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b-nut
read and liked
Jon's
review of Transforming Spirituality: Integrating Theology and Psychology:
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Have you ever asked, "How did my friend change so dramatically in her spirituality?"?
Drawing from the fields of Christian theology, philosophy, and psychology, this book lays out a well researched, thoroughly documented and nuanced per...more
Have you ever asked, "How did my friend change so dramatically in her spirituality?"?
Drawing from the fields of Christian theology, philosophy, and psychology, this book lays out a well researched, thoroughly documented and nuanced perspective on spiritual transformation and promotes a highly relational model of two spiritual cycles: dwelling and seeking. The term dwelling here refers to relating to the sacred in familiar ways that feels safe and comfortable within a group setting. On one hand, spiritual dwelling can provide a consistency of spiritual experience and a sense of group-belonging that provides strong protective factors through hardship and life crises. On the other hand, spiritual dwelling may bring about boredom, predictability, and even disappointment especially as an individual (lets call Brett) faces new life challenges (e.g. starting a family, facing relational loss, health issues) and does not receive satisfactory relational or theological support. This disappointment or discontentment may lead Brett to ask new spiritual questions and explore different spiritual practices, resulting in a detachment from his current ways of spiritual expression and into a time of seeking. As Brett moves into unfamiliar and ambiguous territory, his anxiety level may intensify to the point where he returns to a familiar form of dwelling and feels comfortable and safe once again, or he may learn how to live with the new ambiguity while he differentiates himself from his previous dwelling traditions and customs. This differentiation experience is initially destabilizing and is often referred to as a dark night of the soul, desert, or wilderness (p. 33), but it facilitates Brett's ability to confront himself, others, and the sacred in ways more openly and honestly than beforehand potentially bringing about new levels of spiritual commitment, more focused attention, more authenticity and integrity, deepened relational commitment, and new spiritual insights (p. 33). After having gone through a growth cycle of seeking, Brett may find himself ready to re-enter a cycle of dwelling within a different spiritual relational model. The interwoven cycles of seeking and dwelling provide an excellent model to understand true spiritual growth as "an enlarging of one's area of relational concern, which increasingly engages one in the concrete and communal activity that is being transformed by divine love" (p. 36). There is so much more in this book......less
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