Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Mark Vernon in Conversation: The Road Less Certain

Today, a podcast was recorded live at Nomad’s recent first offline Gathering, and features psychotherapist, author and teacher Mark Vernon. Mark was an Anglican priest but developed deep doubts about the faith. His subsequent journey took him through atheism, to agnosticism, through ancient Greek philosophy, to a Christian faith that sees doubt and uncertainty as integral parts (see Mark’s post, which features a mind-map drawn by one of his listeners at the April 2017 gathering)

I’ve followed Mark’s blog over the years, and on occasion he’s very kindly sent me PDF’s of some inaccessible articles he’s written, particularly in relation to Carl Jung, whom I’ve long had an interest in. A number of Mark’s books can also be found in my library, including How to be and Agnostic; The Big Questions: God; The Meaning of Friendship (Mark’s PhD focussed on this theme); and Love: All that Matters.

As I was listening to the interview I thought of my good friend Alan Jamieson and his PhD research on Church Leavers. In my mind his research and publications around this theme still feel relevant as many people question their experiences of church, faith, doubt, and spirituality. It also underlined for me the missional questions around cultural engagement (listen particularly around the 15 min mark).

This is a thoughtful, encouraging, and considered conversation, and is well worth a listen. I also recommend Mark’s books, and in particular his books on friendship and love.

Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake – Fascinating Conversations

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to six conversations between author / psychotherapist Mark Vernon and scientist Rupert Sheldrake. They covered a broad range of topics, including conversations about Anatheism, prayer, God and Mindfulness, What is Spirituality? The Spiritual Senses, What Does Christianity Get Right and a whole lot more besides. 

The conversations are within the rubric of setting science free.

They’re not long conversations, and they’re well worth a listen for the curious and those committed to life-long learning. I covered a good number of subjects I’d never really thought through.

You find the podcasts here, and iTunes here. Online written interview with Sheldrake here. 

Happy Birthday Teilhard!

I’ve been reading about French Jesuit Priest Teilhard de Chardin S.J. recently, not least because his birth date, while over a century earlier, coincides with the birth date of one of my children. Creation, ecology, spirituality, and science more generally, are significant strands woven through what it means to be human and to live in a 21^st century Western context.

Authors like the invariably controversial (but none-the-less interesting) Ken Wilber, for example, major in ways of integrating spirituality within what it means to be holistically human and at the same time parts of a much larger more complex and interrelated creation. He writes on psychology, philosophy, mysticism, ecology, and spiritual evolution Good examples are his books: The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion, A Brief History of Everything, or as in introduction, his The Integral Vision. 

I think de Chardin will find a new and appreciative audience in the coming years, so too mark the 130^th anniversary of Teilhard de Chardin’s birth on May 1^st 1881; I want to highlight his book The Divine Milieu, a book which Eugene Peterson describes in the following way under the heading of “spiritual direction “…The elements of spiritual direction are laid out in a wonderful way by establishing the broadest and deepest context possible… he [Teilhard de Chardin] was adept at crossing boundaries and making connections.” 

I also want to highlight a newsletter called Teilhard Perspective, and in particular the Fall 2008 issue which featured a really useful and award winning book which sets out to “explain” The Divine Milieu. The book is called Teilhard de Chardin: The Divine Milieu Explained by Louis Savary. And, for those interested in Jesuit Spirituality and The Spiritual Exercises it might be of interest to note that Savary has also written what looks like a fascinating book incorporating Teilhard de Chardin’s thinking and The Spiritual Exercises: The New Spiritual Exercises: In the Spirit of Teilhard de Chardin (pub. Jan. 2011). 

Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter referred to above. It’s an excerpt from the author’s foreword to Teilhard de Chardin: The Divine Milieu Explained: 

“…Almost 400 years before Teilhard [de Chardin, S.J.] wrote The Divine Milieu, St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, the Society of Jesus, designed a powerfully transformative system of spiritual practices, called The Spiritual Exercises. Ever since then, and even today, people seeking spiritual growth have been, as the Jesuits say, “making the Exercises.” Everyone agrees it can be a life-changing event. 

