Tag: God-Hungry

This is a New Year

Today begins a new year and a new calendar2.jpg decade.

Amazing!

As this new year and new decade begins, I am reflecting on three characteristics that are very important to me. I want these qualities to be exhibited in my life. These are not recent values. These have been important to me for a long time.


1. Graciousness. I love to be in the presence of gracious people. These are people whose very demeanor exhibit grace. They are thoughtful and respectful in their relationships. They do not look for ways to take advantage of others. Instead, they are known for treating people right.

Many years ago, I went on a camping trip with a number of guys, most of whom lived in different parts of the country. We had been camping for a number of days and and were ready to return home. We decided that after we broke camp we would drive into a nearby town for a hot meal in a local cafe. At the conclusion of this meal, one young man volunteered to charge everyone’s order to his credit card, instead of asking the waitress for separate checks.

While we waited at the table for his credit card to be processed, we began reimbursing this young man with cash. For the most part, the guys were very gracious. They made sure that they gave him enough cash to cover the cost of their meal including tax and tip. One person asked the young man to count the money to make sure that he was fully reimbursed for the amount that he had charged onto his credit card. “We want to be sure that you get enough money.”

He counted the money and came up short.

One man in the group had not given him enough money to pay for his meal (much less covering the tax and tip.) This was not a situation in which the man had forgotten his money. Rather, it was an awkward moment because he apparently knew he had not fully reimbursed the young man and was not going to give any explanation. Finally, an older gentleman who was sitting nearby quietly insisted that the guy give the young man more money so that he did come up short.

Gracious people do not try to take advantage of someone else in order to save themselves money. In fact, gracious people do not try to take advantage of another for any reason.


2. Generosity. I love to be in the presence of people who are generous. Some people are generous with their time. Others are generous with their encouraging words. Still others are generous with their money.

Far too many people are less than generous. They seem focused on keeping instead of sharing. They live out of their scarcity instead of their abundance. Meanwhile, some people hardly ever, offer to pay for a friend’s coffee or lunch. In fact, they rarely offer to share in any expense. They will gladly receive someone else’s offer to pay but do not display the same spirit of generosity.

Suppose several families get together for pizza one night in someone’s home. Several plan to go to the grocery store after the meal to get the ingredients for a dessert that they are making that evening. Before these people leave for the store, several hand them cash to help cover the cost of the dessert. Generous people offer to help cover the cost. They want to participate and not just consume.

Generous people are not cheap. They don’t look for ways to avoid paying for something. Rather, they are eager to join in and participate.

This example involves money but there are often opportunities to be generous with time. Have you noticed that some people who are stingy with their time often leave the impression that they are busier than anyone else? Meanwhile, some who are generous with their time rarely call attention to their own schedules.


3. Learning. I love to be in the presence of people who continue to learn and take intentional steps to practice life-long learning.

During the holidays, I read a new biography on the life of Flannery O’Connor (written by Brad Gooch). As I read this wonderful book, I was struck not only by her commitment to write but also her commitment to learn. She read widely and deeply on a variety of subjects. She was interested in theology and philosophy but also birds and her peacocks in particular.

Meanwhile, some of the most boring people are those who long ago became bored themselves. Some people grow older and lose any desire to grow. Their bodies and minds are stuck in a recliner. They get sentimental about past years while they squander the time they have in the present.

Meanwhile, learners never lose their desire to grow and learn. They maintain a genuine curiosity about life.

Do you want to avoid losing your edge? Do you want to keep from being stagnant and stale?

Keep learning!

These three qualities are not New Year’s resolutions. Rather, they reflect some of my values for life. As the new year and new decade begins, I want to consider again some of these values which are so important to me.


Question:

What about you? What values are important as you begin this new year?

  

Ministry Inside.28

Each Thursday, I post some reflections especially with ministers and other church leaders in mind. If you are not in the ministry but are simply a person who serves God and serves people, I hope you, too, will take something from this post.

Each week, I am elaborating on some “game-changers” for ministers and other church leaders.


