Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 134 of 216 · 20 per page

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  1/8 ATHEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL the conception of the Father which Jesus revealed to us by his words, by his personality, and by his own relations to the Father. This reformatory and democratizing influence of the social gospel is not against religion but forit. The worst thing that could happen to God would be to remain an autocrat while the world is moving toward democracy. He would be dethroned with the rest. Forone man who has forsaken religion through scientificdoubt, ten have forsaken itin our time because it seemed the spiritual op- ponent of liberty and the working people. This feeling will deepen as democracy takes hold and becomes more than a theory of government. We have heard only the political overture of democracy, played by fifes; the eco- nomic numbers of the program are yet to come, and they will be performed with trumpets and trombones. The Kingdom of God is the necessary background for theChristian idea of God. The social movement is one ofthechief ways inwhich God is revealing that he lives andrules asaGod that loves righteousness and hates in- iquity. A theological God who has no interest in the conquest of justice and fraternity is not aChristian. It is not enough for theology to eliminate this or that auto- cratictrait. Its God must join the social movement. The realGod has been in it long ago. The development of a Christian social order would be the highest proof of God's saving power. The failure of the social move- ment would impugn his existence. Theold conception that God dwells on high and is distinct from our human life wasthe naturalbasis for

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  righteousness in mankind is just as much a saving act of God as the salvation of an individual from his natural selfishness and moral inability. The Kingdom of God, therefore, is not merely ethical, but has a rightful place in theology. This doctrine is absolutely necessary to establish that organic union between religion and moral- ity, between theology and ethics, which is one of the char- acteristics of the Christian religion. When our moral actions are consciously related to the Kingdom of God they gain religious quality. Without this doctrine we shall have expositions of schemes of redemption and we shall have systems of ethics, but we shall not have a true exposition of Christianity. The first step to the reform of the Churches is the restoration of the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. 2. The Kingdom of God contains the teleology of the Christian religion. It translates theology from the static to the dynamic. It sees, not doctrines or rites to be con- served and perpetuated, but resistance to be overcome and great ends to be achieved. Since the Kingdom of God is the supreme purpose of God, we shall understand the Kingdom so far as we understand God, and we shall understand God so far as we understand his Kingdom. As long as organized sin is in the world, the Kingdom of God is characterized by conflict with evil. But if there were no evil, or after evil has been overcome, the King- dom of God will still be the end to which God is lifting the race. It is realized not only by redemption, but also by the education of mankind and the revelation of his life within it. 3. Since God is in it, the Kingdom of God is always THE KINGDOM OF GOD 141

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  In primitive Christianity the forward look of expect- ancy was characteristic of religion. The glory of the coming dawn was on the Eastern clouds. This influ- enced the conception of “ faith.” It was akin to hope, the forward gaze of the pioneers. The historical illus- trations of faith in Hebrews xi show faith launching life toward the unseen future. ' This is the aspect of faith which is emphasized by the social gospel. It is not so much the endorsement of ideas formulated in the past, as expectancy and confidence in 102 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL the coming salvation of God. In this respect the for- ward look of primitive Christianity is resumed. Faith once more means prophetic vision. It is faith to as- sume that this is a good world and that life is worth living. It is faith to assert the feasibility of a fairly righteous and fraternal social order. In the midst of a despotic and predatory industrial life it is faith to stake our business future on the proposition that fairness, kind- ness, and fraternity will work. When war inflames a nation, it is faith to believe that a peaceable disposition is a workable international policy. Amidst the disunion of Christendom it is faith to look for unity and to express unity in action. It is faith to see God at work in the world and to claim a share in his job. Faith is an ener- getic act of the will, affirming our fellowship with God and man, declaring our solidarity with the Kingdom of God, and repudiating selfish isolation. “Sanctification,’’ according to almost any definition, is the continuation of that process of spiritual education and transformation, *by which a human personality be- comes a willing organ of the spirit of Christ. Those who believe in the social gospel can share in any methods for the cultivation of the spiritual life, if only they have an ethical outcome. The social gospel takes up the message of the Hebrew prophets, that ritual and emo- tional religion is harmful unless it results in righteous- ness. Sanctification is through increased fellowship with God and man. But fellowship is impossible without an exchange of service. Here we come back to our previous proposition that the Kingdom of God is the common- PERSONAL SALVATION 103 wealth of co-operative service and that the most com- mon form of sinful selfishness is the effort to escape from labor. Sanctification, therefore, can not be attained in an unproductive life, unless it is unproductive through* necessity. In the long run the only true way to gain moral insight, self-discipline, humility, love, and a con- sciousness of coherence and dependence, is to take our place among those who serve one another by useful labor. Parasitism blinds; work reveals.