Guided Reflections

Reflecting on Stress

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A psychology professor walked around on a stage while teaching stress management principles to an auditorium filled with students. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the typical “glass half empty or glass half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, the professor asked, “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?”

Students shouted out answers ranging from eight ounces to a couple pounds. She replied, “From my perspective, the absolute weight of this glass doesn’t matter. It all depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute or two, it’s fairly light. If I hold it for an hour straight, its weight might make my arm ache a little. If I hold it for a day straight, my arm will likely cramp up and feel completely numb and paralyzed, forcing me to drop the glass to the floor. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it feels to me.”

As the class shook their heads in agreement, she continued, “Your stresses and worries in life are very much like this glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and you begin to ache a little. Think about them all day long, and you will feel completely numb and paralyzed – incapable of doing anything else until you drop them.”

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses and worries. No matter what happens during the day, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the night and into the next day with you. If you still feel the weight of yesterday’s stress, it’s a strong sign that it’s time to put the glass down.

Responding to Misunderstanding

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Share this quote:

“We often become a part of [or begin to associate with] what is called a resistance community, a network of persons with similar ideals and goals.  As a result of this involvement, we experience the fact that others—friends, relatives, family, members of our [physical] community—simply do not comprehend what we are about.  We feel misunderstood, alienated, criticized, even persecuted.” -T. Wiesner

Open the floor for people to share anecdotes of experiences or simply vent about times when they have felt misunderstood by “others” — friends, family, or members of our community.

Activity: Ask participants to write a letter to someone they feel misunderstands their call to service and justice work. This should be someone you personally know.  Try to express exactly what you want from them (Do you want to convince them, understand a little better, or just be more respectful?).  You need not worry if this is a realistic demand or not.

Allow about 10-15 minutes to finish letters and time to share letters after completion.

Raising Awareness

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Short introduction to the importance of raising awareness and how it connects to VIA’s Way of Dialogue. 

“Our activity in this Way of Dialogue is more often work for social change.  We are more interested than before in devoting our energy to work with the poor for structural change.  The emphasis is more on acts of justice than on acts of mercy on behalf of the poor.”

When we speak of the way of dialogue in the VIA framework, we speak of a time where the people in communities we serve begin to share their stories with us. The problems that they voice are not often those that we once saw and thought to fix. As their stories become more familiar, we begin to join in some of their struggles, especially those struggles towards acknowledgement and recognition. A new form of service presents itself as we seek to promote the voice of the voiceless. Though we still work with those we serve on a personal level to address simple immediate needs, we also seek to work with them to address their more complex and long-term needs. On this, T. Wiesner says:

“We also become engaged in the struggle for social change.  This usually leads to involvement in such things as protest, boycotts, demonstrations, actions of resistance, even civil disobedience, arrest, imprisonment.”

Race and Privilege

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“White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
-Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

  • How do you see race play into your service?
  • What do you think you represent to others at your service site?
  • How does one work for social change when racism is so built and interwoven into society?

Describe your personal experience as a racialized person. Journal:

  • Where did you grow up?
  • What was your home like?
  • What was your grade school/middle school experience like?
  • Who were your friends?
  • What teams were you in?
  • What clubs were you in?
  • What were your family get-togethers like?
  • How often were you around people of your ethnicity?
  • How much did you think about the ethnicity of the people with whom you would interact?
  •  Did you have a few people of “other”-ed ethnicity in school/clubs/teams?
  • Were you an “other” in terms of ethnicity?
  • If so, what was that like?
  • How do you experience your racialized identity at DePaul?
  • How do you fit into the DePaul community?

Compassion Reflection Questions

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Must we simply recognize that we are more competitive than compassionate, and try to make the best of it with a ‘healthy dose of skepticism’?  Is the best advice we can give each other that we should try to live in such a way that we hurt each other as little as possible?  Is our greatest ideal a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of pain?

  • To understand the place of compassion in our lives, in what “radically different direction” do you need to look?
  • What would your service site look like if it were based on the ethic of compassion?
  • What would DePaul University look like if it were based on the ethic of compassion?
  • What would the world look like if it were ruled by compassion?

Unconditional Love

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  • What is unconditional love?
  • How have you experienced unconditional love?
  • Is it difficult for you to receive unconditional love?
  • When have you been dismissive of unconditional love and why?
  • Can you love yourself unconditionally?
  • When have you experienced love in service?

Quotes about love:

“I don’t think you can ever really love yourself.” -Lauren Parsons

“A grace given to you by something greater than yourself.”-Lauren Parsons

“Love what you do for a living.” Veronica Tinajero

“I can’t believe I love him so much.” -Brenda Salgado

What is unconditional love? “I don’t think it exists.” -Jamal Mir

“Forgiveness is a lot about trust.” -Sarah Ryan

“It’s easier to forgive than be forgiven.” -Lauren Parsons

“Unconditional love is like a weed that won’t die.” -Chantell Frazier

Understanding Loss and Death

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Based on the work of Ronald Rolheiser.

