Reading: From Prentis Hemphill, On Boundaries
For me, there is a big love [that exists regardless of me]. [Which means,] there are people I have boundaries with that I’m like, “I don’t know if I love you but there’s a big love, or an intactness. I want to remain intact, and want other people to remain intact. For me, that has to do with love. It might not be that I love you in the sense that I love my nephew. But I want everybody’s sovereignty over themselves. And my boundaries are gonna exist in places that allow us to have our sovereignty.
Boundaries give us the space to do the work of loving ourselves. They might be, actually, the first and fundamental expression of self-love. They also give us the space to love and witness others as they are, even those that have hurt us.
We actually don’t have much information about how to be with our own boundaries and when I work with clients I have to say, “it’s not like you’re going to identify a boundary and be like, ‘oh that feels so good, that feels so great. I held that boundary and it was awesome!’…it is the opposite!”Love doesn’t always feel like a weighted blanket and hot cocoa, sometimes it feels like withdrawal.
Boundaries and shame are all tied up together, [and] the reason it is hard for you to hold boundaries is because you feel shameful to hold boundaries where you need them, [but really,] it is a very loving act to have boundaries.
Sermon: Good Walls, Boundaries as Acs of Love
I am guessing we all have this one friend. Maybe from high school, or maybe they aren’t a friend, they’re family. My one friend I met in seminary. He was a lutheran, but not the progressive kind. We were sincerely friends, though. He was smart, and interesting, and extremely dedicated to his very conservative faith. And, every so often, he’d compare his faith with mine, specifically by noting how we Unitarian Universalists, or we liberals more generally, are such hypocrites.
Because we say that we are open to everyone, but really we just mean, we are open to people who think like us. We say we are open to all ways of thinking, unless you believe being gay is a sin, for example. Or we say we are welcoming of all, except those who would say there is only one true God, and one true religion in Christ. When that happens, he’d say we become just as fundamentalist as he is.
He would say these things in an offhand way, but he meant them. There was – from his perspective- a fundamental problem with our way of doing religion. Beyond the fact that we are all heretics who are going to hell.
This problem starts with Universalism. One of the two heresies at the heart of our faith. It is the premise that there is no one outside the circle of love. Like Prentis Hemphill describes, a big love is present for all of us, equally, unconditionally. Everyone’s in, no exceptions. Some would call it God’s love, but you don’t have to. You might also call it lovingkindess. It is the sort of love that has not much to do with your behavior, or beliefs, your circumstances or your choices.
Universalism is why we affirm inherent worth. Inherent, as in – a given. A gift. You might also call it grace. This is the good news of our faith – that there is a love that holds us all, A love that will not let us go, no matter what.
The problem begins when we start to wonder about the “no exceptions” part of this good news. No exceptions, we wonder? But what about….
Before 2016, most people would finish this sentence with Hitler. No exceptions…but what about Hitler?
More often since 2016, I’ve heard….What about Trump?
Leading up to the election, I never thought twice about speaking out against Donald Trump. As a queer woman, and parent to a biracial daughter, his xenophobic, racist, and misogynist comments felt intensely personal. Like he was coming for me, and my family, and being against him, and his way of bringing out our worst possible instincts felt like fighting for my right to exist.
Even more, as a Unitarian Universalist minister, his flagrant embrace of violence, his racist dog whistles, and his anti-democratic impulses on their face appear to me impossible to reconcile with Unitarian Universalist principles, which among other things include a promise to work for peace in one world community, for justice and equity for all, and for democracy as a universal value.
The night after Trump was elected, we held an emergency vespers service where we could grieve together, and the year after his election, we saw a huge influx of new members – we called it the Trump bump.
Before Trump, I was more cautious to make space for all sorts of voters in my preaching, and in our shared ministry – but Trump felt different. It wasn’t about politics, or partisanship. It was a matter of morality, and faith.
So…what about Donald Trump?
