Post-Partum of Start-Up

I feel as if I am losing my center, mostly as I struggle to feel anything amidst an overwhelming emptiness. 

But what a productive and successful time this has been! A conference paper for a conference with Islamic scholars has been written and submitted. Six different ‘sections’ of a curriculum I oversee have gotten off the ground with necessary technological and plenary-lecture finesse. A new class is unfolding in the work to which I have felt drawn—interreligious encounter and companionship—and a book-project of 17-years’ duration has finally arrived, hard-copy, onto our dining room table. Some re-entry bumps within my ‘real’ life have smoothed out. My beloved has relaxed a bit into this new body-focused partner, even surprising me with a book that he would hate himself but suspects I might enjoy. Many of the shared, food-oriented frustrations upon some change of habits have lessened. Differentiation-within-relation…yea. J A good sign. Mostly, I’m saddened to feel a loss of focus and writing-flow here, in this space.

Impulses of activity have arisen during these few days of rest and celebration, but I do find myself resisting another mountain of achievement and the cognitive drive to climb it. I am most attuned to some energies bubbling up to conceive some new bodywork goals. I sense a new chapter is beginning soon and decks must be cleared to attend to it, listen fully. Sitting practice has become non-existent, except for Quaker community practice. Too stationery (ary?) for my current mental chatter. Perhaps it’s time to face the monkey-mindedness with intentional calm-abiding after all.

I think I will refer to this numb space in which I find myself the post-partum of start-up. One cannot help but love the creative blessings that have arrived with such striving, but there’s a renewed sense of emptiness within as well. What had been such an intimate part of your body for so very long now has its own life outside of you. How strange it is, but how logical, to feel so very empty. Stranger still to be aware of a thanksgiving for what is, just as it is.

Blessed be.

Body-Literacy -- 3

“Why move?” I heard inside my head. An odd but necessary question for an “authentic movement” circle. “Authentic Movement” describes an unfolding teaching-learning practice developed originally at the intersection of Jungian psychology (especially his ‘active imagination’ work) and dance performance. A description, from the newly-revised website for the Authentic Movement community:

Authentic Movement is a simple form of self-directed movement. It is usually done with eyes closed and attention directed inward, in the presence of at least one witness. Movers explore spontaneous gestures, movements, and stillness, following inner impulses in the present moment. The witness watches and tracks inner responses to the mover with the intention of not judging, but focusing on self-awareness. … [This] cultivates a contemplative frame of mind, clarity of perception, and movement that is personally enhancing.

Pioneers include Mary Whitehouse, Joan Chodorow, and Janet Adler, though their students have continued to develop the outreach of Authentic Movement in multiple directions, inwardly and outwardly focused: meditative-spiritual practice, tool for professional psychotherapy, method for creative-process renewal, and community outreach for address and resolution of community-wide problems.

As the body-literacy project continues to unfold in my own life, an invitation to explore this practice arrived. I accepted. Not unrelated to my “If not food, not sex, then what?” musings, I was surprised to hear the persistent question, “Why move?” as the circle-practice began. What does it mean to allow spontaneous gestures? To follow inner impulses in the present moment? What movement follows that is not directed or controlled by one’s mind? I have an incredibly narrow palette in my experience for any of these questions. Partially my over-developed sense of ‘mind’ and all that it entails, partially an under-developed exploration of 'body-experiences & potential', with all those entail.

The witnessing-role I played first was familiar, if requiring focus, attention. Sadness arose as I became aware how much negativity my mind (or body?) unleashed: fear, envy, awareness of the vulnerability of movers, anxiety about non-directed/guided actions in shared space. It seemed all I could hear or imagine were the unexpected injuries that could come, the closing in of quiet ones amidst the expressed freedoms of others. Slowly, the awarenesses began to transform into their celebratory counterparts—the value of freedom, the beauty of expressiveness untrammeled, the mystery of movers in their own process unavailable to any witnessing. Although I had desired to move first (mostly to get it out of the way!), I recognize the witnessing role now as an easing of my mind’s controls. I was weary of mind by the time my own body’s movement began.

My recollection of this time now centers mostly in poetic jottings or phrases. Flow. Deep sadness, memory of youthful fear. Shame. Smallness. Alone, isolation. Awareness of others’ connections. Envy, desire. Smiling release and sensation of strength, arising, stature. Seedlings and oak trees. Deep roots and hard work accomplished. Seasons. Ease and rest.

