Mental Health and Loneliness with James Aaron and Sarah Bishop

This is the fifth and final episode in our mini-series produced in collaboration with the Pulse team from Uniting Mission and Education. And in my opinion, this one was such a profound, vulnerable and meaningful conversation. Sarah Bishop and James Aaron joined me to explore mental health and loneliness in the context of faith and spirituality. When I was sitting with Sarah and James having this conversation it felt holy to me. It felt deeply honest and human. And I hope that is your experience as you listen. A strong theme that comes through in this conversation is the strength in vulnerability, and the dignity in asking for help. So if you listen to this and you’re in a place where you need support with your own mental health, remember, there’s no shame in reaching out for help.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Will Small: [00:00:43] Well, Sarah, James, I'm so grateful for your willingness to be part of this big and important conversation around mental health, spirituality, loneliness, and what it's like for young people growing up today in Australia, particularly in or around the church. So there's a, there's a lot of territory there to cover.

[00:01:06] And we'll do our best. Really. I just think we're all we ever do is we start the conversation. We don't have the whole conversation. We just start something that might help people to continue to progress it where they are to begin with. I'd love to hear from each of you just a little bit about who you are and how you approach this conversation.

[00:01:24] How do you locate yourself? Within a conversation around mental health and young people and spirituality, you know, what is it that about that conversation resonates with you or the work that you do or how you kind of exist in the world? How about we start with James? 

[00:01:40] James Aaron: Thanks. So firstly, I'm a minister in the Uniting Church.

[00:01:45] I work at the moment predominantly with young adults. And it is within kind of those formative years that mental health becomes definable and, or experienced or mental illness, I should say. And so my work with the church at times finds me. Defining what mental health is, where congregations or communities have never spoken about some of the realities of mental wellness or mental illness.

[00:02:12] And likewise with, with young people talking about their experience of mental illness. My own experience of mental illness is, You know, trauma related anxiety and, and some PTSD and working through a lot of that with narrative therapy and, and good psychological practice that wasn't always welcomed by the church and wasn't ever safe until I was safe to talk about in a church or community setting.

[00:02:39] And so it's one of my zealot views. One of my strong views in myself is to create safe places for young people, young adults in the spectrum of who we are as the church to speak about our health and wellness especially loneliness and our experience of being alone in that in that reality and to open doors for people to, to build community around not just language, but experience and story and who we are.

[00:03:08] Will Small: Thank you, James. I acknowledge the the vulnerability of entering this conversation. And just, yeah, I'm really grateful for your willingness to share of your expertise, experience and heart in this space. Thanks. How about you, Sarah? Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you locate yourself within this conversation.

[00:03:26] Sarah Bishop: Well, I'm a mental health chaplain in to public, the public health system, relatively new to that space. Have been a chaplain for a little while now and involved with ministry for a long time. And, but most recently and exploring going into the Uniting Church as a minister of some form. So but the, Yeah, mental health is a relatively new field for me, so I feel like it's a voyage of discovery and that I feel a little bit, this is a bit cliched, but I feel like I've found my tribe and that sense of being it's a self acceptance, the acceptance of people who are going through really difficult times.

[00:04:14] Their life is in So impacted. I'm, I'm at the point of meeting people and supporting people and journeying with them. We just, we walk along the path together people who are whose lives are very altered. by their mental health situation, their inability to, to deal with reality or to make sense of what's going on around them.

[00:04:40] It's yeah, it's very humbling and I, I feel like I'm pushed and stretched and grown and yeah, gifted by being in places where there are people who are doing the best that they can. And there's an amazing level of support for them. It's not perfect. The situation is certainly far from perfect in public health, but it's it's extraordinary to be part of it and to have to feel a sense of being welcomed.

[00:05:12] That's what I am most, I think, surprised by is just it, I guess, in, I was warned against going into mental health. And yet, stepping into that space and feeling that the parts of me that don't make sense or, or are hidden, are, are there and it's okay. Yeah. 

[00:05:39] Will Small: Very profound and important work. And to be a chaplain in that space is a really significant thing.

[00:05:47] Presence I imagine and just as you receive I'm sure that you're just you're being there is a real comfort to people that you work with if you think like kind of broadly speaking I think the cultural conversation around mental health has really increased. In recent years, and there's certainly, I, I would think at like the average level, a greater level of awareness and understanding around at least some of the common kind of mental health language and concepts has the church caught up?

[00:06:19] I wonder if you think about your experiences as well as maybe thinking about, you know, what you observe more broadly do we feel like the church is kind of having the conversation it needs to be having around mental health, understanding, awareness, education? Or is the church kind of maybe a little bit behind the conversation at a broader level?

[00:06:42] James Aaron: It's a really complicated answer. You are the church in community doing the work of the church in community. And so in many aspects, yeah, the church has caught up. 

[00:06:52] Yeah, 

[00:06:54] I think all of community, if If there are people self harming and people getting to a point of of physical and psychosocial harm and, and psychological harm in their lives and not being treated, then it's actually a reflection on the whole society.

