Spiritual Voice Research Articles

Book Review: Christopher Cook, Hearing Spiritual Voices: Medieval Mystics, Meaning and Psychiatry

Book Review: Christopher Cook, <i>Hearing Spiritual Voices: Medieval Mystics, Meaning and Psychiatry</i>

Continuities and Discontinuities in the Cognitive Mechanisms Associated With Clinical and Nonclinical Auditory Verbal Hallucinations.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are typically associated with schizophrenia but also occur in individuals without any need for care (nonclinical voice hearers [NCVHs]). Cognitive models of AVHs posit potential biases in source monitoring, top-down processes, or a failure to inhibit intrusive memories. However, research across clinical/nonclinical groups is limited, and the extent to which there may be continuity in cognitive mechanism across groups, as predicted by the psychosis-continuum hypothesis, is unclear. We report two studies in which voice hearers with psychosis (n = 31) and NCVH participants reporting regular spiritual voices (n = 26) completed a battery of cognitive tasks. Compared with non-voice-hearing groups (ns = 33 and 28), voice hearers with psychosis showed atypical performance on signal detection, dichotic listening, and memory-inhibition tasks but intact performance on the source-monitoring task. NCVH participants, however, showed only atypical signal detection, which suggests differences between clinical and nonclinical voice hearers potentially related to attentional control and inhibition. These findings suggest that at the level of cognition, continuum models of hallucinations may need to take into account continuity but also discontinuity between clinical and nonclinical groups.

Stimmversagen, Sprachinfarkt und Zungenbremse? Posttridentinische Betrachtungsliteratur Italiens zwischen orazione mentale und orazione vocale

Abstract In the following, the literary potential of a counterreformation-minded uncertainty will be in focus which in turn resulted from the distinction in orazione orale and orazione mentale made in the context of the Council of Trent. The differentiation of inner-mental and external-vocal voice as well as one’s own word and the prescribed or appropriated word was accelerated by the Council and lead to a self-reflection of prayer literature and meditations concerning their voice and voicing. Whose voice speaks in prayers and contemplation and by which aesthetic qualities are they characterized? The literary crystallisation of standardization, domestication but also the emancipating obstinacy of the meditation-voice ought to be made visible hereafter in an exemplary way. Promoted by the Council of Trent, the revaluation of the spiritual ‘inner’ prayer, in comparison to the textual prayer spoken with an external voice, has become effective in the Catholic counterreformation literature as creative-conceptual freedom, but also as a practical-aesthetic challenge. Literary and lyrical meditations – as will be shown here using the example of Antonio Grillo, Gabriele Fiamma and Loreto Mattei – not only implement the spiritual voice of contemplation discursively and thematically, but also textually and performatively. The specific relationship between production aesthetics (meditating lyrical self) and reception aesthetics (meditating contemplative poetry appropriating self) has a supporting function. Conflicting voice-discourses do not become effective in the sense of reciprocal prevention, but in the sense of symbiotic coexistence. The lyrical considerations analysed here do not solve the interferences of vocal regimes conceptually-fundamentally, but performatively-concretely.

Silenced by performativity: The child’s right to a spiritual voice in an age of neoliberal educational imperatives

ABSTRACT This paper argues the importance of maintaining and promoting the child’s spiritual voice in spite of educational practices that have been reformed to align with the neoliberal agenda, in particular, performativity. Descriptions of spirituality are offered, noting that spirituality is a part of human life that emerges in childhood, and a case made for the necessity of the child’s spiritual voice in the light of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The neoliberal discourse of performativity in education is discussed, and ways this may serve to silence the spiritual voice of the child are indicated. While acknowledging that further research is necessary, the notion of rights-respecting curriculum is posited as a way of nurturing and promoting the child’s spiritual voice in education.

