The Little Red Blog

Sunday Sermon

Tish Harrison Warren:

I have had to learn to think about repentance differently. I think the term “repentance” can be thought of as this really dramatic event, like an altar call, you repent once and then your life is supposed to be different from then on. I’ve come to see repentance and faith as breathing out and breathing in…or your left foot and right foot. We’re constantly walking in repentance and constantly walking in faith. I need to understand repentance and faith not as things that happen to us in dramatic moments but as the daily rhythm of life. Kathleen Norris makes the connection in her book The Quotidian Mysteries between repetitive practices in liturgy and repetitive practices in things like laundry — repetitive practices in daily life.

There seem to be two different struggles that we have with repetition. One is for those folks like me that really crave novelty and new experiences. Having to do something every day — like make the bed every day when you know that it’s going to be unmade again — is really discouraging. Some of it is personality. I need ritual and routine so badly, but I reject it at the same time. To some extent, repetition is completely impossible to avoid. We just are — neuroscience is showing this more and more — people that live in patterns. It’s not the patterns themselves that are the enemy. It’s what those patterns are doing to us. Are we entering into patterns that are diminishing us?

Can we enter our daily lives and the work we have to do in a way that doesn’t diminish us but teaches us the beauty of repetition or teaches us how to serve people? Americans in general love novelty, but novelty exhausts us. We cannot base our faith on it. Repetitive practices are what we actually need to sustain the marathon of our life…I’ve come to see repetition as completely unavoidable…I’ve just gotten to the point where I think this is how humans are made. We will be unhealthy people if we try to reject all repetition. We need to think well about how this repetition is forming us and what kinds of people it’s making us.

http://thewell.intervarsity.org/voices/worship-everyday-interview-tish-harrison-warren 

 

Walk This Way

Full disclosure: I do not own an automobile and do not want to own one.  I have not driven an automobile since approximately 1984 and do not want ever to drive one again.  I believe that automotive culture has been destructive of the natural environment, of urban design, and of human relationships.  I walk not just out of necessity but out of preference (though I utilize Missoula’s “Mountain Line” bus system (it’s free!) when I need to), and I believe that walking contributes to my physical and emotional well-being.

In other words, I’m an oddball. But oddball or not, I love walking; and when Antonia Malchik writes (at Aeon) about “The End of Walking,” I believe she should be taken seriously.

Ms. Malchik begins by reminding us of what we ought to know but in this day and age do not: walking is basic to our humanity and indispensable to our health.  Malchik writes:

 There is nothing more human, more natural, more fundamental to our freedom, than transporting ourselves by foot. Nothing more purely instinctive than a child answering the desire of feet, legs, spine, and head, to dart forward in the direction his brain urges him to go.

Human beings evolved to move at a pace of three miles an hour, breathing easily, hands free, seeking food and shade. We tread without thinking, toes pushing off from the soil, cheeks lifted to catch the air, dirt caking in our nostrils. Walking is the first legacy of our post-ape genes, the trait that makes us most human: H. sapiens came only after H. erectus. We walked, and began our intellectual toddle toward the Anthropocene.

Our most basic access to health comes from walking. Walking for just 30 minutes five days a week has been shown to have a significant impact on everything from obesity to depression and colon cancer. A normal day’s errands would easily take more than 30 minutes on foot. When we get around by driving instead we’re liable to become overweight, insular, edgy. In his book The Story of the Human Body, the evolutionary biologist Daniel E Lieberman dissects the widespread chronic health problems that he thinks are linked to sitting for long periods, including in cars: muscle atrophy, lower-back pain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. ‘We are inadequately adapted to being too physically idle, too well fed, too comfortable,’ he says.

But exercise is perhaps the narrowest of considerations. Walking is a complex interconnection of cognitive processes and sensory inputs. The transfer of information from foot to brain, between the inner ear and visual reception, is mind-bogglingly difficult to calculate. Only the most recent neuroscience research is beginning to grasp the bidirectional link between cognitive and motor functions, and the role cardiovascular health plays in our mental wellbeing.

In our asphalt nation, however, such considerations are blithely dismissed:

Kate Kraft, the National Coalition Director for America Walks, an advocacy organisation for walkability, says that, ever since towns began removing streetcars, we’ve undermined transit systems that would support the walker and planned instead for the car. Walking is an impediment to the car culture we revere, an experience we’ve intentionally designed out of our lives.

