There are 4 spaces in life, 3 we can do something about. We spend too much time and energy focusing on the one that we cannot and ought not try to manage.
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1. Space inside me. What is going on in me? How do I know when I am anxious? We all carry a bubbling collective of pressure, pain, assumptions, inner critic etc that can block our awareness of God and distort reality.
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2. Space between people. This can be space between me and you or space between others. Ever walked into a room with people and you felt off? You might be picking up the space between others.
Anxiety is contagious and often the most anxious person has the most power.
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The events of the week have shaken us all. Murray Bowen described 'societal regression.' Anxiety is contagious in any group and a society is one giant interconnected group, so over time, societies become more and more anxious unless the anxiety is displaced.
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Displacement requires calm, non reactive leadership at every level and we have lacked that at a federal level, hence the massive escalation of anxiety on the 'system' of our society.
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Bowen predicted that as we regress we would no longer be able to listen to each other, we'd become highly reactive, continuing the vicious cycle of catching each others' anxiety and reactivity.
My friend @heyrobkelly was recently sharing his own journey of being adopted as a kid, the power of being intentionally chosen and how it helped him from a young age experience God's love as a beloved chosen. Rob talked about going before a judge to be legally adopted...
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...And how he saw the judge as a positive person because the judge 'could do what I could not do for myself: use legal power and authority to place me in a family.'
Rob then went on to talk about the image in the Bible of God as judge.
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We focus on 'judgement' and giving an account etc, but Rob was reminding us that God as judge also means 'God can do for us what we cannot do: use God's authority to place us into a family.'
I was struck dumb by this and have been pondering it since.
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I was walking into a store when a member of my congregation walking out saw me and yelled loudly with great delight, 'busted!! Ha ha ha!'
I stood there utterly puzzled. Her tone was playful and aggression of it really stopped me in my tracks.
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She saw my confusion and introduced herself as if I didn't know her. That added to my confusion. Her family has been at the church 10 years, serve, I have been highly involved in a crisis they had a few years back.
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So when she told me her name, it added to my confusion. Does she think I don't know who she is? I know her family well. I have been in some of their more challenging times.
But of course she interpreted my confusion as 'the pastor doesn't know me.'
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Every generation holds a spiritual value different from the generation before. And we often arrogantly judge the previous generation for their value, because we see the temptation of it and the hypocrisy of it, but can be blind to our own.
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A Boomer visited our GenX college ministry class. He said, 'Always look like a preacher. Even if you are changing your oil and need to run to the store for more oil, shower, put on a suit and tie to buy the oil.'
We thought he was nuts. Actually, I still think it is nuts.
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But he was a Boomer. He valued personal holiness.
So his temptation was to 'look holy.'
While we judged him and then wildly swung the pendulum, the other way, we valued spiritual hunger more than we valued personal holiness.
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