Judith Wood dissertation

Institute for Clinical Social Work

How Adults Use the Symbol “God� as a Locus of Meaning

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Judith Wood

Chicago, Illinois June, 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the way in which the concept of “God” continues to have meaning for adults in a post-modern world, including the way in which their understanding and experience of God may evolve over the course of their lives. In addition, the contributions of several object relations theorists were explored, and results of the research were reviewed to determine whether or not they validated those theories.

Of the 14 people interviewed, 8 were included in the final research. These were middle age men and women of different religious backgrounds, who had sufficient life experience to seriously reflect on this topic. Norman Denzin’s method of Interpretive Interactionism was used to determine how turning points, called epiphany moments, affected participants’ understanding and experience of God. Results were drawn from the participants’ earliest memories of God, their problematic experiences with their God, and their attempts to explain who God is in their life experience. The results of this study do validate many aspects of object relations theory, especially demonstrating the malleability of the God-concept in the participants’ creative use of this relationship as they experience it. Needs for further research is also noted.

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For my sisters in the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis

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Acknowledgements

Of first importance, I want to acknowledge the generosity given in both time and sharing of self on the part of all the participants in this study. I am truly grateful for their collaboration in this research project.

My thanks go to Joan Butler, Robin Youngs, and Jeanne Boros who have made contributions along the way by assisting with transcripts of the participant interviews, and/or with reviewing and editing the material for errors.

JW

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Table of Contents Page Abstract .................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. iii Chapter I.

Introduction ......................................................................................................1 History of the Problem Formulation of the Problem

II.

Literature Review ..........................................................................................11 Introduction Historical Overview Theoretical and Conceptual Framework Statement of Assumptions

III.

Methodology ...................................................................................................76 Sample Selection Instrumentation Data Management and Analysis

IV.

Results .............................................................................................................87 Introduction Description of Participants Earliest Memories of God Problematic Experiences and Epiphany Moments Who or What is God? v

Table of Contents—Continued Chapter

V.

Page

Findings and Implications ...........................................................................216 Summary of Results Personal Reflection Theoretical Implications Application of Theory to Findings Clinical Implications Limitations of the Study; Further Research Conclusion

Appendices Informed Consent ..............................................................................................242 References ...........................................................................................................245

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Chapter I

Introduction History of the Problem The human limitation in speaking about “God” has been explored from the standpoint of many fields of inquiry—theology and anthropology, comparative religion, literary criticism, and especially epistemology—to name but several. Despite the continuing secularization of Western societies, the “Death of God” movement that emerged in the 1960’s, and the current spate of books promoting atheism as the only viable position for a thinking adult, human beings continue to find the concept of God to be a meaningful symbol for their experience of the sacred dimension in life. Both the Pew Research Center (2007) and the Gallup Poll (2011) have revealed that more than 9 in 10 Americans express belief in God or a universal spirit. Of course, what people mean by the use of these terms would vary widely, and it is important to remember that a given individual’s concept for “God” or “universal spirit” would be the result not only of personal experience and reflection but has also influenced by what has been “inherited,” or received from the culture and faith tradition or traditions within which he or she has been formed.

In her famous book The History of God (1993), Armstrong offers a sweeping account of the evolution of the God-concept across time and cultures. In a chapter titled,

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“Does God have a future?” she acknowledges that for many in our contemporary world, there are all kinds of difficulties with the traditional concept of God as it has been known in the West. Among such difficulties, she notes that the God of the philosophers is the product of an outdated rationalism and that traditional “proofs” provided for the existence of God no longer work. In addition, conceiving God as a remote, “Supreme Being” makes the divine being too distant and removed from our mundane world, while insisting on an image of God as male-gendered does just the opposite, and is too limiting.

Armstrong goes on to suggest that perhaps “the God of the mystics” would present a possible alternative for this era in history, explaining how that perspective may be congruent with our contemporary experience.

The mystics have long insisted that God is not an-Other Being; they have claimed that he does not really exist and that it is better to call him Nothing. This God is in tune with the atheistic mood of our secular society, with its distrust of inadequate images of the Absolute. Instead of seeing God as an objective Fact, which can be demonstrated by means of scientific proof, mystics have claimed that he is a subjective experience, mysteriously experienced in the ground of being. This God is to be approached through the imagination and can be seen as a kind of art form, akin to the other great artistic symbols that have expressed the ineffable mystery, beauty and value of life (p. 396).

There are some drawbacks of this approach, as Armstrong warns. One is that it takes a certain amount of “discipline and self-criticism” in order to provide a “safeguard against indulgent emotionalism and projection.” Second is that mainstream religion tends to marginalize the mystical approach so that it is unlikely to find support within traditional religious organizations and institutions. And third, it is not likely “to appeal to

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people in a society which has become used to speedy gratification, fast food and instant communication” (p.396-7).

In many ways, however, I find this “mystical approach” more consistent with the postmodern experience and worldview. There is in that framework some dissatisfaction with the dualistic thinking by which we formerly framed all ideas and experiences as truth or untruth, objective or subjective, rational or irrational, myth or reality. In fact, one of the definitions of myth is that it conveys a truth greater than that which can be known by the facts (Taylor, Religion and Truth, 2016). This is the realm of metaphor and poetry, of art and literature—through which we often gain greater insight into the meaning of our life experiences. This is not to say that we must discard all distinctions and clarity of thought, but that there is need to balance these with categories of experience that transcend clear definition.

My interest in this topic has inevitably evolved from my own life experiences, as well as from my work with clients in both individual and group therapy, and so I would like to comment briefly about this. During the earliest years of life, my experience of the world seemed to be imbued with a divine presence. This experience is encapsulated in moments such as sitting on my grandmother’s lap and listening to music that came from a distant point across the lake. It is recalled in memories of the scent of seaweed, the warmth of sand, and the sound of ocean waves—all of which bespoke Mystery. It is found in the feeling of awe I remember when, in the midst of a thunderstorm, I was told that the angels were crying for my sins. This did not evoke shame or guilt, but only wonder at the incomprehensible magnitude of heaven. These and other palpable memories profoundly shaped my understanding of God as a consoling presence within

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the world, and within myself. They served as a source of strength and deep reflection when my world became disrupted as a result of alcoholism and abuse within the family, a time when I could find no words or ideas to explain this disruption of the “normal order of things.” According to Bruner (1990), narrative is the organizing principle of a psychology that enables the individual to integrate both the expectable (canonical) and the unusual (exceptional) in human experience. He states that a crucial feature of narrative is that: …it specializes in the forging of links between the exceptional and the ordinary… the viability of a culture inheres in its capacity for resolving conflicts, for explicating differences and re-negotiating communal meanings… made possible by narrative’s apparatus for dealing simultaneously with canonicality and exceptionality. Thus while a culture must contain a set of norms, it must also contain a set of interpretive procedures for rendering departures from those norms meaningful in terms of established patterns of belief (p. 47).

In later years, I found those “interpretive procedures” through the study of scripture and theology, and these served as my guides for creating a meaningful life story.

So much so that I felt compelled to pursue a master’s degree in theology. And even though my understanding and experience of God and religion has changed greatly over the course of my life, it is still true that these remain inextricably tied to the narrative that was begun years ago.

Among the clients with whom I have worked in therapy, many have struggled to reclaim themselves from the lasting effects of childhood trauma and their need “to deal with the God issue” has been expressed in a variety of ways. It is my impression that for

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some, it was sufficient to think of God as a kind of “holding environment,” in that they expressed a belief that God was supporting them and guiding their efforts. Though they may not have spoken about God very often, neither did they express much conflict with regard to their understanding of God’s role in their lives. For others, God simply made “no sense,” and their relationship to this “divine object” was highly conflicted even though they may not have questioned God’s existence.

The comments of three women stand out in my mind as examples of such conflicts. The first of these was Leanne, a thirty-five year old mother of three schoolaged girls, who was distraught over the experience of losing custody of her daughters due to chronic neglect. She had been overwhelmed with the demands of parenting, and though she did not re-enact the severe beatings she had received as a child in the treatment of her own children, Leanne would withdraw into a depressive psychotic state whenever their need for her became too much to bear. Though her children were eventually returned to her care, Leanne requested that child protective services take custody of them again, at a time when she found herself sliding into the former pattern of withdrawal from them. For the next two years, the recurrent unanswerable question to resurface perennially in our sessions together was, “why would God give me children if he knew I couldn’t take care of them?” It was essential for Leanne to explore this apparent contradiction for a deeper meaning, much as one might ponder the Buddhist koan, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” At some level, the question had to be resolved if she were to make sense of her life and move forward.

Another young mother of nineteen, Jessica, expressed her profound sense of hopelessness not in a question, but in her absolute conviction that “God can’t love you if

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your mother doesn’t.” Jessica was fearful that the rage she felt toward her own mother would affect her ability to care for her newborn daughter. She alternately hovered over the infant or withdrew from her, expressing her terror at being the sole person responsible for her child’s care, “not knowing what to do.” She had grown up having to accommodate herself to physical and sexual abuse, but by far the most significant assault on Jessica’s integrity came from her mother who told her repeatedly that she did not want her, and that she was the source of all her mother’s problems. Deeply resentful toward her mother, Jessica maintained the only bond she had ever had with her by identifying with her mother’s rejection of her in expressing her absolute commitment to the fact that God could not, would not love her. To imagine God otherwise would be to lose the only mother she had ever known or could imagine.

A third client found God’s identity and purpose to be as elusive as her own.

“God” had been imposed upon Celeste by an older sibling who was apparently trying to bring some order and meaning into a chaotic family life headed by an acutely psychotic mother and a reclusive, depressed father. For Celeste, God became equated with her lifelong depersonalization and derealization experiences. “I know I can decide who God is for me, but I don’t know who I am”, she explained. Her very real struggle to create a self was linked in many ways with her confusion about accepting, denying, and/or creating a God who was real for her.

The way in which God emerged in the life-stories of these three women is reflective of their attempts at identity construction, with their God-representations presenting a dilemma for that construction of a meaningful sense of self and others.

Their experience of traumatic events formed or deformed their understanding and

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experience of the God-representation. As Herman (1992) has noted, trauma “challenges an ordinary person to become a theologian, a philosopher, and a jurist…She stands mute before the emptiness of evil, feeling the insufficiency of any known system of explanation” (p. 178). This would demand, as Armstrong and others have noted, a tremendous amount of creativity and supportive resources that were not generally available to these women.

Formulation of the Problem The question that I wish to pursue in this study is this: What is the experience or understanding of “God” among those individuals for whom this symbol is significant to their life story? It is not my intent to focus on the God-representations of those who have experienced trauma. Rather, participants will be drawn from the general population of adults who perceive a relationship with God to be an essential element of their life experience and their active engagement with a secular world. Participants will include both men and women who are representative of diverse religious traditions, as well as of differences in educational and occupational backgrounds. It is a qualitative study utilizing open-ended questions in order to elicit participants’ reflection on their experience or understanding of God, and to examine the ways in which this symbol serves them in the creation of a coherent life-story and self-identity. It is a phenomenological inquiry into the experience of God for adults in the second half of life. This particular “stage” of life is chosen because it is assumed that a certain amount of “life-experience” is necessary to develop the capacity for mature reflection and a perspective on one’s experiences.

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Narrative analysis will provide the framework for this study since such an approach seems particularly conducive to elucidating the experiences I wish to explore.

Freeman (1998) has noted the role that the creation of personal narratives have in accessing the sacred dimension of human experience. He explains: It is difficult for many, at this particular moment in history, to imagine that life could actually bear within it meaning, especially sacred meaning… It seems easier to assume that life has no meaning or at least no meaning other than that which we impose upon it… I will simply raise for consideration the distinct possibility that mythical time, far from representing a regressive point of view, may in fact help point the way toward a deeper and more adequate understanding of what I am here calling the narrative fabric of the self (p. 44).

For Freeman, historical time can be devoid of meaning, an endless sequence of events without beginning or end. Mythic time, on the other hand, leads somewhere, to a conclusion, a denouement which infuses the whole of one’s life with purpose and meaning. The emphasis here is on the ways that people create themselves via their stories, most particularly through those relationships which help form the self. He states further that: As significant as relatedness to people clearly is, the idea extends significantly farther- for instance, to nature, to art, to God, and more. Indeed, it might be suggested in this context that the narrative fabric of the self relies somehow on our ability to be related to “devotional objects” able to orient our lives meaningfully (p. 47).

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It is my belief that by listening carefully to the narratives told by the participants in this study, by attending to the way in which they talk about God, and self, and the world—there is much to be learned about becoming more responsive to such a dialogue when it emerges within the clinical setting. If we dare to influence the content of the client’s story so that it will be more useful to his or her functioning, it is necessary to fully appreciate the truth of that story, especially the way in which God may figure into its plot and ultimate denouement. To listen, to hear, to understand, and to become responsive to such narratives remains a key objective of this endeavor. By attending to this process, I hope to learn something of the way in which “the story” with all its cast of characters, including God, can be “sufficient” for the unfolding of self, and thereby to draw implications this may have for the practice of clinical social work.

The Story Is Enough When the great Israel Baal Shem Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Maggid of Mezeritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished. Still later, Moshe-Leib of Sassov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: “I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished. Then it fell to Israel of Rizhin to overcome

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misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest.

All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient.� And it was sufficient (Wiesel, 1972, pp. 167-168).

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Chapter II

Review of the Literature Introduction In order to properly situate the concept of God within social work theory, it is important to identify the current historic circumstances in which that theory is being developed. Although “postmodernism� resists clear definition, the fact that we are living in a postmodern era is almost universally accepted, not only in the academic world but in other circles of thought as well.

Absolute trust in rational discourse and the inevitability of human progress, both products of the Enlightenment that became the hallmarks of modernism, have given way to a more fluid worldview in which what were once considered universal truths are now often understood as contextual realities, conditioned by specific situations and experiences. Hodge and Derezotes (2008) comment on this paradigm shift in noting the following: Rather than a single, real material world, multiple realities exist, incorporating both the material and the spiritual. Observers interact with, changing and being changed by their surrounding environment. Knowledge is local and contextual but simultaneously holistic and ecological; incapable of being reduced to its constituent parts or being collated in a series of universal laws. Knowledge does not accumulate in any absolute sense, but rather grows and changes, eroding

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ignorance, as different value perspectives are illuminated and synthesized over time (pp.107-8).

In this schema, then, there can be no absolute certainty of knowledge. However, there can be a “growing consensus” of what approximates truth as diverse perspectives are valued and utilized as contributors to that consensus. This understanding that there can be multiple realities or truths may have contributed to the fact that so many people now identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” due to a hesitancy to accept the absolute truth claims of many organized religions. It may be because of these changing circumstances, as well as to the long tradition of respect for cultural diversity within the profession, that there is increasing interest in the topic of “spirituality” within the social work profession.

Hodge and Derezotes make note of this and comment that the topic of spirituality shares a common difficulty with postmodern thought. They state that “much like the construct of postmodernism itself, articulating the nature of spirituality is difficult because of its nebulous nature,” and further, that spirituality in contrast with religion “is typically conceptualized in more subjective, individualistic terms” (pp. 108-9).

Elsewhere it has been asserted that “we live in a time of religious resurgence that is cyclical, global, and complex” and that “the number of people who self-identify as religious is greater than ever before in history” (Derzotes, 2009, p.64). But whether people identify as “spiritual” or “religious,” it is clear that this dimension of human experience is reflective of the pluralistic perspective of the postmodern worldview. As such, it should be given greater attention in both the theory and practice of social work, as well as in psychoanalytic thought which often informs the field of clinical social work.

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With but a few exceptions, psychoanalytic theorists have traditionally followed the example of Freud in his rejection of religion as an illusion. While acknowledging the significant role religion played in the development of civilization, Freud dismissed much of religious or spiritual ideas as a form of magical thinking whereby one refuses the responsibilities of authentic adulthood by clinging to a mythical parent-substitute for reward and punishment. When examining how being “religious” had been treated in psychoanalytic journals from 1920 to 1994, Sorenson and Benson (2004) found that the majority of references were either descriptive or nonevaluative. However, “when the word did occur in evaluative contexts, 77% of the time it was pathologized” (p. 68). This tendency to interpret religious beliefs and ideals as pathological left its legacy not only on psychoanalytic treatment, but on the field of social work as well, at least to the extent that it was influenced by psychoanalytic theory. Of course this was not the only factor that contributed to the devaluing of the spiritual/religious dimension. In the many years between the early practice of social work that was grounded in “the divine mandate for charity” to the “current movement advocating empirically based practice” (Stewart, 2009, p.36), the profession went through a number of changes as it adapted to the needs of an increasingly secular society. Over time it became fully grounded in the scientific method and its philosophical relatives of positivism and empiricism, with the result that the religious or spiritual dimension of life became separated from the rest of human experience, and very often ignored or seen as problematic within the clinical setting.

Despite this legacy, the past 20 to 30 years have witnessed a significant increase in the research and clinical reflection regarding religion and spirituality within the social work literature. Perhaps this provides evidence of the profession’s beginning attempt to

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become more responsive to the diversity of individuals and groups for whom this issue represents a very real human need. In a search of the literature on “Social Work” and Religion or Spirituality (in the Social Work Abstracts and Psych Info databases at Case Western Reserve University), I obtained the following results: 1963—1982……..55 citations 1983—2002……..4,354 citations 2003—2013……..11,726 citations The scope of this literature is vast, encompassing such issues as the beliefs of social work students concerning spirituality and religion, to the religious practices of specific populations, and on to whether there is, or should be, a proper place for religion and spirituality within the training and practice of the social work profession. One of the key issues that emerges in this data is the concern over exclusivist versus pluralistic perspectives on religion and spirituality within the profession. For example, Stewart (2009) addresses the dilemma inherent in placing so much emphasis on pluralism that all values become relative. He comments that “disagreement between particular perspectives may be attributable to important, mutually exclusive propositions that cannot be simply dismissed or modified to comply with pluralism” (p.42).

The question then becomes how it is possible to tolerate exclusivist worldviews within a pluralistic perspective. Therefore, conflicts “between stated social work values and alternatively derived values will continue to be problematic until the issue of exclusivity is successfully decided” (p.45). He raises the question as to how the social worker who holds an exclusivist understanding of religious truth—as for example, that Jesus is the Son of God—can suspend that foundational belief and accept the pluralist

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position that all truth claims in this realm are equally valid. Stewart points out that this position is itself “exclusivist” since it is a foundational belief. While acknowledging that the approach of a “softer pluralism” that is inclusive of multiple exclusivist positions may be more useful, Stewart concludes that the inherent dilemma of determining which values are to have priority in ethical decision making still remains for the profession to resolve.

Goldberg (1996) has also addressed the dilemma of how to address exclusivist or foundational beliefs that emerge within the clinical dialogue between therapist and client.

She raises the question of whether or not religious material should be “privileged,” that is, immune from interpretation within the therapeutic process. Reflecting on her own experience with clients who have raised these issues, as well as upon the historical relationship between religion and depth psychology, Goldberg considers three possible approaches to religious concerns—the metaphorical, the functional, and the foundational.

She concludes that religious material brought to us by our clients in the clinical setting should be addressed from only two perspectives – the metaphorical or poetic use of imagery and the functional or pragmatic use of religion for adaptive purposes. She states that “no matter how seductive religion may be, the reality of the transcendent lies outside our area of expertise” (p. 135). Therefore, the third option of approaching religious ideas and experiences as foundational, as that which gives grounding to the client’s life, cannot be explored by the psychotherapist in a secular setting.

Meissner (2009) agrees with Goldberg about the need to draw “a clear line of distinction between the psychoanalytic and the religious or theological realms” (p.225), and is especially concerned with the God-concept and how this can be properly addressed within the therapeutic setting. With regard to this, he suggests that:

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…the objective of the analytic process is to explore and understand the developmental, dynamic, defensive, and compromise processes that have contributed to the formation of the God-representation. The God-representation in these terms can be regarded as a form of transference that is open to psychoanalytic exploration and interpretation as much as any other transference expression. To the extent that the patient’s neurotic God-representation can be successfully explored and interpreted and resolved, this may open the way to reformulation and renewed understanding, enabling the patient to find new and more creative ways of reconciling his or her revised God-representation with his or her religious beliefs (p.229).

Where Meissner draws the line between psychoanalytic and religious realms is in his insistence that the “remodeling and reconstruction of the God-representation” is beyond the scope of therapy and must be left to the initiative of the client, whether the resolution is found in traditional or non-traditional religious terms.

However, there is an element within his argument with which I take exception. This is to be found in the distinction he makes between the “God of the psychoanalysts” and the “God of religious belief.” Meissner explains this distinction as follows: In the simplest terms, it is the contrast between God as known or knowable only by the inherent subjective capacity of the human mind as opposed to the concept of the Godhead as known objectively through revelation and faith as really existing, creating, revealing and saving (p. 211).