[00:07:10] I don't know that it's any church or any faith or any part of community that finds mental health Hard to talk about. But we do often do that as human beings find things that are too hard to talk about and hide away from them. And so you're right. Yes, society is moving forward and there are pockets of the church that.

[00:07:31] Need to do more work as much as there are, and I'm not batting for the church. Trust me. Like I'll be the first to call the church to account, but we all as a community of people need to not hide away from the, from the conversation.

[00:07:48] Will Small:  I think you're right that the, it can only really be embraced as a conversation that actually needs to be very collaborative.

[00:07:54] It needs to cut across. Different fields, faith groups. Yeah, 

[00:08:00] James Aaron: feel free to disagree, but yeah, 

[00:08:02] Sarah Bishop: yeah, no, I think it's, it is a complicated answer. It's, it's not straightforward because it just depends, depends on so many parts and factors and there, there are. parts of the church that are more open to this, to being and have greater awareness and some less.

[00:08:22] But I think that every, that, that all, there's much to be, too much to be contributed. There's many There's many parts to the puzzle, and there's many people that can contribute the parts to the puzzle. So there's this sense of wanting to value all the different parts, but I think at the basis of it, there needs to be an awareness of what mental health is and looks like, and it, and that sense of connection to self, like we are part of the puzzle.

[00:08:53] That we're not separate from, and it can be comforting or, or, but, but ultimately unrealistic to separate ourselves from people that are different, other, and there's a sense, unless we were able to realize that sense of deep connection that exists. That we, it's very difficult to identify with and to assist people because we're not connected to our own self.

[00:09:19] So that's come and that comes back to the loneliness thing. I think that there's a deep sense of, of self loneliness that exists with people. And the church is just another place where people are disconnected. Yeah. But that's what we're called to be deeply connected. And that's across all the aspects of life.

[00:09:38] Mental health being one aspect of life. 

[00:09:42] Will Small: Beautifully put. 

[00:09:43] James Aaron: And 

[00:09:43] I think we yearn, 

[00:09:44] we yearn for connection, but we also yearn to hear our own struggle narrative story behind pulpits and behind TV shows and behind like all these different spaces in our lives. I don't know who said it, but somebody said proximity eliminates prejudice.

[00:09:59] And so when we think about mental, mental wellness and mental illness and the more that we open the door to that conversation, as much as we do to. Knowing our indigenous brothers and sisters or knowing queer family and so on and opening the door to those stories, which is what you've just said I guess that eliminates any kind of prejudicial view that we might have about what mental illness or wellness might look like.

[00:10:24] It's often said, Oh, I never knew that he or she was going through that until. Sometimes too late or until they end up in an acute ward or in acute care, which, you know, no shame, but for a community to not know somebody says that they're doing some deep, lonely work when they might not need to.

[00:10:46] Will Small: Well, that's the thing, right? It's we know that in every community there are people at all different stages with their mental health and wellbeing. And if we think just about young people. We know, you know, the stats, for example, there's a survey by Mission Australia in 2022 that found that almost 3 in 10 young people indicated high psychological distress and almost one quarter felt lonely all or most of the time.

[00:11:13] So, any community with young people, and that's just young people, but the mental health stats obviously stretch across the generations but that's a, that's a big. Percentage of people in community who whether or not they're able to express it whether or not it is known they are there carrying some of that loneliness or some of that mental distress that psychological distress.

[00:11:36] How do you think this intersects with the experience of a young person who is growing up in a faith community? You know, at its best, would there be good news? You know, if you're a young person who's experiencing high psychological distress and you find yourself in a faith community, you know, what are some of the possible things there that could be?

[00:11:57] Protective factors, what are some of the things there that we would hope would actually be reasons why, Oh, I'm glad that I found myself in this context as I am. If we imagine sort of the best case scenario, does that make sense? Yeah. 

[00:12:13] Sarah Bishop: I think sharing your life with people, that sense of proximity that related the relational aspects that happen when we're in.

[00:12:20] whatever the community looks like, that we share life together. I think that's a protective factor. It's part of the important context and that we're sharing life and we're sharing life in a real way. We're sharing all the good and all the bad. as much as it's possible to do that. And so church is a, is a community of people and to be real in that is really important for it to be as broad as possible.

[00:12:51] Yes, there's a sense of having a tribe or a sense of people that you, that share lots of things that you've got in common. And, but also that it's broader than that. And I'm, you know, intergenerational and across different stratas of like that it's broad and wide as much as it's possible. And to be sharing real life with those people, I think that's really one of the real benefits of being in a church environment.

[00:13:21] I think my upbringing in church was that I had that and it was important to me but what was lacking in my, my particular upbringing was the ability to Just to ask questions about the difficult things, we focused on certain things and other things weren't, weren't really allowed or faith didn't faith didn't really allow for that in that context, so that's what I think is important is a context where you can share life and there are almost nothing, there's nothing off limits.

[00:13:54] Will Small: Yeah. 

[00:13:55] Sarah Bishop: You can, yeah, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, all the in between stuff is fodder and allowable. Yeah. 

