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Following the Dread Thread

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A feeling of dread is a good indicator that something is not right in the day. We dread going certain places. We dread meeting with certain people. We dread certain kinds of work. Sometimes, we even dread waking up.

Dread is a good reason people narcotize themselves. We use drugs, waste hours in pursuits that have no meaning but anesthetize dread, lose ourselves in pleasures that are often harmful.

What we need to do is begin following the dread thread. What is it we are feeling? When do we feel it most? Is there any thing we can do to avoid feeling dread that is not self-destructive? Is the feeling of dread becoming a habitual default place I go? How can I take responsibility to change the dread habit?

After examining these elements, another series of questions are also helpful.

When is it we don’t feel dread? What people, which activities, what kind of work, and what kind of days give us happiness, make us feel positive and give us hope?

Then, we need to change the balance as much as it is in our power to do so.
At least, I can try to load my day with events and people and places that restore my soul and fill me with peace. For me, living in the western suburbs of Chicago, I can walk in the Morton Arboretum or fun over to Cantigny where the flower gardens seem to grow larger and more beautiful each year. Listening to a favorite musical artist—Chopin always enchants; his short piano works don’t demand high listening skills from me—helps me love my life.

Play—learning to play again—is the venue I’m experimenting with and finding a satisfactory adventure that defeats dread when it attempts to lodge in my soul again.

Stuart Brown, M.D. has conducted over 6000 play histories with people from all walks of life—serial killers, Nobel Prize winners, celebrities, public servants, and ordinary everyday folk—from that life study he has written a book titled Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. In the book, he maintains that it has been proven humans are genetically programmed to play—more than any other creature (although studies have captured all levels of life in play activities, from amoebas to polar bears).

What happens to humans who dutifully or unintentionally program play out of their lives? What becomes of those of us who feel play is “a waste of time”? Dire things, it appears. Brown writes, “On one end of the spectrum, I studied murderers in Texas prisons and found that the absence of play in their childhood was as important as any other single factor in predicting their crimes. On the other end, I also documented abused kids at risk for antisocial behavior whose predilection for violence was diminished through play.”

When adults find time for play, the world lightens (dread takes a holiday). “When we get play right, all areas of our lives go better. When we ignore play, we start having problems. When someone doesn’t keep an element of play in their life, their core being will not be light. Play gives us the irony to deal with paradox, ambiguity, and fatalism. Without that, we are like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall, who says, ‘What’s the use? The sun’s going to blow up in five billion years anyway.’”

So, as your following your own dread thread, check out your capacity to enter into joyful, healthy, distracting, soul-renewing play. See what it does to dreadfulness. See if it’s an aspect of life that will help you get through the days.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new “Listen to My Life Mapping” Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

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The Appreciation Audit

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Sometimes it is hard getting through the day because we are in circumstances that just drag us down. The car breaks down, a wage-earner in the family loses a job, there are troubles with offspring. What’s more, all these potentially debilitating events seem to hit at the same town. Our emotions spiral out of control while negative thoughts conduct suicide bombings.

Dr. Dan Baker, director of behavioral medicine at the National Center for Preventive and Stress Medicine, writes in his book What Happy People Know, “Your mind, when focused on appreciating, has an unparalleled power to trigger physical and emotional healing.” Understanding that it is difficult in trying circumstances for people focus the mind positively, Dr. Baker has developed the “Appreciation Audit.”

Dr. Baker cites studies that show the brain cannot process both fear (one of mankind’s dominate negative emotions) and appreciation at the same time. So the Appreciation Audit, when practiced, is designed to create a shield in the brain against fear, hate and anger. He recommends a fundamental form of the Audit:

Reserve three to five minutes, preferably three times each day,
to think about something you appreciate. It’s important to spread
this exercise through the day, perhaps morning, noon and night.

To be intentional about practicing appreciation can cause what the psychologists call a perceptual shift. Things are still icky, but your response to them shifts. You begin to see opportunities in the job layoff—perhaps now you’ll have the time to pursue the career you’ve always wanted to pursue. The car breaks down—thank goodness you became aware of the problem before you took that road trip with the family. A teen’s behavior is inappropriate—but this forces you to look at some parenting habits in yourself that you’re not too happy to discover. Suddenly, you have the power over yourself to change.

Dr. Baker explains: “The Appreciation Audit is a form of focused mediation, which has been shown by innumerous studies to have a powerful impact upon the balance of the autonomic nervous system, the brain’s neurotransmitter profile, the cardiovascular profile, muscular tension, and the psyche. Its effects last long after the exercise has ended, sometimes for several hours. It reprograms the mind and memory by severing the fearful, self-reinforcing thought loops of anxiety that are inaugurated by the amygdale and perpetuated in the neocortex.”