Two other questions then surfaced, which, amidst eyes-closed-movement, eventually made me laugh. “Why do I have a body?” followed closely by “Why am I a body?” The laughter erupted. You see, my mind recognized a conceptual frame, collision, and renewal of something with which I’ve wrestled regarding friendship and intimacy. Do you have friends or are you a friend? I’ve written about this elsewhere (forthcoming book, actually!) as the collision between correlational habits of mind and contemplative ones, the former with an inherited dualism or objective-subjective split useful to analysis and the latter with an enacted-surrender unto unified mind of nonbeing more suited to wisdom-walking or fullness of life. Regardless of all that jargon, however, what a strange two-in-one question for an embodied soul to ask, in the end. Who is asking, if not the bodied-mind? And will answering it make living within biological existence any more controllable, straight-forward, articulate? Can one's body actually be had anymore than a person ought to be had? Respectively...I don't know; not likely; probably not.

Perhaps one’s body simply has an important role to play in the unfolding of a spiritual path, one’s own path. Perhaps this is where doctrinal impulses—the systematic ones that strive for precise and accurate articulations of consistent and coherent merit—meet their end, for a time. Or their beginning. Perhaps the answer to my question comes not at the beginning, but only in its time, even at the end.

For now.

Thresholds of Here

I’m not back, but I am here. 

Gladness overflows for entering into work rhythms on a campus, to have the commute to my office and anticipate the political (or not) chumming with colleagues engaged in similar callings of theological education. A rich harvest season looms ahead, with a lightness of spirit and sleight of hand in getting all kinds of overwork done, in good order. Metaphorical “balls that drop” because of growth management demands and resulting overwork seem to “bounce,” not break. A broadening container for life has been given, across multiple communities and webs of relationship, such that new paths, new partners, seem not only possible but probable. I’m here, and so very thankful. But I’m not back.

Why bother with such minimal distinctions? For one, the notion of “being back” is prohibiting me and those I love from “being here,” being present to the richness, fullness, that beckons. “How does it feel to be back?” is probably the most frequent question I’ve received in the last month upon my return from a spring-semester sabbatical. Dear co-workers are welcoming their colleague back into work-collaborations on campus, and of course, they know who this person is, right? Actually, no, they don’t. They can’t. “Being back” suggests a return but, at least when sabbaticals are well-engaged in multiple-dimensions, the journey itself prohibits any return to the pre-sabbatical person. The one who arrives on campus after a sabbatical is rarely the one who had left campus in the first place.

“Re-entry” is another notion often discussed amongst all those who truck in the practices of higher education, meaning sabbaticals in this case. “Re-entry can be a bear,” so the saying goes. After months free of campus or student responsibilities and open-ended time devoted to research and conceptual work, faculty face overwhelm and disorientation. “Re-entry blues” or in some cases, like mine, “Re-entry fullness.” Overwhelming, whether experienced negatively or positively. Requiring of some re-acclimation. But re-entry is not accurate either. The learning community that welcomes a person into its midst again after a sabbatical is rarely the one who had said farewell to him/her in the first place.

So here we are, neither ‘back’ nor ‘re-entered.’ And where is here? A threshold of many dimensions, doors, leading into

·         new communities—the Nur Community (Islamic), women-centered spirit-circles, contemplative conferencing

·         new work—interreligious methods unto new book-proposal, ‘naked writing’, integrative leadership in familiar circles

·         new voice—musing vulnerable, budding poetic, exploratory artistic, differentiated academic, blog-plenary professorial

·         new bodywork—active, internal-restful, yoga, authentic-movement, wild-heart

·         new companioning—doctoral support, spiritual listening, liturgical service

How hard we strive to keep the stream the same, to slow the changing currents into an eddy or pool in which we can keep warm. We long to return to the familiar, to the warm and provisional. We spend lives attempting re-entry into what has been. How else does one learn trust, we imagine aloud, if not within protected quarters, well-defined and even predetermined? If nothing stays the same, then how can we know steadiness, stability, durability?

The irony, of course, is that the life of trust only grows across instability, change, disruption. Trust is not necessary within a harbor or in a stagnant pool. There’s so little movement or diversity that everything looks trustworthy, the same. Robust trust, on the other hand, grows out of enacted stability across ever-changing streams, relational tenacity amidst regular disruption and change. The only way to grow steadiness is to have unending situations in which to practice being steady. We never return, nor does anyone “come back.” If one is fortunate, however, one can learn to be here. One may practice finding thresholds and actually venture forth across them, learning a life of trust in new and robust ways, with tenacious and trustworthy companions.

