Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

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Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

November 2003

Practical Joy; some ways to get Ready for Thanksgiving

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

First, before you read what I write, turn to the end of the Olive Branch and read "The Simple Life". There Jeff Staben will tell you in his own words how to survive having a gun stuck in your face and come out of it better than you went in. He really is talking about how to live a life with joy in it, even when life is pretty rotten and you are not happy with it. But since I just can't just say Amen and leave it (we have to have multiples of four pages to print this) I'll share some of what I've been struggling with on how to live so that joy can be part of your life, even when life is hard and not much fun.

I think everybody has hard times every month. But some people manage to have fewer, not because they are lucky, but because they see the hard times differently and respond to them differently.

I have been listening to a book tape called Brain Longevity by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. In it he says that cortisol, an adrenal hormone caused by stress and aging damages our memory, our ability to learn and actually destroy brain cells. His secret to reversing and repairing the damage includes nutrition, stress management, exercise and pharmacology (drugs). Now everybody has been telling us we need to exercise and every month we have an article on good nutrition and we all know to talk to the doctor about drugs if we get sick. (You can read his book for how his program works to slow down or reverse brain damaging diseases and promote optimum mental ability.) But when have we thought about stress reduction as a mental health to keep the brain alive and working? And what does that have to do with thanksgiving and joy?

I have been reading another book, Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch, Ph.D. and I'll go more into it in another article, but right now I want to lift up an essential practices. It is calming your own anxiety, not waiting for others to do it for you. He calls it "soothing yourself", or "holding onto yourself." It reduces chronic stress, thus making you healthier. But the critical thing is it is also an essential practice for being with God. It is another way of becoming sensitive enough to the deep inner silence that you can be free of your fears choose love because you want to, not because you have to. This opens you to feeling God's presence in your love, and creates gratitude and joy. Of course the process of doing this is not easy and usually involves some pretty painful self-confrontation with your fears and if you are in a relationship some painful times till you both reach the place you can take care of yourself and reach out to each other from a balanced place. But if you can, then the really rotten times don't shake your love, they just are another thing you live through, and if you are really balanced, you can live through those times with some joy even though you are not happy with the stuff going wrong.

When we think of thanksgiving we usually think of feeling happy and those outside things that help us feel happy. I agree that this is a very good practice and we should sit down and count our blessing a lot more often than we do. We truly do have a huge number of things to be thankful for, and an attitude that looks for them and sees them will make your life a lot more fun. But inner peace helps you practice thanksgiving when there are very few things in your environment to give you an excuse to feel happy.

Joy is an inner place of balance, love and peace. Happiness comes and goes, but thanksgiving can last. Self-acceptance and taking time to actively balance your mind are ways to start that journey.

Happy Thanksgiving, your brother-in-Christ,
Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

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