Hope and Its Eternal Springs

“Hope fills the holes of my frustration in my heart.”

Emanuel Cleaver

The news has not been good lately; I have tried to keep a stiff upper lip and my chin up; it has mostly worked. I’ve used every skill I have learned and gotten back into student mode to learn more. Frankly, the more I learn, the harder it is to NOT get frustrated. What I am learning about resilience, courage, and change is missing in much of our current social environment.

Last night our family got some good news - which felt jarring. I woke up this morning with a little bounce in my step and some energy for the work that lies ahead. One little piece of good news. We did not win the lottery; racial equality has not been achieved; my friends still are diverse and have wildly different opinions about the world and how to make it a better place. (This makes it hard for a person who relies on her friends a LOT for wisdom and perspective.) The news, while good, carries with it no guarantees. There is plenty of room for ambivalence, although it was the best outcome given the circumstances that we as a family could hope for in the summer of 2020.

I’ve never been a big believer in hope and its eternal springs. I’ve tended to think of it as a precious commodity, not to be wasted on trivial matters. When hope shows up I think we should all throw a party, do a little dance...you know the rest. Hope is so powerful that it only takes a smidge to awaken a heart of stone. It has the capacity to override irrational thoughts, questionable fears and legitimate frustrations. It ameliorates depression. Hope and a cup of good coffee can change the world. Sometimes life gets so hard that we miss hope when she shows up for us. Our head is down and we are trudging along; she comes for a visit and we don’t hear her quiet little knock on the door. But here’s the thing about hope: she is one persistent character. She just keeps coming until we notice.

Last night I recognized her visitation in the face of my son; the thumbs up of my husband as I left my zoom lair for the night; the sound of grace and accommodation in the face of a pandemic and I thought, “We are not alone; the world is still a place where God’s Spirit resides and people still incline their head, heart and ears to hear him.” So here’s to you, hope! May we all find some today!

“For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.”

Psalm 9:18

Dial It Back:

“Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure.”

Tim Kreider

What if, suggests the author of the article on 7 Superpowers, we all focused on taking responsibility for our own well-being before we started yammering on about who is to blame for our discomfort? There is actually a difference between our daily experience and the high level issues we fret over and fuss about.

What if we dialed back the outrage?

Instead, take responsibility for making your life healthy, purposeful, and reasonably happy. You do you. This is not selfish, this is self-care. Our capacity to serve others is a by-product of the depth of our self-care.

You do you. But think about the You that You wanna become. Now that’s a winning strategy for life under all circumstances.

Dial It Back: What is Helpful and What is Not

When the stock market plummeted and I could not find toilet paper or chicken anywhere...my heart started skipping beats and racing with anxiety. Until I paused. I went into my toolbox and pulled out every resource I could find. Here are a couple that were extremely helpful:

* We have been hearing for forever about how it is important to stay in the present moment. So I decided to stay there. When my mind started judging this sudden rush on toilet paper, I thanked my thoughts for caring about my clean tushy, but politely asked them to move on. I reminded myself that for today, I had enough toilet paper. In fact, when I thought about it - I had PLENTY of everything I needed. This brought me not only joy but got me thinking about who might not have plenty. Sharing ensued. Staying in the present, reminding myself of what was real, was really, really calming.

* Do what is helpful. When we have wide margins for error during times of calm and low stress, we can afford to get a little careless with our disciplines or even explore new ways of being in the world. This is NOT that time. So Pete and I said, “What is helpful for us? What is not helping?” Here is the real list we made in response to that question:

* It is NOT helpful to watch the news. We know enough to know what we need to do today.

* It is VERY helpful to walk together every single day. (Often we tag team exercise, not right now. We do this together.)

* It is NOT helpful to waste time on distractions. We do not have the margins for being spiritually...thoughtless. We eliminated all TV.

* It is VERY helpful to do our spiritual practices - meditation, quiet time, etc. every single practice that we have done in the past that was helpful - we do daily.

* It is NOT helpful to whine about what we do not have. (Although, I do think whining about missing our grandchildren is just plain necessary.)

* It is VERY helpful to speak gratitude to each other and remind each other of every single little thing that brings us joy. I’ve seen a lot of others doing this too. I’ve seen more pictures of birds, sunsets and goats in the last six weeks than in my lifetime. Keep ‘em coming!!

* It is NOT helpful to experience too much boredom or lethargy - a little is good; too much distraction is not, but there is a happy medium.

* It is VERY helpful to continue serving others, working out, eating right, learning, practicing or finding hobbies, etc. This requires adjustments but my goodness - check out Youtube! I am convinced that if this goes too much longer, many of us could earn a PhD in something!!

