Daily Excerpt: Weekly Soul (Craigie) - Introduction

  


Today's book excerpt comes from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Frederic Craigie.

INTRODUCTION

 

In August, 2004, my friend and psychologist colleague Peter Flournoy, Ph.D., died of cancer at the age of 45.

Peter was a remarkable person, an energetic professional, and a gentle soul. He experienced his cancer as a blessing that taught him more about life than he otherwise would have understood. He packed a lot into the last couple of years of his life, ice climbing several times and sea kayaking to Monhegan Island (ten miles off the Maine coast—not for the faint of heart) a month before his death.

Peter was also excited about his spiritual life, which was informed particularly by Buddhist philosophy and practice in his last years. His memorial service took place on a glorious summer day. We who attended all received a card with a favorite meditative image of Peter’s and his words:

 

Life has taught me not to grasp and hold but to stand with a flat empty hand and allow the flow to happen. What is unfolding itself to me now is enough. By aligning myself with this energy, I remain amused, fed, and delighted by life. Deciding ahead what will make me happy and waiting that to manifest itself before I allow myself to experience happiness is missing the point. Happiness is in the seeing and the experiencing. Happiness is a simple thing; it comes from living life, rather than planning to live life. Life is not a rehearsal; it is what is happening right now.

 

By 2004, I had been professionally active in the arena of spirituality and health for many years. I published what I believe was the first article on spirituality in the Family Medicine literature in the mid-eighties and founded what is now the oldest nonsectarian academic symposium on spirituality and health in the United States in 1987. I did further research. I wrote grants. I started a department of spiritual care at our hospital. I developed curricula. I focused on healthcare and community applications of spirituality on sabbaticals. And I assembled a small interest group of colleagues at my home institution, the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency, who would gather together periodically for dinner and conversation.

As a way of honoring Peter and passing along his wisdom, I decided to share his words with my interest group friends. I sent them all emails—I imagine it wasn’t more than a dozen—and had some appreciative hallway conversations in the next couple of weeks. It occurred to me that it could be a good discipline for me and a good meditative opportunity for my friends to send out spiritually-informed quotations regularly. I distributed the famous comment, attributed in various translations to the French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Fred’s Reflections of the Week were off and running. More people asked to be included. I invited participants in my teaching and speaking engagements. I received emails from people who had heard of the reflections from their own friends and asked to be added to my distribution lists. As I write this, my weekly quotations/reflections—touching on spirituality, healing and well-being—go out to over 2000 people, and the file of accumulated quotations is over 40,000 words.

The Fred’s reflections project is the genesis of this book. You have fifty-two from among hundreds and hundreds of quotations that I have sent out over the years. They come… both the larger list and this sample… from a remarkably diverse collection of authors. They represent science, the Arts, health care, business, journalism, academia, government, the recovery movement, and the arena of self-care and personal growth, in addition to more expressly spiritual fields. Together, these quotations provide rich perspectives on some of the essential questions that we all face:

 

·       What does it mean to live a good life?

·       What is sacred… what really matters?

·       How do you address suffering and woundedness?

·       Where do you find joy?

·       Where is there hope in difficult circumstances?

·       How can one person make a difference in the world?

 

These, and so many other questions that you can imagine and pose for yourself, mark the path (as the book subtitle suggests) of “meaningful, joyful, and peaceful living.”

 

About the Book

 

As you will see, the book is organized into 12 chapters, or thematic sections; Miracles, Aliveness, Purpose, Laughter and Joy, and eight others. I have organized these fairly randomly, and you will do well to pick up the book at any point to which your curiosity directs you.

Each meditation has four parts.

The first part presents a short, documented quotation. These quotations are rich in wisdom. Sometimes, I expect you will smile. Sometimes, you will nod knowingly. Often, I hope, you will find yourself curious about how the ideas presented in the quotations pertain to your life.

The second part of each meditation presents my own reflections. These arise from my professional and personal experience and from countless stories from other people, many of them first-hand or reliably second-hand. I can also point out that the reflections often have an empirical foundation. For several of the areas that we’ll explore together—mindfulness, gratitude and forgiveness as examples—there are robust bodies of scientific research that have informed much of what I have to say. I have written enough scholarly material over the years—and I am not interested in layering this book with academic citations—that the foundation is there. If you are interested in exploring the empirical basis of some of these areas further, you can pursue the names and source citations that I give you or just go to our friends, Google Scholar or PubMed. On PubMed today, for instance, the search term “forgiveness” gets you over a thousand citations.

The third part of each meditation gives you questions for your own reflection and suggestions for how you might specifically follow up on each meditation during the week. What is your life experience with these ideas? What is your wisdom; what do you know about these ideas? How might you build on these reflections in your awareness and in your own exploration in the coming week?

The final section gives you biographical information about the authors of the quotations. I have found that learning some of the life stories of the people that I quote adds color, richness, and context to their ideas. For some authors who are not widely known, the entries are brief. For some other authors—the final meditation about Dorothy Day as an example—you’ll have to pardon me for truncating long and complicated life stories.

A lot of thought went into the choice of a weekly format, by the way. There are many, many resources for daily study out there—the words devotionals or disciplines are often used—but not many on a weekly cycle. While a daily format is certainly useful for many people, I also think that the rhythm of modern life follows weekly cycles. Piano lessons are weekly. Therapy is weekly. My Fitbit organizes activity and health goals week-by-week. I hope that a weekly format will allow you to focus a little more intensively on each meditation and to explore key ideas with the reflections and suggested exercises over the course of several days.

