Transforming Relationships

On October 6, 2010 I Invited my colleagues to join me in an exploration of what the future of the Church might be like if we more fully sought to build just and stable relationships in our local congregations.  Then, on November 10, 2010, I made much the same presentation to the St. Louis Association Ministerium.  This is a summary of those presentations. While the target audience is UCC clergy, all are welcome.

Societies are constructed out of a matrix of relationships.  The strength of the relationships is a measure of the resiliency of the social fabric.  When there is a crisis, as with a hurricane or flood or earthquake, and people come together to act on each other's behalf, we view the strength of the community.

Despite our ability to come together in a time of crisis, there are some strong indications that our social fabric is weak.  Partisanship rules in electoral politics, marriages are fragile, and virtual relationships have begun to attract more of our time and attention than do in-person ones, even among children.

We know how to build stronger and more satisfying relationships.  There are literally hundreds of schools, approaches, and methods which tout the ability to teach participants to have more personal power and more vital lives.  They all have success and each is criticized by some of their former students.  None is perfect but all are effective in the right context.

These approaches include AA and other twelve-step programs, Landmark Education, the Sedona Method, Arbinger, Psychosynthesis, Internal Family Systems, the Diamond Approach, programs of the National Training Labs, and the list goes on and on.  We have a huge body of information about how to train for building stronger relationships.  The most robust of these technologies for transformation have been developed in the last fifty years.

There are some things all of these approaches have in common. 

• They teach in the context of a defined community.  This may be the community of the training event, it may be a virtual community, it may be a workplace or family, but the training happens in the context of relationships of care and concern.

• The content of the training includes theory and language to support making distinctions in one's experience.  Key to the training is coming to recognize that "this" is not the same as "that."  Generally this means using language that is idiosyncratic to the method.

• There are specific behaviors one is expected to manifest in order to learn and realize benefit from the method.  It is not enough to get the concepts.  These must be played out in one's behavior for the results to be experienced.  With practice these disciplines become more second nature and the results become more apparent.

While many intentional and visible schools and methods have appeared in the last fifty years, there are some technologies for transformation which go back thousands of years.  These are the great wisdom traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam, among others.  All of the world religions have methods for building more just and stable relationships through teaching specific distinctions and practices.

Each of the more modern methods for personal growth and transformation acknowledges that, in the more advanced and subtle stages of transformation, one is inevitably drawn into the spiritual realm.  We discover more nearly who we are and that allows us to create greater and deeper intimacy with those around us.  This intimacy invites us back into a deeper self-awareness and, as we move further and further into our deepest apprehension of our Self, we find the divine presence resting at the core of each of us.

Throughout our society there is a great longing for more safe and satisfying relationships, a deeper connection to others in ways that promote the welfare of all, and a profound spiritual awareness.  Nevertheless, there are many who not only don't regard the local congregation as a source for support in building just and stable relationships, they see it as a model for judgment, rejection, and abuse.  The intolerance shown by those who picket the funerals of fallen soldiers, who propose to burn the Quran, and who demonize others and themselves because of sexual orientation, causes many to flee the Church.

Those of us who know that such actions are antithetical to our beliefs and to the teachings of Jesus, who love the traditions, the history, the texts, and the people of the Church, find ourselves perplexed by the way Christianity is seen by so many, even those who claim to follow Christ.  We long to manifest the Church as a source for social healing rather than for rancor and division.

• What if we were able to apply the tools for building healthy relationships which have been discovered in the last fifty years to the language for personal, relational, and social transformation which have been part of our faith for the last two thousand years?
• What if we were able to transform our local congregations into schools in which we learn and teach about the qualities which are present in just and stable relationships?  
• What if the local congregation became a beacon for justice, hope, and healing in a society which threatens to lapse into oppression, despair and estrangement?

Transforming Relationships: Discovering a Vision for the Church is committed to creating that future.  We will do it by mapping our existing language for transformation (being born again, distinguishing life in the flesh from life in the Spirit, having faith in the resurrection, etc.) onto the most robust tools for deepening our awareness of ourselves and each other.  We will apply these tools to those events in our common life where we most fear alienation and estrangement.

You are invited to join us.  A group is currently meeting each Wednesday morning (except when Ministerium meets).  We will continue until the crush of Christmas stops us.  Then in the third week of January we will reconstruct ourselves into two groups .  If you are interested in joining this program in January, please contact me.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Executive Director of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution

314-853-9385 (mobile)

Internet Resources for IFS Community Building

I have written in a prior post about my interest in developing a more robust IFS Community and connecting that community to the Center for Self Leadership in a manner that promotes mutual accountability. While there are many avenues for creating and sustaining this relationship, one of the most promising is the use of the Internet. The Community is spread out all over the globe and the Internet erases distance.

I have a strong concern that we have not made good use of the tools the Web provides us. Just at this most recent conference [October 2010] I often noted that there are tools we could have used that would have greatly enhanced the experience for those of us in attendance and which could have included those who were not.

• We met in a venue that had Wi-Fi coverage but the resource was not accessible to us. It is a simple matter to get an Internet connection and set up a wireless access point. This would allow for a great many things.

