Borders & Belonging, part 2

To part 1

The book of Ruth is short -- just four chapters – a drama in four acts.

Act 1. It’s the time of the judges. A famine comes to Judah. Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion cross borders and go to Moab. Elimelech dies. The two sons marry Moabite women, but then, after about 10 years, the sons also both die. Naomi packs up to return to Bethlehem. Her two daughters-in-law expect to go with her, but she tells them to return to their own mothers and remarry. One of them, Orpah, reluctantly does so. But the other, Ruth, pleads:

“Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.”

So Naomi and Ruth cross the border and return to Bethlehem, and arrive at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Act 2. Word gets around Bethlehem of Ruth’s remarkable loyalty and devotion to Naomi. To support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes to the fields to glean. As it happened, the field she goes to belongs to a man named Boaz, who, impressed by what he’s heard of the young woman’s devotion to her mother-in-law, is kind to Ruth. Ruth tells Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and Ruth continues to glean in his field through the remainder of barley and wheat harvest.

Act 3. Boaz, being a close relative of Naomi's husband's family, is therefore obliged by the levirate law (or may feel obligated by the spirit of that law) to marry Ruth to carry on his family's inheritance. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night where Boaz slept, telling Ruth to "uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what you are to do." Ruth does so. Boaz awakes and asks her who she is.
She answers, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are a redeeming kinsman.”
Boaz tells her there is a closer male relative. In the morning, Boaz sends Ruth home with six measures of barley, then he goes into the city.

Act 4. Boaz meets with the unnamed closer male relative whom he had mentioned. Boaz says, “Naomi is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our kinsman Elimilech. As the closest male relative, you have first shot at redeeming it if you want it.”
The relative says, “I will redeem it.”
Boaz says, “You will also be acquiring Ruth to maintain her dead husband’s name on his inheritance.”
Then the relative says, “I cannot redeem it for myself without damaging my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself.”
So Boaz redeems the property, and Ruth. Ruth and Boaz marry. They have a son named Obed. We are told Obed will become the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.

To understand what this story is doing in the Hebrew Bible, first we need to understand what Moab means to the Israelites. Moabites are despised. As Glenn Jordan explains:

“In Hebrew folklore Moab was stereotyped as a place lacking in hospitality, and with some justification. There is a memory preserved in the words ot the Torah from another time of hunger and distress. In Numbers 22, the Israelites, recently freed from Egypt, are travelling through the wilderness on the way to the land of promise and they camp in the land of Moab. There is a reference in Deuteronomy 23:4 to a request made by the people to the Moabites for bread and water. The king of the Moabites, Balak, terrified by the number of people he would be required to supply… refuses their request for aid and shelter. Balak even hires a man to pronounce curses on them as he expels them from his land.” (27)

So, the Israelites do not like Moabites. They despise them with a special vigor beyond their general distrust of foreigners. The sentiment is codified in Deuteronomy 23:3:

“No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”

And Ruth is a Moabite, as the text continually emphasizes. Hardly does the text ever say “Ruth,” without saying “Ruth the Moabite.” At one point, Boaz's fieldhand even describes her as, “Ruth the Moabite,...from Moab” --just to emphasize that her country of origin is not to be overlooked.

Yet Ruth’s devotion, her lovingkindness to Naomi, is clear. She declares: "your people will be my people." When they get to Bethlehem, Ruth takes the initiative in providing for them, saying, “let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain.” And, the story tells us, Ruth ends up the great-grandmother of King David, Israel’s greatest ruler. She makes a big contribution to Israelite history.

But does the Hebrew Bible really need this story illustrating that foreigners can be decent people who make a positive contribution so we shouldn’t be hostile toward them? The admonitions were already in Exodus:

“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (22:21)

And in Leviticus:

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (19:33)

Evidently that was not enough, and to see why, we need to look back to what was going on in Judah around the time when the Hebrew Bible was taking its form.

