Should You Leave?
March 11, 2012
Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

GATHERING SONG         We Would be One   #318
CHILDREN’S FOCUS        
Did you notice outside? Grass! Do your remember grass? It reminds me of the story of the grass in my yard—a story that happened a long time ago and is happening still. You guys probably know (since you live close to the ground) that a lawn is not just one thing; it’s a whole bunch of different kinds of grass, a whole community. When you look close you notice that there are thin blades of grass and thick ones, soft and scratchy ones, and lots of different shades of color. Some kinds grow better in the sun. Some grow better in the shade. Some grow best when there’s a lot of rain. Some do better when there isn’t much rain. Some are good at resisting disease; others are good at crowding out the weeds.

Anyway, right after the snow melted, one blade of grass shot up above the others, who were still sleeping.  She grew and grew while the others were just waking up until she could look down on them and laugh: “HA! Poky grasses! I’m surely the best class of grass in the yard.” And while she was boasting away, a duck on its way north chopped her down to size.

After a few weeks it warmed up and the other grasses started growing tall too. And whenever one blade would get higher than the others it would call down, “HA HA, now I’m the chief of all grass.” But then the deer came. And when the ducks and the deer couldn’t keep up with all that growing grass, I put my pet sheep out in the yard. (Isn’t that how you all keep your grass short?)

Of course with all that boasting and fighting, the grasses didn’t get along so well. So when the leaves started growing on the trees (shading one part of the lawn) the grass that grew better in the sun said, “I’m outta here.” And he migrated over to the flower bed where there was lots of sunshine.

Then the hot summer sun got so intense! And another patch of grass (one that had grown better in the wet spring) it said to itself, “I’m not gonna sit here with the likes of you tangling my roots. I’m going over to the pond where I can cool off.”

As each kind of grass decided to move to another part of the yard, it left behind only a few baby shoots and roots to fend for themselves. And over the course of the summer the gardener went into the flower bed and pulled up the stray grasses that had migrated there. The gardener also went to the edge of the pond to clear away the thick grasses growing there.

The baby shoots, of course, were not stupid.  They saw what happened to the others that had migrated across the lawn. They saw what happened to the grasses that grew tall. So they were determined to neither move nor grow.

By late summer the gardener saw that there was hardly any grass left, and he was very concerned. The hot days wore on, the soil dried out and cracked and the roots of the remaining young shoots of grass began to separate. One day the young grasses overheard the gardener talking to himself: “What am I going to do, today there will be a huge rainstorm, the yard will flood, and all of the soil will be washed away.”

Well the young shoots feared for their lives! “We’ll be washed into the street and down the gutters!”  And they huddled down flat on the dry soil.  But one little sprout stood up and said, “I can’t play this game any longer, huddling here by the ground.  I am a blade of grass and I was born to stand tall, and even if a lawn mower comes through here, that’s what I’m going to do.”

And he opened his grassy mouth to the big drops of rain. And he found himself growing—not only up, but down!  He felt this tingling sensation inside as his roots dug deep into the soil...and in all directions around him. And he joyfully tickled the roots of his neighbors, saying, “Come on, you can do this too, it’s fun!”

And some of them did, and some of them didn’t.  But there were enough that dug down and put their roots together...so that through the storm, the soil held together. And many more young shoots would grow in that grassy community, and if you look close, you might see this happening in other places too.

CHOIR            Pachelbel Alleluia    
MESSAGE    
America! Love it or leave it. Your family, your job, the church—love it or leave it. Your hairdresser with whom you’ve never really connected, your doctor who missed something important, your favorite store, which you’ve just learned is exploiting low-wage workers: Would you? Could you? Should you leave?

Of course it’s never so simple. Some times you cannot leave; some times you have to.

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati is talking about leaving. And by “nation” I mean everybody...they’re making plans for what to do when rising ocean levels put them all underwater. Should they leave now, or play wait-and-see?

And Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers: should they leave? If so, should they leave because Rush’s audience is leaving? Or because it’ll bad for business now for a few weeks to be associated with him? Or because it’s unethical to support a bully?