• When a presenter has a presentation to which we want access, we pass around a piece of paper on which we write our email addresses. As we do this, we are distracted from the talk and likely to make entry errors or to write undecipherable characters. It is much easier to go to the web site to get the presentation materials or to go to the forum page to sign up for notifications about the resulting conversation.

• I had a great chat with a guy named Frank who teaches spirituality at Claremont. I would like to connect with him but we didn’t exchange cards. I would like to go to the roster of Conference attendees and do a search for him. But there is no such roster. One could be easily constructed by the attendees themselves.

• At one workshop I attended, excitement about the topic was so high that we had nearly universal interest in generating a subsequent conversation or retreat. We know there are others who were at other workshops offered at the same time or even others who were unable to attend the conference who will be interested. It would be great to send a notice to anyone in the community who has indicated they want notification when events in this field are planned.

Creating these options is not difficult. It will take very little work and the cost can easily be born by those using the tools. We don't need to create new ways to harness the Internet to meet our needs. The resources are already available and many of them are free. Let me just spell out my dream system, recognizing that the design of the social networking site should be created by the community itself.

How it might work
When someone goes to the CSL site to purchase a service or resource they are invited to login or to create a profile if they are new. Everyone who creates such a profile becomes a member of the community. The community is defined as those who have ever purchased a book, a training, or a conference slot from CSL. Similarly, when someone offers a workshop for the Conference, they sign in or sign up. Everyone who comes to the Conference or training is a member of the community.

Each member has a profile page on which they can post information about themselves which can only be accessed by other members. They can restrict that information to only those members they have created a "friend" relationship with. They can link to their own web site or they can link to a file they have placed on the Community site if they don't have their own. Thus a presenter can upload a file that other members can access (as with a workshop presentation).

Each member's profile will show what Conferences they attended, what trainings they have completed, and perhaps other items like when they led or assisted at a training or presented at a conference. This could be a sort of IFS resume.

Members can form groups around interests. Any member can create an interest area and any member can join that group if they share the interest. Thus there can be an IFS and Breathwork group that can easily communicate with other members of the group.

Members can control what notifications they get about the activities of other members. They can chose to receive email whenever another member offers a workshop or when anyone in their interest group makes a post to the forum.

Forums are generated by members and the administrator of the forum is the person who created it. They can choose to moderate all posts or leave the forum un-moderated or can appoint another member to be the moderator.

Members can search the profiles of other members to find all persons named Frank, or all with the word Claremont in their profile. Email can be sent from within the site.

Making it happen
It is most unfortunate that Noah Rubinstein of GoodTherapy.org was unable to attend the conference. He has generously offered to enhance the social networking capabilities of the CSL site and it may well be that he has already charted out these or similar enhancements. I deeply hope that we can have such resources in place as we prepare to gather in Boston next October.

CSL and the IFS Community

Is the Center for Self Leadership a corporation or a faith community?


This is the question I heard myself ask aloud in the last workshop session of the 2010 Conference as we were considering the relationship between IFS and Christianity (Mary Steege, Sunday morning). I can say without hesitation that for me this is a community of faith and I know that to be the case for many others who see themselves as part of the IFS Community.

At the same time I remember that at the workshop on using IFS with Groups (Tracy McNabb, Friday afternoon), one newer member of the community (only four years), who is someone nearly everyone at the Conference knows by name, tearfully acknowledged a part that feels like an outsider. When Tracy invited others in the fishbowl group to check and see if they had similar parts, every hand went up. This may just mean that we all have parts that feel like an outsider, but the fact that this arose so immediately in the demonstration group suggests this is a common fear that the community is not addressing as well as it might and as well as I would like it to.

My perspective on these matters is informed by my role as an ordained minister and pastoral counselor who incorporates the distinctions and practices of IFS into all of my work. Some of that work is as a consultant with local congregations and faith-based organizations about team building and conflict resolution. From that perspective it seems to me that the mission of the Center for Self Leadership can be greatly enhanced by clarifying the nature of the relationship between the corporation and its employees on the one hand, and the community and its members on the other. How these two entities (corporation and community) envision themselves and their relationship is starkly different. This difference was highlighted for me at the Town Hall Meeting when Jon, bombarded by suggestions about what might be done, responded that we don't have enough resources. Many around him reflected back that we are awash in resources. The difference is whether "we" are the Center and its paid staff, or "we" are the community of IFS proponents and practitioners.

There once was the Internal Family Systems Association (IFSA). It functioned as a membership auxiliary to the Center. A couple of years ago IFSA went away with the promise that its functions would be picked up by the Center. Two new activities of the Center that seem related to the identification of and support for community are the implementation of a credentialing program and the erection of a forum on the web site. The credentialing program actually has nothing to do with community building but, in the absence of anything else, it appears as the only way to get to be "in." This may be one of the reasons for the resistance to the program.

I will say more about our web presence in a bit, but the forum is too low on features and too high on central control to really be a good platform for community development. I know of groups on LinkedIn and Yahoo which have sprouted and I have started groups on Google. The longing for connection within the IFS community is bursting forth spontaneously because there is insufficient outlet for this impulse within the programs of the Center.

