Wise and Otherwise

In the view of the Roman philosopher Seneca, the great end in life is the achievement of wisdom. As anyone who has ever been fooled, or simply foolish, knows, this is more difficult to achieve than we may imagine. Who hasn’t been impulsive, making a hasty choice prematurely – such as a marriage, or a new car, or a house, perhaps? Who hasn’t suffered at the hands of someone who was more cunning and clever in the moment? Who hasn’t embraced an idea that they later discovered to be false? Sometimes embarrassingly so. Who hasn’t overlooked shortcomings in others – or themselves? Who hasn’t allowed someone else to live inside their heads rent free, as we like to say? I’m guilty on every count – except marriage, just to be clear.

As the 19th-century Scottish physician, poet, and satirical novelist Tobias Smollett quipped, “Some folks are wise, and some are otherwise.” Truth be told, most of us are “otherwise” more often than we care to admit, but that doesn’t mean that we are incapable of cultivating wisdom over the course of our live, even if doing so is difficult and the achievement rare. When the 19th-century Unitarians emphasized the pursuit of what they called self-culture, they were really pointing towards the cultivation of personal wisdom – and they believed that it was a possibility for everyone, the desired end of the spiritual quest – not success, not salvation as their neighbours understood it, but wisdom. In this, they echoed Seneca when he declared, “They who have attained wisdom have reached, not the furthermost, but the most important goal.”

“No one is ever wise by chance,” he maintained. Wisdom is something that is nurtured, which demands effort on our part, and comes to us as the fruits of a lifetime of study, reflection, and discernment. Wisdom, if we achieve it, is a state in which we are both self-aware and aware of the world as it is – able to acknowledge our own imperfections while embracing all that we can learn from others, including those with whom we may, at first, disagree. That can be hard – moving in the direction of a position or idea we once dismissed, but have since come to recognize its merits.

The wise person takes time to reflect on their thoughts and actions without becoming obsessed with them, balances socializing with solitude, chooses both their sources of information and their friends prudently, and prepares to endure both successes and adversities with grace. In short, Seneca held that a person who is truly wise is able to live in the present, enjoying what the present moment has to offer, without fixating unnecessarily on the past or depending on an imagined future.

If Seneca was mistaken about wisdom at all, it was that he assumed that wisdom and happiness go hand in hand, that perfect wisdom and perfect happiness are identical, and that wisdom makes life easier for us. Ha! Wisdom does not promise that we will be happier than others; it does promise that we may be more fulfilled in our unhappiness. While wisdom may lead to a degree of contentment, it seems to me that it correlates with heartbreak as much as happiness, and that the path of wisdom can be arduous rather than easy. In this regard, Seneca allowed his own social status to cloud his estimate of the fruits of wisdom. I’ve known too many wise, working class souls whose lives were marked by unhappiness and hardship to believe that wisdom necessarily leads to good fortune, although it may well have mitigated their difficulties and suffering. There are wise people who dwell on the streets, living lives of quiet desperation – individuals whose wisdom helps them make it through the day, but does not necessarily give them much happiness.

Even so, while Seneca’s claim may not be strictly accurate, or universally true, I think that Krista Tippett echoes his assertion, albeit more temperately, when she says: “I’ve yet to meet a wise person who doesn’t know how to find some joy even in the midst of what is hard, and to smile and laugh easily, including at oneself.” In doing so, the wise person declines to let immediate circumstances have a total say over their mood, robbing them of whatever slender joys and delights they possess. Indeed, wisdom helps them to understand that immediate circumstances may be fleeting, and that deeper joys and deeper possibilities may yet await them.

Many speak of the wisdom of Solomon, including many people who have never read a word about him, but entertain vague Sunday school memories about him being wiser than most. He was the original philosopher king, at least the oldest found in literature, although he has rivals in China and other places. And when people mention his name, they typically mean the judgement of Solomon, which is recorded in the First Book of Kings, not the biblical Book of Wisdom associated with him.

