Curt Thompson
12 min read ⭑
“At the intersection of interpersonal neurobiology and Christian spiritual formation lies a space where people can practice telling a truer story. Where people practice for heaven. They tell their stories more truly, permitting themselves to be known and loved in communities of vulnerable fellow travelers in order to create beauty and goodness in the world.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There's much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
No one knew our pace of life was slow. It was merely the pace at which we lived. Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. Population: 800. No traffic lights. Dogs roamed the neighborhood as they pleased. We played — I and all of my friends — until late into the summer nights, canvassing the entirety of the same neighborhood that the dogs owned. Parents didn’t worry about where their children were; they merely called them to come home when needed. And most of the time, we answered.
Surrounding my little town were farms that were layered over the rolling hills of eastern Ohio. About three miles outside of town on one of the roads that wound in and around those farms was nestled The Willow Restaurant. It sat 40 people, if that. Over the course of my early years, one of my favorite meals in the world was prepared at The Willow — a hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. A meal that was as comforting as the comfort I sensed in the presence of my parents and grandparents with whom I ate it. As comforting as were the servers who knew us by name. A simple, hearty farm meal that, even now as I write, reminds me of how growing up in Mt. Pleasant, nourished by a hot beef sandwich and my evangelical Quaker community of Jesus followers, set the tone, the pace and the path I have followed. A path for which I only have a heart full of gratitude, and a memory full of the best meal one could have at The Willow.
Jeremy Hynes; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We've all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
My wife has reason to worry that I’ll forget that I’m driving our car (with her in it) and will direct it off the road to follow whatever has captured my attention. At this moment, I’m captivated by the presence of a red-tailed hawk that has found itself in my line of sight — of course, as is usually the case, at the most inopportune time. At least if you’re the passenger in the car. A raptor of any form immediately holds my attention as its grace, speed, patience and potential ferocity all weave into a flight of elegance and power. Beauty that is as precious as it is uncommonly seen. Even when at rest, perched on any high place, the hawk has a beauty that, not least in its stillness, draws me into that very stillness and bids me to rest — attentive, unhurried rest. Of course, this is yet another risk if I’m driving the car. But when not, and I’m willing to linger as long as the moment affords, I’m brought to a place of grounding. And the world is at peace.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We're just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what's your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
It’s just everywhere. Wise people have reflected on how the first nine of the Ten Commandments all rest on it, the tenth, and that it is the reason we break all those that precede it. And who knew that it’s not just everywhere? It’s everywhere for me. Envy. In each direction I set my gaze, I notice those who are invariably younger than me. More attractive than me. Smarter than me. More interesting than me. Are writing more important books than I write. Are more loved and respected by their patients than I am. Have more children and grandchildren than I do. Are being asked by the most important people to speak at the most prestigious gatherings more than I am.
I never knew how ubiquitous envy was in my life. Becoming aware of it was, at first, overwhelming. And then, suddenly, it was also somehow liberating. It turns out that so much of my heartache has, over the years, emerged not so much because of what I haven’t had or been enough of but because of my practice of envy. And my envy is rooted in my shame.
The relief I sense in discovering this is precisely because I have now spotted my enemy, and the enemy is clear. Yes, it is everywhere, but it isn’t camouflaged against the backdrop of some complicated story I make up about the complexity of life’s circumstances. No, as it turns out, it’s quite simple. I am envious. And this clarity means that my work every day now includes my commitment to look not for if envy will show its face in my life but where and in what form.
I’m not proud of being envious. Although I have to admit I am proud that I’m not as envious as others I know. Uh, oh. Oh, that’s right. My condemning arrogance. It’s. Just. Everywhere.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What's your obsession? And why should it be ours?
What story do you believe you’re living in? It’s my privilege to walk with people into the most vulnerable, frightening rooms in the houses of their souls and relationships in order to answer that question. And indeed, answering it is very important because those I travel with invariably begin their journey with me believing that they live in a story of a world where we should be afraid, where scarcity rather than abundance is the most real thing. Where suffering is purposeless and devouring. And where violence rather than peacemaking is the rule of final authority.
