A Safe Place to Help Others (#835)
How can we help people young people navigate this season of uncertainty and address their spiritual hungers? Kyle and Wayne continue their conversation about Springtide Research's Report on Religion and Young People entitled Navigating Uncertainty. The book lists some valuable attributes for those who want to help others deal with crisis and spiritual hunger. These include: creating safety, grieving what's been lost, celebrating what's been gained, resisting comparison by making space for a range of emotions, getting together intentionally to combat isolation and focusing on the practical by offering concrete help. They also offer a process to unbundle and rebundle the valuable assets we have to our faith concerns, rather than take an all-or-nothing approach.
Podcast Notes:
Springtide Research Institute and their book Navigating Uncertainty
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I am so thankful for this podcast today. I am a fixer, and I have been really cognizant of if it the last year or so. Your discussion around the 20 minute mark really hit home for me, as I so much want to be a better friend and person, meaning I want to love as Jesus does, not get my “roll up my sleeves and fix this” satisfaction. And the segment about sharing our own experiences to the detriment of the person being vulnerable really has me rethinking how I respond to friends sharing with me (and asking them if they feel safe sharing). So thank you for this podcast, gentleman, from a perpetual fixer that wishes very much not to be, and is floundering to set those habits aside.
I’m in the middle of one of my weekly runs, listening to this podcast. There are many points I wish I could be in conversation about with someone, but nothing that has brought up so much… shock? – as when you (Wayne) so definitively dismissing body care and art exploration as part of a healing process in oneself that can place you better in the position of cheerleader, space-creator, etc., for younger generations. I was so shocked that I sat down on a bench still half a mile from my house to interact with this lol! I will tell you from my personal life story, art, creation, and body awareness have brought me boundless freedom. They literally saved my life. They (through God’s incredible design) gave me a new outlook on life. Again and again, God directs my life in this way, towards more creation and more awareness of the gift of my body. God reveals his goodness to me so often through a simple stretch, through a moment of colorful inspiration. These are times when I am truly in connection with him and his guidance and kindness towards me. Perhaps it isn’t so with you, and that to me means that God is even bigger and even greater than I know to this point. God is so incredibly huge. I hope you can leave a little more space for wacky ideas. Thing is I know over listening for 9 years that you eventually do ?
(From Wayne) I’m glad to hear I could help you take a break on your morning run. After 800+ podcasts, I’m allowed a blooper or two. I really didn’t mean to dis art or body awareness as aspects of our healing. We were just running out of time and I wanted to get to the last one. As a writer, married to a master gardener, we are full on the creativity of art as both a curative endeavor and a place where healing settles deeper in our soul. We are also people who work out and walk regularly, so it wasn’t the value of those I was dissing. My apologies, though, to any who thought I didn’t think those things important or don’t celebrate them with you in whatever healing and freedom God is bringing to your heart.