Game-changer #2 “Manage yourself. Don’t live in reaction to your past or to someone in your present setting.”


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How do I function when I am managing myself?

  • Managing myself is the capacity to take a stand in an intense emotional system. This means that I am able to think and articulate my thoughts, my feelings, and even to take a stand when others seem to be very emotional and insist that I think like them.
  • Managing myself is saying “I” when others are saying “we.” It is the capacity to think and feel instead of allowing yourself to be swallowed up by your desire to be like and accepted.
  • Managing myself is to position myself so that I do not become a part of a church’s polarization. I learn to take stands while I maintain relationships with people in the various polarizing groups.
  • Managing myself is to become a non-anxious presence even when the congregation or various people are extremely anxious.
  • Managing myself is to take responsibility for my own behavior and my own emotions rather than blaming others or the church.

Bottom line, managing myself is choosing to behave maturely. It is refusing to get sucked into immature behaviors and ways of thinking.


Ministers must put a premium on staying connected with others while maintaining a strong sense of self.


This means that as a minister I need to avoid two extremes:

1. One extreme is to know what you believe to be important but then to only really value the relationships of those who see things your way. Consequently, great energy may be placed on investing in relationships with those in the congregation who agree with you while making little investment in relating to those who don’t really value what you are thinking or saying at this point in time. This happens again and again in churches that are polarized. Instead of ignoring these people, I need to look for opportunities to do anything to bless these relationships.

2. Another extreme is to lose your sense of self as you try to have the approval of everyone. The problem is that some ministers seek relationship by trying to be liked and to win the approval of others. They are willing to say or do whatever will make someone “happy.” They believe that something is wrong if someone is not happy with them. If someone puts pressure on them or expresses displeasure, they react to this anxiety by becoming anxious themselves. As a result of this practice, they eventually lose their sense of self and the church loses a valuable resource.

(This post was written after I skimmed through Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve. I read the first edition in 1999 when it was published and just purchased the 2007 edition, which is very nice.)

Question:

Which one of these extremes do you lean toward? How have you addressed this tendency in your own life and ministry?


Refusing to Accept Our Contradictions

Sometimes contradictions seems to be all around us. Maybe you have even found yourself in the middle of one. Here are a few examples:

  • A lawyer who has no will.
  • A funeral home director who gives no thought about his own death and funeral.
  • An agent who sells retirement plans but has no retirement plan for his own family.contradiction.jpg
  • A medical doctor who constantly deals with the health issues of others but gets no exercise and is in poor physical shape.
  • A counselor whose most significant relationships are a mess.
  • A leader who only wants to maintain the status quo.
  • A teacher who has stopped learning.
  • A financial planner who mismanages his family’s money.
  • A nutrition expert who eats only junk food.
  • A minister who has no faith in God.
  • A child of God who does not love others.
  • A Christian who does not intentionally seek to follow Jesus daily.

One question I might ask myself is, “Are there contradictions in my life that are destroying my credibility?” Perhaps a blind spot that so many of us have in common is our failure to see the glaring contradictions in our lives.

Could it be that one of us has a contradiction that is so obvious that others cannot figure out how we could possibly miss it? What if you were to seriously address this in your own life?


Question:

Why are the contradictions in our lives so difficult at times to detect? Can you think of a time in your life when you saw a contradiction and intentionally took steps to address it?

  

On Resilience 5 (Guest Writer-Charlie Coil)

The following post is the continuation in a series by Charlie Coil. You can read part 1 here, part two here, part three here and part four here.

Part V: We Don’t Give Up and Quit–But Why? And How?

