This book emerged from my work as a psychotherapist and pastoral counselor for over a decade. I have been both teacher and student in this process. As Eckhart Tolle states, “both the teacher and the taught become the teaching.” In this process the teaching began to fit together like pieces of a puzzle or patterns in a tapestry.
What I began to see is the consistent presentation of seven distinct patterns that are unique and interconnected. As sojourners recognized their own patterns, they discovered ways to move out of mazes of meaninglessness and to emerge from chaos into coherence. These pieces of the pattern include safety, meaning, justice, competence, connection, healing, and transcendence.
Safety is the first piece in the tapestry puzzle. It is our number one need. Simply put, if we don’t feel safe, nothing else matters. We react instinctually to threat in this way. Anger and anxiety are always in response to threat and are always protective of our safety.
Safety has never been more of a concern than it is right now. The automotive industry has been the bell weather economic indicator for the stability of capitalism for decades. Do you remember, “How General Motors goes, so goes the nation?” The economic tsunami caused from the bursting housing and credit bubbles has sent us on a cycle from boom to bust not seen since the great depression. Revelations of corporate greed have sent shock waves from Wall Street to Main Street. The current digital photo of western capitalism captures an astonishing and staggering image of one huge Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff has become the poster child of the current economic implosion and retraction. As for our health, we await the coming of each new pandemic from bird flu to swine flu. As for the health of the planet, our carbon footprint has created the fungus of global warming that promises to make our planet as inhabitable as a soiled and smelly tennis shoe.
Our foundations of safety have been forever destabilized. Prior to 9-11-2001, the United States could depend on its geographical boundaries to insure a modicum of safety. Terrorism always happened “over there.” We now know that our safety is no longer an inalienable guaranteed constitutional right. We now know what the rest of the world knows: safety can no longer be taken for granted. We now know that 9-11 is a dividing line in history, marking time “before” and “after.” The “new normal” continues to raise anxiety to new levels. Our collective consensus is not if there will be another terrorist strike but when and where. Fighting a war on terror without boundaries and borders may well mean that our nation and the world will now be in a state of war in perpetuity. We have notched up both anxiety and anger through isolated and prolonged acts of “holy violence.”
We cannot live purposefully, creatively, and with passion if we are stuck in a protective mode. Our psychological safety needs trigger anger and anxiety when there are real or imagined threats to issues of justice or competence.
Meaning is a thread weaving through our attempts to find “purpose” through career, companionship, and vocation as we wrestle with life choices. Meaning involves the facts of our lives and how we interpret these facts. “Our baby died,” might be a fact, but what does this mean? We strive to make our meaning making conscious and to develop our own theory, philosophy, theology, or ideology about how to make sense out of our experience. It may be as simple as the Golden Rule or as complex as Aristotle or Augustine.
Justice involves our attempts to achieve balance in relationships. We want to get out of our relationships what we put into them: to get what we give! Most relationships are based upon unconscious bartering, “If I do this for you, you are supposed to do this for me.” When these expectations are not met, resentment eventually builds to implosions or explosions. Reactivity frequently follows real or imagined threats to interpersonal or social injustice.
Competence is our need, drive, and desire to be competent with who we are and what we do. From the time we are born until we die we strive to achieve and maintain competence. In this controversial chapter the reader will witness the dismantling of a popular cultural and psychological myth: there is no such thing as self-esteem. Reactivity frequently follows real or imagined attacks on our competence.
Connection is our need to be in relationships where we experience unconditional love, acceptance, and approval. The old television show “Cheers” began with, “I want to go to a place where everybody knows my name.” We are all creatures of community. We are born into families and we journey our way through many places of belonging, where we receive nurture, challenge, and identity. Are our sources of connection life giving or life denying?”
Healing is our bodies’ homeostasis of health. This is why we have an immune system. The direct connecting link between emotional, spiritual, and physical health will only be made stronger as further research will conclude. Case material will present healing in relationships, the link between emotional illness and disease, how emotional healing may facilitate physical healing, and documented incidences of spontaneous healings.
Transcendence is our search for God. Transcendence is not about finding orthodoxy but orthopraxy. God is not so much interested in right belief as in right relationship. When we get into an aligned relationship, the right belief seems to take care of itself. (Jeremiah 31:31-34) Discovering our destiny is about recovering the divine image hidden below the self and discovering our adoption that connects the soul to the divine. (Romans 8:12-17)
Although I’ve seen this tapestry in my work, let me clearly state there are no formulas to faith. This is not about discovering seven “how to’s” or seven steps to salvation or seven blueprints for the soul. More than anything else I believe abundant life is hard work. (Philippians 2:12-13) Our point of encounter with God is precisely where we may struggle with any or all of these threads in the tapestry puzzle. It is a fundamental affirmation of a fundamental truth that God meets us where we are. We are drawn into our own unique tapestry when we say “yes” to the miracle of transformation. The more intense the struggle, the more we get pushed into who we are in God. The goal of the journey is to hold the tension of our two natures, human beings made in the divine image, and to become whole persons. It is the ongoing work of transformation that transforms the individual and connects us into the
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