By about 601 BCE, the kingdom of Judah was a vassal state paying tribute to Babylonia. Judah made a series of attempts to escape Babylonian dominance. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia laid siege to Jerusalem in 597, and again, 10 years later, in 587. He razed the city, destroyed the walls, demolished Solomon’s temple, and exiled the Jews to Babylonia. About 50 years later, Persia conquered Babylon, and Cyrus, King of Persia, decreed that the Jewish people return to Jerusalem.

During the period of Babylonian captivity, the Hebrew Bible began to form as various oral and written traditions were brought together. Just after the exile, further writings were added – in particular the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra the priest and Nehemiah the governor were the two best-known leaders of the Jewish community in the years just after the return to Jerusalem. In the books for which they are named, we read that Ezra insists on obedience to the Mosaic law’s separation from non-Jews, and that Nehemiah encloses Jerusalem with a wall and purges the community from all things foreign in order to build a distinctive Jewish identity.

It's in that context that this little story of Ruth, which had probably been a part of the oral tradition for a couple of centuries, got written down and emphasized, so much so that it became scripture. I’m saying maybe the Book of Ruth is in the Hebrew Bible specifically to push back against the rather xenophobic outlook of Ezra and Nehemiah. As Glenn Jordan writes, there may be

“occasions in history when the proper response to the times is not another war or new legislation, not even an election, but a work of art. In this case, the process of gathering an oral account and committing it to writing stands in front of the juggernaut of history in an attempt to divert the hearts of people towards some lasting values, and to remind them of their better selves.” (47)

So maybe that’s why this story is there: to address a felt need to counterbalance Ezra-Nehemiah. In the face of the insularity and division and the border-enforcing of Ezra and Nehemiah, we needed Ruth, the Moabite, the immigrant, the border-crosser, to call us back to our better selves.

There’s Nehemiah proclaiming, “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons” (10:30), but a few books away there’s Ruth the Moabite standing before us to say, “Excuse me?”

And while Deuteronomy had said, no Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation, the Book of Ruth tells us that the great King David was just three generations down from a Moabite.

So if you're asking, "What can I do about divisions all around us, and the mistreatment of people on the the wrong sides of those divides?" and what you mean is, "What can I do to change those other people who are so foolish and pigheaded as to disagree with me?" then my answer is: I don't know if that can be done.

But if you're asking, "What can I do to commit myself to the open-hearted devotion and loving-kindness across borders that Ruth exemplified?" that is the much better question. And if that's your question, let me turn it back to you: What can you do? You yourself can best answer that -- if you set your mind to answering it. May that question, and not our fears, command our attention.

To part 1

Borders & Belonging, part 1

To part 2

Everything needs a boundary to be a defined and definite thing. Dissolution of that boundary ends the thing, its contents spilling out and merging with the surroundings.

We need our skin to hold us together – but not to seal us off. We need to let in, and let out, air and nutrients – and the skin itself needs to be porous. The average human adult has 7 million pores on their skin: 5 million hair follicle pores that secrete oils, plus 2 million sweat gland pores. Your pores secrete and also take in – which is how, for example, nicotine patches work.

You have to have boundaries – definition. And there has to be a flow through those boundaries – just to be biologically alive. But we humans are also social – in fact, hypersocial – animals. We need communication, connection flowing in, out, and through. We need ideas and love to flow in, to flow out, and flow through us – or we perish.

Through our connections, we form ourselves into groups, and the group also needs a definition, a boundary – some way to identify itself and be identified as a group. We need to belong, and our belonging requires a sense of US. So borders, boundaries, and belonging are wrapped up in each other. You don’t know who you are if you don’t know whose you are.

But the group’s border also needs to be porous: to take in and to give out. Whether the group is a nation, or a congregation – a trade union, sports team, or a gender or ethnic identity -- its definition of itself cannot be rigid or static, but must be somewhat ambiguous, vague, and evolving -- without being too much so. How do we know the healthy balance?

For the last two months, Ukraine has been trying its darndest to defend its borders – to fight off and push out an incursion that threatens its existence. Ukraine right now needs to be focused on a certain excluding: namely, the excluding of Russian forces. But fending off a very real organized hostile takeover attempt is one thing. Delusions of takeover from imagined dangerous others are quite different.