[00:14:07] James Aaron: Wow. There's so much here. Thank you. Like in a faith community that allows you to ask questions, like really ask questions, it says that we're all accessing the gospel, good news, story of Christ walking among us or story of God meeting humanity in equal measure, like we're all entering the text at the same point.

[00:14:24] We're all. Outsiders and insiders like reaching into something that's bigger than ourselves and so me with my mental health status and you with your mental health status or queerness or straightness or whatever it is, we're all entering the text from the outside. So we're all kind of equal When we enter the, when we go to the table like that, no one gets crumbs and no one gets the best.

[00:14:47] We all get our portion. And so for me, entering into community that's not always been like that, but that I can influence and shape to be almost like that and ask the question about who is here and who is not here and what experience is here and what experience isn't here. Is one of those key questions.

[00:15:07] I've got a bit of a leg up in the sense that this is my office where we're filming this and behind the camera just here is a list of names of people that I am in contact with on a regular basis and check in with and and they check in and keep us accountable to the work that we do. And I think that's part of community as well, is that sense of knowing each other, but also being accountable to each other in my, when I am walking through a mental health crisis.

[00:15:32] I wouldn't say crisis these days, but episode when I'm walking through my own personal mental health episode, there are three or four people in the church community that I belong to, that I sing with, that I bring potluck meals to, that I you know, gather around a communion with there are three or four people in that community who will know who I will reach out to and text or email or call and say, This is happening for me right now.

[00:15:56] And they'll say, great, thanks for letting us know. And in a couple of days, I'll get a text from one. And then in a few days after that, I'll get a text from another one. Because I know that my name is on somebody else's wall somewhere else to check in with me. And that's part of being, I think, in a church community.

[00:16:14] Yeah, yeah, that was a big answer as well. Sorry, 

[00:16:17] Will Small: that was a beautiful answer. I mean, one of the things I think is kind of emerging in the conversation so far is that when there is a level of space for honesty and for authenticity in community, that can be such a powerful thing when people feel like they can be seen as they are.

[00:16:35] The flip side of that, and perhaps this feeds into the loneliness stuff is that you can be in a community. You can be in a room and yet you can feel like you are invisible you are unseen you aren't able to ask the questions or you aren't able to say who I really am or what I'm really going through and so we do have as well as some significant mental health challenges we do have this kind of loneliness.

[00:17:00] Epidemic playing out right now in Australia and probably in plenty of parts of planet Earth, really, where we're hyper connected in some ways and yet alone. I wonder if we could chat a little bit about, you know, in terms of a faith community what are the things that help to create that, that sort of proximity that goes beyond just being in the room together, but, but being able to be honest and authentic, what builds a culture like that?

[00:17:27] Or. What are the things you've maybe witnessed or experienced that actually block that and stop that from being the experience people have in community?

[00:17:39] I 

[00:17:39] Sarah Bishop: think being, being vulnerable 

[00:17:42] is, that's, we, it's not easy to be v to be real and vulnerable. It's, that's, I guess it's just to acknowledge the difficulty of that, but that's what draws Yeah. It, it, it allows other people to be vulnerable. Mm-Hmm. Someone has to lead in that space and so it can come from so many places within a church community, but it has to be there.

[00:18:12] It has to be vulnerability. And, and that, I don't. 

[00:18:19] James Aaron: Can I add to that?. We asked, we asked a bunch of young adults and young people what was missing from the pulpit and they said vulnerability. They said that what they connected with most when somebody got up the front and they led with a sense of vulnerable.

[00:18:33] Discourse like an actual to say that they're human as well when they enter the text and not a superhero. They're not this alpha, you know, super Jesus coming in to save their congregation, but rather they're a real person with real life experience values and joys and that vulnerability leading not just from the front, but kind of swelling throughout the congregation and swelling in there every day.

[00:18:58] Allows for a deeper connection than putting on the front, putting your best foot forward always, you know, I'm trying to do that now with a blocked nose. I'm trying to, you know, I'm really smart, but like, it doesn't really matter. Like leading with that sense of, you know, Like, we all get colds, we all stumble.

[00:19:17] Sarah Bishop: We all suffer from mental health conditions, maybe not in the sense of it being a diagnosed thing, but it's, that's been a big learning for me is that, and I think it's such a big thing. beautiful connection that on the continuum of health, mental health, we're all on it and we move along it and it's okay to not be coping so well and to say I'm not coping so well, you know, to, to admit that it's not a failing, it's human and it connects us.

[00:19:49] What connects us is all of life. And I think when you were speaking about vulnerability, that it, it, and where does it come from? How do, how do we lead vulnerably? Well, it has to come from lots of places has to come from lots of places. It's diff, what I've, what I notice is that culturally, the church struggles with having a leader, the person at the front that's giving the message or holding the space.

[00:20:22] It's difficult to be vulnerable without, it's, it's really a hard boundary, there's boundary issues there and it's hard to do it with professionalism, with, you know, a sense of doing the job well. Well, what does it mean to be a leader in the church, to, to. hold the authority. Well, I think my sense is that we look to Jesus in that space because He did hold the boundary there.