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  built endurance. We had developed our skills and our potential. We had become complete players. That was a long time ago. These days I play “for fun,” which is another way of saying none of us are going to work too hard at it. No coach is yelling at us to run laps. We don’t do drills. There are no weight goals or diet restrictions. Just a bunch of guys with dad bods showing up, talking smack, and trying not to pull any muscles. It is fun, for sure. But if anyone were to scout our pickup games (which will never happen), words like endurance, skilled, and complete would be absent from their clipboards. If you’re going to grow, you have to put in the work. And prayer is a big part of the work. Pray through your trials. Pray through your challenges. Pray through your doubts and fears. Pray through your screwups. Pray through your frustrations. Pray through your character flaws. Pray through your lack. Pray through your business ideas. Pray through your options. The more you pray about these things, the more God will speak to you and change you. I love this prayer that David wrote: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23–24 David didn’t arrogantly assume he was right in everything. He knew he might have blind spots, ulterior motives, toxic thinking, or offensive behavior. So he submitted his heart to God in prayer. God will take you up on that prayer, by the way. I’ll talk more about that later, in a chapter called “These are dangerous prayers.” So only pray if you’re serious

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  My mom didn’t promise me that God would give us the VCR, but she did promise me that God cared about my requests, that He heard my prayers, and that He answers prayers. She taught me to keep praying and believing. And when the answer came, she pointed everything straight back to God. She doubled down on the truth that God answers our prayers. I’ve never forgotten her lesson. NEVER GIVE UP Persevering in prayer has always been a challenge for humans. Jesus’ disciples were no exception. So Jesus decided to teach them about praying in faith even when they didn’t see an immediate answer. Here is the story, told in Luke 18:1– 8: Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” To recap the parable: A vulnerable widow who was desperate for justice pestered a selfish judge until he finally did his job, and justice was done. I love so many things about this story. First, notice that Jesus really wanted them to pray and not give up. He knew how easy it was to get discouraged or weary, so He specifically taught on the subject. God doesn’t hate it when we pray fervently and frequently; He loves it. He responds to it. Second, I love how the woman is one of the most vulnerable people in that society: a widow. She didn’t get justice because she had some sort of clout or leverage, or because she could give the judge a bribe, or because she was more important than other cases on his docket. She got justice because she asked for it repeatedly, unwaveringly, confidently.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  When we pray, we grow. Prayer is not the only way for us to grow, of course. Reading the Bible, being in a church community, worship, talking with other people, classes, experience, getting counsel, and more all contribute to being well-rounded humans. There is something unique about prayer, though, especially when we are going through difficult times. So often we turn to prayer in an attempt to get out of tough times. When that doesn’t work, we pray to get through tough times. But what about praying to grow through those times? What if God wants to respond to our prayers by causing us to be bigger, more complete, more mature people? I think that’s exactly what often happens. It’s no coincidence that James talks about personal growth in the context of trials and endurance. I wish it weren’t this way, but we tend to grow when we are forced to do so. Some trial, some test, or some trouble comes our way, and in order to face it, we have to develop new abilities or tools. That’s a good thing! Why go through when you can grow through? As we think about character perfection (aka completeness or maturity) and what prayer has to do with it, there are a few things to keep in mind. 1. Growth takes work. Personal growth is rarely easy or fun. It’s more often described with words like uncomfortable, painful, slow, scary, laborious, humbling, and confusing. And yet, the results are worth it. When I played high school basketball, we all loved the games, but nobody loved drills. Nobody enjoyed running laps. Nobody showed up to practice excited about being yelled at by sadistic coaches who spent their free time dreaming up ways to drive us to exhaustion. Come game time, though, we were glad for every minute we had invested in our development. The pain was temporary, but the results were obvious. We had

