Depth psychology, religion, spirituality, and more
“HYPOCRITES! HYPOCRITES! YOU HYPOCRITES!” This past weekend, while watching the news about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and the Republican response, these exclamations (and a few other choice words) kept screaming into my head — and occasionally out through my lips. Eventually, I realized I was responding, appropriately, in biblical terms. In the Gospel …
Continue reading "Let’s Not Neglect Justice and Mercy and Faith"
BIBLICAL LITERALISM VIOLATES BIBLICAL TRUTH. Retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong calls it heresy. Literal interpretations of biblical texts miss the mark because they assume most of the texts are straightforward reports of facts. In doing so, such interpretations ignore the literary genres of the texts they interpret. Let’s consider the literary genres present in …
Continue reading "Reading the “Secret” Language of the Word of God"
“LOOSE BUT SPIRITED” HAS BEEN MY MOTTO, for decades, as an improvisational musician. It affirms the value of letting the spirit play — not because precision is a bad thing, but because getting music “tight” too often pushes out the spirit entirely. In improvisational music, the magic happens when the spirit plays the musicians. To …
DO WE REALLY KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT, when we talk about the soul? Maybe not — probably not. In part because, whatever the soul is, it is ephemeral, elusive, even ineffable. That said, here are a couple of things that came up recently in my life and seem, upon reflection, to be surprisingly soulful. …
WHAT IF WE GOT IT WRONG and the “dark night of the soul” is actually about the end of suffering? It’s become commonplace to call a painful time in life a dark night of the soul. But what if the metaphor points to the moment of breakthrough rather than to the suffering? This metaphor comes …
FOR THOSE WITH EYES TO SEE, the symbolism in the Gospel of John invites us into remarkable, even transformative encounters. The gospel’s prologue, for example, proclaims a light in the darkness, a light the darkness doesn’t overcome. Many see this to be an image of the sun and the invincible solar hero, but I feel …
Lurking in the background, behind our everyday concerns, are those “big questions” about the meaning of it all. Who am I? Who are you? Where do we live? What lies ahead? What are we supposed to be doing? Answers to these deeply human questions are offered by our wisdom traditions, by our spiritual giants, and …
Soul Spirit Wisdom 