You know the story, I’m sure. There are two mothers living in the same house, and when one of their infant sons dies, both mothers claim the remaining boy as her own, one accusing the other of having swapped the two boys. In order to resolve the dispute, King Solomon orders that the living child be divided in two, giving each mother one half. One mother accepts the decision, declaring that if she couldn’t have the boy, neither would, while the other mother protests, saying, “Give the baby to her, just don’t kill him.” At this point, Solomon declares the second woman to be the boy’s true mother, granting her custody. Similar stories appear in the folktales of many cultures, so it’s almost certain that this story is an old folktale that came to be woven into the Bible and attributed to Solomon, but this served to preserve the tale and secure the king’s reputation as an exceeding wise ruler. And that may be a reasonable assessment, but it overlooks the wisdom of the mother, who, grasping the enormity of the consequences, intervened to prevent a second tragedy. Is she not as wise as Solomon? Would the king not have appeared to be a fool – and a reckless one at that – if both women had said, “Sure. Let’s get this over with.” Obviously not.

Clearly, Solomon possessed keen psychological insight, a genuine quality of wisdom, but the success of this tactic depended upon an equally wise mother, whose wisdom was shown by her compassion, whether or not she knew the boy to be hers. As Kathleen McTigue says, “we must remember that the truest wisdom comes laced through with compassion, as we come to know how alike we are – each of us doing our best to find the path ahead and to keep walking with our fragile, broken hearts. And all of us in deep need of each other’s kindness.”

As it happens, the Bible personifies Wisdom in the form of a woman, especially in the Book of Proverbs, and both the Hebrew and Greek words for wisdom are feminine, which is reflected in the use of female pronouns – something that must drive religious fundamentalists crazy. Long before the idea of the Trinity was invented to explain away the contradictions of the Bible regarding God, Wisdom – Sophia in Greek – personified God’s presence and was clearly a vestige of earlier female deities who were believed to exist before the Hebrews adopted radical monotheism. Today, wisdom is commonly defined as “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment,” but millennia ago, Wisdom was seen as a manifestation of the divine, and it was natural to identify Wisdom’s creative and harmonizing qualities as feminine.

It would be a mistake to confuse knowledge with wisdom; although they may be related, they are not the same. I’m sure you’ve all heard the old saw, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” I have witnessed many knowledgeable people – great intellectuals with brilliant minds – who have ultimately shown themselves to be fools of one kind or another. Far too many leaders in the field of information technology fall into this category, I’m afraid. Or overspecialized academics who are unable to connect their esoteric and often idiosyncratic studies with useful purposes. Of course, some theoretical physicists were able to create bombs, which was arguably a special kind of folly, so not every practical application is necessarily a wise one. It’s possible to absorb vast amounts of knowledge without having the capacity to arrange it usefully and distill it through the lens of experience. Trivial Pursuit and chess are different games. Data and discernment don’t always mix easily. A command of sports statistics is unlikely to make you better at playing baseball. If the accumulation of knowledge titillates the intellect, we don’t yet arrive at wisdom until we get past our dopamine high and turn our knowledge into insights and behaviours with practical application.

If knowledge is the rock on which we build, then experience is the organic matter that, when blended with the sand, creates the soil in which we live. We test what we know – or think we know – through lived experience, where we often learn as much from our foibles and mistakes as we do from our successes. I’ve learned a lot over the years because I have made a robust number of mistakes in life – some almost legendary, but most simply mistakes of an everyday variety. In that sense, wisdom is often a byproduct of folly. So sometimes we should be gentle with the fools we know because they may be working on their own personal wisdom project. The more mistakes we make in life, we more wisdom that may result – that is, if we’re paying attention and learning from our mistakes rather than ignoring them or covering them over. Of course, we can learn from others’ mistakes as well, which is generally more pleasant, if we’re curious and engaged with our companions – and not too given to gossip and airs of superiority. The popularity of Mr. Bean as a character is partly related to how much entertainment value we receive from others’ foibles. And when it’s harmless, that’s not a problem; but when it’s hurtful, it may be. Learning for the experiences of others works best when approached with a healthy sense of humility. “Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,” declared the poet William Cowper; "Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.”

Without experience, it’s possible to be smart without being wise. My father, who was eminently wise, in my view (although I do sometimes wonder in my mother surpassed him), used to observe that young people were mistakenly called mature when they were simply sophisticated, a thought that was echoed by Stephen Colbert when, speaking at a commencement, he suggested that those who appear young and wise are more likely just cynical. Neither were seeking to be critical of youth, but were rather pointing to the importance of experience in the development of maturity and, ultimately, genuine wisdom. We don’t expect people to become wise simply from readings textbooks or watching the right documentaries. They need to experience something of life to be able to put that kind of learning to use.

