God Driven

I am finally recovering from a two-week miserable cold with double middle ear infections, two trips for treatment to the capitol, and a plethora of medications. But, my spirits are mostly high and I'm trying to stay busy here in my site.

Every week there's a savings group that gets together in my community. I don't take any credit for the creation of the group (it was established by OxFam before I got here), but I am a member and participate. Towards the beginning of this year I had been participating for over six months and felt like something was lacking to the group. People showed up, saved money if they could, took out loans if they wanted, paid loans, and left. I felt like it was a group but with very little group interaction. Sure, there were side conversations and at least it allowed people to get out of the house, but it still didn't feel totally worthwhile if you didn't save or deal with loans. So I made a suggestion that each meeting should start with a little discussion, activity, or mini-training.

Having suggested the idea, I was the one that started doing some of the activities, or charlas. Seeing as I'm an environmental education volunteer I have done some related to the environment, like reducing/reusing/recycling our trash. This past week I was feeling kind of down and decided to watch The Secret again and was inspired to do a mini-charla related to the concept. If you don't know anything about The Secret, I highly recommend it (the book more than the movie), and I'll give you a briefing. Essentially, the secret is the law of attraction: that each thought one has weighs something, positive or negative. Thus if you think positive thoughts, you will attract positive actions and the contrary holds true. For example, if you have a lot of debt and keep thinking about the debt, you will continue to have debt. But, if you have debt and just think about and visualize yourself with lots of money, the debt will subside and you will attract money.

Using this concept, and trying to just scratch the surface in order to get understanding, I did a basic activity with my savings group. I gave each member a piece of paper and had them put down one thing they appreciated in their lives at the moment. I collected them, redistributed them and read them out loud. (The idea being that if you focus on good things you already have, you will continue to have them.) Then I gave them a second paper and had them write something negative they think about themselves or their situation. Examples being, "Man am I poor," or, "I am so stupid." I collected them and we burned them. (The idea being that they shouldn't be thinking the negative thoughts, but focusing on the good and their desires.) In the last step they wrote down on a third piece of paper something they desired that was attainable, written in a very positive light. Then they read their own out loud, hopefully giving them encouragement from the rest of the group to really go after it. With The Secret, you have to be specific too and really believe it, so I gave them examples accordingly.

The idea from my perspective was to encourage positive thoughts and a sense of being able to accomplish whatever it is that they want to accomplish. What I forgot about, was the huge religious hold the Catholic and Evangelical churches have on these people. They put all of their faith in the hands of the Lord instead of their own hands. During the first round of papers, a lot of people wrote things like, "I appreciate that the Lord has blessed me and my family with happy lives." I had given examples like, "I appreciate when my kids help me with the dishes." That's nice that you appreciate that God has given you a happy life, but I was hoping for something more specific that you can manifest more of. We burned the negative thoughts without reading them, so I don't know if at least that step went wrong. For the third step I wanted, again, something specific. There were a couple of people that got it and put down things like, "I want another child." Or, "I want $5,000 by the end of the year." Everyone else put, "I want God to take care of me." Oh, man. What does that look like? How can you visualize God taking care of you? So, it didn't quite go the way I had hoped.

Hopefully, the activity at least inspired a little positive thinking. Because whether or not it is God you are putting your faith in, you can still attract positive things if you have positive thoughts. I'd like to encourage them to put their own future in their own hands, but that would take profound change of belief. So I guess for right now I have to hope that they'll take the first step of appreciating what they have, knocking out some of the negative personal thoughts, and thinking about good things they do want.