“Saying No…”

By Rev. Dr. James Kubal-Komoto

Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church

Des Moines, Washington

November 8, 2009

            The title of my message this morning is, “Saying No,” and it’s the first in a two-part series. The second part, which will be in two weeks from today, is, accordingly, “…and saying Yes.”

            Let me tell why I decided to talk about this topic.

            In the past - - not quite so much anymore - - I have officiated a lot of weddings, and a frequent complaint I have heard from brides-to-be was, “Nobody RSVPs anymore.”

            “We’ve sent out all these invitations, and less than half of the people we’ve invited have told us whether they’re coming or not, so we have no idea how many people are actually planning to attend the ceremony and the reception,” a bride to be would often tell me.

            It doesn’t seem RSVPing would be so hard. Most invitations include a reply card and a pre-addressed stamped envelope. All somebody has to do is check a box on the reply card, put it in the envelope, and drop it in a mailbox.

            However, brides-to-be tell me, “Nobody RSVPs anymore.” “I don’t care if they’re coming or they’re not, but I just want to know!” a frustrated bride would say.

            More generally, I’ve noticed that many of us are hesitant to make commitments too far into the future.

            “Can you be here at this time on this date?” we’re asked about something, and a typical response is not a clear yes or a clear no but a fuzzy maybe.

            Of course, I’m guilty of this myself. “I’d like to do that,” I sometimes think to myself, “but what if I’m extra busy or just plain exhausted when that date rolls around.”

            Even more generally, I’ve noticed that many of us are hesitant to give a clear Yes or a clear No to other people, not just to invitations or one sort or another, but in all sorts of situations - - in our relationships in our families, at our workplaces, in church, and in the wider world - - and I’ve come to believe that this makes all our lives more difficult than they need to be.

            In Christian scripture there is a verse in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus says, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, no.’ Anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

            As a Unitarian Universalist, I don’t too many bible verses as authoritative - - except perhaps that one about eating, drinking and being merry in Hebrew scripture and perhaps that one about loving your neighbor as yourself in Christian scripture - - but I’ve come to believe that it would be better for all of us if more often we would give clear Yeses and clear Nos to each other.

            But why is it so difficult for us?

            In looking for an answer to this question, I recently came across a short, highly-readable and highly useful book. The title of the book is The Power of a Positive No and its author is William Ury, who is the co-founder of Harvard University’s Program on negotiation.

            Ury begins his book talking about how important the ability to say No is to our lives. In fact, he suggests, it may be the most important word any of us know, and quotes a lot of people to prove his point:

            Warren Buffet once said that saying No is the secret of getting rich. “I sit there all day and look at investment proposals. I say No, No, No, No, No, No, No - - until I see one that is exactly what I am looking for. And then I say Yes. All I have to do say Yes a few times in my life and I’ve made my fortune.”

            British prime minister Tony Blair also once said, “The art of leadership is not saying Yes, it’s saying No.”

            Perhaps more inspiringly, Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” and I take his words to mean that our lives begin to end the day we are no longer able to say No to certain things.

            And what series of quotations would be complete without something from Mahatma Gandhi, who once said, “A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

            Saying No, Ury says, is often essential to our very survival. “Saying No is essential to life. Every living cell has a membrance that allows certain needed nutrients to pass through and repels others. Every living organism needs such boundaries to protect itself. To survive and thrive, every human being and every organization need to be able to say No to anything that threatens their safety, dignity, and integrity.”

            Here’s a story Ury tells about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis to illustrate how important saying No sometimes is.

            Among the many close calls [during the Cuban missile crisis], perhaps the least known was what occurred aboard a Soviet submarine armed with nuclear torpedoes and submerged in the north Atlantic. A U.S. warship dropped depth charges on the sub, trying to force it to the surface where it could be tracked. To the Russian captain, with temperatures soaring and his boat running out of oxygen, this was an attack that called for retaliation. He ordered that the nuclear torpedoes be prepared for firing.

            Russian naval procedure…required two officers to agree to the firing. One second captain instantly agreed: “We’re going to blast them now!” he screamed. “We will die, but we will sink them all! We will not disgrace our navy!” But the other second captain, Vasili Arkhipov, said No, reminding the other two that the naval regulations permitted firing only if the sub’s hall had been breached, which it had not. “Arkhipov was a man who never lost his cool,” explained a close friend of his years later. “The captain had lost his temper. The situation was very tense and everyone was swearing. Then, thank God, everyone calmed down.”

