Life Model bites

Every time I want to explain to somebody what the Life Model is about, I realize that there are so many aspects to it, that is is nearly impossible to explain all of them at once. In addition, they are so interrelated that it is sometimes hard to understand one, without understanding the other one. It’s only over time that I started to understand and appreciate the different aspects, but probably I am not yet done.

The subtitle of the Life Model book is of course a good starter: “Living from the heart Jesus gave you.” The Life Model is about living out who we were meant to be. What does it take to really be the person God has created us to be? In a way, all the other aspects – mentioned in the book, addressed in the Munchies CD teaching, taught and practiced at Thrive conferences and in Thriving classes – flow out of this. But as I said, there are many different aspects and it is easy to lose the overview.

In one of the recent webinars at Deeper Walk International (already mentioned here), Jim Wilder gave the following summary of the main characteristics of the Life Model:

• Multigenerational community
• Immanuel lifestyle
• Relational brain skill training

That’s a great summary.

Nevertheless, there are many subtopics that are essential for understanding even these points. This gave me the idea to try and describe different aspects of the Life Model in ‘bite size.’ I want to do this in a new series – called “Life Model bites.” I will try to post once a week Monday or Tuesday, but I know from experience, that I won’t manage every week. So please be patient with me.

Caveat:
There is no guarantee that I already understood everything perfectly that there is to the Life Model. Neither am I officially associated with Shepherd’s House. But I am happy to share what I have learned from them, what I found interesting and helpful.

Relational circuits

This week’s revised Belonging class of the Life Model taught by Dr. Jim Wilder was again very insightful. (Post about the last class can be found here.)

The topic was Relational Circuits. These are things in our brain that can be on or off (or degrees of on and off). When they are on, there is no problem that is bigger than our relationships.  When they are off, our brain does not work well, our relationships don’t work well and we are not creating belonging and Shalom around us. We lose our peace and problems seem bigger than they are.

This was a real Aha-moment for me, when Jim Wilder mentioned the correlation between problems and relationships. For example, when a father yells at his daughter, the problem has become bigger than his relationship to his daughter. At this moment he no longer cares if he hurts her but completely focuses on the problem and his need to express his emotions.

When we suspend our relational functions, we treat people like objects. Expressing our feelings and emotions become deadly weapons. We lose objectivity and perspective. Our communication hurts others instead of creating Shalom. We become as dangerous to others as drunken drivers because our relational capacities are incapacitated.

Right away I remembered situations where problems had become bigger than the relationships and things did not go well. Just recently I had to talk with somebody about a problem. And as much as I tried I could not put myself in the other person’s situation in order to be less judgmental. I knew it was not OK, but I was unable to change it. Now I basically got the explanation of what happened in this situation. (Next time we will hear about what to do then.)

We receive a long checklist of indicators for when our relational circuits are off. Here are some examples that I found very telling:

• I just want to make a problem, a person or feeling stop or go away.
• I become aggressive in the way I interrogate, judge or fix others.
• I don’t want to listen to what others are saying.
• When others are talking, I already know what they are going to say.

All over the world people are drawn to those that consider relationships as more important than problems, who value relationships over problems. I certainly noticed that in different African cultures, that relationship are so extremely valuable – because they are their “social safety net” – and that they would not allow anything, things or problems to disrupt these relationships. My rationalization was that we in the West have social security, health insurance, retirement insurance, etc. and are therefore less depending on our relationships, and don’t care as much how our behavior might damage our relationships. But maybe there is more to it. Our ability to create belonging and whether our relational circuits are on most of the time, are related to our level of maturity. Maybe people in other parts of the world have a higher level of maturity.

So remember: “Our relationship work better when our brain (relational circuits) is running, and not just our emotions and our mouth.” (Jim Wilder) 

25 random things about me

I’m back after one week of involuntary internet withdrawal. It took me that long to establish an internet connection at my temporary home (for the next half year). During this week (without internet) I was tagged twice on Facebook with the meme “25 random things about me”. Now I will follow Tim’s example and also post it on my blog.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to Facebook “notes” under tabs on your profile page (if it’s not there, use the “+” to get to it), paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the upper right corner of the app) then click publish).

1. I am dyslexic and had a hard time in school with German and English, but was top of the class in Math. I consider it God’s humor that he called me into a language related work. This year I plan to learn my seventh language.

2. I can’t read a book or article without finding spelling mistakes.

3. I was not allowed to speak the local dialect as a child so my pronunciation sounded rather “German” (not Austrian), to the point that some Austrians would not believe me that I am Austrian, especially after 3 years at a Bible college in Germany. For Germans it was always clear that I am not German but Austrian. Talk about identity conflict.