[00:20:53] He was able to do it real, authentic, vulnerably, but with strength, with a sense of knowing boundaries and not being dangerous at that sense of safety as a person. He didn't expose, it's a really tricky thing to try to, but it can be done. 

[00:21:13] Will Small: You do have this model in the, the story, the kind of theology around Jesus of the divine almighty one who flung stars into space becoming, you know, ultimately vulnerable.

[00:21:28] Yeah. Both in the form of a baby and then in the form of a crucified. One, you know, you have these incredibly vulnerable portraits of the one who arguably could have, you know, had the most togetherness and upfront power gives it away, which is, it's a really powerful image to dwell on in community and to think, what does it look like whatever power we have, whatever position we hold to try and be more identified with.

[00:21:59] That level of divine vulnerability 

[00:22:03] James Aaron: that that connection with Christ literally resting like God resting God's head into the heart of humanity. Yes. Like for us, opens the door to a vulnerability, especially for the alpha male among us or or in us, like the alpha mm-Hmm. To kind of put, hang that up for a moment and rest our own heads in the vulnerability of humanity.

[00:22:25] Mm. And God at the same time, and recognize that to ask for help. Is almost as compassionate as Giving help, like, in that sense that we don't have to always be the strong willed, strong owner, strong person holding the space of some exceptionally strong women in my life that have persevered and have raised me at different points and not always my mother.

[00:22:53] And those people stood in as young women and like my sister especially, I was stood in as a young person herself and as a young woman to protect and to care for me but. Likewise, since she's had children, she's reached out to me and asked for rest and asked for help and for me to come and pick up her children and for her, that vulnerability broke me, like in the sense of this beauty of being able to step back into caring for and I think that is, Don't do it alone.

[00:23:26] Like if you are, yeah. Like this is, you can say it again and again and again. We all have experience where we've been alone and we've been doing it tough. We've been walking through the shadow and, and so on, and screaming out to God. Like, where the, where the hell are you? Like, heck hell, where are you?

[00:23:45] Mm-Hmm. And to swear word here. And not seeing that. Our sister, our brother, our pastor, our minister, our friend, our loved one, our black neighbor next door is waiting to be broken open and ask for help. And the opportunity to stand alongside you, whoever you are, is an honor and a joy that calls me each new day into the ministry of this community.

[00:24:12] This place and these people. 

[00:24:14] Will Small: Yeah, 

[00:24:16] Sarah Bishop: it's a redefinition when you're speaking. It just, it's a redefinition of what is strength. We have this idea that this is what strength is, and it's more aligned to the Alpha concept, this sense of and the surface and that You know, the no breaks, the perfect, and that's not what, that's, that's so limited, and it's so not, because it's limited, it's not true.

[00:24:48] The truth is in the wholeness, in the fullness. So we, we're called to, to live and embrace a different way of being, of being strong. And being strong is as much in giving help as receiving it. Both, and strength does not exist except both being there and we, we need to be that as a, as a church, as a people, as a, as a community, as individuals, that's how we need to be.

[00:25:21] James Aaron: When we're whole. Yeah. 

[00:25:23] Will Small: I think the the other side of all of this is that you know, maybe where the church has struggled and maybe this is just a human thing, but I think sometimes churches are particularly good at the kind of. Toxic positivity. We avoid anything that feels. Like it kind of calls into question the goodness of God.

[00:25:43] So at its worst, this looks like things like just kind of praying it away. Someone's got a mental health condition. Well, we pray for them and it should be gone. They should be cured of it. This kind of like, or if it continues, we just ignore it. We can't talk about that we can't bring that out into the light because it doesn't belong in this place of goodness and beauty and you know so there can be this sort of like pretending that if we allow that vulnerability to enter we're actually somehow.

[00:26:09] Muddy in the waters of what is supposed to be a community of joy and light and homeless. But actually that, that's all pretty surface level. What, what thoughts does that bring up for you in terms of the church's tendency at times to be overly triumphalistic or positive? You know, how can we create more space for the difficulty, that's not a distraction from the goodness of God, but maybe the place where actually we experience it most tangibly.

[00:26:38] Sarah Bishop: My response is that it's experiential. That's become my sense of, of it, is that it's not a head trip. That if I keep, if I keep faith in my head as a matter of belief, then I have a tendency. And I think the church has a tendency to keep, to stay on the surface and to embrace to be in ways that are not whole.

[00:27:04] It's this becomes a separated existence. When we enter into an experience, then everything shifts. And it's like sometimes drowning. And sometimes swimming, and sometimes floating, but we're in the water. We're not separate from it. And then there's a recognition on a kind of mystical level that we, we're made of water.

[00:27:30] So kind of the analogy of water being that life is all around us, and it doesn't help anyone to have any level of separation. 

[00:27:40] Will Small: Beautiful. 

[00:27:41] Sarah Bishop: Dive in. 

[00:27:43] Will Small: Yeah. 

