On the Wearing of Masks

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.

On The Wearing of Masks

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

Sermon delivered at Countryside Unitarian Universalist Church, February 22, 2009

Anyone know what these are? They are called “Throws” and they’re used during the major Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans that will happen this Tuesday. This is what they look like in the traditional colors of Mardi Gras: purple for justice, gold for power and green for faith. The masked “Throwers” on the floats in the parade will have hundreds of these that they will throw to the people watching the parade who have attracted their attention in various ways.

I had actually planned to throw these necklaces from the pulpit out into the congregation at this point. However, your minister made me promise not to do that. She was deeply afraid of what some of you might do. Both she and I concluded that there might be some in the congregation who would not be able to resist the temptation to flash. While that might be amusing for a moment; there would be all those years of dealing with the consequences. To quote Rev. Hilary “it wouldn’t be good for the cause.”

The people at Mardi Gras wear masks. I like masks. I even thought about wearing one today but didn’t because I worried that you would think me an even odder person than I usually am, but I’m a fan of masks and this is a sermon about why wearing psychological masks can be a good thing.

“Mardi Gras” is French for “Fat Tuesday,” which is the day before Ash Wednesday when the religious penitential season of Lent begins in the Christian Calendar.

These days, Fat Tuesday is really the peak of a series of celebrations that will have been going on for almost two weeks. The season of Carnival begins slowly and works its way to a fever pitch on Fat Tuesday with a huge parade by groups called “Krewes,” such as the Bacchus Krewe, the Orpheus Krewe and the famous Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which will be celebrating its 100th birthday this year. The float Zulu will show off is a secret, but it is said they will be passing gold-painted coconuts out to the crowd. I’ll be sorry to miss it.

Presiding over the whole festival is the Captain of the Rex Organization, a Krewe with a long-time military connection, who will ride masked on a white horse before the storied float on this year’s Mardi Gras theme, “The Parade of History.” On Tuesday there will be parade of floats with themes celebrating everything from “The 1904 World’s Faire,” to “Aliens Landing at Roswell.”

We celebrate Mardi Gras after a fashion at the Bates/Giles household. I display some of the Throws on our dining table, and for the two week period I prepare come classical New Orleans food, which I find to be a lot of fun.

What’s all this about? Mardi Gras is sort of a “last fling” before Lent. Carnival celebrations world-wide include the need to use up meat and animal products, such as eggs and butter, which would only spoil during the 40 days of Lent. But the celebration itself is older. Scholars tell us it may have its origin in the ancient classical custom of parading a statue of the solar god Apollo in a cart through the streets in a metaphor for the sun’s progress through the sky each year.

As the cult of Apollo waned in the ancient world, other gods on their carts joined the parade, with the temple workers on those carts competing for the cheers of the crowd by throwing coins and jewelry to those watching the parade.

So actually, Mardi Gras is a memorial to old pagan solar festival, dressed up Christian, where who do the pagan gods proud.

And we wear masks. Masks are fascinating things. Every culture uses them in some form. The desire to put a different face on one’s own face is universal. I wonder why?


A Brief History of Masks

The first thought that comes to my mind when I think of someone in a mask is the desire to conceal one’s identity. Bank robbers and superheroes use masks for that purpose. In the Mardi Gras, and in the world-wide custom of Carnival, masks are used so that revelers from different social classes might mingle without scandal. They also give a sense of personal freedom about behavior, as one cannot be identified for certain as the person who did such-and-such with so-and-so.

However, in more ancient times masks were not used to conceal identity but to replace it. A worshipper might don the mask of a god and “become” the god for purposes of a ritual or to play a part in a theater. We see this in Japanese Noh Theater and in the mask-like heavy kumadori makeup of the Kabuki plays. In classical Greece, the actors often appeared on stage in a mask.

But nowhere was the notion of a mask better developed than in ancient Rome, which also appears to be the cradle of the Mardi Gras.


Persona

Everyone important in Rome wore a mask. Every day. Not a physical mask, a psychological one.

It was called the “Persona,” and we take our word “person” from that Latin word. In fact, in classical Latin, “persona” literally means “mask.”

