Chaplain, mental health. Relational, pastoral, spiritual health. Permanent dissident, idealist, pluralist, dad.
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ALT In depression, energy (libido, psychic energy) is withdrawn from the external and finds life in the inner world. Depression can facilitate a transformation—a spiritual emergence—by leading us away from the chaotic and unsettling circumference of our lives and toward the centre, where we can dig deeply into the unconscious and fully attend to what we discover there. The breakdown-breakthrough experience requires a caring container. It requires empathy and a supportive relationship. It requires release—verbal expression and allowing imagery to pour forth without judging it. The content that emerges needs to be delivered to somebody. The outward movement of communication actually helps to keep the process moving. With proper support and empathy, a person can fall apart and come back together, achieving a major integrative synthesis. By Kathryn Wood Madden from her book, 'Dark Light of the Soul'.
![[T]he re-enchantment of culture requires the rediscovery of skills that once flourished but have been lost or forgotten. We focus so much attention on bringing ourselves into the future that we lose sight of the equally important work of keeping the wisdom of the past. One such lost skill that we may still glimpse in children's play and in sports is the making of temenos—setting aside a certain area as a special or even sacred precinct. When we choose a seat or standing area on a bus or train, when we arrange space in an office or workplace, when we decide where to put a garden, or chairs on a porch, where to sit on the riverbank to have lunch, where to play with the children—all of these decisions have to do with temenos, marking out a space appropriate for a certain spirit that breathes life into our activity. 1/2](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GdUjXccWsAE9xvx.jpg?name=orig)
ALT [T]he re-enchantment of culture requires the rediscovery of skills that once flourished but have been lost or forgotten. We focus so much attention on bringing ourselves into the future that we lose sight of the equally important work of keeping the wisdom of the past. One such lost skill that we may still glimpse in children's play and in sports is the making of temenos—setting aside a certain area as a special or even sacred precinct. When we choose a seat or standing area on a bus or train, when we arrange space in an office or workplace, when we decide where to put a garden, or chairs on a porch, where to sit on the riverbank to have lunch, where to play with the children—all of these decisions have to do with temenos, marking out a space appropriate for a certain spirit that breathes life into our activity. 1/2
ALT Without the ability to make temenos, we find ourselves in spaces that are purely functional and give us no more than an empty arena in which to work. For the ancient Greeks, temenos was the precinct of a god, a goddess, or another spirit that could have a beneficial effect on human life. Sometimes a temple or many temples would be erected within the temenos, but the essential thing was to mark out a special space for ritual and memory. The noted religion scholar Walter Berckert points out that the temenos was not determined by the natural qualities of a site but was essentially the walled separation of the space from the profane world around it. It's one thing to find a natural place that is home to a special spirit; it's another to set aside certain dimensions in any space to increase the possibility of enchantment. — Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life 2/2
