Beauty, Trauma, & the Healing Power of Presence

[Music] foreign [Music] I'm Brad Joy I teach English here at school and I'm the head of the school and I'm very happy to have Kirk Thompson here with us tonight and I should highlight that this is the 10th year that we St Paul and ba have had a relationship with the Trinity forum and what wonderful speakers we've had uh last spring uh Arthur Brooks we had David Brooks Cornell West Robbie George Dana Joya one of my favorites uh and many many more and uh it's just been a wonderful time to bring people together from the community people from different paths who want to hear individuals like Kurt talk about good ideas and we are grateful to the Trinity former forum and appreciative this relationship and we hope you'll enjoy the night so I think at this point I'm going to ask Cherie to come up and who's become a great friend over these past 10 years and does a great job please join me and welcome International thank you well thank you for that very gracious introduction Brad it has been such a delight to get to work with you and with Will for almost 10 years now um just a really rich collaboration and welcome to all of you to tonight's sold out evening conversation on beauty trauma and the healing power of presence with Kurt Thompson as Brad was saying it is so good to be back in Nashville we had to take an enforced two-year or so Hiatus so it's just a real kind of delight to be back to resume the collaboration and partnership that we formed with Saint Paul and with uh with MBA and uh it's just it's lovely to see so many friendly and familiar faces once again as we start out I'd like to thank the sponsors who have helped make tonight's program possible and indeed this 10-year series there's several of you but you are well worth the recognition so particular thanks to friends Mary and Lee Barfield Janet and David Chestnut Jessica and Kevin Douglas Ashley and David Edwards Rebecca and Al Gonzalez Chrissy and Bill Haslam Elizabeth and Bill Hawkins Eleanor and Eric Osborne Molly and Ed Powell Carol and John Rochford Anna and gift Thornton Heather and Morgan Wills the foundations creating culture fund as well as the cherish foundation and our corporate sponsors Sims Funk and gaw property so thank you to each and every one of you I'd also like to give a quick thanks and acknowledgment to Byron Smith and Sam Funk two of our trustees who are here who have done so much behind the scenes over the years to help sustain as well as Envision and develop this initiative I'm so excited that each and every one of you are here we actually sold out a while ago cozy so and we had to because we had a shutdown registration we are live streaming this so if you have friends who wanted to be here we're deterred by the fact that it was shut down feel free we rarely encourage people to like text but this is an exception feel free to text them to let them know that this will be live stream tonight you can follow along by simply logging on to NBA's live stream page and then we will also have the video for this up and going very quickly both on our website and on our YouTube channel as well as the MBA Channel for those of you for this is your first time here or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum we seek to cultivate curate and disseminate the best of Christian thought and provide a space for leaders to wrestle with the big questions of life in the context of faith for the purpose of ultimately getting to better know the author of the answers and we hope that what happens tonight will be a small taste of that for you today those big questions that so often occupy public attention are usually and not surprisingly political but it seems increasingly undeniable that many of our most difficult Civic challenges are actually rooted in unmet or distorted spiritual and relational longings take for instance the Steep rise in reported feelings of loneliness rejection and shame which have both fueled and been reflected in Nationwide spikes in anxiety and depression particularly among young people loneliness and shame have accelerated our search for a sense of belonging and online tribes and partisan Warfare furthered our divisions intensified our sense of self-protection and interest in seeking to dominate others and contributed contributed to the poisoning of our public and particularly online communication as Anonymous comments and tribal bullying have grown so widespread as to normalize the failure to accurately see hear or understand each other shame and loneliness are all too often both alienating and contagious but as our speaker tonight will discuss there is another way drawing upon a research focus in neurobiology and Decades of clinical experience as a practicing psychiatrist helping clients longing for transformation in their own lives and relationships he argues that beauty can emerge from places of trauma and that learning to see and be seen by others in community opens wonderful new possibilities for healing wholeness and extraordinary creativity and he illuminates the way in which a confessional Community can reshape our imaginations and reveal new possibilities for better knowing and loving God ourselves and each other it's a deeply hopeful vision and there are few who can share it with the expertise empathy wisdom or wry humor as our speaker tonight Kurt Thompson Kurt is a psychiatrist in private practice in Virginia as well as the founder of the organization being known which helps people explore the connection between interpersonal neurobiology and Christian spirituality he is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and neurology and his Focus his clinical practice on the treatment of adults and families with a particular research interest in the integration of Psychiatry and Neuroscience with spirituality and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology and now trains others in that field he is a sought-after speaker and consultant the creator of the being known podcast which we highly recommend and the author of The excellent books anatomy of the soul the soul of Shame and his most recent work the soul of Desire discovering the Neuroscience of longing Beauty and community and he is also I am quite proud to say a senior fellow of the Trinity forum after Kurt gives keynote remarks Saint Paul Headmaster will Norton will pose the first question and then moderate questions from the audience Kurt welcome [Applause] well it is great to be in Tennessee I I I mourn anybody here a Tennessee fan yeah I'm no no no no no no there's no shame not in this room no no no no not in this room um I'm an Ohio State Buckeye fan I I'm just trying to get it all out there get this taken care of before so I can talk about the beauty of the passing attack for what happens at Columbus in the horseshoe so first of all uh I I just want to say thank you to Cherie and to everyone who's hosting for the the kind invitation to invite me to come I'm I always feel honored and humbled um I you know if anybody here would consider themselves to be a Jesus follower and you take the scripture seriously and we find out that when Jesus says we're two or more of my followers are gathered there will I be also he didn't really ask if we needed his you know we didn't ask for permission to come he's just going to come and he's going to work and so I'm grateful that uh we all have come because I think that what we are about if we are followers of Jesus if this is really what we're here to talk about from a thoughtful Christian Perspective if that's the case then what we are really about is about the way that he wants us to think about the world and our place in it and what does it mean for us to create outposts of beauty and goodness in this world that is so currently traumatized and so if there are this many people here I would consider that everybody here is also longing to have answers to these questions in order for us to do together what God has called us to do which I might say is really hard to do and so as we like to say in our business the brain can do a lot of things that are really difficult for a really long period of time as long as it doesn't have to do it by itself and so we will eventually get to this question of community but I want to say tonight that we all first come with a great longing we are here tonight because we long for things and in fact that longing Begins the moment that you come out of the womb babies come into the world longing for things right they come in anybody here giving birth to a baby four of you okay great wow babies come into the world looking for things right we say that they're a lot they long for physical appetites to be resolved they also long for other things we like to say