Episode 8
Bibliotherapy
A discussion on the power of words, how they feed our spirit and build our awareness in this ever changing world.
Transcript
in a fast paced world
Speaker:we move at the speed of life
Speaker:the speed of life is changed a lot in these past eighteen
Speaker:months
Speaker:that's something that has been on my heart this week in
Speaker:talking to students and just
Speaker:observing
Speaker:life in general
Speaker:we will be such a fast pace of life that
Speaker:the clock that we
Speaker:used to have over eight hour day now it's kind of change to
Speaker:something that
Speaker:operates within that twenty four rushing to try to get
Speaker:things complete and
Speaker:there is a foundational component that's missing
Speaker:we were talking about this offline and when I had this
Speaker:discussion with you
Speaker:you're listening to the Ignatian your podcast my name
Speaker:is a **** done more than her father Timothy brown
Speaker:and what we presented just now is an issue that's really
Speaker:taking place not just on college campuses was taking
Speaker:place in the world as we've been operating within this
Speaker:new schedule that we've had to because of ritual and because
Speaker:of just trying to balance and being able to distributor time
Speaker:to things in life
Speaker:the word did she mention that really stood out to me father
Speaker:brown that one talk about a little bit more is biblio
Speaker:therapy can we talk a lot about the bibliotherapy kind of how
Speaker:that
Speaker:sits as a need for us in this
Speaker:New World that we're navigating
Speaker:we should remember J. couple years ago you talked about
Speaker:the tree therapy and we actually did a video and wander
Speaker:the campus and talked about the way in which trees could really
Speaker:bring us to our
Speaker:healing self and that was before the virus hit the world
Speaker:but now that the viruses hit the world and
Speaker:done some pretty
Speaker:irreparable damage
Speaker:I've told my classes it's time
Speaker:to recover
Speaker:to reboot to begin a new and I said the one way that you can
Speaker:all reboot
Speaker:is to turn the devices off
Speaker:in live
Speaker:with the book
Speaker:live with your imagination
Speaker:message remember that book that you might have been energies to
Speaker:when you were maybe four years old maybe even three
Speaker:Dr Seuss
Speaker:the cat in the hat
Speaker:only two hundred and thirty six words
Speaker:simple words interwoven with compelling pictures
Speaker:you know what his magic sauce was
Speaker:he combined the verbal
Speaker:with the visual
Speaker:he had a way of touching
Speaker:our mystical magical
Speaker:selves and an early age
Speaker:yeah I think we know when we return to our child like
Speaker:imagination
Speaker:the beginning of a form of bibliotherapy
Speaker:no biblio therapist
Speaker:basically just the idea
Speaker:people we can all be in that business
Speaker:of therapy as practitioners of healing through books
Speaker:you know in H. increase
Speaker:over the libraries in Athens was subscribed simply
Speaker:this was a healing place
Speaker:for the soul
Speaker:a healing place a library
Speaker:in this day and age picking up a book
Speaker:in allowing the words
Speaker:to wash over imagination
Speaker:words
Speaker:help us think
Speaker:they make us feel
Speaker:okay let us remember
Speaker:they tell us the truth
Speaker:word show us the way they help us understand the unravel
Speaker:the complex
Speaker:in my class right now were starting contracts and trying
Speaker:to figure out the meaning of
Speaker:hi express agreements and how they're enforceable
Speaker:and I think of ways in which words have a life and death
Speaker:meeting
Speaker:this is the captain
Speaker:brace for impact
Speaker:those three words
Speaker:can really bring chilling what's
Speaker:ever been on a plane
Speaker:as I have
Speaker:where I heard a captain
Speaker:announced on the intercom brace for impact
Speaker:those three words have stayed with me
Speaker:and I've used them for other reasons as well
Speaker:and I think of a wonderful wonderful new museum
Speaker:that opened in Washington just recently and Friedman
Speaker:you might know that her husband Tom Friedman writes for The New
Speaker:York Times who's
Speaker:written some extraordinary books
Speaker:the olive tree in the Lexus since so many books about
Speaker:%HESITATION
Speaker:about our world
Speaker:but she decided as a middle school and
Speaker:kindergarten and early reading teacher to open a
Speaker:museum in an old old Washington DC %HESITATION
Speaker:school
Speaker:the name of the museum is planet word
Speaker:and she said very much when she envision this museum
Speaker:I want people to be aware
Speaker:of their words
Speaker:we'll come back to that in a minute when I talk a little
Speaker:more about planet word
Speaker:but I think a lot of us are aware that
Speaker:words can crush
Speaker:in recently %HESITATION there was an editorial in The New
Speaker:York Times rabbi Lauren hot spot
Speaker:%HESITATION rabbi
Speaker:%HESITATION in a
Speaker:two seater with %HESITATION
Speaker:Addus Israel congregation in our nation's capital
Speaker:the title of her guest essay
Speaker:in the Jewish tradition
Speaker:the words we choose matter
Speaker:and she begins this incredible essay
Speaker:the tour begins with the world
Speaker:being created by words
Speaker:let there be
Speaker:is a recurring reframe
Speaker:god means each item
Speaker:late
Speaker:day
Speaker:night
Speaker:darkness
Speaker:earth's
Speaker:C.
