Susan Allstetter Neufeldt

The Question of Faith

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 | Personal Reflection, Religion and spiritual practice | No Comments

I recently responded to the ongoing email discussion of faith at my church and decided to repeat it here. It follows my September entry about hearing Karen Armstrong.

In September I heard Karen Armstrong speak, as did many from the Society, about her new book, The Case for God, at the Marjorie Luke Theater. Armstrong, in her brilliant, thoughtful, and sometimes humorous way spoke to the issue of faith. She described the biblical origin of the word “faith” as coming from the Latin credo, from the words cor do which meant “I give my heart.”  It became “I believe” in the King James version of the bible, which meant at the time, “to prize; to value; to hold dear” and involved living in a particular way.  Until the late seventeenth century, faith meant, in most religions, living by the Golden Rule or its negative statement, “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do until you.”  It still means that in most religious communities around the world.

I felt greatly relieved that this had nothing to do with intellectual assent, which has often seemed to require my acceptance of a lot of opinions about religious “facts”, as if I would be more faithful and virtuous if I simply assented. As my husband Max has always said, one’s religion is captured by the way one acts, not by what one says.

Armstrong pointed out that living in this way is no mean trick. I agree. I have been working to live deliberately according to that rule in a very conscious way since September. I know, for instance, that I do not like being criticized or ridiculed or gossiped about behind my back, and that, for a clever person like me, is very hard to give up. I can even make it screamingly funny. All I can say to people I have offended, even without their knowledge, is that I am sorry that I slip up from time to time and that I am working on it. I am now at least quite conscious when I slip, and without mentioning it to the person I spoke of, I acknowledge it when I can do so appropriately.

As part of that endeavor, I have finally taken up a serious meditation practice—something I have occasionally tried for a few days or even a week—and focused on loving kindness meditation for 25 minutes a day. This requires focusing on happiness, health, peace, and safety for first myself, and then for someone I love, for an acquaintance, for someone I find difficult, and finally, for all living things, five minutes at a time.

Armstrong says that living faithfully, i.e., according to the Golden Rule, takes years of practice. It is hard. I would hope that those in my faith community, by my lights a community dedicated to living this way (our principles elaborate it), would support me in this endeavor.

Thanks for listening.

Tags: Faith and religion, Spiritual practice, Wisdom development

Hard work and free play: A prescription for wisdom

Friday, October 9th, 2009 | Paths to Wisdom, Wisdom, Wise People, Wise environments | No Comments

“My childhood was full of structured work and unstructured play,” wrote Shirley Showalter, former president of Goshen College and current Vice-President in charge of programs for the Fetzer Institute.  “As I look back,” she added, “that seems like a great combo.”  In fact, her succinct statement imparts the essential prescription for wisdom development: responsible work and free play that give rise to creative problem-solving and initiative.

““I was born into a Mennonite family where both sides of the family had been Mennonite for probably 300 years or more,” said Shirley Showalter. “I grew up on a farm, so I learned to work.”  She weeded and cultivated tobacco, their cash crop, and vegetables in the family garden. Additionally, while feeding animals and gathering eggs from the chickens, she milked cows twice every day from the age of ten until she left home at eighteen.  As well, Shirley looked after her four younger siblings.  Her labors were necessary to the family, as she was well aware.  Today Shirley continues to work hard with that same sense of responsibility towards others, in a manner consistent with her heritage.  Former president of Goshen College—a Mennonite college—she now serves as Vice-President for Programs at the Fetzer Institute, whose mission is “to foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community.”

I met Shirley at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, where she was working on her memoir.  Soft-spoken, brown-haired and brown-eyed, clad in a t-shirt and casual pants, she presented herself in an unassuming manner.  She managed not to let on to her fellow writers that she was an accomplished scholar and non-profit administrator.  Once she began to read her memoir, however, I was immediately fascinated by her writing and her story.  I was also intrigued by her Mennonite heritage, like that of my husband’s family from Kansas.  Shocked by her family’s cultivation of tobacco when my father-in-law’s first question about me had been, “Does she smoke?” as if that were the ultimate sin, I asked her about it.  She calmly looked at my nametag, said, “Oh yes, Neufeldt,” a Mennonite name, and then explained that it was the most reliable cash crop in that part of Pennsylvania. They were not to smoke it themselves, she added, but of course everyone tried it.  Later we had a long and involved conversation about the nature of giving, and I asked her to take my assessment and be interviewed.  Six months later we met by telephone to talk about her life, and her story will run through several chapters.