Despite everything I just said, I have never felt confused about Trump being in, not out, of the circle of the big love. I might find his words, his tactics, and his policies reprehensible, but that does not mean he no longer has an inherent worth, even if it is often obscured.
Because I believe this big love exists, I trust that all people are loved. But that also means I don’t necessarily have to be the one doing the loving. I just need to act with the understanding that all people are inherently worthy of love, and all people are held in love. Even if I don’t understand it, or feel it personally, I need to trust that it is true, and to treat people assuming that they are loved, just like every other person, including me.
This is how I think about Donald Trump, and any other person you might say “what about….”. It’s how I think about my friend’s cruel ex-husband, and it’s how I think about the girls who were mean to my daughter in 5th grade. Some days, it’s even how I think about my own self. I don’t need to figure out how to love myself, not all the time, because instead I just need to trust that I am loved. I am held in love, and this love will not let me go.
This helps address some of what my friend would ask me about, but it doesn’t get at the bigger issue.
Which is less a matter of Trump being worthy of love, and more about the ease with which we held the vespers service that night in November, or showed up as a church at protests about his policies. It’s about the people who weren’t grieving, but were celebrating. It’s the question of if these folks can also be tolerated within our faith that we say is built on tolerance. And if not – is that as my friend would say, hypocritical?
These questions get at the boundaries of our community. Who belongs, and who does not, and why.
As Charles Vogl says in his book The Art of Community, “a boundary is the recognized demarcation between insiders and outsiders. The boundary should be more about making the inside space safe for insiders than about keeping outsiders out. Where there’s a boundary, insiders feel more confident that they share values and that they understand one another better.”
For example, a few months ago we held a small group for grandparents who were trying to understand gender, and the boundary for being a part of the group is you needed to have a grandchild who was themselves exploring gender, and you needed to be sincerely trying to understand gender.
If someone tried to attend who didn’t have a grandchild, or who was not at all trying to understand and instead was judgmental or closed off – it would significantly decrease trust in the group, and make it feel unsafe.
Boundaries are the way we define what we say yes to, and to what we say no; or who we say yes to, who is our no. They are the good walls we put up, grounded not in fear, or hatred – but in love.
As Prentis Hemphill writes: “Boundaries give us the space to do the work of loving ourselves. They might be, actually, the first and fundamental expression of self-love. They also give us the space to love and witness others as they are, even those that have hurt us.”
In community, boundaries are rooted in shared values, common interests, and/or behavioral expectations. Which is why boundaries are usually one of the first things newcomers are trying to feel for when they are getting to know Foothills, even if they don’t name it that way. They want to know what those values are, what’s expected, and if they’ll fit in. What beliefs are welcome, what identities, what cultures. What abilities, what practices, what emotional states.
Seriously, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who apologize to me for crying at church – because crying in a lot of relatively public places would be crossing a boundary. But not here. Church is a very good, safe, and appropriate place to cry.
Crying isn’t one of our boundaries, but that doesn’t mean we have no boundaries.
Even a faith like ours that hopes to be extremely open, and accepting, and who affirms a BIG LOVE that holds everyone and everything, and who sometimes declares “we welcome all,” – even we have boundaries of who belongs, and who does not. After all, as Vogl says, “If everyone in the world belongs in your community, this means your community cannot be distinguished from no community.”
Some of you have heard me say before, that instead of we welcome everyone, we would do better to say, we welcome everyones who welcome everyone. This explicit boundary recognizes that our shared values are diversity, acceptance, and tolerance. Our shared value is welcoming everyone.
By saying we welcome everyone who welcomes everyone, we recognize that these values require us to limit acceptance wherever acceptance is limited, to limit diversity wherever diversity is limited, and to limit tolerance wherever tolerance is limited.
This is what philosopher Karl Popper described in his 1945 book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, as the Tolerance Paradox. As he writes:
“Unlimited tolerance [would] lead to the disappearance of tolerance. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
Popper was careful to clarify that intolerant ideas need not be entirely suppressed, as long as they were truly just ideas and not stirring up a fervor of intolerance.