Fear – for our individual person, or for the group which is our belonging – heightens focus on our border, on protecting ourselves by shoring up that border however we can. Fear grabs our attention, and when there’s a real danger, fear is functional. When the snarling grizzly bear is charging you, rational calculation and logical deduction are much too slow – not to mention, they won’t give you the shot of adrenaline you might need. We need fear. Natural selection wouldn’t have made us fearful if it weren’t useful. But fear, in order to be the rapid reaction stimulus that it is, can’t take the time to be very discerning. So we are prone to be fearful of imagined dangers.

Fear morphs from a useful tool, blaring a warning when needed, to a pervasive condition: consuming and debilitating. Here in the U.S., division and polarization tears us apart. There is fear of the other in anti-immigrant attitudes, and in the cruelty of our policies toward people who live in different, poorer neighborhoods. There’s fear of the other driving every form of white supremacy, misogyny, and colonialism.

Zach Norris’ book, Defund Fear – or, as it was originally titled, We Keep Us Safe – is our Unitarian Universalist Association’s Common Read this year: the one book selected for all Unitarian Universalists to read and talk about. Norris points out that what really keeps us safe is – or would be – good schools, good jobs, effective affordable health care, clean and safe drinking water and air, safe roads and bridges. Funding for what really keeps us safe has been eroding for decades.

Instead, we’ve been erecting a more and more pervasive framework of fear, the four key elements of which are deprivation, suspicion, punishment, and isolation. We’ve been erecting and fortifying borders to keep THEM away from US. This has only reduced our safety. Our fears grow and grow, fueling counterproductive reactions that further reduce our safety in a vicious cycle.

Instead we need to cross borders, reach out to whoever is, or has been perceived as, OTHER. WE keep us safe – as the book’s original title says – and we can do so only if we embrace a larger WE instead of fearfully shrinking our WE. As you read the book, you might think to yourself: OK, I get the problem. But what do we do about it?

Norris has a number of recommendations, which he summarizes at the ends of chapters 5, 6, and 7, and those are indeed all worth our support. But sometimes when we ask “what do I do about it?” – or “what does our congregation do about it?” – the question behind the question is: "How do I make other people agree with me? How do I change THEM?" We think: “I see the problem; I am not the problem. It’s those other people, people who watch the TV news of that reprehensible network, and who vote for the candidates of that reprehensible political party." Thus the war between relatively privileged red America and relatively privileged blue America upstages the needs of the more-often-politically-disengaged poorer communities most at risk.

The challenge for us is to find ways to cross two different borders – to open our hearts across the red/blue divide and across the class divide. “How do we change the system?” is a good and important question, but today I want to talk about changing ourselves. I’m not going to go into detail – we will each have different details. I’m just going to call to mind an old, old story – possibly familiar to you – about a woman who did cross a border, and the difference it made. Perhaps it will inspire you to creatively imagine a way that you might reach, and step, across a border that you have for too long treated as impermeable.

The story is that of Ruth, the Moabite, who crossed borders to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi as she returned to Bethlehem in Judah. I’m inspired to bring that story to our attention this morning because of the work of Padraig O Tuama and Glenn Jordan, two Irishmen who led workshops bringing together people across the divisions of the Brexit issue. In the face of the deep and wide social and political divisions, O Tuama and Jordan led people through an exploration of the Book of Ruth. The story of her border crossing helped participants cross the borders that separated them from others.

O Tuama and Jordan were looking for

“a story that might lead us to say things other than the things we are shouting at each other in the letters section of newspapers, comments sections of websites and social media, shouty parts of shout programs on radio and television” (Borders & Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our Times xii).

In these polarized times, O Tuama and Jordan asked: “Can we be held in some kind of narrative creativity by a story whose origins we do not know?” The Book of Ruth, they found, offered just such a container of narrative creativity.

To part 2

The Better Your Boundary, the Less You Need a Border

Crossing the Line, part 2 of 2

Having good boundaries solves the 84th problem. Do you know what the 84th problem is? (I’ve told the parable before -- HERE -- and it's worth re-telling).