I know nothing about the staffing of the Center, but I suspect that no one on the Center staff has responsibility for community development. This probably just falls to Jon along with everything else that no one else has on his or her list. I joked to a friend at the conference that the Center needs a chaplain. She thought we would do better to find a different label for that role but agreed that it would be nice to have someone identified whose responsibility it is to nurture and support the relationships between the various aspects of the community. This is not to say that we don't already have some folks with crazy mad skills in this area. It is only to say that none of them has the authority to act to do community resourcing.

Because the Center exists virtually, I suspect that most of the juices for community building are absorbed in creating a strong sense of "we" among the staff.

In Stephen Greene's excellent workshop (Friday morning) on IFS and neurobiology, we were reminded of the distinctions that Dan Siegel makes about chaos and rigidity and their relationship to differentiation and linkages on the way to integration. All systems can become chaotic or rigid but the place where there is the greatest flow is a region between the two where integration lives. We construct integration through a balance of differentiation (distinguishing this from that) and linkages (connecting this with that). Chaotic systems lack connections. Rigid systems lack distinctions. We need both for integration.

It is my sense that, to the Community, the Center looks rigid. To the Center, the Community appears chaotic. To move toward integration we will need to differentiate and build linkages.

When at the Town Hall Meeting we began to discuss concerns that the vision statement was too broad and that we need a more specific mission statement, we were moving toward greater differentiation. We were seeking to identify some measurable objectives. We tend to be better at distinctions than connections. I noticed this also in the formula of the vision statement. I don't remember the words, but what I got was that we are trying to support the awareness in the world that there is such a thing as "being in Self" and to encourage everyone to become able to be there and to hold that awareness and energy.

When I first started working with the model, it took me a while to "get" what it means to be in Self. But once I had the distinction [both knowing the theory and embodying the experience] and gained proficiency with the awareness practices that are able to reliably build that awareness, I found that I can pretty much be in Self any time I want. Any time, that is, when I am alone. It is much harder to do when others are around. When I am with others I find it much harder to hold Self energy. The real trick is to be in Self with others.

Thus, it seems to me, the loftier vision is not just to be in Self, but to be able to be in Self with others such that they are able to be in Self. And more than that, to, in the context of the relationship we create when we are both in Self, be able to witness together the parts we each have that carry burdens such that those burdens are eased.

My vision is that the Center and the Community may both become able to be in Self with each other such that those parts of each that are pushed to extreme positions are witnessed and their burdens eased. While I absolutely believe we have the will and the wisdom to do this, we are not there yet.

The harder part for us is not the making of distinctions, but of building healthy relationships. We need to focus more on the creation of new linkages and we need a mechanism for creating and sustaining those connections.
 
In the absence of these linkages we miss some great opportunities to promote the mission of the Center and the Community. We have persons and small gatherings of IFS practitioners who are committed to the model and the mission and who want to make things happen in their communities but feel either unsupported or actually discouraged in doing things on their own without direct support or direction from CSL. The net result is that the Center is seen as anxious to maintain control. Such control makes good sense as there is a very understandable wish to protect the purity of the teaching and that it be offered in the best possible light. Nevertheless, this control feels as though it is coming from a manager. It doesn't feel like Self energy.

One of the ways we can strengthen and clarify relationships is through the use of social networking technology on the Internet. I don't mean to suggest that online tools will do everything we need, but the Internet offers many robust options. I have written a second post that spells out in detail what I know to be possible and what I hope we will agree to in terms of social networking for the IFS Community.

Whatever the medium, I deeply hope we will create the mechanisms by which we can maximize the power of this great community.

Team Building

Every system fluctuates between being too constrained or rigid and too loose or chaotic. The place of greatest integration and effectiveness--flow-- is somewhere between the two. We want to have both clear distinctions between the various parts of the system and clear linkages between those parts.

Further, a part of a system may appear to be too rigid from one perspective and too chaotic from another. A couple trying to set a budget may find one person urging greater flexibility in the budget while the other wants tighter controls.

When a system appears rigid, we may think we need to get it to loosen up and relax some of the tight linkages. In fact it works better to differentiate the various parts of the system. When a system appears chaotic, we may think we need to get it to be more homogeneous. In fact we do better to support the creation of better connections between the various parts.

What this means for an organization, like a church, is that the overall health of the organization is furthered by doing two things well. One is to clearly identify and differentiate each of the parts of system with regard to the roles--the rights and responsibilities--of each person, committee, or board. The second is to identify and support each connection--the flow of information and energy-- between all of the differentiated parts.

If one were to map out the organization one might get a huge sheet of newsprint and show each of the officers and committees and informal groups as nodes in a matrix and then draw lines to indicate the way information and energy flows between them. So one of the nodes is the event of Sunday Worship and related to this node is the Pastor in the role of Preacher and the Choir and the Ushers and so forth. Each node brings information to the event and energy in the form of some kind of resource, a sermon, a hymn, collection of the offering, and so forth.

If one were to map the whole organization in exquisite detail we could easily cover a whole wall. We normally only map the larger structures and we do that with a document called the By-Laws or the Constitution. Or we may have Job Descriptions or Standing Rules. Such maps are much easier to carry around and to access.