I question in what sense revelation, however it is understood, can be described as “objective” and somehow distinct from what is gleaned from normal human reflection on

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individual and communal experiences. Even if such reflection is understood to be inspired and initiated by God, it emerges in history through human subjectivity and storytelling. In this sense, the reality of the transcendent lies outside the expertise of every human being. In his book, Terror and transformation: The ambiguity of religion in psychoanalytic perspective (2002), Jones gives emphasis to this reality: Inevitable limitations on human experience and expression mean that ultimately the divine can only be encountered (if at all) as the negation of all concepts. This tell us nothing about the nature of the Ultimate—which remains beyond our ken—but only that any encounter with God must finally pass beyond language into a state in which concepts disappear into a void (p.109).

So while the role of the therapist is to interpret religious phenomena from a psychological standpoint in order that clients may better evaluate how their relationships and functioning may be affected by such phenomena, they need not take a reductionist perspective. It is possible to acknowledge that the religious experiences and understanding of clients are meaningful realities that both include and transcend psychological forces.

The contemporary secular world often struggles with and ultimately rejects concepts of God, precisely because it cannot transcend the limitations of the language employed to convey the nonverbal experiences these concepts attempt to embody. Until recently, concepts of divinity emerged from and were for the most part embedded within specific religious traditions. Since these traditions evolved in a pre-Enlightenment era, pre-scientific era, they require a good translator to interpret their meaning for a modern or post-modern world. Therefore, looking to the literature that informs the current practice

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of clinical social work, it is important to consider some of the root metaphors of the past that continue to influence contemporary theories of religion.

Historical Overview At the “dawn” of what came to be known as depth psychology, two figures in particular stand out for their contribution to this field of study regarding the role of religion in human experience. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were initially collaborators in developing further the psychoanalytic theories that had been initiated by Freud.

However, Jung eventually rejected Freud’s biological determinism in favor of a theory which proposed that the fundamental psychological drive is directed toward integration of repressed aspects of the self in a process known as “individuation” rather than gratification of instinct. While both men agreed that religion is rooted in the unconscious, they disagreed vehemently in describing how this was so. As Jones (2002) explains: For Freud and his followers, the unconscious is a cauldron of antisocial drives and infantile wishes; experienced directly the id can only be a source of psychopathology. So connecting religious experience so closely to the unconscious makes it seem necessarily pathological. For Jung, on the other hand, the unconscious is a source of greater wisdom and healing… religion, with its connection to the unconscious, represents a major mode of healing and a vehicle for authentic and transformative knowledge (p.99).

There have been many others both within and outside classic psychoanalytic theory who departed early on from Freud’s adamant rejection of religion. Famous names

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among these would include William James, Ronald Fairbairn, Hans Loewald and Erik Erikson to name a few. However, my approach here will be to follow a single line of development in psychoanalytic thought from Freud to Winnicott, from Winnicott to Rizzuto and then to the recent contributions of Christopher Bollas. Freud provides the original framework for understanding psychic functioning on which these others build their object-relations perspectives. It is this perspective that I have found to be particularly valuable in interpreting religious experience, as well as a theoretical underpinning for clinical work. With these four providing the background for this study, I will then address my own theoretical orientation for the research agenda.

Sigmund Freud – Religion and God as illusions.

Any attempt to highlight the contributions made by psychoanalytic theory to the study of religious phenomena must of necessity begin with Sigmund Freud. As the founder of this tradition, his powerful presence continues to influence the thought of its contemporary proponents even when they would depart from his perspective. It is well known that Freud identified himself as “a godless Jew,” and that from his earliest writings onward he espoused a reductionist view of religion as comprising a system of wish fulfillment, requiring the disavowal of reality (1961, p. 56). He understood religious ideas, most notably that of “God,” to be completely and irrevocably incompatible with a modern, scientific world-view.

While acknowledging that many of his psychoanalytic colleagues did not share his atheistic views, for Freud, as for most intellectuals at the close of the nineteenth century, “truth” was to be ascertained through careful adherence to close observation and

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analysis of experience which disallows any metaphysical speculation. In his view, empirical arguments against the truth claims of religion had long since been established by others. “All I have done,” he declared, “is to add some psychological foundation to the criticisms of my great predecessors” (1961, p. 45). In many respects, that reductionist perspective of religion remains normative to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis despite both historical and current challenges to it. As Simmonds (2006) has noted: Although the rejection of superstitious and politically coercive misuses of religion is very intelligible, what is much more difficult to understand is why an allencompassing reductionist attitude, amounting to prejudice, toward all spiritual should have persisted in psychoanalysis. It becomes clearer through an examination of the literature that what seems to have been projected onto mysticism and religion was the irrational, unknowable aspects—undesirable because they were unknowable, and what was projected onto science was reason, order, progress, and knowability (p.129).

It was very important for Freud to demonstrate that psychoanalysis was heir to the scientific Weltanschauung which had given shape to the intellectual climate of his time.

For him, religion was the antithesis of science because religion makes truth–claims which are not subject to empirical verification, whereas science makes no such claims to faith, but through a process of observation and reasoning gains an ever closer approximation of reality (1961, pp. 31ff). Thus psychoanalysis becomes “a method of research, an impartial instrument, like an infinitesimal calculus as it were” (p. 47). Purely objective in its study of the human psyche, psychoanalysis is understood as not subject to the biases of a world-view of its own such as those which are found within religious tradition and

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dogma. It is an illusion “to expect anything from intuition and introspection,” Freud insists, “because they can reveal nothing other than the particulars of our own mental life” and “never any information about the questions which religious doctrine finds so easy to answer” (p. 40). Science, in stark contrast, has proven effective in increasing our understanding of the world and our power over it. Freud concludes: “No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere” (p. 71).

R. Sorenson (1994) has referred to the contrast between illusion and reality, religion and science as a hazardous “bifurcation of reason and intuition, with deification of the former and a dismissal of the latter” (p. 638). In this context, he cites the work of Van Herik who “made the case that Freud’s theory of religion can be profitably interpreted as a special but integral case of his broader theory of gender, in whose moral economy the renunciation of wishes is tied to masculinity and cultural achievements, and the fulfillment of wishes to cultural regression, religious illusion, and femininity’ (p.

639). Whatever the reasons may be for Freud’s need to equate the renunciation of wishes and illusions with maturity, it is clear that he failed to recognize the wishfulfillment inherent in his absolute faith in science as the font of all human knowledge.

What he failed to realize is that the “scientific study” takes place within certain philosophical presuppositions, primarily that the scientific method is itself neutral toward its objects of study. But it has been suggested that at least in the realm of human sciences “this philosophical neutrality is a myth. Scientific conclusions about the object of investigation, and the method itself derives from a prescientific and implicitly

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philosophical view of the object which influences what observation will accept as fact and dictates how it will be interpreted” (Meissner, 1984, p.194).

If, according to Freud, all religion could be traced to the experience of helplessness in childhood, this dynamic remained especially valid for the formation of what would later be called “God-representations.” Freud did not use such terminology, but as Rizzuto (1979) has pointed out, such concepts were implicit in his understanding of the role of early objects in the life of an individual. For example, in his study of Leonardo DaVinci, Freud noted that, … the roots of the need for religion are in the parental complex; the almighty and just God, and kindly Nature, appear to us as grand sublimations of father and mother, or rather as revivals and restoration of the young child’s ideas of them (SE X1, p. 123).

These notions concerning the revival and restoration of the child’s ideas about father and mother as projected onto and experienced in other relationships throughout the life-cycle “is what psychoanalytic theory would later call object representations, an essential concept in the theory of object relations” (Rizzuto, 1979, p. 15).

Despite the fact that Freud acknowledged that both mother and father played a role in the child’s developing ideas about God, he clearly considered the paternal figure as the key to understanding the origins of God in the history of the human race as well as in the personal history of each individual. In this matter, as with so many others, the oedipal conflict is pivotal. In The future of an illusion (1961), he describes this transfer of longing from the mother as a natural evolution:

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…the mother, who satisfies the child’s hunger, becomes its first love-object and certainly also its first protection against all the undefined dangers which threaten it in the external world – its first protection against anxiety, we may say.

In this function (of protection) the mother is soon replaced by the stronger father, who retains that position for the rest of childhood. But the child’s attitude to its father is colored by a peculiar ambivalence. The father himself constitutes a danger for the child, perhaps because of its earlier relation to the mother. Thus it fears him no less than it longs for and admires him.… When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child forever, that he can never do without protection against strange superior powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father; he creates for himself the gods whom he dreads, whom he seeks to propitiate, and whom he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection. Thus his longing for a father is a motive identical with his need for protection against the consequences of his human weakness (p. 30).

It is quite clear: Freud equates the need for God with a denial of the human condition. And that is not all. The male child’s oedipal ambivalence toward the father as both protector and rival (for the affections of the mother) becomes the sole paradigm for understanding the human relationship with the divine. Thus a turning away from God, from religion, is interpreted as growth beyond the Oedipus complex (1961, p. 55).

There are several significant psychological ramifications of this approach to the idea of God that should be mentioned here. First, Freud’s analysis, based so thoroughly on the male experience, has nothing to offer us for developing an understanding of the variety of images which come into play in the human portrayal of divinity. “In placing

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the formation of the inner God image in the context of the father – son relationship alone, Freud excludes other possible early object relations: son – mother, daughter – father, daughter – mother,” etc. (Rizzuto 1979, p. 15). As a consequence of this, he offers no insight into the female experience of forming God-representations since “he never mentions the influence of the father representation, or any other, on the girl’s conception of her God. Freud does not concern himself with religion or God in women” (p. 15).

Secondly, and along similar lines, Freud completely rejects the value of preoedipal experiences in the formation of religious sentiment or in notions of divinity, deeming them to be immature residues of an early ego-state before the ego had learned to distinguish itself from the world surrounding it. It was through his correspondence with a close friend, Romain Rolland, that this became especially evident (Simmonds 2006, Jones 1996; Gay 1988; Meissner 1984). Rolland was interested in the maternal image of God known in goddess religions, particularly in Hinduism. In a letter he wrote to Freud as a response to the publication of The future of an illusion “he proposed a pre-oedipal origin to religion as a ‘feeling of something limitless, unbounded – as it were, oceanic . . . a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith’” (quoted in Jones, 1996, p.15). While Freud acknowledged the existence of “oceanic feeling” in others, he could find no trace of it in his own experience. Furthermore, “having firmly committed himself to the centrality of the father, the father God, the oedipal struggle, and the masculine gender,” he had to deny Rolland’s claim to the central significance of pre-oedipal, maternal dynamics (Jones, 1996, p. 15).

In this regard, Freud shared much in common with the religious conservatives of our own time, as well as his. He is antagonistic to the work of liberal theologians, angrily

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insisting upon a specific image of God, one which must be rejected and overcome. As Jones (1996) notes, “the patriarchal God of law and conscience is the only religion which Freud will consider, “for without this paternal representation of God as normative, there would be much lost from the force of his argument. “Freud must insist that religion is essentially patriarchal, for that is the only religion that fits within the frame of the oedipal drama and that can easily be derived from the instinct theory” (p. 17).

This helps to explain why Freud devoted so much attention to the process of superimposing the oedipal drama upon the whole of human history. In Totem and taboo (1950), he traces the anthropological origins of the Oedipus complex. Drawing upon Darwin’s notion of the “primal horde,” Freud proposed that the origins of culture and religion were to be traced to the experience of human beings living in these patriarchal, tribal groups. He believed that the horde was ruled by a single, powerful male figure – the tribal “father” who kept all the females to himself and drove away all the “sons” of the tribes as they grew up. In turn, these “brothers” bonded together to murder the primal father they had formerly loved and admired in order to gain access to both power and sex for themselves. However, they were left with feelings of guilt and remorse for having killed the one person on whom they had previously depended for so much, and for whom they still had much affection. It was in this experience of oedipal guilt that Freud “discovered” the source for all religious sentiment, and for the evaluation of God. Tribal members had to find a substitute for the father in order to assuage their feelings of guilt.

In choosing a totem animal as a surrogate “father” of the tribe, they were able to displace all their feelings of love and admiration for the father onto this surrogate figure. Killing the animal thus became a taboo, and expression of their devotion which helped to

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dissipate guilt. Over time, the totem animal was replaced by the deified hero, gods, and ultimately, the “One God.” Freud continued to insist on the paternal image of the divine as the only appropriate and adequate model, even though he continued to assert that one must reject this model in order to achieve maturity. “Freud cast the relation of the believer to his or her God in the regressive model of the child-parent relationship, with all its resonances of helplessness, passivity, dependence, impotence, and immaturity on the side of the believer and all the resources of power, infinity, majesty, and transcendence on the side of the God-image” (Meissner, 2009, p.213). Among the many who have attempted to trace the origins and reasons for Freud’s absolute rejection of God and religious sentiment, LaMothe (2003) has come to the following conclusion regarding this matter.

In his old age Freud split off the bad part objects associated with mother and father and projected them onto internalized religious representations. This dynamic allowed him to control the bad objects and preserve his attachments to the good, though fragile, mother and father and at the same time maintain a cohesive, idealized self. By attacking the foundations of religious experience, Freud evacuated dangerous aspects of himself, which in turn evoked a great deal of anger, rage, and hostility among many believers. This allowed him to acknowledge and disclaim his own rage and hate in relation to religious believers, and more importantly, in relation to his mother and father.

In attacking religious experience he placed pressure on his opponents to enact a familiar pattern, which was linked to early unconscious losses and disappointments (p. 300).

But whether or not the consequence of projective identification, his inability to take seriously “ways of knowing” other than strict empiricism, or a combination of

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temperament, education and personal experience—Freud’s equation of faith in God with illusion, and even delusion, has had a lasting effect on psychoanalytic theory to this day.

In the last analysis, what can be said about Freud’s contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of religious experience and of God? Certainly he revealed that the psychic origins of God and of many religious conflicts were to be found within one’s earliest experiences of the family, and that so much of religion was derived from re-enactment rather than revelation. As Küng (1979) notes, there is little that can be disputed in Freud’s specific critique of religion: “What Feuerbach wanted from the philosophical standpoint and Marx from the political-social, Freud sought from the standpoint of depth psychology, emancipation, comprehensive liberation, more humanity on the part of man” (p. 96). Within this framework, Küng asserts, Freud rightly criticizes the following: 1.

Defective forms of religion in which God becomes a displacement-substitute for a tyrannical superego, which promotes a regression to magical thinking, or which is manifested through obsessive adherence to law and ritual.

2.

The church’s misuse of power by promoting intolerance and often persecution of those whose opinions deviate from the norm, whether within or without their ecclesiastical boundaries, and which can be recognized in clerical domination, contempt for women, and hostility toward progress.

3. The traditional image of God by which “early childhood experiences with adults who appear as ‘gods’ are transferred both positively and negatively to God … with the frequent result that a vindictive father – God is misused as the means of education and discipline (pp. 96-98).

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One might also suggest here that an overly loving, forgiving and undemanding God-representation may just as easily be misused to rationalize or excuse oneself from taking responsibility for negative behavior. In either case, Freud’s point is well taken – too often, God is utilized as a means to deify human frailty. In this regard, however, believers are not the only ones subject to idolatry. As Fromm (1978) suggests: It is not only pictures in stone and wood that are idols. Words can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many (p. 118).

As mentioned earlier, the difficulty with Freud is his reductionist perspective: God can only be rightly understood as a projected fantasy, a purely “endopsychic product” (Spero, 1992) and belief in God must be equated with immaturity. But as Rizzuto (1979) points out, to deprive the world of such “endopsychic products” would indeed create a barren place, one hardly conducive to human development or maturity: Without unseen atoms, imaginary chemical formulas, or even such fictive entities as id, ego, and superego, the entire domain of culture becomes a flat, irrelevant world of sensory experience … In this context the non-believer is a person who has decided consciously or unconsciously for reasons based on his own historical evaluation not to believe in a God whose representation he has … This is not a matter of maturity. Some people cannot believe because they are terrified of their God. Some do not dare to believe because they are afraid of their own regressive wishes. Others do not need to believe because they have created other types of gods that sustain them equally well. Maturity and belief are not related issues.

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Only a detailed study of each individual can reveal the reason for that person’s belief in his God (p. 47).

Because Freud flatly dismissed the existence of God, he neglected to study in detail the fascinating question of how some people come to believe that gods and devils do in fact exist (Rizzuto, 1979, p. 15). Freud utilized his analytical skills to account for the psychological differences between believers and nonbelievers, not to develop a therapeutic orientation that would respect and shed light upon the intrapsychic dynamics of the believing individual.

As a consequence, the legacy left by Freud, not only for the psychoanalytic community but throughout much of the broad range of the psychological theory, has been one of neglect as well. Until recently, there had been few exceptions where “God-talk” and religion was not considered something taboo for discussion within the therapy session. This must certainly alienate or at least confuse the client for whom this is an important dimension of their life. This is why Küng (1979) makes a strong plea to therapists to reconsider such an approach: Not for God’s sake, who truly doesn’t need it, but for people’s sake do I plead against the repression of religiousness … I plead not for a religious psychotherapy or a psychotherapy only for the religious, but rather for a therapy that does not merely take note of the patient’s confessions of faith or denomination or inquire perfunctorily into his or her orthodox beliefs. Rather, therapy should try to explore in detail and individual’s very personal, often very unorthodox religion which usually undergoes great changes in the course of a lifetime: the patient’s “heart religion” (emphasis mine, pp. 155-156).

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For this reason, God’s reality must be taken seriously within the therapeutic frame (Spero, 1992, p. 58), and not be reduced to a mere projection. As Küng (1979) notes, belief in God always exhibits the structure and content of a projection, but this can also be said of the lover…”every lover necessarily projects his own image of her onto the beloved. But does this mean that his beloved does not exist or at any rate does not exist substantially as he sees her and thinks of her?” (p. 77).

It is clear that Freud’s “heart religion” reflected a deeply personal conviction that what is salvific, healing for the human soul must preclude belief in God. One might even say that he became a great “evangelist” for what at the time was an unorthodox faith. But this unique experience cannot and should not be misused to interpret the experience of those with contrary convictions. It will be necessary now to look at the work of other theorists in order to shed some light on those experiences. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that in his courage to reveal and understand the “darkest” and deepest dimensions of the human psyche, including his own, Freud shared something in common with the goals of religion. Perhaps Oskar Pfister, a Lutheran minister and close friend of Freud’s for nearly thirty years, expressed this most clearly in the following message he wrote to him: Anyone who has struggled so powerfully for the truth and fought so courageously for the redemption of love as you have is, whether he admits it or not, a true servant of God according to scripture; one who through the creation of psychoanalysis has fashioned an instrument through which suffering souls find their shackles broken and the gates of their prison open, so that they can rush into

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the sunshine of life-giving faith, is not far from the kingdom of God…(as cited in Meissner, 1984, p. 75).

D.W. Winnicott – Transitional space and the role of illusion.

It was Guntrip who argued the following in a lecture given in 1968: “If…we dismiss all religion because there is such a thing as neurotic religion, we are on dangerous ground, for there are also neurotic forms of politics, of art, of marriage… We cannot dismiss everything because it can be neurotic” and “If religion can express neurotic dependence, atheism can express equally neurotic independence” (as quoted in Simmonds, 2006, pp. 134-5).

This insight, so clearly in contrast with Freud’s perspective, represents an evolution in psychoanalytic theory to which Donald Woods Winnicott (1896-1971) made a significant contribution. No less committed to the process of objective inquiry concerning human nature than was his predecessor, Winnicott valued the critical thinking and creativity found in a scientific approach to this endeavor. He commented that, “For the scientist the formulation of questions is almost the whole thing. The answers, when found, only lead to other questions” (1986, p. 14).

It was this ability to question, to doubt, to be open to new phenomena – in short, to have what he considered to be capacity for faith that Winnicott valued in both science and religion. And when he was critical of religion, it was generally of that type of conventional religion which holds too tightly to dogmas which preclude the ability to question and doubt, and therefore negates this capacity for faith. In marked contrast to Freud, however, Winnicott is essentially positive in his views on human nature and

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culture, including religion, and in the essential “goodness” of each individual. In addition, his “concept of transitional phenomena allowing a potential space to religion has been of great importance in rethinking the nature of religion and spirituality” (Simmonds, p.135). It is this critical concept of transitional phenomena as described by Winnicott, that I would like to discuss in some depth.

The origins of transitional phenomena are to be found in the earliest relational experiences of the infant. It was Winnicott who coined the well-known axiom, “there is no such thing as an infant” (1965, p. 39), for it was almost impossible for him to consider an infant as a separate being apart from the caretaking relationship. “Wherever one finds an infant one finds maternal care, and without maternal care there would be no infant” (p.

39). He considered the mother’s capacity to provide an environment adequate to meet the infant’s needs to be of primary importance. In the earliest phase of the child’s development, the “good-enough mother” (Winnicott, 1965, 1971, 1986, 1988) or the “good-enough” caregiver adapts almost completely to the emotional and physical needs of the child. This allows the child to have the illusion of omnipotence, as for example “creating” the mother’s breast out of need: “If the mother adapts well enough, the baby assumes that the nipple and milk are the results of a gesture that arose out of need …”

This experience is what Winnicott refers to as “primary creativity.” In this sense, “the world is created anew by each human being … We know that the world was there before the infant, but the infant does not know this, and first the infant has the illusion that what was found is created” (Winnicott, 1988, pp. 110-111).