One of the things I love about this congregation – about being a Unitarian Universalist and having engaged with dozens upon dozens of congregations across the continent and having participated in seemingly endless denominational activities – is the number of wise people I came to know. At its best, a congregation is a school for wisdom, as surely as the gardens of the philosophers were such schools. Now I can’t possibly ame all of the wise people I have encountered during my lifetime as a Unitarian Universalist, but there are a few that I had in mind while preparing this sermon.

One of them was Marg Redston. She was president of this congregation when I finally made the decision to join. She was calm and composed about everything she encountered. And it’s not like there was a shortage of calamities in the life of the congregation while she was its president. There were several, but she remained poised and graceful whenever she dealt with them. She was a model of the kind of emotional maturity found in the wise.

Or Ruth Pierce, with whom I went on a pilgrimage to Transylvania, who had the wisdom to decide, when we reached the foot of the mountain  beneath Castle Déva, that she was walking up the path around the mountain. While others decided to take the funicular up the side, I joined her as did one other Manitoba Unitarian. And we made our way up, all the way around the mountain before reaching the castle where Francis Dávid was martyred in 1579. Now, I have to tell you, if I had seen the sign that said, “Vipers Beware,” on the way up and I had thought about it, I may have taken the funicular (as an evidence of my own wisdom) but instead we made the pilgrimage up the mountain. And Ruth had a colleague here in the church, Harold Robson, with whom she once formed the “Ruth Harold Committee” when there were problems in the church and wise elders were needed to address them.

Or I think of my friend Don McKinnon, whom I loved deeply – my Grade One school principal who became my best friend in midlife, and who was eminently wise about things based on his own lifetime of experience as an educator. But the wisdom I encountered was not just here in Winnipeg. Over in Thunder Bay was Beverly Lehman, who was active in the Canadian Unitarian Council and the Western Canada District. She showed me how to be loving to everyone, even when it was difficult. She had a patience and a nurturing quality that was the first among people I’ve known. Or Stan Calder, a member of the Unitarian Church of Edmonton, who promoted a consciousness of the experiences of LGBTQ+ people, and who led programming to bring the wisdom of his own experience to bear in every congregation in this region. And finally, John and Drusilla Cummins, a ministerial couple down in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who were my guides and mentors, who had lived through it all – through our theological changes and the different emphases of social justice, through all the changes in worship and music in our congregations, but who decided to stick with it because they could see the thread that led from where we were to where we might be. In the view of the Roman philosopher Seneca, the great end in life is the achievement of wisdom. As anyone who has ever been fooled, or simply foolish, knows, this is more difficult to achieve than we may imagine. Who hasn’t been impulsive, making a hasty choice prematurely – such as a marriage, or a new car, or a house, perhaps? Who hasn’t suffered at the hands of someone who was more cunning and clever in the moment? Who hasn’t embraced an idea that they later discovered to be false? Sometimes embarrassingly so. Who hasn’t overlooked shortcomings in others – or themselves? Who hasn’t allowed someone else to live inside their heads rent free, as we like to say? I’m guilty on every count – except marriage, just to be clear.

As the 19th-century Scottish physician, poet, and satirical novelist Tobias Smollett quipped, “Some folks are wise, and some are otherwise.” Truth be told, most of us are “otherwise” more often than we care to admit, but that doesn’t mean that we are incapable of cultivating wisdom over the course of our live, even if doing so is difficult and the achievement rare. When the 19th-century Unitarians emphasized the pursuit of what they called self-culture, they were really pointing towards the cultivation of personal wisdom – and they believed that it was a possibility for everyone, the desired end of the spiritual quest – not success, not salvation as their neighbours understood it, but wisdom. In this, they echoed Seneca when he declared, “They who have attained wisdom have reached, not the furthermost, but the most important goal.”

“No one is ever wise by chance,” he maintained. Wisdom is something that is nurtured, which demands effort on our part, and comes to us as the fruits of a lifetime of study, reflection, and discernment. Wisdom, if we achieve it, is a state in which we are both self-aware and aware of the world as it is – able to acknowledge our own imperfections while embracing all that we can learn from others, including those with whom we may, at first, disagree. That can be hard – moving in the direction of a position or idea we once dismissed, but have since come to recognize its merits.