The Buddha comes to town, and a farmer comes to see him and starts complaining about his problems. His wife this; and his children that; and the ox is sick; and the soil is poor; and there hasn’t been enough rain and, if there were, the roof would leak; and the people to whom he sells his rice are cheating him.

The Buddha stops him and says: You have 83 problems. Farmer says: That sounds about right. How do I fix them?

Buddha says: You’ll always have 83 problems. Maybe you solve one, or it goes away on its own, but another pops up to take its place. Always 83 problems. Farmer says: Well, what good are you?

Buddha says: I can help with the 84th problem. Farmer says: What’s the 84th problem?

Buddha says: You think you should have no problems.

For the person with good boundaries, problems don’t bother them. Problems arise. One responds to them as well as one can. This is life. Whether you call them problems or challenges, there’s always the next one to meet.

Having good boundaries doesn’t keep out your 83 problems, but it does keep out the 84th problem. Your problems then don’t define you; you aren’t consumed with the thought that you shouldn’t be having this problem.

The 84th problem is the extra. Your problems (or challenges) are enough by themselves; you don't need to add anything extra. But we often do add extra problem to our problems. Whenever we're annoyed by the problem, when we think it's wrong that the problem exists, when we let the problem trigger our reactivity and upset our equanimity, we are adding extra problem to our problem. Good boundaries keep out that extra bit.

Life IS problems, or we’d have nothing to do with ourselves, no reason for being. We need problems, challenges, but we don’t need the problem OF the problem. We don’t need the extra, the 84th problem.

Everything has its place. This is a very ancient spiritual insight and teaching. All things belong. On the one hand, being mindful that all things belong eases anxiety, irritation, annoyance, anger. On the other hand, it’s also true that if all things belong, then so does your anxiety and anger. This, too, is recognized in ancient spiritual teachings, though the very modern perspective of evolutionary psychology helps us understand it.

Anxiety belongs because our ancestors needed anxiety. Anxiety about that lion prompted them to run away, anxiety about a brewing storm prompted them to seek shelter. Homo sapiens emerged with a particularly advanced capacity to worry about the future, to imagine dangers that weren’t immediately visible. This was probably driven by the processes that made us not only social animals – as wolves, orcas, emperor penguins, chimpanzees and others are – but ultra-social: able to adaptively cooperate at an extraordinary level because of an astonishing capacity to imagine ourselves into another person’s situation, grasp what they’re trying to do, so we can help them do it.

We were motivated to be helpful because we were able to imagine the future – farther into the future and in more detail than other species. I would help you because I imagined a future in which you would help me – and that capacity allowed systems of reciprocal altruism to begin to form.

As our symbolic language emerged, we were able to communicate to create shared imaginary futures, and then cooperate to bring them about.

Which is all very wonderful. But there’s a rub.

Our ability to imagine the future, and to be goaded to appropriate action by a little anxiety about that future, can easily go to far. Evolution gave us these goads, but it didn’t give us very good mechanisms for turning them off when they’re no longer helpful. Our brains were built to worry, and it’s very easy for them to fall into a pattern of worrying even when it does us no good, and only produces chronic stress and anxiety.

Making matters worse, the futures we imagine aren’t just worries about the weather, or predators, or food sources. Our imagined futures are heavily peopled. "Can Bob be counted on?" "Was Sue lying, and she’ll stab me in the back?" Our brains evolved to negotiate the fantastically complex balancing act of wanting and needing to cooperate, but also guard against being taken advantage of – balancing the costs and risks of cooperation against possible benefits.

This balancing act is carried out through – or manifests as – our sense of fairness. We are as ultra-social as ants or bees, but for us, our sense of fairness is the crucial regulator of our sociability. My brain is built to monitor possible future scenarios of people being unfair to me, and whether they’ll think that I’m unfair to them, and whether they’ll think I’ll think they’re unfair to me – it’s exhausting. Or, rather, it seems like it would be exhausting, but in fact our brains seem to rarely tire of thinking about fairness. Our ability to think about fairness in such complicated ways is also our beauty as a species.

