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Living Spirituality on the Edge
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Lenten Series On Shame #2: Recognizing Shame
For those of you who missed our first Shame series installment, "Recognizing Shame", here's a recap of the evening.
The Elevation Band led worship with a couple of songs, From the Inside Out and Everything.
The Scripture reading for the night from Romans 8:38-39.
The Monologue was a quote from Brene Brown's first book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't).
Sheila Resari presented the Skidoosh:
As we continue our Shame series, based on the work of author, researcher, and speaker Brene Brown, today I want to talk about how to recognize shame; as in, “Oh! What I’m feeling is shame!” This recognition will help us with:
A) Empathy – “Ohhhh! What they’re feeling is shame.”
B) And how we treat others – “Oh-uuuh! I was trying to shame them.”
To review, Brene Brown’s definition of shame is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
The need for acceptance and belonging is hardwired into our systems at a primal level. Long ago, if your tribe cast you out, it meant you would probably die.
When we get stuck in shame, we are desperate to avoid rejection. We try to hide those ugly, shameful parts of ourselves. But this hiding prevents us from connecting – to ourselves, to others, or to God. Shame prevents us from living our full spiritual lives.
Recognizing shame and understanding our personal triggers helps us loosen the grip of fear, anger, and blame. It helps us build shame resilience.
Shame is often brought about by our perceived personal identities, and how we feel we fulfill this perception. Consider the following:
I want to be perceived as ____________________________, _______________________________, ___________________________________, _______________________________________, and ________________________________.
I do NOT want to be perceived as ____________________________, _______________________________, ___________________________________, _______________________________________, or ________________________________.
These questions help us examine our wanted and unwanted identities, particularly in regard to the following 12 categories:
Appearance and body image
Motherhood/fatherhood
Family
Parenting
Money and work
Mental and physical health
Sex
Aging
Religion
Being stereotyped and labeled
Speaking out
Surviving trauma
For example, I want to be perceived as intelligent, graceful, competent, savvy, and talented. I don’t want to be perceived as ignorant, awkward, or an imposter. I invite you consider how you want to be seen or not seen, and fill out a few blanks for each question.
Take a look at the lists you made. Do any of these identities remind you of a time you felt shame? I’m reminded of a student who really challenged my teaching and how angry and scared I felt. I want to be perceived as intelligent and competent; I do NOT want to be perceived as ignorant, or as an imposter. His challenge was a perfect match for my vulnerabilities to shame. Recognizing why I felt so horrible then helps me to respond to similar feedback with greater ease now.
When you’re not spending energy on hiding the shameful parts of you and presenting a perfect façade, you have energy to invest in connection. With yourself, with your community, and with the divine. I invite you to spend time getting to know your personal shame triggers, to create room for resilience and opportunity for connection.
After the Skidoosh we broke into three Activities from which people could choose to participate:
1. Continued discussion with Darren
2. Physicality of Shame with Sheila
3. Guided Meditation with Nicole
From there, we went into our Spiritual Practice of group prayer, led by Eli Zigdon
We then had a time of Giving and Receiving lead in worship by the band to "Healing Is In Your Hands".
Finally after hearing announcements for the week, we Closed the service by singing "Shine On".
As usual, after service all were invited to participate in our weekly Pizza Ritual!
The Elevation Band led worship with a couple of songs, From the Inside Out and Everything.
The Scripture reading for the night from Romans 8:38-39.
The Monologue was a quote from Brene Brown's first book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't).
Sheila Resari presented the Skidoosh:
As we continue our Shame series, based on the work of author, researcher, and speaker Brene Brown, today I want to talk about how to recognize shame; as in, “Oh! What I’m feeling is shame!” This recognition will help us with:
A) Empathy – “Ohhhh! What they’re feeling is shame.”
B) And how we treat others – “Oh-uuuh! I was trying to shame them.”
