Privacy
A Sermon Given
by Rev. Roger Fritts
November 2, 1997
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
I attended graduate school out west in Berkeley, California, studying to
be a minister at a Unitarian Universalist school called Starr King School
for Religious Leadership. When I asked one graduate about the school, he
described it as a three-year encounter group. A popular course among ministerial
students was "The Meanings of Dreams." The dream class met weekly to analyze
each other's dreams. Another popular class was the course on human sexuality.
I grew up in Arizona where many people considered encounter groups a communist
plot, nudity sinful, and nobody talked about their dreams. When I moved to
California to attend school, the faculty and students told me that I was
too "uptight." The President of the seminary suggested that I take LSD as
a way of "expanding my mind." When I declined the suggestion, the school
offered me a scholarship to the Esalen Institute near Big Sur, California.
So one Friday afternoon, I found myself in a car heading south on California's
Highway 1. I was going to spend the weekend learning how to express my innermost
feelings.
The Institute had originally been a resort hotel, which its developers had
placed on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. Its major attraction, besides
the natural beauty of the rocky coastline and the sea, was a hot spring.
Someone had constructed large baths on the edge of the cliff overlooking
the ocean. An awning covered the baths. However, the builders had left the
side facing west open so people could sit in the hot spring water and hear
the crash of the surf against the rocks below.
We ate dinner in the dining room by candlelight. The food was bean sprout
salad and vegetarian lasagne. Later that evening an attractive young woman
gave the new arrivals an orientation lecture. After the orientation I spent
sometime sitting in the hot tubs listening to the sound of the Pacific waves
crashing against the rocks below.
That Saturday I attended three different workshops. Dance in the morning,
massage in the afternoon, and Gestalt therapy in the evening. The therapist
encouraged me to get more in touch with my feelings and to be sensitive about
what was going on inside my body.
I have good memories of the weekend. I liked the food, the hot tubs, the
massage, and the conversations, and the philosophy of Esalen gave me a lot
to think about. It pushed me to look at who I was and what I believed.
The leaders at Esalen taught me that I should make myself vulnerable. They
told me that I should not hold back thoughts and feelings because I think
they are shameful and embarrassing. They taught me that I should let down
my defenses and share my feelings with others. If I do this, then I will
realize that everyone has fantasies, desires and worries about supposedly
terrible, wicked and shameful things.
Our culture has taught us to think that many things are shameful, they said.
Our culture would be healthier and happier if all of us diminished the things
that we consider private. A change in our attitudes would make us more secure
and at ease in the world. If we relaxed and shared more about ourselves,
others could not shame us.
If I had less concern for privacy, then interpersonal relationships would
be better. The emphasis on the maintenance of a private side to life encouraged
dual lives, the Esalen leaders explained. People present one view of themselves
to the public and a different view of themselves to a few intimate associates.
This unintegrated life renders people vulnerable, shame ridden, and lacking
in a clear sense of self.
They told me that privacy creates a context in which deceit and hypocrisy
may flourish. According to the Big Sur philosophers:
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Privacy is the cover under which most human wrongdoing takes place.
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Privacy protects the guilty from taking responsibility for their actions.
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Privacy is moral cowardice, an excuse not to stand up and state our views
and accept whatever unpopularity might follow.
The California gurus suggested that human beings should lead more open, more
spontaneous, less guarded lives. They preached that we would have little
to fear from disclosures of self because we would have nothing that requires
hiding.
It did sound appealing. It is enough to make us feel guilty about our inhibited
lives. Perhaps we should install hot tubs when we convert the parsonage.
Unfortunately for the Esalen philosophers, evidence suggests that the need
for privacy is a part of human nature. Studies of animal behavior suggest
that our evolutionary heritage may be the source of our desire for privacy.
Most animals seek periods of individual seclusion. Most animals lay claim
to an area of land, water or air and defend it against intrusion. Studies
of animals who live in overcrowded conditions show an increase in high blood
pressure, circulatory diseases, and heart disease. The struggle to achieve
a balance between privacy and participation is a basic process of animal
life. The same is true for the human animal. After studying the evidence
gathered by anthropologists and sociologists, one researcher concluded:
| Needs for individual privacy and group privacy are present in virtually
every human society . . . the individual in virtually every society engages
in a continuing personal process by which he [or she] seeks privacy at some
times and disclosure or companionship at other times. |
I believe two unavoidable and discordant elements are part of our personalities.
First I am a gregarious creature. I crave the help and fellowship of others.
