Knowing Me, Knowing You

Recently I (Rich) read a news clip indicating a severe spike this winter in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It has been a long cold winter and lots of folks are really melancholic. I was reminded again of the power of our emotions. Of course there are two dangers whenever we talk about our emotions, we can either make too much of them or to little of them.Our emotions play a critical role in all our thinking and our relationships. Our emotional world is very much intertwined with our cognitive processing. We have ignored this truth far too long. But even perhaps more significant is the truth that our emotional world guides us to a great extent in all our relationships.It is an infant’s emotional capacity that leads her to know mommy and daddy as people and not just as things. As we mature it is our emotions that facilitate our understanding of another’s mental state. Simply put, it is our capacity to connect emotionally with others that enables us to actually experience them as persons and to know their capacity for connection.Communion between two people is highly dependent on their ability to understand their own emotions and those of the other. The same is true in our experience with knowing God. Our emotional world, with all its affections and feelings, is an essential factor in whether or not we experience our life as "hidden in Christ with God." Maybe it would help us all if, in our conversations, we listened not only to the words spoken but for the emotional world behind them.