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  The story continues: “Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain started falling and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. The power of the Lord came on Elijah and, tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel” (verses 45–46). I told you he was fit. The point of this passage is not Elijah’s flexibility or athletic prowess. It’s his persistence in prayer. That’s what James highlighted centuries later, and it’s what still speaks to us today. Notice the cycle of prayer that Elijah followed: He asked God for rain. He watched to see if there was an answer. He waited on God. Then he prayed again. Ask, watch , wait, repeat. It’s the cycle of prayer. Notice what Elijah didn’t do: He didn’t quit. He prayed earnestly, continually, and with faith until he saw the answer. Remember, this was something God had promised. Elijah could have said, “If it’s God’s will, He’ll do it without my involvement. He doesn’t need me.” He could have complained, “I prayed, but God didn’t keep His end of the deal.” He could have concluded, “Maybe I didn’t hear from God after all.” Elijah did none of those things. He just kept praying. That is exactly the kind of persistent prayer Jesus taught about. When we go to God in prayer, we shouldn’t be easily discouraged. We can’t assume that just because we don’t get a quick answer, the answer is no. Take a cue from small children. They have no problem asking the same thing over and over, ad infinitum. Trust me, I speak from experience. Ask God again. And again. And again. Ask Him in faith, trusting that He cares about you and is predisposed to help you. What do you have to lose? Sometimes you will hear a clear no. Sometimes you’ll just know in your heart that you don’t need to pray anymore. Sometimes you’ll realize your prayers need to be tweaked or redirected because they are wrong prayers. Sometimes they might fall into one of the categories we looked at in the last chapter. But assuming none of those things are true, keep praying! Pray until God makes it clear you should stop. We’ll talk more about unanswered prayer later on, but remember this: Prayers nearly always feel unanswered at first. That’s the challenge of waiting. Even if it’s a four-day wait for a VCR, the cycle of asking, watching, and waiting can be discouraging if you aren’t prepared for it. That’s where the faith of Elijah comes in. That’s where you need to be inspired by the widow who took down a judge. That’s when God wants to whisper into your heart to pray without ceasing, to believe Him for the impossible, to cast your cares on Him because He cares for you.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  This is why prayer is such a vital tool. It keeps the lines of communication permanently open with God. Not just during a one-time emergency, but all the time. Sometimes we treat prayer like a tech support request. Have you ever submitted one of those? Maybe you can’t figure out why a program or service you paid for isn’t working, so you contact their support team. They open a case for you, help you solve the problem (if you’re lucky), then close the case. You get a nice email at the end summarizing how helpful they’ve been. And you never speak again. The entire thing is cold, faceless, voiceless. That’s not the point of prayer, though. Prayer is so much more than formally requesting help for a problem you can’t figure out. The Bible is not a list of FAQs that your particular problem has to fit within. And the “case” is never closed. Why? Because God doesn’t treat us like consumers, clients, or customers. We are His children. We are His friends. Prayer is more like an ongoing text thread with a close friend. You text when you feel like it. You answer when you want to. You randomly send each other messages, memes, and inside jokes. You talk about what you’re planning to do that day and how you’re feeling about it. You tell each other what is making you happy, sad, or angry. There is no pressure or protocol. You just talk. We need that kind of open communication with God because life is full of complex, unscripted, and often invisible changes. It has unexpected turns and random dark valleys. When you’re in trouble, you don’t want heavenly tech support. You don’t want a list of FAQs to work through. You don’t want a randomly assigned angel to chat with you politely, give you some options, and close the case. You want to talk with God . Prayer is your link to Him. It’s an open line of communication, an ongoing text thread, that is always available to you as you walk through this crazy thing we call life. Learn to turn to prayer quickly, not as a last resort. Let it be your most familiar tool, your first recourse, your favorite solution. In other words, keep the conversation going. 3. Growth takes humility. Early in her career, before becoming a fitness guru and television personality, Jillian Michaels was fired from her job with a talent agency and ended up working as a physical therapy assistant at a gym. It was a slap in the face and a huge pay cut. It was also the best thing that could have happened to her. She started from the bottom, but she loved what she was doing, and she was good at it. She gained influence as a trainer, started her own company, was invited to be on The Biggest Loser , and has been an influential voice in fitness and television ever since.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  To say that what happened to me in the winter of my early thirties was a miracle is puny compared to what transpired. It started so small. In my hands. In that winter, I sent a short story out as a writing sample. The short story was called “The Chronology of Water.” I sent the story four places: to the Admissions Committee for the M FA in writing at Columbia University; to the hiring committee for a tenure track teaching position; to Oregon Literary Arts as a writing sample for a grant; to Poets and Writers as a writing sample for something called the Writer’s Exchange grant. In the space of one month my mailbox presented me with letters exactly like the ones that had come to my home in Florida when I longed to swim to college. Only this time I was the only one who would read these letters, an adult woman who had put something of her busted up self straight no chaser into the world. They came one at a time -white and geometric and smelling of something like what if. I was accepted into Columbia University. I was offered the teaching job. I was awarded a $3,000 grant for my story. And I won the Writer’s Exchange prize. All in the same