But by-laws and job descriptions are not always followed. We adapt the organization over time to fit new circumstances. Sometimes we amend the by-laws and sometimes we amend how we do business to bring the two into line with each other. But sometimes issues arise that aren't referenced on the existing maps. We don't have the guidance about what to do that would come from a prior agreement. We have to construct a new way of being with each other in the organization.

Typically we discover the need for a new agreement because of the presence of a conflict. Some node in the matrix isn't getting the information or the energy that it needs or expects from another node in the matrix. While this is troublesome, if we have a way to address the situation creatively we can repair the matrix and restore or create a higher level of functioning in the organization. This requires that we see the conflict as an opportunity to be explored and embraced, not as a problem to be avoided or suppressed.

Battering and US foreign policy

This is an article I wrote a few weeks before the US invasion of Iraq. It came to mind because of a recent conversation with a colleague. I have made only minor editing changes to clean it up for posting to my blog now. I reference it from time to time and want it to be publically available.

Mark Lee Robinson
February 16, 2003

I wasn’t able to get to the Instead of War rally at Pilgrim Church on Saturday until almost 2:00 and thus was only able to get into the room by standing behind the screen by the organ bench. I have never seen so many people in that sanctuary. The Fire Marshall would have had a fit.

I was late because I had been upstairs with the men in the Abuse Prevention Class that meets at Pilgrim on Saturdays. These are men who are ordered as a condition of their probation to complete an intervention program because they have used violence against an adult intimate partner. These are called “men who batter.” The juxtaposition of these events in my life only served to underscore for me how much George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein have in common with the men in the Abuse Prevention Program.

The news coverage about the Instead of War Rally disclosed that there was a lone dissenter across the street from the church. It seems his position was that we shouldn’t tolerate Saddam’s behavior any longer. Well, I’m with him. I don’t see Saddam’s behavior as acceptable. The question is not do we support his policies, but how do we oppose them. George W. and his cronies are of the opinion that we stop a bully by being a bigger bully. This is not about whose side we are on, but about what we see as effective mechanisms for positive social change. I want to be very pragmatic about this. A military attack on Iraq will not create peace in the Middle East. It may very well cause a regime change, but we have no reason to expect that the new regime will be able to create greater social justice and stability than the present one.

The men in the program are not men who like beating up their loved ones. They are men who are so scared of the instability in their relationships that they get frantic and do the only thing they can think of to do. They even say about the violence, “there was nothing else I could do.” The purpose of the Abuse Prevention Program is to show them all of the other things they can do to create what they need. There are many other choices. They just don’t see them as ways to get what they need. This is largely because they don’t know what they need. What they know is what they want. And what they want is for someone else to change.

The roots of domestic violence are the belief that the only way I am going to get what I need is for me to get someone else to change and the belief that I have the right to use violence to make others change. Thus “when I want to go out with my buddies and my wife is complaining that I am taking the car when she was going to take the kids to see her mom, and she won’t shut up, I decide I have the right to slap her to get her to be quiet. What else am I supposed to do? She was getting hysterical. You can’t let them push you around. They won’t respect you if you act soft. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

There are, of course, differences between domestic violence and international violence. But there are some significant commonalities as well. They include:

• The offender/attacker defines the problem as being someone else’s behavior. Because the other is doing things they must not do (or failing to do something they must) there is a problem.
• The solution to the problem is in getting the other to change and the offender/attacker gives himself permission to use violence to effect that change.
• The offender/attacker refuses to look at any of the ways that the problem as it is defined is a problem for the offender or is caused by the choices of the offender. There is no willingness to be accountable for the problem.
• Any suggestion by others that the offender/attacker has some responsibility for the problem is met with indignation and a charge of disloyalty (treason).

There may well be lessons for us in addressing the international violence by looking at the successes of domestic violence intervention. Among the strategies of the domestic violence intervention community we find:

• Support for victims: without supporting the victims of the violence, there is no awareness that the problem exists. The preparation and distribution of hygiene packs is an example of this support for the Iraqi people. There are many other ways to provide support and there are many other victims.
• Ending secrecy: the fact that the violence happens in hidden ways allows it to continue. By bringing the facts to light the oppression is undermined. One way this is happening now is the call to have the Bush administration reveal estimates for civilian casualties in the event of an invasion.
• Isolating offenders: by getting the peers of the offender to remove permission for the behavior. This happens in domestic violence intervention when groups of men come out against violence against women. It happens in the international arena when other nations refuse to support the invasion.
• Battering Creating legal consequences: when offenders are arrested for criminal behavior and experience sanctions, there is the strong message that such behavior will not be tolerated. We must work to get the US to agree to the establishment of a world court to which we will be accountable.

Clergy Day of Discernment Task Force

Over the past year a group of clergy of the St. Louis Association (with a token lay person or two) has met every month to six weeks to discuss the future of the Association and the Church. This group has no formal authority. It was responsible for the Clergy Day of Discernment at Parkway in May and has pledged to follow up on the findings of that day with future events. Donna Kendrick-Philips chairs the meetings and Margaret Philip handles the mailing list for reminders. We meet at Eden. All are welcome to attend.

The most recent meeting was in the commons on July 28, 2010. The next meeting will be September 7 at 3:00. What follows are the observations of one participant in the July meeting. This should not be considered minutes of the meeting but only a collection of the observations of one person.

