2013, Year of Thankfulness

Assuming we get through the next 48 hours, Tina has a great idea for the next 12 months:

Even when life is limited or painful, we have much to be thankful for.  Colour, sound, texture, relationships, beauty in faces and bodies and art and clothing, different flavours of food, the riches of the natural world, material goods of all kinds, freedom of speech and conscience.

God waits to receive our thanks.  Not because he’s a grudging giver like me.  Because gratitude does us and our world immense good.  So many influences in our society work to make us dissatisfied with what we have, when materially we’re phenomenally rich by comparison with most other people on the planet, and we’re spiritually rich in the riches of Christ.

I’m going to unilaterally declare this the Year of Thankfulness.  Join me?  Let’s try to thank God for more things every day, and marinate our lives in gratitude. 

The phrase 'aggressively thankful' has stuck with me from a talk I heard a couple of years ago - a church member who consciously looks out for things to affirm and praise in other people, and writes several notes a week to people to say thankyou. I guess for a few of us that will come naturally, for the rest it will be a spiritual discipline, but a good one. 

Tina's blog is Portishead Pilgrim. 

'How God changes your brain for the better'. Neuroscience and the Spiritual Disciplines

I once heard J John happily claim that Christians were brainwashed - because if you knew what was inside most people's heads, it certainly needed cleaning up. Browsing the Baptist Times (as you do), I stumbled across this fascinating piece, an interview with a neuroscientist researching the effects of spiritual practices and faith upon the brain.

here's a snippet

Can you talk about some of the evidence for how God changes your brain for the better?

Most of the current scientific literature shows that people who are more religious - often measured by church attendance or self-report - have lower levels of stress and anxiety, lower levels of depression, and better overall health.

Our more specific research has pointed to specific changes in the brain that are associated with being religious/spiritual, or doing certain practices. For example, we showed that doing the Rosary reduces anxiety in people.

And a meditation practice, called Kirtan Kriya, increases the function of your frontal lobes, which in turn helps to improve memory and reduce anxiety. Of course, there are examples in which religion and spirituality can be bad for people, but that is also my hope to help identify the potential problems so that they can be avoided and turned into something more positive.'

I'd be intrigued to know more about whether it's practices, beliefs, or a combination, which makes the most difference. The examples above are all in religious practice: prayer, churchgoing etc., rather than in the sets of beliefs which people hold.

Being in the more word-based, left-brain Protestant stream of things, we're less into practice and more into creedal truth. But an increasing number of writers (Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, John Ortberg) have pointed out the dramatic gap between knowledge and character which exists in many Western Christians, and called for a revival in spiritual practice - the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, confession, solitude etc. - as the means of grace for God to change us more into Christlikeness. It now looks as if this is backed up by science, as well as theology.