Speaker:haven't
Speaker:from this emerges the concept that words
Speaker:can build
Speaker:or destroy
Speaker:and she talks about how a careful choice of words can
Speaker:make a big difference
Speaker:in our healing
Speaker:in our way of connecting with one another
Speaker:and going back to I recommend an interview
Speaker:about the planet word concept with and Friedman in The
Speaker:Washington Post a couple weeks ago
Speaker:and she talks very much about the same thing that
Speaker:rabbi all she talks about the power
Speaker:of words
Speaker:playing different roles
Speaker:and says where the words that people use around them
Speaker:people have a choice
Speaker:you can use your words to hurt others to wound or you can use
Speaker:them to heal and create friendship and understanding
Speaker:and empathy
Speaker:and obviously it's important to me the two years use your words
Speaker:to do the latter
Speaker:in many ways that's what Ignatius was all about when he
Speaker:introduced the examined and energy use the whole meaning of
Speaker:%HESITATION consolation and desolation
Speaker:in how picking the words of the spirit
Speaker:can feed our souls
Speaker:with god's spirit
Speaker:in choosing the other
Speaker:allows the enemy
Speaker:to invade our consciousness so there's a real interesting
Speaker:connection
Speaker:during the same nation here
Speaker:of how we practice the examine and I
Speaker:think of the
Speaker:five
Speaker:races of the exam and that can really make a difference at
Speaker:the end of the day and you can pray this in your prayer you can
Speaker:pray that with another person your children or members around
Speaker:thank you
Speaker:I'm sorry
Speaker:how can I help
Speaker:be with me
Speaker:I love you
Speaker:just to stay with those can make a difference in your
Speaker:healing
Speaker:and I love the way in which planet word has so many
Speaker:interactive pieces it's not a library it's a museum and it's
Speaker:really a museum built on
Speaker:what I talked about before the enemy of sometimes are
Speaker:our peace technology
Speaker:but in Friedman's discovered a way to use technology to bring
Speaker:us
Speaker:to our best bibliotherapy cells
Speaker:and so I remember I in that interview she had a very
Speaker:interesting point about how many many languages
Speaker:our energies team at planet work
Speaker:in she remembers way back about a year ago after the museum
Speaker:open
Speaker:someone coming up to work
Speaker:and not knowing
Speaker:who she was in
Speaker:this particular individuals from Peru
Speaker:and he spoke not only Spanish but he spoke Quechua
Speaker:and she said he had tears in his eyes and said thank you for
Speaker:having catch what in the museum
Speaker:and she said what's interesting in there in the conversation in
Speaker:the in the planet were %HESITATION
Speaker:place
Speaker:there's an elderly woman
Speaker:groovy and
Speaker:and she talks about how in Quechua
Speaker:the future is behind you
Speaker:because you can't see it
Speaker:think about that
Speaker:the future is behind you
Speaker:because you can't see it
Speaker:allow that
Speaker:to take a place in your imagination
Speaker:and picture that a little bit
Speaker:in this time of great uncertainty
Speaker:and anxiety and does not make you a little more kind of
Speaker:filled with hope
Speaker:and peace and love
Speaker:and then this wise catch one woman said in the past is ahead
Speaker:of you
Speaker:the past is ahead of you
Speaker:because you've seen
Speaker:it's before you
Speaker:you can see
Speaker:and all the sudden when you imagine the way
Speaker:this catch one woman explains the future
Speaker:is behind
Speaker:the past his head
Speaker:you begin to realize only through reading
Speaker:conversation
Speaker:in a real sense of
Speaker:taking seriously the power of the truth
Speaker:can we take into consideration all
Speaker:that's going on in this world today
Speaker:and I know is some of you may not hear this during February
