On Whose Authority?

A sermon on Leadership, Power, and Authenticity

Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

By the Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

March 30, 2003 

READINGS

Virginia Woolf: From Three Guineas

There they go, our brothers who have been educated at schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in and out of those doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, teaching, and administering justice, practicing medicine, transacting business, making money.  It is a solemn sight always – a procession, like a caravansary crossing a desert.  Great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, uncles – they all went that way, wearing their gowns, wearing their wigs, some with ribbons across their breasts, others without.  One was a bishop, another a judge,.  One was an admiral. Another a general.  One was a professor. Another a doctor.  It is a solemn sight, this processions, a sight that has often caused us, to ask ourselves some questions.  But now, at the end of the procession we go ourselves.  And that makes a difference.  We who know agitate these humble pens may in another century speak from a pulpit.  Who can say whether, as times goes on, we may not dress in military uniform, with gold lace, with swords at our sides and something like the family coal scuttle on our heads.  But we have not come here to laugh or to talk of fashions men’s and women’s.  We are here on the bridge to ask ourselves certain questions and they are very important questions, and we have very little time in which to answer them.  Above all, where is that procession leading us.  But you will object – you have no time to think – you have your battles to fight, your rent to pay, your bazaars to organize.  The daughters of educated men have always done their thinking from hand to mouth.  They have thought while they stirred the pot, while they rocked the cradle.  Think we must.  Let us think in offices, in omnibuses, while we are in the crowd watching Coronations, in the Gallery of the House of Commons, in the Law Courts.  What is this civilization in which we find ourselves?  What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them?

Ronald Heifetz:

We often like the word "transformation," but transformation is an a-historical term. It tends to suggest that we’re engaging in a radical departure from the past and creating a new future that’s almost disconnected from the past. First, I think that fails to capture how small "t" – transformational change actually happens.  Second, it’s grandiose.

I like the term "creating better adaptations," because, as in biology, an adaptation may be transformative in the sense that it dramatically deepens and broadens our capacity to thrive in new environments.  For example, in biology we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we carry forward the wisdom of millions of years of evolutionary experimentation, trial and error, to create a conscious creature. It would be ludicrous to say we want to create a new human that does not take advantage of those millions of years of biological experiment.

We want to carry forward the wisdom of the past, and on the other hand, we want to do better than the chimpanzees. And we do a lot better. According to anthropologists, it began with a small adaptation in which our thumb was able to touch our baby finger.  That enabled us to hold, build, and make tools in new way.  As soon as we began to be able to make tools, we expanded our niche, because we could start hunting in a different way.  Then, we needed to be able to run in a new way, we needed a brain that could compute trajectories differently.  To communicate across distances.  So, we had a whole series of rapid new adaptations that generated in a miraculous way an expanded set of capacities, including our capacity for learning and language.

If leadership were about telling people good news, if it were simply about giving people what they wanted, then it would just be easy. What makes leadership difficult, strategically challenging, and personally risky is that you are often in the business of telling people difficult news - news that, at least in the short term, appears to require a painful adjustment.  When people are experiencing the pressure to change, those future possibilities are simply possibilities. What people know is that right now it hurts.

Leadership is about mobilizing people’s capacity to sift through and hold on to what’s essential from their past. Sift through their organization’s past, or from their family, neighborhood, or community’s past, and hold on to what’s precious and essential from that past. They carry that forward, and discard and let go of that which is no longer essential so that they can take advantage of the opportunities that are generated from these cross-boundary interactions and from contemporary life.

Peter Senge:

Many of us who work in leadership and change tend to talk in optimistic tones about the opportunities of change, the opportunities of a sustainable world, a more elevated consciousness, and system of interdependencies. It’s very exciting, that possibility of a more elevated consciousness, and of a system of interdependencies that have economic, political, and cultural features as well as religious and spiritual features.

Ours is a time of opportunity and transition. Yet, one can’t move into the future and take advantage of the opportunities generated by engaging with new cultures, thoughts, systems of values, and new opportunities without letting go of elements from the past that to many seem precious.

