Sermon 9-23-07
The Soul Year Prayer: “I Feel”
Jim Burklo
“Dear God: I feel, I want, I release, I accept, I thank. Amen!” This is the prayer for our church’s SOUL YEAR 2007-08 – a prayer for us to use in personal meditation, in meetings and groups of the church, and in worship. A prayer to bring us closer together with God and each other.
Today I begin a series of sermons about the elements of this prayer, taking us deeper into it, bringing it alive so that it can speak for us and to us.
We begin by praying our feelings.
That’s right – not just feeling our feelings – which is its own challenge – but praying them. Sharing our feelings with God.
But just what are our feelings?
This week I had an email exchange with somebody I’ve been counseling. It’s a woman who is having serious marital problems. I’m referring her and her husband to marriage counseling; I’m always happy to meet with couples a few times but then I send them on to therapists for long-term help. She told me, angrily, that she feels her husband is a cheater and a coward. I responded that saying that you don’t feel that your husband is a cheater and a coward. Accusations aren’t feelings. Anger certainly is a feeling, and one she’s experiencing in a big way. She will do well to share with her husband that she is angry. But she won’t do well to call him a cheater and a coward. In this case, it’s an exaggeration to call him a cheater, and while he may be overly meek, calling him a coward doesn’t help, either. Accusations, descriptions, characterizations of your partner – all these things invite arguments. They’re always debatable. But sharing your feelings with your partner – anger, joy, fear, pain, bliss, embarrassment, affection, attraction – these are not debatable. If I tell you I’m angry, does it make any sense for you to argue with my statement? My anger is my truth – there’s no use disputing it. It’s just there: an emotional fact.
Your feelings are your emotional facts. These are physical facts; feelings are bodily sensations. It isn’t always easy for some of us, myself included, to be in touch with our bodies – to be fully conscious of what our bodies are telling us. To be in touch with our own emotional facts. It can be hard because feelings change, sometimes rapidly, shifting us from one emotion to another. It can be hard because there are some feelings we’d rather put on the shelf and ignore – they are inconvenient emotional truths.
Sharing feelings is sometimes hard for me.
My therapist asks me: “So Jim, what are you feeling?” (I clench my fists and bug out my eyes) – “Nothing, really.”
Even though my body is acting out fear or anger, I don’t feel it sometimes. I’m a lot better at hiding from my own feelings than I am at hiding my feelings from other people. I do myself and others a great favor when I become conscious of my feelings, able to recognize them in the moment, even if they are only mild feelings, barely noticeable.
The body-mind system has a hard time distinguishing between a mountain and a molehill. It takes kids years to give up throwing tantrums over molehills – if they learn it at all. We usually quit throwing the tantrums but are still left with the feelings, and even a low-level feeling has a way of amplifying over time, or in awkward circumstances, thus making mountains where there were only molehills before. Or, preventing us from climbing the real mountains in our lives – preventing us from dealing with the truly real challenges we face. Squelching or ignoring feelings, whether mild or intense, can cause serious problems. Even wars! Owning our feelings, being conscious of them fully, is a step toward physical, mental, social, and spiritual health.
Sharing our feelings with God is the most intimate, most honest, most complete way to own our feelings. By sharing our feelings with God, we are disclosing our emotional facts to the whole universe.