It is difficult being in the outside position in any relationship.  Children who move to a new school can feel like an outsider.  People who visit a congregation for the first time can feel like an outsider.  A spouse can feel like an outsider between a parent and child.  In groups of people, if someone feels like an outsider they may seek revenge on others in the group. 
 
Last month, a group of scientist reported on how revenge is linked to mood.  A study of 154 people found that when individuals have an opportunity to exact revenge, their mood gets better.  On the surface, this would seem to indicate that people seek revenge to increase their emotional state.  If true, it begins to explain some of the behaviors of individuals who have experienced being an outsider.  You can read more about the study here.
 
 
It’s a Triangle
 
In the 1950’s Dr. Murray Bowen began to develop a concept he called the triangle.  The triangle is the basic structure of all relationship systems.  A two-person relationship is unsteady when anxiety increases.  A third party is always brought in during times of tension to balance out the relationship system.  You can read more about the triangle in a recent blog post.
 
Bowen observed how difficult it was to be in the outside position of a triangle while the other two had a cozy twosome.  The only exception to this rule is when there is a high degree of tension between the two inside positions.  Otherwise, anyone in the outside position may take steps to break up the twosome and push one of them into the outside position. 
 
In a way, revenge is a classic example of someone in the outside position making an effort to force their way into an inside position.  The research suggests that there may be psychological benefits that stem from an emotional state of being in the inside position of a triangle.  There may be a sense of security and well-being in the inside position that is associated with an increase in one’s mood.
 
 
The congregation’s role in welcoming outsiders
 
Congregations are home to millions of people who have experienced rejection in one form or another.  Sometimes, congregations are the ones doing the rejecting.  Some congregations practice a sort of bait and switch to newcomers.  Visitors are initially welcomed but then required to adopt specific beliefs or dogmas if they want to continue to participate.  In other words, you are welcomed for now, but you may not be later.  Congregations try to balance their desire to welcome with an integrity of beliefs.  To what extent can people participate in the life of the congregation if they do not adhere to the tenants and practices of a specific congregation?  How much is a congregation able to tolerate when people do not adhere to the tenants and practices?  What can people do when they experience rejection and find themselves in the outside position?
 
Millions, if not billions, of people around the earth are experiencing rejections in one form or another.  Congregations can help people process their rejection.  Instead of teaching congregations how to be welcoming, perhaps congregations could teach their participants how to handle rejection.  What are the alternatives to revenge, gossip, shame?  These automatic responses are part of the emotional process driven by fear and isolation.
 
Rejection is a normal part of life.  A child’s first rejection comes from their mother who weans them off breast milk.  Birds are rejected as they are forced out of the nest.  The animal kingdom is full of examples of animals who experience rejection as a first step to being independent and moving on in life. 
 
I’m certainly not suggesting that people who exclude, shun, or banish individuals are doing something natural.  Those who violate the rights of others or who do not respect the life of another need to be held accountable.  But what about those who overly rely on the help of others, or require the help of others to find emotional balance, or whose very existence is wrapped up in the existence of another?  What about those who fuse to others to avoid the experience of rejection?
 
There is nothing unnatural about feelings associated with being left out.  They are part of the experience of life.  What matters is the way one reacts to these feelings.  We can acknowledge the reality of feeling left out or rejected.  Or we can get angry and seek revenge against another.  We can think about the way anxiety travels through the family and creates the outside position of a triangle.  Or we can take it personally and blame others.
 
There are choices we can make when we are feeling pushed out, or when we retreat from the group.  Congregational leaders can provide leadership to those who feel like outsiders.  The first step is to understand how triangles work in one’s families of origin.  Part of this effort is to understand the functional aspects of the other two positions in the triangle.   What is the other up against in dealing with me?  How is anxiety functioning in this situation?  How am I adding to the problem?  What does it look like to be more responsible for my behavior?
 
Bowen believed that being in the outside position was ideal for understanding emotional process and for defining a self to the relationship system.  He encouraged people to actively take the outside position while staying connected to others in the triangle.  To the extent one is able to be comfortable in the outside position of the triangle, they stand a better chance of doing better overall in life.  Others in the triangle will benefit as well.  A coach can make a difference in this endeavor.

What if everything a congregational leader needs to know can be found by understanding the cell?  This blog will explore the concept of the cell and how the word became part of religion and everyday society.
 