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ДУХОВНЫХ ГОЛОСОВ И ВИДЕНИЙ: ВОПРОС ОБ ЭТИОЛОГИИ

The article analyzes the etiology of experiences of spiritual voices and visions typical for Christian mysticism. The problem of one-sidedness of judgments in this question, which formed a confrontation between the positions of psychiatric and theological reflection by the XX century, is raised. It is shown that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for religious studies, overcoming the initially given positions of predetermining the ontological status of experiences. The approach is aimed at finding an explanation of the natural mechanisms of thinking underlying such experiences. The research shows that in the absence of psychopathological factors, due to the polymorphism of thinking, the internal speech experienced in a situation of failure as given by the Other can serve as such a single basis for both types of experiences. However, these remarks on the etiology of spiritual visions and voices show that it is questionable whether a single universally applicable theory is possible outside the analysis of a particular personal experience. They point to the need for methodological caution in religious studies and perform hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis of the human lifeworld.

Fighting for Equal Spiritual Voice: The Case of the "Women of the Wall".

Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about women’s rights and religious feminism. The context for analysis of women’s experiences is the “Women of the Wall” who have been struggling for the past 30 years for their right to practice their spiritual rituals (praying at the Western Wall) in a hegemonic and masculine arena. We suggest that the “Women of the Wall” and their battle for spiritual equality threaten the hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, this feminist battle expands the feminist revolution and the fights for women’s equality to the religious arena which is dominated by hegemonic masculinity. The implementation of the Listening Guide, a feminist methodology, assists us in uncovering various voices, representing different aspects of the experiences of the “Women of the Wall” in a conflict zone. These narratives reveal juxtapositions of feelings of competence, determination and vulnerability and shed light on the women’s struggle for gender equality in a hegemonic masculine domain.

Managing the results trap: Resources drawn from the integration of spirituality, religion, and practice

ABSTRACTThe results trap happens when social workers believe they are responsible for and/or that they have control over the outcomes of their clients. This article explains the etiology and signs of the results trap along with highlighting how it can impair a social worker’s practice as it fosters stress and burnout. The article explores how a spiritual-based examination of practice perspectives and self-care can help practitioners avoid or limit the impact of this trap. Examination and consideration of spiritual and religious voices as part of a spiritual self-care strategy can help practitioners utilize these approaches while simultaneously avoiding this trap.

Interfaith dialogue in the new religious America

In the decades since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationalities Act, the United States has become significantly more religiously diverse. Thus, interreligious relations and interfaith dialogue have gained attention as part of our American reality. Beginning with my own experience, I outline five kinds of interfaith dialogue. First, the dialogue of life is the ordinary give and take of relationships in the neighborhood, workplace, hospital, or town council. Second, there is the dialogue of learning—the intentional study of another culture and faith, involving the intellectual energy required to understand someone else, in this case someone of another faith. In many situations today, this is a mutual process of learning and understanding. Third, dialogue in community refers to the ways in which people engage with one another in shaping their community and society—a Habitat for Humanity project, a blood drive, or a city clean-up campaign. Fourth, there is philosophical and theological dialogue, in which people engage one another on the deepest and foundational issues of their faith. Finally, there is the dialogue within—reflection on what all this means for one’s own faith, recognizing that the diversity of spiritual voices and perspectives is not only “out there” in society, but in here, within ourselves.

Conflicting Voices in HIV/AIDS Education of the South African Youth: School Culture Versus South African Traditional Healers Using Ancestral Worship