Body Literacy -- 2

I don’t know how to view the world from my core in what I do, in what (it seems) my calling or contribution to the world is. After a very full week of re-entry into this work—preparing for classes, ordering lecture notes, conceptualizing learning activities for other learning styles, attending to institutional and collegial needs of a shared learning community—a morning’s pause, respite really, has opened before me. So...,

I put the poop-bag into my pocket, leash up my canine companion, and walk into the mist of a pre-autumn morning. The sights and smells remind of me something, just out of reach. I breathe in the softening air and remember an invitation to view life from my mid-section. What do I notice? How new and foreign it feels. I realize my posture has shrunk to protect—hide—my core once again. This, after several committed hours to bodily activity, care in hunger and satiation, companionship with others exploring a body-path. Frustration arises. I do not know how to sustain this invited-practice, to view, hear, feel the world around me from my core. It is unclear whether way will ever open in direction of that desire. Way has opened to share at least a foreseeable path, for a time, with others wise in these things. But how do I start, again and again?

The wisdom is recognizable so far: signature ‘expressive delight,’ I call it. The language given me for understanding—for living more deeply into—this work I have called ‘mine’ describes a tell-tale sign of living wisdom in “an expressive (theological) delight able to companion the suffering of self and others.” Sitting in a circle of new companions, for a practice unknown and uncertain, I was struck by the consistent awareness of gratitude, of thanksgiving to be right where they-we were. Thanksgivings were easily spoken, said with heartfelt vulnerability. Suffering of self, the difficulties experienced in exquisitely painful particularity, were not neglected or ignored in these thanksgivings. Both were held in unity, together. Leadership of the circle had the shy smiles of living wisdom too. A space opened in the circle to express a delight of living alongside faced difficulties and companioning to come. “An expressive delight able to companion the suffering of self and others.” Tell-tale sign of wisdom incarnate.

This work I call ‘mine’ has been further conceived as the articulation, modeling, and fostering of such delight in whatever environment or role I seem to be placed, led. This means articulation for my understanding, modeling for my own learning-experimentation, fostering spaces in which I may practice receiving (which oftentime means surrendering precious ‘absolutes’ I’ve inherited to welcome larger and larger ‘absolutes’ coherent with but transcendent of previous ones). Such articulation, modeling, and fostering may also open doors for others to welcome understanding, learning-experimentation, and receiving, of course. If I’ve learning anything on this path, however, it is that little is gained by qualifying my own process dependent upon the openness (or not) of others. Companions are absolutely crucial on the path—interdependence allows nothing less—but each of us is unavoidably responsible for only our own process-opening…or refusal-closure-pace of process. So I listen and practice, attempting to be faithful to this path of articulation, modeling, fostering—attentive to my own path, hopeful for connection with others’ paths, but practicing non-attachment to affirmation/condemnation from others. All this constitutes what I’ve called here “wisdom walking.”

All this also compels awareness that the way opening to shared paths with body-wise circles is indeed an ‘opened way’ in which to learn. No less certain: I have no idea how to start. I have little awareness of how to feel, to regain feeling, to open the door to feeling first so that life comes from there, in harmony with mind-spirit. An ironic statement, of course, in that the summer has been about little if not feeling, which comes and goes as it will. Not unlike scripture describes Spirit, with a shy smile.

The practice unfolded in circle, well-established and communicated. An ocean opened up before us, me.  The “I” I have known began to gasp for air, perchance to drown. At the very least, overwhelm. I was returned to a time of being pushed out of my family thirty-years’ prior when a new circle companion took my place in the circle without awareness it had been my only safe anchor, the only familiar place. Tears arose from all directions, no clear origin to conceptualize and redress. I remembered words “fetal position” from the instructions and my body mimicked the memory. More recent body-memory, enacted in a relatively new (for me) morning yoga practice, reminded me felt-strength can be received underneath or beyond mind. Impatience with feeling small moved me into the rudimentary alphabet. Returning my awareness to my core posited notions of mind-following-body, again and again. Is it possible? a voice asked within me. How does the dan tien become Primary Mover in human being? I’m sure Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas would shudder at their language swiped for this purpose…which makes me smile and repeat it: how does one’s core, one’s mid-section, become Primary Force moving and directing human fullness? As I explored motion from my core, exploring capacity of my head to follow the flow of movement instead of leading it, I became aware of a difference, the words written here. Movement from the core, mind following body's lead.