* Do what is enjoyable! If it is present moment focused, helpful and brings you joy - go for it! This is a great stress reliever AND quite hopeful, don’t you think?

Dial It Back: Emotion Regulation

In my Dialectical Behavioral Training class, I am gaining insights into the value of emotional regulation. It seems to me that emotional regulation is a skill set that also helps the practitioner take more responsibility for their thoughts and actions too. It all works together. I have been fascinated by the topics of learning to distinguish between discernment and judgmentalism. If we can learn how to STOP being judgmental, we actually gain more control over our thoughts, feelings and actions.

This is really hard work, but it is also hard because most of us simply have been trained to be judgmental and had no training in developing discernment. Reread that sentence. I believe it with all my heart.

Discernment is the capacity to deal with reality and acknowledge the truth. Judgment is an opinion we form in our mind. When we avoid judgment, we actually reduce our emotional reactivity; we have better discretion about what is our part to do or not do; our thoughts are clearer; our relationships are more peaceful and so are we!

My instructor (Marsha Linehan) told a story about a Tiger that I’d like to retell it (my way) to illustrate this point. Suppose you go to an animal park with your friend. The animals are safety fenced in, but this one clever tiger gets loose and….eats your friend. “Oh no! You think. This SHOULD NOT have happened to my friend.” I suspect your friend would agree but he isn’t around to weigh in on the subject. The park officials say, “Who left the tiger gate open? She SHOULD NOT have done that!” The park official thinks this is bad (judgment) because they are worried about getting sued. The young guy making less than minimum wage who is going to take the fall for this accident says, “The owner SHOULD NOT BE SUCH A CHEAPSKATE! I TOLD HIM THE LATCH TO THE GATE WAS FAULTY AND TONY THE TIGER WAS LEARNING HOW TO OPEN IT!” All judgments. All in the minds of people. All formed from different perspectives but agreeing on one point: this is BAD.

What does the tiger think? “Yum. Yum.”

Discernment is what is needed to solve this problem; I suspect if this happened in real life what we would be stuck with is judgment. See the difference? The moral of this story is that all our blaming and judgments are a waste of time. Instead, what if we focused our energy on becoming better humans?

Dial It Back: Developing Non-Judgement and Resisting Group Think

Every Saturday night a group of folks gather (via Zoom these days) to hone their spiritual, social and emotional intelligence. It’s challenging curriculum because it asks the participant to...participate. Lately we have spent time focusing on restraint. We’ve asked folks to up their active listening skills, learn how to validate better and more often, consider their internal boundaries, love each other harder and stronger.

Seems like faithful people can do all of this - right? Aren’t these great expressions of the principle of love one another? We think so. But what we have observed about ourselves and others over the years is that principles do not automatically translate into practices. This is why we are spending time focusing on developing skill sets to support our principles of lavish loving.

One of the many tools we use at NSC is the enneagram. If you do not know what that is - no worries, for the sake of this blog that does not matter. What does matter is some of the theory found and taught in that material. In the article on restraint, the author says that “we lie to ourselves a lot.”; the enneagram doesn’t call it lying - but it does kind of agree with this notion that we have these stories we tell ourselves that we unfortunately come to believe.

This causes us to develop a bit of blindness to aspects of ourselves that do not fit the story we have gotten used to telling about ourselves. This also occurs based on groups you belong to. We get accustomed to adopting the same views as the groups we associate with - and this is a problem. Think politics. Think religious affiliations. Think team sports.

Our work in developing the superpower of restraint is to resist group think and unconditional loyalty. We need to have contradictory philosophies that we wrestle with because the world is full of paradox and legitimate contradictions. How do we do this? Well, we need to practice nonjudgmental observation. Try to search out and find common ground with folks who are not naturally in your tribe; be willing to acknowledge the faults of your favorites.

Here’s an example. A political rival (who we do not know at all personally) is accused of sexual improprieties and we say, “Makes sense. What a slimeball. I always believe the woman.” A political ally (who we do not know at all personally) is accused of sexual improprieties and we say, “Fake news. Who paid her off? I heard she was a slut. There is just no way this happened. This person is too decent for that!” This is groupthink. We need to stay out of the herd! We need to do better than this; sit out of the arguments that are driven by our opinions and bias and second-hand knowledge. And...the best thing each of us can do is to wrestle with becoming the kind of people who in no way participate in sexism, sexual impropriety, sexual aggression or assault. This is where our energy is best spent. This is showing restraint and gaining wisdom.