Show Notes
Episode 31. -- The One Essential You Must Have to Be Resilient August 31, 2020.
Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 31, released on August 31, 2020 and it is titled: The One Thing You Must Have to Be Resilient. The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust. Repeat. Absolute confidence in God’s providence. But to have that absolute confidence, you have to be like a infant or toddler, a parvulum if you’re a guy or a parvula if you’re a gal.
Jesus told St. Faustina, “The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them. I rejoice that they ask for much, because it is My desire to give much, very much. On the other hand, I am sad when souls ask for little, when they narrow their hearts”. (Diary 1578) Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska
Freewheeling
1. Up until the last episode Scripting – more like a formal presentation – some moments when I broke out and riffed.
2. Now much more natural, more conversational
a. I like this better anyway, to be with you
b. Getting used to not seeing you physically, but I can see you in my mind’s eye
3. I’m learning to trust in this process, that God and our Lady will be present and guide me, I am working on being small with this and having fun with it, much more childlike way.
4. That the episode doesn’t have to be perfect, and that it’s better to leave room for spontaneity and inspiration
5. Saves time – 6-7 hours, a lot of it fretting about wording.
a. I can put the time back into the community in other ways.
6. Thank you to the RCCD community members for the feedback – Jonathan, Martha, Ann, and John it helps me with my growing edge to keep trying new things.
Best Spiritual Reading Book Chapter Title ever -- Chapter 2 of Life of Union with Mary – Fr. Emile Neubert
Take Only what Applies to You”
Review: spiral back to Episode 30 – Why do we have so much difficulty trusting God – it’s because we are too grown up. We’re too big.
Eric Erickson 1902-1994
1. Emphasized social development rather than resolution of sexual issues
2. Developmental Tasks that need to be resolved in each stage
3. Birth to 18 month the main conflict and developmental task is trust vs. mistrust.
4. This is the most important phase of life. Shapes our view of the world, in addition to our personality.
a. Can I trust those who care for me, those who are near me?
b. Task is Hope – if this phase is adequately resolved, the result, Erickson said, is a sense of hope and confidence that relationships are beneficial, they are good. A sense of personal competence.
c. If successful in this, the baby develops a sense of trust, which "forms the basis in the child for a sense of identity." Failure to develop this trust will result in a deep pervasive fear and a sense that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.
Parallel in attachment theory – John Bowlby 1907-1990 psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Infants and toddlers instinctively turn to their parents in distress unless there is disorder – what Bowlby and Ainsworth found.
The formation of early healthy emotional connections to mother and father is central to identity development. Relationships are crucial, and challenged Freuds ideas about the primacy of psychic energy. Security is dependent on healthy relational bonds.
Erickson and Bowlby said that the first and greatest challenge, the first and greatest task in the natural human development is to learn to trust, to be able to trust in relationship, it’s the foundation for all other development. Gotta get that straight.
I argue that the first and greatest task, the first and greatest challenge in the spiritual life is to trust God.
There is one thing that separates those who are resilient from those who are not. Childlike Trust (particularly in God’s goodness and his Providence for me in particular) separate those who are resilient from those who are not.
We are resilient not because of our own efficacy, our own ability, our own strength, our own intelligence, our own resources, our own knowledge, our own skills, talents, money, possessions, but Catholic resilience depends on connecting to and sharing in the love and power and omniscience of God, sheltering under His wing. And if we are spiritually small in our relationship with God, when we fall, it’s not that far to the ground. We won’t get hurt.
Effects of the Fall – psychological devastation.
However the infant and the toddler will always be disappointed and wounded by the parents, because mom is not perfect, and dad is not God. Often this is totally unintentional.
Paraphrased From Nancy McWilliams (2011) Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (second edition).
Men may easily underestimate how intimidating they are to their young daughters; men’s bodies, faces, and voices are harsher than those of either of girls or their mothers, and they take some getting used to. A father who is angry seems particularly formidable, perhaps especially to a sensitive girl. If a man engages in tantrums, harsh criticism, erratic behavior, or sexual violation, he may be terrifying. A doting father who also intimidates his little girl creates a kind of approach-avoidance conflict; he is an exciting but feared object. If he seems to dominate his wife, as in a patriarchal family, the effect is magnified. His daughter will learn that girls and women are less valued than boys and men.
Oldest daughter Grace, married earlier this month, “the practice child.” Grace and me.
There are parts of us that think we are going to be annihilated if we are small, if we are vulnerable again. This is terrifying for us. Think about the differential 6 foot tall and 1600 lbs, 12 ft. tall. Able to lift a ton worse than getting in the wrestling ring with Andrew the Giant.
