 Global Integration UpdatesCommon Ground for the Common Good Be the people we need--Build the world we need
Special News--June 2023
Parables for Personal Growth
Tales for Your Healing JourneyFeaturing Dr. Melinda Reinicke Detail of the book cover--Parables for Personal Growth (2021 edition)"These parables not only help us see our wounds, but they also show us how to mend that brokenness. Something about a parable whispers to our hearts and helps us embrace truth into our lives. We feel the emotions of the story, we grasp the difficulty of the road ahead, and we carry with us the pictures of the parable to encourage us in the choices we face."
Melinda Reinicke--Taking a Journey with the Parables -----------Overview
In this Update (#84), we focus on your personal growth and wellbeing as you engage in the world's many challenging settings, locally through globally. This Update provides what for many of us is a much-needed opportunity to pause and reflect on our own inner worlds, lifestyles, and even directions as well as to further build this important process into our busy lives and work.
We are delighted to welcome a good friend and fellow psychologist as the Guest Contributor this month, Dr. Melinda Reinicke. Melinda's remarkable and recently updated workbook (growth-book!) and related resources are featured. Parables for Personal Growth--Tales for Your Healing Journey is a tool that we have been using ourselves and recommending to colleagues across sectors since its first publication 30 years ago in 1993. It is also available in Spanish and Portuguese (2022).
Tough people in tough places need tools like this! Stay as healthy and sane as you can, help others to do the same--and keep growing! Thank you, Melinda, for joining with us in this Update!
We conclude the Update with some personal reflections on being "people of faith-hope-love" in the Christian tradition who embrace "common ground for the common good."
Suggested Applications--Making It Personal - Review the items featured below from Dr. Reinicke. Use it also as a springboard to identify a few of the resources and tools that you use to support your own and others' personal growth and wellbeing.
- Probe further into one or more of the items. For example, we encourage you to start by watching the Dragon Parable, a short, animated video that will give you a good sense of this growth-book. It will likely pique your curiosity about your own state of wellbeing as it gently draws you into "a mythical realm not far from your inner struggles."
- Share this Update with your colleagues, organization(s), and networks. Meet with colleagues to discuss practical applications for your life and work.
Going further--see these Global Integration Updates: Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michèle   MCAresources@gmail.com
Featured Resources
Parables for Personal Growth
Tales for Your Healing Journey
Featuring Dr. Melinda Reinicke
“Nineteen parables written for adults with interactive workbook reflections to explore the tapestry of issues in your life. Move forward in your journey out of depression, addiction, self-defeating behavior, sexual violation, anxiety and trauma.” And more!
 The 2021 edition is three languages.Celebrating the 30-year journey since the first English edition in 1993!"The parables are particularly useful in opening feelings that have been closed off. So ask yourself as you experience the parable, “What am I feeling? What part of the story brought this feeling? What is the parallel in my own life?”
Melinda Reineke--Taking a Journey with the Parables----------- Greetings from Dr. Melinda ReinickeHealing Our Wounds and Renewing Our Strengths
Greetings to colleagues in different countries and sectors around the world!
I am grateful for this opportunity to share my work with you. The materials in Parables for Personal Growth are borne out of my own journey into greater personal growth and that of my clients over the years. I hope that they will support your own journey as well including helping to heal wounds and renew strengths in the midst of your demanding work with seemingly intractable problems and sensitive time crunches.
Self-care coupled with mutual care are crucial for the wellbeing of people like you who give so much in making the world a better place. As a psychologist, I am keenly aware of how people in helping roles need to build both types of care into their lives and how organizations in their cultures, policies, and programs need to encourage and reinforce such care. Finding creative and effective ways to help do so has been a passion and focus of my psychology practice.
Perhaps you feel like a person who is so busy feeding others that you do not take time to have a meal yourself until you are almost too exhausted to eat. Or perhaps you do self-care and mutual care well already and are interested in some additional approaches. Either way, I’d like to invite you to sit down and nourish yourself with the parables in this book. There are nineteen short stories each with reflection questions about your own life which can gently move you forward in areas which might be holding you back. You will find no lectures or long treatises as you delve into the stories and connect with the lives of their characters.