The first biblical use of the word cell comes from Jeremiah.  He is placed in an underground dungeon (Jeremiah 37:16).  The Hebrew word “chanuth” does not have a direct connection to the Old English word “celle.”  It’s clear, though, that the meaning is the same.  Latin, French, and Middle English all have a variation on the word celle or cella.  Its original meaning refers to a religious house, a hermit’s room, or simply a small room. 
 
The word cell has ties to the word hell, believe it or not.  That word in Latin “celare” or “helan” means to conceal.  The Irish used the word to explain where they stored potatoes – “hel.”  It also is the root to the word helmet – a dark place to conceal things.  That’s the original meaning, at least. 
 
But, back to the word cell.  Another variation on the word was “kell” which became the root to “caul” (a type of membrane) and “kiln,” something like a stove or a kitchen where you heat things up. 
 
More recently, the word cell has expanded into words like “cellar,” a place to contain things like wine or people when there is a storm.  Whatever its modern-day usage, the original meaning is closely tied up with the idea of containing.  In the 17th century, a scientific discovery transformed how science and religion see the world and how we respond to the world.      
 
 
The Discovery of the Biological Cell
 
Robert Hooke was the first to discover the cell in 1665.  Born in 1635, Hook was the youngest of four children.  His father, John Hooke, was an Anglican priest as were John’s two brothers.  His life was saturated with religion. 
 
In 1665, using a microscope originally constructed by Christopher White in London, Hooke was the first to identify a cell.  He borrowed the word cell from his experience of monastic cells for monks.  No doubt, peering into a cell for the first time must have been a religious experience.  He was seeing the structure of God’s creation.  Here was a living thing, the simplest form of life, contained in this glorious organism he called the cell. 
 
Shortly after Hooke’s discovery, the notion of a religious (Christian) cell was revived in England and Germany.  In less than a hundred years after Hooke’s discovery, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, modeled his new methodical movement after the concept of the cell.  He called his cells societies and bands.  These highly structured cell groups would give life to the movement called Methodism.
 
For hundreds of years, the biological cell was understood and appreciated for the way it internally functioned.  It performs in predictable and stable ways.  Each part of the cell has a specific job, but it functions as a unit.  In a similar way, Wesley’s cell group had a particular structure and function.  As long as individual members of the group functioned according to Wesley’s design, the cell group would survive and thrive as a whole.  The cell group concept flourished in England and spread to every continent on the planet.  The DNA of Wesley’s cell group can still be seen in a variety of congregations around the world.
 
 
Rediscovering the Cell
 
In more recent years, scientists have gained a better understanding of how a cell interacts with the environment.  All living cells, including bacteria, are capable of adjusting to variable changes in the environment.  So long as the environment does not overwhelm the cell’s capacity to adapted, cells adjust and continue to replicate.  These adjustments, based on changes in the environment, happen both internally (within the cell) and externally as the cell communicates with other cells.  This process of communicating back and forth between cells is necessary for the formation of cell groups, organs, and organisms.    
 
The human body consists of 37 trillion cells.  All of them carry out protein synthesis and interact with the environment.  At the scale of the human body, these trillions of cells are working together to perform complex tasks.  The human body is aware of the environment through sensory organs – what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.  For millions of years, the human was limited in its ability to sense its surroundings.  Now, with recent advances in technology, the human experience of their environment has been enhanced. 
 
We have unprecedented access to technology.  The environment is no longer restricted to what is directly around us.  With cellular devices, our environment has become the earth and beyond.   From the weather at the north pole to nuclear testing in North Korea to the threat of asteroids, we have instant access to changing environments.  Cellular phones (which were originally coined for the way analog radio networks mimicked cellular life) are essentially neutral.  But in the hands of humans, technology can communicate how other humans are feeling about our changing environment.  Changes in the environment produce anxious reactivity at all levels of life.  Technology amplifies these anxious responses. 
 
With the recent integration of the cell phone into the world wide web, there has been a rapid increase in the rate and dosage of feedback we receive about other people’s reactivity to our changing environment.  For millions of years, anxious feedback from others consisted of a small group of the family, congregation, or community.  But now, humans have access to the emotional reactivity of the entire planet.  Our ability to process and respond to this level of global reactivity is overwhelming the human capacity to differentiation self from the masses. 
 
 
The Future of the Congregation as a Cell
 
Congregations are groups of humans, and as humans, congregations are vulnerable to increased levels of anxiety and reactivity.  Congregations, like all relationship systems, function as a whole.  Individuals vary in the extent to which they are able to think, feel, and act for self that is different than the whole.  The institutional struggles all congregations are experiencing are related to our inability to understand adequately and respond appropriately to environmental changes.
 