in our work that children long for four things that begins with the letter s they long to be seen soothe safe and secure and that longing never stops that will only stop when you're dead this longing to be seen we have to first see children if we're going to then actually do anything for them if we're going to sue them they first have to be seen there are people in this audience who have parts of you that have yet to be seen that have yet to be seen even by the people that you're married to by the people that you work with we already sense that the spirit of God is in the room and at work because we're raising questions about in what parts of my own life am I not yet seen infants look for this because once they're seen then they can be soothed because we can't sue them until we actually see them but once we do see them we come to be soothed and they have all kinds of needs to be sued that we can easily identify and then as we age as adults we find ways to hide those needs to be soothed we hide them effectively until we burn so much energy trying to manage those things that we've been needing to be soothed for such a long time that we can't cope anymore and then you find yourself in my office now granted I'm not complaining it's good for business anxiety is oh this I feel like I'm on in some movie anxiety is good for business it's not really good for business but you know what I mean that there is a sense in which we aren't when we are not soothed by someone else we are going to have to take that Upon Our Own and as it turns out the brain is made primarily first to be soothed by someone else when a baby comes into the world about 85 percent of her neurons are of his neurons are not yet able to do what they need to do until they have interaction with another human brain that means only about 15 of what a baby comes into the world with ready to do they're able to do on their own all the rest needs cooperation from whoever it is is taking care of them this changes over time but as we say every child comes into the world looking for someone looking for them and that never stops if first I'm seen then I'm sued then I can be made to feel safe now I I want to say here that the word safe has come to a place where it's now fairly often misappropriated in many respects to for me to say that I feel uh I'm only safe if I'm doing the things that I want to do the moment that I don't want to do something I don't want to do I say I don't feel safe it's a euphemism for I feel afraid and I don't want to do the thing that I'm afraid to do it doesn't mean that I'm actually not safe it means I'm afraid but it is still true that safety needs to be created and parents anybody who's been a parent knows that you're going to keep your child safe from things that are outside their skin that might harm them they don't want to have things happen to them that they don't need to have happen to them but the other way that they need to be protected is from themselves a child who's two who's not actually protected from the self will run into the street there will be all kinds of things that I will want to do on my own that you need to say no to safety isn't just a one-way street it's not just protecting me from the things that are outside my skin that are coming towards the things that are within me that are going to come out toward you safety is a matter of what's Happening both to me but what I'm bringing into the world and if I'm safe eventually if I've been seen and I'm sued and I'm safe then I can become secure and to be secure means that I take my sense of safety and I walk outside of this house and I go do things that are hard to do I do things in which I actually take risks I might even make mistakes I get my nose bloodied I get my knees skinned I might hurt people's feelings I get my feelings hurt but then I can return to a place where I'm seeing soothed and safe so I can do this All Over Again I am therefore being commissioned by being seen soothed and saved I'm being commissioned to securely go and create Beauty and goodness in the world where it will be risky to do so and the reason it's risky is not just because we're humans but because we live in a world in which evil has no intention of Beauty Ever emerging now this notion of those four S's again happen for us and it's true for us until we're dead in what ways are any of us here this is important for us to get through our comments tonight in what ways are you not being seen soothed made to feel safe or are you secure those are important questions for us to be answering because if we can't answer those questions for ourselves it will be impossible for us to maintain what is necessary for us to be agents of creating Beauty and goodness in the world we can't give what we don't have now here's an interesting thing about development at some point the child who is seen soothed and safe they're going to start your children ever make you anxious look you're I I tell people children are born to drive you crazy and that's what we're here for to help parents not kill their children this is why this is why we're here do you help parents not kill their children because children will have their own sense of wanting to go into the world and do all kinds of things that will make us anxious but before long before making us anxious they will also start to do things that you don't have to teach them to do and the thing that they will want to begin to do is they will start to make stuff do you notice a child will walk into your kitchen and they will have created something on a piece of paper you have no idea what it is they want you to put it on the refrigerator and they want you to call the neighbors and charge money to come and see it they think it's like Van Gogh they think this is the best thing since anything that's come out of France children do not need to be taught to make things because as it turns out we are made to make things we have this deep longing to make things and they're not things of mediocrity our children bring things to us that they want us to be excited about and children and artists show us what our mission in the world is to be we are to be like our maker now when you open the very first page of the Bible you know it's like as I tell people it's like turning on a TV and the programming is already running there's no like long on-ramp to it you turn the program on and there it is and God's making things and we see that when he makes things after day one day two and day three he pronounces that it's good but the other way that you can read the Hebrew word for good is the word beautiful and he saw that it was beautiful and he had a party and then he went to the next day and he saw that this was beautiful and he's not seeing that it's beautiful just because he notices that it's beautiful in its object reality its beauty emerges as a function of God looking at it here's a question when in the last week have you noticed that your beauty is being called forth because someone is looking at you and not in a way that is consumptive not in a way that is exploitative God sees Beauty in the middle of all of the chaos over which he is hovering this is verse two of Genesis chapter one when the spirit of the Lord hovered over the Deep and then he began to bring order and purpose and I want to say to us that our work as human beings this is what children grow to do they learn to have these longings to be seen soothe safe secure so that they can go out into the world and name things and bring purpose to them and I don't care if you're an attorney if you're a teacher if you're a construction worker if you're a farmer if you're a stay-at-home parent this is what we are called to do to be image bearers of our god this is what it means for us to bring Beauty and goodness into the world and children teach us how to do that we know that things are beautiful easily when we see beautiful things we see beautiful sunsets we see beautiful artwork we see some artwork we don't know what it is but we are still having to look and train but some of these things we look at we just know that this is a beautiful thing because we know that beauty comes to us quickly and easily as first of all Wonder Beauty captures us as a matter of wonder these longings to create Beauty in the world not just objects but ourselves included starts with Wonder have you ever been in a conversation with someone else that's just been rich and deep and you get to the end of the conversation and you are just full of wonder that this last 20 minutes this last two hours has happened Beauty's first wonder and the second thing is that it's welcome beauty doesn't set up restrictions Beauty welcomes you there's I mean I don't know how many sunsets you've seen that you've