Shame or Love – Rev. Darrell Jones
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
From the beginning of recorded history to date, we have tried to make sense of the world through a paradigm of duality. Nature vs nurture, Good vs bad, loyalty vs independence, reward vs punishment, heaven vs hell, holy vs evil, right vs wrong or justice vs forgiveness. To try to make life fit into one of two categories limits its full expression. Denying life to express in its full spectrum is to in essence limit Life’s potential. To deny our individual spectrum of expression is to deny the possibility of Spirit as our lives.
What if you could expand all Life, including your life through the practice of forgiveness. Let go of either or and embrace ALL. Join us this week for a message of Love that is sure to activate your mind, body and spirit to its highest calling.
SUMMARY
– Rev. Darrell discusses the importance of forgiveness and love, rather than shame and blame, in addressing the challenges facing society and the world.
– He emphasizes that shame and punishment do not lead to positive change, and instead advocates for an approach of unconditional love and radical forgiveness.
– The speaker shares a practice of saying “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you” as a way to cultivate self-forgiveness and love, which can then extend to forgiving and loving others.
– He argues that we must move away from a mentality of “us vs. them” and instead recognize our common humanity and the divine light within each person, regardless of their beliefs or actions.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Darrell Jones:
Isn’t that a lovely song? Paige is always so kind and says, Hey, do you have any ideas, any songs that you want sung before service? And I just stumbled across that one. I’d never heard it before last week, and the big thing that I’m pulling out from the lyric is show me how to love the unlovable and is it okay if I’m real with everybody? Oh yeah, Reverend Judy asked, what are you flub boxed by? I grew up, I’m a kid of the seventies and eighties, so I went to computer camp, so I grew up with that in my wheelhouse, but I’ve yet to stumble across an app, a website, an algorithm, a technology to help me with humanity.
What is buing me? Is that a word? Is that how you would say it? Ing doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Show me how to love the unlovable. That’s that’s where I am today. I stumbled across this song this morning listening to NPR on my way in here. Someone was talking about Detroit and Motown and they were like, there was a certain almost folk music sound that came out of that record label in the sixties. Here’s this song called, this Is My Country, by the Impressions. Anyone know that song came out in 1968? One of the lyrics in the choruses, shall We perish, unjust, or Live Equal As a Nation? Sing it, brother, I wish I knew the song, but those lyrics are speaking to me so hard. Shall we perish, unjust, or live equal as a nation? And I have got to turn my timer on because I am promising that we will get into our annual meeting in a timely fashion. Today.
I’ve given this talk two or three times already. I was really excited about radical forgiveness. I haven’t touched that book in 10, 15 years as a big part of my healing journey. Reverend Amy spoke about some of the steps of forgiveness, and if you have not familiarized yourself with Colin Tipping and he has this really intense worksheet, check it out because it is a tool that will help you step through figuring out how to forgive the unforgivable. It’s not about making someone right and someone wrong, but it’s it’s a spiritual technology, he says, and it truly is a spiritual technology because the biggest challenge that I have found is that when it comes to forgiveness, we are waiting for something to change in our human condition in order for us to begin forgiving. And if that is the math or the equation that we’re going to try to use, we’re going to be disappointed and forgiveness will be inaccessible.
Forgiveness is something that everyone can practice. Forgiveness is something that, as you have heard me say time and time again with my philosophy of soul gym, that we are here to exercise and work out. There are things that we must do on a regular daily basis in order to keep ourselves at some sort of baseline. Forgiveness to me is one of those exercises and practices that allows me to deal with humanity. Not only the humanity outside of me, but the humanity within me because I struggle with myself. I’m struggling with myself a lot today. I’m struggling with my own beliefs and the beliefs of people that don’t agree the way that I do. I’m struggling with a country that brought me to this talk title today. Shame or Love, what Feels Better, what Feels better? Love. Love.
But yet we shame all over one another and blame all over one another like crazy. From the beginning of recorded history. To date, we have tried to make sense of the world through a paradigm of duality. It’s either good or bad. It’s right or wrong. It’s Democrat or Republican. It’s heaven or hell, it’s good or evil, and we need these things to help make an understanding. But from the standpoint of principle, if we attempt to limit life into one or another category, on some level, we are suppressing life. Anyone know emotional intelligence? Anyone like to experience anger? Have you ever suppressed anger before? Anyone still suppressing anger? Does that help you experience greater love and joy in your life?
This duality, it’s a hard thing. Humanity, spirituality, this is a hard thing for us to juggle, but if we don’t step back and allow ourselves to at least acknowledge the full expression of life on some level, we are dampening it. If we don’t welcome and try to lean in and understand the individuation of God in a way that we don’t know on some level, we are limiting God. I came to a phrase of what I’m going to invite us to explore today, and it’s loving at all costs, loving at all costs. It’s kind of a weird phrase. I Googled it a couple of times and there’s a whole romantic novel series that’s based in that, and it’s kind of that dark, twisted, like loving at all costs where you impale yourself on someone because no, what I’m talking about is loving at all costs to me is another name or phrase of saying forgiveness.
