For quite some time now I have been especially interested in the idea of resilience. Even more so in recent years as the Resilience Project has found its way into schools and sporting clubs.
I first became interested back in my time as an industrial chaplain in the Latrobe Valley, when the State Electricity Comm©ission was being privatised and thousands of employees found themselves facing the probability of redundancy. The chaplaincy work itself intensified significantly and a great deal of human awareness training was introduced. However, I noticed over that period that some people coped much better than others with all that was happening to them. Things like loss of identity, purpose, security, power, friendships, community etc. I witnessed similar variations during my ministry visits in Sri Lanka while listening to people getting their lives back together after a 30 year civil war.
The word resilience wasn’t used very often; it’s a much more familiar word today. Indeed, a lot of research has gone into understanding just what it is that contributes to being resilient. Some of that research is showing that ‘faith’ in the broadest sense of the word has a part to play.
For the month of July we will devote some attention to the whole notion of resilience as it relates to spirituality.
Shalom
David
Reading: Ephesians 6: 10-18
And
An extract from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life (2015). A book written by Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Naval Officer, in the form of a series of letters written to a friend struggling with life after military service. The letters draw on Greitens’ personal experiences and knowledge of ancient and modern philosophers.