I appreciate this caution, because the flip side of being intolerant of all intolerance is a community where none of us can learn, or grow. Because the only way growth happens is through exposure to different ideas and ways of thinking, which means that sometimes those who value tolerance must also sometimes be tolerant of intolerance.
I’m thinking specifically of my parents, and so many other people’s parents, who were initially and then for a while, not so tolerant, let alone embracing of my queer identity. But over time, they have become not just tolerant but great champions of LGBTQ rights and equality. And the only way that this change was possible was because my partner and I were tolerant of their intolerance.
Let me pause here to acknowledge, we have shied away in recent years, from the word tolerance – because it implies a lower bar we hope to surpass – we don’t want to just tolerate people, we want to accept, even embrace them. But my example of my parents reminds us that sometimes tolerate is exactly the right word. I wasn’t looking to accept my parents’ homophobia, let alone embrace it. But it did matter that I found a way to tolerate it.
I think of this complexity whenever someone brings up “cancel culture,” which is what I think of as the paradox of tolerance gone awry. Because saying or doing something that appears intolerant is often hurtful, offensive, shocking, and can feel like a betrayal. Especially when these words or actions come from someone you consider a leader or role model, an ally, or a friend.
The natural reaction to this betrayal, or at least what has become overly common in our culture, is to call out and/or shun the offending person. We can see this playing out in the Lizzo allegations, or more recently Jimmy Fallon. But shunning anyone who has said or done something intolerant will make their learning very difficult, if not impossible; it says, we’re not sure this person can change, or that they are worthy of change; it says instead, we must get rid of this person. See – the paradox of intolerance gone awry, because we mus be intolerant of all intolerance.
But just like we believe in diversity, we also believe in change, and the truth that this is not the end of the story. Whatever this is. It is the other good news of the big love, that there is a path of forgiveness available to us all.
It’s also the other way to think about boundaries. Because, just like we aren’t personally responsible to love every single person, the big love also means we aren’t personally responsible for healing every person.
We must be discerning about what makes for productive conflict; and also what the right time, place, and people are to heal harm that has been caused; and we must be careful not to confuse conflict with abuse, or to ask people who have been abused to tolerate their abuser so that they can change.
As Prentis Hemphill reminds us, “Love doesn’t always feel like a weighted blanket and hot cocoa, sometimes it feels like withdrawal.”
Even though Popper didn’t say all intolerant ideas must be banned entirely, he also believed there was a limit. When intolerant ideas begin to capture a certain irrational, and powerful energy among people, we must consider them as dangerous as inciting murder.
After all, Popper’s ideas weren’t just theoretical for him as an Austrian Jew forced to flee his homeland after it was taken over by Nazi Germany. Just like they aren’t theoretical for our world today, as evidenced most recently when the persistent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric translated into the murder of a California clothing store owner for hanging a rainbow flag.
To be a faith and a congregation, that welcomes all who welcome all, and also makes room for those who are on a path of learning, and growing their hearts, who make mistakes, and cause harm, and who seek to repair that harm – which, isn’t that all of us, at one time or another? This is the heart of our covenantal way of doing religion. It is what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.
I don’t know if the folks who were celebrating Trump’s election in 2016 would find themselves in this definition – but if they do, they too would be welcome.
It is not a simple, or easy path we journey together. It requires curiosity, humility, and the extremely difficult practice of admitting you’re not always right. It also asks us to accept that sometimes we will be uncomfortable – because we know discomfort is what leads to growth; it requires a willingness to apologize, and make amends, to seek repair, and to forgive.
Maybe most of all, like it says in our covenant of right relations, and in our new member welcome – it means we know we know we will not always get our own way – and we know, that’s a good thing. Because it means that we are a part of an intentionally diverse community that believes in boundaries – which is not in fact hypocritical. And it means we can trust that there is a big love that exists, that cannot, and will not let us go.
Another Possibility 