Between the early illusion of omnipotent control over the environment experienced in being fed according to need and the recognition that there exists an

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external reality which is not subject to one’s control, there exists a range of experiences and objects that represent the boundary between “me” and “not me.” At first, the object may be a substitute for the mother’s breast – a part of a sheet or blanket that is put into the mouth and sucked along with the fingers. The object is used for self-soothing, as a defense against anxiety in the absence of the mother. Eventually, the child settles upon a particular blanket, teddy bear, or soft doll that is used for comforting on a regular basis.

This “first possession,” Winnicott reflects, “…is never under magical control like the internal object nor is it outside control as the real mother is” (1971, p. 10). However, this transitional object serves its intended purpose by assisting the child to adapt to external reality and to tolerate the frustration of unrealized omnipotent expectations.

In this way, Winnicott reformulates an understanding of illusion which is now understood as absolutely essential to healthy development, rather than as an obstacle to it.

The illusion of omnipotence is a necessary stage of development. There can be no disillusionment without the prior experience of illusion, no true acceptance of external reality beyond one’s control without the earlier experience of omnipotence (1988, pp.101-102). Elsewhere, Winnicott has concluded that “if one has been happy, one can bear distress. It is the same” he asserts, in recognizing “that a baby cannot be weaned unless he or she has had the breast, or breast equivalent. There is no disillusionment (acceptance of the Reality Principle) except on the basis of illusion” (1986, p. 47). In serving to establish a relationship between inner and outer reality, it is not really the object that is transitional. Rather, the object represents the child’s experience of “transition from a state of being merged with the mother to a state of being in relating to the mother as something outside and separate” (197, pp. 14-15). As Winnicott sees it,

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this initial experience of the infant continues to reverberate throughout the course of human development becoming the source for all creative activity rather than a mere compliance with external expectations.

This intermediate area of experience, unchallenged in respect of its belonging to inner or external (shared) reality, constitutes the greater part of the infant’s experience, and throughout life is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts, to religion and to imaginative living… (1971, p. 14).

For Winnicott, health is to be found in the balance between the extremes of absolute subjectivity and absolute objectivity, both of which represent a type of ill health.

There are those individuals who are ill because of a weak sense of reality, while “there are others who are so firmly anchored in objectively perceived reality that they are ill in the opposite direction of being out of touch with the subjective world and with the creative approach to fact.” Often these people come into psychotherapy for different reasons; “in the one case they do not want to spend their lives irrevocably out of touch with the facts of life, and in the other case because they feel estranged from dream” (1971, pp. 66-67). Both forms of illness represent the individual’s incapacity to experience the transitional space between inner and outer reality. That failure, Winnicott would propose, was first experienced as a failure of the environment to allow for necessary illusion, a failure to provide an adequate response to the child’s spontaneous gestures. In short, environmental impingements occurred too early in the child’s development, thus blocking the capacity for interpersonal relatedness, and for adequate experience of transitional phenomena.

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On the other hand, if the individual has experienced a “good enough” environment during the initial years of development, during the years of transition between the primacy of the teddy bear to the primacy of the symphony, academic research, or prayer, there exists a continuum of playful interchange between the world and the self. For “the task of reality – acceptance is never completed,” Winnicott writes.

“No human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality and… relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate of experience which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play area of the small child who is ‘lost’ in play” (1971, p. 13).

In just this manner, religious faith, when free from compulsion or compliance, requires a quality of imaginative living which allows for a playful interaction with the real world. If Freud conceptualized mental health as the ability “to love and work,” it might be said that Winnicott conceived it as the ability “to love and play.” For Winnicott, religious imagination or “illusion” if you will, fulfills this need for creativity no less than poetry, music or art. It is a way of knowing that is of a different but equally valid quality with that which can be ascertained from the empirical realm. As Jones (2002) has commented: …religious experience is valued not simply as a supplement for rational living or as momentary aesthetic release from the world of objectivity… In religious experience what is transformed is both our way of knowing and what it is we know… For Winnicott it is a way of knowing that gets beyond the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity in which he seems to feel we are trapped much of the

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time and enables us to enter that state of consciousness from which creative insights and intuitions arise (p.102).

The capacity for this kind of creativity is necessary to an understanding of God because such inner space predates the appearance of specific beliefs, and is a necessary prerequisite for their development. In a presentation given at a 1968 conference on Family Evangelism (cited in Home is where we start from, 1986, pp. 142-149), Winnicott highlighted the importance of understanding this process for those engaged in the religious and moral education of children. He elucidated the reasons why the capacity to believe in anything at all, let alone God, is not merely a matter of education. It is first a matter of the pre-verbal experience in being cared for by mother, father, and others in the environment. When all goes well in the facilitating environment, children do not remember it. The sum of these preverbal experiences produce a confidence in the environment, and this allows for the possibility of belief. To his audience, Winnicott explained this phenomena in terms of their own concrete experience: We are a believing people. Here we are in this large hall and no one has been worried about the ceiling falling down. We have a belief in the architect. We are a believing people because we are started off well by somebody. We received a silent communication over a period of time that we were loved in the sense that we could rely on the environmental provision and so get on with our own growth and development (p. 147).

Therefore, if early in life an individual has known the experience of being held in the loving arms of human others then, according to Winnicott, “we may teach the concept of, say, everlasting arms. We may use that word ‘God’ … but it is a series of steps.

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Teaching comes into place there on the basis of what the individual child has the capacity to believe in” (p. 149).

Elsewhere, Winnicott (1965/94) has explained how important it is to be sensitive to the ways that trust, belief, and ideas of right and wrong are likely to develop from the working of the child’s own inner processes. He cautions against the “implantation of parental or social values apart from the child’s inner growth or maturation,” noting, in particular, the negative consequences of imposing the concept of God too early in the child’s development: In regard to religion, and the ideal of a god, there are clearly the extremes of those who do not know that the child has the capacity to create a god so they implant the idea as soon as possible, and there are those who wait and see the results of their developing infant. These latter, as I have already said, will introduce the family gods to the child when the child has reached the stage in their acceptance.

In the latter case, there is a minimum of set pattern; in the first case, the set pattern is what is wanted, and the child can only accept or reject this essentially foreign thing, the implanted god concept (p. 101).

Again, Winnicott is pointing to the failure of the environment, speaking here not only of parents but of the entire social milieu, to wait upon the child’s “spontaneous gesture” in reaching for what is there to be received from the culture when he/she is ready for it. If religious belief is imposed too early or too rigidly, however, the only response open to the child is either compliance or defiance, thus depriving the individual of the potential for creative living within this human domain.

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Ultimately, Winnicott believes that “religion could learn something from psychoanalysis, something that would save religious practice from losing its place in the civilization process…” (p. 95). For religious dogmas concerning God can deprive the individual of “an important aspect of creativeness” (p. 95) or of the experience of “original goodness” (p. 94) by which individuals collectively create God: The saying that man made God in his own image is usually treated as an amusing example of the perverse, but the truth in this saying could be made more evident by a restatement, such as: man continues to create and re-create God as a place to put that which is good in himself, and which he might spoil if he kept it in himself along with all the hate and destructiveness which is also to be found there (p. 94).

Strongly related to the role of illusion in human development is Winnicott’s reflection on the capacity to believe. As Hopkins (1997) has been careful to delineate, one of Winnicott’s most characteristic formulations is “the development of a capacity for,” a capacity for concern, a capacity to be alone, a capacity for a sense of guilt, etc.

The world “suggests that there is a relationship between the ability (the capacity) to hold or to hold in and the ability to do something,” implying the need of an inner space, a ‘capaciousness” that is essential for such exploration. “According to Winnicott,” Hopkins writes, “such capaciousness is not something human beings are born with, except potentially. It is something that has to be nurtured over time within a facilitating environment that trusts itself enough to allow the maturational processes to follow their course. This notion of capacity is a developmental one. It takes time” (p. 488).

It is here that the concept of “play” becomes especially significant. Winnicott (1971) describes how the capacity for play begins in the potential space between “the

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subjective object and the object objectively perceived,” between me-extensions and the not-me” experienced by each human infant in relationship to the primary caretaker. The transitional object, as discussed earlier, originates as a symbol of union with the mother at the very time the child is intensely experiencing his/her separateness. Play is likewise a transitional phenomena located in the “potential space between the individual and the environment …” In fact, all “cultural experience begins with creative living first manifested in play” (p. 100). For Winnicott, what matters here is the interplay between the individual and the tradition he/she has inherited, the capacity to develop a true selfidentity while at the same time becoming part of a larger community. “The interplay between originality and the acceptance of tradition as the basis for inventiveness seems to me,” (p. 99) Winnicott says, “to be just one more example, and a very exciting one, of the interplay between separateness and union.” Furthermore, he asserts that “it is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition,” and that conversely, “no one in the line of cultural contributors repeats except as a deliberate quotation, and the unforgivable sin in the cultural field is plagiarism” (p. 99).

Perhaps in the realm of religious culture, one could consider the unforgivable sin of plagiarism to be a compliance or a strict adherence to the tradition with minimal investment of the self. Such a stultifying lack of play can create an experience of emptiness and a hunger for meaning that may lead many to abandon their tradition entirely and to seek new, more fulfilling substitutes. This holds true as well for belief in God. A community, as well as the wider culture from which it springs contributes ideas of God which either enriches the individual’s capacity for faith or detracts from it. “The important thing for me must be’,” Winnicott insists, “‘have I got it in me to have the idea

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of God?—if not, then the idea of God is of no value to me… ’” (as cited in Hopkins, 1997, p. 492). If the idea of God is within me, we might say, then it is possible for me to play with that idea, to allow God that “potential space between me-extensions and the not-me” that may allow for true creativity in the interchange between myself and the world. If that idea is not within me, I may have to find other “gods” to serve this function.

As Hopkins (1997) notes, Winnicott’s life became the embodiment of his belief that one can only be original on the basis of tradition. He creatively drew upon the two traditions that shaped his life – the Methodist faith and psychoanalysis – from which he developed his own ideas about human nature and faith. And despite his self-definition as a “believing skeptic,” Winnicott continued to “play” with his own understandings of God. When giving a talk in 1968 on the topic of “Playing and Culture,” he raised this rhetorical question: If God is a projection even so (is there) a God who created me in such a way that I have the material in me for such a projection? A paraphrase might go: granted that according to psychoanalysis, God is only a projection, even so doesn’t this imply the existence of a God who created me with the capacity for having such a projection? (Winnicott, 19 p. 491).

Of course, one might object that such a question is beyond the scope of psychoanalysis or any psychological theory to answer, and that therefore, it represents a syncretistic blending of two opposing traditions, blurring the boundaries between them.

This may be true. On the other hand, it may also highlight the potential space between these traditions “where whatever happens is symbolic of the union or non-separation of

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these two separate things” (Winnicott’s reference to the space between mother or father and their child). In other words, the possibility exists of creating a non-dualistic approach to human experience. …whatever happens is symbolic of the union or the non-separation of these two separate things. The concept is really quite a difficult one and I think it would make a difference to philosophy if this could be grasped. It would also put religion once more into the experience of those who in fact have grown up out of the concept of miracles (Winnicott, 1986, p. 134).

It has been pointed out that there are some very real difficulties with Winnicott’s reinterpretation of illusion as potential space for creativity and religious experience. As LaMothe has suggested, …the focus on illusion and reality vis-à-vis potential space can raise thorny questions. Illusions, by definition, are mistaken beliefs. Who decides what is mistaken and what is real? How does the analyst know which of the beliefs he or she (or the patient) holds are false? What illusions are beneficial and what ones harmful? (2005, p.210).

However, while it is true that there may be difficulties with the use of the word “illusion” to describe transitional phenomena, this dimension of human life is experienced by individuals as no less real than their rational thought processes. In fact, because transitional experiences which are religious or spiritual in nature occur “inside, outside, and at the border” between human beings, they are often experienced as more real than mere fact, and therefore can only be described through the use of metaphor and symbol.

This is why Jones (2002) has commented that “…as with religion, the very experiences

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Freud called on his patients to renounce, contemporary analysts seek to restore” (p. 104).

Why is this so? Because as Jones suggests, the focus of treatment has shifted “from instinctual control to the quality of experience,” and in this regard “religion has a potentially more positive contribution to make to mental health” (p.105).

Meissner (2009) has found Winnicott’s analysis of transitional phenomena to be “an important watershed in the analytic conceptualization of religion… opening the way to encompassing realms of human experience beyond material reality” (p.220). He has explained that to those who believe, faith reveals the nature of the world and provides a sense of meaning and purpose in their existence, as well as a sense of destiny for self and the world. They do not regard their faith as a matter of merely “wishful hallucination,” but at the same time they recognize that they cannot demonstrate the independent reality of the spiritual world to which their faith lays claim. “Consequently, the experience of faith is not totally subjective, nor is it totally objective. Rather, it represents a realm in which the subjective and objective interpenetrate” (1984, p. 178). For individuals within a particular faith tradition, the need and capacity to integrate oneself within that community “must be balanced against the need to rebel and to find and express one’s individuality… The faith of any human being, then, is both received from the religious community… and created as a matter of internal and subjective expression” (p. 179).

What is essential to understand about Winnicott’s contribution, Meissner suggests, is that “illusion in this view is not an obstruction to experiencing reality but a vehicle for gaining access to it.”

If Freud wished to rule out illusion and to destroy it, Winnicott wishes to foster it and to increase man’s capacity for creatively experiencing it. Winnicott sees that

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illusion is an important part of human experience precisely because it is not by bread alone that man lives... Winnicott’s standard of psychic health is not the separation of the real from the wishful, as Freud would have had it, but rather their constant intermingling and exchange. It is through illusion, then, that the human spirit is nourished (p. 177).

What Winnicott proposes is that religion has much to gain from a psychoanalytic understanding of human nature and the way in which religious ideas may correspond with developmental memory traces and unconscious experiences. But likewise, he implies that the religious valuing of illusion has something to offer psychoanalysis as well. Standing “inside, outside, and at the border” between these two worlds, Winnicott has left an inheritance for both.

Ana-Maria Rizzuto—transitional objects, “God,” and human development.

With her landmark study of God-representations, The birth of the living God (1979), Ana-Maria Rizzuto contributed further to a major shift in psychoanalytic thought concerning religious experience. In doing so, she was strongly influenced by both Freud’s insights on the role of the father in the formation of God-representations as well as by Winnicott’s reinterpretation of “illusion,” and the significance of transitional objects and transitional phenomena in human development. Sorenson (2004) has compared Rizzuto’s contributions to the psychoanalytic understanding of religious experience with that of Margaret Mahler’s research on infant development: Just as Mahler had shown that psychological birth is a complex process that is crucially mediated by intersubjective involvement with others extending over a

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period of years, Rizzuto argued that our construction of any God in which we believe (or, for that matter, any God in which we disbelieve) comes into being through similarly mediated relational experience (p.107).

Yet despite this, her contribution remained largely unrecognized within the psychoanalytic community for some time. Rizzuto herself has commented (2007) on the reaction she received following the publication of her first book. She recalls that “correcting Freud’s stance on religion was a clear indication of my unanalyzed pathology” and comments on being criticized for “daring to challenge the obligatory Freudian conviction about the ‘maturity’ of unbelief, a conviction that became obligatory for true followers of Freud” (p. 4). Elsewhere Rizzuto has acknowledged that religious ideas, as well as God, may be used either as a defense from pain or as an integration of psychic changes (1993, pp. 26-27).

In the preface to her book, The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytic study (1979), Rizzuto describes the impetus for the research she presents there concerning the genesis of a person’s God-representation in the course of development, as well as the way that the individual continues to use this representation throughout life. She had been asked to teach a course on “the psychological foundations of belief and pastoral care.”

Though initially enthusiastic about the project, she soon began to realize how daunting it was. Despite the fact that she found Freud’s insights on the role of parents in the formation of God-representations to be especially useful, as well as those of other theorists who contributed valuable material for her exploration of the topic, there were no clinical studies on which she could base her concepts for this course.

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So it was that she developed her own hypothesis, and later undertook a pilot study of this within a clinical setting where she began her training in psychoanalysis. The accumulating data from her study convinced Rizzuto that there was much insight to be gained in understanding the struggle for psychic equilibrium by studying individuals’ hopes, fears, and fantasies concerning God. It dawned on me that we had been treating patients for years without listening systematically to their expressed desires for closeness to God or avoidance of him. I reasoned that if Freud was correct, if God is, in fact, an “exaltation” of parental imagos, our ignorance of God’s psychic role in an individual’s life meant missing an important piece of information about the patient’s developmental history and his private elaborations (conscious and unconscious) of parental imagos (1979, p. x).

Rizzuto recounted that throughout life, “Freud was preoccupied with the questions of religion and most specifically with the psychological origins of God.” Nevertheless, she noted that following him, nobody undertook a study of the implications of the correlation he had made between the individual’s relationship to the father and the elaboration of the idea of God. In her attempt to fill this gap in psychoanalytic research, Rizzuto explained the advantages she saw in utilizing a clinical method for doing so because “it deals with the patient as a concrete historical being in the here and now,” and for the analyst, “the facts about a person’s God need to be personalized and specific to be understood at all” (p. 5).

Rizzuto developed a projective technique for assessing an individual’s internalized object relations as well as his or her relationship with God. It consisted of a

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simple, concrete approach with parallel questionnaires, one which focused on questions concerning parents and the others on complimentary questions about God. She studied twenty patients – ten men and ten women, chosen from the larger population of all patients admitted to the hospital. At the time of admission, each patient was asked to fill out the questionnaires, as well as to draw a picture of their family including themselves.

On the last day of hospitalization, they were asked to draw a picture of God. In order to interpret the data provided by the questionnaires and drawings, Rizzuto also took a comprehensive life history from each of the twenty patients in the study. Using this information, she then wrote a life history for each patient, including the changes which took place over time in the patient’s relations with God and in his/her representation of God. This material became the basis for her to interpret the object sources the patient had used to form his image of God, and to draw conclusions about this had been utilized to maintain psychic equilibrium.

What Rizzuto discovered through this study is that the components of one’s Godrepresentation come from varied sources including, but not limited to, parental imagos: Not only the parent of real life but the wished-for parent and the feared parent of the imagination appear on equal footing as contributors to the image of God. This is because the object representations are not entities in the mind; they originate in creative processes involving memory, and the entirety of psychic life. . . .

(Rizzuto, 1979, p. 44).

It is important here to make a distinction between the God-concept and the Godrepresentation as utilized by Rizzuto. While the former is based upon rational and conscious secondary process thinking, the latter is rooted in the unconscious, in symbolic

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and emotional primary processes. What she is concerned with is the latter, and her thesis is that once formed, the God-representation is given all the “psychic potentials of a living person who is nonetheless experienced only in the privacy of conscious and unconscious processes,” and that other “actions of God” are based upon “our interpretations of events and realities to accord with our state of harmony, conflict, or ambivalence with the God we have” (p. 87). Furthermore, this representation cannot be made to disappear but rather can “only be repressed, transformed, or used” in a way that enables “the individual to master his private reality his past and his contemporary context, as well as of his need for transcendence and meaning in the context of the universe at large” (p. 90).

Rizzuto’s analysis of each person in her study is based on the classic Freudian model of psychosexual development, although her conclusions about the formation of God-representations differs from his. She spoke of this again in a later journal article (2007) in which she revisited her initial research: The resolution of the oedipal conflict, as Freud described so well, brings about the child’s renunciation of wanting a parent for himself or herself and leads the youngster to the exaltation of the parents into a divine being. The child acknowledges that he or she is the parental couple’s child, that they have brought him or her into the world. Here, my empirical findings did not confirm Freud’s conviction that it is the father’s representation that is exalted into a God. Instead, the resolution of the oedipal dilemma uses the parents as an integrated couple to form a God representation. If the oedipal situation remains conflictual, the parents cannot be integrated as a couple, and that aspect of it cannot be used for the God representation (p.5).

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However, she notes that the story does not end there. Adolescence provides an opportunity to revisit, review and disengage from both parental representations and “the divine representations linked with them” and “from that moment on, even until death, each new major emotional encounter with people contributes to modification of the God representation” (p. 5). This should be kept in mind when considering the case summaries which Rizzuto provides as exemplars of the four categories of God-representations she encountered in her research, since none of these individuals were able negotiate this adolescent phase of disengagement from either their parental or God-representations.

Category 1: Those who have a God whose existence they do not doubt.

This God belongs to the latency period with its idealizing love for a safe and protective Oedipal object. The representation is primarily paternal but there may be maternal components as well. God is free of contradictions or intellectual questioning.

Individuals in this category are unable to deal with any negative feelings or thoughts, or any expression of anger towards those they love. Their representations of God are drawn primarily from interactions with their fathers. This reflects a situation in which the child identifies with the parents and obeys their demands, proving themselves to be deserving of their affection and protection. These people “have not had enough frustration in their relations with their parents to move on to other objects and the world at large” (p. 107).