There is no guaranteed way forward for congregations as they deal with this increased level of intensity.  Asking good questions is still the only viable way forward.  How will the church of tomorrow address this new reality?  Will it retreat from the world and cloister inside buildings with little or no contact with the outside environment?  Will it spend its energy working to absorb all that is happening in the world?  Will it continue to morph and adapt to the environment it finds itself in and learn to live in symbiosis with the surroundings?  Or will the congregation of tomorrow do something completely different, redefining the word cell for the next generation?
 
Of course, this connection between the congregation and the cell is just an analogy.  It’s a creative way to describe what is.  It’s an attempt to explain what is currently unexplainable.  John Wesley, like so many other reformers, accurately observed his environment and responded to meet new challenges. 
 
The church of tomorrow will be based squarely on the thinking of the leaders of today.

• Leaders need to become increasingly aware of how the world is changing.  Leaders need to read about it, talk about it, and write about it.  Thereby increasing their understanding and knowledge of the problem and defining themselves in relationship to it.
• Leaders need to become increasingly aware of the congregation’s strengths (assets) that are available to meet the challenge. 
• Leaders need to work harder to articulate what they need to understand better the challenge.
• Leaders need to work cooperatively with other motivated individuals to develop strategies to meet the challenge. 
• Leaders need to work cooperatively with other institutions and organizations to create new symbiotic partnerships to meet new challenges.
• Leaders must avoid at all costs quick fixes, knee jerk reactions, and plans that only meet short-term objectives. 
• Leaders need to have the courage to implement new plans and stick with them, only adjusting to new and credible feedback.
• Leaders need to assess the plan continually and repeat the process.

 
Leaders will need to increase their ability to tolerate the discomfort and pain that accompanies an effort like this.  The best place to start is through a process of studying the multigenerational transmission process in one’s family of origin.  A coach is an essential part of this effort.

The congregation I currently serve updated their emergency plan.  A good emergency plan tells you exactly what to do so you don’t have to think about it.  When you take a first aid or CPR course, you learn how to quickly respond to an emergency.  You practice the response over and over until the action becomes automatic.  Emergency plans and training are designed to help people react quickly and automatically to danger.
 
The brain has two primary ways of responding to the world around us.  As the brain receives stimuli, it decides whether or not it requires a fast-acting response or a response that is thoughtful and reflective.  But what happens when the brain perceives an emergency that isn’t really an emergency?  The brain may determine that a fast-acting response is in order when a thoughtful, reflective response might have been more useful.  What can be done to prevent this problem?  How can the brain do a better job?
 
The thoughtful and reflective parts of the brain represent the intellectual system.  The automatic and reactive parts of the brain represent the emotional system.  It is possible for the intellectual system to override the emotional system.  But the opposite is also true.  The emotional system can hijack the intellectual system and take it for a ride.  In that case, it can be difficult to tell whether one is thinking or reacting.  Anyone who has worked on this effort, distinguishing the two systems, knows it to be true.  The struggle is becoming aware of when one is thinking and when one is feeling, how to catch oneself responding automatically, and how to make strides in being more thoughtful.  This effort is called differentiation of self.
 
Dr. Murray “Bowen’s observation [of the family] led him to propose that better differentiated individuals in a family display greater inner-direction, principle-based, and goal-directed behavior than their less differentiated relatives.  They are more secure in their beliefs and principles, but not fixed in their thinking.  They are able to hear and evaluate the opinions and perceptions of others and discard old beliefs for new ones.  Better differentiated people appear to navigate through the family relationship system with greater freedom from constraining emotional reactivity.  They can maintain and reflect their beliefs in behavior while remaining in contact with important others.  Their lives appear to be more orderly than those of less well-differentiated people, and they can be productive while alone or in the context of relationships.”  The Family Emotion System, page 23.
 
Good leaders counteract their natural tendency to behave automatically.  Here is a list of some of the markers for this effort:

• Being open to receiving additional information that is outside one’s frame of reference.
• Not changing one’s position based on the opinions of others but by reflecting on one’s internal beliefs and values.
• Avoiding a crisis mindset. 
• Remember that it’s not personal.
• Resisting the urge to blame others or self.
• Coordinated efforts with others to resolve a problem without defending, attacking or freezing.
• Keeping oneself organized even if others are disorganized.
• Resisting the urge of doing for others what they can do for themselves.
• Knowing how others in the relationship system think about the problem.
• Think systems. 

