A brief review of Adventures in Soulmaking: by Troy Caldwell

 I got hold of this book because it looked like it was going to scratch a couple of itches for me. You see, I'm involved in spiritual direction and I tend to find that I am interested in the way that psychological factors impinge on the spiritual development and growth of myself and others. What this book frames as 'soulmaking' is just this recognition that we are developing beings from a psychological point of view (though he doesn't say so, I took it that seeing 'soul' as a translation of 'psyche' probably lies large behind this). This inner life is our soul and the development and growth is the making of our souls. You can catch a flavour of why my interest was piqued from the Amazon blurb:

Soulmaking is what happens when we live life deeply and learn by heartthe lessons intended from all the conflicts and struggles we encounter.The whole world and all of life are the raw materials for soul-making.

And this is pretty much what you get by my reading so far: an exploration of this both from the point of view of someone deeply and long-time engaged in spiritual direction and also a mental health professional. Now, for me, the jury is still out on the author's preferred psychological touchpoint, the Jungian tradition. For me this is because I am mindful that the psychoanalytical approach is scientifically  questionable. Though if you are going to use it, then Jung is probably the better conversation-partner because he at least acknowledges something of the significance of what we might call the 'spiritual'. But I do remain to be convinced about things like archetypes. That said, there seems to be enough in the way that Dr Caldwell makes use of this tradition to be somewhat insightful in the face of the real-life instances he brings out for illustrative purposes.

One of the things that I find intriguing and somewhat helpful is dealing with dreams which is one of the first things that Caldwell does. It's an area I've not had opportunity to read around much. And to be frank, I'm dubious about a lot of what I have looked at which takes a formulaic dream symbolism approach. Caldwell doesn't, to my relief, take this approach but seems to do something much closer to what I feel is probably the right way forward which is to attempt to understand dreams within the context of the person's own inner landscape and journeys but taking seriously that these can be channels of God's movement and communication within the soul.


My main beef with this book, and this partly accounts for why I've not yet read it through fully, is that the publisher hadn't done a thorough job on editing for e-book. It looks to me like they have started with a .pdf file and copied the text from there into an e-book template not realising that the originating file has a load of lining out carriage returns which are preserved in the the copying and pasting process. Most of these need to be removed or you get what I am trying to read: a set of lines whose endings don't coincide with the visual endings of my display and so it looks on the page like a long poem and in detail. Thus, sentences are broken part-way through which constantly trips up reading by long-established habits and can wreck sense-making at times. The effect of this is to considerably slow the reading process.

I hope the publisher will address this quickly or Dr Caldwell's book will perhaps not get the readership it deserves.

 In the interests of helping you to be aware of any bias on my part, I should let you know that I received this book as a free promotional copy with the request to review it. That said, there is no pressure from the supplier to write a favourable review.

Adventures in Soulmaking: Stories and Principles of Spiritual Formation and Depth Psychology: Troy Caldwell M.D.: 9780996760010: Amazon.com: Books

 For British readers, I advise clicking on this link but then substituting ".co.uk" for ".com" (if you'd not already discovered this little trick).

Link-Love: 
Troy's website
Adventures in Soulmaking website
Adventures in Soulmaking on Amazon
Adventures in Soulmaking on Goodreads
#SpeakeasyAdventuresinSoulmaking

Let's not speak about calling in the singular

When people ask me about my calling, it seems almost always assumed to be "a priest". But I'll let you into a secret: that's not how it looks and feels to me. I think that I (and everyone else) have several callings. Some of mine add up to being a priest, some of them add up to being in the Church of England, some of them add up to being a chaplain and some of them add up to being involved in higher education . Oh, and some of them add up to being a spouse and a parent. And they all intersect in changing constellations. Some of them feel more fundamental than others and some of them seem to be capable of being expressed in different ways according to circumstances. I'm a chaplain in higher education because more than sensing myself to be drawn to preach, teach, minister sacraments and help people discern God in their sometimes messy lives, I can't shake the conviction that the church needs people like chaplains to counterweight its own tendency to become a world in itself -rather than becoming itself in the world. Chaplains work as public representatives of the churches on that worldly interface beyond where church normally publicly reaches.I had felt drawn to HE chaplaincy for ages but thought lack of opportunity meant I was a mistaken until a hefty push from circumstances and especially others' discernment shoved me out of parish ministry into the local university. And I thrived! My intellectual curiosity, inner-drive towards secular workplace issues, and disposition to improvise missionally, make higher education chaplaincy a good place to be, for me. But beyond feeling drawn, I had to experience it to see the fit.The combination of inner conviction, self-awareness and the insights of those around me coalesce and re-coalesce in me to convey the voice of God in the context of living with the Scriptures and the prayer of the church (I think that the Holy Spirit hovers over all those waters).It should be said, though, that I could imagine my sense of vocations (note the plural) being worked out in different contexts. (Perhaps this other blog post might help explain a bit further: http://nouslife.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/priesthood-ontological-change.html). Other situations and circumstances would change which vocations came to the fore and which were most usually expressed, but they'd all be there acting as stars to steer by or prompts to pay attention. So, discernment did not end with ordination: weaving together the various strands of calling as a human being, as a Christian, as a member of several families, as someone with various God-given gifts and interests is still one the main tasks I find surfacing as a talk with my spiritual accompanist and my nearest and dearest.

Vocation to ordination plus ...

