I like to think that I know something about boundary setting, but I actually have only learned a few things, and highly imperfectly. For that reason, I wrote a post about a year ago: the top 10 ways NOT to set boundaries. Since it was sarcastic and for that reason perhaps hard to understand, I am going to attempt a sincere approach this time.
First of all, the best books on boundaries that I've read are by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, both Christian ministers. A Bible passage alert is in effect for their books, which is great for those of us who love a spiritual thought well-grounded in Bible wisdom but for some it might be a deal-breaker. The original Boundaries book is really perfect for the person who has convinced themselves (or been convinced by the collective consciousness) that they are being loving by allowing themselves to have give and give and give without boundaries or limits. This book perfectly disabuses the notion that there is anything loving about allowing others to violate our boundaries. Cloud (and sometimes Townsend) also published Boundaries in Dating, Boundaries in Marriage, Boundaries with Kids, Boundaries for Leaders and Beyond Boundaries. All great. I have found Boundaries for Leaders particularly useful as a minister.
Most people who talk about boundaries, including Cloud and Townsend, will emphasize that boundaries are set and maintained by us, not by other people. This is so true. But today I'm going to focus on the single biggest piece of wisdom I've learned about boundary setting: there's no real advantage to telling the other person you're setting the boundary.
This is the thing I wish I had learned YEARS ago: One of the big obstacles that has kept me from setting boundaries (at least between my ears) is that I thought that in order to "set a boundary" I needed to talk to the person who had violated my boundaries; I needed to sit them down, tell them how they had hurt me or tell them what they were not going to be able to do anymore; or, at the very very least, tell them what I was or wasn't going to allow.
I would avoid, procrastinate, and delay "setting a boundary" because I couldn't possibly face that conversation and its terrifying emotional fallout.
What I wish I'd know years ago is that first of all setting a boundary (which might involve informing someone that I'm doing it) is not that important. What's important is holding a boundary. And if I am holding a boundary, then I don't need to inform anyone other than myself (and perhaps a trusted person that I hold myself accountable to), I just need to do it.
Example: I had a very close person in my life who was calling several times a day, and if they didn't reach me, leaving terrible voicemail messages about how I had ruined their life and how terrible I was and about all the things that I needed to do differently. Because this person was a very close relative who I was choosing to continue to have a relationship, I wasn't going to completely cut them off, but I also couldn't continue to abuse myself by speaking to them often and listening to their messages.
A trusted advisor suggested that I talk to that relative once a week only at a set time and stop picking up the phone or listening to their messages. At first, I misinterpreted the advice and procrastinated informing this relative of the new policy. Eventually I informed them. As I predicted, they were furious, hurt, and terrified. Their behavior and calls only escalated after I informed them. And when I called at the weekly time, they were especially abusive on the call.
I went back to the advisor and told them how it had played out. The advisor asked me, "why did you tell them you were doing this?" The answer: I never considered any other option! From then on out, I never informed anybody who I was holding a new boundary with that I was holding a boundary, I just did it.
If I could deal with a person coming over once a month for dinner but no more, I just invited them once a month, I didn't tell them it would be only once a month. Works like a charm.
The other plus is that if I don't inform someone of my new boundary, I'm the only one who knows if I can't do it.
Where do you stand on junk reading? I go back and forth. For years I have alternated "quality" literature--like deep spiritual inquiries, riveting memoirs, biographies and histories and prize-winning novels--with "beach" reading like science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers and the occasional better written romance (only the Highlander series comes to mind). As I move from the former to the latter I tell myself that I need a break. I need not to have to work so hard at my reading. But do I (need a break, have to work hard)? Is that actually true?
After recently completing the awe-inspiring Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, I realized that my relationship with junk reading is eerily similar to my relationship with junk food. I have trained myself to think that there's something I deserve or need about junk food and junk reading, but it's a lie. Our culture is full of stories of the person who is forcing themselves to eat kale, quinoa and tofu and then escapes into the true pleasures of a burger, fries and a milkshake.
Believe me my brain is very much capable of enjoying a burger, fries and a milkshake, possibly several of them. But is my body? see my body reliably has strong negative health reactions (stomach trouble, headaches, sinus infections and uncontrollable cravings) to beef, wheat, dairy and sugar; so is it really "enjoying" the burger and milkshake? or is just enjoying the idea of the burger and milkshake, the cultural concept of taking a break from what you should do, having a treat? If the tofu is crunchy and salty, the kale is properly flavored and quinoa is marinated, I can eat a meal that my mind AND body fully enjoy.