 
These are characteristics of a leader who is engaging a higher level of differentiation.  The next time you interview a pastor, a staff person, or a volunteer consider asking questions that address these areas. 
 
All of us can work on developing our capacity to be a good thinker.  Here are some helpful steps in continuing this journey towards differentiation.

1. Find a coach.  It’s difficult to see blind spots and to shift out of a reactive mindset into a thinking mindset. 
2. Create your own “Good Thinker” plan.  Write out steps on “how to” override the automatic, emotional system.
   
3. Discover your motivation.  No one can do this work for us.
4. Dr. Bowen introduced multigenerational research of one’s family as one way to work on differentiation.  By studying the family, one can predict patterns and levels of differentiation across the generations.  Again, a coach can help with this effort.
5. Observe the world as it is, not how you want it to be. 
6. Take responsibility for your part of a problem.
7. Create space for trial and error as you learn to be more of a self.
8. Give yourself time to “see” the way the emotional process is at work.

 
This is not an exhaustive list to be rigidly followed, but an example of what it takes to be a better leader in an anxious world.  This is a way to be less reactive and crisis orientated while becoming more disciplined and thoughtful as you engage others.

I took a bite of a Fuji apple.  One of our sons had gone apple picking the week before and returned with a bushel of apples.  I took a bite of an apple and had a revelation. 
 
I turned to my wife and said, “Did you know that everything in this apple comes from the sun?  All of its components were given birth by a star.”  It’s true.  All the molecules that make up the apple were produced in a star like our sun.  They eventually made their way to earth and are now part of this apple.
 
For thousands of years, we humans have been contemplating the relationship of the Earth to the cosmos.  We know that the Earth is in the Milky Way Galaxy.  It was once considered to be 1 of 200 billion galaxies.  But recently, NASA announced that our galaxy is 1 of two trillion.  That’s a lot of apple seeds!
 
 
Changing Perspectives
 
Keeping track of a ratio is one way to gain perspective.  In the Hebrew Bible, God told Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  In the New Testament, Jesus communicated our importance to God by telling his disciples that God keeps tracks of the follicles on our head.
 
Consider the structure of a cell.  We know that mitochondria are the powerhouse of a cell.  They provide chemical energy for cellular functioning.  To gain some perspective on how much power mitochondria produce, if we were to scale up the mitochondria to our size, the energy produced would be the equivalent of a bolt of lightning.  It’s hard to imagine that this is happening in every cell all the time.
 
The best way I know to change my perspective is to go for a walk.  When I look up, I try to comprehend the vastness of the universe which helps me keep in perspective my place in the cosmos.  When I look down, I am reminded how quickly everything changes.  The grass growing around me, the leaves hanging from the trees, and the bees buzzing around my head will all be replaced this time next year.
 
 
What do you tell yourself when faced with a challenge?
 
The experience of heightened anxiety lacks perspective.  Anxiety always demands an urgent response.  Sometimes an anxious response is useful, for example, when a building is on fire.  But research is beginning to reveal how our neurological systems are chronically anxious.  A consistent call from an anxious system demanding an urgent response often has a limited grounding in reality. 
 
If you could name one committee in the congregation that is chronically anxious, which one would it be?  Finance, Trustees, Personnel, or something else?  The best way to address chronic anxiety is with perspective, grounded in reality.  Sometimes asking good questions helps move the conversation in the right direction:
 

• Have we ever been in this situation before? 
  
• How has the congregation dealt with similar situations? 
• Is this a short-term problem or a long-term problem? 
• Will we still be dealing with this problem a year from now? 
• Is this committee or team responsible for solving the problem, or is the congregation at larger responsible for solving the problem?

 
Stepping back and gain perspective can be extremely useful when dealing with anxious topics.  Matching the situation with the right outlook can help reduce the anxiety of the moment. 
 
But it always comes back to the internal struggle to keep one’s perspective in check.  As a congregational leader, how does one shift the brain into more thoughtfulness?  How anxious do I become when faced with an anxious committee or team?  Am I able to conceive of dozens of solutions to the presenting problem or am I so anxious, I can hardly conceive of one?  Am I thinking about the problem or reacting to my own level of anxiety?
 