Everyone with an important social role in Rome, from the teachers in the academy, to the politicians, to the people important in fashion and society, were taught from childhood to create a “public self” and to put the mask of that public self on every time they sent out into society.

The Roman Patrician was expected to be calm and composed at all times. He or she was expected to be patriotic, traditional and public-spirited. No matter how much political or social trouble he or she was in, his or her public presentation was not to deviate from the calm demeanor of the Patrician class.

The Persona mask was to stay in place at all times. If arrested, if accused by a court, if commanded by the Emperor to divorce a beloved spouse so the Emperor could give the spouse to someone else, or even if honored and rewarded for some lofty accomplishment, the Patrician calmly conformed to a complex social ideal. Calm. Composed. High-Minded. Public-Spirited. The mask of the Persona was never to slip.

Later, when home in the villa, and surrounded by trusted friends and family, only then might the Persona mask be removed and the real feelings of anger, betrayal, fear or joy be experienced.

I think we all do this is some way. Aren’t you often one sort of person in your private life and another in your business life. I am. You see the part Minister part of me up here in a stole.

You’d see a different part of me if instead of a stole I was wearing one of my black belts and if instead of speaking I was hoping to kick you in the head as a form recreation. My martial artist mask or Persona is very different from my Minister self. But they are both me. No one role defines our possibility. That’s my point.


Taking Off Masks

When you decide to become a clergyperson in the Unitarian Universalist Association you go to theological school and do an internship. The requirements are similar to what is expected in other professions. But there is one thing that you have to do that other professions do not. It is called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE.

If you ever want to have a bit of fun, ask any minister “So what did you learn during your CPE?” Then watch the color drain from his or her face as he or she tries to figure out what to say.

CPE lasts one academic quarter. You are placed in an institutional setting such as a prison or hospital and told to function as you think a minister should. You spend half your time doing that and the other half in individual and group supervision, where every aspect of your performance and personality is dissected, analyzed, critiqued and sometimes laughed at.

The process is called “Carefrontation,” a word made up of two other words: “care” and “confrontation.”

It can be a brutal experience. Marriages break up. Some candidates flee the entire profession. At the end of it a written evaluation is presented and this document will be one of the things religious authorities will look at most carefully in deciding if you can continue your studies.

In the CPE Supervision Circle, one common theme is to “take off the mask.” I recall my own supervisor saying that. “Be who your really are, not some role someone has assigned you!”

That’s fine, except the person who has assigned you the “role” was the supervisor, who also assigned you to work with a group of people with the instruction and told you to “act like a minister.”

In other words, you get critiqued for acting like a minister when you’ve been told to go act like a minister. Isn’t that nice? It’s a paradox.

The CPE is valued because how you resolve that paradox, turns out to say a lot about you and about what sort of minister you are likely to be. Each candidate resolves that paradox in his or own way, and if you can’t, you’ve got to find a different line of work.

“Take off the mask!” Is it possible even to do that? I wonder. In any case, it’s a scary thought.

When we are infants we behave as infants do. We do what comes naturally. Unfortunately, we quickly learn that doing what comes naturally to us doesn’t always win us points with people around us.

For example, it is completely natural to defecate in one’s pants.

It’s completely natural to cry or scream every time you don’t get your way.

However, if you want the approval of people in your environment, you learn to moderate your behavior from your natural instincts, to the behaviors that others want you to do. You quickly learn at a very basic level that we are not totally acceptable just as we are, and have to change how we behave. We start putting on masks early.

Actually, that’s probably part of the fun of putting on a mask at a Carnival. It re-enacts our socialization. “I put on this mask and I am making myself something different than who I normally am.”

The mask might be scary, sexy, funny or just odd. But we’ve all had to put on a psychological mask to make ourselves something different than who we normally are, and we do that for many purposes. So why not occasionally do it just for fun?

The masks we learn to wear are so fundamental, that I really doubt there is much under them. And that’s a good thing.


Parts Theory

Consulting Hypnotists use something we call “Parts Theory.” Basically, we think that the human mind is a complex, multi-layered thing. And we think it has some discrete parts. The parts are memories of the sort of people we were at different times of our lives.

