Spiritual & Religious Care Awareness Week - Oct 16-22, 2017 ...

Spiritual health is the path to inner peace

regardless of the turmoil around you.

Anonymous

Hi Everyone!

This week is Spiritual and Religious Care Awareness (SRCWA) Week in BC. The theme for this year's observance is a timely one, Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World. (See the Canadian Multifaith Federation's SRCWA Handbook "Theme Readings" for an excellent list of resources on forgiveness.)

While a significant portion of the population professes no spiritual leanings at all, most people agree that we humans are endowed with a spirit that requires as much care and attention as our bodies and minds if we are to be fully "well".

Our research shows that those with a strong, nurturing spiritual life are more resilient to the impacts of adversity - our own and others'. Hundreds of rigorous, elegant, peer-reviewed scientific articles show spirituality as the root of wellness in children throughout the first decades of life and beyond.

In her best-selling book, The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving,  Columbia University researcher and author, Lisa Miller, PhD, says that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances, 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers and 80% less likely to have unprotected sex.

At the other end of the developmental spectrum, the Canadian Military Journal reports that, "Whereas religion/spirituality impacts military operations writ large, it can also play a significant part in the healing of individual warriors after those same operations." The US Department of Veteran's Affairs  also cites positive outcomes of healthy spirituality on PTSD and depression in some trauma populations and on the intensity of clinical symptoms like anger, rage and desire for revenge in trauma survivors. Healthy spirituality can also help with meaning making, the processing of guilt and moral injury and grief and bereavement after trauma and loss.

Spiritual and religious care providers are among the least well-recognized helpers in our communities. Those who support others in their spiritual development, particularly through times of crisis -  clergy, spiritual directors or guides, chaplains, pastoral care volunteers and others - may have the benefit of having spiritual resilience practices already in their toolboxes but they are still at risk for compassion fatigue and burnout.

The sheer volume of people seen by spiritual care providers, the traumatic circumstances under which these people often seek support, the need to protect confidentiality, expectations of exemplary reactions and behaviours on their part, and not infrequently, a culture of competition and judgement can all contribute to the symptoms of post traumatic stress, emotional disengagement and loss of capacity for empathy that are the hallmarks of compassion fatigue.

If others' spiritual wellness is at the centre of your helping work, (and even if it isn't) you are warmly invited to attend the next Caring On Empty: Creative Tools for Compassion Fatigue Resilience workshop on Friday October 27th at the Granville Island Hotel in Vancouver, BC. (email Jan for registration forms at caregiverwellness@shaw.ca)

And if the notion of positive spirituality is new to you, or it's been a while since you've thought about it seriously, here are a range of books with ideas you might enjoy exploring:


1.  The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving  (2015) by Lisa Miller

2.  Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations (2016) by Richard Wagamese

3.  Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life (1992) by Thomas Moore

4.  My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging (2000) by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

5.  Soul Moments: Marvelous Stories of Synchronicity - Coincidences from a Seemingly Random World (1997) by Phil Cousineau

6.  The Spirituality of Nature (2008) by Jim Kainin


And here are a couple of great spiritually-based websites:

1.  Brain Pickings: An Inventory of the Meaningful Life 

2.  On Being: The Big Questions of Meaning


Whatever your personal spiritual leanings, perhaps this would be a good week to nurture that part of your life and to notice and show your appreciation for those who work to provide spiritual solace and support for others' spiritual growth.

Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations ...

All we have are moments. So live them as though not one can be wasted. Inhabit them, fill them with the light of your best good intention, honour them with your full presence, find the joy, the calm, the assuredness that allows the hours and the days to take care of themselves. If we can do that, we will have lived.

Richard Wagamese

Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

Good morning, Everyone!

Yesterday, as I put my life back together after a week on Vancouver Island facilitating two wonderful workshops, my long-awaited copy of Richard Wagamese' last book, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations, arrived in the mail.

Stopping only long enough to make a piping cup of tea, I curled up on the couch and opened the small volume, savouring its smooth cool pages, fitting photographs of Nature and her creatures and the sweet, spare, honest prose of Richard's hard won wisdom. Within moments, tears were rolling down my cheeks as I sat, overwhelmed by the emotional and spiritual power of his words. I thought, "This is my new book of scripture. My new source of sacred writings." If I could live my life in accord with these truths-of-the-heart, I would live my life well.

Richard writes as one who had long ago died in order to survive but then, at the time of writing, had come back to life in all its fullness. There is wonder, simplicity, authenticity and clarity in his wise words and every short meditation opens a window to hours of transformative reflection.

If you have not read this book, do order it now as a Spring gift to yourself. Here are a few quotations that may entice you:

Keep what's true in front of you, Old Man said. You won't get lost that way. I was asking about making my way through the bush. He was talking about making my way through life. Turns out, all these years later, it was the same conversation.

I'm learning that happiness is an emotion that's a result of circumstances. Joy, though, is a spiritual engagement with the world based on gratitude. It's not the big things that make me grateful and bring me joy. It's more the glory of the small: a touch, a smile, a kind work spoken or received, that first morning hug, the sound of friends talking in our home, the quiet that surrounds prayer, the smell of sacred medicines burning, sunlight on my face, the sound of birds and walking mindfully, each footfall planted humbly on earth.

There are periods when you exist beyond the context of time and fact and reality. Moments when memory carries you buoyant beyond all things, and life exists as fragments and shards of being, when you see yourself as you were and will be again - sacred, whole and shining.

There is sunlight in the mountains today. The morning is crisp and clear as untrammelled thought. Against the sky, the trees raise crooked fingers in praise. To be here is to be affected, made more. Filled. The creative energy of the universe. Drink it in, my friends ... 