Wow—this is pretty powerful stuff! Scripture also calls us to refocus our attention, but too few of us work to do this three times a day. The Apostle Paul writes, “And now, dear friends, let me say one more things as I close this letter to you. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me. … Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.”  Philippians 4:3-13, NLT

Now there’s a man who will pass an Appreciation Audit with flying colors!

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is currently getting ready to begin a mentor writing project involving teleconferencing. She will be offering an 8-month, twice-monthly, one-hour-each training program on writing personal memoirs. For more information, e-mail karen@hungrysouls.org. This program will begin in February of 2010.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new “Listen to My Life Mapping” Listening Group as well as two 3-Day Retreats of Silence for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

About Karen Mains:
Karen has written some 24 books (several of which were best-sellers), has a background in radio and television broadcasting, has been part of publishing teams, has taken journalism assignments around the world, is a national-prize-winning author, and is now exploring the science of Internet publishing.

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The Enemy Despair – Part Two

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This blog is a continuation of Blog 1-52, “The Enemy Despair—Part One.” I refer back to my book, Karen! Karen!where I write about my battle with depression earlier in my life.

There had been wispy thoughts of suicide that month—wouldn’t I be doing everyone a favor if life just ended?—which as yet hadn’t had a chance to possess me. Which would be the easiest and most painless way? These lingering vapors were only introductions to a hell through which I did not have to walk; but they fogged my mind as the blackness increased, until on some days it seemed an effort to breathe, despair had so polluted my inner air.

I hated myself for my ennui, for the dirty house, for the fact that no friends called or cared. Ugly, ugly, ugly be his name. Praise to me in my all-consuming ugliness. Think of Karen; dislike Karen. Adore this awfulness. Don’t lift your head; stay in bed today. If you struggle in this grasp you will only go deeper into the muck, the black February muck of winter.

It came with clarity and life—the thought from my husband’s sermon—he wants to destroy me. David was right, Satan’s desire is to destroy us.

Suddenly I could see the implications of my despair. The children’s lives could be ruined, their mother unresponsive to their needs and eventually resenting and hating their natural demands. Perhaps suicide, or huge psychological treatment expenses that would keep David from functioning in his ministry. It would ruin my parents if I died in this despair. The waves rippled on and on. Satan’s desire was to destroy me.

Something called to me at that moment of realization. I think its name was Love. It asked me to choose. Which did I care for most? children, husband, family, or the desperate wraith of my soul? The answer was obvious. But did I love them enough to struggle to preserve myself and them also? For the first time in my life, I consciously committed myself to spiritual warfare. I was determined that if there was power in Christ, I would find a way to escape the hold of the destroyer.

Recalling part two of David’s sermon, I realized it was my opportunity to overcome. My Christian background hadn’t counted as nothing in my life. As a child I had memorized I Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I knew the words of truth; my problem was how to experience them.

I decided I would catch the enemy when he turned the handle on the door to my soul, rather than after he had dirtied the rooms with a few days’ sojourn. The worst thing about depression is it sets off dominoes of emotional traumas. It is like the back injury that causes pain to be felt in the neck although the ailment itself is located somewhere along the lower vertebrae. Helpless to discover the source of depression now that despair’s boa-embrace had severed my nerve endings, I resolved to stop everything the moment I heard the doorknobs jiggling.

When I sensed myself sinking lower than my normal moods, I would sit still and ask, “Now what is it that is causing me to feel this way? What has someone said that has discouraged me? or what have I said that I’m embarrassed about? Do I feel that David is too busy to give me attention? Am I really resentful? or am I physically exhausted and making more of things than they call for?”

I discovered that there was always a hook on which my adversary could hang his cloak.

Once the source of my growing uneasiness was discovered, it became a matter of refusing the enemy an entry. It became an intense battle to “stand firm.” It felt literally as though I were pressing my weight against a door while something heaved and shoved on the other side. I can remember fighting against giving way to my unhealthy feelings, sometimes for hours. “I refuse the power of the enemy,” I would whisper, teeth clenched. “I refuse to give in to this thing which he wants to use to destroy me.”

I would force myself to keep on functioning. Keep cleaning, keep working. Get out of the house, go to the beach, to the zoo. If you are tired, go to bed and sleep. Don’t allow yourself to brood; above all else, keep that door shut.