This type of God-representation, Rizzuto asserts, was the only one Freud described; one which he connected with the fear of an unpredictable universe in adult life (p. 105).

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Category 2: Those wondering whether or not to believe in a God they are not sure exists.

This God belongs to the last stages of separation-individuation. The representation is derived mainly from the mother of the “mirroring phase” of development and experienced as kind and appealing, but also as ignoring the individual’s need for recognition and admiration. The representation of God is symbolic and preconceptual. As an example of this type, Rizzuto described a 39 year-old-man who became bitter and depressed following a car accident. He was the youngest child in a family with ten children, who had been sickly and lonely as a child. He believed that his mother had hated him throughout his childhood, and he held resentment toward her for giving him the painful shots that were required to treat his illness. Rizzuto interpreted his need to be independent of God despite his expressed wish for this relationship as expressive of a reaction formation that was rooted in his attempt to be independent of his mother, despite his wishes for her attention and recognition. His ambivalence toward God’s existence reflected a simultaneous loving yet disappointing relationship he had as a child with his mother.

Category 3: Those amazed, angered or quietly surprised to see others deeply invested in a God that doesn’t interest them.

The developmental level of this representation belongs to the late latency period when full object representation is possible. God is attractive only as a concept. A wish for closeness coexists with a fear of the object whose representation is based on the father figure. The only choice is to avoid the task of dealing with the question of God’s

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existence. Typical of this category was a young man who grew up as a disappointment to his parents. His mother surrendered all responsibility for family life to the father, except for basic household duties and basic caregiving. His father had been the disciplinarian, decision-maker, and breadwinner of the family. During attacks of rage, he would shout and throw objects about the house. He hated his father for his abusive behavior, but also admired him for his successful career. Though he was not drawn to the medical profession, he pursued a career in this field at his father’s insistence. This man’s God image remained dependent upon the image of his father who could harm, punish, reject, or ignore him. Hungering for a compassionate, loving God in much the same way that he yearned for a compassionate, loving father, he remains caught between his fear of a vengeful God and wish for a loving God, and therefore must deny God. For now, God must be kept at a distance, solely a subject for conjecture (p.148).

Category 4: Those who struggle with a demanding, harsh God they would like to get rid of, or they were not convinced of his existence and power.

An abnormal relation with the maternal object has contributed to this type of Godrepresentation, whose characteristics are drawn from maternal representations from early to later stages of development. Since none of these belongs to the oedipal mother, the God-representation remains at the service of a dyadic relationship. There is a struggle to get rid of their God-representation. An exemplar of this type was a young married woman with three children who had experienced multiple traumas as a child, including emergency surgery at age five, frequent beatings by her father, and the loss of a loving grandmother. She also recalled that, “I never felt I deserve God to love me… I used to

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pray for him to make me good… if anybody could, he could.” Primarily, God was made in the image of the idealized, good mother who is capable of giving love to her, but also includes a devalued self-image “based on her failure to fulfill the demands of the ideal self to be the perfect daughter” (p.163). On the other hand, the positive experience she had of a loving grandmother enabled her to believe in a personal God. The crux of the problem is that she believed that her parents could listen to her, be available to her, to love her, if she deserved these things. “Similarly, God seemed capable of listening, loving, being close and giving strength and happiness—but not to” her (p. 164). As Rizzuto explains: …the total acceptance of her badness is a defensive maneuver to keep the hope that there is love available in the universe, in her mother and God. She is not getting it because she is bad… Her defense denies that her parents’ home was empty, indifferent to cries of emotional hunger (p. 173).

Though this Rizzuto’s study focused on the experiences of patients whose normal functioning was severely compromised, she believes that they have provided useful insights concerning the normal development of the God-representation. In fact, she did a pilot study that included staff members of the hospital and found “no differences of any significance between the members of the staff and the patients in their way of relating to God” (p. 181). It is a central premise of her work that “no child in the Western world brought up in ordinary circumstances completes the oedipal cycle without forming at least a rudimentary God-representation, which he may use for belief or not” (p. 200).

And that choice, in her view, cannot be considered a matter of maturity:

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Some people cannot believe because they are terrified of their God. Some do not dare to believe because they are afraid of their own regressive wishes. Others do not need to believe because they have created other types of gods that sustain them equally well. Maturity and belief are not related issues. Only a detailed study of each individual can reveal the reason for that person’s belief in God (p.47).

Nor does Rizzuto accept the notion that belief in God, or its absence, can serve as an indicator of any type of psychopathology since “they are indicators only of the particular private balance each individual had achieved at any moment in his relations with primary objects and all other relevant people….” (p. 202) The results of her research led Rizzuto to draw the following conclusions: 1. God is a special type of object representation created by the child which like all transitional object is located simultaneously “outside, inside, and at the border.”

2. God “is not a hallucination” and “in health… does not ‘go inside’ nor does the feeling about it undergo repression. It’s not forgotten and it is not mourned.”

3. God is a special transitional object because God is created from representational materials whose sources are the representations of primary objects, and because God does not follow the usual course of other transitional objects—instead of losing meaning, God’s meaning becomes heightened by the oedipal pre-oedipal experiences.

4. The psychic process of creating and finding God never ceases in the course of human life. The God representation is re-elaborated through defense, adaptation, and synthesis, as well as through relations with oneself, others and the world at large.

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5. Though God is not the only mental representation used by children and adults alike as a transitional object, in our culture God has a special place. God is the cultural creation offered to people for their private and public re-elaboration of primary ties.

6. The child’s and the adult’s sense of self is affected by the representational traits of their private God. “God, our own creation, like a piece of art, a painting, a melody… will in reflecting of what we have done, affect our sense of ourselves” (pp. 177-180).

There is no doubt that Rizzuto’s thoughtful analysis of God-representations has become a focus for the development of a new approach to religious thinking within psychoanalytic theory. Utilizing clinical material, she has demonstrated the lasting impact that early childhood experiences with significant others has upon the development of the God-image, and how this is used to maintain psychic equilibrium. However, what I find missing is an understanding of how these representations are re-elaborated “in health.” It is left unexplained as to why there are just four categories of Godrepresentations; what is inherent in development that would limit the possibilities to just these four? And if there are just these four, what are the ways in which they may evolve to keep in pace with the individual’s developmental level and life experience. Rizzuto does allude to the fact that the mystics, for example, “do not seem to be longing for parental love but for a mature, object-related love” (p. 47), indicating this as a potential end-point for a line of healthy development. However, the insights of her research call for further study as to how adolescent and adult relationships, not to mention the treatment relationship, may influence the evolution of an individual’s Godrepresentations toward greater maturity.

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There is something else that may be missing from Rizzuto’s research. She explores how the God-representation is necessary to a sense of self, but not how an experience of one’s relationship with God may contribute to psychic development. What Jones (1991) suggests is that Rizzuto “focuses too much on the transitional object and not enough on the transitional experience (pp.45-46). What he proposes is to shift the focus of study from the God-representation to the God-relationship as an expression of one’s relationship with the sacred. And he suggests further that any study of the origin of the God representation should also consider the origin of the God-relationship, and “how a relationship to the sacred enacts and re-enacts transferential patterns throughout a person’s life (p. 65). One question that he considers important to pursue would be “the connection between the coming of a new sense of self and the development of a new image of God” (p. 66). This last question is one that I may be able to address in the process of my research. In any case, a focus on how the God-relationship may provide a grounding for the core sense of one’s self and one’s relationship to others will be addressed by this study.

Christopher Bollas – The transformational object.

Christopher Bollas is a well-known author in object relations theory. His more recent works include The Infinite Question (2009) on how clinical practice illuminates psychoanalytic theory concerning the human impulse to question, and The Evocative Object World (2009) which explores the relationship of dreams to “the outside world.”

However, the work which holds the most relevance for this study is to be found in the first chapter of his book The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought

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Known (1987). It is here that Bollas describes how the human encounter with the “object” is experienced as transformational, a concept which further expands upon the views of Winnicott and Rizzuto concerning religions experience.

Bollas is recognized as a leading contemporary psychoanalytic writer who “believes that we are born with a unique idiom (self) which can only be partially known and develops through its use of objects and by objects using the self,” and also that he views the object world as “the entire world of life as we daily construct the dream work of our being” (Heimowitz, 2002, p. 861). Clearly, what Bollas understands as the “self” and what is meant here by “the dream work of our being” demands further explanation.

Bollas explains that the self can be understood as the history of many internal relations. Throughout the life cycle “parts of the self are articulated through the interplay of internal and external reality” (p. 9). In many respects, one’s experience of the self as a unified phenomenon is an illusion since the self is a fluid reality comprised of many different affect-states, experiences and relationships. Like Winnicott, Bollas has a positive notion of illusion as a means for accessing reality. Not only is the “illusion of the self” necessary for us to reflect upon human experience, but it is also a necessary illusion that the world we talk about is there to be experienced. “This necessary illusion underwrites our existence,” Bollas declares, for “without this belief in a verifiable perception we would share not only the anxiety but the certitude of one’ another’s madness.” Likewise, the collective agreement we have that the world is shared by us all “is matched by another poetic license, that the terms we use to describe the world are adequate to represent it” (p. 30). Thus, language itself functions through illusion,

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something to remember especially when attempting to describe the inner workings of the psyche.

There is no one unified mental phenomenon that we can term self, although I shall use this term as if it were a unity; it is true to say that all of us live within the realm of illusion and within this realm the concept of the self has a particularly relevant meaning. Over a lifetime we objectify, know, and ‘relate to’ the many different states of our being. Emotional and psychological realities bring with them self states which become part of our history. The concept of self should refer to the positions or points of view from which and through which we sense, feel, observe and reflect on distinct and separate experiences in our being. One crucial point of view comes through the other who experiences us (pp. 9-10).

The fact that a “crucial point of view” of the self “comes through the other who experiences us” is best exemplified in the earliest experiences of one’s life. Before a child is capable of expressing his/her relation with the parent through either mental representations or language, he/she already experiences the parent through a process of being and relating. In this way, the object casts its shadow upon the child’s developing ego long before it is recognized or thought about. “While we do know something of the character of the object which affects us,” Bollas explains, “we may not have thought it yet” (p. 3). It is this “unthought known” which exerts a lasting and profound impact upon the human experience and expression of the self in relation to others, and to the world as “other.”

Building upon Winnicott’s description of the mother as a “facilitating environment” for the newborn child, Bollas takes this concept one step further.

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Winnicott suggested that the mother is the total environment since she is continually affecting the child’s internal and external world through the process of caretaking, meeting psychosomatic needs through feeding, diapering, playing, soothing, etc. Bollas refers to the mother as the child’s first transformational object, as she is experientially identified with the process of internal and external transformations that alter the selfexperience.

It is an identification that emerges from symbiotic relating, where the first object is ‘known’ not so much by putting it into an object representation, but as a recurrent experience of being – a more existential as opposed to representational knowing (p. 14).

Bollas emphasizes that this is not a delusional experience, for through the caretaking process, the mother does, in fact, transform the child’s world. At the same time, the child’s own capacities for movement and perception, for differentiating between objects as well as for remembering them when they are not present, are all emerging.

These transforming experiences, including the acquisition of language all become associated with the presence of an object. Then, with the infant’s creation of the transitional object, the experience of the transformational process is displaced by the articulation of that experience. Bollas is clear about this. The transitional phase follows us upon the transformational one, with the former representing the child’s first creative act.

With the transitional object, the infant can play with the illusion of his own omnipotence (lessening the loss of the environment – mother with generative and phasic delusions of self-and-other creation); he can entertain the idea of the object being got rid

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of, yet surviving his ruthlessness, and he can find in this transitional experience the freedom of metaphor (p. 15).

Furthermore, Bollas suggests that in adult life, a person’s search for an object of transformation – a person, place, event, or ideology – is a manifestation of this early object relation with the mother as the mediator of transformative experiences. “The quest is not to possess the object,” he explains, “rather the object is pursued in order to surrender to it as a medium that alters the self, where the subject-as-supplicant now feels himself to be the recipient of enviro-somatic caring.…” (p. 14). Bollas thinks that too little attention has been given to this phenomenon in adult experience, since both the religious and secular worlds provide rich examples of the “collective search for an object that is identified with the metamorphosis of the self” (pp. 15-16). In the religious world, hope is frequently vested in God’s potential to transform either the believer or the total environment, while in the secular realm, it is ubiquitous that the hope that a new job, a new relationship, or a move of a new location may prove transformational. In either case, Bollas suggests what is being sought is not only a new transformational experience, but also a continuation of the relationship with an early object which signifies the experience of transformation.

This experience is met in what Bollas refers to as the “aesthetic moment,” when an individual feels a deep subjective rapport with an object (a painting, an area or symphony or a natural landscape) and experiences an uncanny fusion with the object, an event that revokes an ego-state prevailed during early psychic life (p. 16).

Bollas comments further that it would be incorrect to say that in such moments cognitive memories of the early relationship are being recalled, but rather that it is a

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psychosomatic sense of fusion, an existential recollection with the transformation object (mother) that is evoked. The anticipation of being transformed by an object of the aesthetic moment, inspires reverence, “so that even though the transformation of the self will not take place on a scale it reached during early life, the adult tends to nominate such objects as sacred” (p. 17). Wright (2006) has reflected on this concept of the aesthetic moment as utilized here and concludes that: For Bollas, the aesthetic moment recreates the transformational moment with its unique maternal pattern; the earlier moment is glimpsed and re-embodied within the perceived shapes of the present. Bollas is aware of the religious resonance of what he writes for his language is redolent with religious expressions.

‘Reverential’, beseeching’, supplication’, ‘transported’, ‘uncanny’, are just some of the words he uses. But the word ‘sacred’, which occurs repeatedly, is the closest he can get to this earliest experience... (p.181).

Although Bollas emphasizes the positive aspects of the aesthetic experience, he acknowledges that an individual may in fact seek a negative aesthetic experience. For example, borderline clients may continually repeat traumatic situations as a means of remembering their origins in an existential sense. All the various forms of addiction as well as criminal activity also may be understood as ill-guided attempts to transform the self internally by seeking to relive an object relation experienced in the earliest part of life, while making up for deficits within the self (which may be the consequence for what was lacking in that relationship). In this way, the search for the perfect crime, the perfect partner, the perfect “fix” with one’s drug of choice – each is symbolic of the person’s

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search for a particular object relation that has become associated with transformation of the ego and repair of what Balint has named, “the basic fault” (p. 18).

Bollas believes that the search for the transformational object does not arise out of a desire for the object per se, or even from the experience of longing. Rather, “it arises from the person’s certainty that the object will deliver transformation,” and that “this certainty is based on the object’s nominated capacity to resuscitate the memory of early ego transformation” (p. 27). In other words, the object being sought is an ego-object, which may in fact, conflict with the individual’s subjective experience of his/her own desire. This is indicative by the fact that the addict feels compelled to drink, to gamble, to engage in compulsive sexual activity despite his/her hatred for the compulsion to do so. As Bollas suggests, “Once early ego memories are identified with an object that is contemporary, the subject’s relation to the object can become fanatical…”

The aesthetic moment is experienced as so powerful probably because it evokes within the individual a deep conviction that he/she has been in rapport with a sacred, transformational object. Therefore, Bollas delineates four aspects of the aesthetic moment which appear to be particularly salient for the object to be experienced as transformational.

First, the aesthetic moment is experienced as a “caesura in time,” when the individual “feels held in symmetry and solitude by the spirit of the object” (p. 31). Such experiences are wordless in nature, wherein both subject and object in a suspended moment “appear to achieve an intimate rendezvous” (p. 31) with one another.

Secondly, for the individual experiencing it, the aesthetic moment comes as a surprise, as though the event was initiated by the object. Bollas explains that this

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surprise, “complimented by an experience of fusion with the object (icon, poem, musical sound, landscape, etc.), of feeling held by the object’s spirit, sponsors a deep conviction that such an occasion must surely be selected for us” (pp. 31-32). It is an experience of being rather than of mind, during which one feels under the spell of the object.

Thirdly, the aesthetic moment represents a form of déjà vu because it is an existential memory. These moments feel familiar and sacred “because they express that part of us where the experience of rapport with the other was the essence of life before words existed” (p. 32). In part, such moments reconnect us with the “first human aesthetic,” that is the experience of the mother as transformational object. Whatever our existential critique of her aesthetic, be it generative integration into our own being, compliance followed by dissociated splitting of our true self, or defensive handling of the aesthetic (denial, splitting, repression) we encountered her idiom. Indeed the way she handled us (either as accepting and facilitating or refusing and rigid or a mixture of both) will influence our handling of our self… (p. 36).

Fourthly, one’s search for the transformational object will be greatly influenced by the way one experienced his/her mother. Whether one experienced her aesthetic as “good-enough,” frustrating, or both will determine the motivation for the search, as “the self seeks transformational objects to reach relative symmetry with the environment or to re-create traumatic gaps in the symmetry” (p. 36). In the first case, one re-experiences the “good enough” situation in which the mother manipulated the environment to correspond to human need, in the latter case, her failure to do so is re-enacted.

This leads to the last aspect of the aesthetic moment to be discussed here; namely that such moments offer hope for further integration. Since each aesthetic experience is

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transformational, Bollas understands the search for the aesthetic moment to be the same as the search for the transformational object. What the transformational object seems to promise the self is “an experience where self-fragmentations will be integrated…” (p.

33). In such moments, the individual feels whole, complete, but not alone. The search for a transformational object “is an endless memorial search for something in the future that resides in the past...,” an experience “that promises to metamorphose the self” (p.

40).

This interpretation of the object has significant implications for understanding the way in which religious objects, including God-representations, maintain such a persuasive pull upon the human imagination. They could not do so if they did not provide aesthetic moments that reverberated with early childhood’s experience of being transformed in the presence of the mother. The sights, sounds, smells associated with the explicitly religious domain of one’s culture can be highly evocative of these early experiences. So much so that one never knows when they may take on meaning that was previously rejected. For example, Bollas describes the moment of an unbeliever’s conversion to Christ: The person usually feels the sudden enclosure of the self by a sacred presence.

This may be followed by a sense of being held by the object, and a recognition of some significant change in the environment’s light … or by the accompaniment of polyphonic gongs that one recollection remind the subject of church bells (pp. 3031).

These things – images, sounds, etc. – were waiting there in the environment and may have gone unnoticed. However, something of the individuals’ early life experience was

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re-awakened by the present moment and, I would add, provided new meaning for the individual’s sense of self and future. Bollas insists that “the experience of the object precedes the knowing of the object” (p. 39), referring to the infant’s experience of the mothering figure. But this is descriptive of the religious experience as well. While concepts of God and theologies may differ, they all represent attempts to articulate the human experience of the sacred, which may, as Bollas has shown, have its origins in infancy, but which holds the potential for a life-long dialectic.

Shafranske (1992) has attempted to build on Bollas’ idea by tracing a line of development from the transformational object to the transitional object and its further elaborations. He explains that: The transformational object forged from moments of transformation in infancy, sets the tone for further elaboration as transitional God-representations that exist as virtual objects throughout the life of the individual. The trace of these moments provides the existential basis for hope and the trust that is placed in one’s God-representation (p. 68).

However, in her critique of Shafranske, Rizzuto (1992) rejects his notion that the God-representation is always rooted “in the earliest period of an individual’s ontogenesis” (Shafranske, 1992, p. 62). She agrees that this may be true for those individuals whose early experiences of a helpful transformational object permitted them to form an unconscious representation of a God who is capable of transforming them.

Yet this is not the case for many other people, Who, due either to very bad early experiences or derailments at any other level of human relatedness, have come to form consciously a representation of God that is

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not suitable to bring about any desirable transformation and might or must be avoided (Rizzuto, 1992, p. 162).

In these remarks, neither Shafranske nor Rizzuto seem to take into account Bollas’ view that the transformative experience is not necessarily one that is positive. He gives examples of negative transformation, for instance, with clients who need to be misunderstood in order to experience relief since this re-enacts a pathological motherchild relation. Even when they promote growth within the individual, transformative/aesthetic experiences are not necessarily pleasant.

Transformation does not mean gratification. Growth is only partially promoted by gratification, and one of the mother’s transformative functions must be to frustrate the infant. Likewise, aesthetic moments are not always beautiful or wonderful occasions – many are ugly and terrifying but nonetheless profoundly moving because of the existential moments tapped (Bollas, 1987, p. 29).

I believe that Bollas has provided a valuable paradigm for understanding the adult experience of the sacred. While such experiences may have their origins within the earliest life-events, they do not end there. I agree with Rizzuto (1992) that the notion of the transformational object need not be restricted to its earliest source, that “once the function of the transformational object has been accomplished, it leaves an open road for many other types of transformational objects at any time in life” (p. 163). It is these later elaborations that I anticipate hearing about from the individuals that I will interview concerning their own experiences and understanding of transformation, of the sacred, of God.