The United Nations Agency of International Development (2013) states that an estimated 24.7 million people are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 71% of the global total. The 2.9 million are young people aged 15–24 and this generation is living in South Africa. These alarming statistics reveal that various HIV/AIDS prevention strategies have met limited success. The question arises: why? The South African youth face the dilemma that they receive conflicting messages from two opposing sources, each with a strong persuasive pull of its own where HIV/AIDS education is concerned. On one hand, the voice of modern medical science proclaims that the disease is caused by a viral infection that suppresses the victim’s immune response, while on the other hand spiritual voices of African traditional healers offer explanations such as witchcraft or angry ancestors. This article is an attempt to discover whether either or neither of these voices is gaining ground amongst the youth. This article is based on a qualitative phenomenological study conducted at an urban secondary school in Pretoria, South Africa. Empirical findings resulted from the purposive sampling by means of interviews conducted with two focus groups of teachers, three focus groups of grade 12 school learners and one school principal. This was followed by thematic analysis involving the identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. Facts emerging from the research were that conflicting voices are stressful for young people who are subjected to societal pressure to conform and comply with unrealistic expectations. The South African social culture of ancestral worship is very powerful, yet school culture has significant countervailing influence that sheds liberating “light” where gloom of fear, uncertainty and superstition used to prevail. It is critical to note in this regard, for instance, that where HIV/AIDS remedies are concerned, there is no standardised solution for the ‘entire world’ and that a unique situation prevails in the South African social cultural environment where ancestral worship exerts a critically real influence on people’s response to the threat of HIV/AIDS.

Making Prayer Real: Leading Jewish Spiritual Voices on Why Prayer Is Difficult and What to Do About It by Mike Comins (review)

Reviewed by: Making Prayer Real: Leading Jewish Spiritual Voices on Why Prayer Is Difficult and What to Do About It by Mike Comins Dan Ornstein (bio) Making Prayer Real: Leading Jewish Spiritual Voices on Why Prayer Is Difficult and What to Do About It, by Mike Comins. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010. Many books about t’fillah (Jewish prayer) try to inspire the reader to a life of prayer through explanations about the history of the siddur, the structure of the liturgy, and brief explanations of individual t’fillot. Rabbi Mike Comins’s [End Page 94] book, Making Prayer Real, begins with the premise that a meaningful life of t’fillah can only be achieved when we identify why it is so personally difficult for so many people, and when we each then take complete responsibility for our own prayer lives. Comins is a Reform rabbi and Jewish wilderness spirituality teacher who lived in Israel for many years and who has learned in traditional yeshivot as well. His book is a primer for a largely non-Orthodox readership that is unfamiliar with Hebrew and liturgy, put off by the unfamiliarity of synagogue services, and unwilling to accept the idea of a personal, commanding God who literally listens and responds to obligatory prayer. The first two chapters examine, from Comins’s perspective, contemporary Jews’ stumbling blocks in traditional prayer: the liturgy is too wordy and long; we pray with our minds, neglecting to engage our bodies or emotions; we rely too much on the keva, the words of the siddur, instead of cultivating the kavvanah, the intention of our personal prayer voices; we are unsure of the efficacy of t’fillah; too many synagogues treat t’fillah as a social and communal experience more than as a ladder to reach God. Comins then undertakes to show the individual worshipper how to become a “prayer-person,” someone who is constantly developing a sense of the divine presence within him or herself and within the world. His approach is uniquely multivocal: he draws upon the insights of more than fifty Jewish spiritual leaders, mostly rabbis, of all denominations. Rather than simply edit a series of fifty-plus consecutive essays—a technique that is used fairly extensively in books published by Jewish Lights—Comins introduces a topic, then inserts brief comments from these teachers which he intersperses with his own ideas and teachings. What results is a somewhat cacophonous but lively conversation among these teachers and practitioners of t’fillah. This allows the editor to move to the background and give space to a variety of opinions and experiences around Jewish spiritual practice and formal prayer, in the energetic manner of a page of Talmud. Comins also includes a number of essays on topics in contemporary t’fillah and spirituality for those (like me) who process full-length comments by individual writers more easily than we process snippets of writing. Equally enriching in Making Prayer Real is the actual variety of topics, concerns, and spiritual goals that are addressed by him and his fellow teachers. The five parts of the book describe in detail personal experiences and counsel for developing a life of t’fillah. These focus on the spiritual dynamics of prayer; how to begin to pray; growing and healing through prayer in the realms of loss, grief, and t’shuvah (repentance); and how the individual can begin to enter the world of traditional Jewish prayer meaningfully. (This last point is a major goal of this book and of Jewish religious education in general.) The book ends with an extensive section of spiritual practices and exercises that show the reader, step-by-step, how to personalize what he or she has been learning in the first four parts. This “how-to” section does not purport [End Page 95] to show the reader how to acquire ritual skills or chant prayers, but rather the means by which to make one’s prayer life with God a daily reality. I was particularly moved or intrigued by the chapters that deal with the efficacy of prayer, developing an “attitude of gratitude,” using prayer to grow in t’shuvah, and the value of addressing God personally...