We came to scorn walking, to fear it. Real Americans fold themselves into cars, where they feel safe and in control. For exercise, the better-off mimic walkers, bicyclists, hikers, and farmers on stationary machines in health clubs. They and the middle class drive to parks and wilderness preserves for the privilege of walking outside among trees and birds and clean air, and the poor are left with vast wastelands of road and concrete; the advice to ‘walk three times a week for your health’ easier given than followed when there’s nowhere safe to place your foot.

Whatever the benefits of the internal combustion engine and the personal/family automobile, the unintended consequences have been immeasurable:

Over the past 80 years, walking simply as a way to get somewhere, let alone for pleasure, has become such an alien concept to Americans that small movements towards making neighbourhoods and communities more walkable are met with fierce, indignant resistance. Much of this fight has to do with who pays for the sidewalks. Once an area has been designed without walkability in mind, it’s extremely expensive to reverse the infrastructure. 

There are neighborhoods in Missoula—urban neighborhoods, not outlying rural areas—that do not have sidewalks.  Russell Street, one of Missoula’s busiest, lacks sidewalks for blocks on end.  Montanans boast of their “cowboy culture”: real men, apparently, do not walk.

As Malchik explains:

At a deeper level, Americans’ attachment to private property and individual liberty – which are rife with a history of racial and class tensions – drives us to mistrust walking. ‘It’s that ‘get off my lawn, get off my sidewalk’ feeling,’ says Kate Kraft. ‘People get this fear that “undesirables” will be walking through their neighbourhoods.’

The car, the distrust of walkers, they’ve become the hallmarks of an everybody-for-herself, bootstrap-pulling, falsely self-sufficient American culture. Freedom to drive when and how we please is as American as apple pie and a gun holster; freedom to walk is not.

In many parts of the US, pedestrianism is seen as a dubiously counter-culture activity. Gated communities are only the most recent incarnation of the narrow-eyed suspicion with which we view unleashed strangers venturing outside on foot, much less anywhere near our homes. 

Walking is not just countercultural, it’s dangerous, and not just because pedestrians are at a disadvantage to cars:

Walking opens us up to the menace of a world outside the built environments that we control. Driving, despite the high risk of crashes, injury, and death, masks itself as freedom: we’re not watching our backs. And once we’ve become unaccustomed to the movement of the air, the rustle of the trees, the sight of other people, they can startle. People who move differently and think differently from us become, from the safety of our fortress-homes and echo-chamber media and car-conduits that feed it all, threats to our way of life. And so we design towns and suburbs, neighbourhoods and cities, unfriendly to the walker, to those who break out of the paradigms we’ve deemed safe. 

I can attest to the fact that when walking, you encounter people you don’t know; you have to decide about making eye contact and offering a friendly greeting to complete strangers! And some of the people you encounter are walking because they can’t afford to own cars: that is, they are poor!  

Despite the chance of such terrifying experiences, Antonia Malchik thinks walking is worth it.  In fact, she very explicitly encourages us to do it:  

Open your door; go for a walk. Feel the spring in your step, the buoyancy in your spine, the loose-limbed gait, as more than clichés. Take one last, lingering moment to appreciate this miraculous thing before we lose it forever.

I’ve never met Antonia Malchik, but as a fellow Montanan, I will extend the following offer: come to Missoula sometime, Ms. Malchik, and when you do, please look me up.  You and I will go on a walk together, while we still can.

https://aeon.co/essays/step-by-step-americans-are-sacrificing-the-right-to-walk

"Why is he walking?"

Sometimes [Leonard Mead] would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open…. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.                                          --Ray Bradbury, “The Pedestrian”

A few weeks ago, I was walking—it’s my mode of transportation, my method of getting from one place to another—past Loyola High School, where a friend of mine teaches students to drive. As I walked by, he and a couple of students happened to be in the Driver’s Ed car, getting ready to pull out of the parking lot; seeing me walk by, my friend asked the student driver to honk the horn to get my attention.   The student complied, and then turned to my friend and asked, “Why is he walking?”  My friend was momentarily nonplussed by the question: why, indeed, would anyone be out walking?