Second, I am a private creature. I crave silence, tranquillity, introspection,
and moments when I can contemplate my personal place in the world. Two competing
forces function inside us: the wish for relationships, company, and society
and the wish for autonomy, individualism, and self-reliance.
I do not need to find fault with the outgoing aspects of our personalities,
to champion the private aspects. Both are critical to human life. However,
I do feel a need to speak in support of the private side when I hear introversion
described as a debilitating illness. When others claim that outgoing persons
are the ideal, when they suggest that detachment is a sickness, when they
tell me I should always be interacting with others, I feel a need to speak
in favor of solitude. For I believe that what goes on within people when
we are alone, is as significant as what goes on in our interactions with
people. I suggest that having a private life away from the jumble and babble
of contemporary society can renew our spirits. I assert that to be with people
all the time is not good for our souls.
What is the purpose of privacy? I can think of least four common
functions:
First, privacy is necessary for the creation of individual identity.
When I was a child, I needed to develop a private world. This private world
made it possible for me to move from seeing myself as part of my parents
to seeing myself as an individual with a separate identity. Private thoughts
and private dreams foster my becoming and remaining an individual. As adults,
privacy helps me maintain this individuality. Alone I can rediscover the
person inside me.
Second, privacy makes love between two people possible. The possibility
of intimate relationships is logically dependent on privacy. I create intimacy
by sharing thoughts with a few friends, or one other person. Without this
private sharing, respect, love, friendship and trust are not possible. Recently
I officiated at a wedding here in this sanctuary. After the service, the
couple went to the library to be alone for a few moments. Later they stood
in a reception line and posed for photos. However, on that most public of
days, for a few moments after the service, they took private time to be together
alone. They understood: privacy makes possible the deepest love two human
beings can share.
Third, privacy promotes creativity. Time alone stimulates imagination,
daydreams and fantasies; the raw stuff of the creative process. Beyond providing
freedom from distractions and opportunities to concentrate, privacy also
insulates the artist from ridicule and censure at early stages of groping
and experimentation. Emily Dickinson wrote her poems in seclusion. Georgia
O'Keefe retreated from New York City to the deserts of New Mexico to paint.
Creativity requires that we be away from others, free from the inhibition
of advice and comment. Creative people spend a great deal of time alone.
Instead of seeking friends, counselors, or organizations, their intimate
companion is solitude.
Fourth, privacy is important to the development of our spiritual life.
Privacy nurtures and protects something sacred inside us. Moses walked up
the mountain to talk with God. Jesus walked into the wilderness to wrestle
with temptation. Buddha meditated beneath a tree on the banks of a river.
Mohammed withdrew from the world to a secluded cave. The great religions
are a reflection of their inner lives. If their revelations were divergent,
the procedure was identical. Go to a remote place. Isolate oneself from others.
Examine the core of one's existence. Listen to the still small voice within.
Feel the unity that underlies the universe. As Whitehead warned, "If you
are never solitary, you are never religious."
This is then, is my four-point defense of privacy:
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First, privacy is necessary for the creation of individual identity.
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Second, privacy makes love between two people possible
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Third, privacy promotes creativity.
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Fourth, privacy is important to the development of our spiritual life.
Twenty-two years ago Gestalt therapists told me that my reserve was an emotional
illness. They told me, in the name of personal growth, that people should
open up and share more of themselves. I felt then and I believe now that
we need a balance. The ideally balanced person will find meaning in privacy
and in relationships.
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On the one hand it is good to reach out to others, to risk, to share our
secret feelings and ideas. Shyness and reserve can be the road to loneliness
and pain.
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On the other hand, some of our secret thoughts and feelings are no one's
business but our own.
All our lives, we will feel the pull of the two distinct poles and weave
a path between them. We must cultivate both the inner and outer worlds. Being
alone and being related are both necessary elements in human existence.
At the end of the weekend, before I drove away from Esalen, I took a walk
along the beach. I found myself observing the sky, the earth, and the sea.
The coastline has extraordinarily beautiful scenery. It is rocky and irregular,
with canyons, redwood trees, and mountain streams. The waves of the ocean
are constantly flowing over the rocks, changing shapes and patterns, with
the vast open space of the sea spreading out to the west.
Alone, the beauty around me renewed my spirit. So it has been all my life.
Others that weekend found strength in encounter groups. I gather strength
by retreat into solitude, away from relationships. If it is not right for
everyone, it is good for me. It is one way I care for my soul.
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