[00:27:44] Sarah Bishop: Embrace the wet, the moist, the, the, the juiciness, and the, the sometimes drowning nature of that, that I, I can only survive if my, my brother, my sister, my, my, you know, my neighbor and, and I'm in the world and, and I it, it really is the people that are saving me are the people in mental health wards.

[00:28:12] Will Small: Hmm. 

[00:28:13] Sarah Bishop: Like, they are my teachers and my, and my guides and my friends, and increasingly, that's where Christ is for me, and so, no separation. Yeah, throw that out because that is just not what, where, where life is. I don't think, I don't know if I answered your question. That's a 

[00:28:31] Will Small: beautiful answer and it's another reminder that that's where, you know, Jesus did locate himself in terms of, you know, when, when I was hungry and you fed me and, you know, I was in hospital and you visited me, like Jesus actually says, if you want to find.

[00:28:46] The face of divinity, the face of God, you go out to those who have been kind of pushed to the edges, they actually hold the very presence of of the divine. 

[00:28:56] James Aaron: I think there's something fundamentally flawed with the community that thinks that it can walk in and save a bunch of people because God does the saving we.

[00:29:04] And so it's quite funny. Like you're saying you walk among you walk among your work at the moment and you are changed by it because you see God in it. And I want to like repeat that kind of an echo that is I work with. Young people and a whole spectrum of people actually across the whole church because my, my job is to resource the whole church.

[00:29:25] And I find God in the least likely and the most likely and not always with equal portion, but that's more on me than it is on them. And so just recognizing that. In the work that I've done in in the homeless sector and the work that I've done in mental health and the work that I've done in health leading into this space, it's never been about, and I hope it's never been about me saving them, but always being available.

[00:29:52] To the God in each other. And we talk about In Mego Dei and all of that, but literally, literally holding that as sacred as sacred as our communion, as sacred as our baptism and the diving in when did we lose touch with the fact that our humanity And our godliness includes body, mind, spirit, self, and, and who we are as community, and I, I, you know, I hate to say that it's, it's, it's something that's bred out of slavery because we needed to separate slaves from their spirit so that we could baptize their spirit and still treat their bodies like crap.

[00:30:27] And we haven't recovered from that, and I think we might be slowly recovering from that, but from the beginning of the law with Moses. And in fact, in, in the law of humanity our laws governed what the body and the mind and the spirit did or didn't do. So it was entwined and Christ came and entwined or re entwined body, mind, spirit in how they, God called us to love.

[00:30:53] One another in body neighbor and in mind and in spirit. And likewise, I think we're being called again in this new time and place to re entwine who we are as body, mind and spirit for lack of a better word. 

[00:31:09] Will Small: Yeah, this idea of separation and wholeness, like two words that have come up. It's so interesting because I do think major issues in the church, major issues I have with, you know, a lot of common theology is to do with separation.

[00:31:23] Yeah. And where I see, you know, God and people and creation have been kind of split apart in terms of our mental models. But even in the mental health space, We know that part of the work there is to bring back together your mental health is not separate from your health you don't have like a body that is healthy or unhealthy and then a mind that's in a different plane and we know that often what's good for your body is good for your mind and vice versa.

[00:31:53] So I just think in both spaces it's so interesting that the work is what has been. Separated that we need to bring back together and make whole, and that could be seen as the restorative, you know, wholeness, shalom, shalom bringing work of the spirit. At the beginning of the conversation, James, you said you like said a phrase about mental health and then quickly clarified around mental well being or mental illness.

[00:32:17] I'm not sure you have heard of Gus Warland gotcha for life is kind of a big suicide prevention mental health foundation by. Gus, who's a radio presenter who lost a mentor to suicide and then started his foundation. But he talks a lot about mental fitness. Yeah. He talks about how we don't just need to have strategies for coping with our negative mental health, as important as that is.

[00:32:41] We need to help build mental fitness, mental muscle in the proactive, positive sense. What would it look like for a generation of young people, young adults, for 18 year olds to be learning mental fitness? In the church, what would that look like in terms of their, their connection, their spirituality, their way of engaging with the world?

[00:33:02] You know, how could we kind of push more into that churches that build? Mental fitness.

[00:33:10] James Aaron: Talk about it. As a community, I really believe that sharing each other's narrative and actually being available to each other getting informed. So for churches to actually realise that I'm a minister, I'm not I'm not a registered psychologist or otherwise. And so inviting like professionals into that space where we haven't previously done that.

[00:33:31] I keep thinking of a doughnut of resilience where we have like this kind of this merry go round of connect, communicate discern and integrate and then a step back into connect, communicate and just follow this kind of cycle of who we are as an individual, but who we are as a community. And so you kind of journey that, that doughnut or circle or cycle or whatever you want to call it as a community.

[00:33:53] For me. My experience, sorry, I'll jump it back into my experience for a moment, but I'm really lucky. No, I'm something that I experienced mental wellness and mental illness in my body in the sense that my anxiety fuels disordered eating. And so I know when I'm anxious because I'm practicing disordered eating.

[00:34:16] And so my mental fitness comes into question with my. Physical fitness, because unwell, tired and to recognize the signs that my body is not being fueled how it needs to be. And so there's this, it had to happen hand in hand, that my physical and my mental fitness had to literally go hand in hand.