Antonia Malchik lives in, and grew up in, Montana, but that is the least of many reasons to recommend her wonderful article “The End of Walking”.  To begin with, she reminds us of our bipedal nature and ancestry:

There is nothing more human, more natural, more fundamental to our freedom, than transporting ourselves by foot…Human beings evolved to move at a pace of three miles an hour, breathing easily, hands free, seeking food and shade. We tread without thinking, toes pushing off from the soil, cheeks lifted to catch the air, dirt caking in our nostrils. Walking is the first legacy of our post-ape genes, the trait that makes us most human: H. sapiens came only afterH. erectus. We walked, and began our intellectual toddle toward the Anthropocene.

Ms. Malchik also emphasizes that the simple act of walking is good for our health:

Our most basic access to health comes from walking. Walking for just 30 minutes five days a week has been shown to have a significant impact on everything from obesity to depression and colon cancer. A normal day’s errands would easily take more than 30 minutes on foot. When we get around by driving instead we’re liable to become overweight, insular, edgy. In his book The Story of the Human Body, the evolutionary biologist Daniel E Lieberman dissects the widespread chronic health problems that he thinks are linked to sitting for long periods, including in cars: muscle atrophy, lower-back pain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. ‘We are inadequately adapted to being too physically idle, too well fed, too comfortable,’ he says.

Moreover, walking allows us to experience the world (and to process its potentially overwhelming deluge of sensory data) at human speed and human scale:

Walking is a complex interconnection of cognitive processes and sensory inputs. The transfer of information from foot to brain, between the inner ear and visual reception, is mind-bogglingly difficult to calculate. Only the most recent neuroscience research is beginning to grasp the bidirectional link between cognitive and motor functions, and the role cardiovascular health plays in our mental wellbeing.

Whatever else modernity hath wrought, its wholesale abandonment of walking in favor of fossil-fueled combustion engine-powered automotive transport has been nothing short of tragic:

Walking as a way of life is more out of reach than ever...Walking is an impediment to the car culture we revere, an experience we’ve intentionally designed out of our lives…We [have come] to scorn walking, to fear it. Real Americans fold themselves into cars, where they feel safe and in control. For exercise, the better-off mimic walkers, bicyclists, hikers, and farmers on stationary machines in health clubs. They and the middle class drive to parks and wilderness preserves for the privilege of walking outside among trees and birds and clean air, and the poor are left with vast wastelands of road and concrete; the advice to ‘walk three times a week for your health’ easier given than followed when there’s nowhere safe to place your foot.

Ms. Malchik further notes “the lack of public transport and sidewalks, the assumption that destinations even half a mile away – a 10-minute walk – required a motor vehicle and a seat belt. The car, the distrust of walkers, they’ve become the hallmarks of an everybody-for-herself, bootstrap-pulling, falsely self-sufficient American culture. Freedom to drive when and how we please is as American as apple pie and a gun holster; freedom to walk is not.”

As an example of how “freedom to walk” has been forced to give way to the tyranny of four-wheeled machines, Malchik cites “the invention of jaywalking”:

Jaywalking was once a semi-derogatory term referring to country bumpkins, or ‘jays’, who inefficiently meandered around American cities; by the 1920s, the term was being used to transfer blame for accidents from motorists to pedestrians. Making jaywalking illegal gave the supremacy of mobility to those sitting behind combustion engines. Once upon a time, the public roads belonged to everyone. But since the ingenious invention of jaywalking we’ve battered pedestrianism in one of those silent culture wars where the only losers are ourselves.

The world of Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian”—in which the innocently perambulating Leonard Mead was hauled off to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies—may already be here:

In many parts of the US, pedestrianism is seen as a dubiously counter-culture activity. Gated communities are only the most recent incarnation of the narrow-eyed suspicion with which we view unleashed strangers venturing outside on foot, much less anywhere near our homes. A friend of mine told me recently that a few years ago, when she lived in Mississippi, she was stopped by police constantly simply because she preferred to walk to work. Twice they insisted on driving her home, ‘so I could prove I wasn’t homeless or a prostitute. Because who else would be out walking?’ She finally got tired of the hassle and bought a used bike to commute.

Worrying that “Those of us who walk are finding the paths slipping out from under our feet,” Ms. Malchik wonders “What will we become without the means to walk, the desire, the space, the capability?” She concludes with the simplest advice: “Open your door; go for a walk. Feel the spring in your step, the buoyancy in your spine, the loose-limbed gait, as more than clichés. Take one last, lingering moment to appreciate this miraculous thing before we lose it forever."                                