I also want to say a few words about spirituality. You know that this has been an area of professional passion and expertise for me for many years. That said, you will find very little expressly spiritual or religious language in this book. It is very important for me to be inclusive, to welcome and speak to readers from different spiritual and religious traditions and to readers who follow no particular traditions, who form and follow their own personal and unique spiritual lives. I want to honor your own spiritual path, however you frame that, and to invite you to bring your own understanding of spirituality to the ideas and issues that we will be exploring together.

My understanding of spirituality, as it pertains to and transcends different traditions, has to do with what people experience as sacred. The questions that frame anyone’s understanding of The Sacred, like those above, are spiritual questions. Who are you? What do you cherish? What do you love? What kind of person do you aspire to be? What keeps you going in hard times?

For most people, moreover, The Sacred is understood in and often rooted in their experience of God. “God,” of course, goes by many names. Yahweh. Allah. Great Spirit. The Universe. Higher Power, or Higher Consciousness. More than one patient has referred to God, not entirely jokingly, I think, as “The Man Upstairs.” With countless variations in language and image, most people hold beliefs about an overarching Presence… Spirit… Energy… that is often the basis of creation stories and stands to provide coherence, direction and comfort.

My own experience of God has been vital in my life. My understanding of God has evolved over the years, but I have always been particularly drawn to the idea, traditionally attributed to John the Evangelist in the Christian tradition, that God is love. Perhaps this may resonate also with readers whose spirituality is framed more in terms of a sacred Path than in terms of Divine relationships.

Your spirituality is your own, and I want to honor whatever ways you conceive of these eternal issues. Even without expressly spiritual language, though, I think of this as a deeply spiritual book, and I hope you may experience it that way, as well.

 

About Me

 

I am a clinical psychologist and medical educator. Before launching into what I call “semi-retirement,” I was a faculty member for over 35 years at a family medicine residency in central Maine. My educational role was teaching residents and medical students about behavioral health issues and helping them to value and cultivate their own resilience and well-being. My clinical role was providing behavioral health care in our outpatient primary care practice, working with a largely underserved population. Since 2004, I have also been a faculty member at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine (it has gone by other names in earlier years) at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, where I coordinate curricula in spirituality and healing relationships. And you know some additional details about my work with spirituality and health.

That’s some of the professional information. I also want to tell you a little about who I am, and who I am not, at a more personal level. Readers, I believe, deserve this.

I am a scientist. I am an observer and a collector of stories. As a teacher, I am privileged, as all teachers are, to be able to learn from students. As a clinician, I am privileged, as all clinicians are, to be able to learn from those people we variously call “clients,” or “patients,” or—I like this best—“fellow travelers.” I am, like you, on a journey.

If you’re looking for people who have personal odysseys of suffering and overcoming suffering, it’s not me. Like anybody, I have had a few rough patches, but overall, it’s been a comfortable and undramatic life. My parents loved me. I went to a great public high school, an old and prestigious college, and a good graduate school (which was, by the way, in the era of generous National Institute of Mental Health traineeships, largely free). I have been singularly blessed to have been married to a wonderful woman since 1973. My three children and their partners are remarkable people. I have six incredible grandchildren and a loving extended family. My life, as I write this, allows ample time to spend with all of them, along with opportunities to be professionally active pretty much on my own terms. I’m not in the one percent, but neither do I worry about where the next meal is coming from or whether there will continue to be a roof over my head. With allowance for the fact that the joints aren’t quite what they used to be, I’m a healthy and active guy.

Demographics are pertinent, too. I am an Anglo white male. If you are a woman, or someone with an ethnic or cultural minority background, or someone from the LGBTQ community, I am thrilled and honored to have you here, but I can’t pretend to understand the nuances of your life experience.

I have tried to listen carefully to people over the years who have had different experiences and backgrounds, but it’s a project of continuing learning and one that I take seriously. If some of what I say doesn’t resonate with your life experience, please know that it’s not because I don’t care or that I think I have a corner on the market for wisdom.

I hope you will feel a spirit of humility in how I present the ideas in this book to you. I want to share with you some of the experiences and ideas that have marked the path for me, but just as much, I hope this book invites and empowers your own ideas about what it means to live a good life.

 

Using the Book

 

I have designed this book with the thought that it can be particularly meaningful as you are actively engaged with the material. Below are three suggestions for using this book.

First, spend some time with my questions for reflection. As I have said, these are prompts to think about how the ideas pertain to your life in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Second, do the exercises. For each meditation, there is a recommendation of specific activities you can pursue during the week. I think you will find that exploring the ways that the ideas from each meditation fit into your everyday life will add depth, and perhaps some new insights, to your experience.

Third, consider working with this material with someone else. You can certainly make your way along with the book individually, but sharing this with other people holds special advantages. You learn from hearing other people’s experiences, and you learn by forming and giving voice to your own ideas and putting them out there. You might pair up with one other person—an partner, a neighbor or friend, a sibling—or you might find that the book is well-suited for group study in your personal circle or in your community.

Welcome, and thank you for coming along on this adventure. May you find some new insights, some challenges, some substantial affirmation, and continuing growth on your journey.

 

Fred

Tucson, Arizona

May, 2020

Book awards
Book of the Year Award (gold)
American Book Fest Book Award Finalist, Spiritual: Inspiration
Reader Views Literary Awards, Silver Medal, Mind, Body, Soul
Reader Views Literary Award, Silver Medal, Religion
Kops-Fetherling International Book Awards Honorable Mention, Inspiration and Motivation
Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Inspirational
National Indie Excellence Award, Well-Being

For more posts by and about Fred and his book, click HERE.



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