Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem

The Four Pillars of Psychological Resilience for Catholics

Episode 4:

It’s the late 7th century BC in Judah.  The northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed by the dominant Assyrians, 200 years ago.  The whole northern kingdom lost forever, 10 tribes gone, utterly ruined.  The little southern kingdom of Judah survived, two tribes left, Judah and Benjamin, but those two tribes are surrounded by powerful enemies, idolatrous nations running rampant.  

 The ruling Assyrians are brutal, even by the standards of the day.  But by this time Assyria is in a late-stage empire collapse.  Assyrian nobles are jockeying for power and position, with palace intrigues and dirty dealing.  Betrayals and internal power plays are the name of the game.  Insurrections are on the rise, civil disturbances are breaking out as factions consolidate under rival warlords.  The political situation was very dangerous and rapidly changing.  

 

The conquered peoples under the Assyrian’s harsh rule – the Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Cimmerians became increasingly restive and hostile.  These subjected nations, all much more powerful than little Judah smelled the Assyrians’ weakness like blood in the water.  They sharpened their swords and were bided their time for payback.  And little Judah, powerless, weak, vulnerable --  little Judah finds itself riding a red tricycle in a demolition derby.  And in 616 BC it happened, like rolling thunder, real rebellions break out from the simmering tensions. 

 

By 613 BC, the Babylonian army has broken free and with a vengeance is headed for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the biggest, most powerful city of the world.  The Medes, Persians, Cimmerians and Scythians all join in with the Babylonians and pile on.  It’s payback time for the brutal years of subjection.  The Assyrians have ruled for centuries and they are not rolling over.  It was a clash of titans.  The battle for Nineveh lasted months, with hand-to-hand fighting from street to street and house to house.  The city finally falls in 612 BC and the victorious armies sack, loot and burn Nineveh.   

 

Now we have a huge power vacuum.  The political and military situation was highly fluid, very unpredictable and really dangerous the cars crashed and burned in the derby and little Judah rode on.  

 

Cue the Prophet Habakkuk:  

 

I hear, and my body trembles,

    my lips quiver at the sound;

rottenness enters into my bones,

    my steps totter beneath me.

I will quietly wait for the day of trouble

    to come upon people who invade us

 

So why am I sharing with you the story of the fall of Nineveh and the words of Habakkuk?  Because the book of Habakkuk is all about a wild, tumultuous time, and there is great psychological wisdom in it.  Those wild, unpredictable and dangerous days are also a great rea-life historical backdrop to this five episode series on resiliency.  In the next five episodes I am giving you a mini-course on psychological and spiritual resilience in our own current crisis.  

 

I’m sharing with you the four pillars of internal, personal resilience in the face of crisis.  These are the four critical elements that distinguish among those that thrive in hard times, from those that survive, from those that don’t make it and fall into despair.  I call these mindset, heartset, soulset and bodyset.  I draw from the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview.  And I also draw in references from CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  

 

So four pillars of resilience.  What are these four pillars?  Mindset, Heartset, Soulset, Bodyset.  

 

I’m going to start with the most important pillar – guess which one it is.  Mindset, Heartset, Soulset and Bodyset.  

 

All of you who guessed Soulset – you’re right!  Soulset is Pillar 1.  But were are not starting with Pillar 1.  We’re starting with Pillar 3.  Yeah.  Pillar 3 is Mindset. Because people are more familiar with mindset.  

 

Pillar Three:  Mindset is essentially a frame of mind. Our mindset is the position of our intellect, and how we apply reason to our situation and our experiences.  For example, a person could have a pessimistic mindset or an optimistic mindset.  That person filters the perception of the world and our thinking through that mindset.  More intellectual, analytical people weigh mindset much more heavily in their decision making.  A classic example is Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series, or the character of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

Here’s the thing – our mindset is dynamic and changes – we can have a very positive outlook at one point in time and a very negative one at another point in time and look at the same set of circumstances.  Our mindset greatly influences not only our thinking but also our behavior.  If we give free rein to our behavior, it will partially flow from our mindset.  It’s much easier to act well when we have a good mindset.   And one more thing – our mindsets can range all over in terms of their accuracy of perception and the quality of the thinking they produce.  