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Theoretical and Conceptual Framework The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how people use the symbol God as a locus for both finding and creating meaning in their lives. It is a phenomenological study, focusing on the way in which adults find a relationship with God to be significant to their understanding of self, as well as to their relationships with others. As such, this study will attempt to understand, rather than to explain, how individuals create “meaning” by developing a narrative in which their experience and/or understanding of their God has continued to evolve with their life experience. What these individuals have found within their cultural framework or religious tradition, and how they creatively use this as a window to understanding self, others, and the world will be an important consideration of this study. It is expected that the insights gleaned from these narratives will have clinical implications for practice of social work.

Object Relations theory provides the theoretical foundation for this study. It does so in that I accept, as a given, the profound influence that early experiences of self-inrelation to others has upon the individual as well as upon the collective experience of God. As Rizzuto suggests, “not only the parent of real life but the wished-for parent and the feared parent of the imagination” (1979, p. 44) are to be expected influences upon an individual’s images or concepts of God. It will be interesting to learn whether this is true in the life-stories of those who participate in this study. Similarly, I wonder if the participants’ accounts of the search for their God or a struggle with their God will reverberate with Bollas’ analysis of the search for a transformational object, one that is identified with the earliest experiences of personal transformation according to the aesthetic motif provided by one’s mother.

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However, unlike the research conducted by Rizzuto, the approach proposed here is not one of analyzing or interpreting the developmental level of participant’s object relations vis a vis the four positions she outlined in Birth of the Living God (1979), or according to any other schema. As a psychoanalyst, Rizzuto’s focused on the “unconscious processes of object representation, symbolization, and formation of the sense of self, which permit, facilitate, or directly interfere with the normal process of forming a representation of God…” (p. 89). While this focus on unconscious processes may be the unique “gift” or insight of the psychoanalytic approach, it can also represent a reductionist tendency to discount conscious motivation and intentionality.

George Steiner (1989) has commented on this tendency in the way that the field of psychoanalysis has evaluated the arts. He notes the following: Psychoanalysis seeks bedrock. It would tease out the motivations, the buried of necessity and meaning in the raw material of the psyche. It is these, claims the psychoanalytic reading, which the artist’s professed intentionalities have concealed both from himself and the drowsy public. …the wager on the authenticity of depths are unresponsive to, irresponsible towards numerous categories of literature and the arts. There are countless texts, paintings, statues… whose strength, whose enunciations of organized sense, lie ‘at the surface’” (pp.

173-174).

Steiner does not reject the depth interpretation, rather he argues for greater inclusiveness of thought, for accepting the “surface” intention of the artist, or more accurately, an attempt to pursue an understanding of the relation between “surface” and “depth.” The word of the artist must be interpreted from both “surface” and depth,” in which inner and

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outer, subjective and objective realities overlap and merge precisely because that is the nature of an encounter with another.

Our encounter with the freedom of presence in another human being, our attempts to communicate with that freedom, will always entail approximation. The congruence is never complete. It is never uniform with its object. If it was, the act of reception would be wholly equivalent to that of original enunciation. Our guest would have nothing to bring us. (p. 175).

What Steiner has said here concerning the artistic encounter, I believe, applies to the therapeutic encounter as well. Each person the therapist meets within the clinical setting is after all the artist of their own life. He is the author of a life poem, his story.

She creates her narrative from the materials given her – a particular spoken language, a unique people, and the specific historical and cultural milieu in which she is immersed.

In Winnicott’s terms, a life is lived primarily in transitional space; it is both created and found. The goal of this project is to become a “good-enough” researcher, one who is able to dialogue with participants concerning their God-imagos in such a manner that their creative use of these images in their conscious development of a self-identity and their bond with others will be revealed.

In an opening essay in his book The spiritual life of children (1990), Robert Coles gives an account of his personal struggle to break through the constraints of his psychoanalytic training. He recalls with sadness how the children he encountered early in his career “were all too often turned into reductive putty by my mind,” and how he had the tendency “to focus on their ‘psychodynamics’ unrelievedly, to the point that they and

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I became caricatures’ (p.10). Like Steiner, Coles is also concerned with recognizing the relation between “surface” and “depth. As he explains: A psychoanalytic “approach,” then can forsake ideological targets, conceptual ambitions, in favor of a phenomenological acceptance of the everyday, the objectively visible and audible—all worthy of respectful attention for their own sake as well as for what they tell about a past subjectivity, one only surmised, one indirectly relayed through dreams and memories remembered (p. 21).

Coles remains unconcerned with “making general psychological statements without reference to idiosyncrasies and exceptions” (p. 22). As a result his book is a veritable treasure trove of the insights and ponderings of children from diverse religious backgrounds—Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Secular—concerning God, the devil, heaven and hell, and reveals both their belief and skepticism concerning the faiths in which they grew up. His lively descriptions of the children and their perspectives on these issues remain experience-near to each child’s reflections, and this has served as an inspiration for what I would hope to accomplish in my research with adults.

Employing the thought of D.W. Winnicott, Jones (1996) also makes an appeal for this approach in contemporary research and practice. He points out that Winnicott proposed an independent developmental line for symbolic processes that goes beyond the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity, one which provides a framework “in which the analysis of religion can take place” (p. 136). Commenting further that in Winnicott’s theory, “play closes the gap between subjectivity and objectivity that Cartesian empiricism had opened” (p. 133), he notes that the concept of transitional space and

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phenomena has more to do with interpersonal experiences that give rise to the process of symbolization than it does with “stuffed animals or blankets.�

Thus the desire to integrate or transcend the dichotomy of inner and outer subjective and objective, lives on long after the teddy bear has been forgotten.

When transitional objects are outgrown, they leave behind the creativity that drives the arts and the curiosity that drives the sciences, that is, the capacity to create culture (pp. 133-34).

This desire to transcend the dichotomies of inner and outer, subjective and objective is addressed further in Jones’ (1996) analysis of the three models used to frame the relationship between science and religion. Each of these models has something significant to offer in developing a non-reductive hermeneutic. The first of these is the Discontinuity Model. According to this model, science can neither validate nor threaten the claims of theology since each field remains autonomous, with its own terms and methodological domains. According to this approach, the discontinuity between science and religion is emphasized. This model would normally be applicable to both Psychoanalysis and Social Work in the sense that both fields are understood as applying scientific principles in their research and interpretation of human behavior. As Jones explains, according to this model there can be no conflict between science or social science and religion because each provides separate and mutually exclusive accounts of human nature. This is the approach discussed by Goldberg (1996) and Rizzuto (1979) as mentioned earlier in this paper. It reflects a compartmentalized approach which on the one hand prevents conflict, but which also makes dialogue essentially impossible since there can be no common language between them.

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The second approach or Continuity Model would view theological accounts “as continuous with psychodynamic and even neurobiological accounts of human nature and religious experience” (p. 152). According to this model, the theological account is considered to be more encompassing, and terms such as soul, spirit, and God are not seen as context-bound constructs but “as the terms used to address the most encompassing and universal concerns” (p. 152). In my view, this approach is best exemplified in the work of Carl Jung and I concur with Jones’ critique of this theoretical understanding in that it “can easily dissolve the crucial differences between religion and science into metaphysical mush and collapse the fierce mystery of the spirit into intellectually digestible and manipulable forms” (p. 153).

Understanding the dilemmas and constraints imposed by both the Continuity and Discontinuity Models, Jones proposes the advantages of a third approach, that of a pluralistic or Relational Model, in which neither psychology nor theology is reduced to the disciplinary parameters of the other. According to this model, the integrity of each discipline is retained while they mutually enrich each other. “A relational epistemology makes us aware of the common features of all forms of human understanding, psychoanalysis and theology included” while it “underscores how all knowledge is transitional in a Winnicottian sense” (pp.153-154).

Finally, what emerges is an interactive dialogue in which the actual continuities and discontinuities, agreements and disagreements, cannot be predicted in advance. They become apparent only as the dialogue proceeds (p. 154).

Such a dialogue between the two disciplines of psychoanalysis and theology is greatly needed, especially as it impacts upon the practice of psychoanalytically informed

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social work. In recent years, a call for such a relational model of dialogue between traditions has emerged within the psychoanalytic community. While formerly representing mutually exclusive perspectives on the nature of truth and reality, Bass (2006) notes that, Both Freud’s own perspective and the religious one are now understood as two opposing attempts to truthfully grasp, through ideas that could never be proven true, a common inner reality that comes from the past in a way that leaves it always open to some degree inaccessible to our minds (p. 39).

Here is the recognition that religion/theology and psychoanalysis are both genuinely engaged in the endeavor to truthfully describe and account for the same inner reality that allows for a more fruitful interaction. As she explains further, while “remaining opposed, the grounds for the outright rejection of the alternative perspective are, here, clearly moderated and thus, a more humble dialogue and exchange become possible” (p.

39).

In contrast with this moderation of a clearly discontinuity model to a more relational one between psychoanalysis and religion, the impression I received from much of the recent social work literature on spirituality and religion is that it often reflects the continuity model, with its consequent blurring of the lines between various spiritual traditions and professional practice. Some practitioners promote a specifically Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist interpretation of therapeutic change, while others draw upon a wide range of diverse spiritual practices. In their text, Spiritual diversity in social work practice, Canda and Furman (2010) remind those who consider themselves “spiritually sensitive social workers” of their ethical obligation to “continually strive to increase their

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professional wisdom, knowledge, and skills for effective practice,” and clarify that this is especially the case “in regard to explicit use of religious or nonreligious spiritual beliefs, symbols, rituals, therapeutic practices, or community support systems” (p. 55). While not concerned exclusively with psychotherapy but with the broad scope of social work practice, they favor using a model of therapeutic transformation that “encourages us to draw on metaphors and stories pertinent to clients that demonstrate the spiritual growth potential inherent in their experiences” (p. 322). In doing so, a dialogue ensues between the practitioner’s professional theoretical framework and the client’s theological perspective, one which can contribute to the development of a practice theory that is consistent with the relational model described by Jones.

This relational model is also reflected in Bruner’s (1990) discussion of what he calls “folk psychology,” which promotes the tendency for people to schematize or frame their experiences along the lines of cultural norms. From the moment children first learn to talk, Bruner explains, they begin to structure their experience into narrative form as a means of negotiating meanings between their intrapersonal and interpersonal worlds.

It begins to be clear why narrative is such a natural vehicle for folk psychology.

It deals…with the study of human action and intentionality. It mediates between the canonical world of culture and the more idiosyncratic world of beliefs, desires, and hopes. It renders the exceptional comprehensible and helps keep the uncanny at bay.… (p. 52).

As Bruner suggests, human behavior and its meaning needs to be situated within its cultural context in order to be understood. The social world in which we live is “neither ‘in the head’ nor ‘out there’ in some positivistic aboriginal form” (p. 105). All

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knowledge—including knowledge of the Self—is both situated and distributed. In other words, the experience of the Self is malleable even as it maintains a sense of continuity.

The Self, then like any aspect of human nature, stands both as a guardian of permanence and as a barometer responding to the local cultural weather… the Self using its capacities for reflection and for envisaging alternatives, escapes or embraces or reevaluates and reformulates what the culture has to offe.r… (p.

110).

Similarly, Rizzuto has emphasized that the symbol “God” is ubiquitous in Western civilization, and therefore, is an important element within the folk psychology of diverse groups and individuals. The way in which adults organize their experience of the world, their transactions with others, and their own inner lives is bound to be influenced by the significance they give or do not give to their God as an organizing principle for that experience. Therefore the task of the research here will be to serve as an inquiry into meaning making concerning the experience and understanding of God. It will invite individuals to reflect upon and give expression to the ways that which he or she has created a Self through relationships which have been most significant over the course of life. It will ask these individuals to weave together from their experiences, both canonical and exceptional, a coherent story through which they have situated a Self in the bosom of the universe. Such an inquiry can shed light on the way in which the creative act of narrating the Self also discloses the individual’s experience and/or understanding of the divine.

The expressed purpose of this study to elucidate the adult experience of the symbol known as “God,” and to reflect on the implications of this for the practice of

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clinical social work. In order for any real encounter to occur in this study, it will be necessary to negotiate meanings and become attentive to the unique understanding and/or experience of “God” which have evolved within the unique cultural contexts and personal histories of the participants. Attention to what Bollas describes as “transformational” in the aesthetic moment can only be communicated through the use of metaphor, and therefore attention to participants’ use of metaphors will be significant in this research endeavor.

Statement of Assumptions The following assumptions reflect both the beliefs of the researcher as well as those expressed within this literature review: 1. The concept of God is ubiquitous in Western culture. Though the definitions or descriptions of God may be as numerous as the persons for whom the symbol is salient, the word is universally recognizable and, therefore, has meaning.

2. Truth is contextual. When attempting to understand the external physical world, the objective tradition is most useful. When attempting to interpret the internal world of meanings, the subjective tradition is more valuable in assessing validity.

3. Both culture and language structure the experiences and the meanings ascribed to those experiences that individuals have over the course of their lives. Through their unique use of the metaphors provided by their culture and language, individuals, in turn, may impact the development of their culture and language.

4. Both the “good enough” researcher and the “good enough” therapist serve as interpreters of metaphorical language, including the use of God-language. Both need

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to find a means for dialogue between their theoretical orientations for practice and the religious/theological orientation of clients or research participants.

The methodology to be used and the specific questions to be explored in this study will be addressed in the following chapter.

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Chapter III

Methodology Sample Selection In choosing participants for this research project, I wanted the sample to consist of people in “the second half of life” and to be representative of those who hold diverse religious or spiritual perspectives. The reason for the former is that I expected such participants would have had sufficient “life experience” to be able to reflect on their personal history of making meaning and developing their personal understanding of God. The reason for the latter is that I wanted to learn something about what is common, as well as different, among those who hold to various faith traditions or who develop their own. So this was a purposeful sampling, with participants being selected based on their meeting the criteria intended for the study.

The method that was used for this selection is what is generally known as “snowball” or “chain sampling.” Potential participants were identified from among people I knew, as well as from people who knew people that might meet the criteria of the study and who might have an interest in participating. I invited three people who I knew personally—a colleague from the agency where I worked, a fellow student at the Institute for Clinical Social Work, and a nun that I met at a nearby monastery. There was also a fourth person that I met on a plane and who expressed interest in the material I was reading on God-representations. Following our conversation about this, he responded

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favorably to my invitation to participate in the study. Colleagues and friends who suggested participants discussed the nature of this research with them, and gained their permission for me to contact them and discuss the study further with them. Everyone who participated was given the opportunity to review and discuss with me the Consent Form which delineates the purpose, procedures, benefits and risks associated with participation in this research project, and each one felt comfortable in signing this agreement.

In all, there were 14 people who were interviewed, 7 men and 7 women. Their ages ranged from late 30’s to early 70’s; four identified themselves as Christian, three as Jewish, three as Muslim, one as Jain, and three as either mixed or having no religious affiliation. Two interviews, ranging from one to two hours each, were conducted with all 14 participants, though with one person the second interview was interrupted and therefore not completed. These took place in a variety of settings, usually in a public setting such as a library or coffee shop, but sometimes at the home or workplace of the participant depending upon the choice of each individual. The purpose in having two interviews with each participant was to capture the consistency in the responses of the participants, as well as to allow for questions of clarification and deeper reflection in the second interview. All the interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2003.

Patton (2002) has noted that, There are no rules for sample size in qualitative inquiry: Sample size depends on what you want to know, the purpose of the inquiry, what’s at stake, what will be useful, what will have credibility, and what can be done with available time and resources (p. 244).

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What I found in listening to and transcribing these interviews was that while the data was extremely rich, there was far more information than what I had the time and ability to manage with appropriate diligence. As a result, I chose to limit the final sample to the eight participants whose transcriptions of their interviews I had completed when I recognized that there was already more than enough information to analyze in achieving the purpose of this study. So the final sample, which includes four men and four women, will be described further in the section on Results. I regret that the depth of reflection provided by the other participants who were interviewed will not be included in the analysis of the material. Here I need to mention the moving account given by a Hasidic woman who tearfully recalled how her grandmother, who following the Russian revolution in 1917 which had taken the life of her Rabbi husband and displaced the family from their home, had instructed her children to sing and dance in praise of God when they finally found a miserly apartment in which to live. There was the Muslim community leader who spoke with quiet conviction about the way in which his faith deepened following the drowning death of his father when he was a young boy, and another older gentleman who had converted to Islam years before but who still enjoyed singing Christian hymns. There was also the retired Quaker woman whose whole life and been committed to social justice and who understood that to be the essence of her faith, and all the others whose life narratives have left a deep impression upon me. The experiences of each one could readily make for a thorough study of this research subject, though they may not be included here.

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Instrumentation The type of qualitative study that best fits the theoretical orientation of this study is phenomenological. This type of research is concerned with “capturing and describing how people experience some phenomenon—how they perceive it, feel about it, judge it, remember it, make sense of it, and talk about it with others” (Patton, p. 104). In other words, it allows the researcher to achieve some measure of understanding how participants create meaning through a process of interaction with them, rather than by pre-assigning meanings to words and concepts they may use. I would add here that we can only understand others through our interactions with them. A methodology that is conducive to this process can be found in Norman Denzin’s approach to the narrative method that he calls “interpretive interactionism,” and it is this methodology that will be used for this research project.

In his book, Interpretive Interactionism (1989b), Norman Denzin states that the basic thesis of this approach to research is that “in social life, there is only interpretation” (p. 11). He points out that in everyday experience, people are forever making interpretations and judgments about their own and others’ behavior and experience.

Unfortunately, people frequently base their judgments on faulty understanding, for example, mistaking their own experience for the experience of others. When such interpretations are formulated into social programs, they often fail because they “bear little relationship to the meanings, interpretations, and experience of the persons they are intended to serve” (p. 11). Certainly within the practice of clinical social work, we often meet with clients for whom the struggle to know and experience God in their lives is central. Yet if this experience must be ignored in order for the clients to receive the

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services needed, it is inevitable that at least some will find the process to bear little relationship to their personal process of making meaning from life experience. That is why a goal of this research is to develop a greater sensitivity and responsiveness to the use of God-language within the clinical setting, and why I concur with Denzin that: The human disciplines, and the applied social sciences, are under a mandate to clarify how interpretations and understandings are formulated, implemented and given meaning in problematic, lived situations (p. 11).

By the term “interpretive interactionism,” Denzin is referring to the research methods used in attempt “to make the problematic lived experience of ordinary people directly available to the reader” (p. 7). Utilizing open-ended creative interviewing, lifehistory, and life-story, the interactionist interprets these worlds. Interpretive interactionism “signifies an attempt to join the traditional symbolic interactionist approach with the interpretive, phenomenological works of Heidegger and the tradition associated with hermeneutics” (p. 14). Clearly, such an approach to research is consistent with two perspectives presented earlier in this paper—both Bruner’s notion of folk psychology as a “system by which people organize their experience in, knowledge about, and transactions with the social world” (1990, p. 35), as well as the Relational Model of dialogue between science and theology that Jones (1996) suggested. Furthermore, it reflects the emphasis both placed upon the use of natural language, and the latter’s focus on metaphor as the means for accessing the meanings that people ascribe to their interactions with and experiences of the world.

Denzin outlines seven stages for this research process: 1. Framing the Research Question

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This originates with the interests and life experience of the researcher, and was discussed in the introduction to this paper. As explained there, it is concerned with how adults talk about their experience of their God and how they make use of this symbol in the creation of coherent life-story or narrative that provides both a sense of self-identity and a framework for meaningful relationships.

2. Deconstruction This provides a critical analysis of previously held conceptions of the phenomenon to be studied, and corresponds to the material discussed in the Literature Review.

3. Capturing Capturing the phenomenon entails all that the researcher does to locate appropriate participants for the study and to obtain interviews that will adequately describe that phenomena. It includes all that I have described thus far, and will complete in this section on Instrumentation.

4. Bracketing “In bracketing, the subject matter is confronted, as much as possible, on its own terms” (p. 55). Essentially, this means that the researcher locates key phrases and themes in the personal stories of the participants. Elsewhere this often called “coding,” and will be discussed further in the section on Data Management and Analysis.

5. Construction As explained by Denzin, “the goal of construction is to re-create lived experience in terms of its constituent, analytic elements” (p.59). In other words, the researcher discovers the common and divergent elements of the phenomenon being studied, which then becomes key aspects of the Results and will be discussed in that section.

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6. Contexualization Contextualizing involves comparing and synthesizing the main themes that have emerged through the interviewing process, and is intended “to show how lived experience alters and shapes the phenomenon being studied” (p. 61). This will also be discussed in the Results section.

7. Evaluation Evaluation involves ascertaining the meaning and implications of the phenomenon that was studied and should illuminate it as a lived experience as well as interpret whether or not it fits with prior understandings of it, i.e. theory. This will be explored in the final section of this paper, Findings and Implications.

In order to “capture the phenomenon,” using Denzin’s terms, of the way in which adults experience, think about, and talk about God, a set of questions were developed to guide the interview process., the fundamental question explored was: “How would you describe your experience and/or understanding of God?” There was also a series of neutral, open-ended sub-questions created with a view to helping participants elaborate on their experience and understanding. These were: 1. What is your earliest memory concerning God? 2. How did you learn about God? From whom? In what circumstances?

3. Has your understanding or experience of God changed or evolved over the course of your life? If so, how?

4. How important is your experience or belief in God to your understanding of yourself?

To your relationship with others and to the world?