month. NOTHING in my life had ever happened to me like that. And most likely never will. Like the sea of my life waters had opened up. Like my wounds had something in them besides hurt. Me being me, I chose the job over the MFA. This is important - the MFA was what I wanted more than anything. You have no idea. With all my broken little heart. But I couldn’t choose it. I had to survive, is what I chose. I had to take care of myself. No one else would. And so I swallowed the desire to name myself as a writer who would go to Columbia. Like the swimmer who couldn’t go to Columbia, either. I took the grant money and bought a car. I wanted to go to Paris but I bought a car instead. A reliable car to get to and from work. I didn’t take myself out to dinner, I didn’t buy myself champagne, I didn’t eat chocolate. Thank god the go to New York Writer’s Exchange prize didn’t have a practical alternative for self destructive people or I would have let that go, too. Almost in spite of myself then, I went to New York. Where the writers are.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  For behold, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been restrained from the love of the world, by which we died through evil-living; and begun to be a living soul, through good living; and Thy word which Thou spokest by Thy apostle, is made good in us, Be not conformed to this world: there follows that also, which Thou presently subjoinedst, saying, But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind; not now after your kind, as though following your neighbour who went before you, nor as living after the example of some better man (for Thou saidst not, “Let man be made after his kind,” but, Let us make man after our own image and similitude), that we might prove what Thy will is. For to this purpose said that dispenser of Thine (who begat children by the Gospel), that he might not for ever have them babes, whom he must be fain to feed with milk, and cherish as a nurse; be ye transformed (saith he) by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Wherefore Thou sayest not, “Let man be made,” but Let us make man. Nor saidst Thou, “according to his kind”; but, after our image and likeness. For man being renewed in his mind, and beholding and understanding Thy truth, needs not man as his director, so as to follow after his kind; but by Thy direction proveth what is that good, that acceptable, and perfect will of Thine: yea, Thou teachest him, now made capable, to discern the Trinity of the Unity, and the Unity of the Trinity. Wherefore to that said in the plural. Let us make man, is yet subjoined in the singular, And God made man: and to that said in the plural. After our likeness, is subjoined in the singular, After the image of God. Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him: and being made spiritual, he judgeth all things (all things which are to be judged), yet himself is judged of no man.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  One day, at a farmers’ market, there was a raffle to win a VCR. I begged my mom to purchase a ticket because I knew that was my only shot at getting one. Honestly, there was very little chance of getting her to buy a raffle ticket either, but at least I could try. I don’t know if my mom secretly wanted a VCR or if she just couldn’t resist my pleas, but she bought a ticket. The drawing wasn’t for a few days, so every morning at breakfast, she would pull the ticket out and we would ask God for a VCR. My mom used the opportunity to teach me to pray and to have faith. She would quote Scriptures about prayer and encourage me to trust God. I’ll never forget the evening our home phone rang. I waited anxiously while my mom answered it. She started freaking out on the phone, and in that moment, I knew we had won the raffle. Praying a few days for a VCR might seem like a short time to wait and a small thing to pray for. But for a kid, it was everything. That experience marked me, and it led me to believe God for crazy requests in prayer. It also taught me the value of persevering in prayer. Not just praying once, but persisting. Not giving up, but pressing in and pressing through. My mom didn’t promise me that God would give us the VCR, but she did promise me that God cared about my requests, that He heard my prayers, and that He answers prayers. She taught me to keep praying and believing. And when the answer came, she pointed everything straight back to God. She doubled down on the truth that God answers our prayers. I’ve never forgotten her lesson. NEVER GIVE UP Persevering in prayer has always been a challenge for humans. Jesus’ disciples were no exception. So Jesus decided to teach them about praying in faith even when they didn’t see an immediate answer. Here is the story, told in Luke 18:1–8: Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Next, you’re in good company. Fully 40 percent of people consider themselves to be shy, which is a shorthand way of saying socially anxious. Expand the question and ask people if they’ve ever been dispositionally shy at some point in life and the percentage skyrockets to 82 percent.3 What’s more, a whopping 99 percent of people feel socially anxious in particular situations. Only 1 percent of people (I’m looking at you, psychopaths) have never experienced social anxiety. With statistics like these, everyday social anxiety is, dare I say, normal. These experiences of yours are more common than you ever dreamed, despite sometimes (or even continuously) feeling awkward and conspicuous. But despite the normality of social anxiety, you’re holding this book because social anxiety has gotten in the way of your life in some respect. It may be circumscribed—agonizing over how to word a text, praying the teacher doesn’t call on you. Or there may be a specific consequence you dread—you’re afraid you’ll offend someone or that your mind will go blank. Or you may feel all but paralyzed. No matter