One morning, after several months of this off-and-on struggle, I had been in conflict for hours. Standing before the kitchen sink, tears streamed down my cheeks and dropped into the dishwater. I was weary with the heat of warfare, and certain I would go under without reinforcements.

“Oh, God,” I prayed, “I’m trying to refuse the power of the enemy in my life. I know he wants to destroy me. I have fought him over the last few months and all this morning. You have said you won’t let us go through anything you don’t think we are able to endure. I don’t think I can endure any more of this. David says your promise is your Presence. I can’t keep my back against this door anymore. If you don’t help me, I’m gone.” For a half-hour I repeated: Help me, please help me. Oh, help, God. Please help.

Soon I noticed that the door was at rest, the knob no longer turned, and when I peeked out, the black cloak had disappeared from the hook in the outer hallway.

By some insight of the Holy Spirit, some rare precognition, I knew that despair was gone for good. Though I had experienced depression in its minor and more severe forms for some eight years, I have never tasted it again since that day. It was the first evidence in my life of the practical, redemptive power of God, of His ability to deliver us from the teeth of temptation.

I was not so naïve as to think my responsibility for personal mental health was over. There were long-range life changes I had to effect. The process of building a whole person was about to begin; the armor of my self-image had huge holes that left me vulnerable to the enemy’s fiery darts. There was mending to do, rebuilding of the chain mail, a new insignia to be painted on my shield, a sword to be forged. Yet I knew the depression was gone, defeated by my Overlord. Instinctively, I was aware a battle lull had been provided for me to spend in preparation, garrisoning, and foraging for provender.

Many have been the lessons in knowing I’ve learned since that day; many have been the failures and successes. When I grow weary, my knees aching, my arms weary, when my vision seems blurred—I think back to the sink and my tears splashing in the water, back to my plea for God’s Presence, back to the instant knowledge that He had truly and finally vanquished my despair.

This buoys me, sustains me, lifts me up. It is my personal miracle of the Red Sea crossing, my water gushing from the rock, my pillar of fire by night. God’s promise is His Presence.

Karen Mains

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains, along with her husband, David Mains, leads Mainstay Ministries. Through their years in broadcasting, both radio and television, they also spoke internationally and between them have written dozens of books. Consequently, thousands look to them as spiritual coaches. Karen’s heart of compassion for those who are struggling and suffering has motivated her to look into her own life experiences and share what she has learned with those who need a word of encouragement. Through her writings, Karen continues to be a spiritual coach other Christian men and women.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

  • Preparing to teach an eight-month mentor-writing course on writing personal memoirs.
  • Promoting the Global Bag Project and hosting fundraising “Bag Parties.”
  • Training retreat leaders for future Silent Retreats.

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The Enemy Despair – Part One

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One of the things that makes it hard for many of us to make it through the days is that old human enemy—despair or depression or a soul-souring discontent. Thinking about this made me turn to some writing I had done earlier in my life. Often I try to catch the pain when I am really in the pain. It’s just too easy, when life becomes beautiful again, to remember how bad the bad days were.This from my book, Karen! Karen!:Having heard my husband David’s sermon on temptation repeated numerous times, I could almost deliver it from hear myself. The text was from The Living Bible, 1 Peter 5:8. Be careful—watch out for attacks from Satan, your great enemy. He prowls around like a hungry, roaring lion, looking for some victim to tear apart. Stand firm when he attacks. Trust the Lord.

The sermon’s three points were simple enough: “1. Satan’s desire is to destroy you. 2. Your opportunity is to overcome. 3. God’s promise is His presence.” I had even edited his sermon manuscript into an article form.

It wasn’t until one long February (it is not the shortest month of the year for some of us) when the winter slush, the interminable gray Great Lakes skies overcast my own spirit for twenty-eight days, that I realized I was in some icy solstice of the soul, looking my adversary in the face. With a start, I realized—he did want to destroy me, and through my destruction wreak havoc in the lives of the children, and ultimately damage my husband’s vital ministry. His desire was to destroy me.

I can’t remember exactly when the depressions began, and by “depression” I mean a debilitating gloom of the psyche which renders one nonfunctional. I am not referring to vague feelings of discontent, or to having a lousy mood. I mean waking in the morning and barely being able to lift one’s head from a pillow, feeling the heavy hood of some medieval falconer blinding my soul’s eyes, his rope tethering my emotions. I mean facing the day with dread because the minor functions seem to be impossible. Making beds and doing dishes and combing one’s hair are vehicles for a confusing desperation. The made bed looks lumpy and welted, corrugated with wrinkles. The washed dish is spotted and sooted, the dishwasher slime. Combed hair is a web of cobstrands, dusty and lusterless. The mirror reveals splotches and ugliness.

