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“What If No One Had Ever Hurt You?”
February 8. 2009

Three years ago, I visited the Galapagos Islands with my husband, father, and step-mother. It was a magical place to vacation! I have two lasting memories from that trip that I have wanted to share in a sermon ever since we returned. As I thought about preaching this particular weekend – when women in the congregation are performing the Vagina Monologues and participating in the Congo Sabbath – it seemed like now was the time.

We were on a sailboat approaching one of the many Galapagos Islands. As we came closer, we saw that there were hundreds of sea lions lying on the sand. They looked up at us as they heard or saw the boat – and then they laid their heads back down, disinterested, and went back to rest. A little later, as we were snorkeling, some of them joined us in the water to swim and play with us.  It was extraordinary.

A few days later, my husband Ralph and I were kayaking. Now, for those of you who kayak or even go for walks in the woods, think about what happens when you come upon a bird 100 feet away. As you get closer, they fly away from you. Not in the Galapagos. We spotted a pelican as we came around a reef: we looked at him, he looked at us. And, instead of flying away, he flew with us, at my shoulder level, for the rest of the kayak ride. It was as if he wanted to be our tour guide, proudly showing off his home.   

I asked our naturalist why the birds and seals were so welcoming to us -- that I had never seen undomesticated animals that were so unafraid. He replied, “It’s because no one has ever tried to hurt them. People have never preyed on the animals and birds in the Galapagos. They don’t know they need to be afraid.”

No one has ever hurt them. They don’t know they need to be afraid.

Is there any one here who has never been hurt by another person? That’s obviously a rhetorical question. All of us have been hurt sometime, by someone – and I think it’s fair to guess that all of us have also caused other people pain. 

One of our members asked me the title of my sermon last week during coffee hour. When I said, “What if No One Had Ever Hurt You”, he answered quickly, “Well, I’d be a lot less interesting!” 

And I think applies to most of us. We are who we are partly because of the negative experiences we have survived. I also know that many of us carry wounds from our childhood and adolescence that continue to play out in our lives today; we continue to struggle with events or situations from our past even though they happened many years ago.

In second grade, my family had just moved to Norwalk, and I was in a new school. There were 12 girls in the class; 11 of them were Christian and then there was Jewish me. I was the girl with “cooties”; I was the girl who was always picked last for teams; and by the end of the fall, they had formed the “Hate Debbi Haffner” club. I ate lunch by myself, read books instead of played during recess, walked home alone, and because I had learned early in my home that I was to be a good girl and not cause problems, I didn’t tell anyone -- not the teacher, not my parents. Some of you may have been good little girls and boys too.

I don’t know if the teacher ignored the Hate Debbi Haffner Club or if she just didn’t know it existed.  I do remember that I got in trouble one day, for allowing one of the girls to copy off of my test, thinking that maybe that way she’d like me. I told myself I could handle it on my own, take care of myself, until one day that spring, when two older boys, brothers of some of the girls in my class, followed me on my solitary walk home from school, picked up hot tar from the newly paved sidewalk, threw it down my shirt back, and ran away. Don’t let anyone tell you that bullying is a new phenomenon.

I arrived home late that day, preferring to wander aimlessly than go home and tell my parents what had happened. I did have to tell them though, mostly to explain to my mother why I was so late getting home. My memories at this point become hazy:  I think my parents did go talk to the teacher after that; I remember the leader of the club had to have me over to her home; and the school year finally ended. We moved again, and I started elsewhere in third grade.

That hurt little girl, rejected by her peers and not believing she could count on anyone, still very much lives inside me. On the positive side, I learned to be strong and independent and to take care of myself. Much less positively, I was left with an over-arching need for a sense of personal safety, a high need for control, and an almost complete intolerance for being criticized in a group, especially in a group of women. In that type of situation, I am flooded with those 2^nd grade feelings of rejection all over again – and even though I can recognize where they come from, these situations remain painful for days after they occur, even now, decades later.  For a long time, I thought that with enough introspection and enough therapy, I could reach a place where I no longer would feel that little girl’s pain. Not likely – as the Dixie Chicks sang, time doesn’t always heal everything. I have chosen instead to honor her and to take care of her. In fact, I now have pictures of me at age seven in both my home and office as a way to remind me that that inner child is always there and I need to treat her (me!) with compassion. 