I found this to be a fascinating and spirited conversation by the nine who attended the nearly two and half hour meeting. Present were Starsky Wilson, Traci Blackmon, Karen Miller, Randy Orwig, Donna Kendrick-Philips, Margaret Philip, Jacki Tyler, Betsy Happel, and myself, Mark Robinson. A focus of the meeting was the memo I wrote following the June meeting which began with the “elephants” that Cindy Bumb had identified as having been finally named, and ended with my sense that what we are looking for is greater clarity and commitment around building mutually accountable relationships.

A second focus of the meeting was the content we each shared as we “checked in” about what was currently arising in our personal and professional lives. Portions of this check-in referenced broken covenants by youth on mission trips and lock-ins. While no one got harmed, the transgressions hurt the whole community. We also considered the request by Gateway ONA that the Association begin a process of discerning whether to declare itself Open and Affirming.

There arose from the discussion a new vision of what the Church might be like for us and how it might manifest in the St. Louis Association. I want to start with that vision and then talk about some of the implications and some of the program ideas that came from the conversation.

 

The Homogeneous Church

It was never really true that all of our congregations were alike or even very similar. But I think it is true that, for most of our members, there is a sense that there is a best way to be the church. Some churches have a better choir and some have a better youth group and some have better mission trips, but all churches are supposed to excel at being all things for all people. Thus, when someone moves their membership from one church to another that means they find the new church to be in some sense better. Not just better for them, but ontologically better. When a pastor loses a member or a family to another church that means the pastor has failed.

One of the “elephants” is the sense of competition for members and the concern that, when members move, the pastor who has “won” them has engaged in sheep-stealing. But out of our conversation a different sense of the Church emerged for me and it allows us to see the transfer of members in a very different way.

We have never been alike. Our churches have always been distinct but have never been very skilled at articulating the differences that make each unique. When we see that some churches have great music programs and some have robust youth groups and some are dedicated to addressing problems of food insecurity and some are active in Habitat for Humanity and some are able to articulate a progressive theology in the idiom of the Black Church and some can minister to people who are rich in things but poor in the Spirit and that it is just fine and even precious that we are so distinct, then we can see all of our congregations as unique expressions of one Church. When a family leaves my congregation and joins one with other strengths, I didn’t lose members of my church. They are still members of my Church, just attaching themselves to a different congregation which better speaks to their needs at the moment.

 

The Association as Church

One of the barriers to seeing ourselves as members of the same Church is that “they” are so different from “us.” I can’t think of any issue for which this is more vividly true than for how we address concerns about openly affirming our members who are GLBT. There are deep wounds left from the affirmation of full marriage for all people by the General Synod three years ago. We have members who are horrified by being in a church that condones sin and we have members who are infuriated and hurt that they are still not fully accepted by their own church.

If we can see the request to have a conversation about the Association becoming open and affirming as an opportunity to address and heal these wounds we can go a long way to becoming a more unified but not uniform Church. This will require a process that may have to be more careful and complex than has been used by other Associations as they have considered these questions.

A second issue arose out of the awareness of the Confirmation Day event coming up in October at Eden. While we think it is a great event, we are bit puzzled about why it is something Eden does. What would it be like if we were able to create a confirmation program as an activity of the Association? What would it be like for Confirmation to be an activity of the Association rather than of the Congregation? What if we all pooled our leadership and our eligible youth and conducted something that connected the kids in a vibrant and vigorous way with the larger church as manifest in the Association and the closely associated institutions in the St. Louis area? What if our kids grew up looking forward to being old enough to do Confirmation with other kids from all around St. Louis and then “graduated” into a Youth Program of the Association that kept them active in fellowship and mission?

But wouldn’t that require an Association staff to run the programs? Perhaps, but if we look at the recent and rousing success of the Hope for Haiti event a couple of weeks ago we can see a model of collaboration. That event worked because everyone working on it knew they couldn’t do it on their own and so asked for help. It worked because knowing they needed help, they knew who to ask and those they asked came through. It worked because they were able to construct relationships that are mutually accountable.

 

Becoming Mutually Accountable

We sometimes refer to the buildings we own as “the church.” We know that isn’t true. The church isn’t the building but the people. But, in fact, that isn’t true either. The church isn’t the people. You can get a bunch of people together and still not have a church. The church isn’t the people but the relationships between the people. It is the history, the commitment, the agreements, and the hopes of all who identify as members of the church.

Church is relationship. Relationships are hard. They have always been hard but they have gotten much harder. Not but a couple of generations ago we all knew who we were and how we were to be with each other. The roles were clearly defined. We may not always have done what we were “supposed to” do, but at least we knew what that was.

Now it is much harder. Roles are changing…fast. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the institution of marriage. I don’t know anyone who has, or even wants, the marriage that their parents had. And the same thing is happening in the role of pastor. We aren’t sure who we are supposed to be.

We know we need integrity. We know that when we enter into a covenant, even when we sign one with our parents before going on a mission trip or other activity with the youth group, we expect that everyone knows what they are agreeing to and will abide by it. When our youth willfully and repeatedly violate the covenant and then think “putting on puppy-dog eyes” will atone, we become alarmed at their capacity to build healthy and just relationships.

