If we want to bear good fruit in our lives, we must have strong roots. Good fruit must lead to love. As the Rev. Dr. Pam King offers in this episode, “Root into love so that you can live out love.”

Speaking on Jesus’s parable of the Tree and Its Fruits in Luke 6, she draws on theological and psychological resources to reflect on the role of active and intentional love in a thriving life.

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”

Show Notes

• Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
• “I believe this scripture … redefines reality and redefines fruit.”
• True love in *The Princess Bride — “Wuv. Twoo Wuv.”
• “True love is the greatest thing in the world.”
• “Root into love so that you can live out love.”
• What is thriving? What New Testament parables of Jesus express thriving?
• Redefining “Good”
• What is good?
• “Good” is a four-letter word
• There’s always a right answer in Sunday School: “Jesus”
• Defining the Relationship? Or Define the Reality?
• A reordering of values
• “… a radical reordering of values and a re sanctification of sanctioned behaviors. He describes the kind of conduct that is appropriate for this kingdom that he will be leading. It is love your enemies, do good out of love. Give generously out of love. Lend without expectation. Love your neighbor.”
• Fruit is a symbol of love
• Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, “The Home of God”—what is to come is coming now. “Inbreaking”
• Flux in congregational or community life
• The Reciprocating Self
• Conformity is not synonymous with uniformity
• “We are each invited to bear fruit out of our own giftedness.”
• “Bear fruit as yourself.”
• “Pam, you’re a good Pam.”
• “We bear fruit by living out God's love. in this world as ourselves.”
• Tree imagery in the Bible
• “A tree firmly planted, or some versions rooted, by streams of water, that does not get blown when the winds come by.”
• What kind of tree are you?
• How do you root into God’s love?
• Eli Finkel and third-person perspective taking
• “When people take a benevolent third person view in the Christian worldview, God's perspective, and they actually write those things about a person, the conflict is still there, but they're able to interact and care for that person more effectively and see that person more wholly.”
• “80 percent of Americans young people are lonely. We are in a cultural mode of despair in many ways. We are losing our relational capacity.”

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

“How did it go?” As we pursue purpose and spiritual health, we need regular opportunities to take stock and understand how our efforts are making an impact in our lives and in the lives of others.

In the process of pursuing purpose, cultivating joy, and connecting more deeply to ourselves, we need to learn how to audit and assess how its going as we live out our spirituality and refine our values.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains assessment—the final (and absolutely essential) step in the process of cultivating agility and adaptivity for spiritual health. At this stage, we take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.

Show Notes

• Audit and assess
• Take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.
• Consider cycles and frequencies of assessment
• The Ignatian Prayer of Examen
• Becoming aware of where God is most fully active in our lives
• Slow down, connect with God, and take a different perspective
• What are we made and created to do?
• What is our purpose as full human selves?
• The importance of patience and pausing
• Accountability
• Utilize emotions as signposts
• Drawing on the first step of attunement
• How to facilitate the final step of the cycle and move toward beginning again

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”

Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then puts our values into action for the sake of living out our purpose.

Show Notes

• Implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
• “What is one thing I can do today to more clearly align my life to those values and those sources of joy and mattering  that I thought about when I was considering alignment.”
• An attitude of discovery
• Enacting intentional behavior; bringing our values into real life
• “Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”
• Activating your purpose
• What will get us one step closer to our purpose?
• Stay mindful of the feelings we attuned to in the first step of the 5 A’s.
• Positive, expansive feelings
• Small microsteps forward
• Moving toward what matters most

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us.

This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible meanings associated with them. We begin by identifying what's true or what's false in our feelings and thoughts so we can more clearly move toward our purposes.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• “Alignment involves aligning the insights that you gained from taking inventory and attuning to your feelings and becoming aware of their meanings of then aligning these feelings to your ideals, your values, and what you assume matters.”
• What matters to you?
• Taking stock of what we attuned to, and what we became aware of
• How do we align what is with what we want?
• How to practice alignment
• How do you spend your time?
• Reflecting regularly on life goals
• “When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”
• Resilience and stability

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

It’s not easy to reflect on our emotions without judging them or running away from them. It’s difficult to stay with challenging or frightening feelings and thoughts. But to cultivate awareness means taking an open, curious, and non-judgmental approach to observing our minds.

