Six Things Your Community Could Be Providing

We've taken a look at the necessary ingredients for meaningful, authentic community. Now, we return to the big questions we hope such a community might help us answer.

1. How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
2. What am I passionate about? What personal life dream of mine creates greater wholeness in the world?
3. Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 
4. What fears get in my way? How can I dismantle those fears and understand what I actually want?
5. How can I get what I most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness?

Specifically, let's look at the intersection of questions 1, 2, and 5. We've already dismantled the criticism that these questions are selfish. We know that we may have to do a bit of introspection and self-examination to determine meaningful answers to these questions, and that can seem like hard work. On the other hand, these questions are all interconnected, so it's likely that the answers are connected too.

Chances are that we are already engaged in community in some way. Human beings are relational, so it's an intrinsic part of being human to form community. Sometimes, the communities we find ourselves in are by happenstance, and sometimes our participation in them is a conscious decision. Whatever the case, we can choose to be more intentional in how we show up in those communities. This involves knowing ourselves well enough to understand what moves us toward wholeness, and it involves giving ourselves permission to do those things.

Knowing ourselves well enough to understand what moves us toward wholeness is a fancy way of saying understanding what we really want. We have to get past our anxiety in order to know this. When we're anxious, what we want in the immediate sense is for the anxiety to go away. If we can't manage our anxiety well, our autopilot reactions will make decisions for us. We can't get what we most deeply want unless we shift into a more intentional way of choosing our responses. 

Sometimes our anxiety is specifically about what we want. We believe that we have to want something noble or grandiose or selfless in order to be "good" people. Or we tell ourselves that we don't deserve what we want, or that we haven't earned it. And we usually don't have a very reasonable sense of what it would take for us to deserve or earn what we most deeply want. Sometimes we even justify not tending to our own needs because we are waiting on a supernatural to arrange our lives differently. And these are just a handful of the nearly infinite roadblocks we put in our own paths. 

The first hurdle, then, is recognizing that what we most deeply want is important. When we understand our personal guiding principles -- our internal guidance system -- and can connect what we want with our deepest values, this hurdle becomes easier to cross. Knowing the principles by which we want our lives to be governed gives us a solid foundation for determining whether we are identifying what we deeply want or we are instead just coming up with the most expedient way to make our anxiety go away. 

Our guiding principles also give us a way to cast vision in our lives, to imagine what a best possible version of ourselves might look like. This vision is, essentially, a way of identifying what we most deeply want. When we engage our imaginations, we can ask ourselves: What would I look like if I were in complete integrity with my guiding principles? The answer to that question is a vision toward which we can orient our decisions -- and something with which we can realign ourselves when we get off course. And we know when we are off course by recognizing when we are reacting out of anxiety rather than making intentional choices.

Orienting around our guiding principles may give the impression that what we most deeply want needs to be lofty and demanding. This is not necessarily so. Most often, what we most deeply want is not so different from what everybody most deeply wants. We just put a lot of obstacles in our own way, including believing that what we want has to fall into neat categories of either "shamefully selfish" or "impressively selfless". The truth is that what we most deeply want is probably rather simple, and our deepest wants probably help meet other people's needs too.

If what we most deeply want is a sense of belonging, for instance, the healthy community we create from that desire is going to benefit others as much as it benefits us. Rather than judging what we are passionate about, then, we have the potential to connect what we are passionate about with our deepest values and make intentional decisions in our lives. We can create community around anything, provided it aligns with our life-affirming guiding principles. 

(I'll reiterate here what I've said elsewhere: If you think your guiding principles aren't life-affirming, you haven't uncovered your actual guiding principles yet. You may have uncovered a fear you didn't know about, but our deepest values are not built on fear. Don't make excuses or feel ashamed when you get to this point, just be honest about the fear and keep searching for the deeper life-affirming values that it's covering up.)

Being honest about what is fulfilling to us -- and being sharp about distinguishing what we most deeply want from our anxious reactivity -- gives us a way toward creating greater wholeness for ourselves and for the world around us. When we engage in any community intentionally, we have the opportunity to develop deeper understanding of ourselves, more meaningful connection with the people around us, and a greater sense of purpose. Meaningful, authentic community inspires our creativity and provides us with accountability so we can stay aligned with our deepest values more consistently. 

The surface level activities of the community don't really matter (provided they're aligned with your life-affirming values). Bowling league, neighborhood parenting co-op, book club, activist organization, community garden, artist collective, whatever. We can be intentional about how we show up in any community, ensuring that our authentic needs are met in legitimate ways and simultaneously contributing toward wholeness in the lives of others. 

If you want a way to consider the strengths and growth edges of your particular community, some research by a couple of students at Harvard suggest six categories of human need that are met by authentic, meaningful community. You can read about their observations of various secular communities at www.howwegather.org. Their evaluation includes some theistic language, but it's easily ignored or translated. I just mentioned the six categories a couple of paragraphs back, but I'll list them again. If your community does one or more of these things well, that's something to celebrate. If it has challenges with one or more of these areas, that may be something you want to build up.

First, community provides for a basic human need in and of itself. Making sure the community has integrity -- that it is meaningful and authentic, as we've discussed over several entries -- is important. Belonging is important for human beings, but building community with a clear identity in which people are genuinely welcomed and accepted can be challenging.

Second, meaningful authentic community gives people opportunities for personal transformation. When we feel safe and can be honest about our deepest values, community can help us align our lives better. We can grow in our personal integrity and authenticity. 

Third, meaningful authentic community give people opportunities for social transformation. This means, we develop more mature and intentional ways of engaging in the world around us. We become more aware of how we can contribute to greater wholeness in the world.

Fourth, meaningful authentic community helps us identify a sense of purpose. Life doesn't have a larger purpose, but human beings are meaning makers -- we determine what will give us a sense of purpose. Even though defining purpose comes from within ourselves, being in community can inform that journey. 

Fifth, meaningful authentic community engages our creativity. Human beings are, by nature, creators. This doesn't mean we are all artistic, but rather that we all have the ability to contribute to creating something new. Community can provide us with collaborators and inspiration.

Finally, meaningful authentic community provides us with accountability -- people who will pay attention to what we say we want in our lives and will keep us encouraged and empowered to take the next steps in that journey. When we set public goals, healthy communities will hold us to those goals until we redefine them. People who care about us, care about what we want for our lives.

If we understand our personal guiding principles, we can identify our deepest wants and needs more easily. Any community can become a place where we engage in having our personal needs met while we contribute toward greater wholeness in the lives of others. Every community can probably become better at the mutual practices of self-disclosure, active and unconditional love, hospitality, truth-telling, and celebration. Every community can probably become better at setting healthy boundaries and clarifying shared purpose or vision. And every community can be evaluated by how well it provides a genuine sense of belonging, opportunities for personal transformation, social transformation, defining purpose, engaging creativity, and offering accountability.