To review, Brene Brown’s definition of shame is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
The need for acceptance and belonging is hardwired into our systems at a primal level. Long ago, if your tribe cast you out, it meant you would probably die.
When we get stuck in shame, we are desperate to avoid rejection. We try to hide those ugly, shameful parts of ourselves. But this hiding prevents us from connecting – to ourselves, to others, or to God. Shame prevents us from living our full spiritual lives.
Recognizing shame and understanding our personal triggers helps us loosen the grip of fear, anger, and blame. It helps us build shame resilience.
Shame is often brought about by our perceived personal identities, and how we feel we fulfill this perception. Consider the following:
I want to be perceived as ____________________________, _______________________________, ___________________________________, _______________________________________, and ________________________________.
I do NOT want to be perceived as ____________________________, _______________________________, ___________________________________, _______________________________________, or ________________________________.
These questions help us examine our wanted and unwanted identities, particularly in regard to the following 12 categories:
Appearance and body image
Motherhood/fatherhood
Family
Parenting
Money and work
Mental and physical health
Sex
Aging
Religion
Being stereotyped and labeled
Speaking out
Surviving trauma
For example, I want to be perceived as intelligent, graceful, competent, savvy, and talented. I don’t want to be perceived as ignorant, awkward, or an imposter. I invite you consider how you want to be seen or not seen, and fill out a few blanks for each question.
Take a look at the lists you made. Do any of these identities remind you of a time you felt shame? I’m reminded of a student who really challenged my teaching and how angry and scared I felt. I want to be perceived as intelligent and competent; I do NOT want to be perceived as ignorant, or as an imposter. His challenge was a perfect match for my vulnerabilities to shame. Recognizing why I felt so horrible then helps me to respond to similar feedback with greater ease now.
When you’re not spending energy on hiding the shameful parts of you and presenting a perfect façade, you have energy to invest in connection. With yourself, with your community, and with the divine. I invite you to spend time getting to know your personal shame triggers, to create room for resilience and opportunity for connection.
After the Skidoosh we broke into three Activities from which people could choose to participate:
1. Continued discussion with Darren
2. Physicality of Shame with Sheila
3. Guided Meditation with Nicole
From there, we went into our Spiritual Practice of group prayer, led by Eli Zigdon
We then had a time of Giving and Receiving lead in worship by the band to "Healing Is In Your Hands".
Finally after hearing announcements for the week, we Closed the service by singing "Shine On".
As usual, after service all were invited to participate in our weekly Pizza Ritual!
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Lenten Series on Shame #1: Religious Ties to Shame
For those of you who missed our first Shame series installment, "Religious Ties to Shame", here's a recap of the evening.
The Elevation Band led worship with a couple of songs, The Motions and Savior Please.
The Scripture reading for the night from Genesis 3:8-13, 16-19 about the Fall.
The Monologue was a collection of quotes from Brene Brown's first book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't).
Nicole Highhouse presented the Skidoosh:
We originally got the idea from the TED talks done by renown speaker and researcher, Brene Brown, PhD. and then picked up her books. Much of what was discussed was from her book called “I Thought It Was Just Me But it Wasn’t”. Her TED talks are also brilliant:
Why are we looking at shame? It might seem an odd subject for Lent. But really, much of our Christian understanding of ourselves as human beings is based on shame. Look at the scripture read during our worship set from Genesis 3: the Fall of Man.
- Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge and realize their own nakedness.
- They hide from God.
- God sees and casts them away.
- They are forever cursed – disconnected from God and paradise, cursed to endure pain and hardship.
And thus begins the Judeo-Christian story. We begin as flawed, shamed people, unworthy of connection to our God.
That is essentially the definition of Shame. It is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that one is somehow flawed and unworthy of acceptance and belonging.
What else defines shame? How is it different from guilt? Or embarassment? The definitions for our discussion are relatively important.
Embarrassment is something that is fleeting, often normal or even funny. We know it happens to other people and we know it will go away.