5. How do you deal with the problem of pain/suffering and God?

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6. How might you “define” or “explain” God? 7. How would your life be different if you did not believe in God? Since I wanted to listen closely to the comments of participants and ask questions that were responsive to what they shared, not all of the questions listed above were included in each interview. The interview process was fluid, and not infrequently I was surprised by where the dialogue led. Nevertheless, sub-questions 1, 3, and 5 were discussed in every interview, either by being asked directly or by evolving naturally from the dialogue between the participant and myself. What I was looking for throughout the interviews was to develop an understanding of the way in which participants created a cohesive narrative of their life-experience and the way in which God played a role in that narrative. Key to this process was their understanding of the way in which cultural and/or religious influences played a role in the development of their self-story and understanding of God. In addition to these questions, what I tried to attend to were what Denzin calls “epiphany” events. He describes these as moments “that have the potential for creating transformational experiences for the person” (p. 15), and explains that these occur in “situations where the subject confronts and experiences a crisis” (p. 17). Such moments, Denzin goes on to explain, can be very dramatic, major events in an individual’s life.

Others come following an accumulation of events which lead to a significant action or change of direction for a person. Still others are considered illuminative, minor epiphanies in that they reveal underlying tensions which have not yet become a turning point for an individual. And finally, some epiphanies are relived experiences during which the meaning of an event is understood when reflecting back upon it following the

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passage of time. Denzin explains further that any given event, may at different phases in a person’s life reflect all four of these types (p.129). Certainly, I found this to be the case as I listened to the participants describe periods of struggle, insights that followed, and/or major turning points in their lives. All this will be commented on in greater depth when discussing the results of this study. Throughout all the interviews, I offered supportive feedback concerning how each participant’s comments were helpful to this research project, and thanked each for the insights they shared about their experiences. At the end of each interview, I made sure to let ask if there was anything that I left out or if there was something that they wished to share that I had not asked them about.

Data Management and Analysis As mentioned earlier, the questions used during the interview process were openended, affording participants the opportunity to think about and recall experiences that were meaningful to them concerning the topic of research. In addition, each interview was such that new questions arose during the course of the dialogue which I then asked participants to comment upon. Sometimes this was the case because the individual gave brief, straightforward answers for which I sought further reflection. Sometimes, also, there was so much depth and breadth to what participants shared that I needed clarification or further expansion upon their thoughts to fully understand or appreciate what was meaningful to them. What I sought to gather throughout all the interviews was enough material that I would be able to provide what both Patton (2002) and Denzin (1989) have referred to as “thick description” in the analysis of the data. Both have noted

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that description provides the basis or framework for interpretation, and therefore, needs to be as deep and authentic as possible. As Denzin explains: A thick description creates verisimilitude; that is, truthlike (sic) statements that produce for readers the feeling that they have experienced or could experience, the events being described (pp. 83-84).

By contrast, he notes, thin descriptions gloss over meaning and simply report facts.

In addition to tape recording the interviews, I also took notes during them.

However, I did not find this helpful since most of what were in those notes could also be found in the transcriptions which I made of all the interviews. Also, I noticed that it was impossible for me to not consider possible themes and categories to be discussed in the Results. Patton has noted this as a normal phenomenon in qualitative research. He explains that “…the fluid and emergent nature of naturalistic inquiry makes the distinction between data gathering and analysis far less absolute” (p.436). Likewise, Denzin has commented on this as well: As the researcher enters the interpretive process, he or she is always located within the hermeneutic circle … can never get outside the interpretive process.

He or she is always part of what is being studied (p. 31).

These comments were reassuring to me in that at first I felt I was inserting my own thoughts, interpretations, and beliefs too quickly into the process. To the extent that at times this may have interfered with my listening attentively to the participants, this would be true. But I did attend as best I could, and following interviews, I noted my reactions and possible themes to be addressed in the final chapters.

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To protect the material, I kept all information on file in my office or at home and kept backup copies of the transcriptions, both in print and on two computers. I read and re-read the transcriptions and color coded and/or highlighted pertinent comments that pointed to common patterns and themes, or which revealed unique experiences that could help provide clarity in the discussion of the results of this research. All of this will be explained in greater detail in the next section. What I was looking for, and found, was a greater insight into the lived experience and meanings these participants ascribed to their understanding of God.

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Chapter IV

Results Introduction During the interviews, it became clear that it was extremely difficult to neatly delineate the responses of participants according to the seven sub-questions as described in the chapter on methodology. All the participants were able to begin their reflections by focusing on their earliest memories and how they learned about God. However, following this, the thoughts of participants were often connected by association to different events or ideas rather than by adherence to those specific questions. Their comments had a tendency to flow between memories and ideas associated with the evolution of their understanding and/or changing experience of God. As a result, when collating their responses I discovered that those seven sub-questions did not evoke clear, discrete responses. Instead, the responses were more suitably combined into three main focus areas or themes in the following way: Earliest Memories of God 1. What is your earliest memory concerning God? 2. How did you learn about God? From whom? In what circumstances?

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Problematic Experiences and Epiphany Moments 1. Has your understanding or experience of God changed or evolved over the course of your life? If so, how?

2. How important is your experience or belief in God to your understanding of yourself? To your relationship with others and the world?

Who or what is God? 1. Define or explain your understanding of God. How would life be different without God? 2. How do you understand God and the problem of evil and/or suffering?

There was universal agreement among participants that their understanding and experience of God had indeed evolved over the course of their lives. This was most often implied rather than explicit in the accounts of their lives. The same would be true of the way in which their experiences or beliefs about God related to their sense of self, as well as their relationship with others and the world. It may be helpful to note that even within these themes, material gleaned from the interviews tends to overlap, so that these categories reflect the way in which each participant emphasized certain concerns over others. This will become more evident in the comments that follow under each of the chosen themes.

Description of Participants What follows below is a brief biographical description of each of the participants in order that their comments might be more clearly understood in the context of their diverse life stories.

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Sister Anna is a 78 year old Carmelite nun of Irish descent, and Abbess of her 18 member community. What is perhaps most striking about her is that she is a bundle of energy. She speaks rapidly, and laughs readily, something one might not expect in an individual who spends most of her day in quiet contemplation. She describes the milieu in which she grew up as imbued with Catholic symbolism, and with significant relationships that reinforced her sense of belonging to this particular religious tradition.

While there were clear struggles in her early life, she experienced the consolation of a divine presence which continues to sustain her. In some ways, she reminds me of the famous “unsinkable Molly Brown," whose joie de vivre is unshakable. In addition, her own experience of joy and sorrow seem to have deepened her compassion for the struggles of others, for whom she expresses great empathy.

Christopher, a 62 year old African American man, is employed by the national office of his Christian denomination as their Coordinator of Multi-Cultural Programs. He speaks simply but poignantly about the two experiences that have shaped the course of his life in the most significant ways. The first is his adoption at the age of three, the influence his adoptive family had upon his life and faith development, as well as his search and eventual discovery of his birth family. The second is the impact that the Alcoholics Anonymous program has had upon his faith and his relationships over the course of the last 20 years, during which time he has not only maintained his sobriety, but discovered a path that opened him to a deeper relationship with God. In a matter of fact, non-dramatic way Christopher talks about his former alcoholism and how this led to a divorce from his wife and separation from his children. While he recognizes and owns the pain and struggle of the past, he is convinced that the hand of God was at work in it.

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Sarah, a 40 year old divorced mother of two, is a professor of Jewish history at a highly respected Midwestern university. She describes her religious upbringing in the terms used by her immigrant mother, as “modern orthodox,” meaning that they were observant Jews but also appreciative of the secular world, of secular studies, and strongly Zionist. Both parents survived the Holocaust, having met and married in New York following their diverse journeys there. However, other family members did not survive the concentration camps of Europe, with the result that Sarah never knew her grandparents nor many of her extended family. She also lost the close relationship she had with her father as he developed a serious mental illness while she was still a young girl. What sustained her during her childhood and adolescence was her love of learning and the strong bonds she had within the Jewish school and community to which she belonged. A series of experiences later threatened that bond while she was pursuing advanced Jewish studies. Yet ultimately, Sarah reaffirmed her commitment to living an observant Jewish life though she no longer considers herself Orthodox nor identifies with any other Jewish denomination, stating simply that “none of the labels fit.”

Timothy is a Caucasian man in his late 30s. A professional actor and educator, he grew up in the Catholic faith tradition but expresses a great deal of conflict regarding his continued participation in the church. Not a small part of that conflict is due to Timothy's identification as a gay man within a church that officially considers this identity to be disordered. This issue became more and more salient for him as he and his partner of two years planned, and then celebrated their marriage. In addition, his mother's long and lingering illness as well as her untimely death some years ago continue to leave a mark on his relationship with God and the Catholic faith. Despite this, his longing for God and

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his search for a clearer understanding of how God works in the world has led him to seek assistance from diverse spiritual guides. Of all those interviewed for this research project, Timothy probably spoke the most consistently about his desire to know God. Marion is a 58 year old African-American woman who has worked as an accountant for most of her adult life. She describes herself as highly inquisitive and as one who has a voracious appetite for reading. Marion was raised in the Methodist church, but became a Muslim in early 1980 following a move to the South where she met several Muslim women with whom she developed a strong bond. Her first husband, also a convert to Islam, was still living at this time. However, Marion is very clear about the fact that he did not influence her faith choice, and that he had always been respectful of her decisions, whether in regard to religion or anything else. She has three adult daughters, none of whom practice the Islamic faith but all of whom are comfortable with their mother’s choice. Several years following her first husband’s death, Marion met and married her current husband of 20 years through ties within the Islamic community. Her journey toward Islam included a long period of searching and participating in a variety of Christian faith traditions for which Marion still expresses much respect. Yet she strongly believes that in a very real sense she “returned home” when she became a Muslim.

Kaliq, a 39 year old man of African descent, is married, and has three young children. He is deeply reflective, an intellectual, and a published poet who teaches writing at a public university. Kaliq was raised in a large extended family, including four siblings, which also comprised most of the members of the non-denominational Christian church where he received his initial religious formation. Though he has fond memories of his experiences there, Kaliq speaks with some degree of pain about his family life, due

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in no small measure to his father’s alcoholism and infidelity to Kaliq’s mother. He began to question his faith as a teen, and later while in college, he became a Rastafarian. His search led him to a deep commitment to Islam for a long period of time, and though he still identifies strongly with that tradition, Kaliq now considers himself a practitioner of Yoruba, a West African religion. When speaking about this complex journey of faith, it seems as though Kaliq feels compelled to continually reinterpret the meaning of the past events and experiences that have led him to this moment, to this particular understanding of God. Likewise, it is clear from the intensity of his comments that that this understanding is continuing to evolve.

Amy is a woman in her mid-50s of both Irish and Italian ancestry. She was raised in the Catholic faith, describing a devout childhood and adolescence despite multiple family problems including alcoholism as well as both physical and sexual abuse. In fact the church had been a source of solace to her until she became involved with cult-like Catholic organization where she was sexually abused in her late teens by one of the priest leaders of this group. Since that time, Amy has remained guarded concerning all religious authority. For a time, she and her husband were active in the Unitarian Church as they wanted to provide their two children with a strong ethical and progressive religious orientation. However, Amy finds it difficult to commit herself either theologically or emotionally to any specific faith community. Despite this, she has a deeply contemplative, almost mystical approach to life which is reflected in her love of Nature and her intense experiences of connection with it. A former early childhood educator, Amy is now employed as an Energy Practitioner.

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Vanraj is a quiet, soft-spoken man in his early 70’s, who has been retired for several years. He holds two Master’s degrees, one in business administration and one in mechanical engineering, both of which he obtained here in the United States following his emigration from India in 1961. He speaks with enthusiasm, not only of his former work endeavors, but also of the many volunteer activities in which he is currently engaged. These include providing a financial education program for young people, assisting in a Hospice program, and working with disaster relief services, along with his wife who is a physician. Vanraj has been a lifelong practitioner of the Jain religion and continues to be a very active member of his local Temple in a Midwestern city.

Nevertheless, he speaks readily about his high regard for other religious traditions and comments frequently about the influence that some Christian leaders have had upon his own spirituality. He and his wife have three adult children, each of whom works in a respected profession, and about whom he speaks proudly.

Earliest Memories of God God encountered in the experience of awe and mystery.

For two of the participants—both Amy and Sr. Anna—the earliest memories of God were more clearly cast in these terms than with any of the other participants. Amy, in particular, used the words “awe” and “awesome” repeatedly when describing her childhood memories. And it was clear in the way she gave an account of these experiences that they continued to provide a rich source of meaning for her. Amy’s immediate response to the question about her earliest memories concerning God, are included here.

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It sounds kind of silly, but to me an awesome, God-like experience was when I was very, very little, and my Grandma—I’m saying very little, maybe around 3 or 4, preschool—my grandmother wrapped her arms around me, and she had my hands on the top of a carrot in the ground, and she wrapped her hands around me, and we pulled the carrot out of the ground. It was absolutely awesome. I will never forget it. It had to do both with my grandmother’s arms around me, and the magic of this carrot that I had always found on the table or in the refrigerator, coming out of the ground, was awesome. That is the first one.

Another one was … these were not yet associated with the word God, but was the experience of awe. Another was after a tornado came through our house; it felled at least 3 trees on the house, killed some people on the street, and we had to crawl out the windows to get out of the house and I saw a sidewalk, a four-square sidewalk, standing on one corner. It was awesome; the power, the power in that storm was awesome.

It is interesting to note that these experiences—one which was associated with an obviously pleasant memory, and one which could easily have been recalled as a frightening event—were both connected with a sense of wonder that at a later time, Amy associated with the concept of God. Similar experiences continued during her adolescence, as she explained further: And then more spiritual, more directly connected with what you would call God—I’m thinking of an adolescent time when I was just walking through a second floor hallway, and there was a stained glass window in the hallway. I literally had my breath taken away by the (pause), had more of a mystical almost

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experience of a loving presence that was so strong that I could almost hardly breathe. It was just unexpected, so encompassing. I just stood still, and like soaked it up. I was awestruck by it.

Another time, I was sitting on a hillside; I would have 18 or 19. I was sitting on a hillside after a 6 week stay in a French Canada, and I couldn’t speak any French. I was operating with a different part of my brain than normal. And as I was getting ready to leave, I was sitting on the hillside and had a moment where I was one with everything. There was a cow in front of me that looked up, and it was like it just welcomed me, and I was one with everything and I felt so strongly the interconnectedness of myself with everything that I felt that even when I die, I would still be connected. It was an awesome experience.

During her grade school and high school years, Amy made a conscious effort to maintain this sense of mystery and connection with God. It was something very comforting for her to do this, and she was deeply aware of the ways in which this helped her to maintain a sense of balance despite the many difficulties in her family.

When I was in grade school I went to daily Mass. It was important for me to start the day oriented that way. In high school I used to also go into the church and sit for 20 minutes, a half–hour, 45 minutes, trying to get to—the word that caught my attention was the “ground of all being,” the source that’s behind the word “God,” or the word, “Jesus,” or whatever, the source of it all.

I think probably in high school. I was in a Catholic high school at the time. The idea was that in the Mass I was doing the ritual, which was a soothing way to start the day, almost like a yoga or an exercise. But when I would go into

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the church, it was a quieter moment of trying to connect my center with the mystery that’s underneath it all, and found that very drawing for me to do that. I think it was counterbalancing, to some extent, the amount of chaos in the home, but it was also a personal yearning that I would tend to. So those are my earlier experiences.

When Sr. Anna described her earliest memories, she did not use the same terminology as Amy did, but her account had a similar quality. Anna’s first memory had to do with what has been known in the Catholic Church as “40 hours devotion,” a time set apart within a parish church for prayer before the Eucharist (the consecrated bread received during Mass). Sr. Anna began by recalling one of her earliest memories as one of being engaged in this ritual celebration. Her experience of rapture was communicated more in the manner in which she described this than in the specific words she used.

Well, it was definitely grade school, and what I remember is like processions, 40 hours (a devotional ritual), you know, wearing the white dress—first communion, when you’re wearing a white dress and for Exposition you’d be throwing flowers, the way they did it at St. Cecilia’s, you’d be throwing flowers at the Monstrance (a religious vessel containing the Eucharist). They still come back to me; they still come back to me.

Without pausing, Anna immediately went on to describe another childhood memory: … and I remember they had a movie (in grade school). It was a silent movie of the life of Christ and it really made a profound impression on me. I don’t know if they still have it…

When asked what had been the impression this film had left upon her, she replied:

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Other-worldliness, I think. It was the silence. It just gave it a feeling of not being on this earth. Something of heaven. It made the religion feel, that’s the only way I can express it; it wasn’t of this world. Because we were probably used to noise and everything, and it just had that silent thing. It made it different. It made it not of your normal life.

Continuing to discuss her grade school and high school years, in a selfdeprecating and humorous way Anna described herself as very “pious.” She loved reading spiritual books and attending Mass on a daily basis, even when her mother discouraged her at a time when there had been a raging snowstorm. Though she enjoyed her friends and going to dances and parties, she’d come home from these occasions and think to herself, “oh they’re trying to have fun and be so happy drinking and everything, and that wasn’t for me.” And just as Amy described experiences in nature as the means through which she had experienced a connection with God, so did Anna.

And I just loved being outside; I’m aware of God right away. I always did find God— because I grew up… my relatives had a cottage in Vermillion and we used to go out there every summer and swim and everything—and I was always aware of God in nature. My Dad used to take my brother and I (sic) for walks in the park on Sundays, looking for mushrooms and stuff. And I just loved being outdoors, and walking, and I was very aware of God’s presence.

After my senior year, I became a camp counselor… And camp, there wasn’t any radio or magazines or books or papers or anything—you were just living away from all that worldly stuff. I was finding happiness just being

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outdoors with the kids and just being with nature. I found out I could be happy, and have a good time, and be close to God without all that other stuff.

For Anna, these experiences of intuiting God’s presence in prayer and ritual, as well as in nature, continued throughout her childhood and adolescent years. They culminated in a retreat she made following the beginning of her teaching career as a young adult. This is how she described that experience: There were ten of us and we had between Christmas and New Year’s free and we decided to make a retreat. So we got a new Jesuit who was newly ordained, and we had a retreat for those six days at John Carroll—it was six days that I kept my mouth shut, and it was quiet, but by the second day or something, he must have said after every conference, “Now God did this for you because He loves you.”

And I guess with the silence and being aware of God’s love, by the second day I felt like a convert, that I was hearing the life of Jesus for the first time. I was really caught up in this realization of how much God loves me, to the point that it would take me an hour to say the stations [the Stations of the Cross, a devotional practice]. I’d skip lunch because I was so hyper and I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and God’s making love to me, so why should I bother to sleep, and so I realized I had to face it at this point and I didn’t mind facing it at this time because I was already so much aware of God’s love for me that I wanted, even more than ever, to give myself to God. [Saint] Ignatius says, “This is what God did for you; what are you going to do for God?” So in my immaturity, and when I give talks that’s what I tell them, in my immaturity, I felt well, I can’t just be a

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teaching nun. God went the whole way for me: I’ve gotta try the whole way for him. So that was the first time I thought of contemplative life.

This experience is what led Anna to become a contemplative Carmelite nun. A contemplative Carmelite Order is one of those religious congregations that is dedicated solely to prayer and which does not provide other forms of service, such as teaching, nursing, or social work which is common among most religious orders of women. While over time she recognized that any way of life could be one that is lived in union with God, in her youth, Anna thought that only by entering a contemplative religious order would she be able to do this. She described this way of life as “trying to deepen yourself in the mystery” of her faith.

It is true that many of the other participants in this study also described their experiences of God in language cloaked with a sense of mystery, but none so clearly identified those experiences as the most salient of their earliest memories as did Amy and Anna. Both of these women were brought up in the Catholic faith, however, in Amy’s case, traumatic events eventually led her away from that faith tradition, while for Anna, this faith continued to influence her development throughout adulthood. More will be said about this later in this text. For now, attention will be directed toward those participants for whom the faith tradition in which they were raised, as well as their early family relationships, were fundamental to their earliest memories.

God revealed in the context of family relationships and faith tradition.

Four of the participants—Kaliq, Sarah, Marion and Vanraj—all described their earliest memories of learning about or experiencing God primarily in terms of these two

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categories, frequently intertwined with each other. Though Kaliq, for example, shared memories of childhood loneliness and a sense of abandonment by his older siblings, this is not what shaped his earliest experience of God. I was raised in the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, AME Zion Church. And I mean, when I say raised, I mean that St. Stephen’s AME Sunday School Church was—my aunties were the musical directors, my cousins and my aunties, we made up the choir; we were the Christmas program, we were a good portion of the congregation, I mean—we were that church. I mean, actually right now, one of aunties is now the pastor of that church… And that’s where my literary career began, my comfortability in front of a microphone began, my gift of gab—it all started in that church, and the church was 85% family. So, that’s where I was introduced to the concept of God, the concept of Christian religion.