Intoning the Male and Female Voices in a Novel by Eva Figes

AMY CHRISTINE PARKER University of Manitoba The book Light, with Monet at Giverny: A Novel is a story that imaginatively describes a day in the life of the Monet family. It is written by one of the feminist writers of the first wave which ended in the seventies, ‘‘Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Eva Figes, Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, and Kate Millett’’, as described by Susan Watkins in Twentieth Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice. Watkins’ book describes these women as being opposed to contemporary interpretations of Freudian theory, and in particular to certain aspects of his description of the Oedipus complex which they see as patriarchal and arising from capitalist values and the hypothesis that hysteria is self-motived rather than a problem of sexuality. Yet what Sally Robinson recognizes in Engendering the Subject: Gender and Self-representation in Contemporary Women’s Fiction as the refreshing plurality of the voices of these feminist authors is characteristic as well of those who remain faithful to religion or Christianity, which are traditionally feminine voices. This paper searches for the developing voice of women in this work of fiction by Eva Figes and recognizes as well the presence of the continuing male voices. A positive aspect of Figes’ novels is the fact that she often finds a way for a character to thrive despite harsh conditions. Throughout the novel, exterior sounds such as a clock counting the hours, a nearby passing train, singing birds and galloping horses create some sonorous effects. As the land lies amongst hills and a river, echoes can also be heard. These sounds punctuate the dialogues and silences within which much of the meaning of the story is contained. In this novel about an artistic family, the auditory effects are enhanced by visual motifs of light and color. In another of her novels, The Knot, there is a similar recurrence of ‘[n]ot

Religion, Spirituality and State-Funded Schooling

Habermas recommends that post-secular societies re-examine their relationship with religion to give religious and spiritual voice a place in the public sphere, a place denied by secularism. This article re-examines one aspect of that broader field, the relationship between religion or spirituality and publicly funded education. Recent interest in faith schools, particularly in the UK and USA, has raised questions about whether the secular, or common, school continues to be the best model for publicly funded education. Meanwhile, anxiety about religion, and concern to develop religious, spiritual and cultural understanding, have raised international awareness of the potential value of religious and spiritual education which, in some countries, is not permitted in publicly funded schools. This article draws on the work of Habermas to argue that post-secular liberal democracies should revisit and rework the relationship between religion and publicly funded schools and aim to include the religious and spiritual without undermining core liberal democratic principles. The article discusses both the role of religious or spiritual education in the post-secular common school, and post-secular liberal democracy’s relationship with faith schools, that is schools which are motivated by a spiritual worldview. The argument is framed by secular liberal democratic principles put forward in the 1980s by Terence McLaughlin and concludes that, in post-secular liberal democracies, publicly funded schools should subscribe to a revised form of McLaughlin’s principles.

Quiet Voices: The Significance of Subdued Dialogue and Voice-Over in the Films of Aleksandr Sokurov

Many of Sokurov's films, features as well as documentaries, are characterised by scant or subdued dialogue and/or voice-over narration. This aesthetic style of the predominance of visual over verbal expression is understood as a direct expression of Sokurov's concern with mortality and death. The argument proceeds from a semiotic distinction between language as basically discrete and moving pictures as basically indiscrete. By subduing the discrete semantics of language, Sokurov gives precedence to the potential of moving images to pursue the indiscrete flow of human life as it moves inevitably towards the moment of death, to the vanishing point of human existence. Six films are examined: The Lonely Voice of Man (Odinokij golos čeloveka); Whispering Pages (Tichie stranicy) and Spiritual Voices (Duchovnye golosa); Moloch, Taurus (Telec) and The Sun. The first three films reveal quietness as a mode of contemplation in the face of death, while the last three feature the three despots, Hitler, Lenin and Hirohito, in political retreat.

