The Matter of Faith

Dreams Unfolding

I’m invited to a discussion on faith in the rectory of a Gothic church.  All seem gathered when I take a seat in the circle of chairs.  Then a priest, now dead, that I once worked with enters.  He’s lost considerable weight and seems quite content, unlike when I knew him.  I chuckle to myself when I notice the pink bra he’s wearing through the white shirt.  He sees me and with a big smile says “you better get outta here, this is gonna put a strain on your faith…”

my response:

It’s been awhile since the dreams have pushed me on the question of faith, as I tend to weigh in heavy on the side of experience in a pragmatic William James sort of way.  The round circle of chairs resembles the the arrangement that was present at my meeting earlier this week at the Jung Institute.  The Jungian framework stresses the process of individuation.  In the case of the dead priest who enters the scene here, my memories of him are a mixed bag of genuine affection and disgust.  And while the end result of his life in this world seemed quite questionable, the fact that he lived the opposites in an overt manner cannot be argued.  In the time I new him, I too wrestled with the opposites in an overt way, living a life of contradictions which would rapidly succeed each other in the desperate attempt to find the elusive center.   What I am learning is that the contradictions of our deepest selves do not need to be the burden of the ego if we can find right relationship to them.  But who can afford to identify with them?

Concerning faith, in his “The Varieties of Religious Experience” William James states “All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves.  Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust in the next step.  It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary.  It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but a mutilates expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.”

Since I’ve been invited to a discussion and since I’ve been teased to back away, I’ll open with Mr. James’ point of view.  Next…