really enjoyed it says like no you can't look at me I'm too beautiful thank you it's Wonder it's welcome and eventually it's worship because what beauty is doing is it's pointing us to something Beyond itself this is what we were made to do and as it turns out that creative sense was all present at the end of Genesis chapter 2. we like to say that when we are going to create Beauty in the world there are at least three things that are maximally helpful for it first of all is that we like to create Beauty as a way of having different things coming together and the man and his wife were naked and unashamed you read this at the very end of Genesis chapter 2 the second page second and third page of the Bible Genesis chapter 2 we see this it's primal the man and his wife now I tell folks so I've been married for 36 years uh tool and I love my marriage I absolutely love my marriage but you know people here are married some people are married and you're admitting that okay good uh and you're are you here with people that you're married to um even more so and you know you get married and then you know six days weeks later you're you like it Dawns I mean like I thought I really wanted I thought I was wanting to marry Phyllis and then as it turns out I didn't really want to marry Phyllis I wanted to marry me I just wanted me to look like Phyllis I wanted someone who thought like I thought I wanted someone who like hung the toilet paper like I hung the toilet paper I want someone who who got to movies 15 minutes ahead of the start time you see I didn't want to marry someone who was differentiated from me well okay the sex thing was okay but I mean as far as that but other than that you see what I mean right there's this sense in which what I really want is just to be doing creative work with people who think like I think but we have to recognize that beauty in its most durable form begins with creating with those who are different than us with material that's different than me and the second thing is that they were naked they were vulnerable the Hebrew for the word naked is not just speaking to the questions of physicality it's also speaking to the question of protection I in my vulnerability need you to protect my dignity I need you as a resource because I do not have everything that I need in order for me to create Beauty and goodness in the world I'd like to think that I could but that's not what we are intended to do in fact the way that your brain is even arranged the way that it comes online it does so in such a way that it needs other parts of the brain in fact my brain won't come online an appropriate way unless I have contact with yours I need that differentiation if Beauty and goodness are going to emerge and the third thing that we need is the absence of Shame the husband and his wife were naked and unashamed what parts of our lives do we look around at and we say gosh all I see is Extreme fracture there's no connection between differentiated parts shame is living everywhere and vulnerability is nowhere but this is how we were designed to create and unfortunately we turn from the second page to the third page of the Bible and we have trauma in its longest and worst ways because the most powerful and the most prominent trauma that takes place takes place in our kitchens takes place in our bedrooms in our boardrooms takes place amongst the elders in our church it doesn't just take place between Russia and Ukraine we like to talk about trauma being something that stands on two pillars the first thing is that any of us who've had any experience which we a feel overwhelmed by the situation and B in our sense of overwhelm we also have no agency to change it now most of us can name all kinds of things in the world that are heinous in their traumatic impact sexual abuse rape War poverty a range of different things that we all identify what we often don't identify is that most trauma for us takes place in very micro moments throughout the course of most of our lives that we find other ways to cover up but once we've covered it up we then have to burn lots of energy to contain it in order for us to cope with it and that is energy that we then do not have available to create Beauty and goodness in the world one of the most important things that trauma does and we see this in this scene in Genesis 3 one of the most important things that it does is that it tends to shatter our capacity to imagine when trauma enters a person's world and this can be political this can be between this can be in the classroom this can be anywhere when trauma enters a person's World it doesn't just make me feel uncomfortable in wielding shame trauma doesn't just make me feel bad it makes it impossible for me to accurately perceive the nature of my story as it really is and as it can be going forward we humans have this interesting thing about us and that we tell stories like no other animal that we know of at least unless you're in a C.S Lewis novel as far as we know we are the only ones who tell stories about our past and about our future squirrels do remember where they placed the acorns as far as we know they're not having conversations with other squirrels about how last year's Harvest was compared to this year's they're not telling stories in that way but we are telling stories all the time in fact we can't not tell them we are always in the business of trying to make sense of what we sense and here's the thing if I don't have much experience being seen soothed safe and secure I'm going to tell you a traumatic story that's only going to have one ending and the ending is going to have me and you being alone and at each other's throats by the end of the day and how do we know this we know that what began as a simple taking of the fruit in Genesis 3 led by Genesis 4 to murder and by Genesis 6 it led to the development of Empire that was intending to abuse everybody else around it that wasn't for its cause and this is just what we've become and so it doesn't require us to talk just about Russia and Ukraine for us to talk about trauma and how we are making it very difficult for ourselves to create Beauty and goodness in the world we not only have a hard time then making sense of the stories that we tell part of the difficulty with this is that shame tends to as we like to say one of its most potent affects effects is its isolating effect neurobiologically as well as interpersonally shame tends to separate us from ourselves and from one another we like to have that we have a shorthand when it comes to brain science we say the brain does five things I think oh wow this is great I'm going to get a master's in Neuroscience in like 10 minutes it's gonna be great five things it senses images feels thinks and we behave now this is an oversimplification but when you think about what you sense image feel thinking how you move with your body shame tends to disintegrate tends to disconnect our capacity to think coherently while we are feeling it makes it impossible for us to create it makes it very difficult for us to want to be close to anyone else even people that we love let alone people who are our enemies this sense of isolation makes it very difficult for my brain to imagine any story other than the one that I tell myself about myself it's a simple example the ten-year-old who walks into his father with his 92 percent on his math test and you and nobody here is going to think this is abusive and it isn't and the father is going to say that's really great where's the other eight percent he's one right in the end and the kid has never gotten a 92 percent of his life where's the other eight percent now many of us like we were in that house many of us were in this house because if we're working really hard to do really well we're working really hard to get the other eight percent can I hear an amen here's the challenge the challenge is the next time he's going to get a 93 but he's not going to tell his dad because he knows what the price is for paying he's going to pay for that and then he's going to get 94 and you know how this works and the fact is by the time it's all said and done he's going to make straight ice he's going to be a five-star quarterback for his high school football team he's going to go to the University of Tennessee he's going to win a National Championship and for goodness sake he's going to beat Georgia foreign and he will still be looking for the other eight percent and it won't matter how much Beauty and goodness it appears that he's created on his resume internally I will tell you he will be in my office wondering why he's not good enough because this is what trauma does in very very very small ways this is how evil operates evil does its best work in the