The first part of the practice concluded, inviting us into an intentioned time of personal-integration before sharing words in the final section or group-integration. Stilted words came first, in green marker on paper: cannot, positive, negative, etc. The drum-beat softened the edges, drew an abstract exploration of page-space not unlike the Korean-Japanese artist-teacher I “met” this summer at the Guggenheim, Lee Ufan. My spirit had yearned for weeks now to explore abstract drawing or practice in such fashion but I had not known how to start there either. Pen followed drum beats, spirit-body breathed into the sound-structure provided. Mind eased, letters disappeared, all that remained was rhythmic marks and dots, guided forward in multiple directions chosen in a manner inarticulate.

The circle spoke its experiences in brief and diverse fashion. My mind spoke in my turn, mostly from its petulance. “I don’t know where I am. It’s going to take a long time,” I heard myself say. Then a dissonance of some kind felt itself awaken, suggesting to me (belatedly) that what I had spoken was, in fact, inaccurate. Confirmation arose in me as the tears flowed, again without aware-referent or obvious ‘cause.’ Tears not unlike the salty ocean that had opened before us, that had overwhelmed articulate speech in the circle. Tears salty enough to cleanse but also to confirm an open way. A companion assured me the tears would not last forever.

As I walked back to my car in the holy darkness, I felt a bit of that other tell-tale sign that invites attention as gift: sacred envy. Something Wise is here, whispering its unspoken welcome, waiting for any and all willing to step into the surf. Perhaps it is good not to know. Perhaps sacred envy leads each of us to lean bodily into the trust of those who do know, who have learned to breathe in such a surf, who have been cleansed by their own tears, who live from the core of their being-loving-serving. 

At the very least, it is good to breathe open at the core once again, to offer a small thanksgiving into the morning-mist, and to walk into the ways of the day, whatever may unfold.

Living the Unintended Lie...with a Smile

What do we do when what we want most remains out of our reach, not for any external reason but because of all the internal ones? This is a question that has fascinated me for year amidst the work I do, which regularly attempts to unlock or open seekers’ best wisdom—their own—by encouraging/urging/goading/irritating them enough to act, to risk it, to expand to the next greatest possibility for significance, meaning, delight in their lives. As I fail at this regularly, and those with whom I share my life do too, I like to think of it as the long defeat (ala Tolkien’s LoTRs). 

Yet there is absolutely no better way to spend a life. In the words of Mumford & Sons, “where you invest your love, you invest your life.” Or Clarissa Pinkola Estés: living open-hearted, knowing the pain and choosing openness again and again, is the only way. In one of her closing poems, she articulates the secret to this kind of life: “Climb the tallest tree you know. Look at the branch you think might break under your weight. Step out onto that branch.”

Allow me a couple hypotheticals. Say there’s an academic who is slowly discovering that she writes most fluently when she lives at the cusp of body-building, strength-training. She is unaware of pursuing public avenues for such things, and has no intention or clearly articulated end-point, goal for this path. If she winds up losing weight because of this pursuit, great. If not, great. At some point, the aim was articulated at simply: not feeling self-loathing anymore, especially when focusing mind at the mid-section. That’s it. That’s all. Not much, but still something never accomplished in over four decades of life. As she walks the path, the loathing lessens, from time to time. She smiles, from her core.

Or another. This one is more familiar with ministry students, for instance. Say there’s a young man seeking connection, a deepening intimacy he seems to know already, recognize, but yet he says he doesn’t. He smiles when he says he has “intimacy issues.” He expresses an articulate desire to confront them gently, wisely, slowly. He sees a fullness of life in those who have learned to risk into relational space, and yearns, regularly, for such connection, such fullness. At every opening, there’s an articulate ‘yes’ alongside an enacted ‘no thanks.’ What he says he wants most remains always just out of reach. Openings come every day, but something internal obstructs. Those around him can count on it, anticipate it, see it when it happens. Again and again.

In these situations, which is the unintended lie? The avoidance of loathing with pretending it doesn’t matter? The desire for intimacy—with self or with other? Or is it the desire itself that deceives? The mind says it wants release from loathing, but the decades of companionship with it are so familiar. It’s better to know the life that’s painful than it is to risk into what might be worse but could be best. Or the fellow who yearns for connection but only knows how to shadow the language, to speak the desire but never push into it far enough for any satisfaction. Which is the lie, and how does one know?

How do people of Spirit discern? The wise-ones who have all the patience in the world, it seems? Who smile in the face of fear (thanks, Pema Chodron) or open hearts again and again (Thich Nhat Hanh, or Baal Shem Tov) to anyone and everything that needs them but needs more to resist them?

I think the answer lies in smiling at the resistance, expecting the deception, and loving whole-heartedly anyway. There’s just enough absurdity in that to hear a gospel ring. Or a bodhisattva vow. Or a gentleness of spirit that comes with practice, practice, and more practice. Such is devotion, the branch that can never hold anyone’s weight but nevertheless never breaks.

