relearning how to say yes and say no...

One of the challenges of my current incarnation is accepting limitations: it is a counter-cultural commitment to sometimes say no, right? Especially for clergy. Stanley Hauerwas once described clergy burnout as the result of living like a quivering mass of availability. Twenty-five years ago I began to learn about this commitment through the spiritual practice of "saying yes, saying no." (for more information see:

https://practicingourfaith.org/practices/saying-yes-and-saying-no/) Martin Copenhaver, retired President of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary, tells the story of his mother's strict NO when it came to sabbath keeping. He wrote:

At first, saying No usually looks like a form of self-denial. And often it is only later that we can see that the No is really the key to freedom. For instance, when my mother was a girl her family kept the Sabbath quite strictly. In accordance with the biblical mandate, they would observe Sunday as a day of rest. My grandmother would bake bread on Saturday to be served with warm milk the next day—their traditional Sunday meal—so that she would not have to cook on the Sabbath. When Sunday arrived, the children would not do their normal chores. The Sunday newspaper was kept on the top shelf of the China cabinet until Monday morning. They couldn’t talk on the telephone and they weren’t allowed to play any games, either. As a boy, I remember thinking that it sounded awful. My mother would say, “Well, actually, that was my favorite day of the week. After church in the morning, we would spend the day together. It was a busy family, so it was nice to have a day when you could eat dinner together without being so rushed, take walks and catch up with each other. Or we could spend time with friends.”

My aversion to Blue Laws notwithstanding, something was lost when Sunday became just another day of doing business. Not that I favor returning to a watered down theocracy, mind you. Not at all. Simultaneously, however, I know that actually articulating a commitment to Sabbath - and living into it - is baffling to most contemporary Americans. We may lament that our children and grandchildren have sports events when they might be in worship - or that families struggling to make ends meet now regularly work on both Saturday and Sunday - but our behavior tells a different story. The art and discipline of keeping the Sabbath holy has been ceded to devout Jews and Muslims as Christians rush about with more and more important tasks to complete. 

Back in our early days of Sabbath keeping I was scolded by a Cleveland matriarch for my selfishness in not answering the phone on my Sabbath day off.  The very notion that I would opt out of engaging was an affront to her - especially, she said pointedly: because our pledge pays your salary! In addition to the loss of Sabbath consciousness her fury was fueled by an understanding that a pastor is just like any other employee in the so-called helping professions. And as much as I protested and challenged such narrowness: it's in the cultural air we breathe and not easily eradicated. Copenhaver adds:

It is not insignificant that the Sabbath was established when the Jews were in exile. Their Babylonian captors wanted to get as much as possible from the Hebrew slaves. So they tried to make them work every day. But the Jews rebelled and insisted that one day a week they would refrain from working so that they could worship their God. In short, they said, “No. We are good for more than labor. We are made in the image of God. This is the God who rules over us all, Jew and Babylonian. Call us slaves if you will, but one day a week we will remind ourselves that we are precious in the sight of the one true God.” Somehow the 4 Babylonians knew that this was a form of rebellion that could not be crushed. And so they relented. One day a week they did not expect the Jews to work and allowed them to worship. (NOTE: you can read his entire reflection @

https://practicingourfaith.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Learn-to-Say-No.pdf)

The mystical wisdom-keeper of Western contemplation, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia
Bourgeault, notes that challenges to our commitments (be they Sabbatarian or not) are necessary in helping us strengthen, deepen, and modify them as needed. Questions and controversy, you see, reflect the healthy tension of natural new life where outdated truths are discarded and eternal insights fortified. How did the poet Rilke put it in Letter to a Young Poet?

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

But let's be clear: saying NO is still counter-cultural. It remains a discipline to be practiced. And requires patience along with a willingness to fail in order to sustain its life giving qualities. As a dear friend from L'Arche Ottawa wrote me: you can't keep adding commitments to your day without relinquishing others if you want a balanced life, ok? Upon accepting a call to serve as an Interim Minister during a time when my musical options were starting to flourish showed me just how much I needed a "saying yes/saying no" refresher course. Reality was squeezing some commitments out even as new ones were being revealed. Some, like needing to stay local during key holidays rather than traveling to loved ones, broke my heart. AND this reality is calling us all to become more creative and inventive in finding ways to stay connected. We haven't cracked that nut yet but the possibilities are beginning to strike me as wonderful even as I grieve what is being lost. Talk about paradox, yes?

The cultural/political/spiritual/emotional need to revive a healthy commitment to saying NO is all too obvious in 2024. But NOT in a theocratic/return to blue laws way. No, our rebellion must be a playful and tender rebellion that helps us affirm the best of this era while relinquishing habits that no longer celebrate life. Today, as part of MY Sabbath, I'm off to the library. There isn't a better place to practice saying yes and no for they are both part of the dance of life. I like how Copenhaver's essay concludes:

Here as elsewhere, it is not simply that we must learn how to say No to some things and Yes to other things. The two are more closely related than that. It is like they are two steps of the same dance. The No is implied by the Yes. The No frees us to say Yes. We say No as a form of Christian practice so that, finally, in the end, our lives might sing a word of affirmation: Yes, yes, yes!