The personal camera: subjective cinema and the essay film

The essay film: problems, definitions, textual commitments -- The metacritical voice(over) of the essay film: Harun Farocki, found footage and the essayist as spectator -- The musealisation of experience: Chris Marker's digital subject between archive, museum and database -- Performance and negotiation: Jean-Luc Godard plays Jean-Luc Godard -- First-person filmmaking: history, theory, practices -- The diary film: Aleksandr Sokurov's Spiritual Voices and the feeling of time -- The notebook film: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the film that cannot be made -- The self-portrait film: Michelangelo's last gaze.

The rise of the child's voice; the silencing of the spiritual voice

In recent years the notion of the child's voice has gained prominence, particularly influenced by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 which outlined rights for children on an international scale. Many countries, including the UK, subsequently legislated for the child's voice to be heard in a variety of arenas including the education system. Despite the concept of the child's voice now being firmly established within schools in England, this paper argues that one aspect of their voice is not being heard: their spiritual voice. Drawing on evidence from research, this paper proposes that a variety of factors have culminated in a tendency towards a silencing of the child's spiritual voice. It argues that this silencing is an important one which should be acknowledged and rectified if educators in all schools are to treat the concept of the whole child seriously, and fully value their well‐being.

CHAPTER 4: Spiritual Voices of Preservice Teachers

ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines the spiritual characteristics of preservice teachers. Poetry and prose of twenty-five preservice teachers written on the topic of Where I'm From, were analyzed for the spiritual characteristics of (1) justice, (2) compassion, (3) personal fulfillment, and (4) community. Findings indicated that preservice teachers spiritually reflected when given the opportunity to reflectively write and they uncovered their personal and moral values and beliefs. Teacher education programs must seriously consider the preservice teachers' multiple expressions of spirituality to address this significant need. This, in fact, spurs a teacher education renaissance acknowledging the “whole” teacher and what he or she has to offer.

Varieties of Geological Experience: Religion, Body, and Spirit in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Lyell's Principles of Geology

