Connecting the Dots

Sometimes things come together in ways you don’t expect.

 Kwamé Bediako talked about integrity as integrating the various parts of your life together into a whole, connecting the dots.

I spent a good part of my life trying to communicate my experience of God’s love to others. I ended up studying linguistics of all things, and going to Africa, of all places.  

 Then in post-colonial Africa, many people found themselves in the middle of war zones. How do you experience God’s love when your village is bombed and everyone runs for their lives?

So I got involved in trauma care and learned about how trauma affects our brains and how we can rewire our minds and connect with God’s love in the midst of suffering, and experience healing.

When my involvement in trauma healing ended, I was drawn into art—something completely other, or so I thought.

Until I read Your Brain on Art. As it turns out, emotions are deep inside us, often beyond our consciousness and language. They are our driving force: we are feeling beings who think, not visa-versa.  

Getting in touch with emotions is tricky though. Sometimes they're trapped and can’t get out.

Art gets around our minds and connects with our emotions, giving them a way out. When that happens, good chemicals are released, and new neural pathways formed. We feel more alive, energized, euphoric, more connected with ourselves and others. It’s our very own renewable energy source!  

Even the painful emotions work this way. Keeping them secret takes a lot of energy. Just getting them out is cathartic.

Art helps us heal from life’s wounds and flourish. It’s not just a luxury for people with spare time and money.

And the kicker: flourishing is like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.