the shape of your social anxiety, there is hope. Consider How to Be Yourself a path to change—to shed the outer layers of nervousness to reveal the comfortable, confident core of who you are. No matter what you’re currently showing the world—sarcastic and tough, ultra-nice and agreeable, high-strung and awkward—I know your best “you” is in there. It’s the you that surfaces around people with whom you are comfortable—your confidants, your closest family—or when you’re savoring your solitude. That’s the real you. So when I say “be yourself,” I mean that true self. The self you are without fear. And believe it or not, it’s safe to show that real self to the rest of the world. But I can’t just tell you that. Instead, in the coming chapters we’ll shine a bright light inside that brain of yours, keep what’s working, discard what’s not, and load you up with tools to nudge you in the direction you want to go. “Yourself” is always changing. You’re a living, breathing entity, and you’re not the same person at ten or twenty that you are at thirty, forty, fifty, and beyond. You’ve changed over the years, and you will continue to change. But here’s the thing: you get to choose the direction. Now, I will not promise a “new you,” because, believe it or not, there’s no need to change your personality. You just need to see that who you are is already perfectly sufficient. Fundamentally, social anxiety is seeing our true self in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be the truth. We magnify (or even flat-out imagine) our bad points. We worry about our perceived flaws, all while completely forgetting the myriad gifts we have to offer. You don’t need to co-opt someone else’s confidence when you can discover your own. All you need to grow is a willingness to try.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  And there is no such thing as time. No past, no present, no future. Or else they are all there at once. So the slowing and slurring of language, the heaviness in your legs, the oddity of your hands turning to giant leaden balls that swing slowly from your arms, the big wad of pillowcase in your mouth, these are all body modifications needed to go where you are going. Though I distinctly remember things going better when I did not leave the apartment. I had, for lack of a better phrase, night blindness and dumb girl head out in the world. Plus there was the problem of legs and arms. Or maybe I saw the world for what it was, no place for a girl like me. Why not … leave? There were other, not cool times. Like the time I woke up under an overpass with my face against asphalt in a pool of my own vomit with my pants down around my ankles. Or the time I woke up in some blond and blue-eyed Karate guy’s bed with leather twine around my neck. Or the time I fell from a second floor balcony and cracked my head, the woman with the latex gloves touching my forehead in the ambulance saying, “Lidia, can you still see me? Stay awake for me, Lidia. Good girl.” She looked like an underwater white octopus lady. Pretty though. I’m a strong bodied person. And the thing of it was, the things I thought would kill me in my life, maybe even the things I wished had, didn’t. What, I distinctly remember thinking, did I have left to lose? Crossing the blood-brain barrier. The mind body barrier. The reality dream barrier. All that euphoria filling up the hole of me. No pain. No thought. Just images to follow. I was a zombie for a spell in Lubbock. In Austin. In Eugene. It wasn’t epic compared to the other wounds in my life. Rehab and relapse and remember all start with the letter R. What It’s Not THIS IS NOT ANOTHER STORY ABOUT ADDICTION. It’s not The Heroin Diaries and it’s not Trainspotting and it’s not William Burroughs and it’s not a Million Fucking Little Pieces, OK? I’m not gonna be on Oprah and I don’t have a series of meaningful vignettes to relate that can compete with the gazillion other stories of druglife. It’s not Crank and it’s not Tweak and it’s not Smack. No matter how marketable the addiction story has become, this is not that story. My life is more ordinary. More like … more like everyone’s. Addiction, she is in me, sure enough. But I want to describe something else to you. Smaller. A smaller word, a smaller thing. So small it could travel a bloodstream.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  I’d be arrogant. And I’d probably be a jerk. Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”3 If we are always the top of the class, the king of the mountain, the star of the show, we will likely end up stunted in our growth and puffed up in our egos. That’s where our failures and struggles do us a favor, though. They bring us back to reality. Personal limitations bring us to the end of ourselves, which is a good place to be. That is where grace begins. There are days when problems seem to roll in like waves, one after the other, each taking their turn to tumble us in the surf. At those moments, when we’re tempted to run from what God has called us to do, or take a shortcut that would compromise our integrity, or just curl up in a fetal position and try to survive, prayer is a lifeline. Jesus knew His disciples would face all kinds of tests and trials. He knew most of them would give their lives for the gospel. He knew they’d feel like quitting at times. He knows we feel that way too. And He gently calls us to bring those feelings to Him, in prayer. God promises to help us in difficult times: “And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God is for you. He wants you to succeed. And He’s ready to help you do it: to live in the victory, joy, and peace that you were created to experience. Practicing the Lord’s Prayer Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. What difficult situations am I facing right now?Am I strong in courage, integrity, and faith? How are my emotions and thoughts doing?Do I feel attacked? Am I responding the right way?Do I feel