Forrest Gump sits under a tree beside his beloved Jenny’s grave mulling over one of the great philosophical questions: “Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right or if, if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s bot

h. Maybe both is happening at the same time.” We understand the dilemma here, don’t we? Those who try so hard to shape their own destinies discover lady luck insists on playing her part. We are both dust in the wind and beings without end! Making sense of why we keep getting up and living our lives is the challenge here.

resilience (1).jpgEnlightened moderns don’t like this both/and choice—either we’re immortal or we’re not they say. Only the weak-minded imagine there’s a heaven. We can make peace with our mortality if we just “imagine there’s no heaven”, no immortal soul, no ultimate destiny. I think this is why we lost the word “Jesus” in that old song. Today we sing, “Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Nobody knows my sorrow [instead of “but Jesus”]. Instead, the popular ethos is to just be your authentic self and have the courage to “roll with it.”

But, if the notion of human destiny is meaningless then so is human resilience. Bounce back to what, from what? If humans are cosmic accidents and resilience is merely evolutionary biology then why are anti-depressants the most commonly prescribed drugs in the world? In fact, why are people able to choose not to be resilient? The evolution of our DNA should have taken us far past such a modern predicament by now. Why do highly-evolved teenage brain cells “give up” these days so that they lose the will to live and suicide is soaring out of control among this age group? Aren’t we supposed to have evolved in psychic resilience by now? We humans are supposed to be at a place in our evolution where we don’t give up and quit for the simple reason that it is in our evolved genetic makeup not to give up.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish holocaust survivor and famous Austrian neurologist and psychologist. He is perhaps most famous for his aforementioned book, Man’s Search for Meaning and for his notions of existential analysis and logotherapy that he worked all of his life to explain. His experience in the concentration camps taught him that “[a] man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward another human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’[i]So, Frankl at least admits that humans need a ‘why’ in order to survive and thrive, but he apparently didn’t think the content of the ‘why’ or the purpose mattered much, just so you had one.

I disagree! At some point there comes a time when a ‘why’ must lead to something more than ‘just because’. Meaning must point to something beyond itself and hope must have its substance. One of the more fascinating (albeit tragic) causes of the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852), according to many astute historians, was less about the infamous potato blight as it was about the government’s “answer”. One well-known example was a public works road-building program that notoriously put men to work building “roads to nowhere”. When the workers learned this fact they lost interest in work and ultimately in living. They embraced a kind of fatalistic acceptance and returned disheartened to the tight quarters of their filthy government-provided workhouses and died mostly of disease.[ii]

You can see that we must address the question of why we don’t give up before we can talk about hownot to give up. For centuries philosophers and poets have recognized the need for some kind of plausible response to this question. Perhaps the oldest treatment is found in the Jewish Tanakh’s ancient wisdom book of Ecclesiastes. In 7:29, the wise teacher says, “See, this one thing I have found, that God made human beings ‘just right’[iii], but they have devised many schemes.” The idea here is expressed lyrically (perhaps accidentally) by Joni Mitchell in a song from the idealistic nineteen sixties. “I came upon a child of God / He was walking along the road / And I asked him, where are you going / And this he told me… / We are stardust / We are golden / And we’ve got to get ourselves / Back to the garden.” At least here is a popular vision for why we don’t give up. We are goingsomewhere—we’re trying to get ourselves back to the garden, never mind what you conceive that garden to be. At least, here’s a purpose, a telos for humanity, and therefore a clear reason not to give up.

The ultimate telos (Greek for “end” or “purpose) is only alluded to in the Old Testament. ‘Fear God and keep his commandments’ was the conclusion of the greatest wisdom book of Judaism. But again, why? Where is all this leading to? To God? “Yes,” says the rabbi. “But show me why I should do this? Why should I keep going? Where is all ‘this’ going?” asks the modern. Judaism clings to only half an answer: it is in the notion of a King returning that all ‘this’ makes sense. But, Christians believe that the King has come and shown us the way and will return again. That gives us all the ‘why’ we need for now.

Another of my teachers, Dr. Harold Hazelip, concluded a message on “The Destiny of Man” that aptly illustrates this enigmatic truth.

