Following a practice I began last week, I am including here in Reckonings the letters I send weekly to participants in our group exploring the tradition of Celtic spirituality.
Here is today's letter:
Dear friends,
This coming Tuesday we'll be discussing our responses to Chapter 7, "Reconnecting with the Unconscious," of John Philip Newell's book The Rebirthing of God. As John Philip writes on the first page of this chapter, "Whether as individuals or collectively as nations and religious traditions, new beginnings will be born among us when we open to the well of what we do not yet know or what we have forgotten deep within."
I offer these notes to you now, a little earlier than usual, because this chapter (befitting its subject) is more demanding than most, more deserving of our conscious attention, imagination, and rereading.
Shortly after the chapter's beginning, Newell invokes the words of a very early—one might say virtually original—exponent of the Celtic tradition, and long a favorite of mine, Brigid of Kildare, an abbess and tutor to Saint Brendan, both of whom I first came to know thirty years ago in Frederick Buechner's lovely novel Brendan.
As usual in these chapters, John Philip chooses a companion as guide. In this instance, he could not have chosen better: the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung. In writing of Jung, John Philip says, "He devoted his life to accessing the psyche, a word .... meaning 'breath' or 'soul.' Jung believed that wholeness was to be found by coming back into relationship with the unconscious depths of the soul. We long for what is beneath the surface... We long for what we do not yet know to emerge from hidden and unawakened depths within us into the light of day, into the realm of full consciousness. The way to access these depths is through the world of dreams, intuition, and imagination." In my training as a clinical psychologist I had the great good fortune of finding as my first therapist a Jungian analyst.*
John Philip reminds us that at the heart of our Bible, whether Torah or New Testament, is not doctrine but story. He concludes this remarkable chapter with a discussion of Pentecost, and with arguably the most crucial of questions: "As Peter said on the day of Pentecost, when Christianity was born, 'Your young shall see visions and your old shall dream dreams (Acts 2:17).' It is a rebirth we are seeking, not a resuscitation. It is a fresh springing forth from the unknown depths of the human soul. New vision, new dreams, a new Pentecost, a rebirthing of Christ in us. Shall we open to it?"
Warmly, as ever,
John**
* I know of no other therapeutic method whose "graduates" continue to regard themselves as fellows of one another. At least when I last checked, there were dozens of "Analytical Psychology Clubs" meeting for discussion throughout many major cities of the U.S. and Europe.
** We have only one more chapter of The Rebirthing of God to read next week. So we face a choice. We can conclude our group after next week, or we can choose another book as deeply reflective upon the Celtic tradition. If we choose the latter, I would suggest the comparably moving and informed Anam Cara [Soul Friend in Gaelic], by the Irish poet and scholar John O'Donohue.