Community and Purpose

There are lots of different kinds of communities that meet different needs for people. We've been exploring what intentional components contribute to meaningful, authentic community. Mutual self-disclosure, active and unconditional love, hospitality, truth-telling, and sincere affirmation work together to meet people's needs. In other words, people need a place where they can:

• know others deeply and be known deeply by others,
• love others and be loved by others,
• serve others and be served by others,
• hear others and be heard by others,
• celebrate others and be celebrated by others.

Healthy boundaries, on the part of the community itself and on the part of its members, make the community a safer environment for all of these intentional practices. The last necessary piece we need to acknowledge is purpose. When a community lacks a sense of shared purpose, it's more difficult for people to feel a sense of belonging. 

A purpose can be a restatement of shared values. A community's purpose may be to promote a specific value (or set of values) in the world. In many cases, it would still be helpful to clarify how the community intends to promote those values. A community can value the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but it's even more clear when that community says, "We're going to honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person by ending homelessness in our region." That's a clear, audacious purpose that can give people who align with that vision a sense of belonging. 

If someone comes into that community and says, "I care about organic farming," they may not be strongly aligned with the shared purpose of the community. They might not feel like they belong in a community united around a purpose of ending homelessness. This is OK. That individual can decide whether they want to buy into the shared purpose of the community or whether they want to find meaningful, authentic community elsewhere. The community doesn't need to launch an organic farming program. This would potentially compromise the sense of belonging and shared purpose it has already cultivated. Unless organic farming clearly ties in with ending homelessness (and there may be a way that it does), the community can say no to focusing on organic farming. Members of the community already have a clear focus that defines what they want to do in the world.

Some communities have a clear focus that doesn't create greater wholeness in the world. Having a shared purpose still contributes to a sense of belonging for members of those communities. The KKK may not meet the criteria of our five essential ingredients, but their sense of shared values and purpose is undeniable. It's the clarity of the KKK's identity that makes it possible (and just and compassionate) to oppose the organization. Yet, the KKK still exists today because our society doesn't equip people to manage their anxiety and dismantle their irrational fears. When people find groups that legitimize their anxiety and fear, they feel accepted. They feel as if they belong to something larger than themselves. They feel a sense of safety in the midst of a world that is hostile to their perspective. Fundamentalist religious groups offer the same thing. They reinforce people's anxieties and fears in order to provide a sense of belonging and purpose. 

This is one reason the conversations about essential ingredients for meaningful, authentic community happened before the conversation about clear shared purpose. If you get a sense of belonging from a community because they seem to be anxious about the same things you're anxious about and they seem to fear the same people you fear, run for the door. A shared purpose that fails to create greater wholeness in the world is not a purpose that will ultimately serve you or anyone else. This is not to say that every organization that claims to create greater wholeness is legitimately beneficial, but a purpose that doesn't clearly lead to greater wholeness is not a worthwhile purpose. 

A community's purpose can only be evaluated if it's clear. I once heard a community leader speak at a fund raiser and say, "This organization has done great things in the past, and it was because of your contributions. I don't know what we're going to do next, but whatever it is, it will be because of your support." Not a very inspiring sense of purpose. This organization may have a set of values that a lot of people agree with, but without a clear statement of shared purpose, all the members of that community can run off in different directions doing what they think will support their shared values. And none of them are likely to be as effective as an organization that unifies people around a clear vision. 

Some communities care a great deal about inclusion. This is a wonderful and praiseworthy value, but it cannot be a community's purpose. A clear purpose is actually a specific kind of healthy boundary for a community. Including everyone isn't possible within the context of a clear purpose, because everyone doesn't hold the same values or passions. At best, a community can be inclusive of every person who aligns with the clear shared purpose of the community. But a single community's purpose cannot accommodate every person who walks in the door with a personal agenda. This winds up creating a sense of belonging for nobody.

Imagine a mosque attempting to be inclusive by serving communion for the sake of a Christian couple that wanted to start attending. That mosque would fail at its purpose of creating Muslim community. It would alienate the majority of its members. It probably would not provide the same caliber of communion experience that a Christian community would provide. It would compromise its clear shared purpose (unless that clear shared purpose was to become a more Christian community). And it would probably fail in its ability to set healthy boundaries. Now, hopefully the community of Muslims that gather at that mosque have a greater shared purpose than simply to gather together and be Muslim. Hopefully, they have a sense of how they want to engage in the larger community to live out their Muslim values in a way that creates greater wholeness. That shared purpose probably does not need to include serving communion, no matter how lovely or insistent that Christian couple may be. Inclusion has its limits, and those limits are set by the clear shared purpose of a community.

Within the boundaries of a clear shared purpose, of course, inclusion can be a powerful value a community holds. True inclusion is a lot of work, though. It often requires a lot of time and energy, and it often means being hyper-conscious of socially accepted metaphors and practices. A group of people recently became offended because the metaphor of walking was used throughout an event. They claimed that this metaphor was a repeated act of verbal violence toward people who use other forms of mobility. This presents a real problem when commonly used phrases or familiar songs (with no intent of excluding anyone from their message) use a metaphor of walking. Being inclusive sometimes means creating new language, and this new language can sound stilted at first. Unless the shared purpose of a community clearly connects with creating new language so that everyone is included in the words used by the community, this call for inclusion can be a hindrance to the community. If an entire community is able to align with the need for new language, however, it can be a powerful unifying and strengthening factor.

Claims of verbal violence and calls for greater inclusion often fail to take a community's purpose into consideration, however. Angrily insisting that a community accommodate one's personal values is not necessarily the most self-differentiated approach. If you want to be part of a community, and you feel in some way ostracized, the very best approach would seem to be connecting the practices of a community to its clearly stated purpose. Even if a community values the inherent worth and dignity of every person, if its clearly stated purpose is to honor the human value of people around them by distributing shoes, it isn't really appropriate to insist they also build houses, even if building houses would also align with the community's values. If that community is failing to distribute shoes effectively, though, or if its distribution seems to repeatedly avoid a certain neighborhood, there's a clear line of connection to follow. When inclusion clearly connects to a community's shared purpose, it's hard to argue with. 

Personally, I find it difficult to be in communities with religious identities. Songs that praise or petition a supernatural are antithetical to my personal beliefs. Public prayers rarely call upon the strength and capability of human beings, but rather ask an external deity to provide things for people. Speeches or sermons often proclaim things like, "It's all part of God's plan," or, "God is in control." I feel like an outsider in the presence of those songs or prayers or speeches. I can choose to be personally offended, or I can look to the clear purpose of the community. If a community's practices are clearly in alignment with its identity and purpose, then I really have nothing to complain about. I simply won't feel a sense of belonging in that community, because my personal identity and values are different from what the community promotes. 

If the community's practices seem not to be aligned with its clearly stated purpose, however, then I have a reason to speak up. It's often the case that a community and its leaders are unconsciously making assumptions that aren't true. If I feel an affinity for the community's purpose and my values and identity align with the community's stated values and identity, it's up to me to point out how the community's unintentionally exclusionary practices can shift to include my perspective while remaining clearly aligned with the community's shared purpose. When a community lacks a clear purpose, it's much easier for me to feel angry, offended, and alienated, especially if community leaders express a value of inclusion or claim to be welcoming to all people. At the same time, I don't believe that I should be made welcome by every community I might visit. Some communities have a purpose I don't share and don't have any interest in sharing. Neither I nor the community need to change. We all just need to be honest about what we are choosing to make our lives about.