[00:34:38] And so that cycle that I just spoke through was something that I had to really build a community of people faith, because needed to integrate who I was in God's eyes because there was this huge shame gap between who I thought I should be and what I should look like and what I should be doing and, and all of that stuff and what I was or wasn't.

[00:35:00] And so this huge shame gap happened. So I needed to fill it with faithful people and with nutritionist and with psychologist and with PT and like all of these other people. And suddenly the shame gap ended up being. My communal like interaction. And so maybe that's part of how we can be community.

[00:35:20] I hope that 

[00:35:21] Will Small: and it's a great example and you're not the only one James, who, you know, there are clues in your body. I mean, it's true for everyone, right? Clues in your body. Or whether your mental state is, is unwell or, or well, and to help people have an awareness of, you know, your spirituality comes down to being able to recognize how, what your body is asking for is a valid request.

[00:35:47] Yeah. So answer it and be well. Yeah. In the name of Jesus kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. What, what does that bring out for you, Sarah, as you think about mental fitness and how we. Kind of increase that in communities. 

[00:36:01] Sarah Bishop: Well, one of the areas that I've found very helpful for my own sense of connection, that sense of integration is spiritual practices, and it's something that I feel is like this hidden treasure that we can bring into in, into the conversation and into practice.

[00:36:21] It's a, it's a practice. It's that sense of building the muscle or the fitness. When you spoke about fitness, I think about, well, the way we get fit is to do something, to repeat it over and over. And so practices are those things that out of, out of the traditions. And for me, it's not just Christian traditions.

[00:36:39] It's across all spiritual traditions because there's so much similarity and so much beauty. So that's what I. I have found for my own self, for my own journey of becoming an integrated person, all the levels of myself kind of being valued and being connected, becoming more connected, and it's something that I'm seeking to bring into the mental health spaces because In the mental health context where I am in hospital, it's the focus is on mental health and stabilizing that, often with pharmaceutical interventions as the kind of main stay, as well as some psychological elements to that as well.

[00:37:25] Then it's a hospital environment, so the body is, or the physicality is part of that, as a, as part of it. But not the focus, but it's there. Anything other than that is not considered. So it's about trying to figure out ways to, to bring other aspects that give people something that they can focus on. So personally labyrinth walking has become important.

[00:37:49] And it's a, there's a, there's a, an amazing wisdom to that, which is bodily, which is mental, which is spiritual. There's this kind of holistic nature to it. The practice of Dadidi, the indigenous practice of deep listening and inner stillness and meditative practices, mindfulness practices, all of these are there's so many, there's so many.

[00:38:12] The world's spiritual traditions are full of ways of becoming whole and healthy across all of our whole self. So that's what I think the church, if we're going to create spaces, I think that we need to be looking to bring back some of. These into our common practice. It's not just a head trip. It's and we need to be in to seek ways of integrating 

[00:38:42] James Aaron: in this very little time for humanity to just stop at the moment and to be present to one another or to themselves.

[00:38:50] And so finding practices where. You can stop and I say this carefully, but stop hiding from the reality of you. So like there's only so much Netflix that can drown out the internal voice that says stop eating. Or there's only so much so many podcasts that you can listen to. Sorry, podcast.

[00:39:09] Hello. Thank you for listening. But only so much that you can listen to to inform you before you actually start moving. My trip was the fully embodied practice of me praying was actually stepping into an MMA ring and having somebody with a bamboo stick, like, hit me until I was really present because I was really obnoxious and and I wouldn't be present otherwise.

[00:39:32] And so it took that. For me to find meditation and to find self and to, to kind of sit in the discomfort of who I was at that time and where I'd be, where I'd found myself. So find the right exercise or right thing for you that actually works for you and for your community. And it will be different, as I say, it's different for everyone and the practice is something that you're going to build a habit to.

[00:39:58] But I think. What happens when we put ritual to something and I'm not talking candles or bells or whatever else, but yeah, it could be, yeah, 

[00:40:08] Sarah Bishop: rituals, ritual, but it's individual, it's personal and it's communal as well. 

[00:40:12] James Aaron: And you attach this meaning that says this is how a vessel 

[00:40:16] Sarah Bishop: of meaning. Yeah, that's a ritual.

[00:40:17] Yeah. 

[00:40:18] James Aaron: And you step into it. And for me. Stepping into a boxing ring was going up and, and seeing the person I trusted with my life, literally and, and nodding and acknowledging them and then bowing towards the person who I was about to face and being present to them. And that ritual created a deeper meaning for me to step into that.

[00:40:38] And now I've carried that into other aspects of my life that gives me resilience and integrates a sense of. taking my wellness with me. And so finding those. Beautiful. 

[00:40:50] Sarah Bishop: Yeah, it is. It's so personal. I, in a mental health context, I will say to people, because it's multi faith, it's, it's all faith and none.

