Hijacked

First, I would like to say how privileged I was to participate in the celebration honoring the work and ministry of Rev. David Mair and his wife, Pat at the First Presbyterian Church of Marquette.  I was taken by the fact that David and Pat had participated in most of the great crisis over

Dave Mair and Pat Megregian

the years that challenged our country.  From the civil rights movement to helping the poor to have access to medical care, David and Pat continue to work for those who are vulnerable in our society.  They are good and faithful servants of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
 

This week at Northern Michigan Hospital, two of us presented an in-service workshop for the Hematology/Oncology Clinic staff.  This particular workshop was dealing with how to manage strong emotions and feelings.  In the process of preparing for the workshop, I revisited the work of Daniel Goleman, the originator of the ideas of "Emotional Intelligence".  He has recently written a short book called, "The Brain and Emotional Intelligence", which relates "EI" to recent brain research.  He talks about the importance of identifying and understanding our feelings, especially our negative strong feelings and emotions. Those feelings that come from deep within a part of the right brain called the amygdala.  It is where our fight/flight or freeze reaction resides to events in our lives.  Our positive thoughts, values, beliefs come from the front of the left side of the brain.  This part moderates our strong emotions.  How we humans work is to go back and forth between our strong emotions and our values and beliefs when we interact with each other. 

But, we can become hijacked by our strong emotions causing us to forget better ways of handling things, perceiving events as threats, being inflexible, and relying on old ways of behaving that didn't work in the past.  We see this happening in the world around us and unfortunately, even in the church.  Where are the wise men and women like Rev. Mair, who brought people together to talk and solve problems for the greater good rather than be in opposition to one another? Where do our values of respect, transparency, working together and relationships, trump strong emotions and confrontational thinking of "our way is the only way" and "I am right and you are wrong"?  In the church, we are called upon to work together. 

There is a story of a belligerent Samurai who once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of Heaven and Hell.  But the monk, replied with scorn saying "You're nothing but a lout.  I can't waste my time with the likes of you." 

His very honor attacked, the Samurai flew into a rage an pulling his sword from it's scabbard yelled, "I could kill you for your impertinence."

"That," the monk calmly replied, "is Hell."

Startled at seeing the truth the master had pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the Samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword and bowed, thanking the monk for his insight.

"And that," the monk replied, "is Heaven"

In the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven", we are called to be in relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters in the new heaven and new earth.  We are called not to be hijacked by our emotions but to use them with our higher values for the good of all people.  Can the Presbytery, our churches really be heaven on earth? Following Jesus, we are called to do so.  To be emotionally intelligent, we are to have three positive thoughts to one negative thought.  How are we doing?