How do you gain perspective in anxious times?  What do you tell yourself when faced with anxious others or when you are anxious?  Please be sure to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The use of protest is an integral part of any democratic society.  It has become instrumental in creating regime change.  In the United States, many congregations are intimately engaged in social issues both at a local and national level.  Faith communities may struggle with the use of the protest and the best ways to engage the broader community about issues of injustice, racism, and oppression.  Protesting is primarily a group process with very little room for individual expression.  In this blog, I’ll be thinking about alternatives to protesting.  I hope you will share your thoughts and reflections in the comment section at the end of the blog.
 
I’ve supported and marched in protests over the years.  My first protest march was as a kid growing up in Downers Grove, IL.  The teacher’s union went on strike.  My mother brought me to the march.  I’m not sure how I ended up marching, but there I was holding a sign, walking with teachers, and asking for better wages.  There have been other protests.  Each of them was an opportunity to stand against injustice.
 
I think Disney’s Bug’s Life does a good job of illustrating the effectiveness of the protest.  At the end of the movie, Flik (the main character who is an ant) realizes that there are more ants than tyrannical grasshoppers.  Flik decides to stand up to Hopper, the head grasshoppers.  Shortly after, the bugs overthrow the grasshoppers. 
 
The New York Times recently ran an article about the Art of the Protest.  The author highlights some of the core elements of protesting.  It’s worth a read, and you can find it here.
 
Protest is a natural reaction to injustice.  A few weeks ago Elizabeth Warren grilled the CEO of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing.  You can watch the exchange below.

Wells Fargo at the time was being investigated for opening fraudulent accounts without consumer’s knowledge.  Something they have since apologized for and worked to amend.  As the facts of the scam came to light, and as I watched the hearing, I found myself saying, “I need to protest.” 
 
Protesting is an essential part of community organizing.  It addresses systemic injustices by shifting the balance of power from governments and corporations to communities and organizations.  Protesting is one way to solidify coalitions and advance a specific agenda.  It has the potential of forcing governments and corporations to enter into dialogue or to give up altogether.  People, though, have to be motivated to participate in a protest.
 
The Achilles heal of community organizing seems always to be the struggle to build durable coalitions that can exact long-term, solid change in society.  At best, change is often incremental. It may have to do with who becomes responsible for change.  If responsibility for change rests only with community organizers, then we may not see the kind of change we desire.  Real change may only come when individuals take responsibility for their part of the problem. 
 
For too long, everyday citizens have abducted their personal responsibility to political, corporate, or religious leaders.  We often make assumptions that those who are elected and appointed as leaders will take responsibility for things we the people think are important.  Apathy, towards the government, is not the result of failed leadership.  Apathy is the result of a system where candidates make promises they can’t deliver, and the people continue to believe that candidates can make good on their promises.  It’s a hopeless relationship.  We elect persons who represent our collective inability to see what is. 
 
As political leaders take on more responsibility and the general populous takes on less, our system of governance is prone to collapse because it eventually lacks the very thing it needs to survive: the people’s participation and voice.  People are the economy of any society.  When people are actively engaged (participating in the things they are interested in), societies do better.
 
 
Engaging people by engaging thinking.
 
A few weeks ago in Charlotte, North Carolina, there was yet another shooting of an unarmed black man.  Judy Woodruff of the PBS News Hour interviewed Trevor Fuller of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners just days after the shooting.  You can read the entire interview by clicking here.
 
In the interview, Fuller called for a continued process of engagement to make systematic changes in Charlotte.  When asked by Woodruff how to make these systemic changes, Fuller responded: 
 
“Well, the answer is first we have to regain calm.  We have to regain security.  Because my view is when emotions are high, intelligence is low.  And so we’ve gotta get our community in a place of safety so that we can have these conversations that we need to have.  Conversations about who shares in economic prosperity.  Difficult conversations about race.  But it’s very difficult to have those conversations when people do not feel safe.  So we first have to establish safety, and then we not only have to have the dialogue but also have a plan of action and execute on it.”
 
Dr. Murray Bowen also connected the two systems of emotions and intellect.  Bowen described it as the interplay between anxiety and thinking.  When anxiety goes up, thinking goes down.  When thinking goes up, anxiety and reactivity go down.  When individuals engage their thinking, there is both an internal benefit with the downregulating of the fight, flight, or freeze response, and there is an external benefit with a lowering of the level of reactivity in the relationship system.  Problems are solved, not through the intentional or unintentionally raising of anxiety but in thoughtful engagement.  But this is not how most organizations are trying to create social change.  They assume that only through social pressure can there be viable change.  So if the goal is to raise us up to our better natures and best selves, then what makes for good, honest dialogue and negotiations?  Is it social pressure or is it something else?  Social pressure does lead to short-term solutions, but does it lead to long-term problem solving?
 