It may well be that the task of the Church is to support the creation of healthy and just relationships. For us to be able to do that, we first have to know how to do it for ourselves. But a relationship isn’t something I can do by myself. I have to construct them with others.

Toward the end of the meeting I tossed out that I have had a series of conversations about building on the content of Boundary Training by going on to look, not so much at what we shouldn’t do, but at what we can do to be healthy. The last portion of the most recent iteration of Boundary Training does this by introducing the theme of accountability. This will be the core of a seminar I would like to create under the banner “Beyond Boundaries: Building Mutually Accountable Relationships.” I will spell out more of what I have in mind in another memo.

I have tried to weave together in this narrative some of the themes that arose for me in this remarkable meeting. I hope I have captured some of what others experienced as well. Let me just close with the observation that we all want to celebrate who we are and not gather to make lists of how we know we are dying. We are living and growing. We just don’t know who we are going to become as we grow up into the fullness of Christ. We trust that when two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, we are the Body of Christ which will not die.

Mark Lee Robinson

Beyond Boundaries: a conversation for St Louis Area clergy

I recently completed “Boundary Training” in fulfillment of the requirements of the Associations of the UCC for clergy with standing. While I can’t say I was really looking forward to it, it was a good day well spent with fellow clergy. The conversation was frank and open and the issues were real and relevant.

This iteration of the workshop is new. A committee of several pastors, conference staff, and active laypersons has revamped the structure of the workshop leaving in a couple of the best pieces of the older version while adding some new ones. All in all, it is better than the one I did three years ago which was better than the one from three years before that.

Still, I found myself disappointed. It is such a rich opportunity that perhaps my expectations and hopes are unrealistically high. The larger topic of how we construct relationships that are not only safe but deeply satisfying is one that has consumed much of my professional life. It is not enough that we as clergy don’t misuse our power and privilege; it is the mission of the Church to be a source for health and healing in all of our relationships.

The core of my problem with “Boundary Training” is that it is about boundaries. Given the history of how this requirement came to be and given the larger cultural concerns that make it continue to be necessary, it is not at all surprising that we want to make it very clear where the line is so that no one can step across it and claim they didn’t see it. If we are to be righteous we must know what constitutes a transgression.

But as Paul has taught us, we are not saved by the law. We are not given license to violate the law, but simply obeying will not bring us into the fullness of Christ. Within the context of the workshop we began to consider what it means to be accountable. This moved us much closer to what I see as the heart of the matter, but accountability is a complex concept and would take a more robust paradigm than the ones we were using for us to become able to fully realize it.

I have a sense that there are others who share my longing to go further and deeper. To that end I am inviting all St. Louis area clergy join me in an extended conversation. I am happy to give it a place and a structure. If we are few we can meet at my office and if we are many we can easily find one of our church’s meeting rooms. I suggest we meet on a Wednesday morning in the space left by the vacationing Ministerium. That may not work well but we can find what is best for most of those who are interested.

If you are interested in joining the conversation, simply email me and I will be sure you remain informed of plans to gather. You can contact me at MLRobinson@charter.net.

Groundhog Day Release

The publicity team for the release of the book Just Conflict is preparing for a large campaign to begin next Tuesday. As it happens, that is Groundhog Day. While the timing was not coordinated with this odd holiday by design, it has a kind of synchronicity which connects with the 1993 film by Harold Ramis starring Bill Murray.

In the film “Groundhog Day” Murray plays Phil Connors, a weatherman for a Pittsburg TV station, who once again is on assignment in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for the February 2 festivities. He is not pleased. Indeed, very little seems to please Connors. He is a smart and funny but shallow and narcissistic loner who manages to alienate everyone he relates to.

Without explanation Connors has predicted that a big storm heading across the mid-west will miss mid-Pennsylvania. He is wrong. It hits and strands him and his team in Punxsutawney for a second day. Except it is the same day. He wakes up on what ought to be February 3, but it is Groundhog Day all over again. At least it is for Connors. For everyone else it is the first time they have had this day.

Day after day it is Groundhog Day. No one changes but Connors, and it takes him a while to begin to adjust his own behavior. It is Day Four before he remembers to miss stepping in the slush-filled hole on his way to his moment on camera at Gobbler’s Knob, the park in the center of town where Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and predicts six more weeks of winter.

As it turns out, both Phil’s are afraid of their shadows. In Connors’ case it is not his physical shadow but his psychic one that scares him. He can’t get close to others because he is not close to himself. The heart of the film is the exploration of his transformation, kicking and screaming much of the way, into a person who not only knows himself, but likes himself.

Along the way he does what we all do to avoid deep connection. He explores all manor of self-destructive behavior. He has the luxury and the curse of having no long-term consequences. No matter what he does today, he will get a fresh start tomorrow.

He also explores manipulating others for his own immediate desires. He seduces women, punches out an insurance salesman, robs an armored car, all with no lasting effect on his self-satisfaction. In the end he does succeed in breaking out of his predicament, but one of the marvels of the film is that it is not obvious what he did to release himself.

Considering what worked for Phil Connors makes Groundhog Day the perfect time to promote Just Conflict. We all share in Phil Connors’ predicament. In one scene where Phil is describing his situation to a couple of town drunks with the lament that it is the same day over and over, one of them responds by saying, “Yes, I guess that about sums it up.” We all, to some degree, have the same day over and over.

