Category: Uncategorized

Interpersonal Boundaries: setting and observing

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Interpersonal boundaries are the subject of academic study, reports and articles, and not enough honest conversation among ordinary people.  Writing not as an academic, which I am not, but as an ordinary person, which is also open to debate, this column is dedicated to promoting more conversation about interpersonal boundaries.  It comes not without the wisdom gained in the usual way.  
It also comes from experience in the parish from which I retired.  Some years ago it offered a workshop on setting and observing interpersonal boundaries because it was apparent that many adults were unskilled at it.  They were accustomed to operating out of habit according to old social norms tolerating degrees of racism, sexism, and the privilege of class.  That was then.  The sexual abuse issues that have recently become widely exposed in the media probably make it necessary to do it again.  Although my denomination mandates sexual abuse training for all persons having church related contact with youth, and for clergy and others who meet privately with adults, understanding interpersonal boundaries isn’t the same thing.  It’s related, but different; understanding them is essential to maintaining a safely congenial environment in which issues of sexual abuse are less likely to arise. 
Although issues of sexual abuse have the public eye, there are other forms of abuse of power and position that can be mitigated through a better understanding of boundaries, and developing the skills to assertively maintain them.  Assertiveness training was vogue a few years ago.  It was marketed mostly as a way for women to make their voices more clearly heard in a business world dominated by men who didn’t want to hear them.  As with many self help fads, it faded away, but as an element in setting and observing appropriate boundaries, perhaps it needs to come back.  But I digress.
If setting and observing interpersonal boundaries was easy to understand, they’d be easy to teach.  They’re  not.  The difficulty lies in the nature of boundaries.  Some people have little skill in setting them for themselves.  Others seem unable to recognize or respect boundaries they shouldn’t cross.  Different cultures have different understandings of appropriate boundaries.  What may seem perfectly innocent to one, may be deeply offensive to another.  From family to family standards differ.  Moreover, boundaries are permeable, and knowing when, how, or why to let someone cross yours, or for you to cross another’s, is governed by complicated, unwritten rules, social norms, experience, law, emotions, intent, and a hundred kinds of circumstances.  Sadly, there are also power predators who intentionally cross boundaries to intimidate and subdue others into subordination.   They have no intention of allowing others to set or observe their own boundaries.  Their boundaries are barriers behind which they hide as they subdue those around them.  It’s a form of evil that sometimes wears the mask of strong leadership.
If that wasn’t enough, the climate of polarized politics has complicated it even more.  It’s created barriers out of boundaries, not in the way of power predators, but out of fear.  They’re fortified barriers separating people who believe one way from all others who believe in any other way.  When interpersonal boundaries become barriers, they shut off the possibility for relationships to develop in constructive ways.  So the question is, how are we to understand appropriate ways to set and observe permeable interpersonal boundaries?  
Getting personal about it, I have a personal boundary of a little less than an arm length.  Consider it handshake distance.  Inside it is my personal space.  It makes me uncomfortable for others to enter it without my permission, which I offer in obscure ways not easy to understand, even by myself.  I dislike receiving hugs from people I don’t know well, yet have learned to tolerate the huggers in my life, one at a time, depending on who they are.  Social kissing is out.  I enjoy giving hugs to my loved ones at the right time in the right place, and, with some reluctance, to a few friends who seem to expect it.  There is a kind of gentle side hug that can be comforting and reassuring for some from whom I’ve learned it would be welcome when comforting reassurance is needed.  As a pastor, I never touch someone for a prayer or blessing without asking permission, and telling them what I am going to do.
Those are my physical boundaries.  You have them too.  What are they?  We also have emotional boundaries, the parts of our lives not open on demand to public discussion.  Language boundaries set limits to the vocabularies we deem appropriate in different circumstances.  Moral boundaries establish limits to what we believe is right or wrong, good or bad.  Remembering that boundaries are always permeable, what are they for you in each of these areas?
Describing in a few words what your boundaries are is a good way to start.  There may be several sets of boundaries important to you depending on circumstance: family, close friends, acquaintances, business, strangers, dates, defined moment of intimacy, etc.  Don’t make it too complicated, but once done it’s less awkward to let others know what they are.  Not that it always works.  A woman I’ve known for twenty years insists getting her face as close as possible to mine whenever she has something to say.  She does it to everyone, oblivious to how uncomfortable it is for others.  And, as we’ve learned from the #MeToo movement, there are many men, and some women, who take liberties where liberties have not been granted, because they think they have the right and power to do it.
Boundaries can expand and contract.  In crowds, physical boundaries can contract to almost, but not quite, nothing.  They can be expressed formally in business settings, but looser, more relaxed in social settings.  When in places where the dominant culture is alien, adapting as you are able keeps boundaries from becoming barriers.  Fortunately, there’s a rule of thumb that makes all of this easier: respect the dignity of every human being, and expect respect in return.  At a minimum it means doing no harm to another’s well being.  Mistakes happen.  When they do, it means apologizing.  Not the, “if I offended you,” non apology, but the more honest, “I offended you and am sorry.  What can I do to make it better?”  In the Church we call it it confession, repentance and restitution.