Just as all of us need a clear sense of purpose to make our lives meaningful, communities need a clear shared purpose. The clearer and more specific the purpose, the more confident people will be in their sense of belonging. The more confident people are in their sense of belonging, the more easily they will participate in the mutual ingredients that make community healthy, authentic, and meaningful for everyone. The more vague a community's purpose, the more tentative people will be in their sense of belonging, and the more likely they will be to feel anger, hurt, or sadness when the community fails to meet their personal expectations. Lacking a clear purpose that's shared by its members means a community will have greater challenges in creating safe space for people to practice those five essential ingredients. It's better for people to leave with a clear understanding of how their personal identity doesn't mesh with the community's identity, even if this means that a community remains small. A community serves its current and future members best by having a clear purpose that all its members can share.

The Basics of Boundaries

A lot of communities are familiar with boundaries. Boundaries are often used to define who is an insider and who is an outsider. Religious communities often use belief as a boundary. (Members of this community believe in X, Y, or Z, and if you don't believe in X, Y, or Z, you can't be a member of this community.) Some communities use behavior as a boundary. (Members of this behavior abstain from alcohol, or pray at certain times of the day, or wear special clothing, and if you don't do these things, you can't be a member of the community.)

Especially for people whose entire social circle is comprised of a single community, these rules and restrictions are a means of controlling people. Stepping out of bounds can mean being ostracized or disowned. This sort of boundary is harmful when shame, rejection, and condemnation are used as enforcement. The message from many religious communities is that certain people are unacceptable, unlovable, or unworthy because they don't fit within the community boundaries. In many cases, boundaries become walls, shutting people out of community, imprisoning people in relationships, or preventing safe self-disclosure, honesty, and affirmation.

Healthy communities, on the other hand, set boundaries based on what behaviors align with the shared values of the community. A healthy community doesn't need to distinguish between insider and outsider, because the community's commonly held guiding principles and shared purpose are clearly defined. Rather than controlling people's behavior, healthy boundaries are collaboratively defined practices that reflect the community's values.

For instance, if a community has decided to practice mutual affirmation, self-disclosure, hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty, they may agree that some behaviors reinforce those values and some behaviors run counter to those values. Let's say, for instance, that a community recognizes that gossiping about someone isn't congruent with those five characteristics, but that it reflects those values to speak honestly, directly, and respectfully to a person when there's conflict. The boundary for the community, then, is that communication within the community reflects the community's shared values.

If Alex goes to Bethany to complain about something Charlotte said, that doesn't mean Alex should get kicked out of the community or shamed. It does mean that Bethany has an opportunity to help Alex make a course correction and realign with communication that reflects the high aspirations of the community. Bethany could do this in a variety of ways. She could guide Alex toward speaking directly, honestly, and respectfully with Charlotte -- or even offer to go with Alex if the conversation seems challenging. She could also help Alex empathize with Charlotte. Remaining detached from Alex's anxiety might be challenging for Bethany, and she may be tempted to take sides or spread further gossip about Charlotte (or Alex). Having clear boundaries in the community and giving everyone responsibility for upholding those boundaries will hopefully make it clear to Bethany how she can respond more intentionally.

This is an important point, because many communities have specialized people who are boundary enforcers. If you have a problem with someone, you go to the boundary enforcer and file a complaint, the boundary enforcer looks into the situation and decides if a boundary has been crossed, and then (ideally) a system of justice is activated to provide just consequences. This system lets most people off the hook for enforcing community boundaries. In a large society, this has some benefits. Our national justice system is severely flawed, but it's at least an improvement on vigilante justice or the escalations of retributive violence that happen in some cultures. In smaller communities, though, people can collaborate to create community boundaries that reflect their shared values, and everyone can be equally responsible for enforcing those boundaries by their own intentional behavior. Bethany doesn't need to go running to a community elder to inform on Alex. She's capable of being intentional in her own behavior when Alex's anxiety gets activated.

Each community has to determine for itself what level of boundary-crossing warrants greater attention. There are times when people may be resistant to correction when they are acting in violation of a community's shared boundaries. People can engage in conflict when they are anxious; fear prompts defiance in some folks. It's important for a community to know how it will respond to this kind of anxiety or fear in a way that aligns with its guiding principles and values. Community members should know ahead of time what the consequences are for persistent boundary-crossing, and as many members as possible should be empowered to hold one another accountable to the community's shared values and guiding principles.

Boundaries can also help provide a sense of safety in a community. Background checks for people working with children is a boundary. Clear lines of financial accountability may be another community boundary. Sometimes these sorts of boundaries are rooted in fear and anxiety about people. The same boundaries could flow from a community's intentional identity, however. The difference is not necessarily the boundaries themselves, but the foundation on which the boundaries are built. Well-defined community values and shared vision undergird healthy boundaries.

Healthy individuals have boundaries, too. And individual boundaries may not be identical to community boundaries. One person may choose to be vegetarian, while the community as a whole doesn't make such a choice. It's the responsibility of the individual to clearly state their boundaries, and it's the responsibility of the community to respect the boundaries of individuals. Emile has the responsibility to say, "I won't eat the chicken casserole Devon brought to the potluck, because I don't eat meat." No one has to apologize for the presence of a chicken casserole, because vegetarianism isn't a shared value of the community. Likewise, no one in the community gets to force Emile to eat the chicken casserole, or shame or pressure Emile (or Devon). Radical hospitality may prompt someone to take action to make sure Emile has something to eat, but this can be a loving act that respects the boundaries of those present.

Sometimes personal boundaries are the result of false beliefs, and sometimes personal boundaries are inconvenient for a community. Healthy community can recognize these realities and remain respectful of the boundaries that individuals set, as long as the community's shared values and guiding principles aren't compromised. Say a community decides that its shared values are non-theistic -- that as a community they will not promote supernaturalism through any of their common practices. If Gerry prefers to pray before a meal, it's fine for Gerry to pray. It isn't fine for Gerry to insist that everyone else pray. If Gerry wants to listen to overtly theistic music, that's fine. Gerry just doesn't get to require everyone to sing theistic music together.

The same would be true for a theistic community that determines its shared values to include affirming and promoting affection or gratitude toward a supernatural. If this is a shared value of the community, Fabian's personal boundary of refusing to pray doesn't get to define the practices of the entire community. The community's boundaries also don't mean that Fabian can be forced to pray, however. Fabian can choose not to sing the community's theistic songs, but if the community's shared values include gratitude toward a supernatural, Fabian should expect them to sing praises to that supernatural as a community practice.