[00:40:59] It's so it's not just the, the things that we find useful that come out of the Christian tradition, though they are beautiful and they do speak of depth. And but it's, I say, and I, I know that people that aren't watching this can't see it, but I always use the gesture of a, the golden thread that, which is meaningful for me and for other people as well, but the sense of being drawn or invited.

[00:41:24] into life. And I say to people in the mental health context, where is the life for you? Go there, go where the life is drawing you. And it might be in the boxing ring. And that's just, I love that, that sense. That's so cool. I'm a Tai Chi person, so, you know, there's a connection between those two things, but there's a physicality to them.

[00:41:46] It, for a lot of people, it's in nature, that's where, and they, it's easily accessible. But you do need to make time for, you need to give it, and I find that the spiritual journey is so, is, is characterized in one way by forgetting and remembering. And that cycle of, we lose our way. We get distracted, we, whatever's going on, but we, part of the journey is to the return home, that coming back to self, whatever that looks like or whatever it is, it has to be though, becoming connected to your being.

[00:42:26] James Aaron: And it's so important on that journey to not forget, but definitely forgive yourself and like make room in your, in yourself and in your community to forgive each other. There's this ritual that we do every, every week in the church where we come together and we acknowledge the forgiveness that God gives us.

[00:42:44] But I try and remind communities when I'm leading, definitely That they're allowed to forgive themselves and to let go because we hold on to I think in, in our common breath as a community, we hold on to a lot of pain that we've inflicted on ourselves and others and giving us that space to let go.

[00:43:01] Creates new space for, for that coming home business, which we should, you know, we should all sort of sit in and practice in some way, shape or form. 

[00:43:10] Sarah Bishop: Yeah, it is. It's a difficult to, it's a difficult thing to do. And it doesn't matter how old you are. We, we get shown to live like that by our, formative people.

[00:43:22] Yeah. And so we learn that that's the way to be. And it's not good though. It's not a good way to be. And we practice it over and over again, and we're surrounded by all the people. And yet part of, of what I think God is calling us to do is to be people that live differently in a place where Where we are, we are forgiven and we live that and we practice it and we inhabit that space and we do the hard work of it, of accepting that, that's that call and response, that accepting again.

[00:43:57] James Aaron: Yeah, and context is so much, like, we do live in a narrative world where a world of narrative where shame is expensive, like, you don't have enough, you are not enough. You can't ever be enough. And you won't ever attain enough. And so what happens when you turn that over 

[00:44:16] Will Small: and 

[00:44:16] James Aaron: you're on an inner community where you've created space to come home, where you are enough, where you have enough, where you can, you have already attained enough.

[00:44:26] And you can just be you, here oh. 

[00:44:30] Sarah Bishop: That, to me, is the heart of the loneliness issue, is that, that's the very heart of it, is that sense of within ourself, that deep, deep knowing that we are enough, and that we, I completely totally love just exactly the way that we are and we're called to become more but it's more of who we are already.

[00:44:55] Will Small: I think the two of you should start a podcast I am just over here just like soaking it in and there's so much beautiful wisdom that you have shared and it's actually it's it's beautiful to watch if people you know are just listening just watching. The animation of your bodies as you speak about these practices that have been life giving for you, MMA or walking a labyrinth.

[00:45:16] And I was going to ask James, and then you kind of started to take it there anyway. But, you know, I suppose there's that difference between the individual practices, which are really important and so good for us to grow the self awareness to know, well, for me, it's this, but what are those practices that help us in a community to have those reminders that, that lift us from.

[00:45:37] Individualized self into well as a people we remind ourselves around this table that we are all welcome and invited. Or as a people we say these ancient words that connect us with something that's even bigger than the people in this room but through time and space are there any other I don't know practices that come to mind for people that might be thinking about what community looks like or what even a small group of people looks like practices that can build that sense of.

[00:46:06] Holding the space for each other.

[00:46:11] Sarah Bishop: I would say get creative. 

[00:46:13] Will Small: Yeah. 

[00:46:14] Sarah Bishop: There's so many, like, it's just, it's almost infinite, the number of, I mean, there are traditional practices, there are things that are, like, I just came from the youth mental health context, and there were two people sitting on the lounge playing a, you know, some shoot em up kind of game.

[00:46:33] game. I'm not really into games in that way, but that was their community. And they were really, and I kind of had this little interaction with, with them just to check in, you know, how you guys doing? And and one of the people said, it was amazing. He said well, I'm going to be being discharged today.

[00:46:54] And I'm like, Wow, that's great. Like, you know, how are you feeling about that? You know? Oh yeah, I'm, I'm, yeah, that's really good. And then he turned to the person with, with him and said, but I'm a bit sad because I don't get to hang out with the, you know, this person that I, and I, I'm like, yeah, you made friends here, even in this place.

[00:47:15] Wow. And so there's that sense of acknowledging. And celebrating and lamenting and, you know, the wholeness, the fullness of it. 

[00:47:24] James Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:47:25] Sarah Bishop: No separation. 

[00:47:26] James Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:47:26] Sarah Bishop: Yeah. 