I was very clear in my very late teens when 'what are you going to do after university?' was becoming a pressing question that the ministry of the whole people of God in the world is the primary church-related vocation: redemptively related to the human vocation to tend and till and to 'surprise' God with how we name the creatures making culture along the way. That's how I express it now, btw, not then!So while I first looked to live out a Christian commitment in secular life, I became aware of an inner nudging towards helping God's people to be equipped to live God's mission in the world. So I thought "being a Reader?" ... but the nudging seemed to have presiding at communion in it. So, "non-stipendiary ordained ministry then?" You see, I couldn't really shake that sense of ministry pressed close into the 'secular' world. I decided it was easiest to go for a conventional route to ordination (as I didn't have a career at that point) with a view to revisiting that 'in the world' issue further down the line. You may, rightly see in that brief description (and, oh, so many questions it begs!) how being a chaplain might be a good way to be a priest pressed up against the secular.Of course, I could have been kidding myself about that 'inner nudge' and I knew that. So I didn't act on it without much thought and chatting things over informally with friends and more formally with people like chaplains and other clergy. Because they seemed to discern in me things that confirmed that inner nudge, I kept on with the process of enquiry as the CofE then had it. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense of the person I felt I was becoming. I sensed then and now more-or-less know that God speaks to me most in these growing inner convictions which are sensed by those around me. Clearly, that's not a quick process.

x

Jack Lewis, meet Matt Fox for an original blessing

Jack Lewis meet Matt Fox ... Matt, this is Jack. Matt, you may recall Jack by his nom de plume: CS Lewis. Now, I've brought you two together because you have both influenced me in a congruent way. I know it may be hard to believe, one of you apparently defending a Christian tradition that the other has found deeply alienating. Yet, actually I learnt a particular something from both of you and I find myself wondering how best to tell a story of human corruption against that background.

So, what is that particular something? Well, from you, Matt, I became convinced that we really do need to make sure that we tell the story starting with original blessing rather than making original sin the main and key point in our thinking. I became convinced mainly because that is where the Hebrew and therefore Christian scriptures begin; with "And God saw that it was good". But this is also where you come in, Jack. Because I had learnt something from you already which, over time, I realised was deeply congruent with the idea of original blessing. From you I had learnt in my undergraduate reading, that we must understand evil as derived, unoriginal and merely parasitic on the Good. Evil cannot be thought of in a dualistic way as somehow 'being' an equal and opposite force to 'good'. Your reasoning convinced me that behind every evil is a perverted or misused good; that evil is, in a sense a parasite feeding off what is good and unable to exist without goodness.

In this, I think, you are both united. Reality is fundamentally good and we are called to participate in that fundamental goodness, and indeed to tend it and help multiply it. This is our human calling before any other calling: to be blessed and to bless in turn. I actually think both of you would probably agree with that, in broad terms, leaving aside quibbles about terminology or which metaphors might be most apt and resonant.

What I want to do with this conversation is think about where we go next in terms of accounting for what has tended in the Christian tradition to be called 'sin'. Though, to be sure, there have been and are other terms for it and a variety of images to think it through.

You see, I think that a further dimension of what I think Matt has got right in all this is to be critical of where the fall-redemption model, as he tends to call it, sometimes (indeed, often) pushes Christians and those influenced by that way of thinking. On the other hand, what you, Jack, do really well in so many of your books is explore the inner world of sinning in a way that helps us to see how sinning is a non-dualistic thing. It's not an alien force that takes us over so much as a directing of drives and desires that in other circumstances and dealt with differently would be simply an ordinary good. What you also do is help us to see that there is a fundamental surdity about it. These things would sit well enough, I suspect, with the fundamental right insight behind the idea of original blessing.

So, in future blog posts, I hope to try to tease this out a bit further: what is sin in a non-dualistic account, recognising that so much popular thinking about sin is at root dualistic, I think that may be what you were saying, Matt. I don't recall you saying that Jack, but as I indicate above, I think that your approach amounted to that.

Religious Children show up as less altruistic: but why?

I found myself very intrigued by this report of research. Partly because it sems to contrast markedly with a lot of research which indicates that te pattern is reversed in adults who tend to show up as having greater altruism and empathy where religion or spirituality is positively involved in their lives.

Family religious identification decreases children’s altruistic

behaviors.Religiousness predicts parent-reported child sensitivity to

injustices and empathy.Children from religious households are harsher in their punitive tendencies

The best explanation by way of working hypothesis to bridge the gap might be to investigate how far it might be to do with children growing into their faith and negotiating identity. Also the forms of religiousness in the background might need closer investigation and by contrast the social and political views of the groups involved: I'm wondering how far 'religion' in parents correlates to socially conservative expressions of faith to. What if we controlled for social attitudes and then investigated whether that correlated. Would socially conservative and non-religious be different to their religious counterparts? Would socially 'liberal' non-religious be different to theirs?
Once we know things like that, we might be able to assess more helpfully.


The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children's Altruism across the World - S0960-9822(15)01167-7.pdf: Family religious identification decreases children’s altruistic
behaviors

Joy for every creature (corporisations too)

This intrigued me when I thougt about corporisations as creatures (that is created things).I'm trying to figure out whether 'inappropriate' should be 'appropriate', though.

All creatures have their destiny in giving an inappropriate but faithful response to the joy with which the Godhead is filled from eternity.

— KarlBarthforDummies (@Karlbarthfordum) January 1, 2016

What would it mean for a university or a company to know joy? How would that show up and how would it affect the humans who make it up? Intriguing question. Part way to answering would bo to consider how spiders or Jellyfish or chipmonks ...