Some of you may have similar stories of bullying and harassment, but many of you carry histories that are so much worse. If we are representative of the nation as a whole, one in four of the women here today and one in six of the men were sexually abused as children. The effects of childhood and adolescent abuse and incest is lifelong –adults with these often histories suffer from high levels of depression and anxiety¸ post traumatic stress syndrome, reduced sexual desire, and problems with intimate relationships throughout adulthood. My own struggles to feel safe are insignificant compared to someone who was sexually or physically abused by an adult they trusted when they were a child – a family member or clergy person or coach or a neighbor. It’s part of why I am so committed to of the programs and policies we have put in place here at the Unitarian Church in Westport to keep children safe in our congregation.

The Vagina Monologues that we are performing this weekend are powerful testimony to the many ways that women’s sexualities have been broken, even as some of the monologues give voice to pleasure and love. The performance last night and this afternoon ends with a video about the women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Genocide is a fact of life in the Congo: nearly six million people have died as a result of the wars ranging since 1996. As many as one in two women in the DRC have been brutalized and raped, often as a weapon of war used by the armies on all sides of the conflict. They are subsequently abandoned by their husbands because they have had sex with other men, even though those men are rapists, because their bodies have been ripped open and left them incontinent, because of the pregnancies and HIV infections that result. 

Sexual violence is one of many legacies of having our souls violated among many that some of us carry into adulthood. Many of us are survivors of families paralyzed by alcoholism and other addictions, by mental illness, by physical violence and abuse, by belittlement and criticism. Most of us carry scars from not receiving the type of unconditional love and regard we needed and deserved as children. Forgive sounds good, as the Dixie Chicks wrote, but sometimes it is neither realistic nor possible. Sometimes we have to act.

These histories – our stories – can paralyze us if we don’t find ways to heal ourselves and our planet and move forward. I read this in an essay in a women’s magazine last week. It said, “What doesn’t kill me, doesn’t not make me stronger.  It makes me anxious, bitchy, and vulnerable…but nobody wants to see that embroidered on a pillow.”

Rev. Sharon E. Watkins, the President of the Disciples of Christ, a Christian denomination, told a Cherokee truth story at the prayer service at the National Cathedral the day after the inauguration. You may have heard it.

One evening a wise old grandmother was teaching her young grandchildren about the struggle that each person faces. 

“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old woman said. 

“One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self pity and fear. The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth and love.”

The granddaughter sat thinking, and then asked, “Which wolf wins, grandmother?”

Her grandmother replied, “The one you feed.”

The one you feed. It’s the choice we all have to make. It’s at the root of whether we can heal from the certainty that you have been hurt by others, that you will be hurt again. It goes to the root of what kind of person you will be, how you will feel in the life you lead.

Naming the hurt and speaking it aloud is often the first step towards healing. In the rooms of AA, people begin that naming when they stand up and say, “I’m Bob, and I’m an alcoholic” and people respond – “hi Bob”  -- and then listen to the story that follows. Speaking your truth out loud to others makes a difference – whether that’s with a therapist or a minister or in a small group ministry. I have a sign in my office that says “What people need is a good listening to.”  Being a good listener, without judgment – reaching out and saying “I’m here to listen” --  is one of the most important gifts you can give your spouse, your partner, your children, your friends, each other.

With support from the United Nations, Unicef, and V-Day, women in the Congo began speaking out this fall, to cameras and to New York Times reporters, about the atrocities they have faced.  In one woman’s words, which you can read at the VDay website, "I did not believe that I could still hold a speech in front of a crowd. But I have done just that," she said proudly afterwards. "I feel like I am someone important," she said recently. "The recognition that I have been given today has made me realize that I am a valuable member in my community."  Another woman who spoke out that day said, “I had no value until I came here. People were afraid of me. They thought I was a monster. Then they changed when they heard my story.”

Standing in community with others is part of the healing. Last April, along with 35,000 other men and women, I attended the tenth anniversary of VDAY at the Super Dome in New Orleans, which included a cast of celebrities performing the Vagina Monologues at the Arena. I was there with my mother and daughter. When Eve Ensler is performing the Vagina Monologues, she now always ends her performance the same way. She tells the audience that she was a victim of incest by her father for many years, and that it led to her depression and alcoholism until her early forties. She then invites any woman or man in the audience who has been sexually assaulted, raped, abused, or otherwise had their sexuality violated, to stand up and be recognized and applauded as a survivor.