It’s eminently possible—and, from an evolutionary standpoint, eminently obvious—that human beings can best make sense of ourselves and of the world we inhabit when we walk through it at three miles an hour: the faster we go, the less human we become and the less at home in the world we are.

________________________________________________

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/step-by-step-americans-are-sacrificing-the-right-to-walk  

For Even One Day

Richard Beck (Experimental Theology) suggests¹ we need to calm down, chill out, and consider the lilies of the field:

“Non-violence flows out of relaxation. Kindness, gentleness and mercy all flow out of relaxation. Joy and gratitude are rooted in relaxation. And by relaxation I mean being physically and mentally at ease. Being non-anxious. Peaceful and calm in body and mind. Non-defensive. Non-neurotic. Unselfconscious. Emotionally quiet and still.

“Most of us are not relaxed in this way. We are constantly being triggered by the successes and failures of others. We are emotionally reactive--always being angered, disturbed or upset by other people. Our fuse is short. Our nerves are on edge. Our stomachs clench and turn. Our heartbeats race. Our thoughts swirl and obsess. We feel jerked around by events, small and large. We feel pushed and pulled by every little thing. We feel knocked off balance. We crave. We desire. We worry. We obsess. We ruminate. We rant. We self-medicate. We despair.

“We are not relaxed. And it's difficult to be a human being if you aren't relaxed. It's difficult to be emotionally available to others if you aren't relaxed.   

“So how do we become relaxed?”

The correct answer, of course, is “Prozac” or some other nifty little pill that our doctor will be happy to prescribe and our local pharmacist—assuming it doesn’t conflict with his or her religious beliefs—will be happy to dispense.  But if for some odd reason you’d like an alternative to pharmaceuticals, Beck continues:

“Religious traditions differ in how they answer that question. The stoics have their approach. So does Buddhism.

“Jesus's answer is twofold. First, trust. Trust that God will take care for you. Consider the lilies and the birds.  Second, place your heart in a location where moth and rust do not destroy or thieves break in and steal. Your heart must be "hidden in Christ" in a place where death has no dominion.

“Trouble is, these recommendations strike us as pious platitudes. Trust. Lay up your treasures in heaven. These are the sorts of things we tell children in Sunday School. These are recommendations we find in inspirational books and on bumper stickers…We are way, way too sophisticated for that. Life is too dark and too hard for such saccharine recommendations.

“But hold on, just for a second. Put your cynicism and your education aside for a moment. Seriously, stop and consider the lilies. Consider. Consider the birds. What would it mean to live like that, if just for a moment, today? What would it look like to live like the flowers and the birds? And what would it mean that my heart was hidden in a place where what I treasure couldn't be lost, broken or destroyed?  What would it mean to "seek first the Kingdom"?

“Might I become more relaxed? More natural? More at peace? More awake? More aware? More free?  True, we have our doubts about all this. It all sounds so childish and childlike. Like a lesson we've heard before but never learned. It's almost as if one must become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Yes, we were taught all that in kindergarten, weren’t we?  I am embarrassed to admit that I failed kindergarten and, in many ways, childhood.  Nonetheless, I believe Richard Beck (along with Jesus) has a point; as does Buddy Miller² when he sings “Oh, I worry too much / Somebody told me that I worry too much.” 

Today’s troubles are enough for today, don’t you think?  As Rick Nelson³ sang, “Who cares about tomorrow?”  Oh, to live like a lily or like a bird for even one day. 

_________________________________________________________

¹ http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Mille and http://buddymiller.com/

³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LnAux3WEc4

 

Better Liver Through Writing!

According to Rachel Grate¹ (at mic.com), writing is apparently the secular version of prayer: it miraculously cures whatever ails you.

“The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary. 

“No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms.² In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.

“By writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events, participants were significantly more likely to have fewer illnesses and be less affected by trauma. Participants ultimately spent less time in the hospital, enjoyed lower blood pressure and had better liver functionality than their counterparts.” 

