negative? If staying positive is such a good thing, why do we mess it up so often?

I’ve pondered this. I found in Coelho a possible answer. We have an inner voice that is not on our side. In his book, The Zahir, Coelho calls this voice “the Acomodador.”

This is a concept borrowed from the shamanic practices of North Mexico. The Acomodador is the point in life where you decide to stop reaching for the fulfillment of your dreams and hopes, and instead settle for something less. It is the moment in our lives when we decide to abandon our desires and make do with what we have. It is seldom a good decision.

It’s what goes on when you think of all the wonderful things you’d like to do with your life but find yourself saying “oh come on!” “You’re never going to do that. Who do you think you are?”

You know that voice don’t you? I certainly do. It’s an easy and a seductive voice that suggests we give up, settle for what we have and cease to strive.

In hypnotism there is a style called “Parts Work.” It’s where you imagine that the mind is made up of sub-personalities and you work with them individually.

Someone once said that we all have within out minds at least two parts. We have a Don Quixote part and a Sancho Panza part. For those unfamiliar with the classical story by Miguel de Cervantes, Quixote is idealistic and mad, Sancho Panza is his sidekick who just tries to keep Quixote out of trouble.

We all have an idealistic part and another part that is less than idealistic. That’s the Sancho Panza part who just wants to sit down, have a beer, get a girl (or what have you) and chill out. That’s the Acomodador. It wants you to settle.

The problem with that is that you know you have settled. You’ve disappointed yourself and that will cast a shadow. Over time, that shadow can make you negative.

Yet this analysis suggests a solution. A decision not to settle, or at least not to settle easily and without a fight. An unrest in the soul that pushes you to try should be cherished.

Perhaps that’s why I rejoice when the vocalists in Celtic Thunder sing the song “Heartland.” A hymn to giving something your best shot, even though it’s tough and the odds may seem long. It’s simply, in my opinion, the best way to live.

And that’s my sermon.

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Opening Words

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Chalice Lighting and Covenant

God, who broughtest us from the rest of last night,
Unto the joyous light of this day,
Be Thou bringing us from the new light of this day,
Unto the guiding light of eternity.
In symbol of that light, kindle we the lamp of this day.
-Carmina Gadelica

Reading

Sir. 20:1    There is a rebuke that is untimely,
and there is the person who is wise enough to keep silent.
2 How much better it is to rebuke than to fume!
3 And the one who admits his fault will be kept from failure.
4 Like a eunuch lusting to violate a girl
is the person who does right under compulsion.
5 Some people keep silent and are thought to be wise,
while others are detested for being talkative.
6 Some people keep silent because they have nothing to say,
while others keep silent because they know when to speak.
7 The wise remain silent until the right moment,
but a boasting fool misses the right moment.
8 Whoever talks too much is detested,
and whoever pretends to authority is hated.
9 There may be good fortune for a person in adversity,
and a windfall may result in a loss.
10 There is the gift that profits you nothing,
and the gift to be paid back double.
11 There are losses for the sake of glory,
and there are some who have raised their heads from humble circumstances.
12 Some buy much for little,
but pay for it seven times over.
13 The wise make themselves beloved by only few words,
but the courtesies of fools are wasted.
14 A fool’s gift will profit you nothing,
for he looks for recompense sevenfold.
15 He gives little and upbraids much;
he opens his mouth like a town crier.
Today he lends and tomorrow he asks it back;
such a one is hateful to God and humans.
16 The fool says, “I have no friends,
and I get no thanks for my good deeds.
Those who eat my bread are evil-tongued.”
17 How many will ridicule him, and how often!

Prayer
(by David Honour)

GOD, IN WHOM I LIVE AND BREATHE AND
HAVE MY BEING...

Like the purest and most subtle perfume
Your presence fills my consciousness.

Ineffable, indescribable;
You are as close as my own soul,
Yet as different and alien as the stars themselves.

In your holy embrace I live and breathe and have my being.

I call out to you and you answer in the echo of my words.

You are Incomprehensible Mystery;
Yet my soul dances with knowledge of you.

You are the one who transcends;
Incarnate in all that is;
Beholden to none.

You cannot be held by our words;
Or by the limits of the human mind.

You are within, beyond, between.
An all embracing reality, without shape or substance.

Haunting presence.

Soul of the Cosmos.