For some communities, the challenging part is defining these boundaries clearly so that individuals will know whether their personal boundaries will be in conflict with the community's practices. If a community expects everyone to do something, it's best to be honest and direct about that expectation. Too often, communities claim to welcome everyone and fail to provide a clear indication of what they're welcoming everyone into. It doesn't matter to me if a Christian community acts like they welcome me; if they're going to expect me to participate in blatantly Christian activities, I'm not going to feel welcome. I'm not going to feel like a respected, valued, accepted part of a community that expects me to act in opposition to my own personal beliefs. When a community is clear about its boundaries and practices, and an individual is clear about their personal boundaries and practices, people can easily see whether they are a good fit for the community. Hopefully, a community's shared values and guiding principles are directly reflected in their boundaries and practices.
   
I mentioned that sometimes personal boundaries are the result of false beliefs. As long as those personal boundaries aren't in conflict with the community's boundaries, it's still best to be loving and respectful of those personal boundaries that may be misguided. As a person grows in their ability to practice mutual self-disclosure and honesty, and as a person participates in giving and receiving sincere affirmation and active, unconditional love, their beliefs -- and therefore their boundaries -- may change. People first need to feel safe in community before they can engage in the challenging work of defining personal guiding principles and casting vision in their lives. Respect for their personal boundaries, and clear community boundaries, can help provide that sense of safety.

All of this conversation about boundaries is within the context of a community that is practicing the essential five ingredients we've already explored: mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, mutual active and unconditional love, mutual honesty, and mutual affirmation. Some people may need a lot of help from their community to learn how to establish healthy personal boundaries. Boundaries can also be abused to preserve a community at the expense of the individual, or to create power-over structures rather than power-with systems. This is one reason community boundaries should be collaboratively created by the members of a community, with a clear connection to the shared values and guiding principles of the community. With these elements in place, a community can incorporate one more vital piece to creating greater wholeness in the world: a well-defined shared purpose or vision.

There are several books and web resources that carry this conversation about boundaries deeper, but one of the best is still Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. Even though this is touted as a Christian book, Cloud's observations are valid beyond the sphere of Christianity, and his recommendations are easily interpreted into a sound Humanist framework for relationships. He's also released a number of spin-offs that may be helpful to people looking for guidance on setting healthy boundaries in specific relationships.

Bold Honesty Part 2

Seriously considering what you actually care about most can be challenging. Previously, we recognized that it helps to spend enough time asking yourself why you care about what you think you care about in order to get to the most solid foundation. Sometimes it even helps to talk through things with someone else who can respond with open and detached curiosity. (It isn't as helpful to have a conversation with someone who has a tendency to be closed-minded and judgmental.) When what you care about seems not to be life-affirming, you can ask yourself what you're afraid of, work to dismantle irrational fears, and dig deeper to get to what really matters most to you.

Even when we get past the temptation to run what we most deeply want through an "acceptability filter", and we're able to say what we really care about with clarity, our ever-active anxious minds can still give us reasons to hesitate. Sometimes we second-guess and question our passions before we even have a chance to be boldly honest about them. Other times, we test the waters of bold honesty about what we want with someone and our first attempt receives a less-than-satisfying response. So we keep what we most want to ourselves, out of shame or fear, which means much less of a chance to create something meaningful.

A little bit of inward questioning is helpful. That's how we're able to dig deeper and get to the heart of what we really care about. It's important for us to ask ourselves, "Is this life-affirming? Or is this coming from some anxiety or fear I need to deal with?" Our minds ask other questions, though, and some of these inner questions hinder our ability to live into our deepest values. We second-guess ourselves in multiple ways, but two common ways we sabotage ourselves are through thinking our deepest desires are too small or too big for us to care about. Both of these tap into our tendency to feel shame, and as Brene Brown has pointed out in a number of books and TED talks, shame is a destructive force that limits our ability to live authentically.

We might think what we care about is too small and insignificant for us to take pride in. We might feel ashamed that our personal creative life dream isn't big and dramatic and world-changing. All around us we see stories of people accomplishing incredible things. The role-models we have for living into a compelling vision for our lives are people who make international headlines or change thousands of lives. Our deepest life-affirming desire might seem much less significant by comparison -- maybe only affecting our neighborhood or one community. 

What we fail to realize is that any life-affirming vision we cast for our lives is going to have a positive influence on the world around us. We know that our actions have ripples -- that what we do has an impact on people we never meet. And yet, when we allow our minds to drag us into (inaccurate) shame about how little and insignificant our goals are, we forget all about how much of our influence is unseen. We may never know how our life-affirming actions in one small part of the world influence an entire system toward greater wholeness. The point is not that we make a big splash, the point is just that we get in the water. If everyone in the world decided to live with greater intentionality and chose one "small" and accessible life-affirming purpose to live into, humanity would thrive like never before. Your job isn't to find a way to change the world. Your job is just to live into your life-affirming values in a way that is deeply meaningful to you. And that begins with bold honesty about what you really care about most. There is no personal life dream that is too small. Everyone who lives on purpose makes a difference in the world.

Our shame is similarly evoked when we dream big, except that instead of being ashamed that our vision is not enough to make a difference, we become ashamed that we are not enough to make a difference. This is also a lie. When we get really honest about what we want for our lives and for the world, we may come up with a mammoth-sized creative life dream. We may realize that what we really care about means enormous change for a huge number of people. We may need allies and collaborators. We may need to learn things we don't yet know and develop skills we don't yet possess. Shame will knock us back from the threshold. Shame will convince us that we can't possibly do what we most want to do, so we'll just have to settle for a life of being less than our dreams. Which means not living into our values because where our values lead us is too scary. If we can be boldly honest about our big, daunting dreams for the world, though, we may find we aren't the only ones who are committed to dreaming big.

"Scary" and shame are partners in all of this. Our shame is actually a very clever defense mechanism to keep us safe. It's a survival trait that kicks in when what we may want to do seems dangerous. We don't need our shame when we are living into a bold creative purpose, but because we feel anxious about jumping in the deep end, our shame tries to convince us to stay out of the water entirely. Our shame tries to keep us safe by making sure we never take a risk. No risk equals maximum safety. Except that change requires a bit of risk, even when it's positive change. Living into a personal creative life dream requires vulnerability, even when it's an amazing and inspiring vision. 

If our shame wins, we get to feel safe and unfulfilled. If we push past our shame and let our deepest life-affirming values guide us instead, we get to feel vulnerable and fully alive. Believing that what we most deeply want is too small or too big to share honestly with anyone else will mean that we never risk the possibility of having what we want. How crazy is that? That we would know exactly what we want, and never risk having it? That's the survival purpose of shame. Our primitive brain equates less risk with greater chance of survival. But shame is not a separate intelligence guiding our lives and trying to keep us safe. Our shame doesn't know anything we don't know. Our shame is not the voice of a supernatural trying to direct our actions. It's just leftover thought routines we don't need. 

Once we know what our deepest life-affirming values are, and once we are willing to live intentionally with integrity to those values, shame is useless to us. Our guiding principles may not always make us feel completely safe, but they will help us take meaningful risks. Our life-affirming values can keep us focused on the kind of person we most want to be, so that the risks we take are part of living into a bolder vision for our lives. We are fueled and empowered by our willingness to be boldly honest about what our deepest life-affirming values inspire us to create.