Better liver through writing!  But that’s just the beginning:

“It turns out writing can make physical wounds heal faster as well. In 2013, New Zealand researchers monitored the recovery of wounds from medically necessary biopsies on 49 healthy adults. The adults wrote about their thoughts and feelings for just 20 minutes, three days in a row, two weeks before the biopsy. Eleven days later, 76% of the group that wrote had fully healed. Fifty-eight percent of the control group had not recovered. The study concluded that writing about distressing events helped participants make sense of the events and reduce distress.

“Even those who suffer from specific diseases can improve their health through writing. Studies have shown that people with asthma who write have fewer attacks than those who don't; AIDS patients who write have higher T-cell counts. Cancer patients who write have more optimistic perspectives and improved quality of life.”

As with prayer, however, no one really knows why writing helps, but that doesn’t stop them from guessing:

“So what is it about writing that makes it so great for you?

“James W. Pennebaker has been conducting research on writing to heal for years at the University of Texas at Austin. "When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience improved health," Pennebaker writes. "They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function." 

“Pennebaker believes this act of expressive writing allows people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. Instead of obsessing unhealthily over an event, they can focus on moving forward. By doing so, stress levels go down and health correspondingly goes up. 

That’s what he “believes,” anyway, which is hardly a scientific deduction, but still:

“You don't have to be a serious novelist or constantly reflecting on your life's most traumatic moments to get these great benefits. Even blogging or journaling is enough to see results. One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music.”

Ah yes, writing might trigger dopamine release; then again, it might not. 

“From long-term health improvements to short-term benefits like sleeping better, it's official: Writers are doing something right.”

Just a week or so ago, I found out that walking is good for me; now I find out that writing has benefits as well!  If I can only find a study proving that long nights of drinking in Missoula bars are good for my health, I’d say my entire lifestyle (walking, writing, drinking) will have been vindicated.

[Thanks to Celia White for directing my attention to this…]

_____________________________________________________ 

¹ http://mic.com/articles/98348/science-shows-writers-have-a-serious-advantage-over-the-rest-of-us

² As yet, no attempt has been made to evaluate the effects that bad writing has on readers’ moods, stress levels, and depressive symptoms; that’s another study requiring another federal grant application (more writing!)

"Why Is He Walking?"

"Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house….In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.”  --Ray Bradbury, “The Pedestrian”

I've always loved to walk; regardless of whatever benefits may accrue from it, it simply seems natural and human to do so.  It gets me from one place to another, it allows me time to think and to reflect, and it’s an opportunity to appreciate and to explore my surroundings; it’s also my daily exercise.

True story: a friend of mine teaches Driver’s Ed here in Missoula. One day I was walking to work, and he and his students were in the car, stopped at a stop sign as I walked by.  My friend told the student-driver to honk—“That’s a buddy of mine,” he said; and one of the students asked, with utter seriousness, “Why is he walking?”  My friend had a hard time explaining.

For most of human existence, there was no need to convince people of the benefits of walking, for the simple reason that there was mostly no alternative.  Times change, and these days walking (in America, at least) has become a lifestyle option: something that has to be extolled as a form of exercise, an opportunity for spiritual reflection, or a way to commune with nature, rather than simply being accepted as the normal human method for getting from one place to another.  We’re not quite in the world of Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian,” where Leonard Mead ends up being arrested and sent off to “The Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies” because of his quaint habit of taking solitary late-night strolls; but we can see that world from here.

Habitual walkers take heart, however; writing at The New Yorker in defense of walking, Ferris Jabr informs us that walking, in addition to being entirely natural, is linked to creativity and to the processes of thinking and writing.  Mr. Jabr has all sorts of science to prove it, too:

“What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

“The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.

“Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight.”

It's certainly reassuring that something I've always done as a matter of course turns out to be good for me.  In fact, walking has so many benefits, it's almost as if humans were designed to do it.

Just something to think about while you're sitting in your car, stuck in traffic on your way to work...

_________________________________________________________________

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/walking-helps-us-think?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

Peaceable Selves

I’ve just been given a gift, and thought I would share it. 

It’s from Richard Beck and it’s a post titled “The Non-Violent, Peaceable Self”.¹  I hope I don’t violate the “fair use” protocol of the blogosphere by quoting from the post too extensively, but if I do, I ask in advance Professor Beck's forgiveness.

Professor Beck writes about a lecture he attended (by Dr. Brad Stawn and Dr. Al Dueck) entitled “Pastoring Our Personal Congregations,” and he writes about what he took from that lecture.

