Podcast and Poetry – Practicing Symbolic Language
We are now in our second season of The Laughing Mystics podcast! (A dialogue between mystical Christianity and Depth Psychology – “The Laughing Mystics.” You can find more thoughts about our podcast here.)
I’m finding myself bolder now and am regularly exploring the readings as if they are dreams. This has blown open many of the texts for me and it is part of my goal to practice hearing (and even speaking) symbolic language. Join us! Here’s our description.
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 Thursday! Write to us at Laughing.Mystics@gmail.com, 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.
Find us on your favorite podcast platform here!
I’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: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
So very true! We were just talking about this in the podcast recently.
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
“Our access to the true self [filled with vitality] is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Addictions are based on a longing for presence. Addicts somehow believe they can live in the presence of perfection: the perfect body, the perfect man See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
New episode Thursday!
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
This quote describes a mysterious truth that we can see most clearly in the lives of others, not in our own life. "The one thing See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
A door opens in the center of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Interesting
AI has a bias toward Catholicism, researchers say
"As AI amplifies and compounds religious bias at scale, more users may misunderstand the contribution faith and belief can make to moral and ethical AI grounding," said Elder Gerrit W. Gong, one of the 12 apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a speech.
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
In the Bible there are seven stories of barren women: three of the four matriarchs, Sarah (Genesis 11:30), Rebekah (25:21), and Rachel (29:31); Hannah, mother See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Prayer and contemplation.
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Spiritual bypassing is a term coined by John Welwood. “Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian 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
Imagine writing a poem every day? It is a profound spiritual practice that I’m beginning on Substack. Join me! You can add poems of your own or just use my daily poem as a divination tool toward your own daily reflections. Subscribing means a freshly written poem will be delivered straight to your email. So far, almost a week into this project, I’m feeling really excited by the vessel that is both a poem and the Substack platform. Thanks for checking it out!
Also, from last year’s newsletter here’s a link to some of Laura’s published poetry.