The wise person takes time to reflect on their thoughts and actions without becoming obsessed with them, balances socializing with solitude, chooses both their sources of information and their friends prudently, and prepares to endure both successes and adversities with grace. In short, Seneca held that a person who is truly wise is able to live in the present, enjoying what the present moment has to offer, without fixating unnecessarily on the past or depending on an imagined future.

If Seneca was mistaken about wisdom at all, it was that he assumed that wisdom and happiness go hand in hand, that perfect wisdom and perfect happiness are identical, and that wisdom makes life easier for us. Ha! Wisdom does not promise that we will be happier than others; it does promise that we may be more fulfilled in our unhappiness. While wisdom may lead to a degree of contentment, it seems to me that it correlates with heartbreak as much as happiness, and that the path of wisdom can be arduous rather than easy. In this regard, Seneca allowed his own social status to cloud his estimate of the fruits of wisdom. I’ve known too many wise, working class souls whose lives were marked by unhappiness and hardship to believe that wisdom necessarily leads to good fortune, although it may well have mitigated their difficulties and suffering. There are wise people who dwell on the streets, living lives of quiet desperation – individuals whose wisdom helps them make it through the day, but does not necessarily give them much happiness.

Even so, while Seneca’s claim may not be strictly accurate, or universally true, I think that Krista Tippett echoes his assertion, albeit more temperately, when she says: “I’ve yet to meet a wise person who doesn’t know how to find some joy even in the midst of what is hard, and to smile and laugh easily, including at oneself.” In doing so, the wise person declines to let immediate circumstances have a total say over their mood, robbing them of whatever slender joys and delights they possess. Indeed, wisdom helps them to understand that immediate circumstances may be fleeting, and that deeper joys and deeper possibilities may yet await them.

Many speak of the wisdom of Solomon, including many people who have never read a word about him, but entertain vague Sunday school memories about him being wiser than most. He was the original philosopher king, at least the oldest found in literature, although he has rivals in China and other places. And when people mention his name, they typically mean the judgement of Solomon, which is recorded in the First Book of Kings, not the biblical Book of Wisdom associated with him.

You know the story, I’m sure. There are two mothers living in the same house, and when one of their infant sons dies, both mothers claim the remaining boy as her own, one accusing the other of having swapped the two boys. In order to resolve the dispute, King Solomon orders that the living child be divided in two, giving each mother one half. One mother accepts the decision, declaring that if she couldn’t have the boy, neither would, while the other mother protests, saying, “Give the baby to her, just don’t kill him.” At this point, Solomon declares the second woman to be the boy’s true mother, granting her custody. Similar stories appear in the folktales of many cultures, so it’s almost certain that this story is an old folktale that came to be woven into the Bible and attributed to Solomon, but this served to preserve the tale and secure the king’s reputation as an exceeding wise ruler. And that may be a reasonable assessment, but it overlooks the wisdom of the mother, who, grasping the enormity of the consequences, intervened to prevent a second tragedy. Is she not as wise as Solomon? Would the king not have appeared to be a fool – and a reckless one at that – if both women had said, “Sure. Let’s get this over with.” Obviously not.

Clearly, Solomon possessed keen psychological insight, a genuine quality of wisdom, but the success of this tactic depended upon an equally wise mother, whose wisdom was shown by her compassion, whether or not she knew the boy to be hers. As Kathleen McTigue says, “we must remember that the truest wisdom comes laced through with compassion, as we come to know how alike we are – each of us doing our best to find the path ahead and to keep walking with our fragile, broken hearts. And all of us in deep need of each other’s kindness.”

As it happens, the Bible personifies Wisdom in the form of a woman, especially in the Book of Proverbs, and both the Hebrew and Greek words for wisdom are feminine, which is reflected in the use of female pronouns – something that must drive religious fundamentalists crazy. Long before the idea of the Trinity was invented to explain away the contradictions of the Bible regarding God, Wisdom – Sophia in Greek – personified God’s presence and was clearly a vestige of earlier female deities who were believed to exist before the Hebrews adopted radical monotheism. Today, wisdom is commonly defined as “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment,” but millennia ago, Wisdom was seen as a manifestation of the divine, and it was natural to identify Wisdom’s creative and harmonizing qualities as feminine.