In co-directing a large counseling center with many interns under my supervision and raising five children, I often found that multiple issues would suddenly need my attention at the same time. There was always more to do than hours at the end of the day. But I would take time for myself to reenergize. My hope is that the parables will be a safe and supportive means for you to do the same.
Wishing you all the best!
Melinda Reinicke
Parables for Personal Growth--Tales for Your Healing Journey (2021 edition). Melinda Reinicke. TraumaClinic Edições. Also available in Spanish and Portuguese. “ Nineteen parables written for adults with interactive workbook reflections to explore the tapestry of issues in your life. Move forward in your journey out of depression, addiction, self-defeating behavior, sexual violation, anxiety and trauma.” And more! - You can watch the Dragon Parable, a short, animated video that will give you a good sense of this growth-book. It will likely pique your curiosity about your own state of wellbeing as it gently draws you into "a mythical realm not far from your inner struggles.
- You can read two of the 19 parables here:
--Dragon Parable with Reflections. “There was once a great and noble King whose land was terrorized by a crafty dragon. Like a massive bird of prey, the scaly beast delighted in ravaging villages with his fiery breath. Hapless victims ran from their burning homes only to be snatched into the dragon’s jaws or talons. Those devoured instantly were deemed more fortunate than those carried back to the creature’s lair to be devoured at the dragon’s leisure...
Riding alone in the forest during a period of calm, one of the King’s sons heard his name purred low and soft. In the shadows of the ferns and trees, curled among the boulders, lay the dragon. The creature’s heavy-lidded eyes fastened on the prince, and the reptilian mouth stretched into a friendly smile...”
--Mirror Parable with Reflections. “Born into a dark and war-torn land, she was the youngest child and only daughter of the king and queen. Because of the battles, her father and older brothers spent little time in the castle...
Under the cover of this darkness one night, a band of misshapen gnomes climbed silently from the depths beneath the castle cisterns and crept unseen into the chambers of the sleeping princess. She awoke with a start to find small bodies like rats clamoring onto her bed. Though she opened her mouth to scream, only the whisper of a cry escaped and her body froze in terror...”
In a mythical realm not far from your own inner struggles, you will find travelers in these pages who join you on your sojourn. A noble prince who falls under the sway of a destructive dragon allows you to feel the process of recovery from self-defeating behavior. In another parable, an enchanted mirror leads a princess to mistakenly believe she is grotesque. Eventually she discovers her true identity.
These parables not only help us see our wounds, but they also show us how to mend that brokenness. Something about a parable whispers to our hearts and helps us embrace truth into our lives. We feel the emotions of the story, we grasp the difficulty of the road ahead, and we carry with us the pictures of the parable to encourage us in the choices we face.
Written for adults on a personal growth journey, these parables speak to the heart as well as the mind. Self-defeating behavior, codependency, inner child work, boundaries, depression, self-concept, loss of childhood, recovery from childhood abuse, dysfunctional family interactions, fears, anxiety, unhealthy group victimization, forgiving and letting go, loss and grief: many of these apply, if not to you, then to someone you love. Even issues that may, on the surface, have nothing to do with you, carry parallels in your own life. Your dragon may not be addictive or compulsive, but you know the talons of self-defeating behavior. Your uncle may not have danced with you in the dark, but you have felt betrayed by someone you loved.
Similarly, the gender of the main characters is varied, but the truths apply equally to any gender. There are many male codependents, many women who were the angry scapegoats in their families, and many men who were molested as children.
The parables are particularly useful in opening feelings that have been closed off. So ask yourself as you experience the parable, “What am I feeling? What part of the story brought this feeling? What is the parallel in my own life?”
A section for personal reflection follows each parable. These pages involve you through writing, drawing, imagining, meditating, and other experiences designed to lead you toward more wholeness in your life. Feel free to skip exercises you don’t feel ready for. And, if at any time you feel overwhelmed by memories or emotions sparked by a parable, please talk to a good friend or counselor.