So we are built to worry what other people think, and to want to be in agreement with them. Yet, the more clear we are about who we are, the less need we’ll have to be self-protective, i.e., defensive. So here’s my thought about boundaries and borders: the better your boundary is, the less need you have for a border. That is: those who are self-differentiated don’t have to be self-protective.

When difference and conflict aren’t a threat to your sense of self, then ego defense mechanisms don’t get triggered, and the walls that block empathy don’t go up. When boundaries are solid, borders don’t have to be. When we’re comfortable with ourselves, we can let people in -- we can take down the walls that shut them out. When we don’t require conformity of ourselves, or of others, we can be free to connect with and work with very different people, appreciating and not being threatened by their difference – while also appreciating and not being scared by our own differentness.

This is true on the personal level, and it is true on the national level. As a nation, the US has lost its boundary. We have no clear sense of who we are as a people. We are, as it were, “out of bounds.” The old story that defined our nation was deeply problematic in many ways. It was a story shot through with patriarchal and supremacist assumptions, and the critique that helped dismantle the old story was well warranted. But a new and better story has not emerged. In the interim, we don’t know who we are, don't know what "America" is.

In compensation for our lack of boundary definition, the national psyche instead turns to border protection and a very literal wall -- blocking empathy, blocking compassion, blocking our own growth, blocking the very connections that our spirits crave.

As our national norms break down, lines are crossed. Lines of civility are crossed. These lines helped "political leaders hold two opposing ideas in their heads simultaneously:"

"...the first is that your political opponents are wrong about many things and should be defeated in elections. The second is that you still need them. You need them to check your excesses, compensate for your blind spots and correct your mistakes." (David Brooks, New York Times, 2019 May 9)

But it's gotten easier and easier to cross the lines that held our leaders in a system that helped them know how to work together amidst disagreements, and find and build on common ground while respecting the beneficial role of political opposition. Crossing those lines makes it harder and harder to cross the lines that exclude and shut out -- the lines of enmity and othering.

The task before us is daunting. But as Rabbi Tarfon says, be not daunted. You are not obligated to complete the task. Nor are you free to abandon it.

The task is to strengthen our boundary – clarify our principles, know our story and stick to it, develop equanimity in our integrity, bring our nonanxious presence. Only thus will we be able then to cross borders, replace walls with bridges, join hands, and end the loneliness.

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See Part 1: Good Boundaries

Good Boundaries

Crossing the Line, part 1 of 2

Some lines, it’s good to cross. Other lines are better respected.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940)

You’ve probably heard the verse by Edwin Markham, titled “Outwitted.”

He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!

In those four lines we see both the good and the bad of the lines we draw – the boundaries and borders we put up. Some lines shut people out. Other lines hold people together. And sometimes it’s the same line: holding US together and keeping out THEM.

Our monthly theme for June is Borders and Boundaries. These two words are synonyms – or they used to be. They both mean the outer edge, the bound or the limit of something. In recent years, though, the words have come to be used in different ways.

A “border” is more often now used to mean the kind of line that shuts people out. Divinity students at the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Meadville Lombard in Chicago, must design a focused project to carry out during their internship, and it is an explicit requirement of the project that the student show how they cross borders in their ministry – borders of race or culture, gender or generation. Crossing borders is a crucial component of building a more just and harmonious world – a more beloved community. Those lines that shut people out: we have to find ways to erase them.

Boundaries, on the other hand, in the recent usage trend, are a good thing. Having good boundaries is a part of being psychologically and emotionally healthy, and a key to effective leadership.

Boundaries, we are told, need to be maintained. Borders, however, need to be erased, or at least crossed with facility.

What I’d like to do today is first talk about good boundaries: what that means and why it’s helpful to have them. Then we’ll take a look at borders – the lines we draw that shut people out.

Having good boundaries is also called being self-defined, differentiated, or having a well-developed self. Good boundaries are what let you be guided by what you think of yourself rather than other people’s opinions. Without those boundaries, your identity merges with the people around you. You’re more susceptible to “groupthink.”