4. I hate traveling but keep doing it a lot for the sake of God’s calling. I have lived in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Mexico, France, USA, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali. I have visited Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Zaire, Chad, Kenya, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Santa Domingo, Croatia, Greece, and maybe some more which I forgot. I even travelled three times to Eastern Europe as Bible smuggler before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

5. My original training was in plastic engineering, as part of a technical high school, but equivalent to a college degree. I would have needed to work in this domain for two years to obtain my engineers title, which I never did.

6. I am fascinated by other cultures and love to observe and analyze cultural differences. I also love guessing where people in public come from and what language they speak.

7. I am an organizer and love logic puzzles. My love for whodunits probably falls in the same category.

8. I first need a framework before any detail information makes sense to me.

9. I got my first camera at age 14 and loved photography ever since.

10. I am from the tribe of “hunters and gatherers” – in the past this meant catching frogs, lizards, grasshoppers, and collecting stamps, coins, dried plants, books, song texts, poems, etc. – Now most of my collecting is digital: photos, music files, computer programs, song texts, articles, etc). And I no longer put dead mice in my colleague’s in-baskets.

11. Ten years ago I started painting watercolors. I have experimented with a few other painting techniques but haven’t done a lot in recent years.

12. I love all kinds of dancing and started teaching others to dance at age 16. I once opened a ball with the Lutheran Bishop of Austria, Oskar Sakrausky – he was a very good dancer. During a recent furlough I won two tickets for the Concordia Ball, the ball of the Austrian Press club, in the Vienna Rathaus (city hall). It was a challenge to find all the things (dress, shoes, accessories) AND a dance partner within three days but it was great fun.

13. During school I learned playing recorder, during Bible college guitar, and during a recent furlough I started playing clarinet. I did not get very far with playing the pan flute.

14. During the same furlough I took singing classes and even reached the high B. During the next furlough I learned to more use my chest voice. Regrettably I am better in singing along than singing solo.

15. I love musicals and grew up listening to West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Man of La Mancha, Anatevka (Fiddler on the Roof), Porgy and Bess which my father had on tapes – old-fashioned big tapes.

16. I have a large family because my mother had 7 siblings and my grandfather 12. One of my great-grand-fathers was a wood turner. During his journeymanship he travelled all over Europe mostly on foot – Dresden, Vienna, Trieste, Lyon, Paris, London, and eventually got married in Paris with a wife sent from back home. Another line of my ancestors goes back to the Huguenots from France who fled to Czechoslovakia and later came to Austria.

17. I love watching (and photographing) sunsets and other sun atmospheres and clouds. They can calm my spirit in incredible ways. Watching birds from close by touches my heart deeply.

18. I can be very curious. Which really helps with strange food – I have eaten porcupine, snake, bush rat, monkey, gazelle, elephant trunk, elephant guts, cat, giant frog (3kg! photo below for those who can’t believe it), caterpillars, termites, locusts. Elephant trunk is the finest meat and caterpillars with koko leaves in peanut sauce was my favorite dish in CAR.

19. I won a bike with three gears at age 14 in a youth traffic quiz. I had it for may years until it was stolen in the Netherlands.

20. For a real vacation I like to read a lot and swim, preferably in the ocean with lots of surf. A special bonus is when I also have a chance to do windsurfing which unfortunately does not happen very often.

21. I never stick to a recipe but like to change it and call it creativity.

22. I learned the hard way that maintaining relationships is more important than avoiding high telephone costs.

23. I am half-African when it comes to temperatures after living in Africa for 15+ years – I hate the cold, and everything below 26C/80F is cold for me, which does not mean that I like it when it’s too hot, i.e. above 32C/90F.

24. I think that there are no black people, not even in Africa, because even those called black are shades of brown.

25. I love worshiping God through songs and started expressing them through free style worship dance a few years ago.

At first I could not think of so many random facts, but after reading the list of several friends, my own list got longer and longer, until I had to delete a few.  Let me know if you have done a similar list on Facebook.

Joy strength

About two years ago I heard for the first time about the so called joy center in our brain.¹ It was fascinating for me to learn how important joy is for the healthy development of our brain and for the maturity of our character.² This joy center is especially developed when we enjoy healthy and secure relationships. Our joy center grows always when we perceive that another person enjoys our company, when our presence brings a sparkle into the other person’s eyes. Normally this happens completely subconscious and therefore cannot be imitated. This joy flow starts in our right brain hemisphere, is expressed on our left half of the face, flows to the left half of the face of the other person and then to his right brain hemisphere. Our vis-à-vis sends the communication back on the same path. All this happens six times per second and is amplified the longer we look at each other.³ Wow!

Shortly after reading about this I had two opportunities to observe this sparkle: in the eyes of one of our friends in the village and in the face of the 3-year old daughter of my colleagues. And I noticed how much this warms our heart. Since then I have seen it in many faces and always rejoiced how wonderfully God has created us.