Since any journey is better with company, you might consider going through the parables with a friend, Twelve-Step sponsor, or support group. The book lends itself to either individual journaling or group exploration. For those wanting more information on group use, please see Appendix 1.
You may be an avid reader of recovery or self-help books, but the parables often reach a part of you that lecture-style books do not. Or, perhaps you don’t enjoy reading and aren’t familiar with recovery principles. The parables will refreshingly introduce you to personal growth without boring or overloading you with “psychologese.”
You may be a new traveler, only recently having discovered the road to wholeness. You are eager to learn what is ahead and how to get there. Others of you may be seasoned travelers but would appreciate some encouragement on the long trek. It is, after all, a never-ending journey. The longer we travel, the stronger our injured souls become, the fewer the pitfalls we stumble into, the more beauty we notice around us. May these parables help you enjoy your own wondrous sojourn.
Melinda Reinicke
 Melinda Reinicke, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist and her husband, Aaron Reinicke, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California where they specialize in recovery treatment for trauma and sexual addiction. www.RCAcounseling.com. Her most valued education came from the clients who trusted her to walk beside them in their healing journeys and from raising five children with her wildly nurturing husband. More information about Melinda is HERE.
Personal Reflections
Being People of Faith-Hope-Love
California Coastline USA--Image courtesy and © ENOD 2016
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1964
We appreciate and enjoy connecting with people
from different faiths or of no particular faith.
People are people. As people of faith who practice Christian spirituality, we are committed to responsibly engage with others in the challenges facing our world, locally through globally, while holding firmly to our belief that we are in God's hands. We pray that God's purposes "will be done on earth as they are in heaven;" acknowledge that prayer, repentance, and relationship with God are key to human-planetary wellbeing; and live in hope for the time when God through Jesus Christ will decisively intervene in human history with equity--righteousness and justice--to restore all things. And in the meantime, we seek to embrace lifestyles of integrity that prioritize a deep, practical love for truth, peace, and people. We do not want to further problematize our world's plight by focusing primarily on the negative. Rather we want to also promote the many examples of the good going forward, as people of integrity find common ground for the common good.
Finally, we want to highlight that the despair and disillusion that result from seemingly intractable problems like corruption can also be quite positive. They can embody a crucial existential message about reality that can be "revisited"--explored and heeded--rather than simply "resisted." They can point us to Someone who is bigger than ourselves, the SDGs, humanity, and our world--the knowable, Eternal One who is both in and beyond space-time and who loves us all dearly. The above thoughts build upon the Personal Reflections in Perils, Paralysis, Hope: Sustainable Development-Sustainable Destruction? (Global Integration Update, October 2022).
Member Care Associates
MCAresources@gmail.com
 Member Care Associates Inc. (MCA) is a non-profit, Christian organization working internationally from Geneva and the USA. MCA's involvement in Global Integration focuses on the wellbeing and effectiveness of personnel and their organizations across sectors (e.g., mission, humanitarian, peace, health, and development sectors) as well as global mental health and integrity/anti-corruption, all with a view towards collaboratively supporting sustainable development for all people and the planet. Our services include consultation, training, research, resource development, and publications.
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Global Integration
Global Integration (GI) is a framework for actively and responsibly engaging in our world--locally to globally. It emphasizes connecting relationally and contributing relevantly on behalf of human wellbeing and the issues facing humanity, in light of our integrity, commitments, and core values (e.g., ethical, humanitarian, human rights, faith-based). GI encourages a variety of people to be at the “global tables” and in the "global trenches"--and everything in-between--in order to help research, shape, and monitor agendas, policies, and action for all people and the planet. It intentionally links building the world we need with being the people we need. Our Global Integration Updates are designed to help shape and support the emerging diversity of global integrators who as learners-practitioners are committed to the "common ground for the common good." 2015-current (75+ issues). Some examples of foundational ones:
Doomsday?--June 2017
Living in Global Integrity--April 2017
Peace and Security--December 2016
Global Citizenship--June 2016
Faith-Based Partners in Transformation--August 2015
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Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability;
it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God,
and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April 1963)e |
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