One last little piece of this part of the conversation: Other people will sometimes try to take the place of our shame voice. When we are boldly honest, other people -- without meaning harm -- may not have the kind of inspiring and encouraging response we hope for. They may want us to back down from a big creative life dream. Or they may try to convince us that what we want is insignificant and not worth pursuing. They will probably think that they are helping us by "talking sense into us" or by "giving us a dose of reality." And there are times when we certainly need other people to help us clarify what we most deeply want. Sometimes our initial exploration of dreaming big really is unrealistic and could use a little honing. Sometimes, though, people are unconsciously prompted to convince, compel, or coerce us into staying safe -- remaining right where we are and not taking unnecessary risks. This isn't always helpful.

So, as we become willing to be boldly honest about what we most want to create in our lives and in the world around us, it's important for us to listen openly to multiple voices. One person trying to shame us into giving up on what we most deeply want shouldn't deter us from living into a creative life dream with intention and integrity. Seven people warning us that there are some challenges we aren't considering, however, can help us become clearer about how we can realistically cast vision in our lives in alignment with our deepest life-affirming values. When people's feedback sounds like our own internal shame voice, it's worth acknowledging that their own anxiety and fear may be more important to them than your vision for your life or for the world. When people listen deeply to your own bold honesty and their words help you dig more deeply into how you can live into your deepest values, you may have gained a powerful ally or collaborator. 

This all means that part of bold honesty is also being willing to listen carefully to the responses we receive -- internally and externally. Our own shame voice will try to keep us safe, but we are capable of being guided by our deepest life-affirming values instead. Other people may try to keep us safe, too. Or they may be inspired by our bold honesty about what we most deeply want. Or they may not have much of a response to us at all. It's important that we listen carefully and thoughtfully. And it's vital that we maintain connection to our life-affirming values -- our internal guidance system --  as we clarify what we care about most and become more fully alive.

Bold Honesty, Part 1

So many of our important questions require the willingness to be boldly honest about what really matters to us. Honesty is essential when we consider how we can be satisfied with the way we influence the world around us, or how to connect our passions with creating greater wholeness, or how to get what we most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater well-being.

Often we filter what we care about most deeply through an "acceptability test," deciding whether what we want sounds acceptable to other people. The criteria of what we think might be acceptable varies from person to person, and are often based on belief systems that were imposed on us. Whatever the criteria, though, this kind of filtering keeps us from honestly expressing what we most deeply want, which means that we have very little chance of connecting what we care about to creating wholeness in our lives and the world around us.

One filter I often hear people using is whether something appears in a particular religious text or is endorsed by a religious community. "Feeding the hungry is highly regarded by my faith community, and my 'scripture' considers it laudable, so it seems safe for me to really care about feeding the hungry." This is fine if your actual passion is ensuring that everyone has enough food, but the filter isn't necessary. If you really care about feeding people, you don't need the endorsement of a religious text or community to live into that passion for the hungry. Moreover, some religious communities decide that only certain hungry people are worth feeding, or they decide that feeding the hungry is a means to an end of promoting their particular set of myths. This turns hungry people into targets for proselytization and makes them the victims of the people doing the feeding. It isn't really caring to insist that hungry people listen to your beliefs -- or worse, profess to agree with your beliefs -- before they receive the food they need.

There's another problem with allowing a religious text or community to be a filter through which you judge what you care about. You may care about transgender people, and yet your religious text says nothing about transgender people (although people in your religious community will probably find ways to interpret your religious text so that it seems to). People in many religious communities are opposed to the existence of transgender people. So your personal reasons for caring about a marginalized group of people -- who have an acute need for acceptance and care -- are potentially trumped by outdated and fear-driven religious beliefs. If you just told the truth that you care about something -- or a group of people -- very deeply, it would be much easier to see how that care can lead to creating greater wholeness and well-being.

Religions with exclusive beliefs (i.e., you have to believe what we believe in order to go to heaven, or be a good person, or exist) are by definition anti-equality. If a group of people believes that their group deserves special treatment, in real life or in an imaginary afterlife, they cannot simultaneously believe in equality. This is why religious people often seem threatened by demands for equal treatment by marginalized people: Equality for all means the loss of religious privilege, which in the U. S. means Christian privilege. One cannot truly create wholeness in the world and cling to an exclusivist belief system that withholds compassion and care from people who believe something different. If you are honest about what you care about most deeply, you have a better chance of seeing how it connects with creating wholeness in the world.

Why am I being so anti-religious? Why can't I just write about being honest about how our deepest values connect to creating wholeness? Because it's a real challenge to be honest about what you care about most deeply when so many loud religious voices call equality evil. It's a real challenge to be honest about creating wholeness when so many loud religious voices promote an idea of inherent brokenness. It's a real challenge to be honest about what you value when so many loud religious voices are shouting about what you should value, based on their own strangely-filtered view of the world. Being honest about what you care about isn't always easy, but it is essential to being satisfied with how you influence the world around you.

Some people run into another challenge when they start being honest about what really matters to them, though. Their first honest statements might be fueled by fears they've been carrying around about themselves or other people, and what they think they care about is an expression of that anxiety. Perhaps you think that what you care about most is just that your child gets a good education and a decent job. Or perhaps you think that what you care about most is that the property value of your home stays high, so you think you're against certain kinds of people moving into your neighborhood. Or perhaps you think that what you care about most is proselytizing to everybody you meet so that they have a chance to believe what you believe about imaginary things.

It helps to spend enough time asking yourself why you care about what you think you care about in order to get to the most solid foundation. Sometimes it even helps for someone else to be able to ask you why you care about what you think you care about. When what you care about seems not to be life-affirming, you can ask yourself what you're afraid of, work to dismantle irrational fears, and dig deeper to get to what really matters most to you.

Things like the well-being of your child involve a lot more than selfishly working to make sure they get a better shot at a high-paying career than anybody else's child does. It doesn't create wholeness in anyone's life just to be handed unearned opportunities that they aren't actually prepared to engage responsibly. In fact, fostering authentic well-being in your child's life involves fostering well-being in other people's lives too. Unless you home school your children, groom them to run a family business, and never allow them to meet anyone outside of your isolated community (which may not be a recipe for wholeness), well-being for your children involves well-being in the places where your children learn and play. Caring about your child's well-being ultimately means caring about a neighborhood, or a school, or some environment outside of your family. That doesn't mean that you have to start a non-profit or quit your job to become a full-time volunteer. It just means that you live into your values with a clear sense of connection to the larger world around you.

So, asking why is a powerful tool to help reveal your honest answers as fears or as deep life-affirming values:

I care most deeply about proselytizing to everyone I meet so they can believe in Jesus and go to heaven.
Why? 
Because if they don't believe in Jesus, they'll go to hell.
That sounds like a fear. 
I mean, because I feel loved and accepted by Jesus and I want other people to feel that too.
So, what you want is for people to feel loved and accepted. Is proselytizing the best way to do that? Or is there an even better way to live into your desire for people to feel loved and accepted?

