This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on  June 20, 2004 by Rev. Judith Campbell.

 

Honoring the Space between us.  Establishing boundaries…not barriers.

The responsive reading we just read is a favorite at wedding ceremonies.  And the words to meditate upon in the order of service are taken from that same reading.  “Let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you”.   Like the rests in a piece of music, and the so called empty spaces in a painting or a sculpture, the spaces in a relationship are every bit as important at the connections.  This is true in a relationship with one other person, or among members of a group - like a church community or other social or work-related organization. The open spaces around us are places that can protect us, give us room to breathe and reflect, and ultimately to grow.  Like a plant in a garden, the conditions can be seemingly perfect -the right growing medium, and enough light moisture and warmth to support growth - but unless there is enough room for growth, personal and also spiritual growth will not happen. 

 

In the previous century , - in the late eighties and early nineties - we began to hear about the terms co-dependency and enmeshment, and related to those concepts, terms like  “boundaries” and personal space.  A personal boundary is where you stop and someone else begins. And that doesn’t only relate to the physical body. There are of course physical boundaries; but we need healthy emotional and spiritual boundaries as well.  The words “co-dependency” and “enmeshment” refer to unhealthy relationships in which people have no personal boundaries, and who are so wound into each other’s life and breath that they have no individual identity or autonomy.  This can run the gamut from unhealthy to downright toxic. It can happen in a relationship of two people, or it can happen within a whole family dynamic with all of the members of the family wound into the problem; and in some cases, it can happen in a group or organization where the entire group dynamic is such that it is enmeshed in a toxic relationship. An example of this might be some fanatic groups or religious cults whose members are so interwound with their beliefs and their leader as to have no will of their own; and in fact can die themselves or cause the death of others in the name of adherence to the behavioral code of the group.  

 

Family and group dynamics and relational harmony are the subjects of both serious academic inquiry and any number of self-help books, and, however the researchers approach the subject, the common thread is that personal boundaries are vital to a healthy sense of self, and without a sense of self it is difficult to establish realistic boundaries. It is a circular statement that in and of itself does not give us the answer, followed directly by well then, what is a boundary, and what is a barrier?  A boundary a safe and healthy demarking of self from other. A barrier is when the demarcation so rigid and filled with conditions there is never any chance of relationship.  We all know people like that. 

 

I have a friend who says she is lonely, and would like to have more of a social life.  But whenever I ask her to come and visit, or go to dinner, she is busy.  And when I ask her when she might be free, she says she doesn’t know.  But I am free to visit her. if she isn’t working overtime, or, or.  It took me a while, but finally I got the picture.  Her boundaries have become barriers.

 

So where does that leave us? 

 

Let me talk about boundaries first, personal boundaries.  First of all, they are often situational. Clearly you will have a different level of intimacy with a spouse or partner than you will with a neighbor or with your parent or with your child.  It’s funny, our kids will barge into our rooms or houses with out knocking, but God forbid we should do the same.  Boundaries are the hardest to establish when we have an emotional investment in the other person or persons.  We want to be loved or liked or maybe even just accepted, and drawing an imaginary line in the sand might put someone off. If you do get the courage to draw that line, how do you do it is a way that affirms you and the other? That’s the point where the research and the self help books come together telling us that the first person we must love and respect is ourselves, and with self acceptance and self respect in place, establishing the place and the space around that self comes quite naturally. 

 

Finding out how to love ourselves is the first and the hardest part and that is where, for me anyway, engage with the spiritual and the religious in my own life, and where, in my ministry and in my pastoral listening and counseling, I try to encourage others to find their own place and space.  Hear that word “encourage”?  It is not easy to stand up and say to another person, much less to a group, how worthwhile and valuable you are.  It takes enormous courage, and yet our very first UU principle says that we must affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every person,  beginning with myself (my addition).  If I am convinced of my own worth and dignity, it will be much easier for me to then respect the boundaries I establish for myself, and those which other people whose worth and dignity I also respect establish for themselves, without feeling rejected. 

 

My own spiritual journey has been about finding and owning my own path in the journey of life and as a minister, it is walking with those who are on a similar path of discovery and welcoming and encouraging (there’s that word again) encouraging those who are still searching, to come forward and test the water, and in their own time and in their own way finding and owning a sense of self.

 

Many years ago, I was having lunch with a group of women when one of them mentioned  that whenever she and her husband and child went out for a drive, she always sat in the back and her husband and the kid sat in the front.  The child was then a teenager. In a body the rest of us rose up in outrage. In various tones of dismay we screamed, “How can you let that happen? Why do you take back seat to your kid?  Why do you put up with that? Why does your husband? (and about 15 more variations of that question).

 

The poor dear sputtered in insecure self defense for a while. And then we all saw the light bulb go on over her head. This was nuts, and she was allowing the whole family to put her in the back seat metaphorically and literally in everything they did!

 

The tide changed in that moment and the waves hit the shore the moment she got home.  She is a very changed woman now, and very much loved and respected by her family, but most of all by herself.  She established a boundary, several of them actually and nobody died in the process. But in that process she began to get a life and a sense of spirit of her own. 

 

Having a spiritual dimension in your life, whatever it might be, helps you see the rest of your life from a different perspective and, from that broader perspective, to look at what you want to preserve for yourself alone, and what you want to share.  It is too easy in this very material culture to see ourselves as reflected by our jobs, or where we live, or who our parents are or were. I am a minister, You are a nurse, a gardener, a musician.  We are all these things, but so much of us that goes beyond our jobs, our families, our birth order and our astrological sign. And it is in my religious and spiritual practice that I discover more about that side of me. 

 

In the quiet of prayer and contemplation, which for me is often walking or working on a quilt, I learn things about myself and I find answers to “life’s persistent questions”. Answers to questions I didn’t even know I was asking.  I need to protect that time and that space.  I can say to a person who drops by my home office, “I can’t talk to you just now. I’m thinking” without any further explanation.  I couldn’t always do that.  And I continually need to make time in my schedule for the spiritual.  It goes against everything I say I believe to Pencil in “spirituality Break” in my date book.  But that’s exactly what I do.  Actually, it is not a spirituality break: it’s going to Chorus rehearsals and aqua aerobics at the Mansion house 2-3 times a week.  Both of those activities nourish my spirit.

 

And from the other side of the coin,  when someone says to me that they are not able to visit with me, or talk to me, or that they don’t want to do this or that, they are claiming ownership of their time and space in their own way.  That’s how it should be with establishing and maintaining boundaries.  It takes time to know where your boundaries are, it takes time to keep them in good repair, and when they crumble or develop little gaps along the way, it takes time and patience to repair them.

 

In opening the words of the poem, “Mending Wall”, Robert Frost tells us, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. He tells us that there are forces that continually work to break down walls.

 

With a healthy sense of self and other, we can have wonderful productive relationships. The first step is finding that self, and then loving it enough to keep it safe.

 

 “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…… that wants it down.”…but the wise neighbor from the other side of the hill keeps helping to repair it, reminding us that

“Good fences make good neighbors”.

           

Blessed Be.

 

 

MENDING WALL
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."