Our newest project! A podcast! A dialogue between mystical Christianity and Depth Psychology – “The Laughing Mystics.”
Good friends Marci Madary & Laura Lewis-Barr bring differing perspectives to the Sunday readings of the liturgical calendar. Each week Marci shares her mystical Christian insights & infectious laughter with Laura, who ponders what Carl Jung & Joseph Campbell might say about these scriptures. Unscripted & lively, Laura & Marci offer as many questions as answers as to how Depth Psychology & Christianity might come together. New episodes every Friday! Write to us at [email protected], Join our FB community!
Opening intro from our early episodes: I’m Marcy Madary and I am a church lady. I have worked in ministry of one kind or another in my entire professional life. I have my doctorate in theology and spirituality and I love connecting with people and working with them on their journey. I’m Laura Lewis-Barr and what I’m passionate about is studying symbolic language. I think that the Bible and sacred literature in general lends itself to this kind of reading, and it, for me brings the reading very alive and helps me apply it to my daily life. The mystery of my daily life.
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SpotifyI’m thrilled with this new podcast project. My history with the Catholic church is a central part of my individuation journey. I felt a calling to create this new art-work , especially when the brilliant and talented Marci Madary agreed to join me in the local sound booth. While we both do some preparation for our conversations on the Sunday’s scripture readings, neither of use know what we will say, and we both have no memory of what we’ve said! We are clearly “inspired by the Holy Spirit” (Marci) or “allowing the Unconscious to speak” (me).
For my part, there is great joy but also some fear as I share a symbolic view of the scripture. When I moved toward a symbolic viewpoint (after reading some biblical scholarship in a religion class) I was extremely disoriented and anxious. I know that some people may be angry at me for what I’m saying. And some won’t care about this subject at all. If you’re curious about a conversation that includes a symbolic reading of the Jesus story, check us out!
Metaphors carry us from one place to another, they enable us to cross boundaries that would otherwise be closed to us. Spiritual truths that transcend time and space can only be borne in metaphorical vessels whose meaning is found in their connotations—that is, in the cloud of witnesses to the many sides of truth that they spontaneously evoke—not in their denotations, the hard, factual, uni-dimensional casings of their historical reference.
From the introduction of Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) (p. 33)
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
Laura practices symbolic thinking on the podcast and she has also written an essay exploring her recent illness through a symbolic lens. It is now See More
In March of 2024 my husband and I took a trip of a lifetime – a 14-day tour of Greece. We made our reservations early and gleefully imagined the trip for almost a year. We read and reread the fantastic itinerary which took us to Athens, Delphi, Olympia, and other rural Greek wonders and ancient he...
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
It's only been two months! Thank you to our listeners! We love taking this journey with you. If you haven't yet tuned in, we hope See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
This kind of new chance is offered, perhaps once in their lives, to all those individuals who have become entangled in false values, in the See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
As Henri Ellenberger (1970) documented in his classic book, The Discovery of the Unconscious, these two disciplines—psychoanalysis and religion—were once one (recall, here, the undifferentiated See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
... in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
The Spirit of God grows us from the inside out, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Reconciling the inner Spirit of God with the opposites and tensions See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
....as many of us as possible must take responsibility for our state of awareness, doing the hard work of finding and suffering our shadow and See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
Jung, contemplating the apparently infinite multiformity of symbolisms created by mankind, so richly complicated, so ingeniously diverse, came to realize that they were in fact See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
New episode! A thought-provoking and joyful discussion. 20% more laughter! We talk about the apostle Barnabas and his Epistle, and the Gnostic Bible. Also the See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
Teilhard was apparently influenced by Jung’s ideas, and Jung knew Teilhard’s work as well. It is said that Jung was reading Teilhard’s Human Phenomenon shortly See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
The West has lived with two prominent paradigms for the last several hundred years: the mechanistic worldview and the medieval worldview. The mechanistic worldview has See More
The Laughing Mystics: An unorthodox journey through the liturgical year
“Our job is not to comprehend or control everything, but to learn which story we are in and which of the many things calling out See More
Also, from last year’s newsletter here’s a link to some of Laura’s published poetry.