More, perhaps, at another time.

Anti Tax, Pro Tax, Taxes as Investment?

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
In my part of the country there’s a strongly held belief that lowering taxes is always a good thing.  It’s attributed to the Western ethos of rugged individualism, suspicion of the federal government, distrust of anyone on the other side of the Cascades, all wrapped in a conservative blanket.  It’s unclear what conservative means, but lower taxes always have something to do with it.   
The lower tax mythology is one reason Washington doesn’t have an income tax.  There’s a treasured illusion that folks get to keep what they earn. The government isn’t stealing it.  On the other hand, there’s a demand for quality public services, so Washington has a complicated tax structure of sales and business taxes hidden in the price of things.  Add to them the usual property taxes with an added menu of special levies for various special needs: education, emergency medical services, fire, mental health care, affordable housing, etc.  Every community is different, and so are their tax structures.
Put it all together and Washington is about in the middle when compared to tax burdens in other states.  The most recent ranking I can find from the Tax Foundation shows Washington’s over all 2012 state and local tax burden of 9.3% (on average)  was #28 among all states.  Anderson Economics lists the 2016 Washington business tax burden at an average of 9.2% ranking it #27.  It may be a sloppy system, but fitting in the middle is not a bad place to be. 
The disconnect comes with the inability of voters to understand taxes as investment in current and future quality of life.  It’s an inability with consequences.  Infrastructure installed years ago, sometimes on the cheap, followed by years of deferred maintenance, have meant system failures requiring the enormous cost of reconstruction.  There are the usual letters to the local paper and coffee conversations complaining that “they” didn’t do the job right the first time.  But is there a willingness to invest now for the future?  No more than there was in previous generations.  
As a friend said when a state wide initiative was proposed a few years ago, “It’s a tax cut, who wouldn’t want a tax cut?  It’s a no brainer.”  In another conversation about specific dollars for specific projects, it was claimed that local government didn’t need more money; it was just a question of better allocation of what they already had.  Another asserted that projects could be completed for 10 to 20% of estimated costs because, outside his own life, he had little understanding of the current cost of things.  Yet another demanded to know why millions were being spent on planning?  Why not just build it?  Building it where, according to what specifications?, was met with a blank stare.  
Undergirding it all is the old bugaboo of distaste for lazy people being coddled by the social services of a nanny state.  It’s a way of thinking built on belief in personal responsibility that gets by with what it has, doesn’t rely on government handouts, and expects others to do the same.  It’s not a bad belief.  It has merit.  But it can’t stand by itself. 
Today’s Intermountain West would not exist without massive public sector investment.  Its foundational infrastructure includes dams, rural electrification, railroads, highways, military bases, airports, and coastal ports, all financed by government investment underwritten with broadly levied taxes.  It remains economically viable thanks in part to farm subsidies, and subsidies for river transportation, highway maintenance, cheap electricity, and systems for educating our youth.  All of them are made possible through taxation. 
Understanding taxes as investments isn’t easy to sell.  Too many years have been consumed selling the idea that the government is stealing your money, money you could spend more wisely on your own, and for what?  For socialist welfare programs making life comfortable for lazy people. Overcoming that momentum is difficult.  So I was heartened when a local candidate for the state legislature said she is “pro tax, not anti tax” because she believes taxes are investments in quality of life.  There is hope.