But what if that’s not the story that’s most true about the world? What does it mean to tell our stories more truly? I’m not referring to the facts. I mean more faithfully, more according to how the world most truly is. A truer story where they learn that the most difficult thing for us as humans to do is to allow ourselves to be loved. And that when we allow that to happen, we begin to see beauty where before we saw only carnage. We imagine hope where there was only despair. We forgive rather than fiercely clutch our grudges. We take risks to vulnerably be seen and known by others while seeking the same within those same relationships.
At the intersection of interpersonal neurobiology and Christian spiritual formation lies a space where people can practice telling a truer story. Where people practice for heaven. They tell their stories more truly, permitting themselves to be known and loved in communities of vulnerable fellow travelers in order to create beauty and goodness in the world. In the process, they’re becoming artistic works of beauty. From that perspective, I wrote “Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope.” It is my humbling, deeply gratifying, joyful privilege to shepherd so many. I don’t deserve my life, and there’s no greater example than this.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it's God when it happens?
“Could you please repeat that? I think you just said something really important, but I didn’t catch it.”
Being present to one of my patients as we both stand chest-deep in the excruciating pain of their life can sometimes usher me into a time-space moment where words can tumble out of my mouth, pulled from a place that I can’t fully identify. All of the sensations, images, feelings, thoughts and whatever impulses I have in my body converge into words that are meant to respond to the moment we find ourselves in. A moment of pathos when the person I’m sitting with is often in anguish, and the only thing that stands before them and despair is … well, something that at the moment I can’t come up with on my own.
It’s in those very moments when coming from within me, the sensations find the feelings, the feelings find the words, and the words find their way into the space between us. And it’s only after my patient appears taken aback or even startled by what I’ve said do I then become aware that the Spirit has commandeered my tongue. And when my patient asks me to repeat what they missed, I often tell them that I would love to — if I could remember what exactly I said.
Nicodemus learned that no one knows where the Spirit comes from or where he’s going next. In the same way, I wasn’t aware that the Spirit was coming, nor was I able to control his direction, including getting him to circle back and repeat himself. Often, the more significant to the patient my offering seems to be, the less able I am to recall what just came out of my mouth just 20 seconds before. At that point, while looking into the rearview mirror as the moment passes, I realize that the Spirit has been in the room and on the loose.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin' best for you right now?
Immersion in so many things in order to be immersed, ultimately, in Jesus. First, immersion in a particular place and time, which, for me, is the same most days of the week. The far left side of the dark blue leather couch in our family room. The light coming into the room ranges from faint to bright, depending on the season. It’s always the early hours of the day. The sound I hear is silence until the first, faint chirp of the birds begins. Slowly at first and gradually over time, it will crescendo to a small orchestral production of song.
The first 10 minutes of my time, comfortably enveloped in that space on the couch, I spend in silence, finding my breath — and the breath of God — as I seek to allow him to bring tranquility to my unquiet mind.
Then further into immersion. First in biblical texts — Old Testament, New Testament letters and the Gospels. Then, immersion in texts apart from the Scriptures. Lesslie Newbigin. Hans Urs von Balthasar. Fleming Rutledge. Malcolm Guite. Ingrid Faro. Gregory of Nyssa. Comfort and conviction, all of them.
Then I write, longing to find and put to paper the words that are in response to the chorus emerging from within, to what I’ve heard, sensed, felt and imagined. Words written in blue ink. Waterman fountain pen. Smoothly rough course of nib on paper.
Then, immersion in prayer. Desperate, longing prayer that yearns for the Spirit to once again immerse me in Jesus such I may rise from my place on the couch and greet the world to, hopefully, offer to it what has been offered to me. Longing for the world to permit Jesus to do for it what he has done for me. Immersed in Jesus. In what it means to be loved. Love for which I will once again seek at this same place, this same time.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three resources that have impacted you?