It would be a mistake to confuse knowledge with wisdom; although they may be related, they are not the same. I’m sure you’ve all heard the old saw, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” I have witnessed many knowledgeable people – great intellectuals with brilliant minds – who have ultimately shown themselves to be fools of one kind or another. Far too many leaders in the field of information technology fall into this category, I’m afraid. Or overspecialized academics who are unable to connect their esoteric and often idiosyncratic studies with useful purposes. Of course, some theoretical physicists were able to create bombs, which was arguably a special kind of folly, so not every practical application is necessarily a wise one. It’s possible to absorb vast amounts of knowledge without having the capacity to arrange it usefully and distill it through the lens of experience. Trivial Pursuit and chess are different games. Data and discernment don’t always mix easily. A command of sports statistics is unlikely to make you better at playing baseball. If the accumulation of knowledge titillates the intellect, we don’t yet arrive at wisdom until we get past our dopamine high and turn our knowledge into insights and behaviours with practical application.

If knowledge is the rock on which we build, then experience is the organic matter that, when blended with the sand, creates the soil in which we live. We test what we know – or think we know – through lived experience, where we often learn as much from our foibles and mistakes as we do from our successes. I’ve learned a lot over the years because I have made a robust number of mistakes in life – some almost legendary, but most simply mistakes of an everyday variety. In that sense, wisdom is often a byproduct of folly. So sometimes we should be gentle with the fools we know because they may be working on their own personal wisdom project. The more mistakes we make in life, we more wisdom that may result – that is, if we’re paying attention and learning from our mistakes rather than ignoring them or covering them over. Of course, we can learn from others’ mistakes as well, which is generally more pleasant, if we’re curious and engaged with our companions – and not too given to gossip and airs of superiority. The popularity of Mr. Bean as a character is partly related to how much entertainment value we receive from others’ foibles. And when it’s harmless, that’s not a problem; but when it’s hurtful, it may be. Learning for the experiences of others works best when approached with a healthy sense of humility. “Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,” declared the poet William Cowper; "Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.”

Without experience, it’s possible to be smart without being wise. My father, who was eminently wise, in my view (although I do sometimes wonder in my mother surpassed him), used to observe that young people were mistakenly called mature when they were simply sophisticated, a thought that was echoed by Stephen Colbert when, speaking at a commencement, he suggested that those who appear young and wise are more likely just cynical. Neither were seeking to be critical of youth, but were rather pointing to the importance of experience in the development of maturity and, ultimately, genuine wisdom. We don’t expect people to become wise simply from readings textbooks or watching the right documentaries. They need to experience something of life to be able to put that kind of learning to use.

One of the things I love about this congregation – about being a Unitarian Universalist and having engaged with dozens upon dozens of congregations across the continent and having participated in seemingly endless denominational activities – is the number of wise people I came to know. At its best, a congregation is a school for wisdom, as surely as the gardens of the philosophers were such schools. Now I can’t possibly name all of the wise people I have encountered during my lifetime as a Unitarian Universalist, but there are a few that I had in mind while preparing this sermon.

[The vignettes of the individuals named have been omitted here, but the full version of this sermon, including these vignettes. is available to members and friends of the congregation upon request.]

All of these people were wise, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. One of the things that characterized all of them was a quality of emotional maturity.

Emotional maturity that may be the most important ingredient of all. Wisdom arguably has as much or more to do with what we call emotional intelligence than intellectual intelligence. It involves a quality of intuition and insight that escapes many people until they’ve reached the point in their lives where they begin to let go of of their personal preferences, all of their personal hubris, and learn to accept the world as it is, while nudging it lovingly, ever so gently, in the direction of what it could be.

As it turns out, true wisdom might be compared to a fine whiskey – its quality arises from distillation and blend. In the case of wisdom, it is distilled knowledge blended with life experience. Or, as Alice Bailey put it: “Knowledge differentiates whilst wisdom blends.”

Knowledge lets us know about tomatoes; wisdom reminds us how to make a good fruit salad. And so there’s a practical element: wisdom involves taking what we know, and what we have experienced, and turning it into something useful. That’s why the wise are never ideologically pure; it’s why we never agree with the wise, each and every time. They are using the best of their whole selves, grounded in emotional maturity, so that their wisdom and their insight may be valuable in the world. Just as wisdom blends together “experience, knowledge, and good judgment,” the formula also includes compassion, intuition, and emotional intelligence.