Not Food, Not Sex...Then What?

I’m beginning to think that my body may need or desire more than food or sex. Or food and sex. J The fact that this statement arrived as an insight does not bode well for my state/level of evolution in spirit-mind-body harmonies.

As per “Hunger’s Many Tongues” of last week, I’ve been listening more closely to the times I perceive hunger and how it manifests, what I associate with it. Time and again, I become aware of an emptiness or a sensation akin to hunger and I immediately assume it must be met with some kind of food. I find my mind cataloguing through various kinds of foods to see which one seems a “fit” for whatever hunger I perceive.

But what if the energy clue or sense of emptiness has nothing to do with food at all? If I make it this far, sans catalogue-fit, then the next candidate is physical desire on my roster. Am I yearning for some intimate time and space with my partner or is it a more solitary yearning? Communal calendars, work energies, ongoing narratives all come into this discernment, of course.

But then…what if the energy clue or sense of emptiness has nothing to do with physical intimacy at all?

I don’t think I’ve ever made it this far, myself, because I have little to no idea. Sometimes my body requires rest when I’m unaware of it, but that sensation presents itself differently than hunger or emptiness. It therefore seems an illogical or incoherent item for consideration in this musing. Another posting may emerge about times when I feel extreme weariness or tiredness. I’ve learned this can be a signal I’m avoiding something just under the surface that part of me feels inadequate to address or conceptualize, understand or respond to. Another time, perhaps, with no energy drain at avoidance.

Several learnings come to mind in these things, these veins. There’s a very interesting assumption in play, for one. My mind must sort out what my body needs and then arrange to provide it. Rather colonial point of view, mind over body. A portion of this assumption also requires that communication between colonizer and colonized must be language, conscious, speech of some kind. [And no, just to clear expectation and listening: I don’t have an intention of punning on “colon.” If something clever had come by now, I’d aim for it, but you’re safe, for the time being.] If anything, body-language or felt-sensations I’m coming to understand as ‘communication’ are not in such forms that my mind can easily perceive. Instead of words, linear-associated images, or direct meanings, I’ve begun to learn my own body-speech comes in sensations, symbols, unexpected energy points. An image from Thomas Keating to describe God’s way with us: it’s like my body is playing peek-a-boo with my mind, allowing it just enough to conceptualize but so little as to be unable to control it, direct it.

Another learning has to do with commitment and ‘making space.’ This pathway continues to unfold only as I practice fidelity without clarity, commitment without conceptual direction. A big energy point arrived upon realization that re-entry into my professional work after the freedoms of sabbatical required stability of personal training time, not decrease of it, for example. Following the slight desire to return to a women’s circle I sometimes attend opened a doorway to a regular (weekly or bi-monthly) body-wisdom in a shared circle of practice. I have begun to walk through that doorway with less clarity of energy but awareness of significance. Julia Cameron’s observation about such doors opening, or Quaker-wisdom about ways-opening, seems undeniable in this case. Each time, it has been the willingness to create the space, enact the commitment, that clears my ears/eyes/mind for hearing body-speech.

I wonder how people live when they cannot articulate what it is their body needs but they are committed to receiving it…? Is the task to resist conceptualizing an object to be provided, releasing assumptions about object-ivity, moment-to-moment?

I’ve also wondered whether the task should be understood as the mind surrendering to the body, but that now seems to be error in the other direction, overcompensation for years of one kind of imbalance mistakenly selected to become years of another kind of imbalance. Such surrender may be part of it, but it cannot be the whole of it. Balance comes not within the colonial logic there at play, but release from the logic altogether. Spaciousness of an evenly matched tennis game between body and mind, lived in the breath and exertions of spirit. Or another image…the energy and movement of a jazz quartet, playing in concert so each can innovate and all can relax into the innovation, trusting its integrity and flow.

Not food then. And/or sex. Or rest. Then what…? Once again, there is no ‘what.’ Perhaps the best I can offer myself—mind-body-and-spirit—is the metaphor of music and flow, rhythm and balance. Dynamic, relational terms in which strengths of each energy source weave together into a dance, a personal and communal harmony out of which delight is borne. I’ve named that before, of course: an expressive delight able to companion suffering of self and others. We recognize the music, the flow, the rhythm and balance when abundance overflows and all we are yearns to mend and tend what needs to be, expressive of this incorrigible delight.

Friendship, Wounds, and More...Close the Door

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.'