Maybe you have to ask why several times before you get to something juicy. When you come across a fear, you'll know it because it will not lead to greater well-being for the greatest number of people. Fears may have an Us vs Them component, and fears often crop up when we start thinking outside our comfort zone. Life-affirming values inspire us toward greater wholeness in our own lives and in the lives of people around us. They often allow us to see situations as both/and rather than either/or. The things we care about most deeply may call us toward something bigger than what we can accomplish on our own with our current resources. Or they may simply call us to do exactly what we're already doing, with a different attitude.

Whatever our deepest life-affirming values may be, if we want to connect them to how we can create greater well-being in our lives and in the world around us, we have to be boldly honest about what they are. We have to be able to say out loud to other people, "This is what I care about most deeply." And in order for us to do that, we have to figure it out ourselves, and that can take a bit of work. Many of us are so used to coasting along without giving a lot of thought to where we're headed, the prospect of even having a vision for what we want to create in our lives seems utterly foreign. It's alright to try a few things on before you settle into what really matters most to you.

Next time, we'll explore another challenge to being boldly honest about what you really care about. For now, try a little bold honesty yourself and see what happens.

The Connection between Belief and Caring for Others

As a reminder, here are the big questions we want to address:

1. How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
2. What am I passionate about? What personal life dream of mine creates greater wholeness in the world?
3. Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 
4. What fears get in my way? How can I dismantle those fears and understand what I actually want?
5. How can I get what I most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness?

You'll notice that at least three of those questions include some perspective about how we influence the world around us toward greater well-being (or "wholeness"). This is a topic that keeps coming up when I talk with believers, who often have an impression of atheism that equates with utter self-absorption. In one conversation a friend told me that a large number of people only do good in the world because of their belief in a higher power, and that without belief in a higher power, people would be less inclined to help others. I've also heard people say, "You can't really be an atheist. You care about [the homeless/people going hungry in our city/etc.], and atheists don't have any reason to care about other people." First, it's worth taking a look at this idea that only people who believe in a higher power create greater wholeness in the world. Then, we'll see something even more interesting about people doing good in the world. We'll wind up someplace we've been before, a guiding principle that helps us answer our big questions with integrity.

To begin with, it doesn't take much education about world religions to notice that all of them have something to say about making a positive difference in other people's lives. If it was just one religion that promoted creating wholeness in the world, then we would have something to compare and contrast. In reality, contributing toward the well-being of others is something every belief system holds in common, even though some practitioners choose to draw narrow boundaries around who they feel responsible to. 

People can actually hold two opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. This creates a bit of anxiety and it certainly lacks integrity, but people do it all the time. So, a believer can claim that their loving supernatural wants its followers to be vessels of love and healing in the world and also proclaim hatred for people of a different religion or of a particular sexual orientation. How well practitioners of various religions carry out the mandate to care for other human beings varies widely, but the fact remains that every religious tradition expresses a concern for the well-being of others. This is true of monotheistic, polytheistic, and atheistic traditions.

This suggests that it isn't actually belief in a higher power that inspires people to care for others, but something inherent in human nature. Every religion invented by human beings includes this concern, so it's obviously a human concern. We know that it's important to care for others and to attend to their well-being. Our internal guidance system has naturally included this subroutine. 

We also seem to feel burdened enough by the magnitude of that task that we find ways to put fences up around who we're willing to care for. "We'll care for people who think like us, but we'll still hate those other people over there." Or even more predatory, "We'll meet your needs, if you convert to our religion." Our tendency to corrupt ideas because of our fear clearly plays a role in how we carry it out, but this idea that we ought to care for other people is inherent to every belief system human beings have constructed. Thus, we can reason that it's a human idea that can persist in the absence of belief in the supernatural.

We need not rely on reason alone, however. Research on altruistic behavior continues to affirm that helping other people is an inherently pleasurable human activity, regardless of one's faith identity. Even more intriguing is a study published late last year (in Current Biology vol. 25, issue 22), which discovered that children raised without a religious identity are more generous and have a greater sensitivity to justice than peers raised with a religious identity. The study observed primarily Christian, Muslim, and nonreligious families, in six different countries, including the United States. Across all cultures, children in religious households actually expressed less care for others in terms of generosity and justice, despite their belief in a higher power. Clearly, caring for other people is a human trait that exists strongly in the absence of belief in a supernatural. Why and how might belonging to a religious tradition dampen that human tendency?

The research does not delve into reasons why, so this is merely a hypothesis extrapolated from other things we know about how the mind works. Is it possible that when you believe human beings are corrupted and evil that you have less tendency to care about people -- especially people you don't know? Or is it possible that this serves as an excuse to behave as though you are corrupted and evil sometimes? After all, that's just "human nature", right?

Is it possible that believing that a higher power is in control of everything alleviates some sense of personal responsibility to do what is within your power to do in terms of helping others? Believers don't often say it out loud, but if a god is in control of reality, that god must want a significant number of people to be hungry, homeless, abused, and marginalized, since that is the reality we can clearly see. Is it possible that people let themselves be less vulnerably caring because of their belief in a supernatural?

Is is possible that you care less about the people around you if you believe in an afterlife that isn't dependent on one's health, wealth, or success in the real world? After all, if what "really" matters is that you are spiritually aligned with the right higher power, then suffering in this life is superficial and unimportant. So, you don't have to care for the real physical and emotional needs of people -- you just have to make sure that they have the opportunity to be admitted into a better existence when they die. Even as I type this, it seems absurd and mean-spirited, and yet I know of some believers and even some service organizations that are more interested in "saving souls" than they are in making sure people have their physical and emotional needs met.

In a nutshell, then, I invite you to wonder along with me whether religious beliefs about a supernatural and about human nature actually serve to dampen the natural human tendency to care for others. Consider whether a subtle sabotage on the human capacity to create wholeness emerges through ideas promoted in various religious traditions that "salvation is by divine grace and not by human works", or that suffering will be rewarded in an afterlife, or that we are only really responsible to care for people who believe what we believe, or even just that human beings are wicked by nature. If our beliefs form the foundation of our actions, then there is something about religious beliefs that fuels actions contrary to the mandate to care for others. There is some reason the research finds that the beliefs of children in nonreligious homes allow them to express greater generosity and empathy. Even if my suppositions are off base, there is obviously some connection between belief system and how well a person can live into the human tendency to contribute to the well-being of others.

As we consider meaningful answers to the big questions we're posing to ourselves, it's vital for us to recognize our interconnectedness with others. Our lives influence and are influenced by other people. There is no way around that fact. It helps to have at least one clear guiding principle that aligns with our natural tendency to care about other people's well-being -- a deep value that undergirds the questions we ask and the answers we explore. I would like to suggest the very basic idea that every person has inherent worth and dignity as a shared guiding principle that fuels a meaningful journey toward a best possible version of oneself.

That every person has inherent worth and dignity means that we don't choose who is worthy of our attention. It isn't just people who think like you, and it isn't just people who are part of your local community. Every person means every human being in existence. This doesn't mean that you are compelled to meet the specific needs of every person, and it doesn't mean that a person's inherent worth is going to be easy to see all the time. What it means is that you get to choose how you will honor the inherent value of the people around you. 