Why try? Don’t do it again. Everything you turn your hand to is failure. You are a failure. Your very breath is stale, stale life.

There truly was a pit of darkness into which I was descending.

It seems amazing to me now to realize that my own husband and family were unaware of my descent. Yet unless one has experienced desperation, it is easy to overlook the symptoms in others.

When the mood had done its work, I was released, springing vitally into life, into the sweetness of each breathbeat, into the glow of the children’s eyes and the beauty of my husband, into the world of people and activities. The darkness was forgotten and I learned to keep the despair to myself, because I didn’t know how to speak of it, nor did I realize where it was tunneling.

Early in our marriage a pattern seemed to emerge. Married at 18 to a man seven years older, I stepped from the shelter of my family to the shelter of my husband. There was little time for balanced personality development; my adult maturity had to occur within the confines of our marriage, and within a few years my growing room was crowded by cumulative pregnancies and the responsibilities of child-rearing. I began to experience crying jags, inarticulate effusions of frustration that left my husband helpless and myself drained.

“I can’t do anything well!” I would weep. It was true; a little bit of this and a little bit of that, detours into crafts, but no discipline into art. Stepping from the refuge of my father’s home to the refuge of my husband’s, there had been no time to develop to develop specialties, and I lacked the personal fortitude to become anything’s master. This was an area of vulnerability of which the crafty prey-monger took note.

Through the years I began to experience periodic, though unpredictable, visitations. Something was gnarling my twentysomething-year-old being into ugliness. Admittedly, there was a part of me that loved these orgies of self-pity, so in a way I opened the door of my spirit to a malignant artist painting his meaningless impressions in my inner chambers. Seemingly without cause he would come, this lover of despair, stretching his stays from afternoons to days, until he embraced my soul for weeks before going. Finally on a desperate February day he wearied me fully, and somehow David’s words, which I had heard so often, broke through the clouded gloom.

To be continued … Blog 1-53. See how Karen applied her own husband’s sermons to a brutal battle with the enemy despair.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is a bestselling, nationally award-winning writer who is the Co-Director of Hungry Souls ministry. Consequently, Karen has become a spiritual coach to thousands who look to her work for its authenticity, passion and practicality. Right now, Karen is developing a template for a 3-Day Retreat of Silence, as well as working with a team to develop program for the training of retreat leaders for silent retreats.

Karen will also be teaching a mentor-writing-format teleconference course on “Personal Memoir Writing.”

She also continues to be involved in Global Bag Project efforts, including hosting “Bag Parties.”

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Laughing Again

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I can remember the times in my life when I thought I never was going to laugh again. I can name various passages in my life when this suspicion has haunted me. The days were wearying; the nights were restless. Everything felt grim. The days were grey.

But guess what?—laughter always does come again. In time, on its own volition, it catches us unawares and despite the pain, despite the anguish, despite the feeling that life will never be the same, never again be normal, suddenly, unplanned, without our doing anything, a belly roll of laughter bubbles up from some archived spot in our soul. We throw back our head, we howl with delight, and we think, “Oh, my goodness, where did that come from?”

If you are having a hard time getting through the days, if you are suspecting that you will never laugh again, let me make a promise to you: Yes, you will. Yes, you will.

Laughter is where you least expect to find it.

After one of those niggling days where you come home concentrating on everything that’s gone wrong, I looked out into the yard. It was September and I had filled the birdfeeders. The garden seemed to be a flitter with wings, and birdsong, and chickadees rushing at the sunflower seeds. I’d broadcasted mixed birdseed so ground feeders, the doves and the flocking grackles were feeding on the earth—suddenly my heart lifted and I laughed. Comfort just erased the worries I’d been gnawing at, little worries, not the major heartaches, but ones that can ruin beautiful days and lovely moments. My heart just healed suddenly from that day’s aggravations, and I took a coffee cup out to a garden bench and watched the riot of feathered things racing through the trees and swooping to the feeders and calling across the acres to one another—Food here! Fresh birdseed! Last one out is a pokey birdling!

After a long season of sorrow, the major kind, I decided to fill my life with the kind of people I liked, people who knew how to play. And I was happy again, and we laughed together doing unimportant but life-giving things—cooking meals, canning peaches, going to movies.

After that same long season of unending stress and loss, a son said to me, “Oh, it’s just good to see you happy again!” I had forgotten that other people watch us, and gauge our happiness aptitude, and our sorrow or our joy rubs off on them.

