Spiritual Development

Spirituality, for me, is everything concerned with purpose and meaning. Victor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” comes to mind. As today’s still predominant scientific view, materialism explicitly excludes purpose and meaning. This leads to nihilism and existential frustration, and as Victor Frankl has observed in the Nazi concentration camps, death itself. On the other hand, he says, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

Through Chaos Toward Community

When there are rules and taboos that prevent true fellowship, is there a path out of this stifling pseudo-community? In my article, I blend the insights of M. Scott Peck and Kazimierz Dabrowski to navigate through the chaos.

Change and how we navigate it

Iain McGilchrist has revived the study of brain lateralization after previous attempts were dismissed as pop culture. It is not an analytical and a creative half.

Instead, the two hemispheres host something akin to two separate awarenesses that we experience as one. This can be seen in birds. Birds use their right eye, connected to their left brain, to distinguish food from pebbles, while their left eye, and therefore the right brain, is on the outlook for friend or foe. Without the first awareness, the bird would starve; without the second, it would become prey.

Similar observations can be made with humans, as Iain McGilchrist beautifully points out in his two seminal works, “The Master and His Emissary” and “The Matter with Things.”

The Unfiltered Thoughts of a Pastor in Exile

Have you ever wondered if there is more to faith than attending church, obeying and living a certain lifestyle, and even doing good for others?

Have you ever wondered why, in certain aspects, earthly fathers seem to have a higher moral standard than we ascribe to God?

Or have you ever doubted that doubt is a negative thing, that there is only one interpretation of the Bible, and that the Church already possesses all absolute truth?

I have. When I woke from the dull sleepwalk necessary while caring for my son, receiving healing myself and a cancer diagnosis almost simultaneously, the time came for me to ask questions.

I gathered a few tools to help answer those questions.