Smiles Matter: November 2010

Below is an old assignment from my preaching class... It is far from perfect, but I thought I'd post it, maybe it will help someone, somewhere.

Homily Lonely Women March 9, 2009
"No one knows the blues like Lonely Women do."
These are the words of Laura Nyro, a composer and singer of the 1960s and 70s in her song "Lonely Women"
"A gal could die, without a man. And no one knows it better than, Lonely Women"
How do we honor this observation? How do these words from forty years ago resonate today?
I think they resonate all over the place.
"Blues, the blues that make the walls rush in..."
How many of you know a lonely woman? And if you know her, how do you describe her? Do you use adjectives to keep yourself safe... like "she's the crabby lady who lives next door and hates my kids" or "she's a most peculiar woman"?
Now the purpose of the homily is not to blame you for their loneliness... or put responsibility on your shoulders-- heaven knows we all have too much responsibility on our shoulders already.
The purpose, I suppose, is to spend a few minutes thinking about worth and dignity. To make a brief acquaintance with the blues and perhaps examine our automatic actions, our unthinking life, and maybe find a way to look at this shared life from a different angle-- to quote from the Broadway musical "Le Cage Aux Folles"
But I don't want to spend this time spouting lyrics... though I do have one more, one very important one to me and to my life. It's from the musical "Hair", and specifically a tune called "Easy to be Hard":
"How can people be so heartless, How can people be so cruel?" the singer asks... and then "How can people have no feelings, How can they ignore their friends?" "Easy to be proud, Easy to say no"...
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who say they care about social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend"
and she continues saying: "I need a friend"

I heard this song, and the Laura Nyro song when I was in Junior High School... and the words have stayed with me. "I need a friend".
So where do people find their worth? Where do they store up their dignity to weather the indignities of society?
Friends is one way.
I want to shift my thinking for a bit, shift to a movie called "The Full Monty". It's a movie with almost no lonely women in it, but it is full of lonely men. In fact, it is a study of male loneliness, and the blues which make the walls crush in for them.
The movie takes place in the former steel center of Sheffield, England.
Gaz is a divorced father, unemployed and living on the dole. His loneliness is reinforced by his ex wife and her new husband, who want sole custody of his son-- and the movie follows Gaz as he struggles to say "I love You" to the boy.
Dave, played by Mark Addy, is also unemployed, but still married. His struggle comes from a negative self-body-image. He believes the folks who say thin is beautiful and fat is worthless or disgusting. And he sees himself as fat.
Scrawny, mousy, Lomper is an obedient son to a disabled mother. Unlike the others, he has a job-- a lonely job guarding the closed steel mill.
In one pivotal scene we see Lomper in his car, trying to kill himself with carbon monoxide, but the car won't start... and who should wander by but ever-helpful Dave-- who helps him get the car started. After being rescued, Lomper confessess that he has no friends, and his life is worthless. Dave replies that he is Lomper's friend-- after all, he helped him try to kill himself!
Now, the movie's plot revolves around these men's desire to be Chippendales-- or rather, male strippers-- as a way to make money and pay off one of Gaz's debts.
But it's really about self respect-- a journey where they help each other to see their inherent worth. And... to see themselves as "SEXY THINGS"
It takes friends to do that.
In "Walden", Henry David Thoreau penned the line "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation", and certainly the men in The Full Monty are in that mass...
Thoreau attributes this despair to "when you are the slave-driver of yourself." He observes a wagon master taking crops to market, working all day and whipping the horses with his frustration, never thinking higher thoughts. He observes ladies "weaving toilet cushions" as a way of pretending that they are not concerned with the future... and he calls these people slaves to "the slave driver of yourself."
I don't agree that the slave driver is within. I don't agree that we all have the wisdom to get out of desperate cycles by ourselves.
I see the master in Society. The master who makes fat men and women go on diets of self-denial. The churches, states and armies who make gay men and women deny who they are in order to make a living. The abusive partner who keeps a woman pleading for respect rather than reaching out for help. All these masters are the shapers of society.
But here's the prophetic moment. The bondage can be broken, but not by those people who worry about social injustice. The bonds can be broken when someone takes your hand and says:
"Come, I need you to be my friend."