Can You Keep A Secret?
May 21, 2006
Rev. David Takahashi Morris
Can you keep a secret?
Listen, don’t tell
anyone I told you this.
On
my first day of orientation for
Then
he talked about how to communicate our needs and concerns to the
This was almost ten years ago now, but I remember that moment very vividly, right down to the tone of his voice and the intent looks on the faces of my classmates. In the context of the way most of our culture functions, it was a shocking remark.
We’re constantly asked for feedback. Every customer service organization from restaurants and hotels to hospitals and government agencies has a comment form of some kind. Every workshop, seminar, conference, or class includes an evaluation form at the end of the day, the event, or the semester. Most of the organizations we work for say they welcome our ideas. Most of the time, we can make our comments anonymously.
Anonymity is woven into the fabric of our culture. The last time you went shopping, did anyone who sold you anything know who you were? If you used a credit card, they had a record of your identity, but did the dressing room attendant, the mechanic, or the guy you asked where to find the 5/8” nylon expansion toggles know who you were? In some places the cashiers are required to look at a membership card and say your name—when I used to shop at Sam’s, there was even a $10 reward for me if the poor soul forgot to look at my picture ID and say, “Thank you, Mr., um, Takasake Morri.” But you know if you walked back in there 10 minutes later that same person wouldn’t have a notion what to call you.
This has its good side and its bad side. It’s nice not to have everybody know your business. A lot of people in my parents’ generation moved away from small towns where everybody knew their names on purpose to go where nobody did. But there are losses when we walk through our days surrounded by people who don’t know us. As Leslie shared a few weeks ago, when the world depersonalizes us we lose something of our sense of self.
Still, we protect our privacy fiercely. We want to be able to decide who knows what about us. And sometimes it’s more than just a personal preference.
If they find out where this information came
from they’d fire me.
I could go to jail for telling you this.
If he finds out where we’re living I’m
afraid he’ll hurt me—or the children.
There are situations where genuine harm can come to us if we are known, when anonymity can be vital for our safety and for our ability to call authority figures to account.
Anonymous and secret sources have provided information that ended major abuses in business and in government. Anonymous testing is one of the key tools in combating AIDS; the identities of rape victims are protected, and women’s programs all over the country shield the identities of victims of domestic violence. The names of children and youth accused of crimes are withheld from the public.
All of this accounts for the consternation so many of us felt at Dean Campbell’s blunt assertion: I do not accept or consider anonymous comments, and you shouldn’t either. If anonymity is so much a part of our culture, for so many good reasons, why should our churches be different?
The answer begins with a statement I first heard from Gordon McKeeman: The church is a counter-cultural institution. We live in a society and culture where many of our relationships are either based on or distorted by power, authority, and dominance. The church is meant to be a different kind of community: seeking unity, seeking to discover and to embody the highest values in human relationships. In such a community different rules should apply. In a dominance-based culture, anonymity and secrecy can allow us to protect the truth. In a community seeking openness and trust, anonymity and secrecy can allow us to avoid the truth.
I’d never tell him this, but I really wish
he’d stop preaching about that.
You know she can’t be trusted. I’m not supposed to talk about it, but you’d
be shocked.
I’m not the only one who feels this way, you
know. I’ve heard it from several others
too.
The wider society assumes anonymity encourages people to be more honest, but we know that isn’t necessarily true. Anonymous speakers are not accountable to anyone for what they say. This can allow individuals to move private agendas forward without having to take responsibility for them. It also allows people to be less aware of the emotional impact of the words they choose.
When anonymity is acceptable, offhand or ill-informed comments by people with very little stake in the community can be given the same authority as thoughtful comments by those who are deeply committed. Single anonymous individuals can characterize themselves as the voice of much larger anonymous groups.
There’s no way to respond appropriately to an anonymous concern, disagreement, or accusation. If it’s inaccurate or irresponsible, any response at all draws attention to it. And if it is a legitimate concern, there’s no way to know what actions would make the speaker feel their concern had been heard and addressed.
Anonymous comments can be enormously disruptive in religious communities. Anonymity also works against our individual spiritual growth. One of the most important gifts of living in a religious community is the opportunity to be known for who and what we truly are. Howard Thurman writes that one of the deepest yearnings of human beings is to understand and to be understood by others. We want to be cared for, he writes; we want to know, however vast and impersonal all life around us may seem …that we are not alone. Thurman says we learn to experience our own spirit by knowing and letting ourselves be known by others.
One special gift of Unitarian Universalist spiritual community is that we are committed to wholeness: not to leave parts of ourselves behind in order to find community; not to divide ourselves or the Universe into spirit and flesh, sacred and profane, worldly and holy.
But if we keep parts of ourselves hidden, if we are unwilling to risk expressing our thoughts openly in our own name—how can we be whole? How can we be seen and known by our spiritual community? This to me is one of the greatest losses of anonymity in spiritual communities--that it can place a barrier between us and the community which calls us to follow the imperative to expand ourselves—by following the urge to genuinely be ourselves.
It’s important to mention here that anonymity and confidentiality are not the same thing. In counseling and other conversations with ministers, in covenant groups, and in many other settings within the church we share information about ourselves that is not meant to go beyond that conversation. That’s confidential, not anonymous: Someone knows who we are; and the information shared under those circumstances is private—it’s about us, not someone else, and the person who hears isn’t supposed to take responsibility for what we say. Typically, anonymous comments are meant to be shared and acted on; no one knows who the speaker is, and they’re about someone else. Leslie and I are as fiercely committed to maintaining confidentiality as we are to discouraging anonymity.
Ironically enough, it’s the very value we place on the community that can make us want to stay anonymous when we express thoughts we fear won’t be well-received.
I won’t talk to him about it; he won’t
listen to me.
If I told them I felt this way, they’d be
hurt and I don’t want to upset them.
I think I’d have to leave the church if anyone
knew I’d said this.
If our church is important to us, we don’t want to risk being responsible for creating controversy; we don’t want to be ostracized for having an unpopular opinion. We might be afraid someone will be angry with us; we might be afraid that our voice isn’t respected enough to be heard. We might be afraid that we’ll be identified as the one with the problem. We want things to be peaceful—and yet we have something we need to say. . . so we take refuge in anonymity.
But “To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self,” as our responsive reading says. “To place our ideas before the crowd is to risk loss. . . To try is to risk failure.” The voice calling us to risk speaking the truth in our own name is the voice of our true self calling us to be real in a community that professes to honor the reality of human nature. The life of the church, the value of the community we seek to protect, depends on honesty without anonymity.
The risks are real. People do encounter hurtful responses. It happens in all circles, and it happens here too. So we must always be working to fulfill our aspiration to be a genuine, trusting, respectful community. If we ask one another to be honest and open with our thoughts, our feelings, and our experiences, then we must also learn to make it safe to disagree.
You who were recognized as new members of this church today have joined a community where we are all trying to be real to ourselves and to each other, where we are all learning to understand and to be understood by others, where we are seeking to expand ourselves and to genuinely be ourselves. In such a community we can’t possibly expect to agree all the time. We must each and all be willing to take responsibility for our own thoughts, our own ideas, our own hopes and wishes and disappointments and desires.
We would be one, we sang in our meditation hymn. Let us be one not in a community of power and fear, where we need to protect the truth by hiding ourselves from one another, but in a community of love, of truth, and of trust, where we honor the truth by seeking and struggling for it and celebrating it together. And what we learn here may we turn and teach that wider world we live in, which needs the lessons of trust and truth and love so much.