HOPE
I: Your Body and Spirit
“Your Life” photo taken by
Scotty Shaull, 2014
From the anguish of watching our beloved church begin to
disappear can come the creativity of renewal. The energy for that ignited energy can flow from a
sense of hope -- a renewable form of
energy for doing what must be done – together.
Over the next several blogs, I am going to address the
importance of hope; where it comes from, what it does and possible ways to get there from
here. My observations are from the
perspective of an older adult who, in gratitude, sees life from an
understanding that well-being can come from both friendship and faith. Importantly, thanks to advances in
science, I now see that faith and friendship can be understood to be equal
parts of the same “picture”.
No matter how we construe faith and friendship’s separate
natures, their neurological pathways in our mind are similar. This is as important an understanding
for our efforts to attend to a personal threat of cancer as it is for us to join
together to address our disappearing church.
In an effort to enable you and me to be on this common
journey together, I am going to ask you to do something. And should you be so inclined, to share
what you did with me.
Above is a wonderful picture taken by Mr. Scotty Shaull of
Sacramento, California. As you can
see, I have divided Scotty’s picture into two halves, one representing your
“body” and one representing your “spirit.
The “body” is your earthly life, your daily travels. The “spirit” is your faith life, your
relationship with God, for instance.
What I am asking you to do is to tell (to yourself at
first) what you see in Scotty’s picture that represents what is meaningful about your own present-day story. There is no right way to do this. As in all of life, we always interpret
what we see in a way that fits our own perceptions of ourselves and our
experiences.
Furthermore, I am asking if you would send me your
interpretation of what the picture represents about your life. (I will not share what you send me with
anyone else without your permission.)
But as I discuss our journey of hope on this blog, I would like a sense
of our commonalities as we start – together.
Bruce
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