"The first idea was that the self is multiple. Rather than being a single 'self' we are 'selves,' different selves at different times in different contexts. And often different selves vying for recognition at the same time…The self is multiple and temporal. There is no true self deep in the psyche. There are simply different facets of the self that emerge over time and in certain contexts."

It's time for me to stop looking for my "self," because it doesn't exist; like Walt Whitman, "I" contain multitudes--and so do you.  Beck is quick to point out that he’s not referring to clinical ego pathologies, but to our common experience, expressed in phrases like “She was pleased with herself” or “He was proud of himself”; or, less happily, “He was sick of himself,”  “She was at odds with herself,” and (most tellingly) "You should be ashamed of yourself."     

Beck continues:

"Which brings us to the second idea, the way the selves treat each other.  Specifically, if the self is 'multiple' then psychological distress and dysfunction can be caused when the 'selves' come to treat each other harshly, judgmentally and violently.  Consider self-loathing. Here some facet of the self--the judging self--is expressing judgment and revulsion toward some other self. The selves have come into conflict and psychic violence is taking place. We are internally aggressing against ourselves." ²

Been there; done that; have gotten tired of it; would like to change it.

"Thus the notion of a 'peaceable psychology.' And the peace here is a non-violence that is practiced internally, with the selves coming to treat each other kindly and gently.  Al's metaphor for all this was learning to 'pastor our internal congregation.'  The idea here is that, in light of the multiplicity of selves, we might think of our inner life as a 'congregation' that needs 'pastoral care.' Psychological well-being in this instance is achieved by learning to care for ourselves. Or, rather, to care for our selves."

Self-care is a well-known concept, of which the idea that we need to acknowledge and to care for all of our many selves (“selves-care”) is but a logical (and a necessary) extension.

"Just like a pastor would gently care for the people under her care in a congregation, so should we gently and peaceably care for all the selves that make up our identities, our internal congregation. And much of this will involve learning to forgive our/selves."  

And Professor Beck's coda:

"In sum, we should practice pacifism...toward the self."

Which is to say, Do unto your selves as you would have your selves done unto by others.

Thank you, Richard Beck.

____________________________________________________________

¹ (http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-fuller-integration-lectures-part-6.html#comment-form)

² As well as reminding me of my own daily psychic combat, this puts me in mind of Anne Sexton's poem "The Civil War": "I am torn in two / but I will conquer myself. / I will dig up the pride. / I will take scissors / and cut out the beggar. / I will take a crowbar / and pry out the broken / pieces of God in me. / Just like a jigsaw puzzle, / I will put Him together again / with the patience of a chess player."  A chess player with scissors and a crowbar, no less.

On Witzelsucht

Let's play "Increase Your Word Power"!  See if you can guess this one:

Witzelsucht is

(a)   A popular German Christmas candy

(b)   The breakfast of champions

(c)   How critics described Witzel’s performance

(d)   Why we can't have nice things

(e)   The day after Weihnachten

The correct answer, of course, is…(f) Olive the above!

A good friend of mine frequently says, “A sense of humor is no laughing matter,” and she should know.  Until I learned¹ about Witzelsucht, however, I did not realize how right she was; for that obscure neologism denotes a tragic neurological condition only recently brought to light and still only dimly understood (as well as frequently misunderestimated).  So wipe that grin off your face right now; Witzelsucht isn't funny--and neither, quite possibly, are you.

The knowledgeable people at www.unusedwords.com provide the following italicized information about Witzelsucht (the bold commentary is my own):²

"Witzelsucht": excessive facetiousness and inappropriate or pointless humor.”  (I know you are, but what am I?)

“Pronunciation: Vit-sel-zukt” (That’s what she said!)

“Origin: Directly from German. 'Witzeln' is a sort of wisecrack or a joke, and 'sucht' means an addiction or yearning.”  (I try to yearn something every day.)

“Witzelsucht is a neurological disorder, caused mainly by front lobe damage or trauma. Patients suffering Witzelsucht do not see the jokes they're making as inappropriate or unfitting, nor do they respond to others’ reactions to their joking.”  (People with Witzelsucht are such trauma queens.) 

