MENDING WALL by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say '.Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." 

Boundaries are the topic for today. (Requested by Regina Packard.) Boundaries in the sense of that which indicates a border or a limit. They shape our lives. We are constantly on the move, travelers through time, always encountering borders and border crossings. Of the physical kind, like the very materiality that marks, limits, and defines my bodily presence. The cartilage and bone of my nose go out to here, and no further, for instance. Or the physical, legal boundary lines of our property or the border lines of our country. Recently I found myself at the border with Canada, presenting my passport to the only somewhat inquisitive guard in the toll booth. Nevertheless, I was filled with excitement at the formality of needing some kind of check, or permission, to drive over the St Lawrence River into a so-called “foreign” land. Somehow I don’t feel the same when I approach the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge or the New Jersey Turnpike. Why not, really? Borders of the societal kind exist as well. They manifest as customs, taboos and laws. Women wear dresses, skirts, pants. Men wear pants, predominantly. Why? When a man wears a skirt, as one of my neighbors does, many people become uneasy. He’s crossed a line. Who says? Our laws, whose borders serve to promote the, hopefully, safe, secure and equitable functioning of society, give us firm limits and boundaries, the crossing of which can result in serious consequences. I think that the extremely popular Law and Order series on television satisfies, entertains, comforts and occasionally challenges us because it deals with boundaries, the crossing of them, the questioning of them, and the re-alignment of them. Similarly for all the eternally popular medical shows, cop shows, which also, in part, re-align boundaries.

Essentially we define boundaries according to what we define as a border or a limit. Borders and limits exist on their own everywhere. Why does the St Lawrence river separate two countries and the Hudson river does not? Does my physical presence really end at the limits of my physical body, or does some kind of energy, aura, extend out beyond the physical boundary? Why does the law of some states not recognize marriage between two people of the same sex when it does recognize it between two people of different sexes? We need boundaries in order to negotiate the world, to make sense of it and to function in it. They serve good purposes. Think of games and sports. How would we know a home run in baseball unless we also knew the foul pole? In chess, how would we reach checkmate if all the pieces could move any way we wanted them to? Boundaries serve good purposes. At the same time we recognize that boundaries, rules, borders, limits, at least in the parts of the world nominally under human control, are defined by humans. Boundary lines shift, borders are crossed, limits might be exceeded. Nor are all boundary lines clear. Personal, psychological, spiritual borders exist, but not completely obviously. We do not always know where or how to draw those lines. The lines of where I stop and you begin -- that kind of boundary. We humans have no land surveys that indicate our personal border lines; we have some firm, and many blurry, rules on the personal boundaries. Throughout our lives we have to figure them out according to what we see around us, according to what feels right, according to what we need, according to what others tell us. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Boundaries mark clear demarcations, separations. At the same time, “Something there is that does not love a wall.” Something there is in us that longs for connection. Where do boundaries fit in? It’s a paradox. Personal and inter-personal boundaries help us to be present in our lives. Our boundaries, in part, define who we are, they can aid us in making our own acquaintance as unique and autonomous individuals. They help us to see one another as unique and autonomous individuals. The Bible gives us lots of boundary stories, the very first being Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God said you can eat of all the trees here except that one -- the tree of the knowledge between good and evil. God set a boundary. What did Eve and Adam do? They tested the boundary. Why did God set it? What happens when we cross it? What did happen when they ate the apple? They had to leave the garden, but they gained a way to distinguish between good and evil. They made their own acquaintance, as well as an acquaintance with mortality. (Genesis 2-3)

Some boundaries we test as a part of our maturation. In the process of becoming adults we question the explicit and implicit values and teachings of our families. Boundaries shift depending on time and circumstance. They often work best when they are permeable rather than rigid. In other words, a border with a toll gate rather than an electric fence or concrete wall. I can hear my mother’s voice, born of a working class economic insecurity, saying to me again and again, Take the first job that’s offered to you. Stay with it even if you hate it. You might not get another. And how many times did I listen to her? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Until I became so unhappy, so under-utilized, working for Tiffany & Co that one day I up and quit. Maybe you don’t take the first job that’s offered. Maybe you don’t stay no matter what. Maybe there’s a way to find greater fulfillment at work. I crossed an important border the day I quit that job and it was a major step in coming into my own.

Some boundaries are walls we have erected and they harden and become barriers to us experiencing our own authenticity. When I was a child my mother developed tuberculosis and went away to a sanitarium for two years. That was a very big deal to the five year old I was at the time. I did not understand where she was going, why she was going or if she would ever come back. The feelings were overwhelming. I put them away and held them at bay for many years because I couldn’t feel them then. It was an unconscious, probably desperate attempt at coping with such an enormous change. In the process of healing and feeling the grief of that time, I had an image of myself as that child, sitting alone in a grey bunker. Grey walls, grey ceiling, no doors. The boundaries that separated me from my feelings were concrete grey walls. As my pathway back to myself progressed, the image changed. The walls began to crumble; windows appeared where there were none before. A door opened in the bunker. Eventually the whole structure fell down, dried out and blew away. When boundaries are the barriers that keep us from ourselves, sometimes they have to come down.

