You'll notice a bit of a new look. Hopefully it'll catch on... Sometimes a fresh look outside is just what you need to get the insides moving. I guess there's a balance there. Like the left side of a scale balances the right, our inside balances our out.
Someone started me thinking a while ago about mind/body connection. I don't tend to think of it that way. It's more of an inside/outside thing to me. And this far deeper than the physical. It's hard for me to decide where one starts and the other begins. But I'm ahead of myself. Anyway, this friend got me thinking with a question in terms of how healing is genuinely and significantly affected by thoughts and feelings. (I never answered her question. Sorry.)
Something called Noetic Science. I'm sure it's fascinating research. But to me it's not all too surprising. I think C.S. Lewis wrote about how we are amphibious creations: part physical and part spiritual. As opposed to an angel or demon, which is pure spirit, but with a capacity to affect the physical realm.
Anyway, it makes perfect sense that our souls which are so very much a part of who we are would affect how our body works. For we are both parts, we are not half physical and half spiritual, with a clean line running down the middle. But our spirit is one with our body and our body one with our spirit. So when one is something bears an effect on one, it does so on the other. Christ will raise not only our souls from the dead on the last day, but also our bodies. Which raises, questions I won't answer; God will take care of it.
I'm quickly getting in deeper than I wanted to. But my point is that there are a lot of people searching for what makes the human body/mind/whathaveyou so incredibly special. For what makes people know things 'instinctively'. They need to look no farther than our created nature as spiritual/physical amphibians. I'll muse more on this point I'm sure. But not now.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Choose.
There's a time at camp I value like few others. It's the time that I spend on the top of the climbing tower, sending high ropes course participants on the Zip Line. The Zip Line is usually the culmination of a ropes course experience which lasts three hours or so. I must admit, sometimes by the end I'm so tired that I let the significance of this time slip by unrecognized, but others I take the time to meditate on the dynamic of this circumstance.
The kids are belayed one by one up a ladder to a 8x8 platform 40 feet up in the air enclosed by a half wall made of the top three and a half feet of the climbing walls. I hook each participant into their own safety line as they arrive and they wait for the zip pulley to be retrieved before being hooked in and sent on a gut-wrenching ride like no other.
They stand with me at the top of the world for usually 2 or 3 minutes, one or two or three of them at a time. Their friends aren't there to see whether they smile or frown, the last bit of normality that is left when your school sends you on a three day field trip in the woods is stripped away, and they are faced with a choice. There's not enough time for me to have much of a conversation with them, but sometimes I can pull something out of that experience for them. Sometimes, I see in their face, in their behavior, what I believe may be a clearer picture of their true self.
I spent the last 3 days with 8th graders. There were very strange moments where I felt like I was in junior high again. I've been talked over, embraced, shunned, embraced again, laughed at, laughed with... But at times I was also respected, listened to, and questioned for vital information of great importance(like the name on my facebook account, yeesh, Tim Nummeman is going to be getting a lot of friend requests.)
Thursday I had one group which was exceptionally encouraging to one another while they were climbing the rock walls, I was excited to see what would happen as each face the choice at the top of the zip line. Most of the kids thought a little as they sat there on the top of the tower, equipment checked by me and ready to go, but they went without much hesitation. Three thought a little longer. One was convinced that I would push her off, but I waited for her to make her choice and encouraged her to take control of the situation and make a decision one way or another. She did. After a half dozen tries to lean herself forward and scooch off that tower, she went. And when the chance for seconds came she climbed up again and took the plunge without hesitation.
Lots of kids get to the top and say, "I can't." That's a challenge for me to work with. I understand the sentiment. It can seem impossible to overcome the body's natural involuntary responses to an emotion like fear especially when that emotion is triggered by such a primal instinct as the fear of heights. When faced with this frightening experience, some people let that fear be the end of the story. "I can't. I'm too scared. I want down." This attitude essentially splits one's self: our desires against our emotions. And it puts fear in the driver's seat. It makes fear into an entity outside of our self, and leave our self incapable of an action.
The truth is that our self is actually capable of quite a lot more than we put to it. There's no reason that anyone could say "I can't," to the Zip Line. Gravity does all the work.
I gave my friend a different alternative. I outlined for her the truth of the situation: that I had set-up for her an experience in which she was safe, checked, and double-checked; that she had a choice to do or not do as she pleased, she could go back down on the ladder if she wanted, or she could take the ride she'd climbed up for. And I left it to her, "Choose."
The kids are belayed one by one up a ladder to a 8x8 platform 40 feet up in the air enclosed by a half wall made of the top three and a half feet of the climbing walls. I hook each participant into their own safety line as they arrive and they wait for the zip pulley to be retrieved before being hooked in and sent on a gut-wrenching ride like no other.
They stand with me at the top of the world for usually 2 or 3 minutes, one or two or three of them at a time. Their friends aren't there to see whether they smile or frown, the last bit of normality that is left when your school sends you on a three day field trip in the woods is stripped away, and they are faced with a choice. There's not enough time for me to have much of a conversation with them, but sometimes I can pull something out of that experience for them. Sometimes, I see in their face, in their behavior, what I believe may be a clearer picture of their true self.
I spent the last 3 days with 8th graders. There were very strange moments where I felt like I was in junior high again. I've been talked over, embraced, shunned, embraced again, laughed at, laughed with... But at times I was also respected, listened to, and questioned for vital information of great importance(like the name on my facebook account, yeesh, Tim Nummeman is going to be getting a lot of friend requests.)
Thursday I had one group which was exceptionally encouraging to one another while they were climbing the rock walls, I was excited to see what would happen as each face the choice at the top of the zip line. Most of the kids thought a little as they sat there on the top of the tower, equipment checked by me and ready to go, but they went without much hesitation. Three thought a little longer. One was convinced that I would push her off, but I waited for her to make her choice and encouraged her to take control of the situation and make a decision one way or another. She did. After a half dozen tries to lean herself forward and scooch off that tower, she went. And when the chance for seconds came she climbed up again and took the plunge without hesitation.
Lots of kids get to the top and say, "I can't." That's a challenge for me to work with. I understand the sentiment. It can seem impossible to overcome the body's natural involuntary responses to an emotion like fear especially when that emotion is triggered by such a primal instinct as the fear of heights. When faced with this frightening experience, some people let that fear be the end of the story. "I can't. I'm too scared. I want down." This attitude essentially splits one's self: our desires against our emotions. And it puts fear in the driver's seat. It makes fear into an entity outside of our self, and leave our self incapable of an action.
The truth is that our self is actually capable of quite a lot more than we put to it. There's no reason that anyone could say "I can't," to the Zip Line. Gravity does all the work.
I gave my friend a different alternative. I outlined for her the truth of the situation: that I had set-up for her an experience in which she was safe, checked, and double-checked; that she had a choice to do or not do as she pleased, she could go back down on the ladder if she wanted, or she could take the ride she'd climbed up for. And I left it to her, "Choose."
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