There’s a story about a couple people I used to work with that feels like it needs to be told. Some of you know I used to work for a nonprofit to keep inner city kids out of street gangs. None of the programs to help kids broke even, and money was always in short supply.  Most who worked there had multiple jobs, and no one had health insurance.

We had a bus driver who didn’t show up for work one day because he had a stroke and died in his home.  It was on the last day of our summer program.  The kids were excited about the closing ceremony when some would perform and they all would get a few school supplies for the start of the school year.  Of course, the kids were aware of the last minute shuffling when the driver no showed, and they were naturally curious about what had happened.  Keith was a big personality and even if he was a little overgenerous with his advice, at least by high school standards, he genuinely cared about those kids and they knew it.  They were sad to learn what had happened.  Incidentally, another bus driver, Arthur, died that same year from untreated cancer.

The gal in charge of the summer program had dangerously high blood pressure.  More than once, especially (and not coincidentally) near the beginning of the summer, panicked co-workers rushed her to the hospital ER with intense chest pain, confusion and blurry vision. ER personnel told her she really needed to be on medication under a doctor’s supervision. She often asked for an advance on her pay.  Her car loan servicer remotely disabled her car ignition when a payment was late, so she needed the advance just to get to work.  I’m not judging her spending priorities or how she managed her money.  I’m just reporting observations on the reality of the situation. Minute clinics cost money. The occasional free clinic that pops up at a church in the hood is helpful for many maladies but not for treating chronic life threatening conditions.

It feels this story needs to be told because yesterday, Romney told the Columbus Dispatch’s editorial board:

We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.  We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, “Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack.”

As a point of fact, people do die in their apartments because they don’t have insurance. Maybe we have the heart attack emergency covered, but what about managing the hypertension that led to the heart attack? Cancer is up there with heart disease as the two biggest killers in the US. Let us not forget diabetes. Emergency rooms provide acute care, not routine care for the chronic conditions that kill most people in America.

Romney concluded, “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital.”  No, in reality, you go to the hospital, they tell you you really need to see a doctor for ongoing treatment, and a collections company hounds you for the ER bill.

Join the conversation.  Do you have a story that needs to be told just to keep it real?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

Karen was a charming, vivacious and enterprising friend.  She instigated more good works than I could list.  The entire arc of her professional career was dedicated to making the world a better place in one way or another.  She possessed a huge heart and a pioneering spirit.  She lost her life too early to cancer last week, and her memorial service was Friday.

I’ve been pondering something her priest said in his homily.  It was an uncharacteristically evangelizing and passionate homily by Episcopal standards.  The priest sought to reach mourners right where they were in their faith journeys, and according to at least one friend, he reached his mark.  He claimed that once one accepts oneself as a beloved child of God, and moreover, once that becomes the central pillar of one’s identity, the pressure to perform is off.

I couldn’t disagree more.  Or at least, that does not track my journey in faith.  My experience is informed more by the notion that to whom much is given, much is expected.  When I contemplate the incredibly lucky hand I’ve been given—and let’s face it, anyone born in North America got a pretty lucky hand from a global perspective—I feel a great pressure to do good with it.  If sufficiently focused on the abundance in my life, I cannot conceive how much must be expected.  It is humbling beyond words.

A now retired priest in my local parish was fond of saying, “Beware of arriving safely because you sailed too close to shore.”  I know there is a time for rest, but there is also a time for stretching to the point of discomfort.  Lech Lecha…. go forth… leave the place that’s comfortable and answer God’s call to venture into the unknown.

The Reform Jewish prayer book recalls what Abram had to leave behind in order follow God’s call.  Abram left his homeland, his friends, all he had accumulated over a lifetime, and all that was familiar–for what?  He didn’t have an answer, but he had trust and hope.  “Radical Leaving” is what the prayer book calls Abram’s courageous step, and Rabbi Norman Hirsh’s poem “Becoming” describes how we encounter it.

Once or twice in a lifetime
A man or woman may choose
A radical leaving, having heard
Lech lecha — Go forth.

God disturbs us toward our destiny

By hard events
And by freedom’s now urgent voice
Which explode and confirm who we are.

We don’t like leaving,
But God loves becoming.