For example, once upon a time I was a biker. Yup. Rode a chopper. Fought with a knife. Leather jacket, boots, chains, the whole nine yards. He’s still up here in my mind. If you get me angry enough you’ll see him and he’d probably scare you. He’s not a big part of me anymore, but he’s part of me, and there are times when his voice is needed.

At another time in my life I was a chef. I began my apprenticeship under Chef Savistano who was a great International Chef and a complete lunatic.

If everything wasn’t perfect, the Chef let you know about that in a very, very loud voice. He was an exacting perfectionist who would make no compromise.

I’m not usually like that. But, put me in a kitchen, even today, and Chef Savistano’s disciple will show up in my behavior. And he will tell you in a loud voice that the resotto should be creamy and smooth, and don’t even think about serving something if the colors are not right. Savistano’s disciple is still a part of my mind.

What we think of as our personality is really the voice that emerges from the on-going town meeting of the different parts of who we are, and who we have been. Under different circumstances, different parts become active and influence our thoughts, feelings and behavior.

Truly Whitman was right when he said “I am large, I contain multitudes.” We all do. We don’t just wear masks occasionally, we wear them all the time. They come and go depending on what skills and temperment we need to navagate our way through different situations. The personality we are in the bedroom is different from the presonality we need in the boardroom, or at the flea market. We are large. We contrain multidues.

This is a bad thing only we we decide that our psychological or social roles define us. They don’t. We are large. Part of the fun of putting on a costume mask is that it celebrates the fact that no single social role really describes us. We are full of possibilities as people and some of those might surprise even the people who know us well.

Knowing What Is Possible

The greatest minister I know is someone who you don’t know. He was my minister when I was a young man. The news his daughter died came just before he was to lead a worship service. Naturally, the news shattered him. “We’ll just tell the congregation to go home,” someone said. “No,” he replied.

And he put the mask of his professional role on over his grieving face and went before his congregation and did a fine job. His mask covered up who he was at that moment, but it allowed him to become who he needed to be for a short time. That’s what masks do, after all.

I know someone who was part of this congregation before she moved away. She was fired from her job following a series of job losses during the Dot-Com bust, when tech company after tech company went under. I knew her self-confidence was shot. She had a job interview. Somehow she found a mask she could wear that put a better face on her face. She got the job and as far as I know still has it.

That never would have happened if the Human Resources Vice-President had been able to see under that mask and how how upset and shaken she was. But the mask held. Or, if you prefer, she was able to activate a different “part” of her personality that took the lead, and got her through the interview very well.

He’d had a rotten first marriage. As far as I could tell his wife had the Borderline Personality. That’s a mental health problem where a person always blames everything that happens on someone else. No matter what, it’s always someone else’s fault. And when you’re married to them, that fault is usually yours. Or so they say. And say. And say.

And he was a train wreck. When he first consulted me I didn’t know where even to begin because he was so beaten up verbally and emotionally. We worked together for a while but we were just treading water. Then he met her. She became his second wife. He became a completely different person. She was able to help him reach inside and activated different part of his personality and became a different person in his second marriage then he’d been in his first. It was magical to see.

We are large. We contain multitudes. No matter how upset, shaken, unself-confident, angry or hurt you are, there is a “part” of you that you can call on that can get you through that situation well.

You put that face on your face, and for a time you play a role. But it’s not fake. We are people of thousands of masks. We can become who we need to be in order to survive and to prosper. Our ability to be different sorts of people in different situations isn’t a problem, it’s a skill.

With training you can do it deliberately, but we all can set up the circumstance in our lives to call forth the part of ourselves that serve us well.


The Guard of the Heart

In recent months I’ve been reading about something called Paleo-Christianity. That’s the theology of the early Christian church before the 4th century when the Council of Nicea began to create creeds. It was the time of the Apostles and the Dessert Fathers and Mothers. These were people who left the cities and established communities in the Dessert to seek spiritual enlightenment apart from the Roman Empire which was falling apart around them.

One of the greatest of these was a man named (Saint) John Cassian. Born in 360 CE, he didn’t write much, but what he wrote influenced the entire development of Christianity. He had an idea he called “The Guard of the Heart.”