“People don’t have to be brain damaged to not be able to tell great jokes, nor do they need it to completely avoid any criticism to their behavior.”  (But it sure helps!) 

"To an extent, we are all Witzelsucht patients.” (Ich bin ein Witzelsucht!)

“To see if [your humor] is pathological, try to examine your response when your joke gives rise to eyebrow lifting (eyebrow lifting is about the only exercise some people get) and lip curling (very popular in Canada) instead of the laughter you expected.” 

“If you find the response disturbing in any way- you’re just fine; just try to keep a low humoristic profile and you have a shot at real friends!”  (And who doesn’t dream of taking a shot at their real friends?)

All kidding aside: I want all of you to look in the mirror and ask yourself, do I display symptoms of Witzelschut?  Be honest; you know who you are.  And remember, whenever you point a finger at someone else, three fingers point back at you; if not, you’re doing it wrong.

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¹ Credit where credit is due: I am indebted to Mary Louise for sharing her discovery of Witzelsucht with me.  What I’ve made of it, however, is entirely my responsibility.

² http://unusedwords.com/2013/09/23/witzelsucht/

In Praise Of The Greater Good

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I'd like to be part of a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society”?  If you answered "Yes," then do I have a website for you!  It’s the website of something called the Greater Good Science Center (www.greatergood.berkeley.edu), and I’ll let the good folks at Greater Good describe for themselves who they are and what they do:

“The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.

Based at the University of California, Berkeley, the GGSC is unique in its commitment to both science and practice: not only do we sponsor groundbreaking scientific research into social and emotional well-being, we help people apply this research to their personal and professional lives. Since 2001, we have been at the fore of a new scientific movement to explore the roots of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior—the science of a meaningful life. And we have been without peer in our award-winning efforts to translate and disseminate this science to the public.” ¹

The Greater Good website is chock full of articles devoted to the very translating and disseminating mentioned above, and to the seven “core themes” of Gratitude, Altruism, Compassion, Empathy, Forgiveness, Happiness, and Mindfulness.²  The website also expounds on the Center’s  six “core beliefs”:

• Compassion is a fundamental human trait, with deep psychological and evolutionary roots. By creating environments that foster cooperation and altruism, we help nurture the positive side of human nature.
• Happiness is not simply dependent on a person’s genes. It is a set of skills that can be taught, and, with practice, developed over time.
• Happiness and altruism are intertwined—doing good is an essential ingredient to being happy.
• Science should do more than help us understand human behavior and emotion in the abstract; it should be applied toward improving people’s personal and professional lives.
• Studying the roots of good, healthy, and positive behavior is just as important as studying human pathologies. To promote individual and social well-being, science must examine how people overcome difficult circumstances and how they develop positive emotions and relationships.
• Individual well-being promotes social well-being, and social well-being promotes individual well-being. The well-being of society as a whole can best be achieved by providing information, tools, and skills to those people directly responsible for shaping the well-being of others.

In addition to seven core themes and six core beliefs, the Greater Good is also happy to offer, at no extra charge, Six Habits of Happiness Worth Cultivating, which are (in no particular order): Pay Attention, Give Thanks, Drop Grudges, Keep Friends Close,³ Get Moving, and Practice Kindness.  Order now while supplies last!

All of this is easy to poke fun at—which is why I’ve been doing just that— particularly the website’s earnest repetition of the “it’s science!” mantra.  But call it science or call it common sense, The Greater Good seems to be focused on the qualities and behaviors that comprise the basis for a meaningful life, both for individuals and for communities.  How those qualities and behaviors are taught, inculcated, modeled and shared is, of course, the eternal conundrum; and if the Greater Good Science Center can help us at all in solving that conundrum, then I say, more power to it.

So check out www.greatergood.berkeley.edu for yourself; and remember, it’s science!

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¹Modesty is apparently not their strong suit; but then, it’s not on their list of key attributes either.

² Great film idea: “Snow White & the Common Good,” with the seven dwarves named after those seven “Core Themes”!

³ “and enemies closer”?  I don’t know; that sounds too cynical for the Greater Good.

 

FLOTUS To America's Youth: Drink 'Til You Die

[Author’s note: credit to my friend Mike Kincaid for pointing this story out to me.  When he told me, I thought it had to be a joke (like the one about the time he had dinner with Bernadette Devlin), but sad to say, it’s not.]

