We start with a quote from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, an excerpt from an essay entitled, “The Heroic Work of Repentance:”
Intentions don’t fix harm. Reasons don’t fix harm. Fixing harm is only possible when we bravely face the gap between the story we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and the reality of our actions. Only when we summon our courage to cross that gulf of cognitive dissonance and face who we are and who we have been – even if it threatens our story of ourselves – can we repair the harm we’ve done and become the kind of people who might be able to do better next time.
Ouch!
Oops!
Thank you.
A-ha.
Sometimes: first oops, then ouch.
Sometimes at the same time.
Sometimes: the a-ha comes before the thank you.
I was in a meeting the week before last. The chair of the committee read aloud our covenant. It began with “Honor and respect our time together as precious and finite” which I know to be in covenants of other teams in this congregation. This covenant listed “listening deeply, withholding judgment and allowing for grace.”
And then, the 5th out of 8 bullet points: “Embrace ‘ouch, oops, thanks, aha’ moments [pause] to deepen connection.”
The committee meeting I was attending was of the Responsible Behaviors Policy Committee, tasked by the Board to create a policy that helps us live into our values and respond when someone’s behavior is outside of covenantal expectations. A way to “deepen our connection” with one another.
It’s a committee that has been meeting for a year, give or take, bringing learning and discernment to the task in front of us, with representation from several ministry teams. Given that the purpose of the group is to help the congregation figure out how to respond when someone inadvertently causes harm, it made sense that the committee have a covenant and that it provide guidance on what to do when hurt or harm happens in the course of meeting.
We leaned on this easy-to-remember approach that exists elsewhere in the world, but ~ I believe ~ arrived in Unitarian Universalism via our youth and young adults many decades ago now.
When someone says something that is experienced with a negative impact, the covenant creates space that they can say “ouch” to communicate that hurt or harm, sharing more details as makes sense in the moment.
The person who is the source of the hurt responds not with “I didn’t mean to” or “that’s not what I intended” but with a simple “oops.” An acknowledgement not of their intent, but of the impact on someone with whom they are in relationship.
The covenant then lets us know that we aspire to respond with thank you as the next response, one that keeps at bay potential initial reactions of defensiveness, minimizing the impact, or gaslighting the person who called attention to the “ouch.”
Lastly, the a-ha is a chance to recognize the learning moment that the exchange has become, ideally one that will bring about a change in behavior.
I remember a time, I think I was in my late 20s, and I was called in for using a racist word. Basically, someone said, “ouch.”
It was a word I grew up using, one my family used to communicate when we felt we had been cheated. I didn’t mean to be racist. And it was certainly embarrassing to be publicly called out about it.
Nevertheless, my response was up to me. It was my choice. I could become defensive – “I didn’t mean to be racist.” That was definitely an option that arose within me. At the time, I’m not sure I knew how to spell the word I had spoken. Once its spelling was pointed out to me, I got how the word, spelled g-y-p, was a phrase that emerged from the racist trope that
My recollection is that I did respond with gratitude: “Thank you for informing me. I didn’t know.” Even when we feel embarrassed, ashamed, or guilty; even if we do not yet have enough information to decide how we want to go forward, a thank you response is possible.
And within our covenantal relationships here in the congregation, I would say, preferred. Because we are all growing, all learning, all loved.
Two years ago, not long after I arrived at First UU, I preached on Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s (then) new-ish book called On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, which had been the UUA’s CommonRead.
Rabbi Danya, and her source, Maimonides, will make an appearance or two in today’s sermon. So will Mia Mingus, educator and visionary in the fields of transformative justice and disability justice, as we explore ethical guidelines for how to make amends – a reasonable topic given that Yom Kippur was just a few days ago, and the High Holidays, while officially over, linger since this coming week is Sukkot, Judaism’s harvest festival.
And because talking about a thing – including listening to me talk about a thing – is only one way into an important topic, and rarely the best way, our ritual spiritual practice is different today, adapted to our topic of figuring out the path to make amends.
But first, the talking.
Rabbi Danya offers tells us that there are five parts to the process of repentance and repair. Or, as it is called in Hebrew, t’shuvah, which means “returning” – both literally (like, I just returned from the store) and spiritually, as when it means that we return to being the person we know ourselves to be capable of, doing so with humility and intentionality.
The five steps of t’shuvah, according to Rabbi Danya[1], based on her studies of the 12th century scholar and rabbi, Maimonides, are
First: confession (naming and owning the harm that we have caused);
Second: improvement (beginning to change so that we don’t do it again; showing effort, not just saying we are going to change)
Third: amends (acts of repair to those harmed);
Fourth: apology (a genuine apology to those harmed, which – and this is key – focuses on their needs being met, not on the needs of the person apologizing);
and the Fifth one: change (making different choices the next time you have the chance to do the same thing – demonstrating that improvement has transformed into change).
I also want to raise to you a different paradigm, this one from a secular source, another way into a process of accountability, which is basically what those five steps describe. Mia Mingus has written a go-to text for community organizers and activists, especially those involved in transformative justice.