“The great value of the doctrine of the Second Coming is that it guarantees us that history is going somewhere. When the African natives saw the British construction crews building strips of concrete in the jungle, they were unable to understand this use of machinery, men and money. These engineers were building highways that did not start anywhere and did not end anywhere. But, when the Africans saw the first airplanes land and take off, they began to understand the meaning of the runway. Without Christ life appears to be a highway that does not begin anywhere or lead anywhere; but with Him life takes on a function of eternal importance.”[iv]


[i] Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Washington Square Press, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1963:127.

[ii] Mark Thornton, The Free Market, April 1998; Volume 16, Number 4. Available online: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=88 ; Christine Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1997); Austin Bourke, The Visitation of God?: The Potato and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993); Cormac O’Grada, The Great Irish Famine (Macmillan, 1989).

[iii] The word yāšār here means “right” or “correct.” That which is yāšār is straight and direct (Gk euthēs), not crooked and perverted (cf. Prov 8:6–9; Job 33:27; cf. Mic 3:9). If so, this conclusion harks back to v 13 [“Consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?”] From C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary. New Haven; London : Yale University Press, 2008, S. 265  

[iv] Harold Hazelip, “The Destiny of Man” in Discipleship: Vol. IX, Twentieth Century Sermons, Abilene, TX: Biblical Research Press 1977: 43.

Ministry Inside.27

Each Thursday, I post something especially with ministers and other church leaders in mind. If you are not in the ministry but are simply a person who serves God and serves people, I hope you, too, will take something from this post each week.

Last week, I listed a number of “Game-changers” for ministers. Each week, I will elaborate on one of these.


Game-changer: The very best thing you have to offer a congregation is the presence of a godly person.

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So many of us greatly underestimate the power of such a presence.

Far too many ministers put the emphasis elsewhere:

  • Some of us seem to think the best thing we have to offer is our formal education. Yes, there is something to be said for a person who has studied the Bible rigorously for a number of years. However, simply possessing a Bible degree does not necessarily mean that a person is being formed and shaped by the story contained in the Bible.
  • Some seem to think the best thing that we have to offer is our relevant, effective ministry skills and tools. It is important for a minister to retool and to stay fresh. However, simply possessing good tools and developing one’s skills does not necessarily mean that transformation is taking place. This is true for a person as well as a congregation.
  • Some may think that the best thing we have to offer is our experience, the accumulation of our years of “ministry success.” Unfortunately, such a perspective often leads to endless self-promotion that eventually overshadows Jesus and exalts the self.

The very best thing a minister has to offer a church is the presence of a godly person.

Yes, I know that ministers do a number of significant things in their work. Ministers preach, lead, offer care, and often share the Gospel in a variety of ways. However, there is no substitute for a minister’s godly presence in each of those roles.

For example, a minister may be a good preacher. He may handle the Scriptures responsibly. He may articulate the Gospel well as he proclaims the good news in a public setting. He may read an audience well and have a sense for appropriateness given the situation. However, there is something very powerful about preaching from a transformed life. There is something powerful about preaching when you know the Spirit of God has been at work in you. rearranging your heart/mind as he shapes you to fit the Gospel story found in the Bible.

Titus 2:11-14

11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.


Question:

If one’s own godliness (or one’s own spiritual formation) is of such importance in ministry, what might this suggest regarding a minister’s use of time?

Owning Up to Weariness

Years ago I was coming home from a meeting late one night. This particular meeting had not gone well. It had lasted too long. Some spoke to others in a manner that seemed curt, abrupt, and lacking in grace.

I was tired–very tired. I left the parking lot of that church building and began the drive home. I came to a red light and felt a surge of anger, disappointment, and exhaustion. I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. I slammed my hand hard on the steering wheel. The frustration wasn’t just with the meeting. Rather, this emotion was the culmination of numerous episodes of life that were draining and exhausting.

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I felt weary.

I suspect that you have felt this way at times.   