When all is said and done, I agree with Seneca that the fullest span of life is defined not by its length but by its quality. The fullest span of life is living until we possess wisdom, and then to carry on long enough that we pay back nature more than we have received as good citizens, good friends, and good stewards of the things around us. It is then – when the sum of our days is judged by its weight rather than its width – that our lives may be said to be complete.

“To finish the moment,” asserted Ralph Waldo Emerson, “to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” of these people were wise, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. One of the things that characterized all of them was a quality of emotional maturity.

Emotional maturity that may be the most important ingredient of all. Wisdom arguably has as much or more to do with what we call emotional intelligence than intellectual intelligence. It involves a quality of intuition and insight that escapes many people until they’ve reached the point in their lives where they begin to let go of of their personal preferences, all of their personal hubris, and learn to accept the world as it is, while nudging it lovingly, ever so gently, in the direction of what it could be.

As it turns out, true wisdom might be compared to a fine whiskey – its quality arises from distillation and blend. In the case of wisdom, it is distilled knowledge blended with life experience. Or, as Alice Bailey put it: “Knowledge differentiates whilst wisdom blends.”

Knowledge lets us know about tomatoes; wisdom reminds us how to make a good fruit salad. And so there’s a practical element: wisdom involves taking what we know, and what we have experienced, and turning it into something useful. That’s why the wise are never ideologically pure; it’s why we never agree with the wise, each and every time. They are using the best of their whole selves, grounded in emotional maturity, so that their wisdom and their insight may be valuable in the world. Just as wisdom blends together “experience, knowledge, and good judgment,” the formula also includes compassion, intuition, and emotional intelligence.

When all is said and done, I agree with Seneca that the fullest span of life is defined not by its length but by its quality. The fullest span of life is living until we possess wisdom, and then to carry on long enough that we pay back nature more than we have received as good citizens, good friends, and good stewards of the things around us. It is then – when the sum of our days is judged by its weight rather than its width – that our lives may be said to be complete.

“To finish the moment,” asserted Ralph Waldo Emerson, “to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg.

Legally Kidnapped, Legally Redeemed

Last month, the clever programmers at Turner Classic Movies chose to screen the movie Gaslight at the same time that the news networks were carrying the State of the Union address from Washington. It was a masterclass in trolling, subtle but obvious, not unlike how Queen Elizabeth used to express her private feelings by the jewellery she chose to wear at certain events, such as the time she wore a gift from the Obamas when she was obliged to entertain Donald Trump.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Gaslight, it was a 1944 film starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, along with Angela Lansbury, about a young woman, Paula, played by Bergman, whose husband, Gregory, endeavours to drive her insane by slowly manipulating her into believing she is insane in order to distract her from his own criminality. At strategic points in the film, Paula notices the gaslights dimming inexplicably. Like many Hollywood productions, Gaslight is based on an earlier British movie, which, in turn, was based on a London stage play. It won two academy awards, out of seven nominations, and, ironically enough, during the first Trump administration, it was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in the U.S. National Film Registry for being “culturally and historically significant.”

The primary reason for its significance, beyond chilling its viewers to the bone, is that it’s the source of the expression “gaslighting,” which has become one of the essential words in recent years, long after the film first appeared on the silver screen. Gaslighting is defined by Merriam-Webster, which named gaslighting its Word of the Year in 2022, as the “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.” That’s gaslighting in a nutshell, and we’ve all experienced it – some more than others.

The term might never have been so commonly used if it had continued to refer primarily to the psychological manipulation of individuals in domestic relationships, but during the last decade, its use has been extended to describe the psychological manipulation of large numbers of people by politicians and the media, a phenomenon that runs deeper and extends further than simple propaganda. Today, we speak of gaslighting all the time in this “post-truth” age of “alternative facts.” What we used to quaintly call “public relations” and “messaging,” evolved into “spin,” and has long since descended into gaslighting.

Gaslighting as a phenomenon was around long before we had a word to describe it, long before we had the fields of psychology and psychiatry. It may be older than human language itself, deeply grounded in the ways in which human beings have influenced and manipulated one another.

Elizabeth P.W. Packard (1816-1897)

A curious case of gaslighting occurred in the in the case of Elizabeth Packard, who was “legally kidnapped and imprisoned three years” in an insane asylum by her own husband, Theophilus, who was a Calvinist minister of the most severe sort. When her views on religion and childrearing put her at odds with her husband, he committed her to an asylum, with the aid of influential friends. It was within the power of a husband to do so (in the state of Illinois) in 1860, such was the dominion given to men over their wives in that period. Anyone else would have received a hearing to determine whether or not they were of sound mind, but in the middle of the 19th century, a husband’s word alone was sufficient to institutionalize his wife. And long before the call to “believe women” was even an idea in anyone’s mind, Elizabeth’s protests were in vain.