Yesterday, I sat with a granddaughter who is reluctantly practicing her lessons. “Here,” I said. “Let me play with you. I’ve wanted to take up piano again. Let me see what I remember.” So we fingered the chords and figured the time—one, two, three; one, two, three … and the onerous piano lesson became a laughing place. And we raced through our scales—together—When the Saints Coming In and What the World Needs Now Is Love … and a couple upper-clef trials for some piece from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Definitely, I was laughing again. And my granddaughter was laughing so much she didn’t want to leave the piano when I was done.

So, if laughter seems far away, find the people for whom laughter is easy. Shamelessly ride on the coattails of those who delight in the ridiculous. Let the people who love you report to you on your happiness aptitude. Immerse yourself, completely and forgetfully, in some childlike activity—with a child. Laugh with them all—practice laughing again if you have to. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha (it works). Get down on the floor with a child (or on a piano bench). You won’t have to look for laughter. It will find you.

This is one of the things that will get you through the days.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen and a group of volunteers are putting together a 24-Hour Advent Retreat of Silence and planning the template as well as the retreat-leader training for 3-Day Retreats of Silence. Visit the Hungry Souls Web site for more information on the Silent Retreats.

Karen is also part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a micro-finance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She is also continuing to developing both her Christian blog, Gettin’ Thru the Day, as well as her Web site,www.KarenBurtonMains.com. She is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing,” which will be posted on her site.

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A Miracle Drug

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What if you could take a dose of medicine that would cure non-clinical depression, crankiness, anxiety, personality complaint disorders, feelings of deprivation, as well as love neuroses? Would you take it? Furthermore, if this medicine was free, had no negative side-effects, caused no drowsiness, did not interact dangerously with other medications, was safe for children, and could be used despite pre-existing diseases of the heart and thyroid, high blood pressure and diabetes, would you use it?

Then, what if you discovered that the cure affected by one dose had measurable impact, and that by taking daily doses, like vitamins, you could keep the cure working?

Is there such a wonder drug? There certainly is. It is called thanksgiving. Being grateful. Giving thanks. When I was a younger woman, with four small children, a husband who was an inner-city pastor, and insufficient funds to manage all this, I decided that my gratitude aptitude was deficient. So I spent three months journaling only prayers of thanks—no requests for those three months, no “gimme-gimme-gimmies”—just a growing list of things God had done for me that I added to each day. The phrase “all good gifts come from God and from Him are all things given” has become a breath prayer, begun long ago, that I repeat over and over. I find myself whispering it in my soul almost unconsciously.

What are the results of developing this “attitude of gratitude”?

The systematic study of positive emotions within psychology only began in the year 2000 due to the fact that this field was mainly focused on the negative impacts of distress. Since then, scientific research has gathered evidence from controlled studies indicating that grateful people experience higher levels of well-being. They are happier, less depressed, less stressed (were you aware that an estimated 90% of health problems doctors see are stress-related?). Grateful people are more satisfied with their lives and social connections. They feel as though they have greater control of their environments, they are more intentional about personal growth, have more purpose in their lives, can reach out for support from other people when they need to do so, and when hit by negative circumstances they can reinterpret and learn from them (this is called resilience, a substantial indicator of emotional and psychological health).

The list of proven impacts from giving thanks goes on and on, and is so lengthy we will end here (except to mention studies indicate that grateful people sleep better!).

As a personal observation, I will testify that the impact of practicing gratefulness was so tremendous on my personality, lifting me from the default position of the icky catalog in the first paragraph, that I have practiced it since every time I turn to work in my prayer journal, which except for rare occasions, is daily. I generally find at least a dozen things I’m grateful for each day. But more than a dutiful practice of developing a helpful habit, I find that now, after decades, there is an inner joy of giving thanks that seems to be going on inside me all the time that I notice only when I turn my attention inward. Perhaps this is what writer David Steindl-Rast, in his bookGratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, meant when he said, “Prayer is grateful living.”

So if you are really having trouble “gettin’ thru the day,” try thanksgiving. That lovely Scripture from the Psalms is short and sweet, easy to remember; “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1b, NIV.

In order for gratefulness to have lasting effects, however, you will have to make gratitude an attitude—it can’t just be a one time dose that you take. Even pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors sometimes need a week or two to kick in before they have positive impact. Since it takes at least 30 days to break a bad habit as well as to make a good habit, begin by listing all the things you can find for which you are grateful. Try to add to your list every day. I promise, the practice of gratitude will help you defeat the demons that beset you.

