Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
-Matthew 5:37
Irish abbeys had boundaries. Their floor plans were set with intention for each space and wall, often with big red doors to welcome folks in. The red doors marked a safe sanctuary across Europe, and the tradition of safety behind the red door was echoed as a symbol of a safe house for those traveling the underground railroad to freedom.
Every church today may say they are welcoming, but the thing is you have to have boundaries to make that welcome really matter and actually keep folks safe. Early abbeys had boundaries and not just in the walls that held up the roof protecting folks from the rain. They had space to read their daily offices for the community practices; they had times for work and times for rest, times for prayer and times to create. All of this brings balance and boundaries that are not just physical but spiritual, and they honor our social-emotional needs.
And when things were particularly dangerous, they had a round tower.
There are more than 100 round towers dotting the Irish landscape, and there are two in Scotland. The base of the tower is almost always solid stone. Sometimes they were well constructed, and sometimes the ‘tower’ might seem more like rubble molded together. No matter the construction, they are stone because it turns out wood round towers…are well flammable.
Some folks imagine them as bell towers, but the architects and engineers remind us they weren't built to ring out an Irish tune. They were built to keep people safe. Waves of Vikings were raining violence across Europe and finding their way into Irish communities in the ninth and twelfth centuries.
The round tower had a first floor that was solid stone and the door into the round tower was on the second floor, higher than any person could get to without a ladder. When you climb to the top you find four windows, unless you’re in Kells or Kildare, there you will see five windows directed at the five roads into town looking out over every direction. The moment danger was spotted, they gathered the community and their most sacred items (often the beautiful books they created) and secured everyone inside. Pulling up the ladder, they then shut and barred the door.
And then they waited. Waited for the danger to move on.
Not everyone made that choice. See, you can visit castles of a similar era and find a feature called “murder holes.” They are what they say they are. When the castle was under attack, they could rain hot liquids or heavy stones down on an invading army. Everything in the castle is built for this defensive and violent position, even the stairs up the tower are built to favor the right handed defender and put the right handed attacker at a disadvantage…put the sword in your left hand and you might be a witch.
The round tower is a different response to violence, no murder holes that I know of to rain down…umm…murder on the Vikings. However, they were not extending the welcome mat to those who would wish them harm or posting a banner that says, “plunder here.” They make a boundary; they do everything they can to care for their community's safety, and they do so without responding to harm with harm.
They make this boundary, and it doesn’t always work to be honest, but it is their attempt at building a safe place. A place of refuge that responds to violence and threats without that same use of violence. A tower that has a boundary that says, ‘we are going to do the most we can to be safe and make safe space.’
Boundaries are Hard
I have been late to a clergy meeting and said, “Sorry I was late, I was banning and barring someone from our inclusive church.” They laughed, and then were shocked when I shared how a neighbor experiencing homelessness sat in the shop all day and wrote a violent sexual assault narrative about our manager on cards purchased at the Urban Abbey, and then left the cards for her to read. I knew he needed access to healthcare, housing and mental health care. I also know we need to be safe. I never thought I would have to call the police for help so much and neither did they. Most churches don’t. I have asked staff to call the police during communion. I have called 911 for intoxicated folks, naked folks, verbally abusive folks and, of course, five bomb threats. And I have had to fire not only staff but also volunteers to keep the community safe. I hate doing it every time, and it is all heavy emotional lifting. But I know the risk is too great not to act. I never imagined doing that when I started this place, and I didn’t learn about it in seminary.
I think boundaries are hard because you have to know so much about yourself to understand what boundaries you need. And you have to value yourself enough to enforce them, even when or especially when it makes someone else upset.
Boundaries are particularly hard when you grow up in a female body and everything around you says, “Hey don’t be rude, your boundaries are not important; good girls say yes.” We are told to say yes to hugs from strangers. Say yes to helping others, even if it’s at the expense of your wellbeing.
Just Say No
In fact, I remember being taught to say, ”no” on only two occasions. The first was by Nancy Reagan and her Just Say No to Drugs campaign, which I think research has proven didn’t work out so well. The second was the FCA’s push of purity culture, which boils down to, “Just say no” because girls who say yes are dirty and face eternal hell fire. Just say no, was a clear theme, but not really helpful in terms of boundaries. We really needed space to think about red flags and green flags in relationships, what we want and don’t want, like and dislike because life is filled with questions that need more answers than ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
Not only are we lacking training around boundaries for a healthy everyday life, many of us are from the Midwest where we are allergic to saying, “no.” It’s not really Nebraska nice. “No” can seem so harsh and unkind, even if we say, ‘No, thank you.’ The most aggressive we get is often passive aggressive, so defining boundaries is challenging, especially when you just wish everyone had some common sense about them and would be kind enough to not make you think or talk or establish them.