On the one hand, you’re more controlled by other people’s judgments. On the other hand, you’re also more controlling – more devoted to actively or passively trying to control others.

The self-differentiated person, on the other hand, is more able to say, “I’m going to do me, you do you. I’m not interested in judging you, or in your judgments of me, but I am interested in nonjudgmentally watching how we each are and looking for ways we might harmonize or complement each other. There’s not a right answer or a blueprint for how we should work together or play together or be together. Rather, as I do me and you do you, I’m open to being surprised, to discovering unexpected creative ways that our different gifts can synchronize, or contribute in different ways to a common goal."

Many psychologists note that a person’s degree of self-differentiation, while it probably has some genetic component, is largely influenced by family relationships during childhood and adolescence. Once established, the level of self boundaries tends often to be set for life. It can be changed, but it’s hard. It takes a structured and long-term effort to change it.

People with poor boundaries may be chameleons or bullies, or vacillate back and forth. Chameleons depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that they quickly adjust what they think, say, and do to please others. Bullies likewise depend on acceptance and approval of others, but pursue their need by dogmatically proclaiming what others should be like and pressuring them to conform. Disagreement is a threat to chameleons and bullies alike.

A third type of poorly differentiated person would be the extreme rebel who routinely opposes the positions of others. Reactionary opposition is just as much a way of being controlled by others as reactionary agreement is.

Of course, we are all, as our seventh principle says, interconnected. We depend on each other. But a person with good boundaries can stay calm and clear-headed in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection. They can assess criticism in the context of their own long-term principles and considered values rather only reacting from the emotions they’re feeling in the moment.

Boundaries keep you contained – rather than a puddle of emotions and needs for acceptance. Boundaries thus afford integrity: the ability to live from a consistent set of thoughtful principles rather than being pulled this way and that by the shifting currents of opinion and judgment of others.

In a couple, when the partners are self-defined, they can each talk about what they’re thinking and listen carefully – rather than taking on anxiety about the partner’s issue and reacting out of their anxiety. Each can appreciate the other’s decision-making strengths while also able to think things through for themselves. Neither assumes the other generally knows best, but looks at each situation fresh.

They can talk about their fears or concerns without expecting the other to fix or solve them, but simply because sharing our fears helps us think more clearly about them. When they bring their anxieties to each other, the interaction doesn’t escalate the anxiety. Their boundaries help keep the anxiety contained and thus manageable. Each is a resource for the other: emotionally available without either fixing or blaming.

The difference between a request and a demand is in whether you’re upset if it isn’t met. Sometimes its clear that a demand is being made: "Do what I’m saying or I’m going to be angry or upset!" That’s a demand. Other times, what is presented as a request is not revealed to really have been a demand until after the answer is “no.”

But the extent to which you are upset if the answer is “no,” is the extent to which there was some demand in your request. You might hide the upset – the anger or disappointment – and pretend you’re not upset, but if you are, then you were demanding.

When we have good boundaries, when our perceived worth doesn’t depend on things going our way, we can make true requests, and if the request isn’t or can’t be met, we roll with that without getting upset or anxious.

Good boundaries aren’t a barrier against caring, but are a protection of our integrity. They don’t make us detached or aloof, but allow us to be present to a situation without taking anything personally, without taking on the anxiety.

The notion of being a nonanxious presence in the midst of anxiety once seemed self-contradictory to me. My strategy for being present was to show that I was just as worried or scared or angry about the situation as anybody else. My strategy for being nonanxious was to check out, become detached, emotionally distant.

But the reality is that taking on someone else’s anxiety isn’t really being present to it. Nor is detaching and not being present to it being nonanxious – detachment is one way of being anxious. The only way to be truly present is to be nonanxious, and the only way to be truly nonanxious is to be present. And that requires being self-differentiated, having good boundaries that allow you to know that your worth, your dignity, the worth-while-ness of your life is not threatened by whatever mess of which you might happen to find yourself in the middle.

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See Part 2: The Better Your Boundary, the Less You Need a Border