Steindl-Rast talks about the person who does not believe in God. If you are in that category, please hear that gratefulness works for people like you just as it works for those who attempt to be devout believers. “Even people whose worldview does not include a divine Giver to whom their thanks can be directed often experience deep gratitude in those moments. They experience it no less strongly than others, even though their gratefulness gets mailed without an address, so to say. In any case, we know from experience that whenever we are truly awake and alive, we are also truly grateful.”

Gratefulness is a medicine that can help you make it through the days. And unlike sleeping pills, soporifics, it actually wakens the inner slumberer, the dormant sleeper, the inattentive snoozer missing the beauty in each moment and the meaning that is in all of living.

It is a medicine that, unlike some, goes down smoothly.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains is part of an international team of men and women heading the Global Bag Project, a micro-finance enterprise for women who live in developing areas of the world. The idea is to sell reusable shopping bags, made by Third World bag-makers, to provide sustainable income for them. Visit www.GlobalBagProject.com if you are interested in learning more.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing microenterprise projects.

Furthermore, Karen is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site,www.KarenBurtonMains.com, in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published.

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The Isolation Room

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One of the worst things that happens to us when we are in pain is that we enter into a kind of isolation room that sometimes seems as though it has no door. Terrible things may happen to all kinds of people, but the pain we feel is our own, no matter how common it may be for others.

In our own pain, we are alone. And if we will let it, that pain will become the sole sucking-force of our being, turning our full attention, our active thoughts, the very meaning of who we are, toward its focus.

Our job is to not let that happen. Sometimes, things are so bad in ordinary life, we just barely make it through the day, but when the day is filled with terrible hurt, no matter what the cause, we now have the additional task added of not letting it consume us.

What makes this worse is that where as once we had a culture that was built on community and interaction, we now because of busyness, the technologies, and the distances we have to go to connect with friends are facing a culture that is being built to enhance isolation.

In an article by Janet Kornblum, USA Today reported that Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. This is something of a seismic shift. “You usually don’t see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades,” reports Lynn Smith-Lovin, co-author of the study reported in American Sociological Review and professor of sociology at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. By 2004, that number had dropped to two confidants, and the findings determined that consequently, 25% of Americans have no one in whom to confide.

Smith-Lovin explains, “Close relationships are a safety net. Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.”

The USA Today article makes the point that research has linked social isolation and loneliness to mental and physical illness. If that is the case, can we not also conclude that our mental and physical (and spiritual) health improve when we are socially connected and not living in isolating environments?

So, here’s the thought for this blog: Do not let pain isolate you completely. Do not let it swallow you into itself. Find one friend. Search out an old companion. Join a group. Volunteer where people are present. Put yourself into a happy (and healthy) social environment. Become a member of an accountability group or a recovery program. Just don’t face this terrible season of life by yourself. You can open the door in the isolation room. Don’t stay there so long that you begin to think it’s normal, or you begin to love it.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:
Karen Mains, published author with a background in radio and television, has supervised more than 250 Listening Groups that provide a place for people to hear one another and be heard in turn. She leads women’s Retreats of Silence, is a spiritual coach to hundreds, and is the author of the best-selling Open Heart, Open Home, a book about using the home to alleviate the isolation in our culture.

She and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya, Africa next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

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Real Real Gone

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Somehow, growing up, I totally missed the popular-music culture. “That’s your era, Mom,” a son will say to me. “Don’t you know who this is?”

No, I don’t know who it is. Between birthing and raising four babies, helping my husband plant an inner-city church in Chicago, taking young adults who needed a place to live into our home, and launching my own professional writer’s life, there simply wasn’t time to become an expert in pop music. Ask me about the civil-rights movement; ask me about the economics of poverty; ask me about building churches around the gifts of the laypeople or about creative worship philosophy; ask me about child-rearing theories; ask me what I read during my own young adult years (a lot); ask me about the mystical writers—I can hold my own on any of these topics. But truthfully, I wouldn’t know The White Album from Purple Rain.

Church music?—well, my father was head of the Music Department at Moody Bible Institute. It would be an understatement to say I was overexposed to sacred music. Classical music?—my husband and I have loved the world-class Chicago Symphony, and, when we have any money, have held season tickets. We enjoy the intimacy of chamber music and are supporters of the Orion Ensemble. We have profited mightily on long car-drives, listening to CD’s from The Learning Company; right now, we’re playing The History of Classical Music.