Some boundaries we test and we gain experience that promotes our growth. We say to the toddler-- don’t touch the stove. Hot. The toddler reaches out and touches the stove and learns -- hot. Some boundaries we test just because they’re there. The thrill of the risk; the ego gratification; the attention; the rebellion. We Unitarian Universalists trust in questioning and know that testing boundaries can bring about transformation. At the same time we often walk a fine line between breaking down boundaries that act as barriers to the greater good and testing them for the sake of our own egos. Secondly, boundaries clarify what we have responsibility for and what we do not have responsibility for. They clarify what we can control and what we cannot control. People of goodwill want to help one another, to ease each other’s burdens, to serve. But in so doing, we can find that our boundaries are not always clear or helpful. The doctor who feels personally responsible for the recovery of his/her patient and takes it as a mark of his/her skillfulness; the parent who feels completely responsible for his/her child’s worldly success, and takes it as a mark of his/her success as a parent; the partner who feels responsible for his/her partner’s happiness and takes it as a mark of his/her worthiness as a partner; the mate who feels responsible as the provider for the family and takes it as a mark of his/her own identity are bringing other people into their own personal boundaries. It’s unrealistic and frustrating to try to control what we cannot control, as well as taking away the autonomy of the other people we care about and aim to help.

A different place to define that responsibility boundary is to give our love, our care, our help, our support and to let go of personal attachment to the outcome of another person’s life. To care and love, and to let go. It’s not about us. We cannot control other people. Nor can they control us. Sometimes we define our boundaries in a way that gives the responsibility for our lives over to someone else. In effect, we say to someone other than ourselves, mend my life. In the hope of being taken care of, being protected by one stronger and more capable than ourselves, we give away the responsibility boundary. But does it really work for us? Can anyone else ever really mend our lives?

Thirdly, boundaries keep us relatively safe and they promote relational accountability. They let us know what the rules are and how we ought to behave. Boundaries, when they work usefully and in healthy ways, promote and safeguard our relationships. They allow trust to grow, and commitment. Knowing when to say no; knowing when to say yes, with the skill and strength to do both are marks of helpful boundaries. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Where we draw our relational boundaries can bring great satisfaction or great suffering. And it’s often hard to know where to set the boundaries. Sometimes we want other people to set our boundaries for us. We might try to get away with everything we can get away with, waiting for other people to stop us. We might not call ourselves to be sensitive to or considerate of other people’s feelings, or time, or abilities. We might blame other people for our own mistakes and shortcomings. Sometimes it seems that other people want us to set their limits for them. The person who continually takes advantage of us, for example. The person who asks us, in the name of love, or loyalty, or whatever, to betray ourselves and our best interests. The person who asserts his/her own right to do and say whatever he/she wants to, regardless of the effects and consequences for others. It is neither easy nor comfortable to set limits for someone else, but at times we have to because everyone pays too high a price otherwise. Sometimes relationships seriously cross boundaries and we mistreat, even abuse, each other and ourselves. When that happens, both persons must say no and draw a limit on behavior that repeatedly does damage. Depending on where we draw the border lines, boundaries can support our happiness and promote our functioning, or they can point to areas of needed growth and/or healing, or they can serve as symbols of our unhappiness and the unhelpful ways we have of coping with our lives.

How can we recognize the boundaries that support our happiness? How do we know where I end and you begin and feel peaceful about it? When we live in such a way that we recognize and live from our authentic selves. This means that we basically know who we are, what we think, what we feel, what we want and express that knowledge in skillful and compassionate ways. We allow ourselves to change and we’re able to question values and beliefs for the sake of growing our own authenticity as people. We can be present in our own lives. Boundaries that support our happiness give us a workable knowledge of what we have responsibility for and what is beyond our responsibility. They enable us to function powerfully while at the same time giving space for others to grow and mature and function powerfully. Boundaries that support our happiness help us to feel safe in relationships of mutual accountability.

If there are places in our lives, and there probably are such places for many of us, where we feel we cannot be ourselves, or where our responsibilities feel like enormous burdens, or where we want to control everything, or where someone seeks to control us, or we’re in relationships and we do not feel safe, then we might want to think about moving our boundary lines. Saying yes where we have previously said no. Saying no where we have previously said yes. Stepping back to think about it.

Moving boundary lines is possible. Borders, limits, boundaries are everywhere. They become demarcations when we define them as such. We might need some help in re-defining new boundaries. We might need people who can reflect back to us where our boundaries seem to be and help us determine why that might not feel quite right for us. We might need people to help us figure out where the new boundaries need to be and how we might live into them. We might need people to help us tear down old boundaries that have become barriers to our growth. That’s okay. Helpers are there. In the form of friends, ministers, therapists, family, and more. When our boundaries promote our happiness and further our trusting, caring relationships, they further our connections, to ourselves and to each other. Walls can separate, yes. Walls can also help us recognize a home run from a foul ball. Walls can close us off, yes. Walls can also set us free to be who we are. Frost is right on both counts. “Something there is that does not love a wall.” Something there is that wants and needs connection, that wants and needs to test the walls to find out if they serve us well, and to alter them if they do not. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Boundaries keep us accountable to one another. They help us to really see each other as unique, autonomous people. Our boundaries need not separate and isolate us. They can connect us when they encourage our growth and self-definition, thereby enabling and strengthening our love for each other. We define our boundaries. We, therefore, can shape them to further our connections. We can do this. May each of us have the wisdom and the skill to delineate boundaries that serve us in loving, healthy and happy lives. May it be so.