That every person has inherent worth and dignity means that their worth isn't in question. Your actions toward them are the part you get to decide. You never have to figure out why a person is important or worthy of your time and attention. You don't have to try to fix them or convince them to believe something different that what they currently believe. And you don't have to worry about what sort of afterlife they'll experience. You can focus instead on how your actions and decisions contribute to greater well-being in their lives.

That every person has inherent worth and dignity also interestingly means that you have inherent worth and dignity. Your value is a natural human quality that doesn't come from some external force or stem from your decisions. It just is. It's part of what it means to be human to have worth and dignity. This means that you can worry less about your own value and the sense of obligation that sometimes accompanies caring for others. You don't have to earn inherent worth and dignity, and nothing can take it away from you. Which means that you can boldly do those things that fuel your passions and influence the world around you toward wholeness -- that you can care about what you really want without apology, and you can trust yourself to find ways to connect what you most deeply want with your natural tendency to care about the well-being of others. 

People care about other people. You don't really gain anything in this arena by believing in a supernatural. Even if you think it's your faith that undergirds your contribution toward other people's well-being, it isn't. People of every faith tradition and of no faith tradition care about other people, and the people with no faith tradition might actually do it a little better, based on recent research. If you're willing, let the idea that every person has inherent worth and dignity steep in your mind for a bit. That one guiding principle can fund a lifetime of growing more confident in yourself and your ability to contribute to greater wholeness in the world. 

Selfishness 3

One last little piece of the illusion of selfishness. We've seen that there is no credible evidence for an afterlife where people are rewarded or punished for anything, and we can see evidence all around us that supernaturals are not providing for the real needs of people. We can even see that the figures who serve as examples of behavior in various religious traditions habitually took responsibility for their own well-being, as they were able. Still, we encounter this idea that focusing on your own personal growth is selfish time and again, especially from religious leaders. Perhaps one final piece of the problem is our tendency toward either/or thinking.

Our brains still work in mysterious ways, even as science continues to reveal more and more about human thinking and tendencies. Thinking in either/or propositions is a common way to address issues. "Either I can exercise, or I can sit in front of a screen." "Either I'll be a leader, or I'll be a follower." "Either I can focus on my own well-being, or I can tend to the well-being of others." In logic, this kind of argument is called a fallacy -- a "false dichotomy". This flawed thinking isn't necessarily intentional, but it is lazy. There are so many more options than we usually choose to consider, and we often fail to seek out both/and solutions, maybe because they require a little more work. Our idea of selfishness is caught up in this flawed thinking.

If there really are only two options that we're willing to consider, it may be simply a matter of changing our thinking habits. "I want to exercise, and I also want to watch a movie. How can I figure out a way to do both?" If we really believe that focusing on our own well-being and tending to the well-being of others are competing goals, then we can change our habit of either/or thinking and ask something like, "How can I be personally responsible for my own life and tend to the well-being of others in a satisfying way?" We can re-frame what seems to be a choice between mutually exclusive options once we are willing to admit that our thinking is problematic.

The logical fallacy of our either/or thinking actually disguises something even deeper than the possibility that we can think in terms of both/and propositions. Those who decry selfishness might consider the options to be, "I can do what I want, or I can do what someone else wants." Obviously, to choose what you want is "selfish," and to choose what someone else wants is selfless. Religious traditions often mistakenly teach that selflessness is the preferred option. A more open-minded person might shift to a both/and formula and ask, "How we can we both get what we want?" The most honest question, though, is "What do I really want?"

All of this talk about selfishness only makes sense in terms of surface level desires. When we stay on the surface of our being, we might believe we want things we don't actually want. And we might think we don't want things we actually do want. We might say we don't want to do laundry or wash dishes, but we actually do want clean clothes and dishes. On the surface, we focus on avoiding pain or inconvenience or frustration, but when we get past that and ask what we really want, it becomes clear that doing the laundry and washing the dishes gets us what we actually want. It's a matter of more mature awareness of what we value, not merely a matter of "selfishness."

Likewise, we might say we want something awful to happen to a rude driver, or a malicious co-worker, or an incompetent retail clerk. When we think more deeply about our own lives and experiences, though, we have occasionally done something that inconvenienced (or even endangered) another driver on the road because we were in a hurry or we weren't paying attention. Perhaps we have also made decisions that other people didn't like because it was part of our job. We may even have been thrown off by a simple process because one little thing in our environment was different, or we were distracted by something else in our personal lives. 

As much as we may get angry or frustrated when other people's behavior inconveniences us or challenges us, we actually don't want to live in a world where a sort of vicious karma punishes our every mistake with misfortune. We actually want people to be graceful with us when we almost miss our exit on the freeway, or when we make a thoughtful decision that has painful consequences for someone, or when we just have a moment when our brains aren't firing on all cylinders. We want to be known and understood. We want other people to see our inherent worth and dignity -- and to acknowledge and respect our unique abilities and strengths that may have required a lot of hard work to cultivate. 

Our anxiety prompts us to hold ourselves apart, to demand something different for our own lives than we hope for in the lives of others. Our fear prompts us to defend our own difficult decisions by mocking the difficult decisions of others. Our fear prompts us to refuse rights to other people because we think their freedom will somehow jeopardize our own rights and freedom. Our fear prompts us toward scarcity thinking, believing that I can't have what I need if someone else gets what they need. Either/or propositions are fueled by our anxiety, just as the idea of "selfishness" is really a way of saying that we allow our fear to convince us that we want something we don't actually want -- our anxiety doesn't let us get past the surface level desires to what we most deeply value.

When we are able to connect with what we most deeply value, we begin to realize that what we want requires well-being in our own lives and well-being in the lives of those around us. When we are willing to cast a vision of wholeness for our lives -- or our neighborhoods, or our workplaces, or the world -- we see that our lives are interconnected with the lives of others, that we cannot experience wholeness and well-being in our lives without contributing to wholeness and well-being in the lives of others. Yet we cannot connect with what we most deeply value, what we most deeply want, without learning to manage our own anxiety and confronting our tendency toward lazy thinking. And we cannot learn to manage our own anxiety or confront our mental laziness by focusing on other people. We have to turn our gaze inward and develop our own selves if we want to maximize the meaningful contribution we are able to make in the world.

So, there is really no such thing as selfishness. There are degrees of emotional immaturity and maturity. There are habits of lazy, flawed thinking that we can change and develop into more mature, intentional thought processes. There are anxious, fear-driven reactions that keep us from living with integrity to what actually matters most to us. And there are more emotionally mature, self-aware actions that align with our deepest values and create greater wholeness in our own lives and the lives of others. Well-being is only an either/or proposition when we allow our flawed, surface level, anxious, scarcity thinking to run the show. When we are honest, we acknowledge that well-being in our own lives is inextricably connected to well-being in the lives of others. And when we focus on our own capacity to clarify our deepest values and live with integrity to those values, we transform the world. 