            “If that torpedo had been fired, nuclear war could have started right there,” said Robert McNamara, commenting on the incident over thirty years later. One ordinary man, saying No at the right time and in the right way, may have saved the world.

            Why do many us hesitate to say No in even much more mundane situations?

            Instead of giving a clear No, Ury says many of us fall into one of three traps.

            The first trap many of fall into is the trap of accommodation. We say Yes when we really want to say no.

            Why do we accommodate?

            It’s my own belief that it’s sometimes okay to put the needs of others above our own needs, especially if it’s done out of feelings of love, but not if it’s done out of feelings of love, we are accommodating, and most often we are acting out of feelings of fear or guilt.  

            And how do we feel when we accommodate?

            We feel miserable. We feel miserable because we end up doing things we really didn’t want to do, going places we really didn’t want to go, spending time with people we really didn’t want to spent time with. We also end up feeling lousy about ourselves because we didn’t have the guts to say no in the first place.

            Sometimes we feel so miserable about accommodating, the next time we’re in a situation in which we want to say No, we fall into the trap of attacking, letting our No be fueled by negative emotion.

            “Would you like some more mashed potatoes?” your Aunt Martha asks you at Thanksgiving Dinner.

            “No, I don’t want any of your mashed potatoes. They’re lumpy and flavorless, like everything else on this table, and I don’t know why we always have to come here for Thanksgiving Dinner anyway, driving for three straight-hours through the rain to a mediocre meal listening to Uncle Harold tell the same boring stories year after year. Thank God he falls asleep right after two glasses of wine.”

            Then after having given such a powerful No, you’ll feel absolutely great, for at least 30 seconds. As Ambrose Pierce once said, “Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

            Torn between not wanting to accommodate, which makes us feel lousy, and attacking, which usually makes us feel even worse, many of us fall into the third trap - - avoidance.

            “Avoidance is an exceedingly common response to conflicts today, particularly within families and organizations,” Ury says, and especially churches, I might add.

            Is there a way out of accommodation, attacking, and avoidance?

            Ury says the secret is giving a positive No, and he outlines many steps to giving a positive No in his book, as well as offering some simple tips and tricks such as the disarmingly polite but very effective phrase “I’d prefer not to” that we heard about in this morning’s reading.

            However, this morning I want to focus on just one of those steps, the one that I think is the most important one - - that is discovering the Yes behind your No.

            What does this mean?

            Saying No is difficult and often, at least in my own experience, makes us feel uneasy, but it is much easier to say if we have first discovered the Yes behind our No, the Yes in which our No is rooted.

            Most often this Yes is a Yes to ourselves, to our own interests, to our own deepest values, ideals, and commitments.

            Let me give you an example from my own life.

            As the minister of a church, I often receive all kind of requests to do things or participate in things.

            “Will you come to this important community meeting?

            “Will you come speak to this group?”

            “Will you serve on this committee?”

            I often like to say Yes to these kinds of requests, not only because I have a hard time saying No but because I see my role as minister of this church as not only serving this congregation, but also serving the wider Unitarian Universalist movements of which we’re a part, and serving the wider world.

            But a few years ago, Hiromi and I knew that our adoption would likely be happening soon. I knew that adopting a child would be a big transition in our lives, and I wanted to be able to devote as much of my time and energy to that as possible, and so I made a commitment to myself not to take any additional outside commitments.

            And clearly knowing my Yes - - my Yes to spending as much time and energy with Hiromi and this child we would be adopting - - made it much easier to say No to additional outside commitments.

            When people would call me, I would say, “Thank you so much for thinking of me, but my wife and I are in the process of adopting a child, and I’m not taking on any outside commitments at this time.” I found it to be an easy thing to say.

            Knowing our Yeses makes it much easier to express our Nos, whether we’re expressing these Nos to ourselves or somebody else.

            If we know that our Yes is to a longer, healthier life, then it’s easier to say No to sleeping late and not exercising in the morning or No to an extra helping.