24 month toddler is less than 3 feet tall and about 27 lbs. , can squash the toddler like a bug. Survival is on the line.
I want to meet God on my terms, on my conditions, within my vision, within my understanding. We’re going to meet as equals. We are going to be partners, collaborators, like equally or almost equally yoked.
Trust is faith enacted in relationship. Repeat.
CCC 150 Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. Faith vs. works, reified to the realm of belief.
Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"
Faith without works is dead. James
2:26.
Matthew 9 17 And one of the crowd answered Jesus, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit; 18 and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him; and when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus[d] asked his father, “How long has he had this?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Trust is faith enacted in relationship. The father of the demoniac is asking for help to enact his faith.
I do believe, help my unbelief.
Luke 19:8…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth
Val Conlon: Trust in the Lord and in His mercy is the key to open the flood gates of His mercy. Trust is an act of our free will, which gives the Lord permission to act freely, according to His will. Our trust gives God the freedom to act mercifully. By our trust God can fulfil His plan and desire to have mercy on all.
“Most dear to Me is the soul that strongly believes in My Goodness and has complete trust in Me. I heap My Confidence upon it and give it all it asks” Divine Mercy in my soul # 453 Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska
Listener question/suggestion: This listener I’ve known for several years and since she is local, she was come by the Souls and Hearts studio to ask her question / make her suggestion.
Happy God Images
Call in leave a voicemail, email or text. Bring those questions in.
Goal is to get that trust throughout our whole being, every fiber of our being. That is an experiential process. Can’t think our way there, can’t study our way there. Advanced degrees. Defense of compensation. Corrective relational experience. So that our God images, what we know about God in our bones is accurate, it reflects who God really is.
Two responses to resist negative God images. 1) resist. 2) change the underlying God image.
It pleases God very much for us to work with these God images. This is counterintuitive, bringing things up. Example of kidnapping and disorientation. Extreme example.
From the beginning of time, God knew all the mistakes our earthly parents would make, all the sins of commission, all the sins of omission, great and small, every imperfection, every failing and shortcoming, and all the impact all those would have on us. He knew all the details of our upbringing, every trauma, every attachment injury, every relational wound from the most minor pinprick to the greatest harms we would experience.
He doesn’t actively will harm to befall us. Allows it – in his passive will, allows other to fail to be evil, but he has a plan to make up for every one of those injuries.
Mother Mary and God the Father to make up for all deficiencies in natural parent. Not just spiritual parents. He knew that parents would fail:
Isaiah
49:14-16 But Zion said, “the Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
My Ideal: Jesus, Son of Mary Fr. Emile Neubert Mary as our Real Mother, First Mother, Spiritual Mother .
Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombière
A lot of the developmental work of children is done by their parents, especially from 0 to 24 months. Much of it happens before the age of reason. The child can’t do it by himself.
Trust of our Lord in the flight to Egypt. Herod (murderous – infanticide) 429 miles as the crow flies. Strangers in a strange land
Luke
2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Psalm 138:6 The Lord is on high, but cares for the lowly and knows the proud from afar.
Smallness (humility) versus pride. “The proud I know from afar” because they won’t let Me be close. We have to be small in order to be near God. Example of the Pharisees versus the publican. God wants relationship.
The one thing that you need, the one prerequisite. Absolute childlike trust. Repeat. Absolute confidence in God’s providence. But to have that absolute confidence, you have to be like a infant or toddler
The trust of Blessed Faustina in Jesus was beyond all abandonment. Jesus said to St. Faustina, "your duty will be to trust entirely in My Mercy, My duty will be to give you all that you need. I am making Myself dependent on your trust" (Diary 548).
We have to have trust in order to love others. Where that trust is really matters. Do we trust ourselves? Our significant other? What is our anchor, our mainstay?
Eternal consequences
Doesn’t matter why we flee from God.
We will have to resolve these issues in purgatory, including natural-level issues. Nothing disordered gets into heaven.
Sneak peak to next episode – we will go back to the secular resilience literature and look at what it has to say in the light of these last two episodes.
crisis@soulsandhearts.com 317.567.9594 or if you are in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, the RCCD community, you can private message me or you can include your responses, your reactions on our discussion of this podcast episode
The RCCD community brings together people like you, people that are really interested in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm, and who are seizing this day, this moment as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth. We are adding features to the RCCD community. Today we are launching our first polls to be able to connect better with our RCCD members. Membership in the RCCD community is free for the first 30 days, $25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there, including the God Image Questionnaire, which you can take to help you sort out which of the 14 God images we have just reviewed in the last five episodes are most relevant to you. The God image questionnaire is up there. Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.
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