Whenever I’m in trouble — and this could be just around the corner for me as far as I know — I pause whatever Scripture reading schedule I have and pull off the shelf a work that continues to faithfully bring me back to the Jesus I follow, especially when I sense that I’m not following him in the direction he’s going. I reach for Lesslie Newbigin’s commentary on the Gospel of John, “The Light Has Come.” It’s more of a deeply rooted manual for spiritual formation rather than just a resource for preachers or academics. It takes its reader seriously, just as seriously as it takes the world we’re living in. Newbigin was one of those people whose breadth and depth of knowledge about multiple domains of the world is matched by his humility. It’s the work I turn to when I know I need to be reintroduced to the Jesus who is as demanding as he is compassionate. The Jesus who is not about to let me off the hook — but who himself has no intention of going anywhere without me if I’m willing to follow.
A second resource has been the work of Tim Mackie and all the folks at The Bible Project. The list of their offerings that have helped me is beyond the scope of my answer here, so the one I’ll mention is “The Paradigm” podcast series. Seeing the Scriptures as God-human, ancient, Jewish, Messianic, meditative wisdom literature that comprises a unified story that leads to Jesus has revitalized my encounter with the Bible as few other resources have in the last 20 years. That podcast series? Now, that dog will hunt.
Lastly, as I’ve been telling people lately, along with The Bible Project, the online television series “The Chosen” has met my soul’s deepest longings in times and places that I could not — and certainly did not — predict. The way Dallas Jenkins and the entire cast bring the time and characters — including Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie — into a believable space has brought healing and has reminded me that Jesus is mostly interested in what’s happening right here, right now. He’s not in any urgent need for it to happen quickly. What he’s most interested in is getting my attention, turning my attention to him, and then asking me to follow where he’s leading. He frequently turns around to make sure I’m still with him, and should I wander off the path, he comes to find me.
Each of the resources I shared above has been indispensable for me in this season.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What's beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m learning, each day, to trust God with the work I do. For as long as I have worked as a psychiatrist, helping people to tell their stories more truly, I’ve found it to be deeply joy-filled and meaningful. Indeed, I don't deserve my life; and I can’t believe I get paid to do what I do.
In the last 10 years, my work has expanded beyond taking care of patients to writing, speaking and developing offerings from what we’re learning from neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation that are, hopefully, helpful. Even though I love what I do, I worry about stewarding it all. Evil does its best work in the middle of good work being done. And for me, if any work I’m doing is good, I will, invariably, worry about it. That’s one way that evil comes for me. And so I worry. A lot. About how I will somehow not shepherd all of this very well. About who I will disappoint because I can’t provide what I think they want from me — or what they’ve asked from me but that I don’t have the bandwidth to provide. I worry that I will become so immersed in my work that I will forget about my marriage, my friends or my own health.
Did I mention that I worry? Fortunately, I’m surrounded by a faithful, deeply committed cloud of witnesses, friends and family who know all of these worries and that I keep them. And they faithfully come to find me, just as Jesus came to find Nathanael under the fig tree (even though Nathanael had no idea who Jesus was or that he was watching him). And so, I’m practicing breathing and remembering, with the help of my friends, that Jesus is with me, just as they are — and that he is confident about what I’m doing, such that even doing it imperfectly doesn’t mean I’m doing it ineffectively. Because I do it with and for him in this life that he’s given me — and that I don’t deserve.
What do you worry about? Research from 2015 shows that people spend about an hour and 50 minutes per day worrying (a number that’s surely increased since then). That adds up to nearly 13 hours per week and almost 5 years in a lifetime!
And yet 72% said that they would worry less if they shared their concerns with someone. It’s no coincidence that the Bible tells us to “cast all your anxiety upon [God] and he will sustain you” (1 Peter 5:7, NIV).
There’s no worry or concern that we can’t give to Jesus in prayer. This week, let’s try to bring each anxious thought to him — he can take it.
Inspired by deep compassion for others and informed from a Christian perspective, psychiatrist Curt Thompson, M.D., shares fresh insights and practical applications for developing more authentic relationships and fully experiencing our deepest longing: to be known. Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice and other platforms, he helps people process their longings, grief, identity, purpose, perspective of God and perspective of humanity, inviting them to engage more authentically with their own stories and relationships. Curt and his wife, Phyllis, live outside of Washington, D.C., and have two adult children.
