‘Receive the Gifts’ Bookmarks Collection

A Nouwen Network and Luke14

A Nouwen Network members were present at the Brisbane launch of Luke14 in June 2011. (Luke14 was a cbm Australia initiative committed to the development of disability inclusive Christian communities in Australia.) The artist Craig Watson, one of A Nouwen Network’s founding members, had a display of his paintings at the launch. Other members distributed A Nouwen Network brochures and range of mental health literature in the foyer area.

One of the five ’Tools for Inclusion’ workshops that Luke14 offered was “MENTAL HEALTH UNWRAPPED: Resourcing the Church to Support Mental Wellness”. In the years that followed, several A Nouwen Network members became hosts for this excellent workshop.

Words from the Luke14 website became the inspiration for the name ‘Receive the Gifts’ which was given to the bookmark collection that A Nouwen Network began to distribute in 2014:

"When people are excluded from participation, their gifts and contributions go missing too."

A Nouwen Network’s

‘Receive the Gifts’ Bookmark Collection

In April of 2013 Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology at University of Melbourne, published an excellent article “Either mad and bad or Jekyll and Hyde: media portrayals of schizophrenia”. This article cautioned that journalists and editors need to think carefully before linking schizophrenia to violent behaviour. Haslam also stated “an equally important corrective would be to publish more stories that feature people with schizophrenia living well, present their everyday struggles and adversities or showcase promising treatments and research findings.”

In October of the same year, speaking at a Q&A panel discussion during Mental Health Week, the then Queensland Mental Health Commissioner, Dr van Schoubroeck, stressed that not only was there a need to continue the efforts to reduce the negative messages about mental illness in all the media, but also there was a great need to find ways to increase the number of ‘good news’ stories that were being shared within the community.

As a group, A Nouwen Network was always most proactive around Mental Health Week. There was also considerable involvement by members during Schizophrenia Awareness Week, which is held in May. (At this time they focused on raising their faith community’s awareness of schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses.) However, all throughout the year, network members worked in many ways towards the reduction of mental illness stigma.

Dr. van Schoubroeck’s forcefully spoken works about the great need to get the ‘good news’ out presented a clearly articulated need and goal to the community. This challenged us to prayerfully reflect on how A Nouwen Network members might be able to contribute more effectively to achieving it. The network’s Values had always clearly affirmed the importance of sharing our stories, and we had also tasked ourselves with “reducing ignorance and discomfort around Mental Health issues”. By the end of 2013 it was decided that as well as the sharing that we had already been doing, A Nouwen Network could more purposefully contribute some very clear “good news’ stories both to faith communities and to the larger community via a series of bookmarks.

The bookmarks were shared widely as soon as they were created , and the pdfs for them were made available with other A Nouwen Network resources in the “Ways to show Support” section of our website. (People were urged to print some of them to share with their friends and faith community.)

Luke14’s statement:”When people are excluded from participation, their gifts and contributions go missing too" is all too true. A Nouwen Network members were well aware that so many ‘good news’ stories are never given a space in which to be shared, received, and then shared more widely. We chose the name, the ‘Receive the Gifts’ Bookmark Collection, because we were convinced that it is by first humbly ‘receiving the gifts’ that individuals and faith communities become equipped to help to get the ‘good news’ stories of people living well with serious mental illness out to the community.