While there are many powerful lessons the film can help us learn, there are two which stand out. One is that it really is the same thing over and over. We can try to duck or ignore life’s problems but they keep coming back. While these problems are not as obvious for most of us as they are for Phil Connors, we all have patterns of conflict and we will continue to have opportunities to address them. Avoiding these opportunities just keeps us stuck.

The second lesson is the one it took Phil the longest to learn but which finally, in my judgment, set him free from the rut of the same thing over and over. In the beginning Phil tried a series of strategies which would either exploit the advantage his predicament gave him (carefully planning an armored car heist by observing the security lapses) or which attempted to get others to do something which would save him from his plight (getting Rita, his producer played by Andie MacDowell, to spend the night with him so he was not alone when the day reset). What these strategies share is the hope that we will save ourselves by getting others to change.

We all know we can’t change others. This was abundantly clear to Phil Connors. But it didn’t stop him from trying and it doesn’t stop the rest of us. It was only when Phil discovered that he couldn’t make Rita love him—that he couldn’t become so perfectly who she wanted that she would not resist him—that he gave up being dedicated to manipulation. Instead he decided to put the same dedication into being kind and considerate as he had put into getting others to do as he wanted. He dedicated himself to learning to play piano, not to impress others, but for the love of music.

When he transcends self-centeredness and becomes deeply centered in himself, he draws others to him. In the end, Rita falls in love with him because he is deeply connected with himself, not because he is who she wants him to be. This is a lesson we all need to learn. Deep and durable relationships come from authenticity. We can’t be authentically ourselves when we are trying to make others love us.

Phil is able to effect this transformation in himself by practicing acts of kindness and practicing his piano playing over and over, day after day. It is practices for self-discovery and transformation which Just Conflict hopes to teach.

Having a Committed Relationship

One frequent rough place in the development of an intimate relationship occurs when one party to the relationship wants to confirm that they have a “commitment” to each other or that they are truly “in a relationship.” This is tough for a couple of really good reasons.

One reason is that this may be the first time that have actually talked about the relationship itself. It is one thing to be in relationship with another; it is another to make the relationship itself the focus of shared attention.

When I was in graduate school I became close friends with a guy who lived across the hall in my dorm. His name was George. I went home to see my folks one weekend and as I was driving back to school I became aware that I was looking forward to seeing George. As I walked down the hall towards my room, George came out of his room and called out, “Hey, Mark! Good to see you. I missed you.” We had never before spoken about our friendship and so as we acknowledged missing each other we were moving to a new level of interaction.

In primary intimate relationships this transition is especially fraught with danger. Not only are we now talking about our relationship, we are using language that may not mean the same things to each other. Are we dating, going steady, hooking up, hanging out, going together…what? I had a teenage client mention to me that he was “going with” one girl but really wanted to “go with” another. I asked him what it meant to be going with someone. He didn’t understand the question. They didn’t actually do anything; it was just an understanding that their relationship was special and different.

Adults who are exploring an intimate relationship have this problem as well. Even if they say they are committed, what are they committed to? Relationships work much more smoothly when these expectations and agreements are very clear. But coming to this clarity can be very difficult.

Typically one party to the relationship is urgent that the understanding be clear and the other is less excited about having this conversation. In my experience, women tend to be more anxious about establishing clear expectations than are men, but I have certainly known couples where it was the man who was pressing for sharp boundaries.

Having the talk about what we mean to each other is hard because it is talking about the relationship instead of just being in it. Additionally, we each need some clarity about what we want from and for the relationship. Coming to this clarity involves a series of steps. At each one we can get hung up.

1) “This relationship is not so important to me that I am going to put energy into figuring out what I want it to be like. Whatever is fine with me.”

Not all relationships are so important that I am going to be willing to figure out what I want it to be like. This clarity takes time and attention and I am just not willing to do that work when the relationship is with someone I know from work, for example. Just talking about our relationship makes it seem like more than it is for me.

2) “I care about this relationship and want it to be clear and strong, but I’m not sure what that would be like.”

Even when I can say that this relationship is special in some way, and that it is more important to me than just a routine relationship with anyone, that doesn’t mean I actually know what I want it to be like.

3) “I know what I want it to be like but I don’t have the words to describe it clearly enough.”

Even when I can be clear about what I want, I may not trust that I have the words to describe what I want. I have been clear in prior relationships only to find that what my words meant to the other something was different from what they meant to me. I can’t trust that my words will convey my meaning.

4) “I think I can say what I want the relationship to be like but I am afraid that if I do my statement will be a source of conflict.”

Even when I know what I want and trust that I can communicate my wishes clearly there are still potential problems.

a) “When I say what I want but what I want is not what my partner wants it will become something we will fight about.”

It may be that my definition for the relationship is so different from what my partner wants that she or he will be angry and perhaps even choose to leave the relationship.

b) “When I say what I want and I am not always able to follow through on how I want to be it will be a reason to confront me.”

Even if we are both clear about what we want and we are pretty close in how we want things to be between us, I know that I don’t always act as I have intended. If I say how I want things to be, and then don’t do what I need to do to create what I said I wanted, I will be subject to criticism. A part of me wants to protect me by simply being vague.