            If we know our Yes is to saving up money to buy a house, it’s easier to say No to frivolous spending.

            If we know our Yes is to wanting to enjoy the holidays and not feel stressed out by them, then it makes it easier to say No to every invitation to a holiday party we receive.

            If we know our Yes is to our family, it’s easier to say No to overtime or even a promotion that may mean more time away from home.

            If we know our Yes is to affirming the worth, dignity, and potential of every person, especially people we love and care about, then it makes it easier for us to say No when we hear somebody making a derogatory comment about gays or lesbians.

            I know that the leadership of this church, especially the board of directors, occasionally agonizes over difficult decisions it is required to make, some of which involve saying No to members of the congregation. I’ve observed when the board is clear about its Yeses - - the mission, vision, and values we share as a congregation - - the board has a much easier time saying No.

            When we reflect on the stories of people who have stood against injustice, stories of people who have committed civil disobedience or in some other way refused to continue to lend their tacit cooperation and support to systems of injustices, stories of people who have often taking brave, courageous stands against seemingly indomitable opposition, have you ever wondered what gave them the courage to say No?

            When we reflect on the stories of a Susan B. Anthony or a Gandhi or a Rosa Parks or a Martin Luther, King, Jr., or a Nelson Mandela, or a Harvey Milk or that unnamed Chinese dissident who stood in front of a tank in Tianamen Square, have you ever wondered what gave them to courage to say No.

            My suspicion is what gave them courage is that they knew what their Yes was.

            It’s important for us to know our Yes, but it’s also important, Ury says, for us to express it.

            If somebody asks us something, and we start off with No, the other person may think that we’re just being difficult or ornery. Or the other person may think we’re saying No to him or her as a person. Or the other person may thing we are just indiscriminately yielding our power.

            Ury says that when he asks people about the worst Nos they’ve ever received, the most commonly cited ones are the Nos they received as teenagers from their parents. “No, because I said so, that’s why.”

            A purely power-based No, Ury says, shows no concern for the other, and is difficult to hear, but if we first share with another person our Yes, the other person may  not only hear us better, he or she may end up respecting us more.

            Ury tells the story of Emily Wilson, who was the longtime housekeeper for the family of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

            One day President Lyndon Johnson called to speak to Galbraith.

            “Is Galbraith there?”

            “He’s taking a nap and has left strict orders not to be disturbed.”

            “Well, I’m the president! Wake him up!”

            “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I work for Mr. Galbraith, not for you.” And then she hung up on the President of the United State of America.

            When Galbraith called back after his nap, Johnson told him: “Who is that woman? I want her working for me!”

            Wilson made clear her Yes - - she’s wasn’t saying No to the president, she was saying Yes to her employer, and he respected her for it.

            I want to point out an exception to this rule of first expressing our Yes…

            Sometimes when we are saying No to bad behaviors or especially dangerous behaviors  the only appropriate thing to do is say No as loudly and clearly as possible.

            According to one organization that trains women in self-defense in the San Francisco Bay area, Ury says, shouting “No!” to an attacker actually attracts more attention and recruits more help than shouting “Help!”

            In these situations, No is enough. As a saying in Al-Anon, the 12-step group for friends and relatives of those dealing with addiction, reminds us, “‘No’ is a complete sentence.”

            I also know that sometimes we find ourselves in situations and intuitively, in our guts, we know something not quite right is going on and yet our brains haven’t quite caught up with our guts and so we can’t exactly say what our Yes is in that situation or what our No is.

            Some of you have even told me that you have found yourself in conversations or discussions here at church and something is bothering you that you can’t quite name so you hesitate to say anything.

            In those situations, I want to recommend that the best thing to say is, “I’m feeling uncomfortable with this.” That, by the way, should be a signal to all the rest of us - - anybody involved in the conversation - - to stop, take a break, take a step back, and give our brains a chance to catch up with our guts.

            But in most situations, one of the best things we can do is discover and express the Yes behind our No.

            My friends, if we are to live the richest, fullest, deepest, most abundant lives possible for ourselves, if we are to create a world that is compassionate, just, and lasting for generations to come, we will need to learn to say No.

            May we have the wisdom and courage to say our Nos well.

            So may it be. Amen.