How does one represent their best thinking about an issue without participating in the reactivity that leads to automatic retaliation? How does one know when their focus is on the reactivity of others and not on the issues?  It is possible to get lost in reacting to the behavior of others to the extent that protest is more about blaming and getting even than about solving problems? Dr. Bowen talked about the importance of process over content.  If you don’t have traction on knowing your own level of reactivity and what gets it going, you are simply spinning your wheels. 
 
I’m not suggesting that all protest is unnecessary or isn’t useful.  There are plenty of examples where protesting leads to change.  I am suggesting that when a protest takes away personal responsibility, only short term goals are achievable.  Long-term, sustained change occurs when people take responsibility for the way they behave in relationship to their families, congregations, communities, institutions, corporations, and governments.  As a society, we do a tremendous job telling people how to think and relate.  But where are the opportunities to engage people’s thinking and provide space for them to develop guiding principles and core beliefs?
 
Congregations are uniquely poised to do this important work if they can move beyond their own automatic ways of functioning.  Congregations are at their best when they encourage participants to present their thinking about an important issue without withdrawing from other people or attempting to debate, motivate, accuse, defend, or attack other’s position.
 
Congregations are well situated in communities to push for issues of mercy and justice:

1. Most congregations provide a set of beliefs that uphold human rights and concern for the welfare of others. 
2. Most congregations consist of networks of members who are also connected with influential people in their communities.  Sometimes the influential members of a community are members of a congregation.
3. Most congregations are still respected as a beacon of morality and have a voice of influence with politicians and community leaders.  People still listen to congregational leaders.
4. Most congregations teach some version of personal responsibility.

 
 
Becoming a more responsible self.
 
Whether we can overcome our current situation, with all of its violence, hatred, injustice, oppression, and greed will depend not on our ability to collectively organize but on the ability of individuals to be responsible for self. What do I mean by being responsible for self? 
 
Time and time again we have seen that politicians care about what their constituents tell them.  Constituents keep them in office.  The collective voice of individuals supersedes the collective voice of organizations and businesses.  When individuals speak up against the lobbying of corporations and interest groups, politicians go with their constituents.  Individual participation in the political process matters.  The problem is not corruption.  The problem is a lack of individual participation.  Corruption results from disengagement of constituents.  In oppressive, governmental systems, the same realities are at work, it’s just that more is at stake on both sides.  Whatever the case, when individuals are engaged, things change.
 
So are you a responsible citizen?

1. Do you contact your representatives (letters, emails, phone calls) regularly to share your voice on specific issues?
2. Do you know what issues are important to your representative? 
3. Do you pay attention to what legislation is coming forward at local, county, state, and federal levels?
4. Do you know the facts about your district?  Who is in your district and what are the issues? How does your community compare to other similar communities?  How are the weakest and most vulnerable in your community fairing?  What challenges do they face?
5. Who are the people in your district who are leading change?  How are you supporting their best efforts?

 
My hunch is that a key indicator to how one answers these questions has to do with how one relates to their family of origin.  I believe this could be easily researched.  Bowen described it as differentiation of self.  It’s about being a more responsible self when it comes to relating to the family.  So, let’s turn the questions above about the government into questions about the family:

1. Do you contact your family members regularly to share your thinking on specific issues?
2. Do you know what issues are important to other family members?
3. Do you pay attention to what other family members are trying to accomplish?
4. Do you know the facts about your family?  Where they live, their ages, how far they have gone in school, what they spend their time doing (working, raising children, retired), how their health is in general?
5. Who are the leaders in the family?  Who do you turn to when you need to connect with a good thinker?

 
Bowen would eventually connect the concepts of differentiation of self and the family emotional process with societal emotional process.  There is a connection between the way one addresses problems in the congregation (and the broader society) and the way one addresses problems in the family.  There is a connection in the level and kind of responsibility one takes in society, and the level and kind of responsibility one takes in the family. 
 
Defeating oppression and injustice may necessitate civil protest.  For there to be a long-term change, it cannot be done without differentiation of self.    Our way forward is on the road of more thinking and a reduction of anxiety as we consider solutions to the larger social problems we face.  Protesting will only get us so far.  Until we learn ways of engagement that are more thoughtful and less reactive, our capacity to function at higher levels will always fall short.  The place to begin is in one’s family, and working on being a more responsible self.