Karen embraced this radical leaving.  When we said goodbye the last time, she expressed such striking and contagious hope—hope for a medical miracle, hope for what lies on the other side of bodily death, hope for the world she was leaving behind and hope for friends and her daughter’s long life ahead.

Join the conversation.  How have hard events or freedom’s urgent voice exploded and confirmed who you are?  Do we ever encounter our destiny any other way?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

Middle class.  Isn’t that what this year’s presidential election is all about?  Not so fast, says Jim Wallis.  He is the CEO of Sojourners, an organization promoting faith in action with a Christian take on social justice.  Here’s what he has to say about 2012 election politics:

Jesus didn’t say “What you have done for the middle class, you have done for me.”

As we enter into the final stretch of the upcoming elections, we need to talk about the “P” word – Poverty.  Both political conventions talked a lot about the middle class, but what you didn’t hear much about was the poor and marginalized.  “Opportunity” was another key word at both conventions this summer.  As Christians, we must be clear that creating new opportunities must include poor children and low-income families.

We are called to care for the least of these, but how does that translate in selecting our public servants?

Jim Wallis addresses this question in his Sojourners feature article, “How to Choose a President,” and a free “Why Voting Matters” downloadable voting guide.   Click here to learn about Sojourners and here for the current magazine issue.

“Entitlement” seems to be emerging as another of those presidential election key words, as discussed in the last post’s comments.  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the Jewish tradition of tzedakah both suggest a human desire for self-sufficiency, not dependence.  Are there as many poor people abusing the social safety net as voters trying to justify eliminating it would like to believe?  The truth is, most citizens do feel entitled to safe roads, clean water, 911 emergency assistance, hazardous weather alerts, mail delivery and so on.  Let us not leave out education.  Even those educated exclusively in private institutions benefit from a well-educated populace.  And let’s be honest, most private educational institutions depend on government grants, tax exemptions or tuition aid—government benefits enjoyed for the most part by the rich.  Where is the line between entitlement and the marks of a just and civil society?

One dynamic emerging out of the current election politics is the humorous (and somewhat disingenuous) trend toward everyone considering themselves middle class.  What counts as middle class?  The answer is inflated by taxpayer self-interest.  Self-interest aside, however, could you agree to define the middle class as those with household income not in the bottom 25% or in the top 25% but in the middle 50%?  If so, then according to IRS 2009 tax returns, middle class families have income less than $66,000 per year.  More than that puts you in the top 25%.  More than $154,000 puts you in the top 5%.  Some notable 2012 election candidates are arguing that the middle class extends into this top 5% group.

Is it simply a matter of retaining popular tax deductions or escaping the “fair share” levied on the rich?  Or is there more to the desire to be “middle class” than that?  Do over-the-top lifestyles celebrated in the media skew our perceptions?  Is it a herd mentality that makes us comfortable in the middle instead of in the extremes?  Or does a simple lack of diversity awareness allow us to presume we’re in the majority even when we’re not?

Join the conversation.  What opportunities extended to the poor and marginalized would actually lift up and benefit the middle class?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

While on the topic of justice, forgiveness and consequences deserved, and on this Day of Atonement with it’s Closing of the Gates imagery, I’d like to ponder how dwelling on deserving drags our discourse down.  Because it is election season, let’s pick a political example.  The flap over Romney’s secretly recorded 47% statement seems to be timely fodder.  While I’m uninterested in speculating about Romney’s intention, I am interested in the question his words beg of us all.  Here’s what Romney said:

“All right — there are 47 percent [of US citizens] who are with him [Obama], who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing.”

Lingering over the last few words, I can’t help noticing we’re talking the lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, here.  I posed this question on Twitter:

What do social justice Jews and brother’s keeper Christians think of folks feeling “entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing?”

Jews view the question through the lens of tzedakah.  Often translated “charity,” tzedakah is actually the opposite of charity in important respects.  Whereas nobody is compelled to give charity, tzedakah is commanded.  Recipients aren’t entitled to charity, but tzedakah recipients are entitled to what’s fair.  Mainomides organized tzedakah into priorities and levels of giving.  Tzedakah priorities are like concentric circles around the giver, obligating the giver first and foremost to be responsible for himself and his immediate family before seeing to the needs of his more extended family, his religious community, his community at large, his fellow countrymen and, ultimately, people in dire straits across the globe.  The lowest level of giving is to give grudgingly.  Higher levels are defined by whether one gives after being asked or before, whether recipients are known or strangers, and whether a donor receives recognition or gives anonymously.  The highest level of all is giving someone a way to become self-sufficient.