Finally, in my sixties, I am attempting to rectify my pop-music ignorance by listening to “Greatest Hits” and “Best of” albums. Recently, I’ve enjoyed Van Morrison’s Still on Top. In fact, this Sunday on the way to church, I was captivated with the seeming religious progression of his lyrics. The album begins with Gloria, Here Comes the Night,Brown-Eyed Girl, then eventually progresses to In the Garden with its amazing invocation of praise to the Trinity. What caught my attention most, however, perhaps because I have been thinking about this blog, was Stranded.

The writer is “stranded at the edge of the world,” and this is a succinct expression of the ennui so many feel caught in the “hustle and hustle” of modern life. We don’t know where we are or why, there’s no one to “give us the time of day,” and “every day, every day” we’re stranded.

All great artists, and Van Morrison’s biography seems to indicate that he is considered to be a truly great artist, voice the inner anguish and distress of our common humanity. This is one reason I need to listen to their music: What are these people saying? For whom are they speaking?

You may be one of those folks who is having trouble “just getting through the day.” If so, think about this (a thought that has been deeply medicinal to my soul during rough passages—really rough passages): There is nothing you have experienced that literally hundreds of thousands haven’t experienced before you. This thought doesn’t trivialize my anguish; instead, it comforts me. While being stranded at the edge of the world, between “the devil and the deep blue sea,” I am not alone. Others are familiar with this pain, this cessation of desire, this lostness.

Not only is there comfort in misery, but hundreds of thousands of others have found a way through the desert, through the wilderness, through the vacant lots, through the sour soil of living. Listen to the music and you will find this thread.

Morrison, on this one album, takes us through “the dark night of the soul” in Tore Down a la Rimbaud, to “can’t stand up by myself; don’t you know I need your help” in Real Real Gone, and to the lyrical moment of recovery, of finding one’s self again in The Healing Game—“Here I am again, back where I belong … back in the healing game.”

All great artists face periods when the music stops, the words go, the inner vision is blackened, the math no longer makes sense. Van “The Man” Morrison, the mystical, the magical, searching ever for “a certain quality of soul,” has known them well.

Once, at a younger time in my life, when I had exhausted myself and was real, real gone, I listened over and over, for six months, to the music of Chopin, until finally I was back in the healing game, inner-city ministry. Perhaps if you’re in one of the stranded places, at the edge, the precipice, with nowhere to go, your soul will find some peace in the music of those who know, have been there, and can sing forth that message of comfort in commonality.

We have been where you are; we have survived. Life is good again. Stay with us.

Karen Mains

Karen Mains is the Co-Director, with her husband, Dr. David R. Mains, of Mainstay Ministries. She leads silent retreats, is a spiritual coach to thousands who have followed the Mains’ ministry through radio and television broadcasting and their writings. Karen is the award-winning author of the “Tales of the Kingdom” Trilogy, and is now crucially involved in a team that is creating a microfinance for women project in Kenya.

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Gettin’ Thru the Day

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This blog is about—guess what?—getting through the day.

I ask people, “How ya’ doing?” And so often I hear the same response. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day,” people answer. “Jes’ gettin’ thru the day.”

Believe me, I know where these folks are coming from. In some circumstances, getting through the day is almost more than any of us can do.

However, at my age (67), I’ve learned a few lessons and have advanced, for the most part, from “jes’ gettin’ thru the day” to attempting to live each day as though it is a minor work of art (some days are major works of art). And yep, some days are just plain blah!—but not many, not many at all.

After years of being in ministry, and after conversation with friends who are on local church staffs, we concluded that some 80% of the people in congregations are facing problems too big for them to handle. For these people, getting through the day is a major undertaking.

Perhaps, some of the things I’ve learned and am still learning, some of the things I’m facing and will face, and some of the life lessons I’m activating, will help that 80% who just don’t know how they’ll make it from day’s beginning to night’s end, not to mention the nights in between.

The first thing I know—I positively know—and have taught to my children, all of whom are adults now and married with children of their own, is that we all have a choice. We can make this a good day or a bad day. We can make it a good life or a bad life.

“Look,” I’ve said umpteen times during the child-raising years. “You have a choice. You can choose to make this a bad day or you can choose to make it a good day.”

As hard as this may seem for those facing horrendous situations, this is a basic interior attitude over which we do have control—we don’t have control over most of the bad things, minor and major, that happen to us. We do have control over how we will respond to it.

If you’re part of the 80% just getting through the day, how are you going to make it a good day, despite the circumstances? Do you want to choose to make it a good day? Or are you going to let all the woes, the worries, the injustices rob and cheat you of a good day and a good life?

Love to hear how some of you defeat the darkness on this most personal of levels—choosing to make it a good day.