  • Weariness comes when you witness your friends go through marital turmoil and finally divorce.
  • Weariness comes when you know you should have thick skin, but lately one of your critics has really been getting to you.
  • Weariness comes when a particular person you have been praying for for months finally comes to church. Then, you find out that no one even spoke to her.
  • Weariness comes when you experience deep disappointment with one of your children. Your daughter is having an affair with a married man. Your son was fired from his job for misappropriating funds.
  • Weariness comes when you are in a congregation in which there is much strife and division. You are very tired of this.
  • Weariness comes when you feel disappointed with life in general.   

Sometimes weariness comes not as the result of any one problem or crisis. Rather, it feels like one problem is being stacked on top of another. Finally, you wonder just how much more you can stand.

Somewhere in the midst of this weariness, we are called back to a God who will not let us go.

(Psalm 63:1-8)

1 You, God, are my God,
   earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
   my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
   where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
   and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
   my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
   and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
   with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

6 On my bed I remember you;
   I think of you through the watches of the night.
7 Because you are my help,
   I sing in the shadow of your wings.
8 I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.

On Resilience 4 (Guest Writer-Charlie Coil)

The following post is the continuation in a series by Charlie Coil. You can read part 1 here, part two here, and part three here.


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Part IV: We Are Really Perplexed

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”[i]Ever heard that saying? What about this one? “Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.” The great Jewish philosopher, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides (1135-1204) is perhaps best known in pop culture for these aphorisms. They remind us that there are truths that we may find difficult and perplexing yet true nonetheless.

For example, we know instinctively that you can’t really give people resilience. And we also know that you can’t teach people how to be resilient without teaching them certain practices and skills. But, even teaching a man to fish doesn’t guarantee the man will not starve. No wonder Maimonides words above were penned in a lengthy tract called A Guide to the Perplexed (perhaps the greatest philosophic statement of Judaism ever published) which attempts to defend God and religion in the name of reason. But, using reason as your sole guide often seems to make things more perplexing rather than less.

Many philosophers of religion through the years have, like Maimonides, have tried to defend God and religion in the name of reason. Still, we are perplexed after we hear all the “reasons”. Maybe this also applies to discovering resilience in life. It seems so mysterious and unreasonable why some people are able to exhibit great resilience while others struggle to survive physically and emotionally? Sometimes Christians even try to short cut through this issue by claiming that some one-off conversion event in which the Holy Spirit comes into a person’s heart, miraculously instills resilience inside a person’s being so that growth is automatic and inevitable. This view seems specious on its face. Why all the instruction in the Bible about growth if the Holy Spirit just does it all miraculously and instantaneously?

I think with all these questions we’ve made the case that this is a really perplexing topic. Of course, really perplexing issues are the ‘stock and trade’ of philosophy. As a college professor of Philosophy, I am supposed to be about helping students make sense of or at least make distinctions about perplexing issues. So, here’s an attempt at a brief definition for resilience. I describe the notion of human resilience as a virtue or an identifiable character trait that can be developed over time. Using psychological terminology I define resilience as “flexible self-control, sufficient for survival with reasoned post-stress reappraisal”.

I’m sure I cobbled together this definition from someone else’s book or article but I can’t site a specific source at the moment. Note that I allow for using reason in the process of being resilient though I allow that reason cannot explain all that I see going when I observe resilience in another person. But, this definition at least allows for a realistic recognition of both human vulnerability (without resorting to Stoicism requiring impervious, invulnerability) and some kind of innate ability or strength capacity or responsivity as psychologists call it. Christians use the Latin words imago dei (image of God) to describe this innate or in-born “will to live” or “life spark”. So humans are both delicate and rugged, breakable yet reparable. Resilience is to possess both these features without surrendering to what one philosopher calls “malignant integral breakdown.”[ii]   

So, using Aristotle’s “golden mean” idea, we might say that resilience is the virtue that we aim for which lies somewhere in between an implausible invulnerability and an unhealthy system collapse. But, our Christianity aims far higher than Aristotelian virtue ethics. Our hope is found not in mastery but in a Master, not toward means and measurements but toward a Messiah! And the clear reason for why we’re able to find this resilience is because of the image of God that remains within us despite our fallen nature. Scripture is clear: God never abandons! But, I’m getting a little ahead of Paul in our text. There’s still plenty to be perplexed about, plenty to give us pain, plenty that we will never explain while we struggle to “see through a glass darkly.” Next time we look at the “why” and “how” of resilience.