Shirley’s young life exemplified three elements that ran through the stories of the wise, elements that are critical to the development of wisdom.  Parents of the wise integrated their children into the family, its responsibilities and pleasures.  First, as indicated above, they expected their children to carry their share of family responsibilities.  By and large, having an important role in the family not only teaches the value of hard work but also increases a child’s sense of worth.  Expecting their children to labor at home, these parents also assumed they would be responsible about their school work.  Second, they allowed their children to play in ways they chose themselves.  It would be difficult to overemphasize the role of free play in children’s development.  “It is the only activity that directly prepares people for dealing with life’s unpredictability,” writes Hara Estroff Marano in her book, A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. “Delay play and you delay adulthood.”  Play also teaches children how to be with others in pursuit of a common task and enables them to experience failure and recover from it.  Creativity begins with imaginative play.  Third, acting on one’s own facilitates the development of initiative in seeking or accomplishing what one wants.  These three things, a habit of responsible hard work, the capacity to play, create, and learn from mistakes, and the ability to initiate action and relationships, are critical attributes of wise people.

Tags: Fetzer Institute, Industry and play, Wisdom prescription

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM BABY MAX

Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | Paths to Wisdom, Personal Reflection, Wisdom | No Comments

Having a nearly two-year-old grandson move into our home has changed our lives!  At 71 and 67 respectively, my husband and I had a quiet life until baby Max and his mother moved in for a long stay.  I am reminded that wise people continue to learn from every experience, and so can we–and in unexpected ways.

We have learned all the obvious things–to hang out in a purposeless manner, following the lead of a small boy; to play with trucks; to splash in the bathtub; to read stories with vivid pictures and small lessons; and never to assume we will get anything done at a particular time.

What I didn’t anticipate is learning again to be silly.  As a practicing psychologist and a professor,  I became increasingly thoughtful and serious over the years, albeit with wry humor on the side.  But lying on the floor and shaking my legs in imitation of Max, jumping up and lying down again in short order and then up again, dancing in exaggerated ways and giggling–these are big lessons.   It spreads into other arenas, meetings, evenings with friends, short speeches.  Thanks, Max, for all the fun!

Tags: Fun and silliness, Learning from kids

WHAT I LEARNED FROM KAREN ARMSTRONG

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | Criticism, Paths to Wisdom, Religion and spiritual practice, Wisdom | 1 Comment

Last night I had the opportunity to hear a lecture about her new book, The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong—a lecture offered free to the community in the junior high school auditorium. As those of us who have read her books or watched her on television know, she is a brilliant scholar who speaks about deep religious concerns. I was unprepared, however, for her warm engagement with the audience.

She reported that historically, people of all faiths had lived their religions and not emphasized doctrines until the seventeenth century, with a few exceptions like the Pope’s demands for conformity from Galileo. People recognized from the early days in the caves of Lascaux that there was a place for logos, reason, in understanding the physical, external world, and mythos, the experience of the interior and transcendent. Some of the confusion in Christianity comes from the translation of the original Greek word, credo, into English as “belief” as in the widely quoted Gospel statement, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.” Credo, in Greek, meant “I give my heart.”

St. Augustin, she explained, pointed out that if science and religion were in conflict, then new religious interpretations of scripture were needed. We humans made a mistake when we began to join science and religion, as Newton did when he decided to prove the existence of God. Joining the two also allowed people to see conflict between the two, as if they were along the same dimension of human truth.

The trick for us, particularly those like Armstrong who grew up as Christians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is to shift away from doctrine and back to practice. God, as a wise Catholic priest told me in our interview, doesn’t care whether we believe in Him. He—in a more transcendent sense that a gender term implies—cares about how we treat other people. Armstrong reiterated the words of Rabbi Hillel at the end of the tenth century, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man,” a statement that should guide all behavior. Being faithful means practicing this, Armstrong said, and living it every moment of every day. This, as those of us who have attempted it even for five minutes can testify, is hard work. Understanding religion doesn’t come first, she said. Practice domes first, and when one practices all the time, understanding of the transcendent inevitably comes. We are changed by practice, not by reciting words. I came away determined, when about to make a critical or cleverly sarcastic remark about someone, to ask myself whether I would want this to be done to or said about me and act accordingly.

I am reminded that all of the experiences that are essential to wisdom involve a willingness to work hard to progress along one dimension or another.

Tags: Spiritual practice

Facing Crazy Criticism

Saturday, September 5th, 2009 | Criticism | 1 Comment

Carol, a woman in my wisdom study, told me about her life as a girl with her mother. “My mother taught me things. When I’d have my feelings hurt by somebody, she’d say, ‘Well, think about them. Why would they say a thing like that? Think about what is going on there.’ She taught me that I don’t have to just accept somebody’s negative comment to me. I can look at the source and think about that.