John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

We blew right past a lot of the mythological details in the passion narrative. Some believers focus much more on the details of John 19, and there are legendary tales regarding the mystical powers of the spear that pierced Jesus' side. Since this is rather like spending time dwelling on the actual powers of a harp played by the Norse god Bragi, we've quickly arrived at John 20, which is a somewhat altered resurrection story than what we find in the synoptic gospels. Again, we need not worry about comparing the details of who arrived where first and who said what; these are authorial creations intended to tell a story a certain way. We can turn our attention in other directions.

Most importantly, there is a resurrection. We observed previously that the suffering of the crucifixion was a result of remaining self-differentiated and maintaining integrity in the midst of anxious people who allowed fear to drive them. Here we see that suffering was not the end of the story. The outcome of suffering for the Jesus character is that he rises and assumes an exalted status. Perhaps we too might expect that on the other side of our suffering is a sense of renewed life, not on the other side of the grave, but while we are still alive and walking around.

The persecution we might face for creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves is painful, but we also gain something greater than that suffering -- namely, the more fully alive life that we create. We gain alignment with our deepest, most noble selves, which is a way of being that allows us to be more fully alive -- as the Jesus character seems to be in the resurrection story of the gospel of John. He is barely recognizable to people who knew him well, just as our way of aligning with our deepest, most noble selves may be barely recognizable to people who knew us when we were less fully alive.

There are a few other details in the story from which we might also draw some meaning. For instance, Mary arrives at the tomb, sees something she doesn't expect, makes some assumptions (based primarily on fear), and runs off in reaction to those assumptions. She finds two other people, who hear her anxious conclusions and run off in reaction to her story. These two people make their own assumptions and -- without fully understanding what is happening -- go home, satisfied with the reliability their conclusions. At this point in the story, none of these characters know what is happening, but they all are convinced that they have a full grasp of the situation. They aren't happy about it. In some cases, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. But they believe that they understand the situation fully.

We don't ever understand a situation fully. We might understand things accurately in part, but we can't know all that there is to know about a situation. There are historical events that contribute to a situation and yet their connection might remain unnoticed. Each person in a situation brings their own perspective and baggage into it, and we can never know fully what goes on in another person's head. Before our anxiety carries us off into Autopilot Reaction Land, it's worth remembering that we don't know all that there is to know. If we can remain curious and ask questions, we might just short circuit our anxiety, even if we still fail to grasp a situation completely.

The second portion of this passage from the first half of John 20 has a lot of mystical implications, which were probably very important to the community for which the gospel was originally written. The dialogue between Mary and Jesus indicates that the community thought some very specific things about a post-resurrection Jesus. These ideas are not based on factual data, but rather on the assumptions of a community -- what made sense to those people at that time. We follow the same process too, often arriving at strange conclusions.

For the community in which this gospel was written, it made sense for Jesus to be unrecognizable and to say, "Don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended." They essentially made things up about what a resurrected person might say, based on their assumptions about the world. Some people today think it makes sense to conclude that wild conspiracy theories have merit, or that alien visitation is a viable explanation for some experience. These conclusions make sense to the people making them, even if they don't hold water under objective scrutiny. People today believe a literal interpretation of biblical stories, even though such an interpretation is incompatible with what is demonstrably true about the world.

Anxiety can make us forget things we actually do know. When we are anxious, our brains find it easier to latch onto any explanation -- even explanations that don't make a lot of sense -- because we want our anxiety to go away. When we think we understand something, we feel like we can have some control. We can put tin foil on our heads to protect our thoughts. We can amass a stockpile of resources in a fallout shelter to prepare for a societal breakdown. We can do something based on what we think we know, forgetting that there are pieces of contradictory evidence we aren't considering.

Sometimes, we hold two mutually exclusive competing ideas in our head without even realizing it. We think that our bosses hate us no matter what we do, yet we keep trying to find ways to please them. We think that our spouses love us, yet we behave as if they are our enemies. We believe that we are part of a religion founded on unconditional love, yet we pronounce hateful judgment on people who seem different from us. Somehow, these contradictions make sense in our anxious mind.

Our anxiety makes us forget what we know about people or about ourselves or about reality, and we go off on some fear-driven tangent without even realizing that we aren't acting in accord with what we believe most deeply. If we are willing to stop and think through our behavior, based on a deeper connection with our clear guiding principles, our actions might more often align with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves.

Now, there's no way to know what the characters in this story believed most deeply. One thing that is clear, however, is that there is some emotional volatility at play. Their anxiety is powerful. Yet, at the end of this particular passage, Mary's behavior is very different from the ending of the gospel of Mark, in which the women run away scared and tell no one what they've seen. Mary finds a sense of hope and runs to share that hope with others.

Obviously, hope is more uplifting than fear. Our hope can still be based on unrealistic or dishonest beliefs, though. In the story, of course, Mary accurately identifies a resurrected Jesus. This is just a story, not a historical account. In our own lives, we might be tempted to invest a lot of hope in things that we know aren't likely to happen. Hope in the impossible is not useful hope. In fact, hope in the impossible is most likely an anxious reaction in disguise. We feel powerless, so we place hope in something beyond our control.

An overwhelming majority of parents think that their high school athletes will have a career in professional sports, when it's obvious that only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes will go pro. Often, we expect that people in our lives are going to change into the people we want them to be. While we will surely influence people, we can't control how they will change as a result of our influence. We might hope for a mystical experience with something supernatural outside of ourselves, but every piece of evidence we have points to the conclusion that what we consider to be mystical experiences happen inside our own brains. We mistake internal chemical reactions that we don't understand for external supernatural experiences -- which we somehow believe we do understand.

It's important for us to share our hope with others, and it's important for us to maintain a sense of reality in the midst of our hopefulness. Realistic hope can prompt us toward actions that align with that dream of what could be. And it's important for us to share our anxiety with others too, if we're conscientious enough to share our anxiety with people who will help us shift out of autopilot and back toward a more intentional approach to how we manage our anxiety. Mary is a great example of connection in this passage. Everything that happens, she runs to tell someone. She isn't a great example of personal responsibility, though. We can forgive a fictional character in the throes of grief for not being grounded and centered. In our own lives, we can strive for a sense of connection with ourselves even as we foster connection with other people.

We can draw a lot of lessons from these short paragraphs, then. First -- even though our integrity may be seen as sedition and anxious people may persecute us for our intentional alignment with our deepest, most noble selves -- when we engage in fully alive lives, our experience might be beyond what we ever dreamed life could be.

Second, our anxiety can convince us that we know things we don't know. It's important for us to remember that we can't know everything. Our sense of curiosity can help us manage our reactivity.

Third, our anxiety can make us forget things we do know. We can become sharper about examining our beliefs and identifying when we are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in our heads. We can choose to follow the belief that aligns with our deepest values and let the other one go as a product of our anxiety.

Finally, hope is important, and it's most powerful when it's balanced with reality. When we hope for things that are impossible, we can't move toward them in any meaningful way. When we hope for things that are possible, we can act in accord with that hope and create more meaningful lives for ourselves and for the people around us.