Kneeling vs. Patriotism: A conversation

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
I had an extended FB exchange about kneeling athletes with people I know well.  All good men in their 30s and 40s.  One of them had posted a photo of several people, hands over hearts, saluting a flag while in front of them President Obama stood without his hand over his heart.  Next to it was another photo of kneeling football players, all black. The caption was, “This is where it started.”  My response was, “Yes, it started with a black president and black athletes.”  It did not go down well. 
It was eventually a productive exchange.  Mutual listening took place, but it got off to a rocky start.  The issue, they said, is about unpatriotic disrespect for the flag and nothing else.  To suggest that racism or issues of racial injustice have anything to do with it is personally offensive, and ignores how deeply important respect for the flag is to them.  Quit trying to change the subject, they said.  It’s about respecting the flag, that’s all. 
Of course patriotically honoring the flag is not what it’s all about.  Race, racism and racially motivated systemic injustice is at the core of the matter.  Kneeling in protest upset a social norm that offered a momentary appearance of unity before the game.  Was standing for the anthem a genuine show of patriotism?  For some, yes.  For most I suspect it was an absentmindedly observed social ritual?  Either way, upsetting it illuminated the uncomfortable reality that a significant portion of the population still doesn’t enjoy all the freedoms symbolized by the flag and anthem.  Whose fault is that?  Obviously, if blacks are protesting, it must be whites who are guilty, and no one likes accusations of guilt thrown at them in a public arena supposedly free of that sort of thing.  
Unwilling and unable to admit the validity of the protest, for them it had to be about disrespecting the flag, and only about disrespecting the flag.  To admit anything else would be to admit there is something seriously unjust in the way many Americans are treated by the justice system.  To admit that would mean having to pay attention to people we don’t want to pay attention to.  It would mean having to examine our own share of responsibility, and if we are honest, admitting that so call white advantage is a real thing.  A thing we don’t want to admit we have, don’t want to give up, yet know has to go anyway.  It’s better to pretend it doesn’t exist, and stick with patriotism.  Add a little self righteous anger at overpaid, privileged players, and the book is closed.  
Hotheaded liberal response on social media, mostly from hotheaded white liberals, as been epitomized by broadsides of equally inflexible vehemence, accusations, uncharitable commentary on character and pedigree, sometimes ending with a token shot at a coherent argument.  It’s an effective tactic for cementing the other side in their conviction that they were right all along.  Radical liberals are out to destroy everything good about America, starting with the flag and anybody who is patriotic.
I’d like to offer Country Parson’s Miracle Elixir guaranteed to open doors to a national conversation of a more adult nature.  I don’t have one.  Given the current administration, it seems unlikely anyone else does either.  Maybe the best we can do is to continue exchanges in small groups, by whatever means, where established mutual respect creates opportunity for mutual listening to take place.  

Notes from a Grumpy Country Parson

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Now and then I write down interesting phrases picked up in the news or a magazine that, taken entirely out of context, lead me to reflect on them as inspiration for a column.  Two came to mind recently.  Attributed to the Notre Dame sociology department was the phrase, “moralistic therapeutic deism.”  The other was from a book review written byJason MIcheli in the August 29, 2018 issue of The Christian Century: “We are playing chaplain and cheerleader to people whose faith is being formed elsewhere, shaped by another who just might be the enemy.”  
What I think they add up to is pandering to those remaining in the pews, hoping they won’t leave.  Is that too harsh?  I don’t think so.  It’s pandering to the people in the pews so as not to upset them lest they reduce their tithes or leave.  It produces a kind of ministry ridiculed in the novels of Jane Austen.  If it doesn’t abandon the gospel altogether, it results in weak preaching of little consequence. I’m reminded of a popular preacher, now deceased, of whom it was said by his many admirers that he always left them laughing and feeling good about themselves.  It was “moralistic therapeutic deism” in the flesh.  Momentarily uplifted egos is not what the gospel is about, but that preacher packed the church.  In the face of declining church attendance, is that the answer?  Is playing chaplain and cheerleader what we need to do to keep those whose faith is being formed at work, over beers, or by media personalities?  
Of course not, except that a lot of professional advice comes close to it.  The antidote for decline is better marketing, so we’re told by church growth consultants abetted by hand wringing peddlers of anxiety over the dying church.  Better marketing is not a bad idea, especially considering how well Christianity has been highjacked by those who’ve crafted a civil religion cloaked in questionable theology and phony patriotism dotted with frequent use of Jesus’ name.  
The question is, what are we marketing?  Are we missional enough?  Are we outward or inward?  What’s the best strategy?  The early church launched out into a hostile Roman Empire with but one offering, the good news of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Was it was easier for them because everyone already believed in a god of some kind, but not many do these days?  I doubt it.  Was there any real difference between them and our own pantheon of gods who take the form of sports, reality television, consumerism, wealth, and such?  Not much.  So what did the evangelists do?  They proclaimed the gospel.  That’s it.  No marketing gurus.  No “moralistic therapeutic deism.”  No feel good chaplaincy.  They just kept telling people about Jesus.
Advice to my colleagues, who seldom ask for it, is don’t worry about whether the church is dying, just preach the gospel, and keep preaching it.  You are the one who is supposed to be promiscuously sowing the word, so just keep sowing because the seed will never run out.  But what next?  A little gardening is always in order, but don’t get consumed by it.  Just keep preaching the gospel.  
Will it grow the church?  You’re not in the church growth business.  You’re in the gospel preaching business.   Paul’s work in Corinth involved a lot of sewing and weeding with few results, but here we are two thousand years later still learning from what he had to say to those Corinthian miscreants.  The seed took root, just not in his time. 
We all count heads, but in talking about ordination vows with colleagues from other denominations, none of us could find anything about counting heads.  Although the words differed, there was one central theme: we are called to make Christ known, teach, serve and care for all, declare salvation, and share in the holy mysteries as each of our denominations understands them.
I’m not demeaning concern over declines in church attendance.  We’ve made mistakes along the way that need to be addressed, not to restore the past, but prepare for the future.  First, foremost and always, our job is to proclaim the gospel.  Do that, and don’t worry so much about the rest. 
Here endeth the rant.