Jews are nothing if not pragmatic, and the tzedakah tradition does require the giver to give responsibly, but it is important to note the emphasis on the giver’s obligation, not what the recipient deserves.

What does Christian teaching have to say?  Jesus left a pretty robust bread crumb trail on this one.  We have the socially despised Samaritan who saved a stranger’s life and paid his hotel bill, no less.  We’re told much will be required from everyone to whom much has been given.  And perhaps most germane to this topic is the admonishment to pay your taxes AND to give charitably.  Here again, the Christian tradition emphasizes doing the right thing for the sake of righteousness, not based on the merits of the guy lying in the ditch.

What happens to the conversation when we focus on the guy in the ditch?  Ponder this:

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is.  Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. ~ Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

No one deserved to be born on 3^rd base.  Self-made millionaires didn’t deserve to be born in the land of opportunity instead of in an oppressive regime.  If you want to focus on who deserves what, I would make a case for the hard working immigrants who came to the USA with nothing and made the most of opportunities that came their way, not unlike our nation’s founders, but the current prevailing view is that immigrants aren’t deserving if their parents broke the law to get here.

No matter where you stand in the political spectrum, dwelling on deserving leaves us wanting to take something away.  Tax wealthy estates.  Deport the high school valedictorian.  Let poor kids go hungry.  They didn’t earn it.  We sit in the judge’s seat when we focus on deserving.  When we focus on human dignity and human potential instead, we are reminded of ourselves.  When we do so with gratitude, we realize our cup is running over and we lift others up out of the abundance of our blessings.  The twitter question was not rhetorical.

Join the conversation.  Is healthcare, food and housing too much to require from those to whom much has been given?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

The past week has seen widening violence throughout the Middle East and threats of violence on US college campuses.  What initially may have looked like isolated extremist reactions to an amateurish You-Tube video now looks like a bubbling up of deeply seeded anger and resentment aimed at local power holders in addition the US.  The long simmering discontent merely brandished the silly video in effigy to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  The cascade of consequences seems to be an ever-escalating loop of one group retaliating for the destructive actions of another group in the name of “justice.”

My spirituality group just finished reading Forgiving Ararat, a novel that explores themes of justice and forgiveness.  The notion of justice portrayed in the book, however, is limited to retributive justice, a kind of justice that seeks to settle the score by giving wrongdoers what they deserve.  It thereby juxtaposes forgiveness against justice, as if they are opposites.

Who can’t identify with that?  Sometimes the ones who wronged us appear to be getting off scot free.  No one is holding them accountable for their misdeeds.  We might cling to resentment out of our sense of justice, to hold the wrongdoers to account.  But Oprah and Dr. Phil tell us holding anger and resentment is like eating rat poison and expecting the rats to die.  Our resentment really doesn’t hurt our offenders as much as it poisons our own lives.  Knowing this intellectually, however, doesn’t make releasing resentment in an act of forgiveness a slam dunk to do.

When I am working with folks trying to escape their resentments, I try to get the offenders and what they deserve out of the middle of the matter.  I encourage folks to put their own spiritual reality and relationship with God in the center instead.  Our injuries impair how we respond to others.  Harms suffered get tangled up with harms done.  When we take a cold hard look at our own actions and can honestly say we care more about receiving forgiveness for the harms we ourselves committed than what our offenders deserve, forgiveness is within our reach.

Are forgiveness and justice really mutually exclusive?  It’s a timely question in the Jewish tradition.  Today marks the beginning of the Days of Awe, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when Jews examine their misdeeds over the past year, repair their wrongdoing and seek forgiveness from those they harmed.  Making amends not only repairs harm to the victim but also restores the soul of the sinner.  Thus, the Jewish approach to justice makes both the wrongdoer and the one wronged whole. Through the healing power of forgiveness, this restorative justice promotes peace and reconciliation.