A lot of learning is beginning to take place. There’s an openness and a willingness to learn that I don’t think existed a hundred years ago. We’re talking about a pluralism that’s far more than tolerant respect. A tolerant respect is: "I tolerate our differences and we’re not going to go to war over them anymore."  An appreciative pluralism is where we really have a lot to learn from one another. There’s a more reverent appreciation that we’re each working one road up the mountain.

Ronald Heifetz:

If we want to learn better leadership, a powerful source of learning is our own failure. Sometimes the most difficult thing about learning from failure is noticing that we have failed. It's important for people to get desensitized to facing their failures, because leadership in the context of an adaptive challenge means improvising. People may want you to have a clear critical path and a plan of action. But the plan is just today's best guess. Tomorrow you are going to learn things that are going require a deviation in the plan.

Sometimes these are small tactical blunders - I spoke to this person wrong, I put too much spin on that argument, I sequenced the agenda improperly. Sometimes they are larger strategic errors. But if you can't face this, then how can you possibly do mid-course corrections in this improvisation toward adaptive success?

Leadership requires a learning strategy. A leader has to engage people in facing the challenge, adjusting their values, changing perspectives, and developing new habits of behavior. If you are an authoritative person with pride in your ability to tackle hard problems, this may come as a rude awakening. But it should also ease the burden of having to know the answers and bear the uncertainty. To the person who waits to receive either "the vision" to lead or the coach's call, this may also seem a mixture of good and bad news. The adaptive demands of our societies require leadership that takes responsibility without waiting for revelation or request. One may lead perhaps with no more than a question in hand.

SERMON

"What is shaping how the world evolves today?" asks Peter Senge and he answers. "Not any one individual but rather a network of people and organizations who are planting ideas of interdependency and sustainability that will transform how our larger systems work in the future.  We don't need a new world president who will make it all work out for us. We need many people with an awareness that we're all interdependent."

I agree with Senge and I’m not sure that I like the direction in which things seem to be evolving in the present.  Oh – I see amazing people at work in the world.  People with good, wise vision that arises from the depth of their humanness and the breadth of their hearts.  People who seek and labor every day – to stretch our species further into the future and into a future finer than the present. I also see freedoms, liberties, the will of the people and the good of the nation fading further and further from sight as we pour lives and resources into battle after battle.

And sometimes I have a prickly feeling at the back of my neck – a suspicion – that our President – who so tenaciously has lead this nation toward this second of wars during his administration – I have this feeling that somewhere he has a vague plan for a future new world order.  He uses a rhetoric of democracy – a thing which Unitarian Universalists passionately affirm.  But his models for democracy seem limited.  Repeatedly I have heard commentators say “He has the right to lead this nation to war – on the authority of his office.”  The authority of the office – it is the use of authority in this sense that makes me uneasy and that makes it such a dirty word.  So authoritarian.  The image of those beribboned educated men in Woolf’s Three Guineas has long haunted me.  Empty authority based upon position, upon ribbons, upon the inherited attainment of a position of power.  It was, in part, Woolf, that made it such a challenge for me to follow my call to ministry – but, finally, authenticity won over fear and so I stand here: exploring the many paths of leadership that we make together as a beloved community.

            There is more to authority than those hollow beribboned processions – it’s a word I have struggled with – as a rebel, an existentialist, a feminist, a mother, and a minister. As a person.

As you know, I participated in a Mindfulness Retreat with the Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.  Eating our meals in silence, walking mindfully, meditating a few hours each day, listening to this great teacher – who has been a voice for peace since his homeland of Vietnam was engulfed in war during my childhood – it was a time that took me to the clear places of my mind and the open spaces of my heart.  He spoke of the need for deep listening to take place between the peoples of the world – of the need for this nation to heal old wounds by opening our hearts and ears to one another.  As he spoke, I felt certain that of the 800 people gathered there we could find among us the vision and energy to change the direction of history – to gather in a voice of peace before war might be declared.  I agonized – of course, wiser people than myself were there.  If Thay had wanted us to make something happen he would have said just that – right?  Probably everyone there was bothering him with ideas like this.

Still, impulsively I sat down and neatly printed words from my very center – this is an excerpt.

