During a recent Synod School convocation, the adult convocation speaker, the Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana, told attendees she would “do some psychological work with you.”
Did she ever.
McKibben Dana, the author of “Hope: A User’s Manual” and a book that’s due out next year, drew on such authors as Dr. Charles Richard Snyder, who wrote about goal thinking, pathway thinking and agency thinking. In order, that’s having the ability to imagine a destination for yourself, seeing the possible avenues you might take, and believing in yourself enough to follow those pathways.
We need all three, of course, churches and worshiping communities can get locked into ideals that are anything but: the idea that the pathway to flourish as a church is to add young families to the membership or hire just the right pastor.
Joanna Macy, who died July 19 at age 96, worked with environmental activists to help them work through difficulties and grief “that come through the work of trying to save the planet,” McKibben Dana said. Macy taught that “grief is not a detour to the work; it is the center of the work.”
“Going through those emotions,” McKibben Dana said, “is our way forward.”
Active hope is a practice, taught Macy along with Chris Johnstone, like tai chi or gardening. It’s a three-step process:
- Take a clear view of reality.
- Identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed.
- Take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.
“We can focus on our intention,” the two authors taught, according to McKibben Dana, “and let it be our guide.”
McKibben Dana held up a hand to help teach Dr. Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain. The model involves putting your thumb inside your fist, so your hand resembles a brain.
At the top is the higher-level brain, the upstairs brain, as Siegel calls it. The thumb is the limbic system, the downstairs brain, which is responsible for emotions and instincts, such as fight or flight.
When things are working well, the two talk to each other. Empathy, which resides in the upstairs brain, modulates our fear.
But if a fight or flight reaction gets activated, the two “don’t talk so well to each other,” McKibben Dana said, an event that Siegel phrases as “flip your lid.”
“You can’t be talked into the two talking again,” she said. “It has to be a bodily process,” such as taking deep breaths or applying an ice pack, to come back to a state of regulation.
When we’ve flipped our lid, we cannot be curious, she said. In her own seminary training, McKibben Dana was fortunate to have Dr. Shirley Guthrie come out of retirement to teach his Introduction to Theology class.
Guthrie taught that heretics deserve a hearing. “They are lifting something up that orthodoxy is rejecting,” he would say. “They may take it to a further level than we want to go,” McKibben Dana said, “but they are teaching us something if we want to go.”
A NEXT Church conference explored the notion of positive deviance, people who are exceptional in some way and have found a way to thrive. Mister Rogers had that quality, according to McKibben Dana. “He did things so differently,” she said. “It’s not as common as we might suppose.”
To get Synod School-goers to be in the moment, McKibben Dana brought four people forward for a game of props. She’d hand them a prop, and they’d use it in an unconventional way. A pool noodle, for example, can be used to knight someone or serve as an oversized straw.
“It’s a way to build curiosity in a low-threatening way,” McKibben Dana said. “You might try a few props with your session.”
The words “curiosity” and “care” have similar roots, she noted. “My invitation to you is, what would it look like to go through the day with a spirit of curiosity, which means a spirit of care.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Steve Hoehn, Manager, Hubbard Press, Administrative Services Group
Cathy Holland, HR Generalist, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group
Let us pray:
Father, thank you for the joy of being shared by you, in all diversity and brokenness, with those you love. Grant us grace to embrace your blessings as we journey with others in this amazing adventure of life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment