The Gift of Fight or Flight?

My brain is an interesting place for sure. I've been considering what it is to either react or respond and what within my brain chooses one or the other of those two choices. 

It was very enlightening when I first read somewhere that if I speak to another person such that I illicit a response the conversation will be different than if I speak in such a way that I illicit a reaction.

That knowledge right there gave me wonderful freedom in knowing how to effectively promote a useful conversation.

For example, someone could say to me; "Why did you plant that bizarre, twisty shaped

shrub in your garden?" Or they could say; "Hmm, that is certainly an interesting choice of bush to put in front of your house."

In my brain the first comment heads me right to a reaction. "What do you mean "bizarre?" Why are you picking on me? You obviously have bad taste if you don't see this choice of shrub as being a good choice." And on and on it would go. My ego is activated and I defend and react and attack in return.

With the second comment I am invited into a conversation. I don't have to tamp down and restrain my injured ego, I can just explain what and how I was thinking when I choose that shrub and that spot.

This has a lot to do with the human brain's gift of fight or flight. How do you think that is so? And why?

Those Annoying Transitions of Life.

Fall is one of my favorite times of year.  It's so full of action both seen and unseen, and is the place holder of a new beginnings as well as a fading of what was and will never be again. 

Plants in my garden have been frosted and some will die and the seeds are being spread around.  Other plants are only losing their blossoms, stems and leaves but when I pull those up I see nice fat tubers that I am storing away in the cellar for that new beginning I spoke of.

Change and progression are one of the basics of living life but as humans we tend to fear the changes of life.

Not only does our conscious fear the changes often but according to what I learned in a seminar on the dynamics of the brain, our brain fears change!

If I am about to change myself there are ways that support change and ways of encountering that that sets up a reaction in the brain.

The brain can experience a direct attempt at changing it as a threat.  As such, the fight/flight reaction is triggered and chemicals are released that among other reactions tend to shut down the prefrontal lobe to focus on the "battle" at hand.

So thus the way to encounter my brain with a new habit or new way of being is to simply in peace, and with love for myself, start to learn a new way of living life or being and ignore the other unwanted habit or habits and thus not activate the reactive responses of the brain. 

So, living in peace become not just a way of being with others but a way of "living" with ourselves.

Gently and in fact lovingly noticing those habits or way of living that may have supported us in the past but are not working well now.

Often we need others around us to be with us in this process.  A friend or a community can support us in the upset and confusion that may result from suspending certain ways of thinking or acting and integrating new ways of thinking and acting.

Those friends can love us through those wintery seasons of change and casting off until there is the new birth of something else fresh and new on the other side.

Emerging Church conference quotes

Phyllis Tickle:* The central question that arises each time the church goes through one of these 500 year rummage sales is “Where now is our authority?” * Another important question: What does it mean to be a human being? Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” no longer cuts it * Sola Scriptura: Luther took a flesh & blood Pope and replaced it with a paper one. Protestantism’s great gift to the world was universal literacy. It’s other gift was divisiveness * Jerusalem is good, but the energy is in Antioch. We are here to serve the Kingdom of God, not the old or the new.

Brian McLaren:* What you focus on determines what you miss * Our traditional understanding of Jesus may not have been wrong, but partial * We must learn to see Jesus through the sight lines of his ancestors rather than his descendants only * Jesus went to Galilee. It meant something. If he came today would he go to Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ninth Ward… where?

Richard Rohr:* With dualistic thinking, someone always has to be blamed. The system caves in on itself * The sun rises on the just and unjust. You can’t form a system of exclusion on that! * Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about humanity. He came to change humanity’s mind about God * We have fly-paper minds… everything that gets close sticks. Don’t call that ‘thinking’. It is narcissistic, egocentric, needy, and fragile * “I have no doubt that the Spirit was in the works of the Reformation.” But you can’t have the need to prove the other wrong (adversarial thinking) and be the contemplative mind * We don’t want to be contemplative because we have to give up control * Belonging/belief systems have come to replace transformation. We must turn from a belief system to an inner experience. Know them, don’t believe them * Recognize that I am living inside a mind bigger than my own. Someone is loving through me, and all I am is the conduit. * Francis didn’t run off and join the Franciscans – He just did it.

Alexi Torres-Fleming:* God doesn’t call the qualified but surely qualifies the called. * Am I a fan or a follower of Jesus? * When we pray for God to ‘fix’ a problem, maybe Jesus kneels and prays for us to go out and be the solution * Maybe we’re given a little piece of God’s heart. We couldn’t deal with the entirety of God’s sadness for His children. (Note: Maybe this is what it means to be “made in the image of God”) * If we are free, and God’s poor are not free, then we are not free. * We cannot talk about church and theology without talking about justice. * We like our poor to look a certain way. The poor come to us in many different packages, and some may not be palatable. Some are angry. We must learn to see them as Christ sees them. (Note: Otherwise it’s just about us) * We must model incarnation: You cannot redeem what you will not assume.

Shane Claiborne:* Stop explaining/complaining about the church we have experienced and work at becoming the church we dream of. * We need to be relevant to the big questions of the day while retaining our cultural peculiarity * Fascinate the world with grace! * The church needs discontent. Don’t leave the church but submit to the authority of the larger Body of Christ * You can have all the right answers and still be mean. And if you’re mean, no one will listen to you.

Yup, more about the boiling frogs.

"What you resists, persists". Supposedly Nietzsche said that so my pastor may have missed a great opportunity to quote Nietzsche in his thought-provoking sermon recently.
He talked about the Stockholm and Stockdale syndromes. Which is to say he talked about how humans deal with reality when it's stressful or painful. In the Stockholm situation people sided with the oppressors, on the other hand, General Stockdale was fully accepting of what he was experiencing in a Vietnamese prison camp but decided that he also could be above it.
Also Pastor Dan brought up God's ability to make "all things work together for good" which if really thought through means that at some level all things are good. It also means that we can face reality honestly and squarely.
My faith in God's grace is what allows me to face current reality. Anything that may show up is well covered by God's goodness whether it is something about me or circumstances.
And not just passively sit in whatever it is. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says

"For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. "

Vice Admiral Stockdale passionately lived in what was going on for him... the abuse and humiliation and his deep committment to surviving. This is integrity. He transcended fear and oppression and lived in essence a faith-filled life.
Can we do the same in all of our areas of life? Can we do the same as God who actually doesn't resist anything but in a miraculous way moves into it and converts it. "All things work together for good..."