[00:47:28] James Aaron: There's so, yeah, there's so much that during the lockdown, during COVID gathering around a dinner table even with cameras. Was this sense of vulnerability of welcoming people to my dining room, like a whole church community to my dining room, and then seeing a screen with everybody with the same candle, which we'd given out to everyone in that particular community and sharing a meal together, like on screen was really odd, but in person is really amazing.

[00:47:56] Something about service together, so actually stepping out of the congregational setting and walking into a different setting together, whether that's bushwalking or, you know some of the some of the most vulnerable moments in my ministry have happened for other people walking alongside. So stepping into the bush where somebody might reveal their own mental wellness or illness or their journey or their trauma or something like that.

[00:48:21] And you learn this layers, these layers of people where things because of the physical exertion or whatever it is start to unpack that. So get a hiking group together and then visit, visit a missional outreach somewhere else. So I did lots of tours around the Wayside Chapel where I was working for a short time.

[00:48:43] And what that revealed in people was their own prejudice once they actually got close to somebody who was experiencing homelessness or rough sleepers or so on. It really revealed for them that it could be them and shifted their self worth into something completely different. And so it is like I remember riding an elevator up to the rooftop once to look at the garden and with a group of young people and one of them said, I didn't realize we have everything.

[00:49:15] And I was like, okay, like, cool. What does that mean? Like, unpack that. And I won't go into what they said, but yeah, it just revealed to me a sense that we don't know. We don't know what we have until we look. And we often compare ourselves to, you know, You know, this this stream of people on Instagram and compare ourselves to this stream of people that we think have everything together.

[00:49:37] And we don't recognize that actually we, we actually have a lot. And we have a lot of resilience and we have a lot in ourselves to give and to receive. 

[00:49:47] Sarah Bishop: Yeah, I think comparison is really damaging. I think that, I don't think there's very much good about comparison at all. But I think that there's, if, if there's an antidote to it, it's gratitude.

[00:50:00] And I think that to, to practice gratitude is very important. And I think you can do it to get, you can do it by yourself, but I think there's so much beauty in practicing that. Together. Yeah. And to, to then comparison is okay. To, to compare Thankfulness is Yeah. That's very, that's a cool comparison.

[00:50:22] Yeah. In community. Yeah. In community, which is 

[00:50:24] James Aaron: what we do every Sunday if we gather in a, in a church that follows the common liturgy is we gather and we give thanks to God for that which we are, and that which we've received. Mm-Hmm. . And we do that as a community. Yeah. And it can be real and vulnerable and 

[00:50:40] Sarah Bishop: yes, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[00:50:41] And you get to, I think there's so much beauty in listening to what other people share. And if that's what they're thankful for, but it gives the breadth of there, everyone is thankful for different, but similar. We have that sense of the uniqueness and the common that's, that's held in that space. So. Yeah, I think, and I really agree with what you said about serving, I think, and place, putting yourself into a place of being vulnerable, that's that sense of stepping into, step into that which, where there's a little bit of, oh, I'm not so sure about this, I'm not, you know.

[00:51:18] Yes, holding safety, like don't step into danger. But and know your own, you know, oh, that's too far for me or, you know, that and, and being with other people that can support you is important, but to step into the space of, I don't, I'm not comfortable. I think we have a, there's a fallacy about comfort.

[00:51:39] Life is not about comfort. Yeah. That's danger. Hmm. If you're talking safety and danger. Yeah. Spiritual safety. Is a safe place is a dangerous, spiritually dangerous. So I think step into that, which way you go, I don't know about this, like, you know, like, yeah. And the, the revelation, the enlightenment that comes, the sense of, of being, becoming more open, increased capacity, all these things, this spiritual things that happen.

[00:52:13] Yeah, and it gives perspective, which I think is so good for our mental health to be able to see the breadth of life. It's not just our little section, that that's the, not the only perspective there is. There's your perspective, there's your perspective, and there's the perspective of this whole community that I've stepped into.

[00:52:32] Will Small: Oh, 

[00:52:32] Sarah Bishop: oh, okay. 

[00:52:34] Will Small: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Sarah and James, thank you so much for this very rich. Conversation that, I mean, we're talking about heavy things, but I feel light as I hear all of the ways that we've described in terms of, you know, allowing people to become more fully who they are and to step into that wholeness and to do it in community.

[00:52:56] So yeah, huge thank you to both of you for your time and your vulnerability in this conversation. And I hope for people who are listening or watching, it does kind of give you the sense that there is there is a whole world of possibility if we, if we step into those vulnerable spaces and we open up and allow ourselves to, to see and be seen beautiful things happen there.

[00:53:18] Thanks Will. Thank you. Thank 

[00:53:20] Sarah Bishop: you very much.

[00:53:24] Will Small: Well, hopefully that episode has given you some thoughts to continue to chew the conversation. It doesn't end now. It begins. Make sure that you continue to talk to your friends, family, neighbors, whoever, about the things that were raised in this episode. This was brought to you by Spiritual Misfits and the Uniting Mission and Education Pulse Team.

[00:53:45] And if you go into the show notes with this episode, you can follow us on social media, join the Facebook groups, keep the conversation going.