"Build Strength Through Our Stories"
Sunday, January 12, 2025

Stories are powerful and offer us lessons to help resource ourselves. By looking at historical figures, ancestors, and our own lives, we can remember the stories that have given us resilience and have helped us build community in challenging times. Let's come together to tell these stories and share the lessons we have learned.

Rev. Laura Shennum, Minister of Congregational Life; Sam King, Worship Associate; Liz Strand, Trustee; Linda Harris, UUSC; Reiko Oda Lane, organist; Shannon Warto, Singer

Eric Shackelford; Francisco Castellanos, Camera Operators; Jonathan Silk, Communications Director; Thomas Brown, Jose Matias Pineda, and Francisco Castellanos, Sextons; Carrie Steere-Salazar, Flowers; Linda Messner, Head Usher

LIVESTREAM
https://www.youtube.com/live/eMG0YSpzo3s

OOS:
https://t.ly/20250112OSWeb

PLAYLIST:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGWIRF9PinfwEr0s89S7ybLIupNeewPp5

If Spiritual Intelligence is a real thing how can it be measured? Cindy Wigglesworth in her book SQ 21: The Twenty One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence attempts to deconstruct the concept of spiritual intelligence into skills. She develops a model with twenty one skills in four categories. The four categories are: Self/self awareness, Universal Awareness, Self/self mastery, and Social Mastery/Spiritual Presence.

We will be exploring these skills in these four categories in weekly articles about SQ on davidgmarkham.substack.com every Tuesday and possibly more often.

Some thoughtful people have observed that Americans seem to be relatively low in spiritual intelligence compared to people in other countries. It might be asked, “Why is the US so low in spiritual intelligence?”

There are many factors contributing to low levels of spiritual intelligence and probably the biggest factor is a dysfunctional values hierarchy. In other words, what really matters to people, and how do these dysfunctional values influence their choices and decisions in life?

The US tends to be a very individualistic, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and materialistic country. If you ask people what they want out of life they will say, “To be happy.” And if you ask, “What will make you happy?” They will say, “To win the lottery.” And if you ask if you won millions of dollars in the lottery what would you do with the money? And they say things like “buy a house. Get a new car. Go on a cruise.” etc.

And yet, people will quickly admit that money can’t buy you love, or can it? Americans are very practical and they say things like, “Money talks and bullshit walks,” and “When they tell you it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing, you can bet your last buck it’s the money.”

And so Americans worship the Golden Calf and pay lip service to the virtues. The Stoics taught that what makes people happy is practicing the virtues of self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom. If you asked most Americans to define and describe the Stoic cardinal virtues they would have a difficult time of doing so with any clarity.

The first skill in Wigglesworth’s twenty one skill model of SQ is “awareness of one’s own worldview.” In other words, how aware are you of what makes you tick? Where do your beliefs, opinions, values, and practices come from? Many people when asked “What makes you tick?” will either act irritated or confused and say something like, “I don’t know. I guess it’s the way I was raised.”

We grow up in a family of origin with a peer group in a generation in human history where we are conditioned and socialized by our “psychological legacy” which is usually unconscious and taken for granted until one thinks about having or has children of their own. When one has children, thoughtful people consider to what extent they want to raise their children the same way they were raised or to do it differently? Some of the beliefs, opinions, values, and practices may have been good for them and they want to pass them on to their children. Other of those beliefs, opinions, values, and practices may have been bad for them, even abusive, and they say to themselves, “If I ever have a child of my own, I sure don’t want to raise them the way I was raised.”

Whether a person keeps their psychological legacy or changes it, is not the point. The point is did they become consciously aware of their psychological legacy and make conscious, deliberate decisions about it. If they do make conscious decisions about keeping or changing the beliefs, opinion, values, and practices of their psychological legacy, they have become their own person with a mind of their own not just going along with the herd. They have become captain of their own ship and master/mistress of their own fate. They have become aware of spiritual intelligence skill number one which is awareness of one’s own world view.

To become more granular with his idea of awareness of one’s own worldview we could put it on a scale of 0 - 10 with 10 being enlightened, totally self are and 0 being totally in the dark, not a clue, and 5 being, somewhat self aware but with plenty of blind spots because there's a lot about my functioning I still don’t understand and because I am not aware I have no conscious control over.

Another fancy word for this self awareness is “metacognition” which simply means what do you think about what you think? All human beings think, but fewer think about what they think. People who simply think often are what is called stupid because they are not self monitoring about their world view and don’t realize that their worldview can be modifiable, and change and grow to new levels of self understanding. They are stuck and even worse often adamant that they are right when in fact their thoughts are not in alignment with reality and Truth. It is written in A Course In Miracles, “Would you rather be right or be happy?”

Questions:

1. On a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest to what extent are you aware of your own worldview? Explain your rating?

2. What would it take to enhance your awareness of your own world view?

3. In what ways does being aware of your own worldview affect your functioning in terms of your own self management and your interactions with others?

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Renee Ruchotzke

I talked to my daughter, Kelly, who lives in Pasadena and was able to return to her house on Friday, 01/10/25, with her dog, Nick. She told me a few interesting things:

1. Altadena just two blocks north of her house burned down but her house and the immediate neighborhood was spared because the wind shifted as the fire advanced from Altadena to Pasadena.

2. She said that people are patrolling the streets asking people if they need any help.

3. She said the police were out protecting abandoned properties and while there was one case of a person looting houses, the person was quickly chased away.

4. She said, the support, compassion, assistance and kindness were ubiquitous.

5. She said she is in the process of cleaning up her yard and house and is very happy to be back home.

6. She said that people who work for Caltrans like she does who were evacuated are given 5 days of leave with pay for personal business.

I said, "It's interesting that what we see on the news is all tragedy and decimation but there are fewer stories of the strength and resilience of people to pull together and take care of each other in times of great need."

The moral of the story, at least for me, is that when great tragedy strikes, human beings instinctively, reach out to help and be helped.

My favorite story about Mr. Rogers, is the one he told about his mother saying to him, "Freddie, if you're ever in trouble, look for the helpers."

There are many helpers among us but with our amygdales attuned to threat, we, as homo sapiens, have a negativity and threat bias. But when the prefrontal cortex clicks online we find kindness, empathy, compassion, and the intense desire to help and assist our fellow human beings.

As the Beatles sang, "I'll get by with a little help from our friends."

As a Social Work psychotherapist one of the key components of my assessments and service plans is "who can you turn to when you're really down and out?" Of course, I don't want to hear, "There, really, is nobody." And then I realize that is why they have called for an appointment and they are talking to me.

As a Social Work Psychotherapist I am over and over again surprised that as human beings what we want more than anything is to have someone who is there for us and knows our fear, pain, sadness. We want what Alice Miller called "an enlightened witness." With all the deprivation and pain, our biggest fear is abandonment, to be left alone vulnerable.

It doesn't seem like much, but to be a non anxious presence and willing to become part of a person's moral support system is a huge gift, "precious", as Michael White would say.

"Freddie, look for the helpers."

Here I am. Where does it hurt? What do you need?

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