She divides the process of accountability into four primary parts[2]:
- Self-reflection
- Apologizing
- Repair
- Behavior Change
Self-reflection as a starting off place makes sense – and complements Rabbi Danya’s first step of confession or the experience of regret. Mingus does say that though it is listed as the first step, it is an action that must take place throughout the whole accountability process.
For the second step of apologizing, Mingus is clear that here is the chance to move from self to relationship with other, acknowledging and taking responsibility for the hurt or harm you caused or were complicit in. It’s a chance not just to apologize and be done, but to demonstrate to those you harmed that you understand what you did and the impact on them (not focusing on your intentions). We do this for many reasons, but primarily because it is the fundamental building block for trust. And trust comes not when we try to explain ourselves, or minimize the impact, but when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in relationship with another.
That trust is key because the next step, Repair, can only happen in a relationship where at least some measure of trust is being established. Repair cannot be done alone, though it also cannot be done until you have done your own work on your own. Mingus says this of repair:
Repair can take a long time and usually demands consistency and a level of faith in the face of fear that we are often not taught. It takes a lot of work to rebuild trust and to mend a broken relationship, especially when compounded by past trauma (for everyone involved) ….Repair is not linear and does not follow a set path. It depends greatly on many factors such as: the quality of the relationship with the person you harmed prior to and after the harm, your previous track record of apologizing and accountability with that person, your consistency and commitment to repair, and timing.
Fourth, and last: Behavior Change. This matches directly with the list from Rabbi Danya. Accountability – even apologies – do not have much weight if the same thing happens over and over again. Sometimes, the hurt or harm we cause has little to do with the person who experienced the hurt/harm, and more has to do with our own patterns, which we must break. Which is a big reason that self-reflection is the step we start with and continue with throughout. Transforming our behaviors is hard work. And if we surround ourselves with healthy people, it is easier to make the necessary changes in their good company – people who are not just yes people, but people with whom you can be when you are feeling guilty, or ashamed, who can embrace the whole of you as you commit to transforming yourself. As we commit to transforming ourselves.
And transformation comes not just because our mind has learned a new list to help us make meaning in the world. Transformation comes when we engage intellectually and beyond, into the realm of spirit and soma – our bodies.
In that spirit, for this morning’s ritual, we are rooting ourselves in the holy lessons that Judaism brings us at this time of the year – the High Holy Days just having come to an end, the harvest festival of Sukkot – an opportunity to practice gratitude – here this coming week.
Our ritual is focusing on the reckoning and repairing element of this season, opening an invitation for each of us to “return[…] to the person [we] know [we]’re capable of being with humility and intentionality.”
This is an invitation – open to all, required of none – to confess to the piece of paper (and thus yourself) a mistake, an error, an uneasy memory – not to sweep them away – but to let go of whatever might be holding us back from next steps, however we conceive them to be, hopefully informed by a larger set of ethics than just our own conscience or comfort.
This ritual is listening to that something within us that yearns to come round right.
This ritual is a chance to imagine that, as our reading from earlier in the service said, something creaky, rusty, heavy, perhaps even calcified within us, AND to imagine that it need not stay stuck, that with humility and intention, it can, and we along with it, can turn and turn and turn again, that we might come round a little truer.
We have 6 stations throughout the sanctuary – three at the front and three at the back, each with a vessel containing ordinary water…and a little bit of our homegrown holy water. Hopefully, when you entered the sanctuary, you received a small slip of special paper – special because it dissolves in water. If not, there are some on the tables at the stations.
We invite you to write on that slip of paper (there are some at each station) a mistake, a harm, a hurt, “an ouch” that you hope to make right through a process first of self-reflection (turning that ouch into an oops, first to yourself, that’s what this ritual is), then improvement (a commitment to not commit the same hurt again), before moving to the acknowledgement phase which includes both repair and apology; moving, we aspire, to actual change, a solidification not of our own defensiveness, but learning from and integrating within our behavior and world view what we learned, so that we do not harm or hurt someone, or someones, in the same way, again.
When it is time for the ritual, you will approach the station nearest you and place your slip of paper in the communal Well of Witness. More than one person can be at the station at a time, offering your human witness as the slips of paper disappears. There is a literal dissolution of paper that is symbolic of your “ouch” – not so you can forget what is yours to do next, but so you are relieved of whatever burden, barrier or blockage has stopped you thus far from returning to the person you know yourself capable of being.
It is, as if, in this imperfect world, we are repairing and stitching together what beauty there is, doing so with compassion – self-compassion, compassion towards others, compassion towards this imperfect, disappointing, magnificent, befuddling world, choosing the heroic work of repentance.
Just before the ritual, we will get a few minutes of musical interlude to let our hearts find their way to the thing we want to write on our slips of paper. Before then, let Liam lead us again in a sung response, returning to Return Again.
[1] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/heroic-work-repentance
[2] https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2019/12/18/how-to-give-a-good-apology-part-1-the-four-parts-of-accountability/