Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back – part 1 pp. 1-11

Opening Thought: If you have ever been a teenager, rule number one may hold some anxiety to it. I remember in my adolescence my mother often would tell me to stand up straight with my shoulders back, that I looked like I was about to fall asleep. At the time I thought she was being nitpicky. What I didn’t know was that in my early teen years I was a bit depressed. I had not transitioned to high-school life all that well and was a bit of a loner. I remember the summer between grades 9 and 10, I decided to go to the park in the morning as the sun was rising. A casual friend of mine (also someone who was a teen with sunken shoulders) began to join me for basketball. The two of us found a confidence we didn’t know we had by playing basketball. By the end of high-school I had changed a lot. I was very social, confident, and outgoing. I remember I had gone to the grocery store with my mother one time, and she asked me to go grab something for her. I went and returned, and as I approached my mother with her requested item she giggled. I asked her was what so funny, and she said that I walked with a strut. I was a little embarrassed by her comment, but she assured me that it was good to see me walking straight up and confident, something I had lacked for many years. Following high-school I took a year off and started my own co-op arts program with my basketball buddy. We put on art programs and shows and had some fun getting to know people. For two people, who just over three years prior, people would have been described as shy and defeated looking - we were having the time of our lives. During that time, since I was running my own co-op, I began to investigate business management strategy programs and goal-setting programs. One of the things that radiated through all these programs was the importance of confidence. Confidence was something you had to develop in two steps. First, you had to “imagine” the confidence and act it out. People often have to act out in life a confidence they don’t have yet, and then in time, it is less an act and more earned. It isn’t so much that you “fake it until you make it” – rather it is that you decide to have faith in what you can become. So, the natural second step is once you put on a suit of confidence, you live it out until it is natural.  

Opening Prayer: Gracious and loving God, we should all walk with confidence knowing that you have your wise mind attending to our lives, like a skillful gardener caring for his flowers. Let us bloom knowing that if we take in the gifts you give us, we will shine like a rainbow on this earth. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflection: One of the predicaments of life is that we are creatures in existence with others. We as creatures are not islands, we are networks of interactions and personalities. Peterson explains well how this reality of existing with others formulates a need for hierarchies. Peterson uses lobsters, wrens, and other animals to explain that by the need to procreate and survive we will occasionally bump heads with others of our kind, trying to secure our place within the echo system. As a result of butting heads, some members of the species become subordinate and others rise. This is great for the species, on the grand scale, but on the individual level, it can be very challenging. Peterson uses lobsters to show how defeat can actually change your biochemistry, and your body becomes physically depressed. This is the same for humans, especially in long-term exposure to feelings and situations of defeat and leave a person immobilized in both the physical and emotional sense.

One can see how this ties to spirituality because if you become too defeated it is easy to lose sight of “meaning.” Unlike a lobster, who has an instinctive drive to establish a home and to procreate, humans find meaning in these life events. These life events are good, loving, and give us part of our identity. If we feel so defeated that these goals seem unattainable, even invariant, then we will become spiritually immobilized, and we will forgo meaning and purpose in our lives.

I can already guess where Peterson is going to go with this, my assumption is that making the decision to stand up straight, even if you’re feeling defeated, is a process to accept the harshness of the world; and the only course of action that will help to alleviate the negative feeling of defeat is to decide to re-enter the game. In a way, the prescription to life’s heartache is to take it on. To take on the burden of life in the pursuit of a position within the hierarchies of life gives meaning to day-to-day existence.  

Scripture Brought to Mind: John 14:3; 6:35, Romans 12:10-20

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

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Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

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Love each other like brothers and sisters. Give each other more honor than you want for yourselves.

In the animal kingdom, creating a home for security, having access to sustenance, and having a family are all motivators in a creature’s purpose for being. In faith, these things become the foundation of what you receive in Christ. A faithful person knows that no matter what they face in this life (the physical life) does not subtract from the grandeur of what they can expect in the spiritual life. In Christ we have a home and security for the soul, which is eternal, in Christ we are feed and sustained by the Spirit, and under God, we are all one family that has brothers and sisters in Christ. We do not need to fear if life throws a wrench into our plans because we already have all that we need in the promise of God.

Now, on a day-to-day basis, we still need to live. We still need to get out there and be creatures in the world, but since we can rest assured as spiritual creatures, we can walk out into the world with instant confidence due to our faith. When you have faith as your starting point, the whole world is your oyster. (Wow, what a sea creature pun to go with the lobster theme)

This conclusion is not solely mine, others have concluded that having religious practice in one’s life can be beneficial to one’s physical and mental health. According to an article in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, “through the use of religious practices, such as prayer or meditation, religious individuals can counter damaging tendencies brought about by their illness and can “reduce tension and anxiety, diminish self-blame, stabilize emotional ups and downs, and improve self-knowledge,” as well as advance the management of impediments like: “Panic attacks, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, drug use, stress, chronic pain, and other health problems."[1]

Faith gives us the fundamental security that is needed in our lives. It is a primal requirement for living, and we can see that played out in the biological nature of animals.

Continual Work: Think about how God provides you an eternal home, infinite sustenance, and a vast family in Christ. What confidence can you find for your day-to-day living?

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I can always tell when I am getting run-down, my shoulders hunch forward. It can be both physical and mental stresses that cause that. The good news is, if my mother says to me, “Hey Jake, you’re slouching” I know I need a spiritual pick me up, and then my mental and emotional states follow suit. 

Prayer for your week: Lord, help us find confidence. Remind our inner beings that you’re the way, the truth, and the life – and if we hold onto that truth, we can do so much. We can grow in our greater capacity. We can rise in our stories of faith. Amen.

Artistic Close: Amazing Creatures – though a little ugly to us.

52. & 53. American lobster (Homarus americanus) illustration from Zoology of New york (1842 - 1844) by James Ellsworth De Kay (1792-1851).

 

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[1] Behere, P. B., Das, A., Yadav, R., & Behere, A. P. (2013). "Religion and mental health." Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(Suppl 2), S187–S194.