Join the conversation.  What kind of justice are you going to seek today—the kind that restores wholeness or the kind that settles the score?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

All actions have consequences, including how we express our ideas and ourselves.  Often our expressions have unforeseen or unintended consequences.  Yesterday’s attack on the US Consulate in Libya that took the lives of four people was a retaliatory response to a YouTube video.  The video is reported to disrespect Islam by ridiculing Muhammad.  I haven’t added my clicks to the view count, and I’m uninterested in commenting on the video itself, but I am interested in the consequences of free speech.

All expressions—especially those that reveal something we find real and true—expose us to some vulnerability.  Will the hearers disagree?  Will disagreement diminish me in their sight?  Will disagreement prompt action, like distancing from me or harming me?  Of course, in a presidential election season, we don’t need reminding that some expressions are not true and are designed to expose someone else’s vulnerability.  And some expressions are designed to provoke disagreement.  Some are designed to manipulate us or to bait us to respond in a way that benefits the speaker, if only to garner notoriety.  Perhaps the quip, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” turns out to be deadly after all.

Our First Amendment only protects free speech from government interference (or legal prosecution) to the extent that the speech does not cause harm to others.  Specifically, speech that threatens others, incites immanent lawless action, states facts falsely, is obscene or sexually exploits children is not protected.  Happily for writers, speech owned by others merits no First Amendment protection, either.

The diversity of opinion on what qualifies for protection and on appropriate consequences provides the real grist for discussion.  Ted Nugent is legally free to make public political statements so long as he doesn’t threaten anybody or incite lawless action, but that does not exempt him from consequences like losing an employment contract.  How about the violence that saturates US entertainment—does it not incite more violence?  Isn’t it demonstrably harmful to our kids?  Tipper Gore made that argument, God love her, and her efforts met resounding defeat and castigation.

Personally, I have a hard time advocating limits on any artistic expression that a creator finds to be real or true, even if I find that expression upsetting or manipulative.  On the other hand, I also believe we each carry responsibility for the footprint we leave in the world.  It is the people who threw grenades in the Libyan attack who are responsible for the deaths and damage, not the filmmaker.  The filmmaker’s contribution was to throw disrespect like a grenade.  Expressions that lack respect for others can do no good.  They leave only the footprints of destruction and human diminishment.

Join the conversation.  Do you think the filmmaker did the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded global theater?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

How well do you know your shadow self?  A thoughtful commenter got me thinking more about Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and his insights on the evil we have intended or done.  Kushner asserts that even our meanest and most despicable acts have holy sparks buried in them somewhere.

Of course, no one really wants to shine a light on his dark side or his weakest moments.  It’s easier just to move on, to focus on doing better next time and perhaps to maintain our pride by pretending it never happened.

In the Twelve Step tradition, recovery seekers undertake a searching and fearless moral inventory in the Fourth Step.  Twelve Step literature recognizes the Fourth Step as one of the most difficult and avoided steps because we resist acknowledging, much less embracing, the shadow self we will find.  A popular methodology for approaching the Fourth Step wisely starts with identifying resentments.  Those are the things others did wrong, so it’s not quite so challenging to pride.  It is universally true, however, that injuries impair how we treat others, and the Fourth Step approach continues with examining our impaired responses.  A good Fourth Step is complete when the recovery seeker takes ownership for character weaknesses that fostered his impaired responses.

Kushner is suggesting we shine the flashlight a little deeper, though.  He is encouraging us to find that shard of holiness our character defects encrusted with evil.  Yes, I had an impaired response, but what was the impetus for my response?  Was I seeking safety or emotional security?  Was I just trying to feel ok about myself?  Was I looking for love in all the wrong places?  Those are not bad things—security, affirmation and love.  Those are blessed things.  So what went wrong?

Shifting from Jewish and Twelve Step perspectives to Buddhist ideas, we have attachments to security, affirmation and love.  Perhaps early life experiences left me feeling insecure, so my grip on inner security is a bit too tight.  Those attachments become priorities in my interactions with others.  Maybe I’m a bit quick to fend others off because I’m creating a safety zone for myself, for example.  Or I put others down to feel better about myself.  Or my simultaneous desire for and distrust of true love leads me to superficial intimate encounters.

