"THE SMALL, BEAUTIFUL THING": SAYING NO IN A CULTURE OF YES

Valerie Weaver-Zercher

I had just said no. To the same woman from church. For the third time. Who could blame her for getting a little testy?

This time she had called to ask whether I would lead singing at the church picnic. Once again I had said no—like I’d done when she had called to ask me to do other things at church—and quickly added that I was sorry.

This time there was a silence on the other end of the line before she tacked on the real zinger: "Well. I’m sorry, too."

Now, you must know this: I have sometimes been in her position, calling around to find someone to fill some role at church and being repeatedly told no. So I am intimately acquainted with the desire to make the person saying no feel guilty. I’ve just never had the nerve to actually do it.

My conversations with the woman from my church have made me feel more guilty about something I already feel horrible about doing: setting limits on my life. Since having children, I have dropped almost all of my church commitments. The church-volunteering ball is actually only one of many that I’ve dropped; somehow parenthood has turned my previously impressive juggling act of writer-churchgoer-activist-wife-friend into a comedy routine, in which the juggler slowly drops each of the balls, one by one, until they are all rolling around on the floor.

Most people agree that life today requires us to live faster than ever before. We carry a generalized feeling of "too-muchness"—too much stuff, too much to do, too many phone calls from people at church asking us to do things.

The statistics themselves are so familiar that they’re almost clichés: In 1990, the average American consumed more than twice as much as the average American did in 1948—and also reported having less free time. In the last 20 years, the numbers of hours Americans spend working has increased steadily. Thirty percent of Americans say they experience high stress nearly every day.

I want to look at three of the factors that I believe contribute to the out-of-control nature of modern life, especially for Christians: choices, consumption, and conscience. I will then examine the idea of a "smaller life," rooted in what Barbara Brown Taylor has called "the spiritual practice of saying no."

Choices—Or "I need
to keep my options open"

Soccer team or violin lessons? Social work or psychology major? Paper or plastic? Rare or well-done? Mac or PC? College or trade school? Organic or local? Public or private? Cable or DSL? White or wheat? Bike or drive?

Little characterizes middle-class American life as much as options. Endless options mean endless possibilities—and endless expectation.

Choice is not inherently a bad thing; a certain amount of it improves the quality of our lives. But there is a cost to having an "overload of choice," as Barry Schwartz writes in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (HarperPerennial, 2004) "Clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction—even to clinical depression," Schwartz writes. And, I would add, a sense of spiritual emptiness.

I need to keep my options open.

Consumption—
Or "I need to buy more"

We visited some friends in their home recently. We had good conversations about our lives, kids, and jobs. What I came away with, however, was not only a sense of joy in renewing an old friendship. (And let me be clear that this was not their problem but mine.) What I came away with was this: Our house is hopelessly shabby. Their house holds gorgeous paintings and candlesticks and tablecloths; we, until recently, had a trash bag rigged up to a chair in our living room so that it didn’t fall apart. Our futon frame was nicked all over by golf clubs wielded by little boys pretending to be Tiger Woods.

And if I’m like most Americans, I’m no longer comparing myself and my things only to my friends, family, and neighbors. Thanks to the pervasiveness of the media, many Americans are no longer only trying to keep up with the Joneses; we’re trying to keep up with the Gateses.

Sometimes I am a little proud of our shabbiness. Other times all I want to do is go out and buy a new couch.

I need to buy more.

Conscience—Or "I need
to change the world."

Motherhood catapulted me from a world of college-age idealism into sleep-deprived, 30-something cynicism. Before having kids and even during the first few years of parenthood, I considered myself something of an activist. Even after the babies started coming, I still thought I could do the usual activist schtick.

But after a couple times of standing downtown, holding an anti-war sign while the baby howled in the sling and the toddler tried to fling himself in front of passing cars, I have basically given up—at least on rallies at busy street corners with children.

There is so much wrong in the world: War. Poverty. Homelessness. Starvation. Global warming. And there are so many people to help: the woman with lung cancer down the street; the sad kid next door; the young mother at church; the homeless man on my way to work. I really need to change the world.

Keep your options open, buy more, change the world: the combination is enough to land one in counseling. Or perhaps, at least, in church.

"Too-muchness" may be a uniquely modern problem, but Scripture offers some direction as we face the dilemmas of limitless options and jam-packed schedules. In Psalm 16 the psalmist writes, "The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places." Here the psalmist invokes the law that governed the division of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, in which people were instructed to be content with the portion granted them. He goes on to not only remind readers of the law regarding how Canaan was divided, but to actually compare God to one of the plots of inherited land: "The Lord is my chosen portion."

The incarnation itself could be seen as an exercise in containment and boundaries: the Creator of the universe choosing to dwell in the unremarkable vessel of a human body, in a particular place and a particular time. Christ’s ministry was one of meeting specific needs, one at a time, traveling by foot, whiling away hours he could have been working or praying instead eating and drinking with sinners.

So if God can choose smallness, then perhaps we can too. Theologian Stephanie Paulsell has written about her epiphany that a worthy life doesn’t necessarily require large action. She recounts meeting a scholar whose work she admired very much. While this teacher and scholar had done much worthy work during her career, "what she had not done was write ‘the big book,’ the monograph that laid out her theory of everything. I asked her if she planned to write such a book," writes Paulsell in the March 20, 2007 issue of the The Christian Century, "‘Oh,’ [the woman] replied, ‘I prefer to do the small, beautiful thing.’"

Paulsell writes about how doing the "small, beautiful thing" goes against what Christians often think we hear as the message of the gospel—to go into all the world to preach, to end poverty, to help everyone. "I have noticed," says Paulsell, "that some of my students shift uncomfortably in their seats when I talk about this. They are in school to learn how to change the world. When I say small, they hear irrelevant, ineffectual."

Pursuing a large and limitless life is a well-known part of youth, and many of us closer to middle age would do well to remember the ideals of our younger selves. But sometimes babies come along, or you get cancer, or you care for an aging relative, or you lose your job, and living a large life of yes after yes after yes simply becomes impossible. Sometimes, only when we can no longer say yes do we learn the spiritual discipline of saying no.

Writer Barbara Brown Taylor argues that the spiritual practice of saying no requires, among other things, the discipline of "ego-evacuation." Saying no makes me see myself as I truly am rather than as I’d like to be—someone who can manage and organize a life full of yeses. Saying no means that I’m frequently afraid that other people are disappointed in me. But saying no also "whittles me down to size, giving me daily opportunities to remember who is God and who is not," observes Taylor in the September 18, 2007 issue of The Christian Century. "Facing other people’s disappointment in me lets some of the gas out of my self-image."

Choosing Small in a culture of Big, saying No in a culture of Yes, requires discipline beyond our own powers, and forces us to rely on God’s strength and the support of a community. "You show me the path of life," writes the psalmist in Psalm 16—not the path of Efficiency, or Speed, or Success, or even the Path of the Unconditional Yes. The path of Life.

As for the woman at church who was calling to ask me to do things: she’s trying e-mail with me now. As for me: I’m learning that I can type "no" as fast as I can say it. I can only pray that, as Taylor writes, "learning to say no is how I clear space for a few carefully planted yeses to grow." I can only pray that God is in my "no" as much as in my "yes," and that God dwells as deeply in small lives as in large ones.

—Valerie Weaver-Zercher is a writer, editor, and mother in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. This article is adapted from a sermon at Salford Mennonite Church (Oct. 21, 2007).