Speaker:but it is black history month and
Speaker:and we are aware of the power of
Speaker:words and power of two people
Speaker:wanna a great great actor from Baltimore
Speaker:Lou when he received his Tony last couple of years ago had
Speaker:three great great sentences
Speaker:talked about Baltimore and talked about his roots he
Speaker:talked about
Speaker:the power of the city and his name is Andre de shields
Speaker:you might remember him from years ago in the windows
Speaker:and all these great
Speaker:great parts he's played
Speaker:but he has three lines it's almost a different kind of
Speaker:examine
Speaker:to think through slowly
Speaker:is the fastest way
Speaker:to get where you want to be
Speaker:and isn't that what people your therapy and slowly taking
Speaker:online a sentence
Speaker:the cat in the hat
Speaker:just a few words
Speaker:and staying with it not speeding and scrolling through
Speaker:your tax and
Speaker:making yourself jittery and
Speaker:always kind of not most placid
Speaker:slowly is the fastest way to get where you want to be
Speaker:the second the top of the mountain is the bottom of the
Speaker:so keep climbing
Speaker:so imagine that kind of image of the mountain
Speaker:marching up climbing up
Speaker:then realizing the just the bottom
Speaker:let's move to a different matter
Speaker:let's not be so
Speaker:paralyzed by all that's about us in retreat
Speaker:into the Bible into scripture into poetry
Speaker:into a fun book
Speaker:and finally he says
Speaker:surround yourself with people whose eyes light up
Speaker:when they see you
Speaker:and I think that you can do that with a book you can
Speaker:surround yourself with the people in a book
Speaker:in the light the literally
Speaker:many ways light up
Speaker:when they see you've chosen to enter
Speaker:and so when you go to the planet word you'll find certain
Speaker:books popping up and you'll see a Alice in Wonderland actually
Speaker:coming to life in that museum and
Speaker:taking you around
Speaker:in and Frank and other people
Speaker:and I think that's where bibliotherapy takes off
Speaker:because it's one thing
Speaker:to be a creative writer to appreciate the work of a writer
Speaker:but
Speaker:we all have the opportunity to be creative readers
Speaker:in that way of taking a block and allowing a scene to take
Speaker:off in the way scenic Matias
Speaker:passes to do when we contemplate a gospel
Speaker:to find herself in one of those gospel passages and imagine
Speaker:herself as a shepherd
Speaker:or somebody watching the lord on the way of the cross and
Speaker:playing a role
Speaker:in being a part of that celebration
Speaker:and I think that ever creative reading in our creative writing
Speaker:brings about a very different way
Speaker:of loving
Speaker:a paying attention
Speaker:and just being
Speaker:I love the
Speaker:idea of being able to take thoughts and forming them into
Speaker:words at half power boards that have presence and words that
Speaker:have Perficient wars that allow others to move into a place of
Speaker:imagination
Speaker:so the thing is understanding that words have power
Speaker:understanding that in this world is twenty four seven world that
Speaker:that have been we've been entering
Speaker:in that we've been part of
Speaker:there is ability for you to step into the inner world
Speaker:the step into a place that you can transcend that point of
Speaker:being subject to the social media subject to devices
Speaker:I know it's a world that's really
Speaker:fast pace and there's a lot of things that we're
Speaker:considering in how the world is becoming to this place of new
Speaker:normal but you have the ability with and to be able to
Speaker:transcend to be able to surmount the
Speaker:things that we perceive is insurmountable
Speaker:listening to the nation podcasts
Speaker:my name is AC done more
Speaker:along with father Timothy brown
Speaker:thank you for listening
Speaker:we speak peace power
Speaker:and positivity
