A counterpoint now arrives, close behind received wisdom in “opening the door.”
Sometimes I sit with whatever prose has come in the morning, and it deepens an ability to rest somehow throughout the day. Whatever ‘overt’ work I may be doing, a rootedness or satisfaction from opening to the prose allows a certain flexible weathering of my own or my community’s craziness in achievement, intellect, and politicking. Other times, when I sit with the prose of the morning in my mind throughout the day, I realize I had to leave earlier than its completion. Meandering on errands this morning, I realized I’ve learned just as much—perhaps more—from relationships that have indeed ended, in any practical, day-to-day sense. Relationship with folks whom I no longer see or interact with in any meaningful fashion. It’s tempting to think of this phenomenon of closure as “closing the door,” but I think it’s more accurate to describe it as “opening the door only one of us wanted to open.” At any rate, this notion of the door needs another look.
An illustration, perhaps. I found myself in a Facebook tiff about a week ago, not of my making. I was tagged in an indirect query which had arisen from an incendiary blog-post of an unknown faculty person from another institution of theological, or at least biblical, learning. The question was one of confrontation and orthodoxy and the avenue selected by this well-meaning but unwise fellow was Facebook. Ultimately, the deans of each institution handled it professionally "offline" and little actual damage was done, mostly because there had been no relationship of note to damage. The student, however, may have become a casualty of a kind. Collateral damage in a tiff he had started.
I was intrigued by my own non-participation/participation in the whole thing. As always, there was the overt appearance of dispute and then the hidden but driving splinter in the psyche of one of the actors. A public scuffle masking a deep wounding committed by none of those in the dispute. What an old story that is! Twenty-two posts had been logged before I even checked into my own page. Do I join my voice to say, at the very least, this is not the venue for these things? Does even saying that in the venue mean I’m already surrendering ground? Or would I be opening a new door for truer, more vulnerable communication in better forms, offline?
I chose to participate to say I was not going to participate online. Not surprisingly, the main antagonist did not believe me. Can’t blame him, actually. So I posted a second time, to accept responsibility for all that had transpired since my first post, to ask forgiveness for choosing incorrectly. Each time, I attempted to communicate a boundary necessary for true communication to happen ‘offline,’ if it were to be pursued. Each time, the requested boundary was transgressed.
The student approached one last time, just to me, in a chat-box. “Hi.” he said. “Hi.” Said I, waiting to see whether he would respect the boundary I had expressly stated was necessary. He wrote, “What do you think about the…[same issue, same words]?” Boundary transgressed, after twice-definition. I repeated the boundary a third time. He responded with aggression about my work. I crafted as peaceful a response as I could, with blessing, with encouragement for sustained engagement with those God was putting in his life. Then I said good-bye. I ended the Facebook friendship, cut all ties. Did I close the door, or open one?
As in any question like that, the answer is “yes.” In one sense, all this is a straw horse of an example because rarely are Facebook friendships actual friendships in the sense I intend the word. Lots of media-chatter and literature about that topic. But in another sense, it’s a ‘safe’ example in which to explore the absolutely crucial skill of recognizing and maintaining healthy boundaries in relational and professional lives today. Most of us are increasingly out of practice, for one thing. Global connectivity and instant-access have diffused personal awareness of self-other, the integrity of an “I” self-differentiated enough to be in intimate relationship with another “I”. Much easier is it to remain open all the time, to be shaped and tossed by all the actions and agencies in personal and media forces available today, all those inputs of action and data made immediate by technology and increased felt-disconnection from the earth, from self, from one another. “Open the door” in this sense often means “closing down” what needs time to grow. Relinquishing what is life-giving for what is immediate and available, even if it’s unhealthy and destructive of life in community.
There is an art to knowing how to articulate a boundary while remaining in relationship. “Opening the door” to the wound as that on which new light shines, new life may grow in unexpected strength. Seeing that boundary transgressed, learning through it, perhaps forgiving, and sustaining connection. But no less important is knowing how to discern when the boundary is more important to respect than the relationship is to continue, at least in its current form.
