Eldora<\/a>). I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, and heard some fascinating lectures and research presented by people who have dedicated their entire lives to helping others flourish.<\/p>\nMy favorite\u00a0by\u00a0far was a presentation called \u201cMinding Dread: A Psychoanalytic Appreciation\u00a0of Flourishing,\u201d by KC area professors & practitioners Dr. Earl Bland, and Dr. Scott Koeneman.<\/p>\n
I confess that I have not given a lot of thought, pastorally or\u00a0theologically, to the concept of dread<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the\u00a0sense of vulnerability about the\u00a0real\u00a0possibility of future suffering, or the sense that one is living in a time-frame of ever encroaching inevitability. After Freud, the most common manifestation of dread is usually\u00a0thought to be dread of death, annihilation, or non-existence\u2026 the price humans pay for consciousness,\u00a0an adaptation to the awareness of our own mortality.<\/p>\nBland and Koeneman\u00a0highlighted\u00a0the ways in which dread creeps into quotidian human life, dread that is perhaps less about final things than about relationships and the human experience of love and belonging. Stronger than the dread of annihilation for many\u2013and I\u2019m guessing for people of faith this is likely more operative\u2013is the dread not just of death, but of the loss of important relationships, a sense that the future holds isolation, loneliness, and\u00a0rejection.<\/p>\n
These\u00a0commonplace manifestations\u00a0of dread are anything but trivial, precisely because of their negative impact on human flourishing. As I listened to the list of common types of dread,\u00a0I cannot help but think that they are\u00a0describing the contemporary suburban cultural experience:<\/p>\n
\n- Dread of loss\/rejection<\/em> by others: this relationship, this job, this friendship\u2026 isn\u2019t going to last.<\/li>\n
- Dread to repeat:<\/em>\u00a0tomorrow will be just like today, and the day before, and the day before\u2026<\/li>\n
- Dread of shame:<\/em> at some point everyone will discover I\u2019m a fraud, & am not worthy of love &\u00a0belonging.<\/li>\n
- Dread of emptiness:<\/em>\u00a0not just life, but my<\/span> life has no real purpose, and is thereby devoid of meaning.<\/li>\n
- Dread of annihilation:<\/em> at the end of this struggle of life, I will merely cease to exist.<\/li>\n
- Dread of isolation<\/em>: I am alone in this world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Koeneman\u2019s case study served as a parable\u00a0demonstrating the ways in which people live with various types of\u00a0dread that although it is not necessarily debilitating\u2013it\u2019s not tanking our lives\u2013nevertheless, the experience is at odds with human flourishing. Koeneman suggests that this kind of emotional pain can be particularly pernicious when it\u00a0lacks a witness, or is not voiced (perhaps because it seems irrational to us?).<\/p>\n
Aspirations\u00a0toward human flourishing in contemporary American culture will undoubtedly involve a pervasive consumerism and pragmatic approach\u00a0to joy and happiness. The inevitable disillusionment following that big promotion, the bigger house, the products, services, and social status bought and sold in the contemporary suburban shopping center signals the dread that will ensue:\u00a0If this stuff cannot do what I thought it would do in terms of meaning, purpose, etc., then what the hell will? I\u2019m getting the sense that nothing will.<\/em> Enter dread\u2026<\/p>\nAn observation by Koeneman rang true in\u00a0terms of the experience of a clinician, pastor, or just a\u00a0close friend sharing\u00a0thoughts and feelings over coffee. When you sit with someone who begins to unwind their own sense of dread, say the dread of annihilation and emptiness, or a sense that\u00a0life is random and meaningless,\u00a0the first hurdle we\u00a0must\u00a0clear is the nagging thought that they might be right. It\u2019s that subconscious voice that says,\u00a0Crap, I wasn\u2019t thinking that before I sat down here. But what if what this person is saying is true?<\/em> If we are going to be any good in that relationship we will have to acknowledge the feelings of dread the conversation dredges upon our own soul. In other words, you have to do this work to do this work.<\/p>\nMy reaction to the paper was that human flourishing seems to always come down to a\u00a0willingness, or lack thereof, to conform our lives to the cruciform pattern\u00a0of cross & resurrection. To be invited to share in Christ\u2019s flourishing, we must first be willing to share in Christ\u2019s death. The last thing to die\u2013or more to the point, the hardest thing to kill off\u2013is our\u00a0egocentric quest to establish our own\u00a0significance. The Christian story says that the experience of joy is not available to those whose life is determined by a quest to make a name for themselves.<\/p>\n
Stanley Hauerwas says it this way: \u201cBy the grace of God we are invited to share in Christ\u2019s sacrifice, but such a sharing makes possible lives that are no longer captured by our self-deceptive strategies to secure our own significance,\u201d (Without Apology<\/em>, 127). Self-deceptive strategies to secure our own significance. If that doesn\u2019t fully describe much of our culture I don\u2019t know what does.<\/p>\nOn cannot secure one\u2019s own significance. Human significance\u2013indeed human agency\/ontology\u2013is a gift. It comes to us from God and is mediated to us through relationships (the self to God, self to others, self to self, self to cosmos). We cannot establish our own significance. In this sense, the dread of emptiness\u00a0can be\u00a0precisely the thing that will help us to give up the quest to establish our own significance, and to begin to receive our own significance instead. This is the wisdom of Christ, \u201cFor whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does any of this ring true for you? What is your most common experience of dread?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I confess that I went to a gathering of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies last week (CAPS) in Denver. My wife is working toward a master\u2019s in Marriage & Family Therapy. Over the years she\u2019s had to endure\u00a0many a boring theological lecture with me, so attending this conference\u00a0was a little payback (although, full confession, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":4171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1275,1274,1276,1278,1277,12],"class_list":["post-4167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-caps","tag-dread","tag-earl-bland","tag-freud","tag-scott-koeneman","tag-stanley-hauerwas"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>I confess that I went to a gathering of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies last week (CAPS) in Denver. My wife is working toward a master\u2019s in Marriage & Family Therapy. Over the years she\u2019s had to endure\u00a0many a boring theological lecture with me, so attending this conference\u00a0was a little payback (although, full confession, I skipped out one day to ski at Eldora<\/a>). I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, and heard some fascinating lectures and research presented by people who have dedicated their entire lives to helping others flourish.<\/p>\n