 

Pillar Two:  Heartset.  Heartset is the dispositions or the orientation of our heart, the emotional and intuitive ways of our heart.  Heartset and Mindset can be in opposition.  For example, if a mother can have a solid mindset to go forward with cleaning the gravel out of her son’s skinned knee, while her heart breaks for him and doesn’t want to cause him pain.  St. Therese of Lisieux in correcting the novices under her charge felt great pain in her heart about reproving them in her heartset.  But she knew in a deep and clear way that this was right and true in her mind, her mindset.  Mary Magdalene was heavily influenced by her heartset in how she loved God with deep emotion..  Dr. Bones McCoy of Star Trek also was very influenced by his heartset, which was part of the conflict he had with Mr. Spock, who was moved much more by his mindset.  

 

Heartset is even more dynamic and changeable for many people than mindset.  And it very much influences our mindset – makes sense right, that our emotional states influence how we think.  

 

Pillar One:  Soulset.  Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul.  It is the disposition of our spirit, or how our souls is oriented.  Our attitude of soul.  It can operate independently of mindset and heartset.  

 

Our soulset reflects how we see God, and how we see ourselves in relationship with God, how we see God viewing us.  Our soulset very much depends on our level of security in our relationship with God.

 Now here’s the kicker – our soulset is also very dynamic.  It changes too, often rapidly for some of us.  Think about the orientation of your soul when you were in a spiritual high – how confident your soul was in those moments, the deep and abiding sense of well-being in God’s grace.  Now think about your soulset when you are in you are in a bad spiritual place.  How your soul is closed up and has moved away.  

 

Let’s be clear.  Soulset does not have to be about feelings.  It’s not driven my emotional states.  For example, in a period of desolation, one can have a very open soul, and be growing spiritually by leaps and bounds, very open to the working of the Holy Spirit – but have no consoling feelings and few or no great spiritual insights.  So it can operate very independently from mindset as well.  

 

Let’s go back to Habbakuk:   He struggles with God concerning God’s wisdom and righteousness of God’s providence in current events and the safety and security of Judah.  How can your ways be just or Lord?  The chaos and the danger of the world around him seem unexplainable and irreconcilable with God’s justice, let alone his love.  Habakkuk sees violence and injustice the prophet sees all around him. God tell Habakkuk that he is going to use the Babylonians to come and destroy the evildoers.  Why is God using the Babylonians to scourge Israel?  An even more wicked people? How can God’s holiness, omnipotence, omniscience be squared with all the suffering, pain, danger and calamity? 

Do any of those questions sound familiar.  Have you heard yourself echoing any of them as we face the virus crisis?

Habakuk is not seeing God’s mercy, love, and justice in his current environment.   Those things are not prominent in his mindset – he can’t get there from what he is seeing.   Habakkuk is also not feeling God’s mercy, love, and justice.  His heartset is not revealing mercy, love and justice to him.  But Habakkuk believes the word of the Lord.  He distrusts his own powers of mindset and his own intense heartset.  He relies on his soulset.  And what does he say at the end of his book?  He says this:

 

Though the fig tree do not blossom,
     nor fruit be on the vines,
 the produce of the olive fail
     and the fields yield no food,
 the flock be cut off from the fold
     and there be no herd in the stalls,
 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
     I will joy in the God of my salvation.
 19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
     he makes my feet like hinds’ feet,
     he makes me tread upon my high places.

This is a great example of an ordered soulset – Habakkuk believes without seeing and without feeling what the Lord has told him. 

Fourth, we have bodyset.  – this is basically how our body affects us, how our physical reactions impact us and our dispositions and inclinations.  We are embodied beings, body and soul composites.  Our physical bodies have a huge impact on us.  So our bodyset is the impact of our bodily states on us.   For example, if we are exhausted from a lack of sleep – that has an impact on us.  Obviously our bodyset is dynamic and can change as well.

So we have these four pillars.  Soulset, Heartset, Mindset and Bodyset.  But the funny thing about these pillars is that they are they are dynamic and can change.  That is what leads us to feel a lack of stability in our lives.  We’ll talk more about that in our upcoming episodes.  

Check out the show notes for this episode if you want to review the four pillars of resiliency.  In the next four episodes, we are going to go through each one, one per episode with lots of examples.  Please pray for me and I will pray for you.  And also share with other what you think they might need from this podcast and from Soulsandhearts.com.  Think of who might benefit from hearing this episode.  Really, I mean it.  You know somebody.  Send them the link. Share this with them.  Thank you again for being here.  Let’s invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us.   St. John the Baptist pray for us.