The offer took me by surprise. I was assaulted twice in my early twenties. I had spoken about it to my daughter; I had not talked about it to my mother. This is the first time I’ve said those words from the pulpit. It was at a time when we didn’t have words for date rape; we thought it was just something that happened to women if you made a wrong decision to be alone with the wrong man. Some of you may have seen the final episode this year of Mad Men when Joan is raped by her fiancé on the floor of her office, and then tells no one.

I know some of you have been there too. In one study, one in four women ages 18 to 60 have been forced to have sex against their will – yet only 3% of men these ages said that they had ever forced someone. Fortunately, in today’s world, young people are taught that “no means no” and date rape is now understood to be a crime that is to be reported and prosecuted. Not so in 1974 and 1977.

But, back to that moment in the New Orleans Arena. Eve made this offer, and I had no more than ten seconds to make up my mind.  I hesitated…and then

I stood up. I prayed quickly that neither my mother nor daughter would. They didn’t. But, the woman next to me stood up and took my hand. At least 10,000 people in the arena stood up.  Think about it. 10,000 people who had been sexually abused, assaulted, raped in one place.  That’s what one in three looks like. Think about what it would look like here. 

And in that moment, something inside my heart let go and tears flowed. And then Jennifer Hudson started to sing Aretha Franklin’s Respect. That moment allowed the men and the women in the arena to reclaim a piece of what had been taken from us.

Standing in solidarity can turn into taking action together. In the Congo, women activists are building “Cities of Joy” where women can live while they wait at the hospital for their bodies to be repaired and where they can live afterwards with their children and make a living and a new life together. At that moment in the New Orleans arena, I made the decision to contact Eve and ask her if I could help get religious leaders involved with her efforts. My organization, the Religious Institute, began the Congo Sabbath Initiative this fall, and to date, 50 of the country’s most recognized religious leaders, including the heads of 8 denominations and the National Council of Churches, have joined with us in calling congregations of all kinds to become involved. I want to thank the Unitarian Church in Westport for being part of this nationwide movement.

These are hard issues to speak about from the pulpit, even for me. Many of us come from religious traditions and from families that taught us to be obedient, to not speak out, and to be good boys and girls. In Eve’s words, on the cover of the order of service that she wrote to me to share with the Westport cast, “Every time we stand up to oppression, we open the door for hundreds to follow.”  

Starr King President and UU, Rev. Rebecca Ann Parker writes in her book Proverbs of Ashes says “theology that defines virtue as obedience to God suppresses the virtue of revolt…but obedience is not a virtue. It is an evasion of our responsibility. Religious must engage us in the exercise of our responsibilities, not teach us to deny the power that is ours…we need a God who delights in revolutionary disobedience and spirited protest.”

We need courage to face those hurts and to move forward. I understand that the things I have been talking about are difficult to listen to – that your own memories of how you have been hurt may be very hard to sit with. I want to remind you that each of the ministers is here if you would like to talk more. Anais Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Retired Episcopal Bishop John Spong wrote, “to have the courage to be ones self, to claim the ability to define one’s self, to live one’s life in freedom and with power is the essence of human experience.” 

It is indeed an act of courage to make the conscious decision to choose the wolf of compassion, faithfulness, forgiveness, hope, truth and love – instead of fear, anger, depression, and retaliation. Some times it may seem impossible.

And, that’s part of why we are here. We can’t do it alone. That’s why we need each other: to listen to our stories, to cry with and to laugh with each other, to celebrate each others joys and sorrows, to reach out a hand and offer to listen, to work on social action projects together, whether in Bridgeport or Darfur and the Congo, to know that there is a place we can go where we will be loved for just who we are. We need to know that there are people who will walk with us, walk with the little hurt children inside us, and be there with us as we explore our own journeys.

Unlike the seals and the birds in the Galapagos, we have been hurt. We will be hurt again. But we do not need to be afraid. In the words of Rev. Wayne Aranson, in one of my favorite readings in the hymnal, “Take courage friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down there is another truth. You are not alone.” 

The book of Ezekiel, the book of Isaiah, the book of Luke all talk about the need to “bind up the broken.” We are all the broken –and we all can be healers. Let us be gentle with the child within us. Let us be compassionate towards one another. Let us feel the strength we have within us and in this community to help us heal and bless our days. Let us sing to the power of love. So may it be. 

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