 “My heart is full as I write this to you.  On September 11, 2001 I felt grief and sorrow and fear, but I also felt a door open in our world.  A door to peace – the cries of the wounded and dying, the explosions, the shattering glass were calling us to awaken and make Peace.  Dear Thay, we are here at this retreat – so many awakening persons, compassionate persons.  Perhaps, while we are here, a letter can be drafted, an invitation to governments or a suggestion to the government of the USA to begin a creative dialogue on all levels – national and international.  This can move hearts and change minds – if we mindfully act – it may bring about deep healing, great justice, and the possibility of peace.  I offer my energy so that a “future may be possible.”  Your student, (Rev.) Hilary Krivchenia

Then, I happened immediately to cross paths with Sister Chan Khong.  I gave her the note and began to doubt my impulse right away.  Of course, other people were thinking of this.  Of course, he would have asked had he wanted it – he was the leader.  I went to my discussion group -- the elder nuns were discouraging – they gently cautioned me – to simply cultivate my own peace.  I was besieged by doubts.  What had possessed me to be so forward – a layperson among such skillful monastics?  I did walking meditation in the blazing heat.  I considered leaving – I had a nightmare that Thay would have my letter and decide that it was a perfect object lesson in unskillful thinking.  Nonetheless, the next morning found me at the special session in which Thay takes any questions from the people who are gathered.  A young man came up on the platform and asked Thay what we should do about the need for peace in the world.

Slowly, Thay reached into his deep brown pocket.  Slowly he unfolded and began to read – my note word for word.  I breathed – I am solid as a mountain, I am fresh as a flower – I am nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rockers.  He finished and said “would the Rev. Krivchenia please come up here?”  I went up.  I knelt beside him.  Stunned.  I looked into the eyes of the teacher and I looked out at all the people and felt reticent.  I turned back to Thay and saw in his eyes a deep calm, patience, and an invitation – I could not distinguish words only the invitation to walk further down the path of my own being.  Easier said than done.  I knew that nothing and everything had prepared me for this moment of challenge – when everything of meaning for me and in me was called forth – I took a deep breath and spoke my heart aloud.  I asked if perhaps we could write a letter with Thay and turned to the people and asked if they wanted him to sign such a letter and engage in a project of peacemaking.  Our proposal went to the United Nations, traveled the country with Thay, went to Congress with a Mindfulness Caucus, and was sent to the president.  Our letter did not prevent war from happening – but the process of hastening to war slowed.  We continue to work on this project – it stimulated some of the activism you’ve seen – mobilizing groups to hold peace vigils and evolving far beyond and beside its intended aim.

            It’s my belief that what enabled me to act was an authority beyond roles and titles far beyond ministry – perhaps, the source of the call to ministry – it was the authority of the self – the power of authenticity.  The opening up of a moment in which I able to serve my deepest hope and joy and the world’s great need at once.  The moment when – for lack of a better expression –possibility opens like a page before you and you have the choice of writing yourself clearly into life – or remaining blank on the page. 

            Both personhood and ministry.  Ralph Waldo Emerson’s challenge to the Harvard Divinity School graduating class of 1838 was to deal out to the people their lives passed through the fire of thought.  To bring integrity, the wholeness of their being into church and be willing to place their own fire on the altar in hopes of inspiring those gathered to bring their integrity and wholeness forth.

There are many sources of ministerial authority – the most basic is professional -- the authority of certified competence, experience in ministry, collegial guidance, professional training, ongoing commitment to professional development, and the conferring of ordination.  This is vital authority, but it won’t ignite a spiritual fire.  The spark of authority to use my voice here -- to invite you to use yours – is my human, existential, spiritual commitment - passion for life.  My inner covenant for the healing of the human spirit, vision and hunger for the mobilization of the beloved community, faithfulness to the workings of justice, and to the living tradition and principles of our religion.  I am willing to wrestle in, to pass my life through the fire of thought and deal it out -- not because it is an exceptional life – but because it is a profoundly human life and we need to witness humanness to rise and challenge our own lives.  I am willing to live in that center and to take the marrow of life – my own -- and the world’s stories that can move and awaken and offer them to you – so I wear this robe – not because it speaks of my reading and study – though it does – but because it speaks of the mantle of my true passion, reason, and commitment.