In the asylum, instead of seeking to treat her alleged insanity, the staff seemed more intent on convincing her she was insane. And, in a classic injustice that appears when people are accused of denialism, a concept we should employ more sparingly than we do, Elizabeth’s denial that she was insane was itself taken as evidence of her insanity. The louder she protested, the crazier she was seen to be, so circular was the reasoning.

Although it was her religious views that were presented as evidence of insanity, the immediate cause of her institutionalization was Elizabeth’s refusal to sign a deed to dispose of some real estate without receiving consideration to compensate her for her lost property. Follow the money. Always follow the money. This is why I consider her case to be one of gaslighting – her religious views were employed as a justification to commit her to an asylum, where her resentment of her husband was then added as further evidence, but its proximate cause was her refusal to allow her husband to ignore what she considered to the right to her own property. However, he told her and her father that he was committing her so that her “reputation for being an insane person might destroy the influence of [her] religious opinions” … and presumably free him to liquidate family assets.

After three years, in 1863, she was released from the asylum, having been declared “incurable,” perhaps because she wasn’t actually ill, and her husband then imprisoned her in a room at home, where the door was locked and the window nailed shut. Somehow, she managed to get a note to a sympathetic neighbour, Sarah Haslett, who took the letter to Judge Charles Starr, who issued a writ of habeas corpus. Theophilus was summoned to bring Elizabeth to the judge’s chambers, and, after he met with them, the judge ordered a jury trial to determine whether or not Elizabeth was insane.

The trial itself was something of a spectacle, lasting five days, and Theophilus’s lawyers presented evidence that she held unorthodox religious views, argued with her husband, and even sought to leave his congregation. Can you imagine it? The scandal of it all!

One of these witnesses, Dr. J.W. Brown, who helped have Elizabeth committed, explained why he had concluded Elizabeth Packard was insane. At the end of his testimony, Dr. Brown summarized in 15 points his reasons for finding her insane, repeating himself with two of the points, and closing with: “Her viewing the subject of religion from the osteric standpoint of Christian exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism.”

Let me repeat that statement in case you missed the finer points of it: “Her viewing the subject of religion from the osteric standpoint of Christian exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism.”

It is reported that: “The witness left the stand amidst roars of laughter; and it required some moments to restore order in the courtroom.” While this wasn’t exactly the Scopes trial, Dr. Brown looked every bit as foolish as William Jennings Bryan did three generations later. The people in the courtroom clearly concluded that the doctor was something of a clown.

Do any of you have the foggiest idea of what Dr. Brown meant? Let me assure that I have not begun speaking in tongues. I was as confused as all of you, and so, desperate to understand what this theological jargon deployed as psychobabble meant, I turned to artificial intelligence, which, in addition to correctly linking the phrase to Elizabeth Packard’s trial, explained that, in everyday English, Dr. Brown was referring to Elizabeth’s “shift toward subjective, internal interpretation of Christianity rather than accepting traditional, dogmatic doctrines imposed by her husband and church.” Huh. Does that make a little more sense? It sounds like what religious liberals have been doing for generations. This is us.

At the conclusion of the trial, the jury deliberated for only seven minutes before returning its verdict that Elizabeth Packard was sane. Having been legally kidnapped, she was at last legally redeemed. Almost. By the time she returned home, Theophilus had sold their furniture, confiscated her wardrobe, and rented their house to someone else. And thus began her legal battle to recover her property and custody of her six children, and her political battle to reform the laws governing married women and all people who were considered unfit to manage their own affairs.

But what are we to make of her “Christian exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism?” Why did Theophilus, a man who moved his family from Massachusetts to Illinois with the express desire of escaping the liberalizing currents then gaining ascendancy in New England, including Unitarianism, find her religious views so threatening?

Well, she had come under the influence of Swedenborgianism and Universalism, both of which were gaining popularity at the time. Swedenborgianism, better known in North America as the Church of the New Jerusalem, took its inspiration of the teachings of 18th-century Swedish mystic Emanual Swedenborg, who also had a influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and other New England Transcendentalists. And Universalism? Well, that was the faith of some of our own spiritual ancestors.