You Got A Soul. I Got A Soul. What’s a soul?

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Jokes by the dozens have been told about looking in the bathroom mirror and not understanding who is looking back.  I look in the mirror and see a 75 year old man staring back at me with a look of disbelief.  The “me” that is alive and ever present in me is someone other than that image.  The “me” that is alive and ever present is also present with the me who is still a child, teen, and young adult.  That “me” is always learning new things, becoming a more mature “me,” but it’s not an old man me.  
I thought about that when visiting an elderly woman dying of terminal cancer.  She would begin talking about her life, then lapse into long silences broken by sighs.  Her eyes betrayed memories of all the “me” that was in her, in every age, with every joy and regret.  The frail body lying in the hospital bed contained all that was “me” in her, and it was very much alive.
That, perhaps, is what is meant by the soul.  It is the essential “me” that lives regardless of the body that carries it.  Which is not to say the body is unimportant.  Without embodiment things get pretty airy-fairy.  We Christians believe the embodied soul is essential to our wholeness, which is why St. Paul said, “…Someone will ask, How are the dead raised?…With the resurrection of the dead, what is sown in perishable, what is raised is imperishable.  …It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I Cor. 15)  Was Paul just guessing, or did he have special knowledge?  We’ll each find out by and by.  One thing we know he had was first hand experience with the risen Christ.  It gave him confidence that whatever befalls human beings in this life, there is more life to come, and it’s embodied.  

Be that as it may, I remain stuck with the odd looking apparition that stares back at me from the bathroom mirror, at least for now.  Might as well make the best of it.

