Roll Up Your Sleeves!

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

Our “doing” center of intelligence mobilizes our energy to act on the thoughts and feelings of the other two centers. If we cannot act on what we believe is right and what we feel is fair, no one benefits from our thoughts or feelings. Through its capacity for imagination and innovation, it steadily moves toward completion of the tasks that vision and value call for. It is best at creativity.

Well. First off, I struggle to trust what I believe and give it the thumbs up for being right. And I am not great at fairness. Honestly. I’m not. Objectivity is not my strong suit. I am reactive, especially when I feel like someone is putting my peeps in danger or not looking out for the interests of the common good.

My heart breaks when I see how hard it is for us to listen to one another. I cannot believe it when folks don’t seem to understand their value and worth. It drives me crazy when people are so quick to judge others and justify themselves - especially when that person is me!!! Shouldn’t I know better? As my grandchildren like to say, “Oh yes you should!”

So when my feelings are hurt and my thinking is stinking, what saves my bacon is rolling up my sleeves. Do the next right thing. I have found value in doing inconvenient things for people who would not do the same for me. I find that I am better balanced when I focus on doing the next right thing without evaluating whether or not it will make a damn bit of difference.

Can we do all that we want in the age of the coronavirus? No. But there is still plenty to do. We can phone friends; we can deliver gifts to people and leave them on their doorsteps (thanks Julie for teaching me that one); we can use funny emoji’s and text people. We can try to be kind. Did I mention also that we can show up for annoying zoom meetings? (Misery loves company.)

May you find your doing groove this week!

So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, Let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”

1 Peter 1:13-16 The Message

Don't Let Your Feelings Drive!

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Henry David Thoreau

How did Pete and I know we needed to change our early responses to the pandemic? Our FEELINGS! We were freaking out. Feelings examine our beliefs and how we live and apply them to situations, deciding which rule applies according to the situation.

As a rule, we thinking being good citizens means that we have a responsibility to keep up with the world around us. We are curious; we love to learn. But our feelings were saying to us, “Other rules apply also.” Rules like - what good does it do to know a bunch of stuff if you have a complete meltdown? How do we use what we learn wisely if we are sleep deprived? The feeling center helps add value to the “rules” by valuing the people for whom the laws are made. According to Kathleen Hurley and Theodore Dobson in their book My Best Self, our feeling center adds the language of love to our life, provides a voice for our soul, and gives us the capacity to be vulnerable.

Since we moderated some of our daily guidelines for living, we have developed a stamina that allows us to incorporate adding in hard things. Like living in a zoom lair some days so that our community can stay connected! I for one could not do this if I were still sleep-deprived, freaked out, and driven by my feelings.

These days we walk, 10’s of thousands of steps each week. We do not watch tv. We play board games and once everyone in our family stayed quarantined for a month, added our grandchildren back onto the list of daily visitors. We continue to listen to the scientists and do what is asked of us as citizens. We do not believe that everyone has gotten it all right, but we have calmed down enough to remember that we value supporting safety guidelines and caring about the more vulnerable among us. These are our choices; you may make other choices and that’s all good. But I am so grateful that our freak out alerted us to the need to hunker down and THINK about what we understand and act in a way that fits our values. This includes showing up for zoom calls even when neither of us have had a legit haircut in months.

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.

Psalm 119:114

Listening to Your Thinking Center

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

Early on during the pandemic we devoured all the news we could find on the subject. We had decisions to make as a family and as a faith community. The pressure to do the safest thing was tempered by our belief that isolation is bad for people - especially people who are struggling. The more we studied, the more confusing the process.

One morning Pete had a panic attack; I had not slept in days. We stopped and THOUGHT about our situation. Too much information was causing more harm than good. So we stopped the obsessive watching and chose to limit our exposure. This has worked for us.

This is an example of the three centers of intelligence working at various times together and in competition. Our feelings were teaching us that we were overloaded, but our research and compulsion news consumption was “doing” out of control. We were not thinking, we were ruminating. FINALLY, our thinking center came online and called a moratorium on our doing so that our feelings could calm down a bit.

This is the value of our thinking center. It helps us establish guidelines that govern our lives. It contains new ideas (hey, stop watching all the news and watch just enough to stay informed), original thinking (what about zoom?), vision (this is not our future, it is our present), awareness (what good are we doing like this?), and understanding of the true meaning of reality (this is a historic moment, no one knows for sure what is right). The best gift our thinking offers is the capacity for consciousness.

Lots of time we believe we are thinking when we are really imagining, or ruminating, or obsessing. So, as the scriptures encouraged so many years ago - we have to take captive every thought and give it a good vetting to make sure we are really doing productive work at establishing guidelines that govern our lives.

Some of us are too heady, others could use a bit more thinking. Which are you?

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

Better Days...

I dwell in possibility.

Emily Dickinson

I had a mentor who was in the habit, when asked how he was doing, of ALWAYS saying, “Better!” He said it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips. He intended, I think, to communicate that every day with Jesus was better than the day before. This is not my experience. Full transparency - he was an amazing man of God and this may have been true for him. It is not true for me.

If you have the temperament and faith for it - I wish for you a better day every day than the day before; I celebrate you! But if this is not your experience, can I share a different perspective?

We do not have to feel “BETTER!” to be faithful. In fact, our brain has this amazing capacity to produce all sorts of feelings that do not have a thing to do with our faith.

We have three centers of intelligence: our thoughts, our feelings, and our doing. Our complicated, ambivalent feelings are not an issue so long as we recognize each of these three ways of “knowing” and use each center appropriately. Stay tuned as we go over these during the next few days so that we can evaluate our use of each of them.

For today, we need to recognize that we do NOT use all three equally. We tend to over-use one and repress another, with the third acting as a side-kick to our tired over-relied-upon favorite intelligence center.

My mentor was able to say “Better!” with sincerity because he was a heady guy and did not put much stock in his feelings. That means that one third of his big brain, body and heart was off-line much of the time. Today I serve as a mentor on occasion and I have chosen a different path for myself and it shows up in my mentoring too. Let us dwell in the possibility that all parts of us are valuable. Let’s learn how to be strong and courageous because we trust in God - even when we feel freaked out, think we have better ideas than he does, or prefer to make decisions that suit our preferences.

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave your or forsake you.

Deuteronomy 31:6

The Value of Suffering

Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.

Lemony Snicket

In our community we are zooming like crazy and are fortunate enough to have a group of friends within the community and beyond who see the value of these strange meetings. They are awkward and unsatisfying and definitely a pain in the neck to facilitate. But what a refuge of hope I have found among these courageous and committed people who keep showing up for one another in an inhospitable climate for connection!

Last weekend was no exception. One of our members said this: “I see the value in suffering; suffering has taught me a lot. But torture? Torture is not good for anybody.”

He did not mean that he prefers suffering; he was simply sharing his wisdom. He has learned over the years that suffering has taught him things that making choices based on his preferences have not. His sufferings have made him a better human.

His wisdom did not stop there. He set an outer limit on suffering as a value. When suffering moves into torture, escape is essential. After that meeting Pete and I went for a long walk. We talked about how we define torture versus suffering.

What makes a day torturous? For us, every single solitary time we have put our hope in someone or something or some outcome - it eventually produces, if not exactly torture, certainly needless and unproductive suffering.

Because of my friend’s wise words, I am working on intentionally placing my hope in the only place that makes sense. I am regularly admitting my foolishness when my expectations are out of alignment with my hope. There is some suffering in this refusal to give myself permission to wish for something rather than hope in a God who sometimes feels too far away for my own good.

Nevertheless, I persist.

And now, o Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.

Psalm 39:7