Boots and Blessings

I've been studying Bowen systems theory for about seven years now and though there have been many epiphanies, there are two that stand out. #1 Don't Trust Your Instincts #2 Healthy Boundaries are about Self-Definition, not Self-Protection Let's talk about #2. When my mentor in systems theory presented me with this concept, I felt like staggering backwards. (Which would have been weird, since I was sitting in a comfortable chair.) It was one of those moments where I somehow knew in my brain that this was theoretically correct, but I also knew I was going to have to sit with that for a while, in order to truly understand it. And sit  with it longer before I could truly begin living it out. On the face of it, it's a pretty radical notion. Because the messages we hear all the time are about the need to have boundaries for one's protection. We need to feel safe, the logic goes, so we need to establish and maintain boundaries. You know what the critical er...

"Everybody wants to be understood; well, I can hear you ...Don't give up. Because you are loved ." So we commit to beginning with love when we look upon each other, and being open to their ideas . But we also have ideas of our own. And our ethic of personal responsibility means that it is up to us to ultimately determine our beliefs and our courses of action. So what about if all those things start crashing against each other? It's not if , it's when. But that's okay, IF you have some clearly articulated guiding principles*. The key is clear guiding principles, by which I mean, statements rooted in our core values that we are going to commit to live by, even when we don't want to. You know, like a guiding principle to communicate with love and respect, not snark. (God, that's hard. Why did I choose that for a guiding principle? Oh yeah, I'm trying to live in integrity with my commitment to love the hell out of the world. Ugh.) We give our...

"I know you cannot read my mind, but  I hope you feel my vibe ; I think it's time I let you know that, I see the God in you." If we recommit to an ethic of personal responsibility , grounded in love , how do we interact with those around us? When William Ellery Channing preached the sermon where he named, claimed, and defined Unitarianism, he took as his text a line from the Christian scriptures that should still speak to us: 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Test everything, hold fast to what is good. But the line that prefaces that verse is this: Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Or as James Luther Adams put it , one of the core values of our faith is that we don't know everything. We need to be open to considering each other's thoughts. Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that "revelation is continuous." Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism. Liberalism itself, as an ...

"Where you invest your love , you invest your life." First thing, let's begin with love. And never let go. Our Universalist forebears believed in a god of love. A god of such overflowing, unconditional love that the love would pursue you even after death, unrelenting . They believed that to know, really know, that love would mean that it would flow out of you and into everyone whom you then loved. What if we decided to truly believe in the power of love? Believed that there is a " sustaining, commanding, transforming reality ...the reign of love, a love that fulfills and goes beyond justice, a love that 'cares' for the fullest personal good of all." Believed in it down to the bones of our bones and acted out of that? I believe that we can be the big tent many have dreamed we could be, a big tent that this world aches for. It will take recommitting to an ethic of personal responsibility. And that ethic of personal responsibility is made more pos...

We don't want people to feel pain. Of course. We're compassionate people. But often this means that we're part of the problem rather than the solution. People come in to our UU congregations with wounds. Most likely, they aren't responsible for having received them. Those wounds came from other people, or our society. But the thing is, once the wound is in you -- like a piece of broken glass -- it's your responsibility. It has to be. It's in you. That doesn't mean you have to do your healing alone. That's one of the beautiful, painful, wonderful things about a UU church. You're not alone. Yes, some of your healing may need to take place outside of the church, with a therapist or a spiritual director or some kind of a therapeutic group. But you have a place to come back to. You have a community to come back to. I'm worried about our religious movement right now. I'm worried that we're about to repeat a failed experiment. In the 6...

My evangelical friends talk about being "convicted." That moment when you hear or read a message and like an arrow, it dives into your heart, and you know that you have been guilty, and you have some growing to do. At the very beginning of my learning about Bowen systems theory, the professor was laying out the basic idea: that we all feel anxiety, and when we do, we act (often in unhealthy ways) in order to lessen our anxiety. And in an unhealthy system with emotionally immature people -- a family, a business, a church -- one person's anxiety can trigger the anxiety of others. Here's a great primer on that. Really great. Like, watch it 20 times in a row. Or every morning as you drink your coffee. (I'm not kidding. I think your life would be better. Consider it a spiritual practice.) So back to my conviction moment. The professor went on to talk about how when we see someone who is "vibrating" with anxiety, our instinct is often to rush over, ...

Back when you were a kid, you learned a lesson. It was wrong. And it's time for you to unlearn it. You learned that you were responsible for other people's feelings. Not that you should care about other people's feelings. (You should.) Not just that you should be sensitive to other people's feelings. (You should.) But you were taught that you were actually responsible for other people's feelings. It happens in almost all homes, even the loving ones. In abusive homes, it's more blatant. If Dad is unhappy, you get hit. So you learn that it is actually your responsibility to keep him happy, or there would be consequences. But even in non-abusive homes, it happened. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  You are not responsible for other people's feelings. That's their job. And in fact, you are crossing their boundary if you try to control their feelings. They get to decide how they feel about something, not you. They may decide that you...