What would happen if I released my attachments to security, affirmation and love, or at least loosened my grip?  Furthermore, what would happen if I increased my awareness, not only of my own vulnerabilities but, more importantly, the vulnerabilities of others?  Perhaps with greater awareness and less attachment, I could encounter another and become aware of his need for security.  Since seeking security for myself would no longer be my top priority, I would be free to engage with that person in a way that creates a safe place for her to be herself and to feel loved.

I have been praying this week for spiritual strength to let my holy sparks manifest in caring and compassionate ways.  In breathing prayers like this, one inhales what one desires and exhales what gets in the way.

Inhale: Awareness Exhale: Attachments

Join the conversation.  What have you learned from your shadow self?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

Sometimes we veer off course.  It happens to the best and the worst of us.  An adroit reader responding to a post about apologies last week commented, “I wish I could go back and UNDO a few of my sorries.”

Boy, do I identify with that.  I’ve made choices I wanted God not to forgive so much as to magically erase from history, as if they never happened.  If I’m honest about it, though, my desire to undo the past reveals a little unfinished business.

I come from a faith tradition (Christianity) that teaches anyone can be forgiven.  We don’t deserve it, but by grace we can receive it.  The only condition is that we forgive others who did us wrong.  Now that is easier said than done, and I do not want to trivialize how difficult forgiveness can be, but other traditions have a somewhat higher bar.  The Jewish tradition teaches that one must make amends and receive forgiveness from those harmed before seeking God’s forgiveness.  The Twelve Step tradition encourages folks to recognize their wrongs in the Fourth Step and to make amends for them in the Ninth Step.

We Christians can look right past that amends step.  I regularly practice religious confession to a priest, which is a lot like a Fourth Step and a little bit like the vidui, or prayers confession at Yom Kippur.  The Episcopalian practice makes me think hard about my resentments and releasing them in acts of forgiveness.  But the religious practice doesn’t require me to look as hard at repairing the harm I caused.  Of course, I don’t really want to do that anyway, but I can’t help wondering about the wisdom other traditions recognize in making amends.

The conclusion I reached is God doesn’t revise history.  He builds on it, using all the crumbs and brokenness for some good.  When we make amends, we build on our own history, taking something that fell short and lifting it up a notch or two.  It is possible to feel peace with the past, but also to feel disconnected from it.  I speak from personal experience on that count.  I imagine that making amends builds a bridge to that past and redeems it, so that it is no longer something I wish never happened or that I could do over.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner poetically asserts that it is only by embracing our offenses that we can transform them to good and be reconciled to our past.

We go down into ourselves with a flashlight, looking for the evil we have intended or done—not to excise it as some alien growth, but rather to discover the holy spark within it.  We begin not by rejecting the evil but by acknowledging it as something we meant to do.  This is the only way we can truly raise and redeem it.

We receive whatever evils we have intended and done back into ourselves as our own deliberate creations.  We cherish them as long-banished children finally taken home again.  And thereby transform them and ourselves.  When we say the vidui, the confession, we don’t hit ourselves; we hold ourselves.

Join the conversation.  Can you find a holy spark in the meanest, most hurtful things you have done?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved. Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

This is my new expression whenever I hear someone close to me offer a pseudo-apology.  Readers who have kept an eye on this blog lately know I have posted instructions on the correct—and incorrect—ways to apologize.  Not to throw anyone under the bus, lately I have heard quite a few apologies that, candidly, miss the mark.

To recap the basics, “Robbing that bank was wrong,” expresses regret for my actions.  “I sure am sorry I got caught robbing that bank,” expresses regret for the consequences of my actions but no regret for my actual actions.  Other consequence statements are:

I’m sorry you feel that way.
I’m sorry you misunderstood me.
I’m sorry you took it that way.
I’m sorry you got frustrated.

See the difference?  All this regret is about what YOU did, not about what I did.  It says, “This situation went south on your side of the street.  My side of the street is looking pretty good over here.”  A genuine apology requires taking responsibility for what I chose to do or to say.  Expressing sadness or regret for another’s response is nothing more than deflection thinly disguised as an apology.  It is not a legitimate apology.