He taught that we each needed to know ourselves well enough so that at the very least we knew what sort of thoughts, and what sort of companions, were good for us, and what sort were bad.

Once you had that, he said you should set up your life to spend time with the ideas and people that are good for you, and avoid the ideas and people who are bad. You set a guard up around your heart in this way.

In 12 Step programs they say, “No drunk ever got sober unless he or she changed his or her friends.” There is something to that.

The idea is simple. Surround yourself with the people and circumstances that call forth from you the best parts of you. Avoid those that call forth the lessor parts. Wear the masks that smile and are unruffled, and leave the others off.

That’s not always easy to do. We don’t always control our workplace and some of us are unluckily paired, but with a bit of creativity sometimes you can do a lot. There is usually something one can do to make the circumstances of our lives more like a Carnival and less like Lent.

I like this idea and try to keep a Guard up around my Heart. I recommend the practice to you, so that the masks you wear, or the parts of your personality you cherish, will be those that serve you well.

And that’s my sermon.

Service Materials

Chalice Lighting (Dag Hammarskjold)

Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive,
to carry, and to give back

Reading (Just to prove the relevance of my Mardi Gras topic today…)

Former Zulu queen picked for White House Post by Jonathan Tilove,
The Times-Picayune; Monday November 24, 2008, 9:35 PM

WASHINGTON -- Desiree Rogers, a former New Orleans Zulu queen and
daughter of a former city councilman, was named incoming White House
social secretary on Monday by President-elect Barrack Obama.

In a statement Monday announcing the Rogers' appointment, Obama and
wife Michelle highlighted Rogers' qualifications as one of Chicago's most
high-powered executives, a former head of the Illinois Lottery, former
president of the Chicago utility, Peoples Energy, and most recently president
of social networking for Allstate Financial.

What the statement didn't mention is that Rogers, 49, is a native New
Orleanian who twice was queen of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a
krewe dating back to 1916. She was queen of Zulu in 1988, and in 2000
reprised the reign in honor of her father, who died about two and a half
months earlier.

Her father, Roy E. Glapion Jr., a former director of sports for the New
Orleans public schools and member of the New Orleans City Council from
1994 until his death in 1999, was instrumental in leading the Zulu krewe from
a dwindling band of fewer than 100 black men in the early 1970s to a robust,
financially healthy and racially integrated krewe. Over the course of many
years, Glapion served variously as finance chairman, president and chairman
of the Zulu board.

Rogers is a pillar of the Chicago business and social scene -- a friend to
Barack and Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Valerie Jarrett, the Obama
confidante from Chicago who is co-chairing the transition effort and will
serve as a senior adviser to the president in the new administration.
Rogers' new job will require all her business and social skills.

(Well, maybe not ALL of them; but I wish her every success in any case.).

Offertory

I extend to you what every shop-keeper and tavern owner will say to you on Fat Tuesday in the Big Easy. Brothers and Sisters, make your wallets lighter so that you may carry them more easily.


Reading (Song of Myself by Walt Whitman 51-2)

The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.


Prayer [from Creighton University Ministry, Nebraska]

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for it is from your goodness that we have this day
to celebrate on the threshold of the Season of Lent.

Today we feast.
We thank you for the abundance of gifts you shower upon us.
We thank you especially for one another.
As we give you thanks,
we are mindful of those who have so much less than we do.
As we share these wonderful gifts together,
we commit ourselves to greater generosity toward those
who need our support.

Prepare us for tomorrow.
Tasting the fullness of what we have today,
let us experience some hunger tomorrow.
May our fasting make us more alert
and may it heighten our consciousness
so that we might be ready to hear your Call
and to respond.

As our feasting fills us with gratitude
so may we have an attentiveness to hear the cry of the poor.
Give us a new freedom for
generous service to others.

We ask you these graces
with our hearts full of delight
and stirring with readiness for the journey ahead.
We ask them with confidence

Closing Words

And now may the truth that makes us free
And the hope that never dies
And the love that casts out fear,
Lead us forward together,
Until the Dayspring breaks,
And the shadows flee away.

Benediction

May the Lord Bless us and Keep us.
May He lift up the Light of Her continence upon us,
And Give us Peace. Amen.