Loving at all costs, at all costs. Our pride, our ego, so shame or love what feels better. I want to define these two words just to help us out. I know everyone’s like, yo, love feels better, but okay. Our behavior leads me to believe that we don’t necessarily get it. Shame is the painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness or the awareness of doing something wrong or behaving in a way that is foolish. It’s a natural thing to feel shame. So I’m not saying that shame is bad or the shame is wrong, but we’ll just leave the definition there. Getting ahead of myself, a painful feeling of humiliation, love. Now, there’s so many definitions of love. There’s agape love, there’s romantic love, there’s sexual love. There’s the five love languages. Let’s use this love, an unselfish, loyal, and benevolent concern for the good of life.
So what feels better? Shame or love? Shame is natural when we realize that we’ve done something wrong. When we realize that maybe we have harmed someone in a way that we’ve maybe on someone else’s life and their capacity to express their uniqueness, we’ll feel some shame. I know I have, but many humans on this planet have learned to override that shame. Some of them are in leadership in our country right now. They’ve overridden the capacity to know, oh, I’m doing something. Not that we should be shaming them, but within themselves to have that sense of I’ve done something to harm another. But we’ve agreed in our world that power is the most important thing and power at all costs is shaming, putting other people down, stepping on their neck, putting them in prison, putting them away, kicking them out of the country.
Shame is a natural response in our nervous system. However, when shame is used as a tool for growth, transformation, or healing, I am here to put forth one of my new purposes on the planet, and that is to put my hand up and say, shame doesn’t work anymore. It never has, and it never will. It never has, and it never will. I’ve been doing a lot of work in restorative practices and restorative justice in our educational school systems in the past year and a half, and the basic idea is that punishment doesn’t do anything to help a child learn and grow. That same principle applies to us regardless of our age. If you think of our country, if you think of our planet, if you think of our government systems, if you think of our organizations and businesses, if you think of our families, it’s no different than a school to use shame as a tool for growth and transformation. It doesn’t work.
But yet we employ it in our cultures, in our organizations, in our language, over and over and over again. I bet somewhere within you in the past, let’s call it 14 days, maybe one of these phrases, you may have uttered them out loud or you’ve spoken them loudly, but inside your own head, shame on you. You should know better. Anybody. You ever scream that at the TV in the past few weeks? Okay, you should be ashamed of yourself. That was a disgraceful thing to do. I’m so disappointed in you. I can’t believe you would do that. What kind of a person does something like that? Who says that these are shaming phrases and somewhere within us as a culture and a world, by stating those phrases, we think somehow that’s going to transform someone into a different behavior in a way of being. Do you see the disconnect there?
Has anyone experienced shame in the past 48 hours within themselves? Do you know what happens in your body when you experience shame? Have you ever seen someone experience shame? This is what happens. Shame kicks in. We dim our light, we shut down, we withdraw. It’s not a tool of transformation, folks. It doesn’t work. All it does is diminish, period. Now, sometimes our ego, now sometimes our ego loves shame because it’s righteous, right? There’s that little hit. We get that adrenaline squeeze and stuff starts cosing through our veins and we’re like, yeah, in your face. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that anymore. I’m human. I feel that draw within me, but if it worked, our world would be different.
If it worked, our world would be different. There’s something called affective language. Is anyone familiar with that? Yeah. So instead of phrases like, what’s wrong with you, how could you possibly do something like that? That’s not an affective statement. An affective statement or affective language is still communicating your concern, your frustration, your wants and needs and desires, but not through that language. That’s blaming or shaming. You could call it violent if you’ve ever studied any nonviolent communication, this is something that I think today with our social media world that we really need to be mindful of because many of the peaceful things that we do are actually quite violent online, at least I’ll say, this is just something I have to speak out loud. That was a funny thing for me. So Schoolhouse Rock. Oh yes. Do you remember the No Kings Schoolhouse Rock? There was a song called No Kings that came out in 1975 that was a part of their whole thing. Google it, check it out. It’s kind of funny, but I was challenged by the word no kings from the principle of what am I for? Right? No kings is what I’m against. What am I for? So this is just kind of a little bit of a steam out of the room. I’d say, yes, Queens.
That’s what I’m for. I’m for everybody. I’m for inclusion, and I hope that you are creating some space in your heart for me today because I am torn up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know actually how to be of service to this country. I don’t know how to be of service to this community, but I am reminded of spiritual principle. I am reminded of spiritual practice, and the hard part is, is that spiritual practice doesn’t cause immediate human change. It creates a change in heart so that we can step back into humanity. That’s something that I’m trying to remember myself of, and I hope that I will inspire you into that today. Colin Tipping said, it is essential that we adopt a way of living based not on fear, control and abuse of power, but on true forgiveness, unconditional love and peace.
This is where we are today. We are being called to be radical, to shift out of that blaming, shaming, abuse of power, controlling, trying to transform through fear into a space of unconditional love and peace and forgiveness, but it’s not easy. Desmond Tutu. This is one. This is where I have to sit down and go, okay, let me contemplate this for a minute. Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering to not use your right. You have the right to hit back. You have the power to hit back, whether it’s physically with your fist or with a word or withdrawal. But when we do that, we’re just fighting.
