The Unclad Soul

I recently posted on Facebook an article from the Houston Chronicle about sexual abuse and sexual harassment from ministers within the Southern Baptist Convention. The author provided solid research that spanned the last 20 years involving pastors, youth workers, deacons, and volunteers within local SBC churches who sexually used, abused, or assaulted teens and women in their congregations. We have seen how pervasive this problem has been within the Catholic Church, but the truth is, it has been going on for years in churches across all denominations. Ministers have easy access to vulnerable teens both male and female, and, to women in their churches. Some come for counseling and end up in some sexual relationship with a pastor or youth minister. Church leaders are often so revered they are considered above reproach and this can create manipulation and taking advantage of a person’s trust by them. It is something some morally weak ministers fall into, and, something unscrupulo...

Best-selling author, Jungian analyst, and post-trauma recovery professional, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, has written, “Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation—in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.” This is the essence and the work of psychotherapy. A properly framed question can probe one’s deepest inner spaces and dislodge a revealing answer. But let’s broaden the scope a bit. More than the work of therapists, physicians, and psychiatrists, thoughtful questions offer all of us insights and discoveries we may or may not be aware of. We live in a time of flimsy answers. Our politicians are not interested in questions. They only want to provide their own solutions, even though they may be unworkable and unwante...

Could we all possibly take a deep breath and not go insane over the terrorist brutality in Paris? Yes, it was horrific, cowardly, and barbaric. Innocent lives were murdered in cold calculating hate. But there needs to be a sense of reasonable thinking now. Not just panicked terror. That is the precise goal of terrorism: to provoke fear, frenzy, paranoia, and chaos. And when all of Europe and the Western world collapses in horror and hysteria, screams threats against Muslims, reaches for the big weapons, stirs up more hate and violence; and the decent and the thinking and the caring people of the world give into the urge for matching ruthlessness, then terrorists have truly hit their target. This is a war of ideas. You can’t kill an idea with bombs. This is a war of beliefs. You can’t annihilate a belief system with deadly arsenal. And let’s not compare this to Nazism thinking we that destroyed that idea with war. Nazism was the mastermind of one brilliantly demented man. The whole...

In Mario Puzo’s brilliant novel, “The Godfather,” the mafia leaders meet for a critical negotiation to stop the fighting between families and to end the senseless bloodshed. In a room full of the men who wielded the most power a truce was established. Puzo writes, “The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.” This is in a strange way what international political diplomacy is about. It is sitting down with your enemies and trying to find a way to keep from killing each other. It is setting up rules and codes of conduct and lines that can’t be crossed, as well as giving one another something in return, in order to establish an atmosphere of peaceful toleranc...

Ingrid and I were strolling through Macy’s on our way to the food court in NorthPark mall. We walked by the men’s cologne section and I decided to stop to see if there was anything new on the shelves. I sniffed around a few things and finally sprayed on a little True Religion. It’s been around for awhile but I liked the scent. The rest of the afternoon whenever I would get a whiff of the cologne I kept thinking about the whole idea of true religion. I spent a lot of years studying religion, talking and writing about it, trying to figure out its mysteries and contradictions, its deep thoughts and arbitrary rules, its beautiful ideas and ugly prejudices. I am a Christian by family tradition, by parental influence, by focused exposure, by environmental coincidence, and as an adult, by choice. Had I grown up in India or Iran, Africa or China, Russia or Israel, I’m sure I would be something else. I do not believe any of us are destined or foreordained to be a Christian or to fo...