He published a poem which more fully captures this earliest experience, part of which I will quote here: i was made in st. stephens church on choir pews behind an ageless pulpit. under the almighty eye of mutha (mother), my cousins and i, led by aunties, crafted stodgy hymns into poetry with the love of God and song. al green coloured saturday’s song, but flickering spirits painted church sundays in deep human poetry. our voices reached the oak pulpit, then the small congregation, while aunties bonnell and maudell stirred mutha to rock and hum their gentle music… between prayers they tilled poetry with blood and sweat. in the garden, mutha

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produced converts from her earthen pulpit: stubborn tomatoes. melons ripe with tender song. praising the hallowed floor of this church, this land that knows my uncles and aunties By name…

The space between preacher and pulpit remains sacred. one of my aunties now resides there, naturally. her song full of light. her love like the poetry of my son’s laughter. i feel mutha everywhere. i know she’s always church. kneeling at church, I consider the pulpit, dream about mutha and cherish my aunties. a narrow rift divides poetry and song.

This unique familial and religious world is what shaped Kaliq’s experience of God until he reached the age of eleven. At that point in time, he became disillusioned with Christianity. More will be said about this in the next section, but it is clear that for Kaliq, family and faith tradition were intimately woven into his childhood experience.

As he explained: I think that what happened for me is that when I started wandering away from church, I actually started to wander away from the roots, my family—up until that point, my entire social structure of my life had essentially been centered around my cousins. You know, I have a hundred living relatives on my mother’s side alone; they were my social structure. And, um, everything had to do with my cousins and my Aunties.

Marion is another participant for whom family relationships and faith tradition were intensely interwoven as she shared recollections of childhood.

So my first, my first reference to God was as a child in North Carolina. My Mom, well she’s dead now, was a Methodist and the church that my Mom was affiliated

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with is a church that was built during slavery time and it was built for one of the slave owners. And my family, my Mom’s family, I should say, her mother and generations back were a part of that church and thus, I became a part of the church and I, of course because that’s where we, you know, were taken for religious services. That time was probably a molding time for me in terms of God and my, you know, my association with God and my belief and what have you. It was a church that I enjoyed because it was like an extension of family. The parishioners and the minister were friends, so it was a pleasure going.

As she said, the church was an extension of her family, and she felt very close with the family members in her childhood household, which included her five siblings, maternal grandparents, mother and step-father. As a child, she never knew her father and only met him briefly later in life. After serving in the military during World War II, he returned with a condition that she described as being “shell shocked” and which we would recognize as PTSD today. As a consequence of this, her parents eventually divorced. But by far the most meaningful relationships that influenced Marion’s understanding and experience of God were those with her mother and maternal grandmother. Of them, she commented: “They were the real matriarchs.”

Of her mother, she said: She would do anything she could to help, help somebody. She didn’t have a lot, but what she had she would easily share. In fact, she would give most of it away, and just keep just a little for herself.

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And of her grandmother: My grandmother wasn’t perfect, I mean let’s face it, none of us are perfect but this woman would pray for days. She would get down on her knees, and being a grandchild—and you know I would always try do everything she did—and I would fall asleep on my knees while she’s praying. I would say the Lord’s Prayer two or three times, and she’s still praying.

Perhaps it was due to the impact of these women on her life, perhaps not, but Marion’s favorite bible story as a child was about one of the few key women in the Scriptures whose story is given special significance.

We spent many hours many, many hours studying the bible. So as a child you know, I learned passages as well as verses, and I think the thing that, that of all the things I learned, the Book of Ruth was something that was real, real close to me. I think I liked her story in terms of her life, and if I can remember right, she had lost her husband. She was sort of trying to decide where to go with her life and then she decided to go with her in-laws, is that true? And I think I remember that, “your God is my God.” I remember that the thing that just really made me love that story was that she had so much faith, in her in-laws and so much faith in God that you know whatever would happen to her with them would be fine because they were godly people.

Later in our dialogue, Marion reflected on her experience of losing that sense of warmth she had known in her family and church. She struggled to regain this experience, and the parallel her journey had with the story of Ruth was striking to me. More will be said about this later.

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Among all the participants, it is possible that Sarah’s life story reflects the strongest connection between family relationships and faith tradition as these influenced her experience and understanding of God. When asked about her earliest memories concerning God, her response was immediate: I can’t remember a time when God was not in the discourse. I cannot remember a time; he was always there. It was a religious home, and when you’re Orthodox, it governs your life. A religious Jew blesses, you bless everything you eat, you bless God’s name. It’s everywhere; it’s all over the place. I remember my father became ill when I was very young, but one of my earliest memories… I have memories of him, but really one of my earliest, conscious memories of him was being in synagogue with him. There is a prayer shawl that is worn, and in the traditional world it is big; it covers your body and it’s not a little thing you stitch over your neck. And I remember being in his lap with that prayer shawl. It’s just a precious memory, very warm, and I also lost him, so I’m sure that the memory of that thing sticks more in my head.

This “precious memory,” as Sarah describes it held much significance for her, not only because her father became mentally ill and left the home when she was very young.

At the time he left the home, Sarah had no means of interpreting the meaning of this event, and experienced this almost as a death of one of her parents.

At the time my father disappeared when I was four years old, nobody talked about it. I had no understanding of what was going on. It felt like he ripped the floor right out from under me. And I remember as a young child—I don’t remember how long I actually dreamt this dream; I felt like I dreamt this dream for about a

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year. Every night I felt just the whole night, it was like Alice in Wonderland. I just felt the entire night, I had the feeling in my stomach of falling. I woke up in the morning; I stopped falling. That was how I felt. So, you know, I think I’ve got one parent. Nothing better happen to her.

In any event, Sarah’s recollection of the security and warmth of being at prayer in the synagogue with her father seems to have set the stage for other childhood memories as well. This can be seen in her following comments: I do remember that in 2nd grade. The school—there are a lot of different kinds of orthodoxies too, but I was modern orthodox, which meant that secular study was respected and given weight, and so the classes in Judaica stuff were taught in Hebrew, and we were expected to speak Hebrew by 2nd grade and answer back to the teacher in Hebrew. She taught us how to do Friday night service. The Friday night’s service is particularly beautiful and she taught it to us. Judaism is a patriarchal religion, and orthodoxy certainly is, but there was no man in our house. So the very kinds of things that are associated with male religious behavior were kind of just left floating in my home. My mother came from a Hasidic home where men do certain things and women do certain things, and she was not going to do them; they were things her father did. She had no frame of reference to imagine doing them, so I remember on Friday nights sitting at the table and it’s beautiful music. And it’s night, so there’s this whole atmosphere of the light, and the changing of the light, and the music and just sitting at the table and singing this stuff. It gave me tremendous pleasure, and then I would do—it’s

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called making Kiddush, sanctification of wine; things a man would do. I did them. She taught me. The teacher taught me.

And then again: And then I would say by the age of 11 or so, we always went to synagogue, but if you’re really observant you go three times a day. There are three prayers a day.

And I would go. No women ever went in the afternoon and in the evening on Saturday; you went in the morning. But I would go back, and I was the only female. And you know there is a division, there’s what’s called a Mechitza, a wall, some kind of separation. I was the only female in the place. But I was there and the afternoon prayers were really beautiful too. And then what’s done…You’re supposed to have three meals on a Saturday. Eating was pleasurable and the Sabbath was to be pleasurable. Three big meals. So the third of them was like late afternoon, Saturday afternoon. There’s an afternoon prayer and an evening prayer, and the meal would come in the middle and the men would be at the synagogue; they weren’t going to go home in between, so I would hang out with them. We would do the meal and they would sing and I would sing.

There is a very real link, I believe, between Sarah’s earliest memory of sitting in her father’s lap with the prayer shawl wrapped around her and these later experiences of leading prayer in the home and joining, as an equal with the men, in Saturday afternoon prayers at the synagogue. Sarah has an elder sister who had no interest in these things.

Yet for Sarah, these events were critical in shaping her sense of self, her religious identity, and her experience of God. Those same experiences also contributed to the

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conflict she experienced within the Orthodox community at a later time in her life. But during these early years, all this gave Sarah a sense of wholeness. Speaking again of the Saturday gatherings: I was like a mascot. And there is, once a month, you bless the new moon when you can barely even see it, the first sliver of the appearance of the new moon.

And it’s also very, very beautiful. You go outdoors, and absolutely there are pagan elements to it, and they wouldn’t want to know, but there are. You greet the moon. You dance to the moon. I mean it’s wild stuff, and I was doing it.

They were doing it and I was doing it. And so it was all very integrated, and it was just utterly a part of my life, and very much, very rich and very satisfying, and I think in a childhood that was really rather troubled in many ways, it just was a bastion of happiness and stability.

She was also close to the rabbi at her childhood synagogue. Sarah’s mother had lost her entire family to the Holocaust, except for one brother who died shortly thereafter.

This rabbi was very supportive of her mother, as Sarah recalled: There was a wonderful rabbi who was particularly kind to my mother. She was an immigrant, and she was also the only survivor of her family. She lost everybody to the Nazis and then she came here and got married, and then my father, who was also European, became ill. And she had two children, and the rabbi in this place was just an extremely gentle and nice man, and very loving too.

So I adored him.

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This rabbi, the men of the synagogue who did not exclude her from their prayer and celebrations, and joy in Jewish studies—all this contributed to a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

It also helped me make sense, “make sense” is not the right word, but “put in some place,” you know the kind of history I was living out—my mother’s history.

I had no grandparents. I had no aunts, uncles, cousins. We were living some pretty serious problems. There was nobody to take her part and help her out. She had brothers, but from what she described of them, they would have intervened.

They would have protected her, they would have helped her, but there was nobody. And so I was living that stuff, and because I learned biblical tropes and I knew that Jews had been persecuted… I don’t know, it certainly did not make things better, but at least it gave some context or something. It was terribly important to me.

The fourth person who fits into this category is Vanraj. As mentioned earlier, he was the only participant who was brought up in an Eastern faith tradition, as a Jain. Most people in the West are likely to be unfamiliar with Jainism which is a religion native to India, and which has its origins somewhere between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE. It teaches a theology/philosophy which has many elements in common with Hinduism, and even more so with Buddhism. So unlike the faith traditions that have been mentioned thus far, Jains do not profess a faith in one God, but believe that everyone can aspire to become a divine being. In describing his earliest experiences, Vanraj began this way: I have been born and raised in a Jain family, and from childhood I was going to the Temple which was only half a block away from my home in a small town in

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India. So my earlier upbringing was in the Jain tradition. We go to Temple 2 times a day, early in the morning before we take breakfast, and later in the evening before we take our supper. By looking at the images of God, which we call idols, I started developing the concept of God. I also attended the school, which we call Pathasala, that is, a school for religious education. I was a regular student going there and I learned a lot of rituals and the scriptures going to Pathasala. We had a lot of rituals and a lot of singing, and a lot of ceremonies and a lot of festivals and holy days. And that becomes the core or essence of the way that I have been sort of educated in the religious tradition.

When I asked what stood out as an experience in which he felt a connection with God, he added the following: Especially in my teen years—we would be fasting, where we would fast for a day or skip a couple of meals—that gives me a little bit of meaning to the spiritual aspect of my life. Also, in our home town when I was growing up in my teens, sometimes for 2 or 3 days we leave our home and spend 2 or 3 days with our monks or sadhus, and get a little experience of (this) life. So from this little bit of the rituals and little bit of practices, I started learning about my religion and what its meaning is for me.

One can see from his account that, similar with the memories of Sarah, Vanraj’s earliest experiences of family life and faith life were intertwined with each other. Going to temple with family members twice a day, participating in religious rituals and attending a religious school—all of these shaped his perspective on what he understood

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as divinity. But it was not just the Jain tradition that influenced him, as he explained further: Obviously I’m born and raised in Jain tradition. But you know my home town, when I was growing up as a Jain, the larger populace was Hindu. So naturally we mix, and we play around, and we socialize, and so we celebrate the Hindu festival as well as the Jain festival. So I’ve been exposed to Hinduism, and I find so many basic, fundamental similarities between Hindu and Jain. And many times they are so old that you do not know whether it is a Jain thing or a Hindu thing!

As a result, Vanraj attributes one of his core beliefs as derived from both of these traditions.

I think the most meaningful (sic) that I found through the Jain and Hindu philosophy that God has given us this opportunity to elevate ourselves to the highest level possible, including we can become God ourselves or we can become a godhood. That is one of the distinct aspects of Jain and Hindu religion that I aspire to.

At the age of 7, Vanraj lost his mother to cancer and within a year, his father died of lung cancer. Though he acknowledged that this was a painful experience, he immediately focused on the way two of his elder brothers provided him with support, and raised him as a member of their own households as is the tradition within their religious culture.

But my two brothers, the oldest brother and the second one that is still living, along with their wives—because we believe in a joined family—they took care of my upbringing. Providing obviously, the food, shelter, going to the school,

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everything, and then they lighten the void that I do not have the parents you know. And so today, when I meet my brother and his wife, I believe these are my parents. And that’s one of the rich heritage that we have, to grow up in a very joined family. Many times they didn’t have enough to feed their own families, so to say. They are living on a very low middle class family income. Many times they did not have enough to send me to the college, but these are our obligations we have to take care of.

One final example that I would like to include here concerning the context of family relationships and faith tradition in Vanraj’s experience has to do with a brother who left the household and was never seen again by his family. Vanraj was about 12 years old. His brother was around eighteen years of age and a college student when he left a note for the family that read: “I’m leaving the education, and don’t try to find me.

I’m on a spiritual (path), enlightening myself.” When asked how he had felt about this, Vanraj responded that though he did miss his brother, this experience of loss was not what was most significant in his memories of that event.

One of the tradition(s) of the Hindu and Jain family is to elevate yourself to the highest level, you know, ultimately possible. Ultimately, to what can be called heaven. In a normal life, after you’re the age of 16, you are supposed to withdraw yourself, and go toward more a spiritual existence. So when my brother left, at the age of 17/18 you know, because he’s going for a spiritual belief, it is more like a joyous celebration. I mean first you feel a little loss and sorrow for a while you know. But when somebody’s elevating himself, a person to a high level, there is more joy and more celebrations.

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For some of the other participants in this study, experiences of loss were far more problematic than for Vanraj, at least as he related in sharing his life story. The death of his parents especially, and his brother’s leave-taking to become a sadhu [holy man], certainly left their marks on his life. Yet Vanraj’s memories of these events, though tinged with sadness, have more to do with the meanings this evoked by his faith tradition as well as the embrace of his extended family.

Anger, abandonment and the early experience of God. The two participants whose childhood memories exemplify this category did not convey anything negative about their experiences within the faith tradition in which they were raised, and also expressed having a strong bond with their parents. Timothy, for example, discussed his love for the ritual in the Catholic Church. He said, “I remember being overwhelmed by the pageantry and wanting to feel somehow emotionally equal to it, and doing that.” However, it was not these kinds of positive experiences that stood out for him.

Instead, Tim’s earliest memory concerning God has to do with an experience he had following a stressful interaction with his mother. He described how at age five, it was customary for him to walk two blocks to the school where he attended kindergarten.

One day when it was raining, his mother put a blue raincoat on him before leaving the house. He was angry with her “because everyone else had a yellow raincoat” and that was what he wanted. After his mother walked him across the street as usual, he continued the rest of the way on his own. He recalled:

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I kept stepping on the cracks because I was so angry with my Mom. You know, “step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” But as I was doing this, I kept hearing or sensing God’s telling me that this was wrong. And so I yelled, “Shut up, God!” One might expect that Timothy would feel some guilt about his outburst of anger toward God, but this was not the case. Instead, there was a degree of self-acceptance in acknowledging this to be a part of his nature, that is, to respond first with anger. Though it is also something with which he had to struggle throughout his life. He explained, But I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel in that I test things and try to figure out how much I can, how far away from it I can go. I usually count on people’s resistance as my motivation to things. So, “shut up God” at 5 years old, was pretty much about that, you know? So there’s that kind of little flare up personality.

Tim also shared that as much as he enjoyed the pageantry and ritual of the Church, he could also become frustrated and angry when feeling constricted by it.

I remember a little bit about communion practice being kind of a pain in the ass.

Just like, OK we had to do this and you gotta walk this way, and do it again and again and again and again, and get it right and don’t do this, but that part I remember. But the significance of the event, I don’t think I was really, the miracle of it you know? What the actual initiation represents, I don’t think at that age you’re really old enough to make an informed choice. I think you’re led, and usually, you comply.

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This sense of compliance without an experience of meaning in these events characterized Timothy’s experience of other significant Sacraments as well, both Confession and Confirmation. Preparing for Confirmation at age twelve occurred at a time when all he could do was to simply go through the motions, without any feeling.

That was in part due to the fact that at that time, Tim’s mother was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, and her illness became the guiding principle of family life for some years to come. This was the beginning of some very real problematic experiences in Tim’s life, which will be explored further in the next section. Tim’s summary of that period was the following: That was a turning point in my awareness of God when my mother began getting sick, because I began shutting God out. I began to be angry. I really didn’t know at what. I remember we stopped going to church and that God became a nontopic, kind of, God was still sacred in our household, but I mean, we didn’t really have a lot of the rituals surrounding anymore. I think we were just getting spiritually tired, because my Mom’s illness was long and very draining.

This was a new experience of anger in the sense that up until now, Tim was able to experience a relationship with God that did not exclude his anger and frustrations.

Now, his anger “kept God at bay,” so to speak, and would do so for some time. The difficulties he experienced as a result of his mother’s long illness, which extended into his adolescence, created a distance between him and his initial God-representation. As he explained, “God as a marker along the way became more and more indistinct.”

Here is Christopher’s account of his earliest memory concerning his experience of God:

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I was adopted when I was three and my dad died when I was seven in 1952. It’s my adopted family who I consider my mother and father. And my mother tells me that I said when he died, that I hated God for taking my father away. And, but I guess as I was growing up, I didn’t think much about that at all. I went to church and you know and did those kind of things.

The hatred he felt toward God following the death of his father was not a conscious memory for Christopher, but was something he heard about from his mother.

However, his earlier experiences of abandonment were quite clear to him, and critical in his development. Despite these experiences, Christopher had a strong bond with his adoptive family and a meaningful connection with the United Church of Christ congregation of which, he was proud to say, his family had been members for 125 of its 137 years.

Though Christopher may not have “thought much” about his father’s death growing up, as an adult he clearly recognized that his life had been shaped by early experiences of abandonment.

Without a doubt, I’ve always had abandonment issues even though I had a wonderful family, but yeah, you know, from what I understand and some correspondence I have, that I was moved from a number of foster homes between the ages of birth and 3-years-old and then, my father dying when I was 7.

Though he clearly felt loved by his adoptive mother and had a positive relationship with her, there were also times that he felt abandoned by her. This is how he remembered those experiences:

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And my mother was a school teacher and she loved to travel. She loved languages and she loved to travel, but I grew up in a home with two grandmothers so both grandmothers were there. As a matter of fact my mother said to me just last week, we were talking about traveling, and this and the other. She said, “I just loved to travel but I knew that you had two grandmothers at home and you would be okay.” And I said to her, “Yeah Mom, but it wasn’t the same.” We just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. My mother is 96. You know and I’m almost 56 and she still thinks it was okay. And I don’t fault her for that, but I said it’s not the same. She was a school teacher and sometimes she’d go shopping or something after, after work and if she got home later than the appointed time, or what I thought was the appointed time when I was small, that by the time she got home I was just frantic that she wasn’t coming home. So I have abandonment issues and I’ve had abandonment issues in relationships. You know, so I know that is something that I have worked on and, and probably continue to work on.

When I asked Chris if he thought these multiple experiences of abandonment may have had an impact on his relationship with God, he said that it did not. Then, a little later in the conversation, he commented that: I’m sure when I was drinking you know, I thought God had abandoned me. I just thought, “Why would God want to be bothered with me, you know?” I wasn’t worth saving or whatever. And I guess I didn’t think that God abandoned me necessarily, but that um, well I, that just wasn’t a part of the picture that I had in my head about God and me, and running the streets and all the stuff that I was doing.

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What appears to have happened for Chris is that these cumulative experiences of abandonment, along with the unexpressed anger and pain associated with them, led to a period in his young adulthood that he described in the following way.

I was living my life in the fast lane and um certainly not respecting anybody else other than myself. I wasn’t even respecting myself and what difference did it make? You know, I was going to hell anyways, so. We had, or I had an expression, “if you’re going to tear your shorts, you might as well tear them off.”

You know, what difference did it make anymore? So God wasn’t a part of my life. And I guess one of the reasons I didn’t go to church during that period was you know I thought you know I felt like a hypocrite. You know here I am out in the street you know all week long and Friday night and Saturday night, and then go to church on Sunday and half the time I’d be hung over on Sunday morning anyway and uh to try to get up and go to church that just that just felt like a hypocrite and decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do.

So the repercussions of abandonment did affect Christopher’s sense of himself, as well as who he saw himself to be in relation to God. Though, as he said, “I don’t think I ever stopped believing,” it is clear that this belief did not at this time provide him with a sense of purpose or meaning.