The key to this place and the relationship we have – the spiritual fire we can ignite together is that we have made a covenant.  It is the final source of the authority of my ministry here.  In the act of installation and after long soul searching, talking, and visioning we have covenanted together.  The making of a covenant is a relational act.  Between us good faith is on the one hand my keeping of this covenant -- remaining on the journey together and facing the trials of our time in covenant, and speaking the truth in love.  Your good faith is in our gathering each week, doing the work of the church together, and speaking the truth in love. 

We have a congregational covenant – spoken each week but also written between the lines of our tradition, principles, and humanness.  Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law – to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.  This is a covenant on all sides – remade in the present and made with the future.

For the purpose of religion cannot be to worship the past – though we can treasure and must learn from it – the purpose must be to live deeply in the present, embody the future – to draw from ourselves and one another the greatest promise.  To awaken meaning in one another and from that meaning to call forth our deep authenticity.  Authenticity?  It has to do with the degree of realness that we embody in our lives – the degree of authorship we are willing to take upon ourselves – not with a pseudonym – nor with a fiction – but in existential honesty.  Authentic means -- worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.  Created as an original, not false or imitation, ranging upward from the keynote, true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.  Being in good faith. 

Good faith – Jean-Paul Sartre held – was the holding to, the living out of that authenticity – bad faith was to fail to embody that authentic – core self – that self that came into the world in a place and time equipped both with challenges and gifts for which the world has need.  Freedom – the freedom that Unitarian Universalists have struggled for for so long is the freedom to heed this authentic nature and allow that to carry authority – for it is real.  But – this isn’t the freedom, authority, or authenticity of the lone ranger, the crusty individualist, the one bully nation, or the minister as the sole voice of the holy – uh-uh.  And this isn’t a cosmic self-help program. Though we are led inward, toward the core – we are led inward only to be pulled back out.  Responsible for all life. 

Faith is our relationship with Being/ Becoming, with life.  Faithful.  Sartre said that as we awaken into our own freedom we take on responsibility for the freedom of the whole world: a covenant of existential awakening.  When we see that the strands of our life are woven deep into every life on earth and we serve that freedom with the full authority of heart and mind and voice and hand.  That is good faith.  Authenticity.

Good faith that we engage in together – that must be what the church is for – not for you to come and watch me – I am a signpost at best – a finger pointing toward the moon – the light the fire in the heart of life.  My authority arises as I honor this charge week after week.  But ultimately our covenant is – must be to create the condition that draw forth this authenticity in us all – this authenticity that calls from each her or his own voice and hand.  Daring. 

            There is great risk moving into the authentic self – because the authentic self in every one of us – is a powerful self – a self out on a limb of the tree of life.

            The authority to speak comes from this place, the authority to live deeply, and to lead.  When I see a general far from the action of a war, I am cynical.  When I read that the President is watching the details of war more closely than did his father I think of him at multiple screens in the White House – wherever -- taking in some of the coverage that is available to us every dehumanizing minute of the day.  “USA pounds Iraq, USA calls foul in suicide attacks, USA smacks foe.  Visitors 50, home team 100s.  And now to you down on the field, Morley.”

It is hard to bring this up with you. There is risk in leadership – the risk of a Rabin or a King – not just a risk that popularity will drop.  I think of Rachel Corrie who died shielding a Palestinian home from demolition.  I am certain that she knew that she was entering the zone of risk when she decided to be a human shield.  Ronald Heifetz tells a story of Margie – a Native American woman who babysits for Lois’s kids every Tuesday night while Lois goes out for two hours.  Finally, Margie is so curious that she gathers up the kids and follows Lois quietly.  There, alone in a meeting hall, Lois sits – one single person in a large circle of chairs.  Margie and the kids go home, later Margie asks about the room of empty chairs.  “I am sitting in a circle with the ancestors,” says Lois, “but one day our people will come, too.  We will recover our people from alcoholism.”  An alcoholic herself, Lois was committed to ridding her people of this poison.  It took Lois years alone, in tiny meetings, and meeting with some ridicule – but gradually the room filled and the people began to recover from alcoholism.  The risk and the reward of authentic leadership. Authority based in the center.