It's the same, I realized, with literature. There was NO way that I had to work to "get through" Just Mercy. It was a treat from beginning to end. It was a page turner. It was inspiring. Reading it changed my life and enlivened me.
Why on earth would I need a break from inspiration and being enlivened, I began to wonder? Why on earth would I need to consume anything but brilliantly prepared, well-seasoned magnificent and also nutritional literature this summer?
Now don't misunderstand me. I DO understand that there are brilliant, well-written science fiction, fantasy and other genres out there, and I intend to keep reading them. Nor do I seem to be done experimenting with pulp fiction. The last book I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was The Hearing by John Lescroart (and then I ran out and bought 3 more books by him--well written legal mystery/thrillers set in San Francisco).
Similarly, I don't judge anyone else for eating burgers, fries and milkshakes. Although I really don't touch beef, I do still experiment with wheat, dairy and sugar--always to ill effect. "What I can eat could kill you and what you can eat would kill me," say some friends of mine.
The challenge is that the downsides of choosing junk over nutritional lit are much more subtle for me than those of choosing junk food. I don't feel sick. I don't gain weight. Mostly I miss out on new ideas, new thoughts, an expanded horizon, that feeling you get when you read a perfect sentence that you could never ever have written but that you recognize as sheer genius (I'm talking to you, Jonathan Franzen).
And so I leave you, as I leave myself, strongly considering consuming a stronger ratio of nutritious to junk literature this summer and beyond. And that's a start...
(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) 5 enthusiastic Snouts up (Understand my Snout-Based Rating system) for Wont You Be My Neighbor? The movie about Fred aka "Mister" Rogers.
A month ago I was in San Diego to see my mother and this movie was sold out on a Wednesday night. I said "WTF?" Last night, I bought tickets in advance--lots of empty seats but a solid 30 people, mostly under 40, saw this movie on a Tuesday night months after it opened. What is happening here?
What's happening is that Fred Rogers is one of the comings of the Christ--I don't want to say "second" because I think there are many expressions of the living Christ consciousness amongst us. And I think that when people see Mister Rogers in action in this movie, they recognize that on some level, whether they can articulate it or not, and they want others to feel what they felt while watching the movie.
Many friends recommended this movie to me. One couple described a scene where, in an early episode from the late 60s when white people were violently reacting to swimming pool integration, (white) Mister Rogers invited (African-American police) Officer Clemmons to bathe his feet in the same wading pool. Years later, in the eighties during AIDS scare, Mister Rogers invites Clemmons (who also happens to be gay) to share the pool again and Rogers dries off Clemmons' feet with a towel. The imagery of shared communion and Christ's love is obvious when you think about it, but it is not explained. It is just done. So powerful.
The scene that actually caught me the most though, probably because of my years as a lobbyist, was Fred Rogers' 1969 testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications chaired by Sen. John Pastore. In the movie, right before this testimony, you can see Pastore's snarkiness about PBS and his strong inclination to cut $20 million (a lot in 1969) from its funding to give to President Richard Nixon to fund his growing "exercise" in Vietnam. When Rogers testifies, everything changes. Rogers tells Pastore in his simple sweet way how his goal is to let every child know that they are loved exactly as they are right now. And you can (I almost wrote "literally" but that's a different post lol) watch Pastore's face and heart melt as he feels the importance of that ministry break through all his cynicism.
Link to Fred Rogers Testimony
I had no idea that Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and his life's work was this ministry with children. Sure I watched 100s of hours of this show as a child. I loved the land of make believe. I hated Mister Rogers slow conversations with other adults and us. As I hit puberty, I mocked this show and did my best to ruin it for my younger brothers.
I learned in this movie the real reason I intuitively hated Mister Rogers. It turns out that Fred Rogers was a lonely sad fat kid like me. My response to that childhood was to run like hell from that kid, to do anything I could possibly do to be popular, to be happy, and, if at all possible, to be thin (only moderate success with that). Rogers healed his body -- every day he swam and maintained a curious weight of 143 pounds (you need to see the film to know the significance of that number). Like me he became a minister. But unlike me he turned himself TOWARDS that sad fat kid, not away from it. He stopped. He slowed himself down to the speed of love. And he didn't leave one person behind. He personified divine love throughout his life. What can we do to emulate Fred Rogers?