tempted in any area? Where do I need God’s help to do what’s right?Whether you’re new to prayer or just feel like there is more for you to discover, the Lord’s Prayer is a practical, simple, and yet profound model to use. I encourage you to try praying through this prayer, line by line. Take time to think through each concept, meditating on them and personalizing them. Don’t limit yourself to the ideas or questions in this chapter. Those are just my thoughts to get you started. To get the bowling ball rolling down the lane, so to speak. The more you use this prayer, the more you will see in it, and the more you will get out of it. Two thousand years ago, the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  He called it “incredible” and went on to say, “It is one thing to learn [positive psychology] on paper, and another thing to actually implement it and see real success from it.” After Jeremy shared his and his students’ stories with me during this interview, I shared with him a sketch of the ideas I’d been developing for this book, especially my definition of positivity resonance and its preconditions. As he took in these new ideas, he nodded his head in recognition. He too began to appreciate what I’d picked up back in our sidewalk conversation: that the inner changes he’d made in himself—his rekindled hope, his eagerness to savor and celebrate even the smallest of successes, and most especially, his openness to experiment with new ways to lead—created new connections and resources within his classroom. Drawing on what he’d absorbed all those years earlier about the science of positive emotions, together with the values TFA had instilled in him, Jeremy came to see the abstract idea of “classroom climate” as the accumulation of the many real micro-moments of positivity resonance his students created. It was the energy within these micro-moments—the celebrations and the feelings of connection and camaraderie—that sparked newfound capacity and resilience in these previously lowest-performing students. Jeremy admitted that at first “the kids thought it was lame and stupid to celebrate things.” They had to be exposed to the facts about emotions, like he’d been, before they would buy into the new classroom climate he was trying to instill. Even then, their more positive climate was something that they all had to nurture. “It wasn’t anything quick . . . it wasn’t one person, we all bought into this idea, we all were conscious, we all made an effort, and the fruits of our labor were clearly on display. It was just life changing.” Dear Tisha and Kelly, I’d like to write: Thank you for letting me see how you taught yourselves and your classmates to be so positive. My warmest wishes to you both! Try This Micro-moment Practice: Redesign Your Job Around Love Although positivity resonance can and certainly does unfold completely on its own, without any added thought or intervention, frankly speaking, quite often it doesn’t. Long-held habits of mind and social interaction often conspire to tempt you to focus on vexing problems or to otherwise judge or hang back from others, perhaps especially at work. The on-the-job changes Jeremy made took courage. He had to make the hard choice to forgo teaching about positive numbers in favor of teaching about positive emotions. Plus, just as he taught math experientially, he also taught about emotions experientially. Teaching in abstractions would surely have taken less time but could hardly have yielded the turnaround results that he sought. So he created games and other means through which his students could open up and connect, and feel safe both to take risks and give their all. Take some time to do what Jeremy did.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  When I played high school basketball, we all loved the games, but nobody loved drills. Nobody enjoyed running laps. Nobody showed up to practice excited about being yelled at by sadistic coaches who spent their free time dreaming up ways to drive us to exhaustion. Come game time, though, we were glad for every minute we had invested in our development. The pain was temporary, but the results were obvious. We had built endurance. We had developed our skills and our potential. We had become complete players. That was a long time ago. These days I play “for fun,” which is another way of saying none of us are going to work too hard at it. No coach is yelling at us to run laps. We don’t do drills. There are no weight goals or diet restrictions. Just a bunch of guys with dad bods showing up, talking smack, and trying not to pull any muscles. It is fun, for sure. But if anyone were to scout our pickup games (which will never happen), words like endurance, skilled , and complete would be absent from their clipboards. If you’re going to grow, you have to put in the work. And prayer is a big part of the work. Pray through your trials. Pray through your challenges. Pray through your doubts and fears. Pray through your screwups. Pray through your frustrations. Pray through your character flaws. Pray through your lack. Pray through your business ideas. Pray through your options. The more you pray about these things, the more God will speak to you and change you. I love this prayer that David wrote: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23–24 David didn’t arrogantly assume he was right in everything. He knew he might have blind spots, ulterior motives, toxic thinking, or offensive behavior. So he submitted his heart to God in prayer. God will take you up on that prayer, by the way. I’ll talk more about that later, in a chapter called “These are dangerous prayers.” So only pray if you’re serious about growth. Trials will change you, if you let them. They’ll make you a better, more perfect version of yourself. It might take some blood, sweat, and tears, but the results are worth it. 2. Growth takes time. It takes your whole life, to be precise. I don’t mean that to sound discouraging—what I’m saying is that you will continue to grow for as long as you’re walking this planet. Growth is natural. It’s healthy. And it never stops. Many of us have the false assumption about growth that someday, if we try really hard, we will reach the pinnacle of perfection and never have to change again. That is not going to happen this side of heaven.