AFTER SURVEYING THE STRATA OF RECENT CRITICAL SCHOOLS, HERBERT TUCKER makes an appeal for combining a vibrant neo-formalism with cultural studies. His lapidary reading of aural elements of In Memoriam's section 33 unfolds into a cultural critique that troubles Tennyson's suave apology for the Victorian secular state and liberal society. I wish to extend Tucker's analysis of In Memoriam by applying a culturally aware formalism not only to Tennyson's poem but also to another nuanced cultural artifact, Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. (1) These texts--the scientific laureate's lay and the geologist's poetic apology--warrant similar formal consideration because they participate in the same cultural sphere, intervening in questions of religion, metaphysics, science, identity, and nationalism. While Sarah Gates and Denise Gigante have focused on desire and identity in other excellent cultural formalist readings of In Memoriam, I will address the common critical assumption that its geological sections participate in a Victorian war between science and religion, which Harvard scientist and historian Stephen Jay Gould has described as a cardboard legend of an old (and basically silly) model of 'warfare between science and religion' that creates a misleading caricature of geological beliefs in the early nine-teenth century. (2) My analysis has two goals: first, to modify the persistent meta-narrative of a polarized Victorian culture that views science, especially geology, as the efficient cause of a desperate, precipitous decline in religious faith between 1831 and 1859; and, second, to explore the renegotiation of faith by Lyell and Tennyson that advocates a stark, defensive rupture between the body and spirit. In reexamining the relation between geology, religion, and literature, I will view Lyell and Tennyson as engaged in similar, not contradictory, projects that revise Paleyan natural theology into a dynamic spiritualism that draws an absolute and prophylactic barrier between the physical and spiritual world. The countervailing characterization of this interaction (scientists causing an earthquake of doubt and despair for theologians and Victorian believers) has been so pervasive that even a critic as sophisticated as Isobel Armstrong limits her reading of Lyell's influence on Tennyson's In Memoriam to the uncomfortable and transgressive. (3) In Robert Bernard Haas's reading, Lyell's disconcerting work channels directly into Tennyson's construction of a locus lacrimosus, a place of (4) Instead, I will argue, following J.M.I. Klaver, that geological writing is often a strange melange of awe and analysis. (5) Redefined and negotiated by scientists, theologians, and poets, the terms of belief about immortality, the supernatural, as well as the relation between body and soul, did change significantly in the nineteenth century, but the move of Victorian society and literature, at least in the prominent works of Lyell and Tennyson, was not, as in David Dean's paraphrase of George Meredith, simply from geology to despair. (6) This reading has often relied on the assumption that Tennyson's poem is a chronicle of experience somehow more authentic than scientific texts and the assertion that, within this autobiographical account, the Principles of Geology is a source of emotional crisis over the religious issues of immortality and belief. While I certainly do not wish to deny the biographical importance of Tennyson's grief for Hallam, critics have sometimes let this overshadow the public, argumentative nature of Tennyson's published 1850 text. (7) This perspective, however, needs to be balanced against Steven Gill's presentation of a Tennyson who succeeds Wordsworth as the spiritual voice of the age, interpreting intellectual trends for the reading public. I will not, therefore, read In Memoriam as a journal, a grief observed, but as a text offering an explanation and an interpretation, to the nation. …

Purpose-Driven Leadership

The educational leadership discourse is being challenged to include a spiritual voice in its conversation. Spirituality is defined as the part of life through which individuals make meaning and understanding of the world. It includes the esoteric exercise of personal critical reflection and forms the basis for values and principles that inform individual personal and professional behavior. This article examines purposive leadership, a concept grounded in what Cornel West called prophetic spirituality. It suggests educational leaders who build their professional practice in purpose-driven leadership clearly understand the multidimensional aspects of their daily challenges and yet find the inner strength to resist hegemonic structures and forms of oppression and systemic inequities in the educational system. These leaders' perceptions are not limited to proficiencies and minimum competencies but are clearly focused on ontological pursuits, academic and intellectual engagements, and projects fostering students' sense of destiny, purpose, and commitment to societal change.

Including a Spiritual Voice in the Educational Leadership and School Reform Discourse

Including a Spiritual Voice in the Educational Leadership and School Reform Discourse

Is Silence Really Golden? The Role of Spiritual Voice in Folk Pedagogy and Folk Psychology

ABSTRACT Most recently, considerable attention has been focused on the social construction of knowledge and an internalist, first‐person perspective on learning. Included in this paradigm shift is a particular ‘hybrid’ of both psychology and educational theory often referred to as ‘theory of mind’ (ToM research) or folk psychology. This article outlines models of teaching, learning, and mind in the hopes that such an advance in understanding children's minds will lead to an improved pedagogy. To address the issues of emotion and ‘spiritual voice’ that may constrain learning in the classroom and self‐development, Belenky et al.’sfive epistemological perspectives or ‘Women's Ways of Knowing’ (New York, Basic Books, 1986) are couched within the framework of Olson and Burner's [Folk Psychology and Folk Pedagogy, in: D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds) Handbook of Education and Human Development: New Models of Learning, Teaching and Schooling, pp. 9‐27 (Oxford, Blackwell)] four models of mind, teaching and learning. At issue is the dialogical relation between folk psychology and folk pedagogy and its contingency on both culture and context.