middle of good work being done evil doesn't exist apart from goodness and Beauty it's parasitic upon it what are we to do when you read the end of the fifth chapter of Hosea you read that God speaks of the kingdom of Judah as one that God is going to devour as a lion does because of their behavior and you get to the very end of it and you read that but in their distress once they've reached their night is once they've reached their low Point once they've reached the place where they are in enough distress they will call to me and when they do I will come for them we tell folks you know in in treating patients um who will come in over many many weeks sometimes months sometimes years and they will complain about how they're not making changes yet why am I not making changes and my attempt at being kind but also direct with him I would say it appears that you're probably not making changes because you haven't suffered enough and of course this doesn't this doesn't sound very warm I'm a psychiatrist I'm going to be very clear it doesn't mean that you haven't suffered at all because as it turns out human beings don't make changes until they've suffered enough I can have two 35 year olds I was one of these 35 year olds I can have two 35 year olds that walks into the internist's office and gets bad news about their cholesterol and about their blood pressure and all the other things and one of them is immediately going to make a change because for them that's enough suffering and another isn't going to make a change until 30 years later when they have crushing chest pain even though they have the same information 30 years earlier we change when we've suffered enough and when we do we remember what Jesus said because Jesus said look unless you change and become like little children the Kingdom of Heaven just isn't going to work for you it's not going to work because children are more than happy when a toddler is in trouble what does a toddler do what do they do if you're if you're within earshot and a toddler's in trouble what do they do they come for you they come yelling they come crying they have no trouble they have no guile they have no problem letting you know that they need help and the reality is that the good news for our imaginations even in the presence of trauma is that beauty is still to be held it's just going to be found in places we wouldn't have expected there's a model for that we're going to walk through very briefly and quickly 4th verse the 27th Psalm it goes like this one thing have I asked this only will I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life that I may gaze upon his Beauty and that I may inquire in his Temple one thing the first thing for us to say is that this is a writer who is going to be perseverant he knows that this is going to be a lifelong journey one thing if I asked one thing am I going to do that I'm going to dwell in the house of the Lord I am not going to this is not going to be a McDonald's drive-through I'm going to dwell it is now estimated that if you are younger than 35 years of age by the time you retire you will have had 40 jobs that's not much dwelling if we are going to dwell if the human soul is to be cared for if political Rancor is to be cured we must practice dwelling Stillness I am not a Luddite but I can tell you that your technological devices are intended not to allow you to dwell they are intended to distract you they are intended to disintegrate your mind's activity they are intended to make it difficult for you to pay attention for long periods of time they are intended to make it difficult for you to be in the space with someone else who's angry with you and you don't leave the room dwelling is hard to do this is what the writer says they are committed to doing over the Long Haul I may dwell that I may gaze upon the beauty of the Lord as we said earlier it's not hard to gaze at things that are easily able that we're easily able to gaze at we gaze at Beauty easily it's not easy for us to gaze at that which is really painful in fact it's so hard to gaze at it that we make a practice of not gazing at our own woman behold your son Jesus having a conversation from the cross with his mother and John she has to look at him and look at John to have a conversation with a man who is beaten and bloodied beyond recognition what would it be like for us to allow others to see the parts of us that we would deem to be the most ugly the parts of us that we are most afraid of the parts of us that frighten us the most Tom Holland in his outstanding work Dominion notices that Romans were really good at killing people they had lots of ways of killing them one of the most painful humiliating ways that they used for crowd control was crucifixion but he notes also that Romans themselves were embarrassed about this and they wouldn't allow it in most of their literature the archaeological findings are there to demonstrate that it happened they killed hundreds of thousands of people this way but even they were too embarrassed and then he asked this question how is it that of all of the effort that the Romans put into making sure that we don't know anything about crucifixion there is one that we remember Good Friday is good because of Easter and if it weren't for Easter we wouldn't know anything about Good Friday but because of Easter we look at Good Friday and say there is nothing more beautiful than a crucified Lord but who of us here are interested in revealing the parts of ourselves that we hate the most to anyone who might see it as beautiful foreign to do that requires Great courage and so we dwell in order to gaze in order to allow others to see my pain in order for others to allow me to see theirs and in so doing we then also ask these questions we inquire of the Lord there are four questions about where are you this is Genesis 3 9. where God comes calling and here's the thing God's in the room even tonight asking this question where are you where are parts of you that you've worked really hard to keep out of the sight lines of anybody else that you know where are you number two what do you want these are Jesus first words in John's gospel what do you want most of us like myself like I'm afraid to answer I'm like okay God if I answer the question just tell me that I'm not going to get the wrong answer I just need to know that I'm going to know the right answer ahead of time most of us have a hard time even naming some of the things that we do want because we've practiced so long keeping them buried because they're too tangled up with our anxiety and our trauma the third question can you drink this cup this is Matthew 20. when he asks John and James whose mother has just asked them for the right and the left seats on Jesus throne and that he's basically saying look if you're going to do this work if you're going to dwell if you're going to gaze if you're going to inquire if you're going to be the body of Jesus if you're going to be come people who create outposts of beauty and goodness in the world it's important to know that this is hard to do and suffering is coming and suffering is not just coming because people are going to do bad things to you which is true they're not going to like what you have to say which is true but it's going to come because you're going to do the hard work of peeling off the old ways that you used to live and that's really hard to do to say no to our addictions to say no to my violence to say no to my tendency toward Empire this is and my Empire I don't mean like becoming president of the United States I mean Empire like I have a little fiefdom in my own personal life that I'd like to have and the last question do you love me this is Peter talking this is Jesus talking to Peter in John 21 in which he asks this question as a way of getting to the reality that underneath Peter's response of yes of course you know that I do is Jesus awareness that there was something else waiting under Peter that Peter wasn't aware of yet himself that Peter himself had parts of his own story that were still waiting to be discovered Waiting by waiting for someone to come find him who hadn't found it yet in our work in our practice and what we are working to is I casually say try to export is this notion of creating confessional communities creating communities of people not just in our clinical practice but in all kinds of different venues where people have the opportunity to dwell and to gaze and to inquire and when people are willing to do this we discovered that it is in the presence of individual relationships in which people are being seen soothe safe secure practicing over and over and over and over again that outposts the beauty and goodness emerge and in so doing we're