WAS CHICKEN LITTLE RIGHT?

A Sermon by Rev. Robert M. Eddy
delivered September 12, 1999
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola, Florida

It’s been a great two weeks for the Eddy’s in Pensacola. Jerry and I thank the many folks who have made our moving in feel that we parked our mobile home in the right place. I was pretty sure that would be the case when I agreed to be your interim minister. Now I’m sure.
There have been a few surprises since we arrived. For example, no one had told me that your new building was designed as and served as a mortuary. My office for example is were the bodies were displayed. But that’s o.k. I feel right at home. I wouldn’t even mind if you’d put me in the embalming room. You see my last job before entering the professional ministry was as a morgue technician - I assisted a hospital pathologist perform autopsies. It was good training for a Counselor and Pastor.
Perhaps my career has come full circle: from morgue to mortuary. But there has been a lot of life in between and I know there’s much more life ahead for me and for you. Turning a mortuary into a church that celebrates life is a great example of turning life’s lemons into lemonade. In some ways that - turning a mortuary into a place to celebrate life - summarizes my life posture. - as I believe Sachel Page said, "When life hands you lemons, turn them into lemonade." ? I believe in that - and I try to live it. Yes, it’s been a busy week for me - fun but busy and one of the things that has bothered me has been my inability to remember your names, so when Gerry and I went to the downtown library to get our library cards and saw this book How to Fight Forgetfulness Over Forty1 by William Cone, Ph.D. I grabbed it. Let me quote from Chapter 4: titled Reasons Why we forget. of which there are 16. Here’s reason # 5: : page 34: "Still another reason that certain items are forgotten has come to be known as the Ziegarnick Effect,... the propensity to recall unaccomplished tasks more easily than completed tasks. In part this is useful. The effect makes it more likely that you will remember chores that have not been completed than ones that have been finished. For example, if I ask you to think about your bills, do you think about the ones that you have paid, or the ones that you haven’t paid? The Zeigarnick effect helps you focus on what must be done, rather than what you have done. On the down side, however, unfinished business tends to stay on your mind and fill your consciousness. The popular term for this is worry. ... worry interferes with concentration. It fills your mind so full of the flotsam of unfinished business and unresolved conflict that nothing else is allowed to enter."
Dr. Cone then suggests a five step method for reducing worry, which bears a striking resemblance to the advice of the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus. "Cone suggests first you "write down all your worries." Well for some of us that would use up all available time. secondly, Cone suggests, "decide which items on your list are within your power to change. third - Cone puts it fourth but I’m deliberately changing his order to be closer to Epictetus and to reflect my own experience third : "Let go of the worries that you have no power to change. Thinking about them is a waste of time." Let me repeat: Now, that advice is nothing new. Epictetus said something similar 2100 years ago. It’s still good advice. "Let go of the worries that you have no power to change. Thinking about them is a waste of time." I believe that only when you have "let go of the worries that have no power to change" should you undertake Cone’s third step: "Write a plan of action for facing challenges that are within your power to change and commit yourself to a time and place to resolve."
Cone has a fifth suggestion: "If you still feel that you need "worry time," set aside 15-30 minutes a day to do nothing but worry. When that time is over, enjoy yourself."
Thus endeth the reading from Dr. Cone. I, your interim minister am an unrepentant and unapologetic optimist; a cockeyed optimist - some of my friends tell me. I’ve heard it said, "There are only two kinds of people: Pessimists and Optimists. The optimist believes that this is the best of all possible worlds and the Pessimist is afraid he’s right." Some say, "you can’t do anything about it: you’re born either an optimist or a pessimist. It’s all a matter of Molecules in Motion; certain genes produce certain chemicals that flow between your brain cells and predispose you to be one way or the other. Well, predispose - maybe. But predetermine? Definitely not! We can, by choosing to do things differently, in Johnie Mercer’s immortal words, "Accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative. Don’t mess with Mister In Between" The choir will sing the song later but listen now to the words. Accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don’t mess with Mister In Between You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum, Bring Gloom Down to the minimum Have faith! or pandemonium’s li’ble to walk upon the scene. To illustrate my last remark, [take] Jonah in the Whale, Noah in the Arc What did they do Just when everything looked so dark?
They said, ‘We Better accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative, Don’t mess with Mr. in between"
If you agree, say "right on!"
I chose the topic, "Was Chicken Little Right?" for my first sermon here in Pensacola because it seemed to me that this congregation is suffering from a crisis of faith - faith in yourselves - faith in your ability to achieve the goals you laid out five years ago. In recent years you’ve had high hopes that have been dashed. You’ve had times when you came together after tragedy but then fell apart over trivia. You’ve had times when confidence dissolved into distrust and deep friendships were broken irretrievably - or so it seemed. Now I’m not going to rehearse the particulars. That won’t help. In fact it would do great harm. You see, when we - individually, or as a congregation or as a nation - accentuate the negative - focus on what went wrong - we empower anxiety and diminish our power to achieve goals.