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  A few weeks later, by random assignment, we determined which participants would learn loving-kindness meditation and which would not. All would continue to monitor their day-to-day emotions and social connections using our study website. Months later, weeks after the meditation workshop ended, one by one we invited all participants back to the PEP Lab, where we again measured their vagal tone under the same resting conditions as before. In May 2010, I had the immense honor of presenting the results of this experiment directly to His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. A handful of scientists were invited to a private meeting to brief His Holiness on their latest discoveries about the effects of mind-training. After briefly describing to His Holiness the functions of the vagus nerve and the concept of vagal tone, I shared what my team and I had discovered in this most recent study: that vagal tone—which is commonly taken to be as stable an attribute as your adult height—actually improves significantly with mind-training. Here is your evidence-based reason for hope: No matter what your biological capacity for love is today, you can bolster that capacity by next season. For it was those study participants who had been assigned at random to learn loving-kindness meditation who changed the most. They devoted scarcely more than an hour of their time each week to the practice. Yet within a matter of months, completely unbeknownst to them, their vagus nerves began to respond more readily to the rhythms of their breathing, emitting more of that healthy arrhythmia that is the fingerprint of high vagal tone. Breath by breath —loving moment by loving moment—their capacity for positivity resonance matured. Moreover, through painstaking statistical analyses, we pinpointed that those who experienced the most frequent positivity resonance in connection with others showed the biggest increases in vagal tone. Love literally made people healthier. Upward Spirals Unleashed It’s time now to step back from isolated scientific findings and take in the big picture. Recall that your body’s positivity resonance operates within a much larger system. Along with love and all the other positive emotions, this system also includes your enduring resources—your physical health, your social bonds, your personality traits, and your resilience. Having assets like these certainly makes life easier, and more satisfying. In addition, though, such resources also serve as booster shots that increase the frequency and intensity of your micro-moments of positivity resonance. Love built those resources in you, and those resources in turn boost your experiences of love. This is not a simple case of cause and effect. The causal arrow instead runs in both directions at once, creating the dynamic and reciprocal causality that drives self-sustaining trajectories of growth. Through love, you become a better version of yourself. And as your better self, you experience love more readily. It is in this dance between your enduring resources and your micro-moments of love that life-giving upward spirals are born.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I’m not sure if this is true; I’d have to call all 12 of them and take a poll. But I think we had a dumb hope the whole year. Our hope had nothing to do with the not very good at all book we were collaboratively writing. I think our hope was that Ken Kesey would write another perfect book. That he still had one in him and that we could somehow get it out. But all he kept doing was drinking. No amount of our getting high with him or walking the beach with him or listening to his stories could resurrect the man within the man. Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are on my bookshelf next to As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom. Some books take your breath away. Is it the books, or the writers? When I hold Kesey’s books in my hands, when I open them, I can hear his voice. I can see him. Smell him. Feel him. But it’s the words that take my breath. Isn’t that enough? In the spring of the year of Kesey, on Easter, we walked up Mt. Pisgah to Jed’s resting place. Some of us were high on pot and some of us dropped acid and some of us ate mushrooms. And always Kesey drank from a flask. At the top the wind shuddered the leaves of trees. The mound of grass hill like one of Kesey’s shoulders. I liked being up there. Jed underneath us. I felt most alive near death anyway. I just didn’t talk about it much. Except a few times with Kesey. We embraced up there at one point. Toward the end of the year of Kesey at his house in Pleasant Hill he showed all 13 of us video clips of Neal Cassady. I think Babbs brought them over. Some of us were high on pot and some of us dropped acid and some of us ate mushrooms. And always Kesey drank. Faye was in the kitchen, then she went to church. We sat on the floor we sat on old stuffed chairs we sat on a sunken couch. When Neal Cassady came on the screen my chest filled with butterflies. He looked and acted exactly like a Kerouac sentence. The close up face of Neal Cassady … all that random quixotic fantastic gibberish and eye shifting and head bobbing and facial tic-ery … it was beautiful. Still though it seemed unreal, or surreal. We were nothing in the face of history but a bunch of waiting ducks. Someone could have picked us off one at a time in a pond. I sat there and wished our watching meant more.