practicing for heaven Jesus makes the comment in the gospels there will come a time when everyone will have to give an account of Every Idle Word and I read that sentence and I'm like dang I'm in trouble I want to be like I want to be like one of the last people in line I want to see how everybody else does it so that when I get there like I can have all my answers at the ready and I want to suggest to us that our imaginations are so truncated by our trauma that even the way that I read that text makes it seem as if Jesus is still coming to kill me just like Adam and Eve thought God was coming to do in Genesis 3. he's only looking for a way to put before everyone all the ways in which I've not done life very well just like happens when I go to work just like happens at the cocktail party it's just like like all the other places in my life where these parts of me think that I'm not enough because I'm still looking for the other eight percent but what if that's not how that conversation goes what if when you come to give your account of Every Idle Word all those thoughts that you've had Jesus asks you and you say well gosh that was because of this and then he says well tell me about that what was that really about and what if he is curious instead of condemning what if he is on a mission to continue to create Beauty and goodness even in the inquiry what if his mission even in his Judgment of us is to draw the beauty forth from us just as he was drawing Beauty forth from what he saw in Genesis chapter 1. I want to suggest to us that a confessional Community model is just one of a possible set of ways for us to re-imagine with renewed imagination a world of beauty and goodness that God longs to create in and through us while he is transforming us to become the very Beauty at the same time you've been very kind thanks for your attention I'm done [Applause] thank you Kurt on behalf of Saint Paul and MBA we're grateful for your insights and we're excited to ask some questions before I do that this book is a one of the most significant books I've read in years and really encourage you to delve into it because it just gives further Vision to all that that Kurt encouraged so with the first question I would be curious as we seek to have communities of authenticity where we're known where we're loved and yet also have relationships where there's division where there's distance whether that be within the home or whether it be within a school Community where we want to have people thriving what would you say as you seek to cultivate a confessional Community what's what's a good first question to engage with that or engage with somebody where you know that there's distance but maybe even your own narrative you don't maybe not as even in touch maybe haven't spent as much time in your office of you know really understanding what are the things that you're up against just to start to have those conversations yeah so um I'll just say this first of all uh one thing that we tell people is that nothing that we do in a psychiatric consultation room with the exception of prescribing medicine nothing that we do in the psychiatric consultation room in terms of the conversations that we have with patients doesn't happen in the real world everything that happens in a Psychotherapy session in a group session happens at Safeway's checkout line happens in your kitchen your bedroom your boardroom what's different is that in the Psychotherapy consultation room we're just explicit about everything we're naming the things that are actually happening in the room not just about the things that are outside there we're not just talking about people and ideas and those people and those problems out there we're talking about what's happening between you and me right now the fact that we are explicit about things is important because one of the things that we do uh that is important is we we like to use these words that we are constantly in the business of moving from the imagination to the Incarnation from imagination to Incarnation what does this mean we are a very thoughtful imaginative people we have all kinds of ideas there are people in this room who have already had other thoughts about other people in this room I can guarantee it before this night's over and and you're like you're not trying you're trying hard not to laugh because you know if you do like you're going to be found out as one of these people so you're working even harder right you just I can just I can just tell but you see what I mean like we have all kinds of things that we imagine and it's easy for us to keep things on the imaginative plane and not bring them into the Incarnate plane but the moment that I start to to stop talking about something else and start talking what's happening between you and me we can actually do things that I can't do when I'm just talking in the abstract does that make sense and so when we talk about like what's a good first question I want to say it's actually it's not so much a question as much as an activity and that is that we invite people to begin to tell their stories and when if if I were to give you 20 minutes this is uh we we have what we call a storytelling liturgy it's actually a formal way that we have people tell stories we give them 20 minutes to tell their story and then we have some responses back and forth the whole thing lasts about 45 minutes and people will find themselves saying things naming things in their story that they've not told anyone because no one has asked them to tell their story this explicitly about a lot of things ever before and then when they do they find that other people find themselves feeling things in response to these stories that of course no one has ever said to them before that they feel because they've never told their story to anyone this process goes on and on and what we come to find is that so much when you think about our for example when we think about our online activity in which there's so much division it is completely imaginative it's completely in the abstract no one's coming into a kitchen and sitting down and having a meal and having a conversation with one another we're talking about people we're not talking with people and the more embodied we are and the more proximal we are with the people with whom we have great difference with whom we then start to tell our story and that story includes where did I come from and what was it like growing up in my house and how is it that I've come to be the person that I've come to be all the material none of which that gets included in my latest tweet this becomes the way that we begin the process of telling our stories more truly we said earlier that first we sense and then we make sense of what we sense and this is what the brain is doing 24 7. we're just sensing and they were making sense and then we sense what we've made sense of and then we make sense of that over and over and over again and what trauma tends to do is it leaves me alone to tell my story in the privacy of my own brain my story was never intended to be told primarily and only by myself the question is not what is my story the question is who are the people that are in my mind that are helping me tell my story as I tell it I can guarantee you you have a number of people who are in your life who are collaborative storytellers with you about who you are the question is who are they and how true to who you are really intended to be is the story that you and these people are telling together these people might not even be alive they may be your parents who were dead but they're still in your head telling you things about yourself that you still believe and the only way that my brain is going to believe something different is if I have somebody else in the room helping me to tell a different story about myself in real time and space not just giving me information about my story but giving me an embodied experience in which when I hear you hearing me and I have the experience of being seen soothed safe and secure not as an abstraction but because it's happening in the interaction that you and I are having right here and now my mind and my body finally have a way to reimagine things that it otherwise could not imagine all by itself if you just give me something to read take this home read this and you'll be better that's not how the brain most durably builds hope it most durably builds hope in the presence of people sometimes who are not like me who are helping me tell my story very differently this we would say is what Jesus does the gospel comes and reimagines for us what the story of the world really is in the face of all of us who are telling the story in ways that are only broken okay how was that bad enough that