Now let’s throw in a curve ball for extra credit.  Are these statements legitimate apologies?

I’m sorry my words frustrated you.
I’m sorry my actions hurt your feelings.

Nice try, but these examples STILL express regret for consequences.  Just throwing “my words” or “my actions” into the sentence does not constitute taking responsibility for the wrongness of my words or actions.  That would look more like this:

I said something I shouldn’t have said.
I didn’t intend harm, but I did it and I regret what I did.

Now for advanced placement apology, what should you do if you actually believe you did absolutely nothing wrong?  Let’s say you are convinced your side of the street is spic-and-span, and the person who is upset with you is overreacting or is reacting to something other than what you actually did.  I always say when in doubt, go with the truth.  Acknowledge the person’s feelings and ask for their help to see their side.  Something like this:

I see you’re upset.  That’s distressing because I care about you.  Will you help me understand exactly what I did?

I hope you don’t get, “It’s your tone of voice,” or “You flashed that look,” because subjective observations aren’t as actionable.  I hope you get an answer that is truly illuminating, and you should be prepared to receive (i.e. don’t block) those rays of illumination shining your way.  You might, however, get an answer you don’t understand.  You may have to ask questions to grasp exactly what sparked the response.  You might also sense the person is responding to something you didn’t actually do or say.  Sometimes a harmless comment triggers a harmful memory.  Can you find a gentle and compassionate way to ask the person if there is an older, deeper wound swirling into the present angst?  Draw on your spiritual strength and compassion to turn conflict into an opportunity to encourage healing and intimacy.

If, failing all of this, you are unable to resist the blame game and remain convinced of your blamelessness, ask for time to think before further discussion.  A little distance can change your and the other’s perspectives.

Join the conversation.  Can you share examples of an apology gone wrong?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved.  Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.

Good things are happening in the Resolana unit at the Dallas county jail.  The life skills class continues exploring self-esteem, and last week the discussion centered on making life change actually happen.  Have you heard the joke about the three frogs on a log?  If one decides to jump off, how many frogs are left on the log?  Anybody who has been around Twelve Step programs knows the correct answer is three.  Deciding to make a life change doesn’t necessarily mean one follows through and does it.

How does one actually follow through and make a meaningful life change?  The women learned three steps for doing it: becoming aware, making a choice and making a plan.  There were some heart-felt moments and also some laughs as the women described becoming aware of things they want to change.  One woman realized something needed to change in her relationship with a sibling.  She had always thought their relationship was great, but within the past week she recognized how her sibling’s addiction reinforced her own addictive behavior patterns, and she acknowledged something needed to change to protect herself from relapse.  Her mother had long cautioned her about that relationship, but she hadn’t understood her mother’s concern.  Another woman seemed almost unsure of herself as she revealed awareness she has an anger problem, whereupon there were stifled chuckles among others aware of that already.  That led to a humorous recognition that when we come into awareness of something we need to change, the people around us may be well acquainted with that need and, furthermore, be willing to offer us support in making those changes.

The women tended to gloss over the second step—identifying the choices we have once we become aware—but they also came to see its power.  Status quo is an option.  Changing is an option.  It is important to embrace the full spectrum of choices available.  If we give short shrift or write off options, we are in danger of making a premature (i.e. not fully considered) decision.  Giving all our options their full due, no matter how unappealing or unattainable they may seem, makes our choices conscious choices.

The last step is where the webbed toes meet the bark.  It’s the action plan delineating what we will do that is different than what we did before.  The more detailed it is, the better prepared we will be to exhibit different behavior in the heat of a stressful moment.  The women’s comments on this step revealed the true depth of their commitment to changing their lives.

Perhaps most touching of all was the awareness breakthrough for some inmates. Followers familiar with my book manuscript about the healing power of confession know how passionate I am about the hard work of honest introspection.  Some of us have been around the block.  We know our material cold.  The truth, though, is that this posture is a defensive mechanism, something that protects us from discovering something true about our vulnerable selves.  No matter how happy or content we feel in our present circumstances, honest introspection and greater self-awareness have the potential to bring us greater peace.

Join the conversation.  What is your secret for converting decisions into action?

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Walker All rights reserved.  Visit www.AcrossTraditions.com.