Recently I encountered what feels like irrational criticism of me. Wise as I hope I am, I have had to think about it deeply. First, I had to think, “Is there anything I have done that would make the other person so suspicious and accusatory towards me? People seldom react negatively to us for no reason at all.” I could think of some small things but nothing to lead to the magnitude of the accusations I experienced.

So I take a lesson from Carol and think about the other person. Why would she say such things about me? What is going on with her? What is happening in her life that causes so much anger? It takes me a while to calm down, recognize the hurt in the other person, and forgive. I work on that.

Wisdom, I think, is not in having feelings about something. It’s figuring out what they mean and what we can do about them.

Tags: Crazy criticism

Curiosity Makes Life Easier

Monday, August 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Yoga seems to be the place where I can develop wisdom. I started in my mid-sixties and have struggled to become more flexible while recognizing that I’m not going to attain what my daughter can at twenty-nine. Living with those limitations and still expanding my possibilities has been a challenge.

Last week I returned to yoga class after an unavoidable hiatus for eight weeks—and learned a new lesson. I came with a sense of dread. “I know I’m not strong,” I thought. “I won’t be able to do a pushup any more.” “I’m going to hurt in every position.” “I will be too tired to hold a position.” Just the kind of thinking a wise person wouldn’t do!

Yet when I got to my mat, I decided to approach it differently. I chose to be curious. “What will I be able to do today?” I asked myself. As the teacher presented each new position, I thought, “I wonder what that will feel like. I wonder how far I can reach. I wonder how long I can stay like this.” I found it quite amazing to approach the practice with curiosity instead of either dread or determination. Wobbling on one foot in a balance pose, I was surprised to see how long I stood before I needed to put my foot down or fall. I discovered that one twist immediately cracked my back into releasing. I discovered that I need to do some weight-lifting to build up the biceps and triceps to protect my tender shoulder. I was surprised when our teacher told us to lie down for Savasana, our final resting pose, for a few minutes. In my curiosity I forgot to keep my eye on the clock.

I came home to continue my curious approach to my day. What will I learn from cooking in the microwave while the stove is broken? How much dust comes off the kitchen floor after four people have walked in the front door many times a day? What will I learn from reading the paper? How will I manage to keep up with the news as a good citizen and not be felled by all the bad things happening in the world? And biggest of all, what will I learn from playing with my twenty-month-old grandson today? It was an easier and more interesting day.

Accepting my Body

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | Personal Reflection, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

In church this morning, we had a lay-led service focused on the spiritual practice of yoga.  In any event, a man led the congregation in a few sun salutations in the aisles.  Then each of three women, one after the other, explained an aspect of yoga: mind-body connection, heart-focused meditation, and tantric yoga.  Again we were asked to participate in the activities, this time from our seats.

As I have grown older, I have increasingly been able to quiet my mind and stay calm in some challenging situations.  Perspective based on past experience allows me to recognize that all feelings eventually pass, the good and the ill.  I think I am accepting, but I don’t yet equate yoga with spiritual experience.

So as I sat in church with quiet mind, I stayed with my body.  I breathed, I moved my body forward and back, I moved my mind around my heart.  But when Karena asked us to join with our body and accept it as it is, I lost focus.

Despite the small humiliations described in this space October 8, 2008, I still do not accept my physical limitations.  Honestly I do not know whether my resistance is helpful, as it makes me try harder, but I seem to spend more time in physical therapy after a burst of improvement-oriented activity than I do in performing well.  I can accept that my eyes are deteriorating, that I may eventually go blind with macular degeneration.  But that’s something I can do nothing about, and though I take my prescribed eye vitamins, I consider how I will adjust if the time comes and I cannot see the sky and mountains, luxuriate with the New York Times, or read others’ facial expressions.  But the thought of learning how to get around with a walker or in a wheelchair I push away—perhaps because I began running at the age of thirty and improved myself.  I imagine that I could still do that if I am more disciplined and do different exeercises.

Accepting my aging body, and the mortality it implies, I suppose, is what I need to do.  I think that it’s good to try to improve my yoga within limits, but to acknowledge that my strength and endurance will inevitably deteriorate is harder to accept than my slowly sinking face.  Would a regular meditation focused on accepting my body help?  I have my doubts.  I heard recently that making repeated positive self-affirmations actually diminishes people’s self-esteem, and I’m not sure why lecturing myself on acceptance will do any more good.  I am not anxious to have the near-death experience that might make me grateful for my limitations.  So I continue along, perhaps meditating at times in yoga class.  And see what’s next–

Tags: acceptance, Add new tag, Aging

Questions Raised by David French regarding 12/3 post, “Maintaining a Balance. . .”

