Well Being According to Gallup

In Well Being: The Five Essential Elements, authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter coalesce the data on what makes for a good life. From myriad studies and surveys polling populations in the U.S. and in many other nations, their best work is in summarizing how people are finding happiness in the areas of career, social, physical, financial, and community well-being.

Published by Gallup, it's typical self-help in that the focus is limited to whatever changes the individual can muster in order to move toward greater well-being. You would expect this when we are taking about health, job, money, and social life. Thus, I was a little surprised, when the book takes up the topic of community well being, even then it was all about my involvement in it, not justice or common wealth or harmony or shalom. It was more about how my altruism in civic, even church affairs, can raise my own sense of feeling good. But isn't altruism a little more than my feeling good about myself?

There is some drop off from other books in this vein, such as Now, Discover Your Strengths, and How Full Is Your Bucket? ; Rath has co-authored the later as well. Like these, Well Being provides a helpful online instrument called a "Wellbeing Finder," which can be used multiple times to note your progress in well being through time. There is also a daily resource to journal how the small changes you're choosing are improving your well being. Because so much in this book we have either heard before, or just makes good sense, it may be easy to miss the research that is truly helpful. In career well-being, I appreciated the emphasis on using a personal strength every day and finding a person at work who encourages your growth. In matters of health, I learned that even 20 minutes of exercise can boost your mood for up to 12 hours. In the area of finances, the theme is not about buying goods and services, but rather, providing experiences-lasting memories- for yourself and others. 

The social aspect of well being was interesting. Researchers have found that, not only our friend's happiness boosts our own, but a friend's friend's happiness does too. Even your friend's friend's friend's level of happiness has an improved positive effect (+6%) on our happiness, compared with an increase of $10,000 in income (+2%)! The authors advise to get six hours of social time per day (including online and emails), and spend more time with friends, people you enjoy. 

The book drives home the idea of setting certain "defaults" for ourselves that will equip us to make healthy choices. In the area of nutrition, researchers found that in order to eat a healthy meal while dining out, go to an eatery that has many, many healthy choices. Why? Because when fast -food drive-ins offer their one healthy choice, people almost never choose them but opt for the burger and fries. When you go to the grocery store, stock up on all healthy choices. Automated deductions from your pay check for savings and tax payments are financial defaults we can make to live under our means. When choosing an exercise or diet regimen, the chances of success are multiplied when "positive peer pressure" is the default. 

The book's appeal? To those who find the subject of well-being itself interesting, you will learn from how the good, solid data is presented. However, the well-being for the sake of well-being theme is tiring and tedious. Human wholeness and healing does not exist in the vacuum of facts and statistics from Harvard studies, and is not founded on entirely individualistic categories. In a world of so much social upheaval and suffering, this book falls short. It just doesn't help me with what I need most: transcending my own world to see, and even embrace, with healthy and holy compassion, the pain of others.

The Art of Pentecost: A Reflection

The descending Spirit upon Mary and the Apostles

Simon Haider, Descent of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit descends on Mary and the Apostles

This wood relief sculpture, courtesy of Vanderbilt University, portrays Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, the Sunday that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit. The story of Acts 1-2 describes what it means when the power from on high rests on the followers of Jesus. Mere disciples become apostles. They are sent out, to Jerusalem and beyond, to proclaim the good news of repentance and forgiveness.

The sculpture of the gathered disciples is a lesson that Pentecost is continuing. It is a picture of the church at prayer. To pray is to wait on God the Holy Spirit. God, who renews the face of the earth, is also the One who refreshes, remakes, and redirects God's people.

Pentecost cannot be a one time event heard once a year, like a textbook on ancient Egypt. That kind of reading can lead churches to reenactments of Pentecost, complete with readings in many languages, or dressing in red, the liturgical color signaling the Holy Spirit. Interesting, however, not much use when I'm too tired, bored, sick, depressed or disillusioned to pray.  To be sustained in a long and searching journey, I don't need more spectacle. I need to renew my strength from a Pentecost that shatters the walls I have constructed and the limits I have imposed on God, myself, and others. One that is over-abundantly supplied by the Lord, the Giver of Life. 

What remains for us because of Pentecost? How can it be that redirection comes as I wait on the Spirit in prayer. For me, waiting is listening, remembering the words of Jesus, quieting my mind, noticing small insights, blessing others as they come to mind. Continuing to forgive myself and others. I find endurance by asking God for it.  God, lead me to what is enduring and sustainable. What is a waste of time? What are things I need to wait out? Or act on? 

Reflection: The Ascension of Christ

Like the Easter accounts in the Synoptics, the Ascension narratives provide good soil for reflection. The larger part of reflection is asking questions of the various texts before us. An important question is: what do we find the disciples doing and what does that mean for us? It is not, which one do we like or prefer, but, how does each teach us about discipleship after the Ascension. 

Luke- Acts

Luke 24:52-53

And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Acts 1: 10-11

While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

What I find in Acts is an elaboration of Luke. The disciples find themselves "continually in the temple blessing God." It forms a symmetry with the Luke 1-2, where the temple is prominent in the stories of Zechariah, Simeon, Anna and the Circumcision-Dedication. The disciples are filled with wonder and praise. They are staying inside the temple in one case, and in the other, caught gazing into heaven.  In what ways does hanging out in church (the temple) provide an examination of my preference for safety, insulation?  The deliverance (exodus) from slavery to sin and death challenges my preoccupation with the familiarities and comforts of church worship. 

Gazing in wonderment at the ascending Christ can hinder my communion with the living Christ. Wondering where Jesus is can prove as fruitless as seeking the living among the dead. (Luke 24). This is at least a comment on a sign-driven spirituality, one that quickly germinates in shallow soil but cannot be sustained for long without better soil and deeper roots.

Matthew 28:16-20:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

The disciples gather on the mountain to be commissioned as apostles, "sent out." Matthew is a missionary Gospel.  The distinction from Luke-Acts is the promise of a continuing presence of Jesus- forever. Maybe that's the reason Matthew omits the departure of Jesus, the Ascension. There is no waiting on the Spirit in a temple, or, wondering-gaze to find the whereabouts of Jesus. We are told to go and do, knowing we are doing it with Jesus. 

Mark 16: 9-20 Mark's longer ending includes, like Matthew's, a command to go and do, with the presence of the Lord: "So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it." 

Mark 16:19-20  As the earliest manuscripts do not contain verses 9-20, the writer must have had the benefit of early Mark as well as Luke-Acts, and Matthew. The disciples follow- through in Mark. Not only do they go and proclaim, but also, the Lord "works with them" and provides, with their proclamation, accompanying signs. 

Out of the these comparisons, more questions can be considered: 

1. What are the promises and pitfalls of the disciples' various responses?

2. What is the value of each account in telling the story of Jesus' departure (exodus)? The value in reading them together?

3. In what ways is my practice of Christian spirituality redirected as a result of the Ascension of Jesus Christ?

4. In what ways is the Lord absent? Present?