Actually I don’t think Rush is a bully. Bullies intimidate people who can’t avoid them, and it’s pretty easy to avoid a guy on the radio.

What Rush does, I think, is to teach others how to bully...so that they can go out into the world...it’s amazing what just a few people can do within a family or the workplace or the little league or a town hall meeting...how even one person can sometimes cause all the rest to ask themselves, “Should I leave? Do I really want to put up with this?”

Do I really want to put up with this? It’s a question asked in church too, of course. A book was just published about women leaving mainstream/conservative American christian churches; it’s called, The Resignation of Eve: What if Adam’s Rib is no Longer Willing to be the Church’s Backbone?

I don’t know if the author, Jim Henderson, is pointing to an actual trend of women leaving these churches, but it might be significant when instead of lefty feminists, a male evangelical minister is pointing out that in churches, women, while doing most of the work, are taken for granted, restricted in opportunities in leadership, and attacked when they step out of place.

Another new book from mainstream American christianity is called, “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church and Rethinking Faith.” Now this is a perennial story of course: that young adults step away from the religious traditions of their parents. Until recently, though, they eventually came back. But today the fastest growing religious group in the U.S. is the “nones.”

==
These demographic shifts (and the relocation of an entire island nation) tell us that leaving can have significant cultural impact. But I’d like to speak primarily today about choices that individuals make about leaving. What’s involved in that choice? Maybe you’ve thought about leaving a job, a marriage or a whole set of family relationships...leaving an organization or just taking leave from a particular role that you’ve held within your family or organization.

A few years ago my wife Jane left her nursing career to become a school counselor. She did this with mixed emotions. Her 19 years as an RN had included many highlights (to balance out the lows), good compensation, and tremendous opportunities for personal learning and growth.

Along the way she actually left many jobs, primarily to put me through school, bear children, and to get me settled here. But she always thought of herself as a nurse. She also made some job changes within nursing, between the major disruptions of kids and relocations. I remember her pondering the question, “Should I leave?” She asked herself this in light of some advice she’d received from a respected nursing instructor, who once told her: “Make a change when things are going well. Don’t wait for a time of turmoil or pressure or burned-out bitterness.”

I think her professor was talking about when to leave a particular job rather than when to leave the profession altogether. But let’s think about this advice for a second: “Leave when things are going well.” How well does this apply to other situations?

We often encounter stories of high-profile athletes, actors, or politicians who should have quit when they were at the peak of their career rather than hanging on long enough to really screw things up.

But in a church family, biological family, or family of choice...these relationships don’t necessarily follow the same logic of, “Well, it’s got to end sometime...so why not get out while the gettin’s good?”

Still, there may be wisdom in leaving particular roles within a church family, biological family, or family of choice. Rather than getting to a point of feeling trapped or apathetic, such that you’re miserable and making everyone around you miserable...whether it’s a role you’ve chosen or one you’ve been pushed into...leaving a role within the group might be a way to prevent a sudden snap into complete separation.

==
So ask yourself a riddle: What is the point of departure?

Should you leave when leaving becomes the only way that you can thrive and carry out your life’s purpose?

Should you leave so that you CAN do what you’ve been TRYING to do all along?

Or should you leave to give yourself a chance to do something completely different?

==
Loetta Johnson died recently. She just up and left. I didn’t know her, but I heard about her funeral on ABC News. Apparently at the funeral her daughter Barbara went up to receive communion, but being gay, she was refused communion.

I do not know if Barbara Johnson intends to stay in her mother’s church. But a lot of state and federal legislators have been threatened with not being served communion, and yet they stay. Or at least they hold on to their denominational identity. I often wonder what it takes to stay.

What does it mean to be part of a loyal opposition? In a legislative body, members of the minority party have historically served as a “loyal opposition.” That is, they serve the public with their dissent and efforts to be a moderating influence on the majority. This notion is starting to seem quaint, however, with our increasingly polarized legislatures in which it sometimes seems preferable to bring down the entire system rather than to be caught cooperating with the other side. Olympia Snowe of Maine often played that “loyal opposition” role in the U.S. Senate, but this month she put her hands up and said, “enough, I just can’t take it any more.”