Just Say Yes!
When we started the Abbey, I wanted to be about saying Yes! Yes, you are welcome! Yes, we are more than a church! Yes, come all week long for coffee! Yes, relax and look at books. Yes, we are all these different efforts in one and yes, we love the messiness of it. But we struggled with saying, yes. Our staff said no to things that seemed so silly like a guest wanting to put peanut butter in their fruit smoothie or take their ceramic cup into the salon next door.
I wanted us to say, ‘yes’ so much I held staff meetings about how to say, ‘yes.’ I have literally said, “If you are about to say no, stop and think about how to work out a yes and if you can’t get there talk to me.” I created the inverse Nancy Reagan, with Just Say YES, for the love of God just say yes!
“Yes,” you can put peanut butter in your fruit smoothie. “Yes,” you can take your ceramic cup to the salon. Yes, we can host that event. We had such a hard time saying yes, even when it seemed so easy and so obvious. But then just say, “YES!” became a problem when the manager made a latte during our prayer. A barista said yes to making three smoothies while Sister Kathleen shared about the horrors and costs of Texas for-profit immigration detention centers (P.S. this was during Obama’s presidency and blender noise and for-profit detention centers are still a problem). We said yes to a partner event that went from 20 to 120 people in the morning, and everyone who came to work in our shop…well they never came back because they came to do their work and didn’t sign up to hear stories about human trafficking from an FBI agent.
We said yes to our neighbors experiencing homelessness and became something of a day center which became unsafe. Our Partners at Stephen Center stepped in to help with a plan for managing boundaries and reminded me our ‘hospitality’ wasn’t really helping anyone because we were a coffee shop with baristas, not a day center with social workers.
Just say no didn’t work, and just say yes didn’t either. What I really needed was something I learned from Maria Walker, “Yes and” and “No but.”
Yes you can warm up, and you need to respect other guests and head out after an hour.
No we can’t make you a smoothie during the presentation, but we can get you coffee, tea, soda or a pastry.
No, we are not a detox center or a healthcare facility, but we can help you reach out for support, find a case worker or call for help.
Yes, we can host your event, and we need to keep the group a small group during business hours.
Yes, we would love your help with Sunday School, and we need you to participate in the life of the church for six months first, then get a background check to get started.
No, Absolutely Not!
And sometimes we have learned to just say “no, absolutely not.” Like banning and barring the protesters who drove six hours to stomp around the Abbey and yell two F words at the children, their families and the reader during drag story hour.
Or telling Glen he was banned and barred from the Abbey because there are boundaries on when and where to have a conversation, and no one is allowed to come in this Abbey and make folks uncomfortable in their safe space.
Or starting a campaign like the Devin Please Stop Bothering Us campaign. Not only did he protest outside, but he emailed every community partner and told them I was running a pedofile ring. After one week of the Devin Please Stop Bothering Us Campaign, I emailed Devin. “Dear Devin, we started a Devin Please Stop Bothering Us campaign and raised 4,000 dollars. Thank you for your help! Couldn’t have done it without you if you message our partners or protest outside, I will reopen the campaign.”
Or the PhD clergy man we had to ban and bar on Ash Wednesday (ps he ash-ed himself after the service.) He was attending intermittently after moving to Omaha to work for another faith community. He was fired, and I didn’t really know why. Soon the reasons he left his other non-profit jobs began to surface in the national news. Then women in Omaha began to reach out to me about their experiences of his harassment, stalking and assault. I felt some relief that when he was in the Abbey; he pretty much only chatted with Kyle, or told me how I could do my job better (a frequent practice of male clergy in my experience.) But then I took a look at who he had friended on social media, and sure enough our young adult grad students were there.
When we chatted, she said, “Pastor Debra, I knew you would be asking me about Bud.” He had messaged her online, where I couldn’t see, and over and over invited her out. She politely declined. She mentioned her fiancee, and he responded that she misunderstood his intentions. He’s just a nice guy, and he just wanted to help her with school. She said two things, “I was trying to be nice because we are in church, and he was alone so we sat with him” and she said, “He said he was a pastor, so I assumed he would be nice.”
We banned and barred him in a letter, or tried too several times. He started calling the Abbey over and over to ask random questions. Then he began stalking the Abbey until he slipped in on Ash Wednesday, just as the service started. At the end, after he ash-ed himself, he tried to leave, but I had the paperwork in my apron pocket and informed him he could not come back, or I would call the police. His face was rage and shock, how dare I.