good yeah so we're gonna open up for question and answer you can come along the aisles and and line up we do have three guidelines uh there will be lots of Shame if you break the guidelines um and we'll follow Kurt's alliteration of the Three B's um be brief be civil and be a question all right we'll open up um so you can come up who wants to be the first one this is like the most enjoyable time where everybody's waiting to see who's going to be the first person to come to the front and do that so I'd like to hear your story when you had to face yourself at its most difficult time he's a ringer [Applause] man you people don't mess around uh my story in two minutes I'm the fourth of four Sons my parents were 45 when I was born my brothers were 18 11 and 18 16 and 11 when I was born my oldest brother went off to college I was born a week later he came out of Thanksgiving and said what is this my father died when I was 17. I've lost all three brothers to cancer my mother was extraordinarily anxious when in 1962 you're pregnant and you're 45 you're anxious you're worried so before anything else I was a source of anxiety and in many respects we might say through epigenetic downloading I've lived without for my entire life there are parts of me that are perennially anxious they worry that I'm not getting it right that worry um that are convinced that I'm the dullest pencil in the Box there are parts of me that even now are worried that like whatever it is the case you didn't get a five-star talk for me tonight I met Jesus when I was 13 at a church camp and by the time that fall rolled around I was in the middle of an existential crisis that whacks and Wane for 20 years I have had friendships that have come to find me over the course of my six Decades of life that have been unending and durable and have been willing to know all the parts of me especially the parts that I don't want to know about myself and those friendships my wife not the least but also my kids have been transformational because they have all collectively been the body of Jesus for me I'm a professional Center as I said earlier today I think that if you're good at something you've been doing it for a long time you can call yourself a pro uh uh I'll stop with that for now [Applause] every other question should be easy hi hi I've heard you talk a lot about shame and how evil uses it for Destruction which I've experienced yeah so you're right um I've also the shape has God has used that to show me my son show me boundaries that are necessary in a relationship um so can I don't know how to put words to that can Shane be seen or described as a kindness or a blessing but from the Lord right so another way to put this if I can if I'm you tell me if I'm getting this right like is there is there a way that shame is actually helpful and effective in the world is that fair to say Yeah in the answer is absolutely yes or resounding yes important to know that when you read the biblical narrative shame is there and we would like to say that shame is a signal that God has built into the universe the fabric of the universe to indicate to us that trouble is on the way to signal the problem for us and shame is not that we experience it the problem is how we respond to it and one of the things that didn't happen in the garden and that for the most part doesn't happen for us is that when we experience it we turn away we turn away from ourselves and we turn away from each other we turn away from God now one might you could you could have a long conversation about what was happening in Genesis chapter 3 how it is that there's a conversation between a snake and a woman and we don't hear anything from her husband this is problematic somebody's not coming for somebody in the middle of shame that I would indicate and I would suggest actually is happening in the conversation long before any fruit gets eaten there's a wounding that's taking place even in the context of the conversation kind of like where's the other eight percent we could go on and on about that but I won't but we will say this there are certain things there are behaviors that we enact as human beings for which shame is absolutely the proper response and its response is to help us sense and see that there is a problem part of our difficulty is that we are historically so disconnected from each other in the first place that when someone feels shame they're by themselves when it's happening anyway and they're going to do everything they can to make sure nobody else sees it and the more we work to make sure nobody sees it the more we Empower it to continue to drive us further into isolation what we need and this is how it is that when you read the scriptures so often when you talk about Sin you read the scriptures talking about shame at the same time far more often than it talks about guilt because guilt is far more technically seen as a legal issue shame is a neurophysiologic event that happens it begins as early as 15 to 18 months of age we're good at it we're practiced at it and when we experience it we need someone else to come for us and we need to respond to that and the response is to be able to say yes I sense this because this thing that I'm sensing is reflective of the thing that I've actually done and now you're coming for me is going to help me take care of this problem it's going to help me repent but even repentance even repentance does not happen on its own when we read the story of The Prodigal Son The Prodigal goes away and then he stops and he comes to his senses and what does he do he said he imagined something in his head about what about his father and about his father's place he doesn't just decide only all by himself he has to count on something that is in his memory about another relationship that can call to him and so shame is absolutely necessary in order to form us what's challenging for us and we we say this even in the confessional communities that we expect shame to have to show up and the question is are you going to stay in the room when it does in order for us to do the work that's that whole safety thing again like it's the restraint that has to come like were there things I have to do differently this is what repentance is I'm turning around and going in different directions and shame is a signal to tell me about when some of those things are happening there's extreme trauma but it doesn't truncate or your word will shatter the ability to imagine in fact it's the opposite what would you say is going on with that well I'm not sure uh what the exact what what exactly what you're referring to when you say it's the exact opposite I mean I think I think it's it's fair to say that human beings are remarkably resilient remarkably resilient there's all kinds of trauma that happens all over the world in which people are able to survive people are able to resiliently move through this it's not to suggest that trauma only has one outcome it is to suggest that even in the presence of trauma however there will be elements and parts of our imaginative process that when it comes to us then doing new things it becomes difficult for us now this doesn't mean it's that everyone is the same across the board there are plenty of people who experience trauma and who demonstrate with their life that there's a lot of goodness and beauty that they're creating even in the face of that we're really talking about what is it like for those of us for whom that isn't the case and what would be a potential antidote for that was a potential response to that so I think that there are people who can respond with creative Beauty and goodness even in the face of that and we see this in a lot of a lot of artistic expression we see that um you know we cannot give anything that we ourselves do not have and I have I have felt that to be true in work and in life it seems that uh rest and um there uh when I'm anxious I just exude anxiety often to others yeah but as a Jesus follower it seems like the the opposite is must be true that I have to at all times believe that I I'm able to give something that I don't myself have because of the presence of the spirit in our midst and in actually doing more than what I myself have and it seems like the flip of that is all is often true where uh I'm at least inclined to think that the you know the greatest evil that's ever been committed seems like it's all of that evil is not contained in that person but it somehow grows like it's somehow it's more than what you know I thought I was just saying that one thing but I've created this huge mess it's much more than what I had in my mind or hardness do so I'm curious if you could kind of reconcile those two things like how is it that we at the same time believe that