TRANSFORMING THE HEALTH REVOLUTION

     HEALTH is one of the most important dynamics of human existence.  The word “health” has several meanings & variations.  Presently this dynamic word and process is caught up in the massive changes occuring in our lives and institutions.  We can say there is a revolution in the understanding and practice of health and healthcare.  Changes are inevitable.  Revolutions are likely.  Transformations are possible and necessary.  Organized religion, and individual congregations need to be actively involved and share the leadership in the transformation of health and healthcare.

     Health has been understood as a physical dynamic.  Yet the need for awareness and inclusion of spirituality in this dynamic is slowly becoming apparent.  For centuries health was the province of the church, with folk remedies, shamanism and witchcraft as sidebars.  When science became legitimized, the practice of medicine became the dominant resource and profession in managing illness and physical impairment.  The church moved aside and settled for offering prayers, comfort and ritual healings.  When mental health became a recognizable entitly, both medicine and the church made room for this therapeutic treatment of the mind/brain.  With medicine and psychology dominating the understanding of human health, the church became a minor resource in maintaining the popular understanding and experience of health, and the close relationship between physical and mental health became accepted.  Now there is an emerging awareness that the health of the human spirit/soul is equally important in full health, which the church tends to call “wholeness.”  However, the church is poorly prepared to participate in what sometimes seems like a competition among the three healthcare professions to define and dominate the understanding and practice of healthcare.  For it seems to offer only the traditional resources of prayer, comfort and ritual healing.

     The concept of wholeness is emerging as a opening for the church to posit a model of human beings as a composite of a physical body, a brain-mind, and a spirit or soul.  The interdependency of these three components is now demonstrable, as medicine and psychology slowly yield to the reality that religious faith and practice both modify and enhance the understanding and experience of health.  We can now say that healing and health are not complete without the participation of all three professions, each in its appropriate way.

     Some have called the relationship between spiritual health, mental health, and physical health “the healthcare triangle.”  This metaphorical configuration of the relationship between these three healing-health modes can be helpful. It reminds us that if one side of a triangle is weak or missing, there is no longer a triangle, or at least the triangle becomes distorted and no longer provides the supportive strength, or has the structural integrity we expect from triangles.  A strong triangle formed by cooperative and creative interaction between the professions is the best model for healthcare and health available.

     In order for the church’s participation as a full partner in healthcare to occur, we must define wholeness as more than our standard three resources.  We must teach the meaning of spiritual health, and help demonstrate that a healthy spirit contributes to the health of the body and mind.  Further, the church must help emphasize and practice the emerging realization that prevention of illness and impairment is at least as important as treatment, comfort and healing. 

     It seems as if medicine and psychology are better prepared to manage their respective domains in health than is the church.  We are generally limited to encouraging ill and impaired persons to seek aid from medical practitioners and mental health therapists than to develop the full potential of spiritual resources.  Yet we can offer and demonstrate salvation in all its forms, love as the mystical and demonstrable practice of caring, teaching the model of Jesus the Christ as our reference point for physical touch, and disciplined morality, along with contemplative meditation, and inspiring relationships. Also, of course, we can provide the celebration of of Holy Communion, worship, prophetic preaching/teaching, spiritual expressions of the arts, and leadership in the struggle for peace and justice.  Moreover, we can also share in administering adequate resources for nutrition among the needy, and learning and recreation, as well as the shared efforts in ecological health.  We may call this impressive list of spirual resources that the church can provide the “Good Stuff” of full health and wholeness.  And in order to have the Good Stuff, we must learn to identify and limit the “bad stuff” that distorts and sickens.

     Perhaps the most significant contribution of the church is a constant reminder that we are all human beings having a spiritual experience that involves the body and mind. Yet it transcends these by lifting human experience to its highest joys and possibilities through the evolutionary connection of our soul/spirit with God our Creator. 

     We have not legitimized the church’s new/old role in defining and providing for wholeness, unless we are willing and prepared to do battle with Evil.  For evil in its many forms is a potent infection, mental disorder, and spiritual vulnerability induced by the second most powerful spiritual entity in God’s Creation.  Medicine deals with infection, injury and physical healthcare.  Psychology deals with mental disorders, disease and distorted thinking.  The church, when at its best, battles evil in all its emanations by offering  traditional resources for spiritual health, but it also, in its prophetic expressions, confronts evil in its individual and planetary forms.

     All of these potential healing and enriching resources of the church ( the “Good Stuff”) are notably weak, hesitant and ineffectual as we frequently submit to the “Bad Stuff”–evil, immorality, apathy, confusion, prejudice, and lack of spiritually inspired leadership, by clergy and laity.  As the practice of medicine continues to transform itself into more effective treatments, and psychology begins to transform itself by recognizing the close connection between mind and soul, so the church can rise to its new opportunities to transform itself into an effective antidote for evil, and a potent force for wholeness in both healthcare and prevention of  disabilities and practices that separate us from God and each other.  Revolution is already stressing all three healthcare professions.  Yet their visionary efforts are beginning to reflect the skills of transformation, which can take the energy and disruptions of revolution and turn them into healthy and effective ministrations.

 

THE  SIMPLEST  GUIDELINES  FOR  BODY-MIND-SPIRIT  WHOLENESS

 

For the BODY:

I.  Eat  Smart

     Smaller  portions

     Right  stuff

II.  Drink  Water

     No  additives (flavored drinks such as soda, coffee, tea, beer, et al, are acceptable in modest amounts)

     6 to 8  glasses/day

III.  Exercise  More  (&  Sleep  More – the  great  healer)

     Choose  right  exercises

     Adjust  exercises & recreation to  circumstances

For  the  Mind:

IV.  Think  Free  (Focus  on  the  “Good  Stuff”)

     Expand  Awareness  (Think “outside the box,” and even get rid of the box when it limits our health and growth)

     Openness  to  Reality  &  GOD-ness, and freedom from dogmatism

For  the  Spirit (Soul):

V.   Pray  High

     GOD  Is  Bigger  Than  We  Think– and spirituality has no limits but our own

     Seek  GOD’s  Purposes, as well remedies for our needs

     

                                           ”Good Stuff,” versus “Bad Stuff,” one will become dominant.  We get to decide.