(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) Five enthusiastic snouts up (see Understanding the Snout-Based Rating System) for The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse on the Capital Stage through July 22nd. It's no small trick to create a play that is edgy, brilliant, thought-provoking (all hallmarks of the Capital Stage canon) and also hilariously funny and fun. By grappling with the question of how to write a play examining Native American issues without any Native American actors, playwright Larissa FastHorse has done it all.
The play centers around 4 teachers/actors attempting to "devise" a new more culturally sensitive Thanksgiving play for elementary school children. The two lead characters sound more like an episode of Portlandia than your average play--hilarious caricatures of well-meaning white progressives. At the top of the show, the Yoga Guy/Street performer boyfriend (Cassidy Brown) gives his failed Actress/Elementary school teacher/Director girlfriend (Jennifer Le Blanc) the ultimate sensitive gift: a water bottle crafted from the recycled glass from broken public housing windows. She is so touched. It only gets better from there.
The two other actors, a sexy actress (Gabby Battista) whose heritage we begin to determine from L.A. and a nerdy teacher/would be playwright (Jouni Kirjola) in town, are wonderful too. The teacher/director lady is the lead straight man around whom the other 3 land great jokes.
Director Michael Stevenson (also the Artistic Director of Capital Stage) has done it again with direction that enhances but does not detract from the work--funny funny physicality in this play brings laughs that surely not every production could manage.
Listen, I gotta run and this is only up for another week--see it and tell all your friends!
You ever have a strong sense of the road not taken in your life? Not necessarily regret, but just a sense of what might have been if. Sometimes I get this feeling that life is like a video game in which multiple versions of the same story exist side by side dependent on upon key choices. In one version of my life, I am living in the southern United States representing people accused of capital (death penalty) crimes.
About 2 pages into attorney Bryan Stevenson's brilliant real life To Kill a Mockingbird story: Just Mercy: a story of Justice and Redemption, I had stopped reading to Google bar review courses and look for jobs defending people facing the death penalty.
This was one of my alternate universe lives and I came pretty close to living it. I went to a public interest law school (SUNY Buffalo School of Law) because I wanted to do this. Ignoring the advice of my boyfriend (now husband)'s grandfather who said "the problem with going into criminal law is that most of your clients are criminals," I took all the classes most oriented to criminal law. I even took a special class on federal law and a special class on the doctrine of habeas corpus (latin for "you shall have the body" -- which is highly relevant to capital crimes--this is part of the legal doctrine that makes it illegal to detain someone without charges but also false charges). I worked for the Federal Public Defender in Oregon one summer under the great Steve Wax (who retired a few years ago after 31 great years in that role). And upon graduation, I applied for a public defender fellowship at Georgetown University Law School (and very nearly received it-- see Post on how I lost a prestigious Georgetown Fellowship due to sexism) .
All of this was with the goal of representing people accused of capital (death penalty) crimes. As wrong as I believe the death penalty is, it is that much more wrong that it wildly disproportionately is applied to people without financial means and African-American men. It is said that a "capital crime" is a crime where people who don't have the "capital" are sentenced to die. And that is in large part true. Almost no one with an extensive legal defense gets sentenced to death.
By the grace of God, I still stayed in public interest law (so many of my fellow law students did not find a way to do that) and got to have a career representing consumers and workers in Congress and the California legislature. And although I have no regrets about that decision--it was a thrill to be of service in that way. And although I have now left even that behind for ministry, I am nonetheless finding myself wistful about the path not taken.
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| Michael B. Jordan |
I will continue to read Stevenson's marvelous engaging story of his crusade to represent Walter McMillian, an African-American man from Monroeville, Alabama (the same town in which the famous To Kill a Mockingbird story took place) sentenced to die for a crime he, and large portions of the town, insist he did not commit. It's such a great story in fact that it's being made into a movie next year starring Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) as Bryan Stevenson--you know its big time when a star like that has been hired.
I can't wait to see how this story comes out, how the movie is and how my life comes out. Will I take the Alabama bar next year and move to Montgomery? Stay tuned...
I like to think that I know something about boundary setting, but I actually have only learned a few things, and highly imperfectly. For that reason, I wrote a post about a year ago: the top 10 ways NOT to set boundaries. Since it was sarcastic and for that reason perhaps hard to understand, I am going to attempt a sincere approach this time. 