[i] The origin of this quotation has been variously misattributed as an old English proverb or an ancient Indian proverb or most often as a Chinese proverb from either Laozi (Lao Tzu), Confucius or Guan Zhong. However, some lines from Maimonides’ famous ‘eight degrees of benevolence’ (or charity) comes about as close as any other source to approximating the idea of thoughtful benevolence and the enduring value of education. See Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, Springfield, NJ: Behrman House 1972:134-137.

[ii] George W. Harris, Dignity and vulnerability: strength and quality of character, University of California Press 1997, p. 10-14.

Now This is Church

Charlotte and I talked about this on the way home last night from our life group Christmas party.Christmas-party.jpg

In so many ways, this life group reminds us of what a church ought to be.

Last night, we gathered at Scott and Jill’s home. Almost everyone from our group was there, including some people who are very special to the group. As you might expect, this house looks and smells like Christmas. Yet, what is especially nice is that it feels warm and inviting, and conveys a sense of home. After a dinner of Mexican “stack-up,” our children led us in a number of songs. One played the guitar while the others sang. One of our girls read the story of the birth of Jesus. Randal took the annual group picture. We then went for a hayride. Adults and children sat on bales of hay as we sang Christmas songs and enjoyed being together. We then came back into the house to get warm and drink hot coffee and wassail.

Maybe I especially enjoyed this because it reminded me of the blessing of being a part of a church where a person can experience “family.”

  • A group like this can be “family” in the best sense of that word. For example, some people grew up without pleasant memories of being a family. Family was a place where people argued and fought. For some the holidays bring memories of loved ones getting drunk and acting in ways that are painful to remember. Years later, a group of believers like this can make new memories of laughter, joy, and encouragement.
  • A group like this can be a place where one can know that he/she is loved regardless. Real love is gracious and focused on the needs of others. Contrast this to being in an environment where you feel as if you are constantly being critiqued and found lacking.
  • A group like this can be a place that is safe. Last night four of our girls sang in front of 20 adults. Wow! That is incredible trust. As you might imagine, these adults responded with lots of applause and words of encouragement. I thought later of people I have known who have memories of preforming in front of adults only to receive teasing, digs, and even criticism.

A group like this is a place where we can learn to forgive. We learn that each one of us is flawed and in need of grace. In healthy small groups (which reflect healthy relationships), we practice forgiving and being forgiven. In essence, we experience church. When we practice this kind of love and forgiveness within the context of a small group of Christ-followers, we also learn how to practice that with our spouses and children.

Small groups are like churches. There is no small group of Christians that is perfect. Nor, is there a congregation that is perfect. Some of us seem to want this and occasionally a group or congregation will be held up by some as seeming to have everything in place. Maybe doing this gives some security.

The security of a family, a small group, or a congregation, however, is found in the Lord Jesus. In Him is found the flawless, finished work of Jesus.


Question

Why is it that so many of us seek perfection? Why do we often seek perfection in the perfect mate, the perfect family, the perfect small group, or the perfect congregation? What is the down side of seeking perfection in other people/situations rather than in God himself?


Ministry Inside.26

The following practices are important. In fact, these are game-changers for ministers.GameChanger_512x512.jpg

1. The very best thing you have to offer a congregation is the presence of a Godly person.

2. Manage yourself. Don’t live in reaction to an event in the past or to someone in the present.

3. Be a student of your church and your community. Be observant.

4. Teach/preach this week but prepare for the future.

5. Read. Read. Read. Good leaders read!

6. Take personal temptation seriously. Know that the evil one wishes to destroy you.

7. Seek maturity in your relationships.

8. Take a day off. Rest. Do something that brings you joy.

9. Be present in key pastoral moments, even with people you do not like.

10. Pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and body.