A Labor Day Thought

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Labor Day.  It was initiated toward the end of the 19th century to celebrate the labor union movement that had begun to economically and politically empower hourly wage employees.  They held parades.  Parades were one thing.  Yay for parades.  Everybody loves a parade.  But strikes and demands for higher pay and better working conditions were another.  Pay and working conditions were up to owners, management, and the market, not the lower classes of hourly workers.  
Strikes could be struck with violence on both sides, but they could be put down with overwhelming force by management.  Somehow unionized workers prevailed, rights and pay were won.  The entire nation benefitted.  Union leaders became arrogant power brokers.  By the post war years the big unions could bring entire industries to heel.  They got greedy.  Work rules worked to stifle flexibility, agility, innovation, and efficiency.  In the meantime, post war recovery in Europe and Asia opened new markets, and created new competition from new technologically advanced industries.  Management worked to find more sophisticated ways to win back control and hobble union power: right to work laws, scab labor, mass firings, lock outs.  The new global economy opened new labor markets, enticing offshore factories, while automation reduced the need for production line workers at home.  Union power faded to a shadow of its former self. 
The old time structure of private sector also faded.  Investment funds, public employee retirement funds, hedge funds, and a handful of individual investors now compete to control the ebb and flow of the stock market.  Top tier managers act as if they were owners, but their pay is tied to how well they meet quarterly analyst expectations, which lures them to mess around with accounting tricks and stock buy backs, having no fear of labor raising objections, labor meaning any employee below the top tier.  
So here we are with another Labor Day.  The end of summer.  One day sales.  BBQs.  Back to school.  It comes with a 40 hour week, weekends, sick leave, vacation leave, Social Security, Workers Compensation, and more that we take for granted, bequeathed to us by the union stalwarts who persevered against all odds and won.  
I never much cared for unions myself.  Given an opportunity to join one early in my career, I declined.  I didn’t want to be told what I could or couldn’t do on the job, nor be held accountable to a shop steward.  I had more confidence in my own abilities to compete for advancement.  Later on, consulting on a variety of public policy issues, I found it hard to justify our clients’ desires to pass more right to work laws, although well managed companies did well by their employees in right to work states in order to stave off attempts at unionizing.  Not all were well managed, and the underlying desire was to convert labor to a commodity no different than any other.  Their desires to oppose any increases in minimum wages never did make sense.  No data supported their assumptions.      
A quarter century has passed since I left that kind of work.  A lot has changed.  Wage growth has stagnated.  Income inequality has reached levels dangerous to a democratic society.  Hourly and mid level salaried workers retain their political value only at election time.  Global economic and domestic demographic changes have created an environment in which autocratic politicians in league with oligarchs of industry find it easy to manipulate the disaffected to give up even more of their freedom in exchange for promises of good times ahead.  In a discouraging mind twisting way, hard core libertarians, suspicious of all government, enthusiastically support the move toward fascist government control of everything.   

So here we are with another Labor Day.  Perhaps it’s time to remember with thanks what unions did to make our land a better place, and to encourage them to find new ways to organize on behalf of hourly and mid level salaried workers in a stronger democratic nation.  Ways that don’t reprise the past, but energize a future.  This time with no violence, and without making enemies where none need exist.

The Episcopal Church: A place of respite and healing for some.

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
The following is intended for persons unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church who wonder if it might be a place of refuge for disaffected Catholics.  
Why?  
The Roman Catholic Church has entered another of its periodic crisis moments engendered by sexually abusive clergy shielded by church hierarchy trying to protect the institution rather than the faith.  Making headlines around the globe, it has local epicenters in Chile, Ireland, and Pennsylvania.  It’s going to take time and serious structural reforms to recover its institutional integrity.  Some life long Catholics are pondering whether to stay or go, and if they go, where?  Well, “Catholic Lite,” the Episcopal Church is always a possibility, a place of respite and healing for those who need it.
That’s why In some places the Episcopal Church, a part of the World Wide Anglican Communion, will see new faces wondering if they’ll be welcome.  They will be for as long as they choose to stay.  The setting will be familiar to them: the liturgy, Eucharist, all the other sacraments, vestments, and offices such as deacon, priest, and bishop.  Other things will feel strange: married clergy, women clergy, openly gay clergy, and The Book of Common Prayer.  Like any parish in any denomination, there will also be unique local flavors.
Some familiar things will be missing.  The Episcopal Church has no teaching authority, no catalogue of prescribed beliefs, no dogma.  We adopt many positions on many subjects, but they’re not dogma.  There’s no Vatican or anything like it, no Pope.  The Communion’s head, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England, has no authority but to say who is in or out of the Communion, which he can do only because that’s the way we’ve always done it.  Bishops, by and large, have limited authority shared with clergy and lay leaders through periodic local and national conventions.  Local parishes have authority to manage their own affairs, subject to oversight by bishops. 
Anglican doctrine and practice is a fungible thing.  It evolves through years, sometimes decades, of debate, and once settled begins to change again.  The process is messy, inefficient, never ending, and we have deep faith that God is guiding it in spite of ourselves.  Still, we are not without fundamentals.  Episcopalians are firmly trinitarian Christians within the context of the Nicene Creed of the ancient church.  The sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, are at the core of our worship.  Our clergy are in full apostolic succession.  We adhere to the Chalcedonian definition of Christ’s divinity and humanity (451 a.d.)  Important to all Anglicans are Thirty Nine Articles adopted by the Church of England in the late 16th century.  They attempt to explain who we are if we’re not Catholic and not Protestant, but they are not a denominational confession.  What well meaning church leaders said centuries ago can inform, but not dictate, what we believe today.  In like manner we have no Luther, Calvin, Thomas, or Augustine to turn to.  We have them all, taking from each what they are able to contribute to a reformed catholic church.  For us, scripture, tradition, and reason work together by God’s grace to help us better understand what God is saying now, creating now.
The Roman Catholic Church, especially for its life long members, offers identity, structure, and certainty that the Anglican traditions of the Episcopal Church cannot offer.  What it can offer is welcome, the Eucharist, and God’s abounding and steadfast love for all who enter its doors.  That’s why it may be a way station for those who need time away for rest and healing.
Got questions?  Drop me a line.  You’ll get a Country Parson kind of answer. 

