Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

Your Catholic Mind and Resilience in Crisis 

Episode 5:  April 3, 2020

Mindset.  

What is a mindset and how can I understand my mindset?  These are the questions we will be addressing in depth in this episode.  

And to help us, I’m inviting in Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, in his moment of crisis.  Here you go, you Lord of the Rings fans.  

In the Return of the King, the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series, Denethor is in an extremely difficult position    He is the leader of the kingdom of Gondor. And Gondor is one of the few kingdoms left standing against the evil Sauron his army of Mordor.  

·         Gondor in a strategic position to defend against Mordor.  But now the vast, powerful army of Mordor laying siege to the gates of Denethor’s castle and the situation looks very grim.

·         But let’s rewind just a bit.  Who is Denethor?  And what was his mindset?

Denethor is 

·         Hardheaded, traditional, old-fashioned

·         a grim political realist – pessimistic

·         lonely – his wife has long since died

·         Self-reliant -- Denethor relies on his own resources to resist the powerful evil ruler  Sauron.  .  

·         Denethor is a father of two sons.  

·         Beloved Elder son Boromir has died

o   This increasing his distance, bitterness and detachment

·         secretly uses a the seeing stone – the palantir -- to gather information,

·         Seeing stone or palantir is a ball of indestructible crystal, used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world, events from the past or future.  Some might describe it as a crystal ball.  

·         Denethor believed he that he could control the seeing stone

o   The seeing stone could only show him things that were true – real object or events, but 

o   The seeing stone is not a reliable guide to action – it’s unclear whether events shown are in the past or in the future, and it doesn’t show everything.  

o   Sauron biased what the seeing stone showed Denethor, selectively choosing real events and positioning the presentation to convey a lie.  

In the moment of crisis, the vast, evil horde of Mordor is arrayed outside the castle walls, and Denethor’s younger son Faramir is brought in on a stretcher – Faramir is pierced with arrows and looks like death.  

In the darkness of his hopelessness, Denethor says this to Gandalf:

Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis:  Carpe Diem where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. 

 

I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  Thank you for being here with me.  

 

This is episode 5:  Your Catholic Mind and Resilience in Crisis and it is Friday, April 3, 2020. We are one week away from Good Friday.  

 

Mindset is one of the four pillars of resilience in crisis for Catholics, and this episode builds on the last one, in which I introduced you to the four pillars of resilience.  These four pillars are critical for you being able to not just survive, but to thrive in times of crisis like this moment we find ourselves in now.  

 

Now we are going much more in depth on mindset.  

 

So what is mindset?  

Our mindset is the general position or attitude of our intellect.

 

Mindset captures how we habitually apply our thinking to the situations we face.  It’s the soil in which our cognitive processes grow.  Mindset is not our thinking per se – it’s the mental attitude from which our thinking flows.  

 

So here’s a simple example to clarify.  A person with a pessimistic and bitter mindset looks at a glass, sees it as half-empty and considers how he doesn’t really want water.  He wants iced tea.  With a twist of lemon.  He thinks about how he never gets what he wants.  A person with a providential mindset recognizes that four ounces of water is what he needs right now, and gives thanks to God for the gift of water.  

 

You can think of mindset as filter through which we perceive our situations, other people, and ourselves.  Our mindsets can range all over in terms of the accuracy of their perceptions and the quality of the thinking they produce.   Think about it.  You’ve seen this in others, when they totally misunderstand you in a situation.  And if you’re honest with yourself, you can probably remember times when your perceptions of situations have been really misguided by your mindset.   

 

And reminder of what we discussed in the last episode, our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking but also our behavior.  

 

It’s much easier to act well when we have a healthy mindset 

 

So now, back to Denethor.  Let’s discuss his mindset.  What was Denethor’s mindset?  Think about it for just a second.  Was it despair?  Well, he did move to mindset of despair but only at the very end.  Remember that mindsets can change and flux.  

Denethor was in trouble with his mindset long before the host of Mordor gathered at his doorstep, long before the battered body of his son Faramir was hauled back to him in the castle.  So what was the original problem with Denethor’s mindset?  It was this:

Denethor believed that he needed only to rely on himself.  

He was a man of great capacity, many talents and strong will.  

He pursued the good as he understood it to the limits of his strength.

But was self-reliant.  

He tried to carry out his mission alone and isolated.  And that mission was greater than any one man could face alone. 

None of us has the strength in our own will and in our own character to face our challenges without help.  

Relying on our own strength is a prescription for disaster.    

I empathize with Denethor – parts of me really want to be self reliant as well, want to be independent, not rely on anyone else.  That resonates with some of you as well.  So I get Denethor’s mindset, and the temptations he faced.  

There was another problem with his mindset.  