On this background I started to notice how often the Bible speaks about the importance of joy, about the joy in the Lord. In Nehemiah 8:10 we read “The joy of the LORD is your strength (your protection, your protecting wall).” During the last year I have often meditated about this verse and understood in a new way, that it is probably our joy of being together with Him, no matter what our circumstances. This gives us the strength and enables us to overcome difficult circumstances. This joy strength makes a huge difference whether we experience something as suffering or as trauma.

I find especially fascinating what Zephaniah 3:17 says: “For the LORD your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty savior. He will rejoice over you with great gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will exult over you by singing a happy song.” Is there a better description of God’s joy for being together with us? God has this sparkle in his eyes when he looks at us – no matter if we are doing well at the moment or not, whether we are successful or not, diligent or lazy. He rejoices over us because we are his beloved children. From my own experience I know how difficult it is sometimes to believe and accept this in our heart of hearts. We are deeply influenced by our society that is so achievement-oriented. Therefore it is all the more important to remind ourselves that God’s joy does not depend on what we do (our performance or accomplishments) but on who we are.

This is for us a two-fold invitation:

• Be more conscious about bringing joy to other people by showing them that we enjoy being together with them;
• Increase the sparkle to God’s eyes by spending time with him, and showing him that we enjoy his company.

When was it the last time that you looked at the Lord with sparkling eyes, rejoicing in his jubilation about you and jubilating back to him?

Footnotes:

¹ Through reading “Life Model: Living from the heart Jesus gave you” of Shepherd’s House, CA

² These insights are a combination from pastoral counseling and latest research results from brain science.

³ This sparkling at each other is one of the most important nutrition for a baby. It starts to develop at the age of 3 months and reaches a climax at the age of 9 months. At this time they can smiles at their mothers for up to 8 hours per day. The fascinating thing is that this part of the brain never stops growing. Therefore we can always catch up any deficit in this area – through safe relationships with other people and with God.

Arrived

Our trip went well on Saturday, even though it got rather late. We already got off to a late start in the morning because Timothee depended on a friend’s taxi to get to my place and had little control over when they got going. Also, it seems that we had a lot of head wind, plus the drag due to 6 chairs and 2 sacks on the roof rack. We took very few breaks and even ate lunch while driving. Nevertheless, time got short and I had to drive the last leg after sundown, which is very strenuous. But I arrived safely, praise the Lord.

I was very thankful for all the things Idrissa and Maryama had already prepared for me:
* the fridge was switched on
* the clay pot and the water filter were filled with water
* the dust covers were taken off the furniture
* everything was nicely cleaned
* the dirty laundry had been washed and was sitting on the table (it seems that washed clothes should never sit on the floor, therefore the laundry basket has to sit on the table – this always amuses me); I even found some towels in it and did not need to search for them.

Yesterday was Sunday, but I did not drive to Konna for the service. It would have been to strenuous after the long trip. There were enough things that needed doing here.

When I got up in the morning, it was only 75 degrees. Brrrr – so cold. That got me the idea to light some candles. A desire you rarely have in this climate.

Shortly after that I hear some rattling noise in front of the house. Seni and a friend have come to fill up our water barrels on the roof, and are setting up the ladder. Normally they come in the evening. Maybe their father had heard about my arrival and sent them to make sure that I have water in the house.

First task this morning is to discuss lunch with the Idrissas. As I walk over to their place, I notice this unpleasant strong wind blowing. I completely forgot that this is normal at this time of year. I bring Maryama one cabbage and some pieces of squash for our lunch. Since I feel like celebrating my return, I propose to eat a duck. Idrissa and I go to have a look at our poultry. One idea was to eat the white cock, but since it is our only one, I refuse. They are not so difficult to get, but it is not so easy to have one that does not crow all the time, or fight, etc. Eventually we agree on one of the ducks. I also give Idrissa the vinegar necessary for its preparation according to their tradition.

After that we take a look at the garden. Some plants are growing nicely.
Unfortunately the chickens still manage to get in and have already ruined a lot. And the lizards eat the flowers of the green beans and other plants. Too bad, no lettuce. I had counted on it and did not bring any. Oh well, no salad then this week.

Then I take time to have breakfast. In between I get some visitors. Soumare accompanied by Jango are the first friends from the village to welcome me back. Since it is cold they refuse the usual drink of water as a sign of welcome. As they have heard about my accident, they also need to inspect the car. They don’t stay long since the rice harvest has started and there is a lot of work in the fields to be done. (I can’t imagine what it must be like to stand in cold water while harvesting. No wonder, so many of them get ill.)

A little while later Idrissa comes with his helpers to lift off the heavy sack from the roof rack that his brother has sent with us. Only now can I drive the car completely into the car port.

In all these encounters I realize that I am very happy to be back. At the same time it is tiring. So, I am all the more grateful that my energy levels are nearly normal, otherwise our reunion would be subdued.

I was gone for quite some time – everywhere I need to change the calendars from August to December. Several unfinished tasks lying around remind me, that I left for 10 days, but was gone for more than three months.