Months later there was a church trial. The women he harmed didn’t want to testify, so it came down to us. We were the only ones willing to testify in the trial to take his credentials away. The lawyers prepared me for this process and let me know Bud was assassinating my character. He said things like, “The Abbey is just a little fringe church, and Debra is a fringe pastor that nobody really likes. Her church is tiny. She is out there. She didn’t really ban and bar me; she is being manipulated by the church.”
There was also the worry that as this part of Bud’s story made national news, the Abbey would be in the spotlight too. Would it harm us to be associated with this situation and the allegations Bud was facing? Probably. And that’s probably why most organizations moved him on quietly without any trial and plenty of severance.
On the day of the trial, he gave up his credentials. He can never say he is a Methodist Pastor again.
Jesus 💜's Boundaries
We don’t think about Jesus having boundaries, probably for the same reason we don’t think he is political. We tend to domesticate him and his message in a way that is palatable for the powerful. We transform this change maker into a maintainer of the status quo because a community of quiet, boundary-less folks are much easier to use than a group of robust, committed folks with serious intentions and a profound sense of their own worth.
When we really look deeply, Jesus had extraordinarily clear boundaries. He doesn’t even respond to mom-guilt (Matthew 12:46-50). He eats with friends; he weeps with friends; he rests often in his favorite town of Bethany; he receives intimacy reclining on the chest of the beloved disciple (John 13:23), and he even takes a nap on a boat during a storm (Luke 8:23).
When folks seek healing, he offers it on his terms, on his timing. He leaves people in line when he is done, and to the man waiting for 38 years to be dipped in the pool he asks the questions, “Do you want to be well?” (John 5:1-14) This moment isn’t about him, it isn’t about how many people he can heal.
The disciples are never hanging around after the crowds dwindle and decide to head home after shooting the breeze. When it’s time to leave work, he leaves his work; when it’s time to eat, he eats; when it’s time to pray, he prays; when it’s time to teach, he teaches; and when it is time to move on, he puts one foot in front of the other.
He is intentional about every aspect of life. He is intentional about who is a disciple and who is a part of the crowd.
He knows who he is, objecting when crowds and even his own disciples attempt to make him over in the image of the world by wanting to make him king or lead a revolution.
He teaches his disciples to do what he is doing, feeding people, healing people, changing people’s lives in order to change the world. This act of empowering others is an ultimate way of saying this is not about me, it’s about us. It’s a way of saying the kingdom of heaven is different from any kingdom you see on earth.
He sends the disciples and the 72 out with their own boundaries, with companions for the journey and no solo heroes. He asks them to be vulnerable in their travels and, in a last note, he reminds them of their boundaries, telling them to shake the dust from their sandals when they are not well received (Matthew 10:14 and Luke 10:11). He sends them out in for-otherness, not to be used by others.
Brené Brown, in her study of resilience, names that people who live wholeheartedly have the clearest boundaries. They can be vulnerable because they do it with intention. I think Jesus invites us into this even if the church has not. This scripture in the Gospel of Matthew is one of the great sermons, with some of the greatest hits. Simply avoiding the big sins is not enough. Faith requires hard work and deep intention. He lays out a deeper commitment to the kingdom of God, and he urges folks not to take vows or oaths they can not honor. He instructs them to mean no and mean yes when they say it.
Meaning it when you say it can be hard. It can be hard to say no, even when we need to for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. But I would take a “no” over a half hearted “yes” any day. A half hearted yes makes us grumpy and disappointed, it leaves us feeling used, and we become no longer cheerful givers, but quiet sulkers. Jesus established clear boundaries that allowed him to engage meaningfully with others and flourish in his work. He never says yes because he’s nervous about saying no. He chooses boundaries and invites us to do the same.
We 💜's Boundaries. Just like Jesus.
That is why at this Abbey, we will practice our boundaries with intention, and there is a good chance we will do this perfectly imperfectly. And ask you to participate in this community, I want you to let your yes be yes and your no be no. I don’t want a half-hearted yes, even when I’m asking you to be a part of a ministry team. You decide when, how, and with whom you want to share your contact information. You get to decide, and you get to change your mind.
And if there is any person who makes you feel uncomfortable, I want you to trust your gut, and I want you to tell me. Because I can't do anything about it if I don’t know. There is also a good chance that if someone here is pushing your boundaries, they are pushing someone else's as well. We will stand together in the hard spaces with the most vulnerable folks.
May it be so.
Amen.