Elizabeth denied the Calvinist doctrine of human depravity. “That terrible dogma that our natures are depraved, has ruined its advocates, and led astray many a guileless, confiding soul,” she declared. “Why can we not accept of God’s well done work as perfect, and instead of defiling, perverting it, let it stand in all its holy proportions, filling the place God designed it to occupy, and adorn the temple it was fitted for? I for one … am determined to be a woman, true to my nature. I regard my nature as holy, and every deviation from its instinctive tendency I regard as a perversion – a sin. To live a natural, holy life, … I regard as my highest honor, my chief glory.”

Likewise, Elizabeth had come to believe in universal salvation – that the same fate awaited us all. “I am not now afraid of being called insane if I avow my belief that Christ died for all mankind,” she insisted, “… that no rebellious child of God’s great family will ever transcend his ability to discipline into entire willing obedience to his will. Can I ever believe that God loves his children less than I do mine? … And has God less power to execute his kind plans than I have?”

Now, I need to say that Elizabeth Packard was hardly a liberal as we would understand it today. She was simply a sincere and inquiring Christian who disputed some of Calvinism’s central tenets while embracing unconventional ideas that Calvinists found uncomfortable, even threatening. Even by the standards of her own time, her opinions were hardly radical, and most were thoroughly conventional. For instance, she viewed the union of marriage as a partnership, but she accepted the idea that a wife was the junior partner; she simply insisted that what she saw as her natural rights as a woman be respected by her husband and the state.

Still, although her overall religious perspective was quite conventional, she insisted that she was entitled to her own views. “Yes, I insist upon it,” she declared, “that it is my own individual right to superintend my own thoughts; and I say farther, it is not my right to superintend the thoughts or conscience of any other developed being. … My individuality has been naturally developed by a life of practical godliness, so that I now know what I do believe, as is not the case with that class in society who dare not individualize themselves.”

“I have become so radical,” she continued, “as to call in question every opinion of my educated belief, which conflicts with the dictates of reason and commonsense. … Henceforth, I am determined to use my own reason and conscience in my investigation of truth, and in the establishment of my own opinions and practice I shall give my own reason and conscience the preference to all others.”

From 1863 until her death in 1897, at the age of 80, Elizabeth devoted herself to fighting for the rights of women – especially married women – and challenging the power on insane asylums,” writing several books and campaigning across the states. “Married woman needs legal emancipation from married servitude, as much as the slave needed legal emancipation from his servitude.” Curiously enough, although she and Theophilus neither reconciled nor divorced, she supported him when he became destitute – until his dying day.

“Cannot there be laws enacted by which a married woman can stand on the same platform as a married man, that is, have an equal right, at least, to the protection of her inalienable rights?” she asked. “And is not this our petition for protection founded in justice and humanity?”

Like Paula in the movie Gaslight, Elizabeth Packard prevailed and prospered, but gaslighting continues in the households and institutions of the modern world. It continues to be used a weapon that some deploy to manipulate others to their own purposes. In the 19th and 20th centuries, and for long before, women were its primary victims, and, if the Epstein files have taught us anything, women continue to be victimized by it.

But every one of us is vulnerable to gaslighting – by family and friends, intimate partners and strangers alike – and it can happen anywhere – in our homes or online, in politics or the media. Whenever someone tries to convince us we are crazy because of our religious or political views, because of who we love or rebuff, because of what we do or avoid, we are vulnerable to gaslighting. We need to remain vigilant, and, when it happens, like Elizabeth Packard, remain resolute and determined, confident in our own ability to discern what is true and act upon what is good, using our own reason and conscience.

So let us go forward, today and always, in pursuit of our unique “osteric standpoint of … exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism.”

A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg on International Women's Day.

Works Consulted

Phyllis Doyle Burns, "Elizabeth Ware Packard: Advocate for Women and the Mentally Ill," HubPages (November 2023).

E.P.W. Packard, Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanety (Chicago: Clarke & Co., Publishers, 1870).

E.P.W. Packard, Modern Persecution, or Married Women's Liabilities (Hartford, CT, 1874).

Troy Rondinone, PhD, "It's About Control: Remembering a Mental Health Crusader," Psychology Today (July 2022).