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
“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
I love this story as a reminder that deep symbols (or archetypes) surround us and can offer healing and meaning for our souls. "Discouraged and See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
"...new methods or gadgets, are of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious and in any case dearly paid for. See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
The first Christian monks, the desert fathers, fled Constantine’s domestication of Christianity in search of the extreme discipleship of the early martyrs. Since there was See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
The Bible itself, in the Book of Job, gives us a pattern of healthy disagreement. Not only that, but throughout the whole Old Testament in See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself, as taught by Meister Eckhart, became for me the key to opening See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
New episode Thursday! What is my growing edge? pod.link/1799776273 open.spotify.com/episode/68FzziJj2bm47Uxaq6jaq2 See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
A long wonderful quote here.
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that…our divided, schizophrenic worldview, with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of See more
The Laughing Mystics: Jungian Psychology and the Christian Liturgical Year
Carl Rogers tells of his early life in a speech he gave, later recorded in his last book, "A Way of Being." Given his eventual 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.