the spirit is doing far more abundantly than we could ask or imagine and also evil is doing far more than we even thought we were beginning to do but also neurobiologically or interpersonally like we we have these limits to what we can provide and give and so uh let me let me just thank you thank you for your thank thank you for all your questions um uh I'm going to um uh just reflect on something that you said you said how do we reconcile two things and I want to just kind of pull the camera back and uh just be curious about it and and note that there are a lot of things that are a great deep mystery that we have a hard time reconciling would it be fair to say this might be one of those things like for instance I'm I'm someone who frequently wonders okay in this interchange that's happening in this confessional Community or in this Psychotherapy session or in the exchange I'm having with my checkout with the clerk of the checkout in Safeway like where does the Holy Spirit end and I begin would that be fair to say and when I'm feeling like I don't have enough energy left like where is the energy coming from the Holy Spirit and all all these kinds of questions that I would like to I would like to reconcile would that be fair to say and I would say the fact that I'm even asking the question is a reflection there is a part of me that needs to know the right answer to this I need to know where the line is and I need to align ultimately in order to prevent myself from feeling shame from not finding it and this is where I would say that most of the time when I'm having these kinds of challenges trying to reconcile things it is in I'll speak for myself it is often a function of me trying to figure this out by myself I'm typically when I when I say to my friends in my own Circle my own kind of confessional Community when I say this is where I am I'm trying to reconcile these things and they start to ask me questions about well what part of your own story is being activated here how is this not just about the Holy Spirit and so how is this not just about a theological question but how is this about other actually bigger things for you how is it that even the possibility that you're exploring this question is about God trying to get to parts of you that are still 8 and 10 and 15 years of age that didn't get to do their work when they were that age does that make sense and so I think we find that um you know I tell people behind every question under every question every question is a longing and sometimes that question is like how many cups of sugar go in this recipe it's that simple right but we might also say like I want to know how many cups are in that recipe because I really really want to make a cake that tastes good it's a longing for how the cake is you might say well that's not about a long I know it's about it's about creating Beauty and goodness it just has to have to do with a cake and so much of our questions have to do with longings that have been wounded by grief and the fact that we don't have the answers to those things that we can't yet fully integrate and that creates distress for us has a lot more to say about my worry that if I don't get this right there's going to be trouble in those moments I'm really wondering what is it and where is it that I imagine Jesus being and do I imagine him being able to be in the room with me and say like yeah we don't really understand this but like we're okay I'll stop with that yeah this is reiteration of psychology and theology here really very helpful thanks yeah so thank you um so there are a lot of successful people in this in this room I think and Community leaders and others and and many of us are good at image management we're good at um showing people we want to show us and show them and hiding what we want to hide and and you've invited us to think about not doing that right so very practically let's say someone is here today and they decide I'm gonna go to work tomorrow I'm gonna go home today I'm gonna do whatever I do and I'm going to decide to take that mask off I'm going to commit to that what's the first step very practically do you just jump in the deep end of the pool tear the mask off you know you sure yeah yeah it it's a great question I mean I I mean I do I'm aware that like you could feel like I'm setting you up to like to do that very thing like just strip and get in the deep end of the pool right you look like you're looking forward to that so um right okay so and and in the same in the same way uh and we I would say like uh it is true that um doing this work we and we tell the people who are in these confessional communities that we run in our practices and that are being exported and the people are doing in the community that are not part of the practice that uh this is very hard to do and we don't want people to think that um you again that somehow magically just telling your whole story all at once this is a thing that we begin and when we're going to continue with the rest of our lives um in in the confessional communities I'm going to get to your answer in just a moment but in the confessional communities we have this storytelling liturgy that I mentioned right and that is a process for that for each person who's entered it takes about 40 45 minutes to do that for each person but we say you're going to do that process but then you're going to be in this community and you're going to continue that process until you're no longer in the community for however long it is that you're with us and you move on or whatever it is like your story is something that you tell all day every day what we're doing in the community is helping you tell it extremely explicitly because the more we are aware the more I am attuned to what I'm sensing Imaging feeling thinking and doing the less on autopilot I am and the less on autopilot I am the less my brain stem and my right and lower hemispheres are not completely in charge of what I'm doing I can actually let my prefrontal cortex come to the party and reflect and make a decision in a way that's actually useful and so one of the ways that we do this is uh and in in both of the in both the soul of Shame and the Soul desire there's a bit of a template at the end of the books in which we talk about a model for how you go about doing this one way would be to say I'm gonna meet with one of my friends somebody that I trust right not just we're not just pulling people off the street somebody that I trust and I'm going to take 20 minutes and tell them my story I'm going to ask them if they would be willing to do this and I'm going to ask them to be curious about these questions that we talk about in the soul desire like where are you and what are you feeling and what are you sensing all those those kinds of questions um for the purpose of beginning to practice this this is not a matter of in 20 minutes I have to tell every one of my deepest darkest secrets right this is like uh when you have people who have been literally who've been starving uh you don't give them a full filet mignon dinner right you have to like Usher them back into a place where they can be nourished little by little by little by little and that's the same thing that we're doing here for those of you I talked about this at the school today for those of you who are I don't know how many of you are fans of the chosen I'm a fan and one of the things that you see in this online TV series is that Jesus has no uh he has no intention of moving his project forward quickly and of course it's irritating everybody it's irritating Peter it's like every like Chop Chop like we've got so many options for like Instagram like why aren't you doing this why aren't you letting us like move this forward um you know I I think that uh part of the difficulty for us is that we feel the urgency of our time so acutely that we have come to believe that we must meet it with a response that is similarly urgent Swift impactful and as it turns out Christianity was virtually unknown to the public eye for its first 100 years it was not known by the Romans on the public landscape these little communities these little outposts of beauty and goodness little by little by little by little my encouragement is for you to pick one or two friends and to begin to tell your story truly to be prayerful to look for the spirit to do work in that space and then we don't we don't have to worry about building an empire we don't have to worry about like doing this right we're just going to do this Faithfully and the more that we do this the more truly my story is told and this is what we come to find is that if my story is told more truly because you know more about my story I'm less anxious I'm less ashamed that means I am