Karen Mains

Karen Mains is a national-award-winning author of more than 26 books. She is involved right now in helping to create a microfinance women’s pilot project in Kenya—the Global Bag Project, which seeks to sell reusable shopping bags made to provide sustainable income to help bag-makers around the world lift themselves from poverty. Her book about the refugee crisis in the world, The Fragile Curtain, won the 1982 Christopher Medal, which is awarded to works that uphold the highest values of the human spirit.

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site,www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

Also, Karen is preparing for the upcoming (Advent) Silent Retreat, which is still open for registration (see the Hungry Souls Web site for more information; click “Retreats of Silence”).

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Dancing in the World

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Yesterday morning, I and my grandson, Elias John Mains, skipped church. It was an exquisite September day, the ground kissed with early light; David, my husband, is overseas in Kenya. A busy week had prevented me from making time for my seasonal gathering—clipping tall swamp grass, beaded dock and fuzzy cattails that I combine with artificial sunflowers from Hobby Lobby and realistic-looking but plastic pumpkins for the arrangement on my front porch.

It’s all too easy to cram grandkids into our adult schedules and something told me that the holiest way I could pass this morning with this grandchild was to go out into the fields and gather—Elias is delighted with the natural world. “Let’s go clip cattails,” I said.

“Oh, Nina,” he said. “I love cattails!”

So we did. We found stands of tall grass, clipped enough to fill the natural wood basket I had hauled home one year from West Virginia. We found the cattail pond, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, then parked our car to take a walk down the Prairie Path—the old Chicago, Aurora & Elgin train line that has now been turned into a pedestrian path for strollers and joggers (and for bikers and for the few horseback riders who still exist in our area). We brought the hand-clippers and began snipping enough late summer weeds, some blooming and some past bloom, sections of curling vines and interesting branchets—field daisies, rose hips, all wild things happily living their cycle of life out in the proper season of life.

These all were for a bouquet—Elias pronounced the T. After several false pronunciations, I corrected him and explained that bouquet was a French word and in France, the consonant at the end of the world was not pronounced. “We have a lot of foreign words in our language because people have brought their words with them when they came to America,” I explained. “We think they are English words, and sometimes we speak them in English ways, but we have become so used to them we forget that they are not really English words.”

“Oh, like placate,” Elias responded. He had been studying Julius Caesar in school. “Yes, that is a Latin word, and in Latin, it would be pronounced pla-ca-te,” I explained. Who could have imagined that this walking in the exquisite morning world would have included a discussion on etymology with a nine-year old? This is why I love spending time with children; they are always so much smarter then we think they are.

We watched a flock of Canada geese fly overhead and form a V-wedge. We noticed grasshoppers hopping in the sunshine. We clipped enough for two bouquets (pronounced the French way now)—one large bouquet and one smaller. Elias is a chatterbox with many intriguing thoughts bouncing around in his mind—a startling good mind. So, I love to get him alone, relaxed, and without distractions. I never quite know where our conversations are going to go. Tracing our way back the Prairie Path, he slipped his hand into mine and we carefully watched for bikers who were now more frequent as the day aged. “Biker behind us,” Elias warned. “I saw a flash of metal.”

When we returned home we went to the back patio and arranged the larger plants in the earthenware jug and the smaller in the Chinese teapot—Elias took joy in filling the containers, and I slipped in some late summer roses from my garden.

“They look good, don’t they Nina?” Yes, indeed. Our hodgepodge of late summer cuttings looked great. I hoped I would have time to gather a larger, more spectacular group sometime in the week. “You know, Elias. Everything God has made is beautiful in its own way.” And that is true for those who have eyes to see, who take the time to attend, and who care to step in the rhythm of life, each season at its turning, each month in its appropriate calendar place, each week, each day—morning, noon and evening.

Each creature—animal or plant or human—is beautiful in its own created way.

I am a person who finds the Presence of God in the natural world. I am enthralled, filled with awe, full of praise in my garden, at the seaside, before a grand mountain and walking along the Prairie Path in Illinois with a nine-year-old grandson’s hand in mine.

It is beautiful.

Come to this dance that is life, join in the steps, join hands with others who walk beside you and sing the praises of the One who teaches us the steps. (And if you can, take a child’s hand as you do.)

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth
—at Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be.
I am the Lord of the Dance said he,
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is creating a teleconference curriculum on “Personal Memoir Writing” to post on her Web site,www.KarenBurtonMains.com in an attempt to create a distance learning mentor writing project to help other “Wannabe (Better) Writers” get published. Additionally, she and her husband, David, are hoping to lead a Christian trip to Kenya next March for the purpose of developing micro-enterprise projects.

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