The Spirit of Transformation

Abstract

In our final chapter we engage with the role of spirituality, the sacred and religion in the transformation of perspectives and lives. We explore mythos, ritual, and wisdom as responses to questions that seem illusive to rationality’s gaze. We draw on Libby Tisdale’s work where she assumes that spirituality is far more than religion. It has to do with awareness and the capacity to honour interconnectedness and mystery in life; and movement “toward greater authenticity or to a more authentic self”. We share ambivalence about religious perspectives on transformation, shaped as we are by the academy, but also, especially for Laura, how the Roman Catholic Church has demeaned and constrained women. However, religion and ritual will not go away, as we realise the limitations of what we know, and, in the case of Linden, the extent to which some religious sensibility is, for him, at the heart of individuation. This is not the religion of received wisdom, delivered on tablets of stone, but of a living relationship with archetypes like the Christ figure, as a companion in suffering, and a source of faith. And we embrace the idea of heaven and hell as lying within us, as part of a lifelong learning pilgrimage.