It was bad enough back in 2008 when candidate and flimflam artist Barack Obama said we could solve our energy problems by keeping our tires properly inflated (how's that workin' out for ya?).  Now his huckster wife Michelle is peddling some junk science of her own under the guise of her nefarious “Drink Up!” campaign aimed at getting kids to drink more water and die.

From the Washington Free Beacon:

"Michelle Obama’s campaign urging Americans to drink one more glass of water per day is based on faulty science experts said Friday on CNN.  Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of the University of Pennsylvania alleged the campaign is supporting urban myths surrounding increased water consumption that have been “debunked over the years”:” There’s no good evidence that drinking extra water is going to lead to a healthier existence. […] They [the White House] decided to sort of support some of these urban myths that have been really debunked over the years.”

Dr. Goldfarb took particular issue with the way the White House is framing the initiative, according to Politico: “There really isn’t data to support this…I think, unfortunately, frankly, they’re not basing this on really hard science. It’s not a very scientific approach they’ve taken. … To make it a major public health effort, I think I would say it’s bizarre.”  Goldfarb, a kidney specialist, took particular issue with White House claims that drinking more water would boost energy.  ”The idea drinking water increases energy, the word I’ve used to describe it is: quixotic,” he said. “We’re designed to drink when we’re thirsty. … There’s no need to have more than that.”

“Bizarre” and “quixotic”: take that, First Lady Fraudster Michelle!  Dr. Goldfarb has been the go-to expert on this issue for years, ever since he and a colleague conducted a thorough review of the scientific literature and concluded that it didn’t prove anything one way or the other about drinking lots of water:

"The literature review by Drs Negoianu and Goldfarb reveals there is no clear evidence of benefit from increasing water intake. On the other hand, no clear evidence exists of a lack of benefit. "There is simply a lack of evidence in general," they explain.  On average, the body uses between 1.7 and 2.6 pints (one-1.5 litres) of water daily and more in high temperatures or when exercising.  This is replaced through drinks but a large amount is also contained in food, so it is not necessary to drink an equivalent amount to replace water levels. Too much water can affect the balance of salts in the body causing "water intoxication", which can be fatal." ²

Great: so if there’s a spike in “water intoxication” deaths in this country, we know who to blame.

To be fair, Dr. Goldfarb isn’t completely anti-water:

“While it may not help a person to drink lots of water, it may not harm them much either, Goldfarb said.  "If someone enjoys it, I say that's wonderful, keep doing it. They're not doing anything that's going to hurt them.  A little mild dehydration for the most part is OK, and a little mild water excess for the most part is OK. It's the extremes that one needs to avoid," he said.” ³

Moderation in all things—for this Dr. Goldfarb conducted a literature review?

Lest you think this is merely right-wing knee-jerk overreaction to anything said or done by the First Couple, the leftish Huffington Post isn’t letting the First Lady off the hook either.  Noting that the “Drink Up!” campaign is sponsored by several major soft-drink companies (who also happen to produce bottled water), HuffPo says,

“While promoting the consumption of water is certainly a worthwhile goal, the far more useful message is for children to drink water instead of drinking sugary beverages. Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest wisely commented:

 "There's not exactly a hydration crisis in this country that needs solving. Rather, the problem is that Americans are getting too many nutritionally worthless calories from sugar water. Soda and other sugar drinks are one of the biggest promoters of obesity and diabetes, and advocating drinking more actual water and less sugar water is one of the most important messages that Let's Move! could deliver." ⁴

The controversies engendered by “Let’s Move!” and “Drink Up!” make it clear that the White House needs to stop meddling with our lives and instead let us drive with underinflated tires and sit around getting fat while drinking as much water or whatever else we want when we damn well want to.  This is America, and we don’t need no stinkin’ health advice from no busy bodies.

Next up: the controversy over the new White House “Take a Deep Breath” campaign.  Is deep breathing—or, for that matter, breathing at all—really beneficial to our health?

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 ¹ http://freebeacon.com/michelle-obamas-drink-more-water-campaign-based-on-faulty-science/

 ² http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1583752/No-benefit-in-drinking-eight-glasses-of-water-a-day-scientists-say.html

 ³ http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/02/us-water-health-idUSN0236679720080402

⁴ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-huehnergarth/drink-up-campaign-_b_3921750.html