Guilt is about things we do, our behaviors: "I cheated on a test. I should not have done that. It was really stupid and it doesn’t line up with what I am." Or "I didn’t hold the door for that elderly person. I should have helped. I want to be a good person in this world and that didn’t line up with my values." We realize the behavior, what we did or didn’t do and what we will do differently next time.
Shame on the other hand, is about who we are. The talk in our heads or to ourselves might be more like, "I cheated on a test. I’m so stupid. I can’t do anything right. I am a bad person."
Guilt: I did something bad.
Shame: I am bad.
A person who feels guilt can recognize that their behavior was inappropriate and might want to change that behavior. That person can grow or move on from the experience. It can be an incentive to improve.
A person who feels shame can come to believe in the negative statements about themselves. They can believe that they are bad, or old, or stupid or whatever. The person who believes their story doesn’t believe that change is possible, and often continues to enter into the negative behaviors.
When we feel shame, when we feel we are not worthy of belonging or connection, it’s not something that we find easy to overcome. We end up creating behaviors to hide it.
- We withdraw. We stop telling people our real story.
- We numb. Do you realize that we’ve become the most obese, most addictive culture in history? We take pills. We drink. We use drugs. We console ourselves with food.
- We cover up! We try to perfect on the outside to hide our pain on the insides, which leads to even more shame when we fail.
The problem is, our current culture has quite high expectations. We’re supposed to be thin with perfect hair, expensive clothes but not look like we’re trying. We’re supposed to be witty and brilliant and adventurous and up to date on pop culture and yet appropriately humble and self-assured. We are supposed to be nothing less than perfect, which is most likely nothing like what our authentic selves really are.
When I was writing this, it reminded me of this commercial:
Through magazines where every model is airbrushed and has a team of makeup and hair artists, to movies with actors who devote 8 hours a day to working out and read scripts written by wordsmiths, to car commercials and weight loss commercials and on and on … our culture has created an impossible vision of perfection, for which each of us falls short…. and by which each of us finds a reason to not be worthy of connection at some time or other.
And back to our religion. Depending on the culture you were raised on, some Christian culture tells us that there is a particular way to act. We must throw authenticity out the window in order to be pure, wholesome and perfect. This never seemed to be the actual message in the Bible or from Jesus, but it is has been an impossible standard meant to kept God’s people in subjugation since before the middle ages. And we’ll talk more about using shame and responding to shame later in the series as well.
The point is that believing that we are less, or unworthy, or somehow flawed because we do not measure up to a social ideal of perfection is a shame that we all feel from time to time. And by recognizing this very thing is the start to realizing that there is a way out of it.
Every single one of us wants to belong. We want to know that people like us, and that we are worthy of connection. We are probably not all versions of the Most Interesting Man in the World, but we all have something to offer each other.
We all NEED connection. In the story of Creation, God made Adam and Eve – both of them, so that they wouldn’t be alone. God made us to be social creatures, to need one another. Shame is what keeps us from being what God wants us to be for each other. It keeps us from speaking our truth. It keeps us from being vulnerable to one another so that we can empathize and uplift one another. These are all things that we’ll discuss in this series.
Most of all, Shame keeps us from realizing the gift of redemption, the selfless and beautiful gift of love offered freely by Jesus Christ so that we could be free from everything that kept us from connection with our Creator.
After the Skidoosh we broke into three Activities from which people could choose to participate:
1. Continued discussion with Nicole
2. Contempletive Group Prayer
3. "Bible Blame Game" where participants looked at scripture to which they may have connected shame, and scripture that overcomes it.
From there, we went into our Spiritual Practice of group prayer, led by Eli Zigdon
We then had a time of Giving and Receiving lead in worship by the band to "Captivate Us".
Finally after hearing announcements for the week, we Closed the service by singing "Shine On".
As usual, after service all were invited to participate in our weekly Pizza Ritual which also featured chicken nuggets and cake! :)
Friday, February 15, 2013
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