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | Paths to Wisdom, Personal Reflection | No Comments

Rejection as a Source of Strength

Thursday, January 8th, 2009 | Personal Reflection, Wise environments | 1 Comment

As I’ve been preparing to write my fourth chapter, “Coming to Terms with Difference,” I have been rereading the interviews given by those wise informants who clearly differed from their peers and experienced rejection because of it in their youth.  The wise handled their diversity in a variety of ways.  As they proceeded through school, many found others in high school or college who were similar to them in some ways and experienced greater comfort while retaining their differentness.  Those who were unlike others because of skin color or ethnicity clearly could never fit in with the majority culture.  Religious differences, particularly if they involved dressing according to religious strictures in adolescence, could only be discarded by losing one’s religious identity.  By and large, they did not give up their diversity by learning how to fit in.

As a youngster, I was scapegoated badly, probably because I was a year too young both socially and physically and yet visibly better in school than my peers.  This was not a winning combination in the late forties and early fifties, to say the least.  My mother spent a lot of time trying to make me fit in.  “Dress nicely, dear,” she said, “and don’t tell fortunes in the front yard with your Magic Eight Ball.”

By an accident of nature, when I hit puberty, I grew tall and slender with a Marilyn Monroe figure and pretty face.  At that point I was able to please people and fit in, especially since I went to a high school where intelligence was valued and we had our own group of academically strong kids.
I learned ways to get along and had all of the perks of pretty high school girls, though I never made cheerleader.  In retrospect, I enjoyed all of that, but I never learned to be tough.  I learned instead that pleasing people won me friends.  Being pretty and “nice” made my life easier.  I never learned to stand my ground when challenged.  In grade school I was miserable, and in high school I conformed.  Consequently, when challenged in midlife both on the job and in volunteer leadership, I really didn’t know how to cope.  Sometimes I just cried, and other times I became defensive, removing my eye from my intention.  Retiring gave me the opportunity to see myself more clearly and assert my strength in new arenas.

My sister, on the other hand, was neither so scapegoated as a child nor so good at fitting in and shining in all of her femininity as an adolescent, especially when she moved to Oklahoma City to a new school.  Now she serves as a successful Associate Superintendent of Schools in Northern California.  “You have to stop worrying about being liked,” she said, “if you are going to be effective, because a lot of people won’t like you if you are doing your job.”  She’s both confident and good at what she does.

I had always thought my sister had the tougher road through adolescence—and she did—but now I see she also learned to handle rejection in a way that I gave up when I figured out how to conform.  Through rejection she gained strength.

Added March 15th:  The benefit of realizations like this is that I see that I am no longer relying on beauty and “niceness”–which is not the same as kindness–and am freer to speak truth when it needs to be expressed.  I trust my mind and heart more and appearance considerably less.

Tags: Adolescent Popularity, Adolescent rejection, Feminine strength, Scapegoats

Do Organizational Wisdom Imperatives Apply to Family Wisdom?

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | Paths to Wisdom | No Comments

The Human and Organizational Development program at Fielding Institute put on its 2009 Winter Session in Santa Barbara, California, and I participated Monday as a panelist in a program devoted to organizational wisdom for three hours.  Our presentations were brief, intended only to stimulate discussion among the thirty participants.  We all generated ideas and comments for another two and a half hours.

A few ideas stood out for me.  To provide an environment that nurtures wisdom, certain structures need to be in place.  As I thought them over later, I realized that most of them could apply equally well for the development of wisdom in members of a family.  I share those ideas here.

-    Create a reciprocal community, not only within the organization but in relation to those in the larger    community.
-    Create a culture of respect among all those who work in the organization.
-    Encourage tolerance for different voices, and allow respectful argument with authorities.
-    Encourage continuing to discuss issues past the point when people make their initial expected responses.
-    Create a culture that allows risk and mistakes.
-    Encourage thoughtful reflection when someone gets stuck or makes a mistake.

Diminish
-    A focus on short term results
-    Crippling rules designed for everyone that cover only the behavior of the least ethical or effective people.

Leaders or parents
-    Treat members of the group with respect.
-    Reflect on one’s own mistakes, when appropriate, in front of other members of the group.
-    Model ethical behavior.

Tags: Family Wisdom, Organizational wisdom, Wisdom development