Authority has become a dirty word because those who have formal authority too often hide behind the mantle and do not fill it.  The people vacillate between fear, hatred, and unthinking obedience.  With the sacrifice of their own authority, they create the monster they fear.  Or by standing so hard on their own ground they lose the new ground they might share with the future.

            Authenticity is genuineness – not of a certificate – or seal of approval – but of the true self.  The true self that comes into the world.  Stephen Covey says: "Live out of your imagination, not your history."  Imagination is a core place in the psyche that makes new things possible.  We need that more than ever -- to make new things possible.  There is a need for humanity to be willing to author a better future – that recognizes the wisdom and reality of the past but challenges us to create a wiser path.

            There’s a picture that shows a person at a crossroads – with a sign post and two directions to choose from – the direction marked “the future” and the direction marked “no longer an option.”  It can be hard to move forward where there may be a signpost but no clear -- no critical path – but you can be sure that where the path is really clearly marked – the signs are at worst false and at best going to need revision as we go along – learning – making the path as we walk it.  Like that unexpected moment when I was faced with hundreds of people who looked into my eyes and were eager to make a difference.  Not mapped.

I attended a conference this week and was reminded of my sense of purpose while doing pastoral care in a hospital.  It was so clear and urgent.  This was needed, do that. Anoint the dying, hold the hands of the living, move to the next room, say the next prayer – so ultimate, so basic.  At this conference one chaplain said that he would never enter parish ministry because it so easily degenerates into triviality.  It was, he said, like being pelted to death every day – with popcorn. 

It is our failure to take seriously our project of being together that causes this – or our fear of it.  We are spectators popping corn, getting ready for the show – a little angry at persons in leadership because deep down we know we’re all leaders of differing gifts which must be given.  For me the challenge of parish ministry is deep and true – we’re so busy with our lives – our battles to fight, our parties to offer, our children to raise – that is, precisely the challenge – to think, to act while stirring the pot, writing the thesis, holding the baby.  It is precisely the charge of the church to help us in our covenant to do this.  It can be scary to take these risks myself and attempt to model strong leadership -- from the pulpit or the vigil or the paper or at a Zen retreat.

But I know, I know – I know that the strength of each one of us is the strength of us all – as long as we remain in covenant and good faith.  Above all the purpose of ministry is to call forth the leadership of the people.   Few of us write sermons or dedicate ourselves to the church full time and this is as it should be – but we have all gifts of existential meaning to give – solid and new – that responds to the world as it is now and not how it has always been.  To provide leadership that helps us to adapt.  Not to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s challenges.  Yes, it’s scary to adapt – to change – to risk loss in a new venture. It is easier to criticize the people in leadership than to risk offering a vision or addressing another need entirely, easier to grip what is passing than to reach out grasp the new meanings and new possibilities.  Easier than evolving ourselves -- to adapt and grow and be agents of change in the present.  Just as we have to respond in our lives to our world as it is, so we have to respond with our church.

In our church, we are faced by many invitations to write ourselves fresh onto the page – to adapt to new times and needs and there’s no higher authority promising salvation or damnation for our efforts.  We know that the past is no longer an option – the church wants a new building and a program that better serves the vision and needs of the local community and our world.  The quiet presence of Unitarian Universalism has the appeal of modesty – but there are so few voices of free thought – we need to break our quiet.  Not simply here among each other – but as a gathered presence, leader, and teacher in the community – as a force of reason, justice, democracy, and the strength and goodness of the human spirit and of the spirit of the divine.

It is easier to criticize the president than to take on the depth of the challenge he has brought to our time – easier than taking the risks to turn history laboriously around.  Easier to talk of what was – than what must be created – by our own hands.  But our own hands are not alone -- that is the purpose of our covenant

            Peter Senge said: “We need many people who do things with an awareness that we're all interdependent.”  This place – this church – is the sacred microcosm – the smaller school for the soul set in the larger universe – ity for all souls.  As we risk leadership, participate in it together, as we adapt and evolve – with our good will and our good faith -- we bring history forward, we move into our authenticity – the real embodiment of our individual values and our collective principles -- we expand the authorship of life, and we step together into the heart of that authority which is as the Unitarian Reverend Theodore Parker said: of the people, for the people and by the people.

So it is and so may it be – by our hands and our hearts – So will it be.