Power and Love and Lent

The prodigal’s father runs down the hill to forgive and welcome and console his wayward son. The radical preacher cleverly outwits the bullies and saves their victim. If we experience these acts of kindness we may well feel good inside. Daniel Goleman (click for a link) writes in Social Intelligence that he was surprised by research into brain chemistry that showed not only an expected chemical change in those who performed good acts and those who were the recipients of these good acts, but also an unexpected change in those who observed these good acts. The prodigal’s father reaches down to toward his weeping son. As his finger first touches the youth’s dusty shoulder, serotonin is released in his blood and finds its way to his brain, and he feels happy. At the same moment, the receptors in the weeping youth’s skin feel the softness of the father’s touch, sense the forgiveness in it, and the same serotonin flies from his red blood cells into his own brain, easing his sobs and regulating his breathing, even before he looks up to see the love in his father’s face.


But we call these “feel good” stories, because they make us feel good. The gift of these particular Good Stories is that we can see in ourselves how they affect us, whether Goleman is right, that we as observers share in the kindness effect.  Now join me in recalling the opposite in your own experience – where you were treated badly, or where, if you are like me, you may have really gotten hacked of at someone when you were driving. Somebody sits on your tail, even though you are driving the speed limit. You find yourself looking at them in your rearview mirror; feel the stress growing inside yourself. You turn on your hazard flashers in an e=attempt to get them to back off, but they don’t. Your anger builds until they finally decide to pass you, and as they go by, maybe you fight the urge to give them a sideways look, but then they pull so quickly in front of you that blow! Words you thought you’d forgotten fly from your mouth, words that you wouldn’t say in front of people who think well of you. How do you feel? If you’re like me, it’s not a great feeling. I feel spent by it, worn out and disappointed in myself. I feel bad. I feel the foolishness of control, the madness of power. Maybe sin is like pornography; it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it. It is the ugly feeling inside. Power corrupts.

In our Examen, we have the opportunity to recall the feel good moments in our day, and the feel bad moments too. We quiet ourselves, enter into the whole-iness within our deepest selves, recall these experiences, feel again the feelings they elicit, and then think about these feelings. What do we do about the bad feelings; how do we respond to them in the future. What can we do to turn toward the good, re-lean, re-pent, as our hearts and minds yearn for us to do? 

Fasting reminds us that we are on this journey, that we are in companionship with the Divinity within us and all around us.

Prayer as the practice of the presence of this Divinity is helped along by our Entering the Story like this week’s adulteress (Click for a link and go to the Gospel) and honoring our nightly Examen.

And Almsgiving can take the form of simple acts of kindness, a smile, a compliment, a little bit of help or thoughtfulness that releases serotonin into our brains, and Grace into our world. Love trumping power, going viral.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.