May the rich writings of this lovely little book touch and help to transform your life.

On Becoming Wise ...

This is a book for people who want to take up the great questions of our time with imagination and courage, to nurture new realities in the spaces we inhabit, and to do so expectantly and with joy.

Krista Tippett

Hello Everyone!

Happy Spring! I'm beginning this wondrous season of new life by reading Krista Tippett's intelligent, reflective, small "s"spiritual book, Becoming Wise. 

Krista is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, New York Times best-selling author and the recipient of the US National Humanities Medal for "thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence". She is the host of the US National Public Radio program and blog, On Being, (one of my favourite places to go on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a hot cup of tea), and a wise woman in her own right.

I love this book. I'm reading it with two friends and we're discussing it chapter-by-chapter using the equally thoughtful study guide. I commend both to you.

Here are some quotes from the Introduction to the book:

Change has always happened in the margins, across human history, and it's happening there now.  Seismic shifts in common life, as in geophysical reality, begin in spaces and cracks.

The interesting and challenging thing about this moment is that we know the old forms aren't working. But we can't yet see what the new forms will be.

History always repeats itself until we honestly and searchingly know ourselves. 

Our spiritual lives are where we reckon head-on with the mystery of ourselves, and the mystery of each other.

We create transformative, resilient new realities by becoming transformed, resilient people. 

Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are not the stuff of saints and heroes, but tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behaviour that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. 

Listening is about being present, not just about being quiet ... 

The world right now needs the most vivid, transformative universe of words that you and I can muster. And we can begin immediately to start having the conversations we want to be hearing, and telling the story of our time anew.

I hear the word love surfacing as a longing for our public life everywhere I turn.

I have yet to meet a wise person who doesn't know how to find some joy even in the midst of what is hard, and to smile and laugh easily, including at oneself... (Humour) is one of those virtues that soften us for all the others. 

I define hope as distinct from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth ... Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It's a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.

What has gone wrong becomes an opening to more of yourself and part of your gift to the world. This is the beginning of wisdom.

If this is the Introduction to Becoming Wise, you can imagine what the rest of the book offers to an open, reflective and hopeful mind. Enjoy!

Summer Reading 2015: Spirituality & Resilience ...

One benefit of summer was

that each day

we had more light to read by...

Jeanette Walls

Hi Everyone!

It's almost time to say "Happy Summer!" and I, for one, can hardly wait to spend some long lazy days with my nose planted in a good book.

All through a VERY busy spring, I've fantasized about sitting on the deck at the cottage with the sun on my back and a pile of books on the ground beside me. As I've made a list of titles to pack into my duffle bag, I've been a little surprised to see that many of them are connected by the thread of spirituality. (I've been growing more and more interested in spirituality as a resilience factor for both compassion fatigue and chronic sorrow but hadn't expected that interest to show up in my vacation reading as well.)

Let me share with you some of the titles that will soon be winging their way to the Muskoka lakeside with me:

1.  The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health & Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller, PhD

I've cheated a bit with this one and started reading it already. Written by the director of the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia University, it reads a bit slowly but offers a host of new-to-me studies on the impact on physical and mental health of supporting and nurturing a child's "natural spirituality".

Research by Miller and her colleagues over the last decade shows that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances, 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers and 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex.  They are also more likely to have positive markers for thriving and for high levels of academic success.  I'm finding the book a warm, hopeful and practical guide for enhancing children's spiritual development.

2.  The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martin Pretchtel

Martin Pretchtel was raised on an Indian reservation in New Mexico and was trained by a renowned shaman there. According to the reviews, he says that modern society has lost its way in leaving grief to be experienced and expressed alone, without the support of community.

He says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honours what it misses." He explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural and individual ills we're currently experiencing. He shows how this collective, unexpressed grief, long held by our ancestors as well as ourselves, can be worked through so we can all be healed from the intergenerational trauma of loss, war and suffering.

3.  Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most by Tim Schriver

I've wanted to read this book ever since seeing Tim Schriver interviewed about writing it. He struck me as an authentic, vulnerable and articulate seeker who was able to translate both the best aspects of his faith tradition and his experience with the intellectually disabled through Special Olympics into a strong and supportive personal spirituality. He has also drawn on the Kennedy family story of "retarded" Aunt Rosemary who, he says, "taught them all how to care from within". Kirkus Book Reviews has pronounced the book "sincere, profound and deeply satisfying".

4.  Blue Horses: Poems by Mary Oliver 

This is Mary Oliver's latest collection of new poems. She describes in spare and perfect phrases both the everyday happenings and beauty of Nature and the resilience that comes through our connection with the natural world. I can't imagine a summer at the cottage without one of her books.

5.  Walking the Walk: Putting the Teachings into Practice When it Matters Most by Pema Chodron (Audiobook)

I figure this audiobook by Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron, will help to pass the time waiting in airports and during the five hour flights to and from Toronto.

Pema addresses the difference between knowing spiritual concepts and applying them in everyday life. In four sessions, we have the opportunity to reflect upon practices that can be applied in any faith tradition - stabilizing the mind (awareness, presence and foundation), unconditional friendship with yourself (getting unstuck from patterns that create our own suffering), freedom from fixed mind (releasing biases and prejudices to revitalize everyday experiences) and taking care of one another (learning to be truly there for others).

And, as you might guess looking at previous lists, I'm also planning to find space in my bags for a couple of escape novels. At the moment, Joanna Trollop's Balancing Act and Elizabeth George's Lynley and Havers mystery, Just One Evil Act are in the running. (I know, I know, I'm just a little behind on this series!)

Whatever you choose to do this summer, I hope some happy moments with a good book are there in the mix. Enjoy!