Redeeming a Polarized Society

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Polarization is the word of the decade. It’s said the nation is divided with part on one side, part on the other.  Between them is a deep, wide chasm populated by a rarely seen tribe of moderates.  They’re unimportant, pay no attention to them.  Is that the way it is?   
We may be deeply divided but hardly polarized because there are too many poles to be counted.  There isn’t one side and another.  A better way to say it might be that we are divided into many groupings, each clinging to strongly held opinions centered on a few issues around which an entire world view is built, and against which all others are measured.  Gathering around competing poles, groups warily seek temporary allies in a society where none can be trusted.  It’s not a congenial environment for social stability, public welfare, democratic processes, or personal emotional health.  
I was thinking about this when I stumbled on old notes from a Karl Menninger lecture of about fifty years ago.  What he said then, the notes I took, and how I reflect on them now, may be poles apart, but I think they offer helpful guidance about ways to create conditions where good faith debate about issues of public policy can displace abusive polarization.  As I recall, Menninger’s lecture addressed seven disciplines of life: living in reality; handling change with less discomfort; freedom from debilitating symptoms of stress; living into generosity; relating to others in mutually acceptable ways; sublimating hostility  to useful purposes; and committing to life long learning.  What follows is a brief take on each.
Reality
The ability to recognize and engage with reality helps one to disengage from living in fantasy, falling prey to tales of conspiracy, and making value judgments without evidence to support them.  I suppose you could call it knowing how to tell the difference between real news and fake news.  It’s the old trust but verify thing.  Reality is always subjectively understood, but it has objective existence that can be defined through disinterested observation of verified facts to see how they relate to each other.  
Change
Improving ways to deal more easily with change is crucial in today’s society.  Everything around us is changing with accelerating speed.  It isn’t going to stop.  There is no ground to stake out that will not move under our feet.  Most of what passes for absolute moral truth is built on social standards of the day buttressed by highly selective appeals to scripture and tradition.  When uncomfortable change is upon us, it’s too easy to believe that “…rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism.” (Emerson, 1841)  Leaving old standards for new does not mean anything goes, but the new must always be challenged and tested.  Challenged and tested by what?  As an Episcopal priest, I recommend the Sermon on the Mount, the Two Great Commandments, the New Commandment, and the Ten Commandments.  
Tension & Apprehension
Trying to figure out what reality is, and dealing with change constructively, all the while being confronted with unplanned events that disrupt lives, creates tension, apprehension and guilt.  They can’t be avoided.  That’s life.  What can be avoided is allowing the symptoms that come with tension, apprehension and guilt to eat away at our souls.  In the Christian tradition, confession, repentance, and giving and receiving forgiveness are the best practices for staying emotionally and spiritually healthy.  Other traditions have their own best practices, and we’re the wiser to learn from each other.  What we know, in our age of PTSD and high rates of suicide, is that when symptoms become health and life threatening, seeking help from qualified providers is essential. 
Generosity
Each of us can choose to live in lives of scarcity or abundance, which are not the same thing as poverty or wealth.   Living in scarcity leads to anxious selfishness, excessive desire to control others, unwillingness to contribute to community well being, and a suspicious, fearful outlook on life.  Living in abundance leads to seeking and finding the good in others, joy in sharing friendship, willingness to support others toward their own abundance of life, and a realistic but trusting outlook.  Living in abundance becomes a life of generosity given and received.  
Relating to Others
Improving the ability to relate to others in mutually satisfactory ways leads to amicable connections with others across political, economic, social, and ethnic divides.  Agreement is not a necessity.  One can have adversarial relationships with others that remain mutually respectful.  It frees us from captivity in the exclusive company of the like minded to discover a wider, more interesting world.  In my tradition, the discipline to do that begins with respecting the dignity of every other person, no matter who they are, or what their condition in life is.  In every tradition it means laying down the school yard taunts that litter the Twitterway, and taking up the practice of authentic conversation.
Anger
Anger is sometimes accused of being an impolite emotion best held in check, hidden behind false smiles.  Why?  Some things are worth getting angry about.  How anger gets expressed is another matter.  Sublimating it to useful purposes works against its use as a means of revenge, control: an abusive hammer doing bodily or emotional harm to others.  The rule is to let no evil come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up.  It doesn’t delegitimize indignation over injustice, it directs it toward restoration of what is just.
Life Long Learning
Children are naturally curious about everything.  What, why, how, where are their endless questions.  Somewhere along the line curiosity begins to ebb, and for too many by middle age it’s gone.  It doesn’t have to be.  A life of curiosity in which learning never ends opens doors to new adventures, breaks down barriers, and demolishes prejudices.  It’s hard to become trapped by polarization when a world yet to be explored lies ahead.  Whether in quiet contemplation or energetic engagement, a life of curiosity, exploring new worlds, and learning new things has little time for polarization.  
So Now What?