That’s what Chicken Little did. That poor little chicken was so focused on the negative that an acorn landing on her head sent her into an orgy of despair: "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling". And her foolish friends with the foolish names did nothing to reassure her. They too panicked and ran right into the jaws of the big bad fox. Now I know that there is at least one revised standard version of the tale where no one gets killed in the end - not even the fox but the old original version I think is closer to the truth.
Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural address, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" Many claim that’s an overstatement and it is - unless you include the modification Roosevelt added in the next phrase: "blind, unreasoning fear." Truly, you, "have nothing to fear but fear itself, blind unreasoning fear." On an individual, congregational and national level we are endangered by fear; facing the possibility that the unreasoning fear will create the very things we fear. We all swim in an information sewer where everything that could frighten us anywhere in the world is served up 24 hours a day by every medium. The first two commandments of all the so called "news" media are: 1. "Good news is no news" and 2. "If it bleeds it leads". "The Sky is Falling; the sky is falling," they tell us morning, noon and night and this constant barrage of information about things we can individually do nothing about erodes our faith that good outcomes are possible - and what else is faith if not the conviction that a good outcome is possible. Without the sense that no matter how bad things are, things can get better, we fall into what Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s progress called, "the slough of despond."
Now am I saying one should always be cheerful - never worry - "take no thought for the morrow" as Jesus recommended? That is, I think an excessive optimism. Excess optimism is not a problem any of us faces. Besides, the natural outcome of excessive optimism is exhaustion, sleep and recovery. The natural outcome of despair is death. Accentuate the Positive. Let the sunshine in. There is Power in Positive Thinking despite the fact that Norman Vincent Peal and his successor Robert Schuler have carried the truth to absurd lengths. But it’s not just in our personal life that we need to Accentuate the Positive. It applies to our congregational life as well.
Some of you are familiar with a new technique for helping organizations achieve goals titled "Appreciative Inquiry." There was a workshop on the technique at General Assembly - which ‘m sorry to say I did not attend. but I’ve ordered materials for your Governing Board’s perusal. Appreciative Inquiry is based on the observation that we endow with energy those things to which we pay attention. Thus when we focus on "the problems" instead of "the successes" - the worries instead of the tasks completed - as Cone observed - we are exacerbating a bad situation. We are not contributing to a solution. Our human organizations and social behavior are not, as was assumed by nearly all educated persons until recently, determined by blind material or evolutionary forces. In the area of culture we are co- creators with God. Or if you want to put a negative spin on it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." But if the enemy is us - individually, organizationally, globally - then we can turn that enemy into a friend. If our sky is falling it is because we fail to hold it up! Henny Penny and her followers ran to find the king to hold up the sky - a slightly disguised metaphor for God and ended up in the fox’s lair - a slightly disguised metaphor for predatory religionists. But if we recognize that the human world is susceptible to human reformation we will not run witless into the lairs of the unscrupulous. Appreciative Inquiry converts that post modern philosophy into very specific organizational modalities. It "accentuates the positive." It is the opposite of conventional analytical problem solving which "accentuates the negative". You’ll be hearing more about Appreciative Inquiry in coming months.
We Unitarian Universalists sometimes take a perverse delight in being - not "holier than thou" but "more cynical than thou". Like Eyore in Winnie the Pooh, some of us can throw a wet blankets on anything. Some of us seem to take delight on raining on everybody’s picnic. How different from our Unitarian and Universalist predecessors! They were full of optimism, foolish optimism, some would say. Perhaps, but It was an optimism that produced results - not malaise; action - not excuses. If worldly wisdom produces resignation then it’s not true wisdom. True wisdom lifts up and empowers - individuals, communities and the whole world eventually. True wisdom encourages it does not discourage. True wisdom recognizes that while no one can do everything everyone can do something better. True wisdom recognizes that while we cannot achieve Utopia overnight we can choose put the stubborn ounces of our weight on the side of progress. True wisdom is not cynical, defeatist, discouraging, dismissing, or dismal. True wisdom fills us with hope and determination and energy.
I want very much to bring "true wisdom" to you in the next eight months - or at least that part of it that I’ve been able to accumulate in nearly 69 years. I will put aside the things I cannot change and focus on the things that I can. I encourage you as a congregation to do the same. Accentuate the Positive. Chicken Little was Wrong! Please join me in some moments of silent meditation.