Status Updates From Tending the Wild Garden: Gr...

Just got through "goodness". TW for Rape mentioned with post-event detail and death by AIDS

Reading this slowly with my Bible study group. Actually really really like it. However, sometimes I feel like the examples are too triggering to be effective for the reader (see the happiness chapter which was freaking horrifying). The author has a tendency to pivot in a way that's jarring, like pivoting from "we must embrace kindness" to "not embracing kindness leads to things like the mass murder of children".

Just finished the chapter on Peace for our Bible Study. Really enjoy Gamble's writing and also her consistent ties back to therapy and neuroscience. Did think that her examples in the Joy chapter were incredibly triggering though.

Neuroscientists tell us that acts of kindness release endorphins, neurotransmitters that alleviate pain and lower blood pressure. God has designed our bodies to benefit from genuine kindness both when we receive it and when we offer it. Kindness is God's medicine.

To engage with the fruit of the Spirit is not just to understand or to better recognize that fruit, as useful as that may be. It is, rather, to deepen our relationship with our source, the wild untamed Spirit of God, who brings to maturity a way of life that is both countercultural and immediately recognizable as home.