Polarization may be the word of the decade, but we can change it.  It doesn’t seem to matter what one’s politics are, everyone is unhappy with it.  I’m reminded of an old saying that everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it.  The polarization of our society doesn’t have to be like that, but there’s no magic pill.  There’s no “they” who should do something about it.  Each of us, acting in our own spheres of influence, must take responsibility for becoming as unpolarized as we can.  These seven disciplines are exercises that will help make it happen.  Like any exercise, to do any good they have to be worked on with intentionality and perseverance.  They have value only if put to use, one person at a time.



Emerson, College Freshmen, and Self Reliance

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
My Saturday coffee buddy Tom is having his freshman class read and reflect on Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance”, partly to introduce them to the discipline of critical reading and thinking at the college level.  It should be interesting since Emerson, writing in 1841, used only male pronouns, and his 19th century verbal flourishes sound strained and strange to modern ears. 
I last read it in high school, so for the sake of our weekly coffee dates, read it again, making a few notes along the way.  I was reminded that Emerson had a powerful, but unremembered, influence on the mythology of the American character.  This essay in particular laid a foundation for what would morph into the ideal of rugged individualism, though I’m not sure how.  What he called self reliance had more to do with what we call self confidence, which is not the same as rugged individualism, in spite of some shared attributes.
If there is a central theme, it’s that in any generation there are no fewer great minds capable of bequeathing great wisdom to future generations than there ever were.  What’s lacking is the self confident courage to proclaim it.  While he had high regard for intuition as the source of wisdom, he also recognized it came through the hard work of well informed thinking.  Moreover, he believed well informed thinking was more likely to come through perseverance in the face of trial and error than a higher education’s supposed ticket to professional success.
Every self-help guru whose published a book or given a TED talk owes something to Emerson’s demand that being all who you can be requires the courage to claim your own originality, and that it is right to ask of others, “If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier.”  No egalitarian, he didn’t appear interested in returning the favor.  His love of the common people was purely in the abstract.  He recognized, in a sort of pre-Maslow way, that those who are fully actualized are at the top of a pyramid.  Below them are lesser mortals who may be on their way up, but probably aren’t.  Still, anyone who read his work or heard him lecture would be assured they were among those rising, or maybe already there.  Below them all: the “unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society.”  And this from an ardent abolitionist.
You know all those elders who complain that kids have it too easy these days?  There was Emerson in 1841 complaining that college graduates had it too easy. They expected instant success and wealth right out of school.  They were nothing but a bunch of elitist snowflakes not worth comparing to the hard working journeymen of rural areas.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  He went on to harp about how modern 19th century technology was making life too easy for everyone, especially the young.  No one had to walk anymore.  They all had carriages.  Anything you wanted to know could be easily looked up in the library, so you didn’t actually have to learn anything.  Maps, charts, almanacs, and such took away the need to know by experience about the land, sky, and sea. Machines were taking jobs from skilled workers.  Oh the ruin of it all. 
Nevertheless, he would have us value one another for who and what we are, not what we have.  Shamelessly inconsistent and self contradictory, his essay may be best remembered for the line: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”  He traveled the world, and loathed tourists.  He made friends with the great intellects of his day, and dismissed those who became disciples of what they taught.  He praised self reliant living in the woods, and enjoyed an urban house staffed with servants.  He denigrated the wisdom of ancient days, but studied all the classics, quoting freely from them.  He rejected popular approval, and relied on it for his income.  Self reliant (confident) all the way.

