Welcome to Alive in the World

My name is Gary Hardwick. I am a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and also a Licensed Professional Counselor. For almost 18 years I had the privilege to lead a variety of groups in my role as minister at First Christian Church.  These groups focused on a variety of topics: biblical, theological, spiritual, philosophical, relational, emotional.

As I was leading these groups,  I did not want participants to walk away and say, “Those are interesting ideas.”  I did not want them to walk away with just more knowledge or insight than when they came in.  Instead, my goal was to invite them to consider how their interactions with these ideas and with the people in the group…how that could change the way they were looking at the world, and so change the way they were being in the world.

It is not unlike what I do as a therapist. As I sit and walk with these courageous individuals who come to me for help, we do not really discuss ideas.  Instead, we talk deeply about what is happening in their lives.  My goal is to invite them to experience the problems and struggles differently. When they experience this difference they can live meaningfully, even if the problems and struggles don’t go away completely.

At the end of 2019, I retired from my full-time job at First Christian and opened a part-time counseling practice. Over these months, I have enjoyed doing counseling, but I am also aware that I have missed the interactions that came with facilitating these groups. And we all have experienced a degree of separation and even isolation because of the pandemic. So, I decided to begin this blog as a way to continue sharing my thoughts and insights and questions into these areas of life. I invite you to join me on the journey with your thoughts, comments, wonderings, and questions.

But why the title “Alive in the World”?

A good beginning for the answer to that question comes with the orgin of the phrase. It is the title of a song by Jackson Browne. You can hear a lovely acoustic version of this song below. I’ve also included the lyrics. I invite you to go beyond listening to the song. Which images resonate with you? You might wonder why they do. Where does that resonance come from inside of you?

I want to live in the world, not inside my head
I want to live in the world, I want to stand and be counted
With the hopeful and the willing
With the open and the strong
With the voices in the darkness
Fashioning daylight out of song
And the millions of lovers
Alive in the world

I want to live in the world, not behind some wall
I want to live in the world, where I will hear if another voice should call
To the prisoner inside me
To the captive of my doubt
Who among his fantasies harbors the dream of breaking out
And taking his chances
Alive in the world

To open my eyes and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes and fully arrive in the world

With its beauty and its cruelty
With its heartbreak and its joy
With it constantly giving birth to life and to forces that destroy
And the infinite power of change
Alive in the world

I think there are times when we can be alive but not really in the world.

The things that we are alive are limited by our perceptions and ways of seeing what is happening in the world and what is going on with others. We look at others through the lens of our own beliefs and ideas, and we never consider what others are experiencing and how their perceptions can challenge and even enrich our lives. To use Jackson’s images, I will not hear if “another voice should call to the prisoner inside me, to the captive of my doubt.”

I think there are times when we can be really in the world but not alive.

One person has described this as living on autopilot. You do the activities and interactions that make up life, but it can feel like you are going through the motions. You aren’t fully present to all that is happening. To use Jackson’s image, I am still “inside my head” or “behind some wall.”

As you might guess, I think it is important to be fully alive and in the world. I hope that the reflections in these blogs and the conversations we might have about them will give us eyes and hearts to see how, in so many ways, this can be so. Thank you for joining me, and feel free to share this blog with others.