THINK – 3

 

C R I S I S   I N   C L E R G Y   A U T H O R I T Y:

“The Clergy Killer Phenomenon”

 

     The epic of Christendom is no stranger to attacks and crises.  However, while most previous attacks originated externally and left clergy relatively unscathed, our contemporary crisis is unique in originating from within a congregation and focusing on the clergy.  The Clergy Killer Phenomenon features vulnerable clergy and small numbers of lay persons terrorizing pastors.

     The attacks by laity, resulting in devastated clergy and widespread collateral damage may legitimately be designated “spiritual warfare.”  Spiritual warfare is identified by its participants, their motivations and the massive interference with God’s purposes for the church.  The participants are clergy unprepared for bold and persistent attacks on their authority and ministry, their personhood, and anyone near to them.  The motivation of the antagonists is to cause elimination of the pastor through character assassination and anguish, while the pastor strives to survive without benefit of adequate training, support and freedom to fight back.  The interference with God’s purposes for the pastor and congregation are so intimidating that parishioners are confused, intimidated and may leave the church.

      Consequences of these terroristic attacks have ripple effects beyond the congregation and its pastor.  Denominational officials are forced to choose between unwanted responses while parishioners must choose sides, church polity is weakened, and the morality of the community and nation is compromised as part of this phenomenon.  Damage has reached such high proportions that the church and its pastors must now learnand use the legitimate spiritual resources available in spiritual warfare.

     The “authority” of clergy was and is dependecnt upon the tradition and mystique of the role,  the validation of the selected person by legitimate training institutions in organized religion, appropriate fr this role, a source book of polity and theology, denominational and congregational support, a decorum for the pastor’s daily life, and a respected position in the community/nation.  When any one of these supports is weakened or missing, clergy authority, perceived and real, is weakened, and she becomes vulnerable to personal disrespect and and attack.  Presently we are learning that not only have all of these clergy supports been weakened, but the weakened and unsupported pastors are under abusive attack by persons who have given themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to the elimination of not only the pastor’s authority, but that of his personhood and supporters as well.  With the loss of all these supports, and the growth of abuse, many anguished pastors are feeling FORSAKEN.

      Multiple causes have produced this potent social phenomenon, some more signifcant than others.  The clergy sex scandsls and permissive decorum of the 1980-90x are a prime case of clergy giving cause to question the validity of their authority.  The exposed politics of denominational operations, and decline in the decline in church membership also lessen authority.  However, the major external causes are the “question authority” and “entitlement” in USA attitudes, and loss of fear concerning spiritual spiritual issues.

     CAUTION:  CLERGY BLUN DERS AND SCANDALS GIVE NO EXCUSE TO SCNADALIZE, ABUSE AND ELIMINATE NORMALLY FUNCTIONING CLERGY! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THINK³

 

I have a dream…too.  I dream that global transformations will continue until the vast majority of human persons will have developed the magnifying thought process we can designate THINK³.  This is the third and most expansive level of thinking we have yet discovered.   It involves mind-spirit-body in an expanding awareness of our universal existence, and the amplification of universal participation in an exploding cosmic creation.  Level One in thinking is our normal use of consciousness.  Level Two is the occasional burst of mental creativity that lifts us temporarily above Level One to “thinking outside the box.”  Both of the first two levels happen of their own accord.  THINK³ (from here on T-3), however, requires conscious imaginative thinking without a box.  How is this possible? 

{This concept will be followed by a full essay soon}

 

 

 

 

Imagination

You won’t believe what comes next…

     IMAGINATION is the X-Factor in spirituality.  Our imagination is the open-ended experience of God & the spiritual dynamics of the universe, this planet, and our personal experience of that which is greater than humanity.  This reality would seem to imply that our experiences of the Holy would be blissful and awesome.  Sometimes they are.  Yet the personal and shared experiences of God and spirituality are limited to the capabilities of our personal imagination.  And since imagination takes place in our brain/minds, it can only accomodate what we have individuality experienced, and the projection of our engrams (established memories) blended with our hopes and fears.  Yet every once in awhile, we break out of our habit boxes and become at least temporarily aware of other realities.  The experiences of trauma, “miracles,” and blissful hopes are typical ways this occurs.  The contemporary breakthroughs in spiritual experience, however, can increase our experiences of the awesome, the universal, and of God-ness.  These bursts of spiritual energy are becoming more frequent, and may open possibilities of continuing growth and insights into who and what we are in relationship with that which is greater than ourselves.  In fact, we now know from experience and relationships that we are part of a spiritual realm with beautiful possibilities.  The mental focusing that promotes these possibilities is what we usually call ”meditation” (“mindfulness,” “cadences,” “intimations,” etc.).

     Readers probably know these clues regarding our mental/spiritual gift of imagination.  Yet I add my voice to those who “understand” the new/old spiritual dynamics that are becoming available through our intentional awareness of greater realities within us and beyond us.

     The future is present, and the present is future.  Let us take more time for focused meditation, and the fascinans of the numinous (Rudolph Otto), and a review of “Your God Is Too Small” (J. B. Phillips).

     More to follow…Think and dream with me, and all the “re-visioners” of our day.