Denethor assumed he could master the palantir, the seeing stone.

He presumed he could and Suaron’s attempts to control him though the stone.  

He lacked intellectual humility in his quest for clarity about the future.

He was driven by fear and uncertainty – he had to know the future.  So relied on the palantir and succumbed to its misleading guidance.

Denethor wildly distorts the visuals he sees in the stone and assumes the horde of Mordor outside his castle walls means doom.  And so he despairs, ending his life by burning himself to death.  

Gandalf says this of Denethor:  'But his wisdom failed; and I fear that as the peril of his realm grew he looked in the Stone and was deceived: far too often, I guess, since Boromir departed. He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things which that Power permitted him to see. The knowledge that he obtained was, doubtless, often of service to him; yet the vision of the great might of Mordor that was shown to him fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.'

The overthrowing of mind that Gandalf refers to is the shifting of Denethor’s mindset from self-reliance to the broken depth of despair.  Denethor’s mindset finally broke his will, strong as his will had been.  

What do we know of mindsets from our Catholic Faith?  Let’s listen what God in Sacred Scripture has to tell us about our mindsets:

From Isaiah 55 – we will hear this in the upcoming Easter Vigil readings.  This is where God tells you and me:   For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Denethor’s thought were not God’s thoughts.   Denethor’s suicide flowed from his distorted, confused mindset.  Caught in his false certainty of doom fueled by his relational isolation, his pride, and his lack of any alternative frame of reference, Denethor ruined himself in his moment of crisis and abandoned his duties to his family and his people.  

So we can see how mindsets can shift.  Now, we’re moving to the action item for this episode.  I want you to recall a dark time in your life.  It could be during this current time of crisis, or some other difficult and dark time for you.  Be specific about the time and place.  

Write down what your thoughts and assumptions are when you are in your dark place?  Let’s get a good picture of your mindset when you are in a dark, problematic mode of operating.  What negative beliefs about yourself, about others, about God, about the future do you default to when you are afraid, depressed, or angry.  Or maybe your dark place is when you feel abandoned or lost, or unloved.  Whatever your dark place is write down your beliefs.  When I am in my dark place, I assume that  ______________________.  When I am in my dark place, I believe ___________ about myself and about God.  

 Let’s get these beliefs into words.  When you put them into words, when you speak these beliefs, they become much clearer, the come up out of your preconscious and into conscious awareness.  Then your intellect and will can work with them much more easily.  

Now some may raise an objection – but these beliefs are heretical, they aren’t true, I need to resist them!  Ok, I get it.  But the fact is that they exist in you.  They exist in you.  We all have beliefs and assumptions that are untrue, in our fallen state, in our fallen world.  And if we repress, suppress or deny them, then then those false beliefs can work on us in ways in ways that we can’t see.

  It’s much better to acknowledge in humility that we have these beliefs when we are in our dark places.  It takes humility to accept that we do have this mindset when we are in the dark place.  

 

Keep that handy, because in the next episode, we are getting into how to become much more resilient and health in your mindset.  

In the next episode, on Monday, I’m going to walk you through very practical ways to improve your mindset, to help you get it much more ordered toward the Good, the True and the Beautiful.  This is where the rubber really meets the road.  Don’t miss that.  It’s a great opportunity for you to learn critical information about yourself.  

We are also going to start exploring how mindset relates with the other pillars:  heartset, bodyset and soulset – our emotions, our bodies and our spiritual lives.  So don’t miss that.  That will come out on Monday, April 6, early in the morning on the east coast of the US. 

Here’s a shout out and a big thank you to Fr. Don Kania, who has put this podcast, Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem on LectioTube – thank you Fr. Kania.  Check out lectiotube.com for the best of Catholic podcasts, shows, and other media brought to you in one place from all over the web.  

Now I’m working really hard to get this podcast out twice per week, every Monday and Friday.  If I am supported by your prayers and the grace of God, I can do it.  So pray for me.  I’m praying for you.  

But I need something else from you, in addition to your prayers, a way you can really help me.  I never imagined how difficult it would be for this podcast to rise above the noise of the internet and be noticed. If you find this podcast worthy, I need you to get the word out.  Let your people know about this podcast – your friends and family.  Put it on the Catholic listserves, email your parish priest and office staff, sharing it with your colleagues.  I need you to help spread me the word.  I need you to help me spread the word so that others can benefit from what we have here together at soulsandhearts.com.  You know somebody or a lot of somebodies that could benefit from this.  So thank you for that. 

Don’t forget that you can come to soulsandhearts.com and you can find the show notes for this episode.

And that’s a wrap for today.   Let’s invoke our patroness and patron:  Mother Mary, undoer of knots, pray for us.  St. John the Baptist, pray for us.