Happiness creates success . . .
. . . but success doesn't necessarily create happiness.A meta-analysis of 225 psychological studies suggests that "chronically happy people are in general more successful across many life domains than less happy people," in part because they seek out and engage new goals.
Importantly, the study examined the relationship between happiness and "culturally-valued success"--by which I presume the researchers mean North American, consumerist definitions of "making it."
Much previous research assumed that happiness followed from, rather than contributed to, successful personal and professional accomplishments.
I'm curious about how this study might correlate with pastoral theological understandings of hope, which tend to emphasize agency far more than positive affect. I am not aware of any research correlating Christian hope (or "spiritual hopefulness") with "success" of any type.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, December 19, 2005
Stranger, host and guest
A student* wrote a lovely summary of Christian thought on hospitality, identifying the ambiguity of roles and relationships in guest/host interactions.I am particulary intrigued that the Greek term xenos can simultaneously mean "stranger," "guest," and "host," suggesting a dynamic reciprocity of roles (or, perhaps, a particular type of relationship) in the practices and attitudes of hospitality (which, in Greek, is called philoxenia: love of stranger/guest/host).
It strikes me that "hospitality" could be a key theme for theological development of social constructionist ideas. To my knowledge, hospitality is not addressed in the literature of social constructionism, and pastoral theology has not attended to it much (with Katherine Godby and Margaret Guenther as notable exceptions).
As presented in the paper I received from Jennifer, the Semitic (and, more precisely, Christian) concepts of hospitality could be correlated with (and critique) John Shotter's concept of "joint action" in helpful ways (if you're not familiar with the technical term "joint action" in constructionist psychology, see this for more detail).
Thanks, Jennifer, for prompting helpful and generative reflections!
* To whom I cannot (unfortunately) provide a link; I cannot find her on the Web, in part because she is not listed on the website of the congregation where she works--reflecting, I suspect, the ambiguous and marginal role of women in ministry in her conservative, free-church tradition.
And here I must acknowledge that I am contributing to her marginalization by not naming her fully--a decision I made because I have not asked her permission to name her and because I do not want to create difficulties with her denomination by identifying her personally in a comment about her marginalization by the church.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Saturday, December 10, 2005