More than simple or immediate observation (like Attunement), awareness asks us to get curious and reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we discovered in step one of attunement. What emotions are coming up for us? What thoughts keep coming into our consciousness?

In this second step of the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health, Pam King explains how we can become more emotionally aware and open-minded about our psychological reality. The key to observing our thoughts and feelings is to simply look, and not judge yourself. Let the emotions come and go, and learn from they provide information to us.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
• For the most enriching and helpful listening experience, make sure to start with the beginning of this series!
• More than immediate observation: we must reflect non-judgmentally
• Just observe, don’t judge yourself.
• Examining the meaning of our feelings, thoughts, and sensations
• Attach reflective thoughts to our embodied and psychological experience
• Journaling is a powerful exercise to connect kinetically with emotional realities.
• Narration and storytelling helps with processing non-judgmentally.
• Cultivating curiosity and open-mindedness
• “So be curious, welcome the dust, welcome the muck,  hold it, consider what it means and what it's pointing you towards.”
• “Avenues for growth. Avenues for loving yourself.”
• Uncover the values that fuel our life.
• Understanding anger, sadness, disappointment, joy, delight—all as emotional signposts to meaning and purpose
• Emotions that direct us to what matters.
• Practical Example: Anger
• Practical Example: Sorrow or Sadness
• “Linger, but don’t loiter.”
• “You’re not in this alone.”

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

What’s happening right now? What do you feel? What physical sensations are present from head to toe?

The first step in practicing the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health is Attunement—a simple, direct process of connecting to reality, perceiving your experience of the present moment, and paying attention to our physical sensations. It’s as simple as a clear-eyed consciousness: listening, feeling, acknowledging, being aware of basic sensations.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains attunement and the foundation it lays for cultivating greater agility and adaptivity. She oconsiders theological and psychological grounding for the benefits of attunement, and offers practical techniques, including a body scan and breath exercises.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
• ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!
• What is attunement? And how does it support personal agility and adaptivity?
• Connecting to reality, the present moment, and our physical experience and sensations
• Clear-eyed consciousness
• Listening, feeling, acknowledging, noticing sensations
• Embodiment and rooting in the body
• Our bodies are part of the created order.
• God has given us bodies to know and serve God.
• Pain and stress, joy or pleasure
• How do we attune?
• How to perform a body scan
• Breath exercises
• Walking as a spiritual practice of attunement
• Breathing
• Andrew Huberman’s breath exercises: “the physiological sigh” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZKIupBUuc

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

How can we cultivate agility and adaptivity in our chaotic, shifting times? Dr. Pam King offers a research-backed cycle of practices to incorporate into the rhythms of your daily life—helping you navigate change and work through life’s obstacles. She calls them the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health: Attunement, Awareness, Alignment, Activation, and Assessment.

In this episode, she introduces the 5 A’s, explaining the context, process, and benefits. She comments on the contemplative practices and psychological science that support this cycle of habits and offers reflections on why these simple movements can be so transformative.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

• With & For Producer Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
• “Why do we need to develop agility as a practice?”
• Developing agility and adaptivity
• What the 5 A’s are: “a cycle of practices synthesizing, research on different contemplative practices from different spiritual traditions …. and psychological research around the efficacy or the impact of different types of spiritual practices on human well being and health.”
• Attuning to our bodies and physiology
• What sensations might mean
• Engaging emotions, thoughts, values, actions, and behaviors that lead to a thriving life
• Dealing with complexity and unpredictability
• Tuning into our sources of meaning and purpose
• How to cultivate more spiritual vitality and sense of purpose
• “At the center of thriving is adaptive growth.”
• “We want to be able to grow in a purposeful direction.”
• “Thriving is living life on purpose.”
• Agility allows us to balance goals, relationships, and values.
• Attunement
• Awareness
• Alignment
• Activation
• Assessment

About the Thrive Center

• Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
• Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
• Follow us on X @thrivecenter
• Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

• Host: Pam King
• Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
• Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
• Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
• Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.