“This cycle is not something that we must undergo just once, at the moment of our deaths, when we lose our earthly lives as we know them. It is rather something we must undergo daily, in every aspect of our lives.  Christ spoke of many deaths, of daily deaths and of many rising and various pentecosts. The paschal mystery is the secret to life. Ultimately our happiness depends upon properly undergoing it.”

“Name your deaths”

  • Talk about the suffering that you have witnessed at your site. What has been particularly challenging for you?

“Claim your births”

  • What is there to celebrate at your site? Where do you find hope?

“Grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality”

  • How do you stop yourself from becoming overwhelmed?

“Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing”

  • What do you take away from your site, good and bad?

“Accept the spirit of the life that you are in fact living.”

  • How does your spirituality help you deal with what you encounter at the site?

 

Ronald Rolheiser, OMI is a Catholic priest who writes on spirituality and systematic theology.

Humility and Simplicity

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“The indispensable quality for good listening is humility…The humble person senses his or her incompleteness…So [s/he] listens.”
-Robert P. Maloney, CM
“Humility acknowledges that everything is a gift.”
-Robert P. Maloney, CM
Simplicity today: In some ways simplicity is not difficult to retrieve today… In a contemporary context… it can take many forms, some of which are suggested below:
  • Speaking the truth.
  • Witnessing to the truth.
  • Seeking the truth.
  • Being in the truth.
  • Practicing the truth (in love).
  • Integration
  • Simplicity of life.
-Robert P. Maloney, CM
Compassion also leads us to simplicity in our way of living. We begin to sense the need to live more simply, to let go of many superfluous possessions, to examine the way we live in contrast to, and often at the expense of, the way the rest of the world lives. The Quaker Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline has an insightful and practical chapter on simplicity. He speaks of three inner attitudes that characterize simplicity: to receive what we have as a gift from God; to know that it is God’s business, not ours, to care for what we have; and to have our goods available to others. Then he goes on to speak of the outward expression of simplicity and lists ten controlling principles that are excellent guidelines for developing a simple lifestyle. They are:
  • Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status;
  • Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you;
  • Develop a habit of giving things away;
  • Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry;
  • Learn to enjoy things without owning them;
  • Develop a deeper appreciation for creation;
  • Look with healthy skepticism at all “buy now, pay later” schemes;
  • Obey Jesus’ instructions about plain, honest speech;
  • Reject anything that will breed oppression of others;
  • And shun whatever would distract you from your main goal
“Each of these characteristics of the Way of Appreciation– experience, compassion, acts of mercy, simplicity of lifestyle–is important for spiritual growth toward solidarity with the poor.”
-Theodore Wiesner, CM

Positive Energy Reflection

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As a facilitator, read these statements in consecutive order for the group, pausing after each:

  1. I would like to invite you to take a moment and look around the room. Take notice of who is here. Who else surrounds you? In whose presence are you in? Who accompanies you?
  2. Now, secretly identify 3 people (perhaps 3 whom you do not know very well, or have yet to have a conversation with). For now I want you to hold them in your heart, we will return to this activity in a moment.
  3. I’m going to ask you now to please close your eyes.
  4. Looking back over the past week, or it could even be today, I invite you to identify 3 independent positive interactions you had with someone from which you felt good energy from, or maybe briefly developed a good connection with. Re-imagine and re-create that experience and moment in your mind. (Pause and wait about 10 minutes).
  5. Reflecting on these moments, how did it make you feel?
  6. What was the energy like in that moment?
  7. What made that moment have such positive energy?
  8. Bring that feeling of positive energy to the fore front of your mind and hold it there. Try and focus that energy to certain parts of your body as I read them aloud to you. Please feel free to close your eyes and concentrate on the words I am saying. (Read deliberately and slowly, giving space and time to focus attention to each body part intentionally). Feel that energy move throughout: your shoulders and your back. Behind your neck. Your wrists and your knees. Your ankles and your toes. When you are ready, please open your eyes.
  9. Now, I want you to recollect the 3 people you secretly held in your heart and identified earlier. Send them some of your positive energy that you have within.
  10. Feel free to silently say or send a prayer for them.
  11. Take a moment to think about, some concrete ways in which we can share positive energy. Especially with the 3 people we have identified.
  12. When you are ready I invite you back to this space, and feel free to jot down those ways you’re going to share your good vibes with this person and with the world.

The 100th Monkey

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By Ken Keyes, Jr.
The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.
In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.
An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.
This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes–the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!
But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea… Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.
Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.
But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!
From the book The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes, Jr.