"Isolation is one of shame's primary methods."
"When I am in the presence of another who elicits discomfort within me, though I easily point to the person outside my skin as the responsible party for my distress, the real problem is far more proximate. For it is ultimately within me.
"My 'problem,' as it turns out, is ultimately what I am sensing, imaging, feeling, thinking and doing. It is not my only problem, just my ultimate one...
"But beyond this, and even more important, my problem is not just what I am sensing but that I do not feel adequate to respond to it. I perceive, beginning at nonconscious levels of awareness, that I do not have what it takes to tolerate what I feel. I am not just angry, sad, or lonely. But ultimately these feelings rest on the bedrock that I am alone with what I feel, and no one is coming to my aid. Shame undergirds other affective states because of its relationship to being left. And to be abandoned ultimately is to be in hell" (109).
"...we must remember, we are dust and breath, and healing shame will necessarily mean we act differently with our bodies. We will move when before we were literally unable to with our bodies. We will speak when before we were silent. We will demonstrate physical agency in the real world, as God did in Jesus..." (148).
"This is the story shame wants to tell. It is the story of fragility. It is the story of showering those who are smart, gifted and charismatic with approbations, and those are less so with, well, less. The story in which we have conflicts but are too afraid to face the emotions we anticipate will be waiting for us. These emotions have their source in the shame whose attendant tellls us that we are not enough and that Jesus is not enough for us to have this conversation. We won't be able to take it. Furthermore, if we ever imagined that Jesus would be present in that conversation, we might think he could take it, but we don't imagine that he's even there" (158).
"...unless leadership of an organization is open to curiosity, open to the idea that unless we are known, what we know doesn't matter, and open to seeking where shame hides, exposing the reality of our naked, vulnerable selves, and disregarding the shame that wants us to hide, we will continue to repeat the interaction that took place in Eden" (159).
"Paul then lists a number of noble things that we might do, but if they are not done lovingly, they mean nothing.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poot and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)"In this sense, love is less a noun than an adverb (i.e., lovingly), a word that describes the action of a verb, action taken at wisdom's pace. And shame is all about stopping movement, shuttering conversation, crushing creative discovery, acting to quickly or too slowly for fear of making mistakes, and avoiding the repair of ruptures that re inevitable with the mobility of intersecting lives" (177).
"I mentioned earlier that love and shame are the two fundamental affective states warring for our souls. Of course, this oversimplifies the case. It is not as if shame is the only emotion that gives us trouble, and love houses virtually ever emotion that leads to constructive, integrating behavior. The point here, however, is that in many respects life is not that complicated. In any instant it boils down to microdecisions we make that generally move us in one of two directions: a more integrated, resilient life of connection with God and others, or a more disintegrated, separated, chaotic and rigid life. Every minute of every day we choose between shame and love" (179).
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