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  They need that. Our role as parents is not to do everything for our kids, but to help them believe in their own abilities and to encourage them in their purpose. In an interview with inc.com, Dr. Stephanie O’Leary, a clinical psychologist and author of Parenting in the Real World: The Rules Have Changed , insisted that letting children struggle, even fail, benefits them far more than doing everything for them. She stated, “Your willingness to see your child struggle communicates that you believe they are capable and that they can handle any outcome, even a negative one.”1 Our kids need to know that they are more than able to be successful on their own. They need supportive parents, yes, but they don’t need helicopter parents hovering overhead, making sure they are constantly happy and always perfect. They might be frustrated in the moment, but the very fact that you believe in them enough to let them muddle through is teaching them self-confidence. Plus, by trying and failing and trying again, they learn problem-solving, perseverance, and a bit of humility. Those are invaluable gifts. Now, if we as parents realize that, don’t you think God does too? In case you haven’t noticed, God is not a helicopter God. He’s always there, of course, but He’s not anxiously controlling our progress, stepping in to fix our mistakes when we color outside the lines, or yelling at us when we accidentally shatter a flower vase. God continually encourages us to try new things, to fail, to learn, to try again, to grow. He’s with us and for us, but He doesn’t do everything for us. Instead, He cheers us on as we move forward in our purpose. PRAYER AND PURPOSE Purpose . Think about that word for a moment. It implies a potential, a calling, a goal. It means participating in life, not just letting life happen. Good parents don’t just protect and provide for their kids. They help them find and achieve purpose. That includes purpose in the general sense of becoming a responsible human, but also purpose in a more specific sense, by inspiring them to dream big and nudging them to pursue their dreams. When it comes to prayer, doesn’t it make sense that our heavenly Father would also hand many of our requests back to us? That He would look beyond our immediate comfort and instead point us toward our purpose? That He would tactfully ignore the whining and remind us that we are capable, creative, well-resourced people made in His image? In other words, God doesn’t do everything for us, but He works with us to do everything that needs to be done. It’s a partnership. When we pray about what is worrying us, God usually involves us in the solution of the very thing we are praying for.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Some counselors and group leaders are not credentialed. Some programs are fronts for cults. Even a well-meaning program may inadvertently promote long-term victimization. Although these groups are set up to reduce codependency, many participants become completely dependent on their 12-step meetings and friends. For a critical perspective on the recovery movement, read I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional by Wendy Kaminer (Vintage) and Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps by Charlotte Kasl (Perennial Currents). If you were subjected to or witnessed extreme forms of abuse, seek a therapist or counselor experienced in working with survivors of trauma. (See Chapter 13 on how to evaluate a therapist.) Also review the sections in this book on anger, fear, dissociation and triggers, post-traumatic stress, relationships, and self-expression. In all cases, denying your abuse will only prolong your misery. Our best advice is to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and work through the trauma so you can move on. [image file=img/img0019.jpg] Healing takes place in many different ways. Each person is different and responds to different things. In this chapter, we address some of the paths to recovery that have helped former cult members. One method is self-help, which includes an attitude as well as an effort that is key to regaining wholeness. Also, many former members find professional counseling useful. Finally, there is activism, which usually occurs at the middle or end stage of healing when a person feels ready to speak out or take part in educational activities. Self-HelpThe primary sources of self-help are education, creative expression, and support networks. Each of these is described here. Educating YourselfEducation is one of the most important ways to cope with and integrate a cult experience. Most former members go through a period of reading everything they can get their hands on. This is a crucial phase in the healing process because it helps to correct many misconceptions about cults and cult members. By reading about cultic influence processes, former members can begin to comprehend and assimilate what happened to them and why. Education can help them shed self-blaming stereotypes and attitudes, and it can help them explain their experience to others. There is a growing body of literature on cults, including books and articles on types of groups, specific groups, and theoretical issues. For example, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) compiles useful bibliographies; ICSA also sells selected books, journals, pamphlets, and other material, and publishes a journal called the Cultic Studies Review. Back issues of that journal are a wonderful source of information. Some of the most useful and informative materials are listed in Appendix D. We also recommend perusing the endnotes of each chapter of this book (and other books you might read) for useful sources. Unfortunately, a number of good books are out of print, but often can be found at libraries, used bookstores, or through the Internet. Expressing YourselfSelf-expression-whether through writing, art, dance, music, drama, or some other medium-is key to shaping your postcult identity.