If you were to “make” the Exercises, your culminating experience would be the “Contemplation for Attaining the Love of God” (Contemplatio ad Amorem). In this almost mystical exercise, Ignatius hopes you will be graced with the “eyes to see” that it is (with) in God, whose name is Love, that we live and move and have our existence.  Living in God is like living in the air we breathe. God is the atmosphere, the environment, the divine milieu in which we spend our lives. 

The Spiritual Exercises were a transforming experience for Teilhard, too. His purpose in writing The Divine Milieu was to share with us how he, as a Jesuit and as a dedicated scientist, learned to use the new eyes that Ignatius gave him in order to see spiritual reality today – in the world contemporary men and women live in, thoroughly informed and transformed by science and technology. (ix-xi)

Teilhard was a part of some of the scientific discoveries of the past century. He realized that humans would continue – as we have done – to make more and more discoveries like these about our world. And these discoveries I mentioned don’t even include those that have been made – and are being made daily – in the fields of physics, chemistry, psychology, anthropology, neurobiology, and brain research, to name just a few. 

Teilhard realized we needed a radically new kind of spirituality – an understanding of God and creation and our part in it – that could welcome and easily integrate all these important scientific facts of our existence into itself. Most contemporary spiritualities, following tradition, usually put these scientific facts aside, assuming they have little to do with our spiritual lives. 

But in fact they permeate our very existence. They are part of the way we think today. We cannot put them aside. And Teilhard doesn’t, because, for him, everything we learn about Creation is something we are learning about the Body of Christ – the Christ that lives today, the Christ who is as big as the cosmos (xiii)…” 

You can find the full Fall 2008 issue of Teilhard Perspective here (PDF). 

 

David Tacey, Jung, and a Perspective on Physical and Mental Wellbeing

Dr David Tacey is Associate Professor and Reader in Arts at La Trobe University in Victoria, where he teaches literature, spirituality and Jungian psychology. He is the author of five books on spirituality and culture, including Edge of the Sacred and Re-Enchantment: The New Australian Spirituality. 

Recently he was interviewed on ABC’s The Spirit of Things about his latest book God and Diseases. Here’s the “blurb” for the interview: “The secular world is killing us, says David Tacey. The Jungian scholar and author of Gods and Diseases believes that living an entirely rational existence seeks its opposite in intoxicants and other forms of escape, which lead to depression and self harm. The mid-life crisis is another casualty of a life devoid of spiritual fulfillment. Aboriginal initiation rituals, he believes, offer a clue for renewal.” 

You can download or listen to the interview here. 

While not without criticism (and you can be critical) I always find Tacey an interesting and stimulating ‘conversation’ partner, so any chance to hear him, as in this interview, is a delight. He offers some interesting thoughts of sexuality & spirituality; mental health; psychotherapy; and mid-life. See what you think. 

Gods and Diseases: Making Sense of Our Physical and Mental Wellbeing. Published 2011. 

Book Description 

“…There are many problems in today′s society that cannot be resolved by the applications of reason, logic or medical science. These include child abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide. Numerous mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and phobias, are rising dramatically and there seems to be no solution in sight. In this book, David Tacey argues that the solution lies in breaking free from the confines of modern medicine. Instead we must turn to spirituality, and to what Tacey calls ′meaning-making′, to make sense of our physical and mental wellbeing.” 

Have a look inside the book. 

Keating, Wilson and Hauerwas Interviewed

Paul writes – Today I want to draw attention to three online (written) interviews:

A 2009 Interview with Fr. Thomas Keating – here. 

A June 2010 two part interview on prayer with Ken Wilson – part 1 and part 2. 

A May 2010 four-part interview with Stanley Hauerwas here, here, here, and here.

Here’s a great quote from his memoir that gets at an important theme, which for me links these three interviews – prayer. 

BRUEGGEMAN ON WHY, IN THE END, PRAYER IS THE KEY: “…I have spent a lifetime learning how to pray. Yet I did not become a theologian to learn how to pray. I became a theologian because I found the work of theology so compelling. Along the way, I discovered that the work of theology is the work of prayer. …. I confess, however, that prayer still never comes easy for me. But I hold no conviction more determinatively than that the belief in prayer names how God becomes present to us and how we can participate in that presence by praying for others…”