Forgiveness is a second chance. It’s an opportunity for something else to be written and remembering that we have the right to hit, but we have the choice also to not hit back. That’s an interesting space to be. One of the things that has brought some insolation and allowed me to just find some peace in the midst of where I am right now, thinking about radical forgiveness and how is it that I can bring radical forgiveness into my life and be a beacon for something new than what we’ve been doing for centuries is some of the teachings from a Course in Miracles, Mr. Wozniak, A Course in Miracles, every loving thought is true. Let’s start there. Everyone is, everyone down with that? Not every thought is true. Every loving thought is true, okay? Everything else is an appeal for healing or help regardless of the form that it takes.
Everything else is an appeal for healing and help regardless of the form that it takes. I don’t like anything. Well, I won’t say anything. I don’t like 99% of the things that are happening out of the White House and people get all, whoa, whoa, Daryl, you’re going to be political. You’re not supposed to be as Amary. I’m a human being. I’m just going to give you my opinion and I’m not telling you what to think, but I don’t like a lot of the things that are happening. But what I realize right now is that it is a call for me to forgive and love and find a way to bring in parts of this country to have a conversation.
It’s easy for me to shame people that I know, that think in some similar way. It’s easy for me to walk away from them. And I’m not saying everyone can do this and should do this. Some of us just aren’t, aren’t going to do it. We may not even physically be safe, but one of the things that I’m charged about is that I don’t care anymore because I’m safe in love and I’m safe in God. And so I want to have those hard conversations. Mr. Trump, if you’re listening, let’s talk because this does not work. Fear and power hoarding has been our history and it needs to change, but what I recognize is that it is an appeal for a healing. It is a call for help. There’s so much fear in our government. The fact that they cannot make a decision about how to run the country is ridiculous to me. Everyone’s afraid to do anything. Fear cannot be the way that we try to gauge our living and our choices. We must forgive what has happened and find some way of reconciling and getting present, getting present to where we are.
Everything loving, every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help. How many of you are willing to embrace that second statement wholeheartedly? We cannot afford to wait for human conditions to change in order for us to start practicing forgiveness. And the beautiful thing about forgiveness, this is one of the things that comes out of radical forgiveness and any of the big forgiveness authors, teachers studies, is that any forgiveness that we do is healing. Whether you are doing healing out there with a relationship or you’re doing healing in here with your relationship, it’s all healing. So start where you can. If you are like, there’s just this thing I got to do, I don’t know how to heal it, then go to Colin Tipping’s website. You can download the PDF for free and walk through it. But here’s where I wanted to invite us to start, because it is no less powerful, but it is simple. It gets me out of my intellect and into my heart. I’m sorry.
Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Four phrases that stop me dead in my track and bring me into that space that there is only love. And if what is happening in front of me is not the love that I understand that I am being called to express or practice love in a way like never before. And if I don’t know how to do it, I call upon these four phrases, theono practice from our beloved family members, and they say family members. Because if you think about it for a minute, really think about it. You’re not getting away from anyone on this planet.
We can have borders, but we’re all on the same rock floating through the universe, so we are all family. So our family in the Pacific Islands, the Ano practice, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. If we had more time, we could delve deeper into it, but let’s bring today’s practice to a close because my hope was that you would have something to take with you to begin doing some practice of forgiveness of self, but then also have a practice that allows you to step into relationship to the world that is kind of bumpy right now, and not to forgive, to forget, but forgive to remember that what might be happening is a call for you to be an expression of love like never before, to be an expression of healing and help.
Are you down? Yes. This is rarely do I like to use the word warrior, but this to me is a warrior stance. To be a warrior of forgiveness is to love at all costs. Let’s try it out right now. Take a nice slow breath in hands to your heart. As you exhale, feel your feet on the floor. As you breathe in, hear the sounds of the room, wherever you may be, and we’re just going to go through a few rounds of these phrases. You don’t need to memorize them. You can look it up later online. Just repeat these words quietly in your heart. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you for all the places in your own personal self that you hold yourself hostage, that you make yourself wrong in your history. I’m sorry.
Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you even for that one thing that you’re like, this is unlovable in me. Just try turning your attention towards it. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Unless we are willing to pause the self shame, we will never, ever pause the shaming of others. Let us begin doing what feels best and good, and that is loving all aspects of ourselves, period. One breath at a time, one statement at a time. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you, and it is from this place that I recognize that these are the words of the divine realigning itself as itself, as your life, as my life, as our life. Now, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
Thank you. I love you. I forgot how amazing God is. I forgot how amazing spirit can be. I forgot how amazing this creative process and how entrenched I am in the good of not only my life, but the life of everyone around me. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I love you for welcoming me back into the circle of understanding of realizing that we are here not as one, not as two, not as us, not as them, but the people of this planet are here to restore ourselves to the greatest glory that we have ever known, and that is the light and love of God itself. May we remember this truth as we forgive ourselves in all the ways that we have been contrary to it, letting this word go, letting this time go. I know that we have increased the capacity for liberation and freedom, and so it is. It shall be. Amen. Peace and blessings to you all. Thank you.