Emotions

I’ve been noticing that our recent staff Bible readings provide many examples of Jesus demonstrating a range of emotions, e.g. frustration with disciples, anger with the pharisees and law ‘obsessors’, sadness and grief, amazement, joy, peace, anxiety, love, the whole range!

Emotions are part of being human, we have been created with them. Rather than seeing them as good or bad, our focus should be on our knowledge and awareness of them, how we experience and we manage them.

It’s been interesting exploring this aspect of ‘Self-awareness” as part of the Growing deep capabilities personally and collectively. While most people are open to awareness of habitual ways of thinking and responding and finding new ways of ensuring our personal biases do not influence our decisions or interactions with others, when we start looking at our personal emotions, things get eerily quiet.

I know I was raised to cover up, deflect, push away, distract from anger, rage, grief, sadness or fear seeing these as ‘bad’ and to avoid at all costs, as opposed to acknowledging them, noticing the physical response, the source of them and then exploring safe ways of managing them.

LOVE is a fascinating emotion to explore. I am discovering the expansive nature of love. It opens us up, rather than closes us down, it takes our focus off worries and allows us to focus on others. It can also allow us to hold space for those we find hard to love.

The other day a leader shared that she was struggling with our grounding practice but once I drew our awareness to LOVE and how we experience it, she said it was transformational. Many groups she has in her life came to her awareness, people which evoke love in her, family, friends, community groups, etc. She said, ‘all my worries, thoughts melted away and I had an expansive warm feeling throughout my whole being’.

This is what God has created in all people, a space for God’s love to ‘expand’ in us so that we can flourish, and we can give and receive love to and from God and others.

It is so comforting to remind myself that God, who IS love, is in and with me, waiting for me to draw my awareness to God’s love which is unconditional. God doesn’t put people in boxes, the in and out group, us and them, worthy or not worthy.  God sees all people as worthy of love, even when I don’t. And it’s amazing to know that this love never runs out, is always accessible and helps me to manage all the other emotions I experience on a daily basis.

Lamentations: 22-23 MSG “God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They are created new every morning. How great is your faithfulness!”

Mignon Weckert

 

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