more willing to take the kind of risks to create the things that I've been waiting to create before the foundations of the world and these are things that I don't I may not even know that I want to do until you help me tell my story more truly and this is what I believe Jesus was coming to do with everybody that he meets he's coming to tell our story more truly and evil wants us to stop paying attention he doesn't want to pay attention to that it's hard it's difficult he didn't say anyone who wants to follow me come pick up your Tesla come on right this whole notion of bearing across includes what it means for us to tell our stories more truly because it's absolutely the case that the very thing that each of us want I want to be scenes who like I long for all that and at the same time the very thing that I most deeply and desperately want is the thing that terrifies me like nothing else does the whole notion of actually being seen is not something that you want as much as you'd like to think it is because once it gets here it will be hard for us when someone looks at us in the eye in these spaces that we are afraid to be seen if we're willing to stay in the room though everything is transformed is there a way to inspire your parents to see or soothe or you know parent up you know Advanced stage parents how much money is this answer worth to you you know one of the uh one of the questions that comes to us uh commonly is what are we supposed to do with the fifth commandment when I've had Parents that have behaved badly and perhaps even continue to behave badly we take care of a lot of people who are in their 20s 30s 40s 50s and whose parents are having a hard time being adults now at the same time we have to acknowledge that we live in a culture increasingly that wants to uh and we have to have to be careful about this let's talk with some folks last week uh parents who were actually people that I know um that are working really really hard at being people of Integrity as parents they want to like if there are things that they and their adult kids if they if they want to work some things out with their adult because they're like at the ready they want to talk about they want to do and these are parents who are doing their own work and uh their kids won't have anything to do with them because if the parents don't understand and see life exactly as their adult children see it then their parents are not seeing life the way it actually is and this is problematic because we live in a culture that is making it increasingly difficult for people to live in the real world so these are two different problems but they're related and uh for those folks who might be in maybe well I'll just say someone who might be in your shoes for example um I I like to say that until and or less our parents are medically or psychiatrically impaired and are unable to do what they need to do they are always to be the parents it is always their job to be the initiators in relationships it's always their job to be curious now sometimes they do that and and the adult and the kids like don't respond and that's a suffering for the parents when kids go to their parents and say gosh I'd like to like have some conversation about this and parents aren't responding I will say eventually you're going to learn like well how dry is the well and how many times do you want to put your bucket down that dry well and as such there's nothing that you as a child can do to get your parent to do what you need them to do any more than it was than you had then you had the chance to do it like when you were six what I would say is that uh you know even even for those of us you know we we say that like the true sign of maturity is when we are able to forgive our parents true sign of maturity and to be able to forgive also includes our capacity to name effectively what it is that we need to forgive our parents for we have to name those things not to throw them under the bus not to criticize them no it's not to condemn them it is to name what has been true about my story and then to not hold them responsible for my emotional well-being and my capacity to begin to do that requires that I'm also having other people who are helping me tell my story more truly here's the tricky thing is this even when you have found other folks who are enabling you to live honorably before your parents right we often hear that command honor your father and your parent oh your father and your mother it means really in the Hebrew like live honorably before your parents that's what it means to do live honorably before them so it may go well with you in the land and what that means then is for you to be a person of Integrity of love joy peace patience kindness goodness all the things without holding them responsible despite the fact that the longing that you have for them to see you will go with you to your grave and there is a certain suffering in that for which uh Jesus would look at you and say gosh I know exactly what it's like to be you because I had all kinds of friends who I wanted to uh I needed his resources and there they were asleep the night before they killed me and so um I I think it's important for us to know that Jesus knows this and he's not worried about it and I wish you well I think we're done Kurt thank you there's a lot to think about there I really appreciate it a lot to wrestle with and one of our hopes for having these kind of evening conversations is that it will be a catalyst for new kinds of conversations to happen in a community and a friendship in a relational level so it is one kind of processes and digests a lot of what's been talked about tonight we encourage you to do that with friends and in community as we leave we want to leave both with thanks and with a few invitations right outside we'll be selling different copies of Kurt's book as he as we've mentioned there's he has three books another one on the way we have two of them outside anatomy of the Soul his first work is available in paperback form and the soul of Desire his most recent one is both out there as well we we commend those to you in addition want to extend an invitation to all of you here to join the Trinity Forum society which is the community of people which help further the Trinity forms mission of cultivating curating and disseminating the best of Christian thought and providing space for conversations like this one today there are many benefits in being a trinity foreign Society member including a subscription to our quarterly readings many of which will be outside and several of the ones that will be out there will be in some ways story forms illustrating a lot of what we've talked about tonight whether it's Babette's Feast Brave New World other stories which illustrate some of the themes that we've discussed it also includes our daily what we're reading list of curated reading recommendations and for all of you who are here tonight we will also offer a signed copy of Kurt's book of your choice when you join tonight or with your membership of a hundred dollars or more so hope that you will Avail yourself of that of that invitation in addition if anyone here would like to be a sponsor for future events and join the group of folks who are please see me see my colleague Molly wicker or Byron Smith or Sam Funk if you just raise your hands people can kind of see where you are or we'd love to have you join the list of sponsorships as both as Brad mentioned this coming spring is our 10-year anniversary so you are are planning an even larger event than normal and would love to have you be part of that and finally it's always appropriate to in with thanks with events like this as you might imagine even though there's a few of us sitting up uh here on stage it's largely people who are not on stage who made tonight work so I want to thank again our sponsors whose generosity helped make this evening possible thank our partners Brad Joya and Will Will Horton and um and your your team at St Paul at MBA thank you so much and in particular I want to I thank Langan Coleman at MBA and Jeanette Leggett at St Paul as well as a few volunteers that we've had from St Paul including Ashley larmer and Lauren Hester thanks also to our photographer Allison Akins our videographer Barry McAllister my able colleagues Nikki Sheffield Molly wicker and Brian daskem thanks above all to Kurt for your thoughts tonight say that again of course always it's implied um and finally thank you to each of you for your presence and your participation tonight good night [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

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Length: 81min 46sec (4906 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 09 2022