How does one learn to recognize non-negotiable boundary-lines in deepening intimacies? How does one practice honoring them in oneself first, then making it possible for others to know how to honor them as well? Lastly, how does one offer enough opportunity for grace to grow amidst injury or transgression, if it will, but then choose ‘home’ or ‘rest’ or ‘safety’ over persistent transgression of boundaries?
In the Facebook case listed here, it was a relatively easy choice. The technological dimension of reading, receiving, taking time to consider, then typing, writing responses allowed prayerful intention and communication as clearly as one could muster (if not achieve). It was relatively easy to open opportunity to see whether respect would be accorded, whether grace might grow. When neither occurred, formenting irritation but no real injury, it was an easy choice to discern healthy relationship practice with exclusion of all those who acted unhealthily for my articulated sense of ‘home,’ ‘safety,’ ‘rest.’
Move the challenge into the family, or into the intimate life of marriage. What if continued interaction with a family member brings nothing but passive-aggressive wounding, disrespect coated in sugary tones, unmet fear cloaked in feigned concern? For the sake of family, do you a) sustain the injuries without justice or recompense or b) remove yourself from the fray in as peaceful a fashion as possible? Or what if the one who has promised to love you “until death does part” begins to verbally disrespect you, even abuse you in tone and in speech? If the scriptures to which you accord authority say, “You must forgive, seventy-times-seven times,” but each time you forgive, the abuse gets worse…when do you finally love yourself fully enough to choose health, safety, rest, home?
It’s so tempting to say there are times to “close the door” on such relationships, and there’s truth to that statement. But I don’t think the opposite direction to “open the door” offers suitable answer anymore. It may be time for a relationship to end, for the two who have been most privy to its life…and then its death…to decide that no intention for continued companionship can live in health and happiness. It may be time to honor the relationship most by letting its shape or form become something totally different—no contact but prayerful concern all the same, minimal contact and enacted blessing from safe distance. For such things do not mean that connection or relation no longer exists, like a door has been closed on the fingers of life that continue to grasp what had been between you. It may very well be—especially if one puts any stock in the notion of interconnection and interdependence of us all—that the sense of connection or relationship has increased, but is simply no longer observable within social interactions. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, or look, connection in absence may be the only way to live a life-giving connection. Allowing what has been done to others to stop being done, at least by you. Opening doors to new avenues of wholeness, even if s/he does not want them, or know s/he wants them.
In the end, if both are choosing life, though in separate paths, marking a conclusion of relationship, then both are doing what promises most wholeness. They are actually opening the door, not closing it. Both are sustaining the pain of finite separation or disagreement in order that both may continue along a now separate way toward wholeness, toward the sacred, toward Life. True, it may be that only one of the two (or the many) realizes that to open such a door to a painful conclusion is actually opening the door to wholeness, to the sacred, to Life. And there are times when we will never know whether the conclusion we stewarded, the boundary we chose to honor over the observable relationship continuing, was actually the life-giving thing to do. But in a strange way, what often looks like "closing the door" may actually be opening it. The door is about an opening to life, after all, not grasped connection.
In an unhelpful (perhaps) but increasingly palpable way, I’m learning that my body may know more about this phenomenon than any other part of me. I’ve begun to ask, “What course of action brings oxygen to my gut, my heart, my spirit?” “What action brings life-energy-qi-verve, not only to me but to those with whom I travel in practice, in faith?” Am I willing to acknowledge the limitations in myself, in others, and commit to choosing life, even if it means disagreeing with another or removing myself from communal affirmation? Can I accept the container I have created--or that has been created on this path emptily called 'mine'--and steward it in all its finitude and definition?
I'll close, at least this time, by opening that door. Perhaps with practice, we learn more for every 'next time.'
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