I hope Tom’s freshmen, many from well to do families where they have been tutored, coached, and therapeutically counseled from childhood, will discover through their few weeks with Emerson the courage to claim their own originality, the value of doing the hard work of informed critical thinking, and the courage to express it as the authentic person they are in the process of becoming. There will be others in his class from less privileged backgrounds.  May they discover within themselves the same gifts, and the courage to say, “If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier.  I will do the same for you.”

The Path to Wisdom

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Some advice I picked up somewhere:
Who among you loves life, and desires long life to enjoy prosperity?
Keep your tongue from evil-speaking, and your lips from lying words.
Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, puts it in less tactful words.  We live in evil times, he wrote, so be wise, not foolish.  Don’t get drunk on wine because that’s debauchery.  Were the Ephesians excessive in their love of wine?  Who knows?  Read in the context of everything else he had to say to them, it’s a stern warning to not let any desire overwhelm a spiritually and physically balanced, healthy life.  It results in destruction of the good things in life for one’s self, and for those near by.  
You don’t have to be an alcoholic or drug addict to live into debauchery.  It happens whenever the impulse to satisfy yourself with what you want when you want it becomes the center of daily living.   We all have those impulses.  It can feel good to act on them, but wisdom calls for us to set and observe boundaries under the guidance of what God teaches is moral and ethical.
So far so good, but the question of what is moral and ethical too easily gets translated into lists of specific behaviors, sins, said to be immoral or unethical, each paired with a set of socially prescribed reprimands.  The lists are endless. No one agrees about what should or shouldn’t be on them.  They’re dictated more by social custom than godly instruction. Scripture is assaulted for proof texts to justify them.  We strain at gnats while letting camels in.  We mistake human precepts for godly precepts.
God, as we understand God in Christ Jesus, takes an entirely different approach more interested in what philosophers call the prior question.  What is it about a particular behavior that is troubling?  What are the socially prescribed reprimands intended to accomplish?  Pay attention to the prior questions that lie behind lists of sins.  Jesus does it all the time.  For that matter, I think the Hebrew prophets do too, but that’s for another time.  Keeping with Jesus’ teaching, I’m constantly driven back to the Sermon on the Mount as the example of how it works.
In it, Jesus pointed in a new direction.   He instructed his followers in ways of living that contribute to a more abundant and godly life without dwelling on no-no prohibitions.  Interpreted for our own time, they might read like this:
  • Be humble in spirit and demeanor
  • Be honest about what Paul calls evil times, and the role you have played in it
  • Hunger and thirst for righteousness
  • Be merciful
  • Be pure (have integrity) in heart
  • Be a peacekeeper
  • Be willing to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake
  • Be a person worthy of the respect of others
  • Let your behavior illuminate God’s presence in all that you do
  • Understand the spirit and depth of the Ten Commandments, not just their words
  • Seek reconciliation with those whom you’ve injured
  • Let your yes be yes and your no be no
  • Confront violence in radically peaceful ways
  • Give anonymously with generosity
  • Pray in simple words as Jesus has taught you
  • Serve God, not wealth
  • Trust God, and don’t worry so much about this life
  • Don’t be quick to judge others, you’re not good at it anyway
  • Respect the holy in all creation
  • Ask, knock, seek: God will answer
  • Aim for the narrow doorway, not the big one that leads to damnation
  • Beware of false prophets
  • Build your life on the solid rock of God as revealed in Christ Jesus

It’s a curious list the way I’ve presented it.  Unclear about specific behaviors not allowed, it’s disinterested in punishment.  The warning that disregarding it will result in a second rate life and eternal death simply points to the natural consequences.  For the most part it emphasizes what you should do, not what you shouldn’t.  Jesus exercised his disciples in them so they would become habits of the heart when he was gone.  They didn’t get it all, but they got most of it.  That’s what we also are called to do: work at it so that they become habits of the heart.  Perfection is not ours to have, but we can do better tomorrow than we’re doing today.  And that’s the path to wisdom.