For those of you who are not legislators but simply negotiators of the rules within your own household: in those cases when you don’t get exactly what you want, how is that “loyal opposition” thing working out? How much imperfection can you tolerate before you call it quits?

==
Decisions to leave, you might think, would primarily be about improving your situation – getting away to something better. But people leave relationships even when they know it’s going to hurt terribly...even when they know that on some levels they’re going to be worse off. Why? Leaving for something worse is a decision we might make when we feel we’re being treated unfairly.

For example those unhappy about how the work is divided up in the household may leave even if this means now they’re going to end up with all the work instead of just three-quarters of it.

Fairness isn’t just a luxury. Fairness/equity in a relationship is about mutual acknowledgement of each other’s humanity. To deny this is to deny one another dignity. So it may seem extreme – to leave and give up part of your identity as a member of your family or group -- but it may be better than giving up your identity as a human being.

How do we get into such unhealthy relationships? Family therapist Murray Bowen suggests that we pick partners who are at our own level of “differentiation.”

Differentiation is kind of like what the little blade of grass did in the face of the storm. You could call it “maturity”—the ability to maintain your own identity within a group (or in a couple)...and here’s the tricky part... to have your own identity while remaining WITHIN the family or group. Independence without separation. It’s quite a balancing act.

Here’s a test: when you are with your partner, or when you walk into a setting with your family of origin, or go to your high school reunion, or your workplace, even church...how long does it take for you begin to act and think in the way that you think the group expects you to act and think?

Do you instantly revert to old patterns? Or are you allowed (do you allow yourself?) to grow? When you find your opinions, your preferences, your needs...changing...do you find yourself resisting the change because you don’t want to lose your place in the group? Or do you find yourself gravitating to the edges of the group?

Is it ever possible to grow right where we are? Is it possible to grow deeper roots rather than to pack up and plant ourselves somewhere else? Is our American myth of independence primarily about being able to pick up and go, when life gets uncomfortable? Or is independence about being well-grounded, blooming where we’re planted? Regardless of the circumstances – making the best of what we’ve got?

==
Differentiation is hard work. Families and groups often do everything they can to prevent differentiation and personal growth. It’s just too disruptive. Unconsciously, perhaps, we do all we can to maintain the status quo. If one family member begins to grow, the others interfere. Probably not even realizing it, we behave in ways that will ensure that the old familiar patterns are repeated and everyone will remain right where we’ve got ‘em figured out.

One way we do this is by entangling each other in emotional triangles. Trying to influence one member of the family by talking to someone else about them.

We all know that these triangles are dysfunctional. We also know that triangles are very stable. Once they’re formed, it’s difficult to get away.

Healthy relationships, in contrast, allow us to flex and grow in relationship to one another. These are one-on-one relationships. In a family or a group that means a lot of strong but independent one-on-one relationships, each with its own terms.

In less-healthy, rigid, or triangled relationships, when we need a little more space, and we ask for that space, or try to move on our own initiative, the bonds may be too tight, and growth not allowed.

So sometimes, unfortunately, it can take a lot of energy—or a pretty severe disruption—to initiate even a little bit of growth.

==
There’s a children’s book from the 1970s called “Nobody’s family is going to change.” The title sounds pretty harsh for a children’s book, and the story contains a pretty direct message. It’s about a family, naturally, and family dysfunctions. It’s about one kid’s desperate sense that she needs to get out; she needs to change either her parents or her situation. It’s not an abusive family, just imperfect in all of the ordinary aggravating ways. Emma, the daughter, eventually conspires with some friends to form what they call The Children’s Army, which agitates under the mantra that it is a child’s right to change his or her family.

But in the end Emma comes to a profound realization. Her family is not going to change. Her father is not going to stop arguing with her brother around the same old ridiculous topics. Her dad will never be particularly kind; he will probably never really listen to her. Her father, mother, and brother are who they are, and, whether she sticks around them, or not (because we can certainly be stuck with people even after we physically leave)...the only way to escape the madness is for her to figure out how to change herself.

DIALOGUE
SENDING SONG     One More Step              #168
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