For these reasons it can be very difficult for a couple to talk about what they want the relationship to be like. So let me offer a suggestion about a couple of topics the couple can address in trying to navigate these potentially treacherous waters.

1) Is this relationship sufficiently important to each of you that you want it to be special? Do you want this to be different from any other relationship you currently have?

2) If it is special for both of you, what are your concerns about being clear about how you want it to be different from any other relationship?

Be aware that as you have this conversation you are not going to name the same things. This is not a problem. It would probably be a bigger cause for concern if you only had the same concerns. You are different people. If you were totally alike it would be really hard for you to get along.

Be aware also that what you each want the relationship to be like is certain to change as you get to know each other better. If what you each want isn’t changing, you probably are not in a relationship with each other. Instead you are each in a relationship with who you want the other to be, not who the other actually is.

If you have trouble with this, you may want to review Discipline #10.

Gender Justice Roots for Just Conflict

What might it mean for women and men to have deeply intimate and just relationships when, for so much of human history, relationships between men and women have been shaped by dominance, gender inequality, and violence? 

This question arose for me out of thirty years of work in the domestic violence intervention community starting with my role as a volunteer on the staff of one of the first programs in the country to do intervention with men who batter.  This program is RAVEN in St. Louis.  I was the coordinator of counseling services there for over eight years in the 1980’s.

The parent group for RAVEN developed from the planning team for the 4^th National Conference on Men and Masculinity held at Washington University in St. Louis in 1977. That conference brought together men (and some women) who were interested in discovering how our understandings of gender shaped our relationships with other men, with women, and with our children.

The planning group continued to meet after the conference and formed what was first called Brothers in Change but which was later changed to the St. Louis Organization for Changing Men. We were a collective which allowed anyone who completed the training and volunteered at least three hours a week to be a member of the staff and to participate in the consensus decision-making process. That is, anyone who was male. Women were excluded from membership.

The broader organization had multiple goals and activities. There was a monthly public meeting that explored some issue of men’s identity, often through a film and subsequent discussion. There was a group exploring the roles of men as fathers.  And there was what we called the Childcare Collective which provided childcare at women’s events. The intervention program working with men who batter was not originally an activity of the collective. It mostly arose out of a concern to figure out why men would physically assault their women partners. Some of the men on staff had themselves been violent in past relationships.

I took the training to join the staff in the fall of 1979 and started co-leading one of the groups for men who batter in January 1980. In June of 1980 I went to my first National Coalition Against Domestic Violence conference and discovered how controversial our work was. I saw us as allies with the women who work with battered women. It never occurred to me that there would be women who opposed what we were doing. Still I found that I had great respect for the women who were not impressed or encouraged by our work. Their indifference and skepticism gave me a very helpful lens through which to see what we were trying to do.

A central concern for feminism in the 70’s (and which has continued to this day) is the problem of violence against women. Much of the activism of the day was about creating support services for the victims of that violence: victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. The men who were attracted to Brothers in Change were primarily social activists who wanted to change the world. While we were not welcome to join the women in their work, we envied their zeal and the cohesiveness of their consciousness raising groups.

It was self-evident that the women who were victims were the victims of men. As men, it was our job to address those men, our brothers and at times ourselves, who perpetrated the violence. We saw ourselves as unwilling beneficiaries of men’s violence against women and we committed ourselves to ending it. While we would have enjoyed women’s thanks, it was clear we were not going to get applause for cleaning up the mess we were making.

So the Domestic Violence “Community” was actually two communities. There were the women who worked with women, and the men who worked with men. We didn’t meet together routinely. From time to time there was occasion to each present at the same event and we knew each other socially, but there was a sense that our work was different and that there was little reason to collaborate.

As men we knew that our work depended on the work that women were doing. Indeed, there is no “problem of domestic violence” in those communities where there are no services for battered women. On the other hand women considered that we were at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. We certainly weren’t going the get the men to change and we might give their partners senseless hope which would lure them back into danger. There was no sense that we men were in a mutual relationship with the women. Some of us felt a sense of justice in this imbalanced relationship. We were atoning for thousands of years of patriarchal violence and oppression.

But by the 90’s the politics started to change. It became more and more important to model gender equality and that meant having men working at rape crisis centers and women co-leading intervention groups for men who batter. As this shift happened it also became more critical that we have a clear notion of what just and equitable relationships between women and men might look like.

This clarity has not emerged in the communities of which I have been a part. We have a pretty clear sense of what we don’t want, but we don’t have a clear vision of what healthy relationships are like. It was my wish to describe just relationships in gender neutral terms that helped prompt me to develop the ideas I present in Just Conflict.

In order to envision what healthy relationships look like in the book we consider the nature of power, kinds of relationships, forms of agreements, and tools to create and recreate accountability. In every instance it is important to take into account the effects of culture on our expectations. Nevertheless, just relationships are not shaped by the demands of gender. We must take seriously the trauma of abuse and discover ways of establishing a radical level of accountability if we are to build relationships which do not mimic the oppression that characterizes much of what is considered normal in this culture.

My personal efforts to answer these questions have resulted in the practical framework which is the vision of Just Conflict.