Problematic Experiences and Epiphany Moments As mentioned earlier, the focus of Denzin’s research methodology is “to clarify how interpretations and understandings are formulated, implemented and given meaning in problematic, lived situations” (Denzin, 1989, p. 11). Critical to this approach is the

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concern of the researcher to contextualize the material that was gleaned from the interviews, and to recognize the themes that emerge from participants’ reflection on the meaning of their life experiences. These meanings evolve from problematic experiences.

As Denzin explains: Meaningful biographical experience occurs in turning point interactional episodes. In these existentially problematic moments, human character is revealed, and human lives are shaped, sometimes irrevocably (p. 28).

Such turning points or epiphanies can be the result of a singular, dramatic event in an individual’s life, they can be the consummation of cumulative experiences or of new insights on one’s life experiences, or they can occur as the outcome of reflection on past experiences. In any case, each of the participants in this study spoke about problematic experiences in their relationship with God and/or their understanding of God. The categories which follow are not mutually exclusive. In the life stories of each of these individuals—trauma, loss, and disillusionment have all played a part. The seeds of these experiences can already be seen in some of their accounts of earliest memories.

Nevertheless, one of these three types of problematic experience seemed to play a primary role in each of their lives, and their reflections on these experiences and the repercussions these had for them will be discussed below.

Trauma and the transformation of wounds.

Of all the participants in this study, the experience of trauma was the single most significant experience in the life of Amy. As mentioned earlier, as a child Amy experienced sexual and emotional abuse within her immediate family. However, during

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her childhood and adolescent years, Amy’s emotional equilibrium and spiritual identity were sustained by the experiences of awe and mystery that were described earlier in this paper. When in her late teens she was betrayed by a priest who had been her mentor, and in whom she had placed a great deal of trust, all that changed. After the Catholic hierarchy intervened, Amy found out that not only she, but several other young women who were part of the religious group this priest had led, had been sexually abused by him as well. It took some time before Amy was able to realize the impact of what had happened to her in this group, under the influence of this priest.

It was a deliberate maneuver by the individual priest to get our allegiance with him by pointing out negatives in the Catholic Church. Pointing out the mass exodus that was going on in the seminaries. Our allegiance switched from the Catholic Church, and we stood with him looking at all the flaws. The thing is there was a lot of truth in what he was saying. And then, when the organization folded which was when some of the individuals in the organization went to the bishop and the whole reality of how much sexual abuse especially was going on, and the organization was closed for a long time, I still felt that this priest and his interpretation of life was like my adopted Church, my adopted interpretation.

And it was only through therapy that I began to realize how much he had manipulated and how wrong he was.

For Amy, the immediate aftermath of this experience was the loss of that foundation she had known in Catholicism which provided her with a language and with symbols for developing and maintaining a relationship with her God-representation. As she explained,

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I experienced such a dramatic damaging, would be the first words… of the symbols that worked for me as a child—the daily Mass, the confessional, the communion, having been for six years receiving those symbols from the person who was also so distorted and self-centered and abusive. The symbols don’t work anymore. It’s like they, what they were meant to connect me to, their ability to do that, the power for them to do that, to represent the divine is gone.

And then later, she added: See, I’ve experienced spiritual ecstasy while receiving communion from the hands of the person that was sexually abusing me. And I experienced the openness of going into my soul, to talk about the sexual touching my father did, to this person who then turned around and sexually touched me, so for me the spiritual experience, I felt that I really spiritually grew in this man’s care for 6 years, and at the same time I was being destroyed.

This experience was so confusing and traumatizing that Amy not only left the Catholic Church, but feels that she can no longer trust any religious or spiritual organization. She is still concerned, that in the right circumstances, she could be overpowered by any religious leader or group she might choose to join. Of this, she commented: I’m cautious of all religions. When I feel the draw to that (Tibetan) monk’s mantra, to the communion ritual, I right away my red flags go up. It’s like, do not give over any more. And that’s still the dilemma. It was really cult like in its power over me.

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Amy is fully aware of how this period in her life had a tendency to affect all her subsequent relationships, saying: “That is what was most damaged, the ability to trust other people and myself.” And yet, she did learn to trust others, not in the religious realm, but through therapy. She said, “I’ve been mainly in rather than out of therapy for the last 20 years, 30 years.” Amy participated in different types of therapy over the years, all of which she found helpful in working through her experiences of trauma. In discussing the value of therapy over the course of her adult life, she made the following correlation between Catholic symbolism which helped to frame her earliest experiences of God and what took place through the therapeutic encounter.

I was formed in the Catholic Church and the symbols and the rituals were very powerful for me. I remember being fascinated with the idea of transubstantiation (the belief that the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ). That, that a substance can be changed through intentionality. It was just powerful for me. I feel that that is how I have worked in therapy. Therapy has been almost a religion for me. I have told my therapist I feel like I am recreating my past. I am going into the past, going over what happened and recreating a frame to hold it. And it reminds me of transubstantiation; I am changing the substance of who I am by going back. So therapy in some ways has become a very religious, spiritually transforming experience.

This “spiritually transforming experience,” according to Amy’s own account, sufficiently freed her from the ongoing impact of trauma so that she could attend college, and finish both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education. Therapy freed her to be open to new relationships. She met and married her husband, whom she describes as “a

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very kind, soft, sensitive person and that was exactly who I was seeking… and in many ways, let me lead.” This relationship was a healing one because she had no fear of being controlled, or dominated by him. Therapy also freed her to accept and enjoy her own unique way of relating to who or what she continues to call “the ground of all being.”

For example, she consciously chose a profession working with young children “because I feel they are the closest reflection of who we are before we layer ourselves with too many experiences.” Raising her own son and daughter, as well as educating young children, reconnected to her own childhood experiences. She continues to experience that “ground of all being” in the natural world, in her relationships with family and friends, and in the process of therapy itself. She commented on the latter, saying, “…therapy is a way to go inward and reconnect with myself as the expression of the larger ground of being.” Yet, while Amy has experienced a lot of healing over the years, she still feels that something is missing.

I do still feel a huge yearning that has no specific avenue for connecting except nature. At times in nature I just feel the awesomeness, the connectedness… I see the wind in the trees that is the breath of life.

The symbols just don’t work. Usually when I am at a funeral or a wedding and it’s in a Catholic Church, I either have to struggle holding down feelings of anger at what I feel is the hypocrisy, or the anger at what I feel is the drawing of people into this illusion that doesn’t necessarily have the substance.

Or else I sit there and sob for what those symbols used to mean for me, and they don’t work anymore. And I have no others to substitute. It is a grieving that I

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can’t quite finish yet. If I didn’t have the yearning, I wouldn’t have the problem.

But I still have the yearning.

The emotional pain expressed here is evident. Yet despite this, Amy understands her goal—you might almost say, her mission—to be that of continuing the spiritual journey whose culmination still remains quite uncertain. This is the way she understands that journey: My spiritual growth has to do with untangling that, and speaking it somehow.

And I don’t feel… that’s why I feel the social obligation of some kind. I have to untangle my own tangle. Because in untangling it, maybe I can put words to what other people also are struggling with. Because ultimately all of our pain is so similar. Someone once told me that she had read the words, “every human being comes on earth to receive and transform a sacred wound.” It is an ultimately spiritual journey to transform whatever the wounds are that we experience—[this] is the growth of what you might want to call God, or the ground of being.

For Amy, a relationship with “God/the ground of all being” is inevitably intertwined with the transformation of wounds, her own, and those of the world. This constitutes for her an epiphany, an understanding of how to respond to the crisis experienced in her life. Through therapy, through her family relationships and connections with others, through her experiences in nature and in learnings from other faith traditions—all these become part of the journey through which wounds are transformed.

And I do feel it’s like a hermit crab.

I have left the housing that first framed that

quest for me. And I’m a crab not yet in another shell. And I don’t even know if I

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want another shell. You know, I was at a Buddhist wedding once and I just thoroughly enjoyed the Buddhist monk. I feel like I’m a world traveler, or a religions traveler. My undergraduate degree was in philosophy and religion. And then when I went to children—because I feel they are the closest reflection of who we are before we layer ourselves with too many experiences. Was it Wittgenstein, a philosopher who said “all words as soon as they are spoken are like worn-out shoes?” It’s like I don’t feel any symbol, whether it is the Tibetan monk mantra, or the Catholic Church symbols, the Jewish symbols, or whatever, are big enough to contain or truly, fully reflect the ground of being. And I think for me it’s just going to be a matter of going deeper and deeper inside myself until I find the wellspring, using all the symbols along the way, but no one (in particular). Like the hermit crab has no one home.

Loss, fear of loss, and reconnection.

Of the four participants include in this category—Christopher, Marion, Timothy, and Sr. Anna—whose most critical problematic experience had to do with loss or the fear of loss, it is Christopher’s early losses in life which make him an exemplar of this category.

As mentioned earlier, until early adulthood Christopher went to church regularly, appeared to be content with the faith in which he was raised, and had some sense of a relationship with God, though he shared very little about this concerning his childhood and adolescent years. Maybe this is because what remains most significant to him is what happened during a clear turning point in his life. Beginning in his early to mid-

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twenties, Christopher was actively alcoholic. During this period of time he married twice, and fathered three sons. Reflecting back on the years following his second divorce, he commented: So from 31 to 37 was the high point or maybe the low point of my drinking, because I was on my own basically. And, no family responsibilities or anything like that. Well, I had family responsibilities. I look back in retrospect and I guess, you know I had a firm grounding in the church and in religion, and what was right and wrong, even though a lot of what I did was wrong. But I think I still I knew in the back of my mind, what was the right thing to do. And through all that time I always paid alimony and child support religiously. I paid it. I wouldn’t pay my bar bill. I wouldn’t pay bills, but I always took care of the kids and their mother. I always did that. And I’m not, I look back and I’m not sure why, but I believe that the divine intervention of God was working in my life, even though I didn’t know it.

It was only in looking back at those years that Chris could now discern what he described as “divine intervention” at work in his life. This follows upon the major turning point his life which occurred at age thirty-seven. His most problematic experience in life, as he described it, had been those years of drinking which had so interfered with all his relationships, not the least of which was with the God of his understanding. This is what he had to say about those years.

It was self-perpetuating and I didn’t know what else to do. You know I would say I’m not going to do this today and I would do it anyway. You know and I would say well I’m going to stop and have one drink, and then I’d be there until you

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know ‘til 2:30 in the morning when the bar is closed. And then I’d wake up in the morning, just could not believe that I had done it again. Yeah. And then you get depressed, and you know despairing and then you go drink because you’re depressed and despairing.

He continued by explaining how he had justified this problem to himself: I remember saying at one time, “I may be an alcoholic, but I’m a functional alcoholic,” whatever the heck that meant. What it meant to me was I still had a job. And having a job was important because it made me understand that I wasn’t that bad. You know I wasn’t the guy under the bridge. You know I wasn’t standing out on the corner with a cup. You know I wasn’t homeless. I was still, still okay: I wasn’t that bad. But I was much worse than a whole lot of other folks too. So, it was my rationale for maybe keeping me from getting sober sooner because as long as I had a job then, then I was okay. You know, not perfect but I was okay.

Despite these excuses that Christopher made for himself, there came a time when he was no longer willing to go on in this manner. The following is his account of the sudden and dramatic change that took place, once he had decided to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

March 17, 1983, which was St. Patrick’s Day, I went out and started drinking and drank for six days. Went out on a binge. And on March 23 I came home and called the AA central office and told them I wanted to go to a meeting and that was a Wednesday, and didn’t go on Wednesday, and Thursday, they had given me a meeting for two days, and Thursday I went to a meeting and have been here

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ever since. I wake up every morning and I’m amazed you know that I drank like I did. I never went to treatment. I never had, you know, DT’s, delirium tremors. I never had withdrawals. Just transitioned from one to the other. I was drinking you know for six days, almost 24 hours a day, and then the next day there was this line I crossed and I didn’t drink again.

This turning point is what marked a dramatic change in Christopher’s relationship with God as well, as he explains: I’m amazed just truly amazed and I know that I didn’t do this. I mean, I mean I just know I didn’t. I mean I did, you know, some of the stuff but the fact that this happened is beyond comprehension. I know that it was God’s doing that got me sober and has kept me sober. Um, when I came into AA they told me to pray and I did that every morning and I’ve done a very informal survey, and ask guys that have gone back out if they prayed and ask God to keep them sober the day that they drank and not one of them has ever said that they had prayed and asked God to help them stay sober. As a matter of fact most of them said they stopped praying sometime prior to that in a week or two weeks or a month or three months or whatever before that. And so I know that prayer works and I know that God has worked in my life to keep me sober. I can’t, I can’t believe that there’s any other reason why this has ever happened. I mean I just loved to drink. I mean I was an alcoholic I just loved it.

Through his experience in AA, Christopher has come to the conviction that “God doesn’t abandon me.” He has experienced a reconnection, not only with an image of God with whom he could relate, but also with his family, with the members of his church, and

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with other people in the community. In any event, the problematic experience of his long-term alcoholism led to a turning point, an epiphany moment in his life that may be best summed up in this comment: There’s an expression in Alcoholics Anonymous that says when I feel distant from God I have to ask the question, “who moved?” You know and, and I’m the one that moved. You know God stayed the same. But I’m the one that moved.

I’m the one that distanced.

Chris went on to describe several examples which are clear evidence for him of God’s continuing care and guidance through his prayer being answered. He prays before riding his motorcycle and believes that God has protected him, and kept him safe from injury. He had struggled for years to quit smoking and continued to pray for this, then one day, he threw out all of his cigarettes…

It was the most amazing thing. I didn’t go through withdrawal—I mean I just, I just quit. You know I didn’t need a patch, I didn’t need gum, I didn’t need any of that, and I’d been smoking since I was 16-years-old. And I just quit and it was, it was, I mean that’s the kind of stuff that happens you know.

When he was desperately in need of work, Chris had a similar experience: I was kind of in-between jobs after I retired and looking for work, and the job I had before this was Executive Director of a community development group. And I remember praying, “God I need a job, you know I need a job, please help me find a job.” And I would ask God that every day, and not long after that the old director who I knew called me up and said he was getting ready to leave and go to Arizona and I had been a candidate. I had been the No. 2 candidate for this

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position a couple of years before that. He asked me would I be interested, and I said sure I’d consider it. And I got the job. That was the most amazing thing you know…

Perhaps the most significant events for Chris though, apart from the dramatic turning point in his life in Alcoholics Anonymous, were those related to his finding and meeting with his birth mother and his extended family. He knew his birth name, but had little other information. So Chris contacted the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Washington D.C., but initially received a letter saying that there was no information on this individual. He said, “So I, one day I remember praying about it, like I really want to find this out God, and I called them.” There had been some misunderstanding in the initial communication sent to him, and now, an accurate birth certificate and information about his birth mother was sent to him. As a result, Found out my birth mother had lived in Cincinnati and had her address and everything. So I went to Cincinnati, now this is 40 years later. I go back to the street, I mean how many people live on the same they did 40 years ago? How many people will even know the people that lived on that street 40 years ago? I go back to the street and where the house was is a nursing home. So I go up and down the street knocking on doors asking anybody if they know the whole family.

This one lady I go to knock on the door and I asked for _____________ and told her the whole thing. She said she died a few years ago, this that and the other so I said okay. So I’m leaving and so I told her why I was looking for___________ so she said, “Oh you mean the daughter!” And she gave me her number. But the other part of that was she had just come back from Las Vegas the day before.

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Now if I had been there a week or so earlier I wouldn’t have caught her. If I hadn’t of left, I mean if I hadn’t of told her exactly—so I know it was divine intervention that, that caused me to find out who she was.

Christopher found so much meaning through this reconnection with his birth mother, and later his birth father. He learned that his mother gave him up for adoption because of her young age and inability to care for a child. He found out that there were many relatives in his father’s family who struggled with alcoholism, and some who died of it. He discovered that he had a sister who joined a church of the same denomination for which he worked. Meeting all these relatives not only provided him with an extended family, but also helped him to understand himself better.

All these experiences enriched Christopher’s life and deepened his relationships with others. He has been able to be honest with his adoptive mother, whom he considers to be his real mother, about his experiences of abandonment by her while still maintaining a loving relationship with her. He speaks readily and authentically about his beliefs concerning the way in which God works in his life, and he loves the ministry he has in his church, and the friendships he has there as well as in AA. I think the following comment by Chris sums up his epiphany experience this way: “So I know that prayer works, I know that prayer works in my life, I know that God works in my life.”

For each of the participants, problematic experiences in their relationship with God occurred at different points in their lives, and for some, there was more than one event that was significant. In Marion’s case, for example, there were two events that took place in her late childhood, between the ages of eleven and twelve years old, and which presented problems that she struggled to resolve. The first of these was the loss of her

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grandmother who died as the result of a massive stroke that occurred in the family home.

As was mentioned earlier, Marion was very close to her grandmother and spoke of her in the following way: She was so well loved by our family, her nickname was ‘Sweetie’ and she was the youngest of her siblings… she was the focal person. And she meant a lot to me.

Even though my mother was there, you know my grandmother, she was everything. She was everything.

Clearly, this was a major loss for Marion, and this is how she described the experience: In fact, we were all in the house in the various bedrooms. She called me, and I went to see what was wrong… and she told me to get my mom, she thinks she had had a stroke. So I woke my mom up and my mother came in and my grandmother was still able to speak. She said to help her get to a mirror; she wanted to see what she looked like. Then we helped her up to the mirror, and then she succumbed to it. And my mother asked me to remember I told you the community that we lived in, it was, everybody was close you know you had relatives there and those that weren’t relatives were like relatives. So she asked me to go next door and get my aunt, this was my grandmother’s sister who was a midwife, but it was somebody that could come help her. And needless to say when I got her, she helped my grandmother get into bed and they called the doctor and what have you. So when the doctor came he said even had they taken her to the hospital she would have died. And as a child that bothered me so much because I just could not understand how God could take somebody that meant so much to me. And you know that’s, you know you’re a child you think like a

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child. And I, I was just livid and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and in fact, she passed that night. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. And I had gotten to the point where I was so upset. To me this woman was perfect. How could he take this perfect human being? And not knowing any better, I always assumed when people died they were bad. But that’s the child in me, and so I had a real hard time with that. It was just devastating…

It so happened that at the time of her grandmother’s death, Marion’s mother was pregnant with her youngest child. She had been quite ill during the whole time of her pregnancy, and when her daughter was born, the baby “had all kinds of problems” and died shortly after she was brought home from the hospital. This pressed Marion’s capacity for interpreting the meaning of death even further.

And then I made the analysis. I said, “now wait.” Here’s a baby who is totally perfect, who’s never done anything wrong, I mean didn’t live long enough to sin, and he’s taking her. So then I can’t constantly be upset with the fact that he took my grandmother. You know I started thinking about it then, so… then it was really deep, and I would sit for hours and hours and think and ponder about this thing. I mean I would think about it every single day, all day… And then you know eventually it started making a lot of sense. So I said I can’t be upset about him taking my grandmother. Well, that’s when I realized that the Supreme Being can take whom he wants, when he wants, as he wants it so then I started thinking about, wow, I had been wrong all my life.

This realization, or epiphany, enabled Marion to reconnect with her Godrepresentation. While she struggled with other problems in her life, having worked

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through this issue in her mind and heart, never again did she doubt God. Repeatedly, throughout our conversation, Marion was very clear in her conviction that everything fits into God’s plan, even if people are unable to comprehend it. Along these lines, she commented: “There’s a reason for everything. There’s a reason for everything… As my grandmother would say, don’t question God.” Yet, for a brief period following her resolution of this dilemma, Marion was very self-critical for having doubted God. However, she was able to resolve that problem fairly quickly. As she describes it: Then it was like, am I going to be punished because I thought bad of him? Am I going to be punished because, you know, I didn’t know any better? Then I said, well I can’t be punished because if you don’t know any better how can you be, you know, penalized for something you don’t know.

It is very clear from this analysis by the eleven year old Marion that she had reconnected with a positive God-representation.

A second problematic experience in Marion’s relationship with God began shortly after the death of her grandmother. It was one that did not threaten the experience of that relationship, but rather the context in which it could be nurtured. Marion was sent to live in New York City with her maternal aunt, following her grandmother’s death. Her understanding of this was that her mother no longer had the help that her grandmother provided with caring for the children, and as the eldest daughter, it was deemed appropriate for her to live with her aunt. Living in New York City was a dramatic change from her life in rural North Carolina. Not only had she lost her grandmother, but now Marion had lost her close, daily connection with her mother and siblings, as well as with

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the loving community in which she had felt so secure. This is how she described that experience: And then leaving, and then going to New York City it was a totally different experience altogether. The religious community there—because the city is so vast, and you know, so large—the people have, and still do have a tendency of not being as warm. So I missed that. When I went to New York with my family, I lived with an aunt who is dead now. In fact it was my mother’s only sibling, and she was as close to us as my Mom was. And she wasn’t able to have children. So the church that she was a part of was warm, but it didn’t it still didn’t have that closeness. And I think when you start getting into numbers you know people “en masse”, you know, something happens and the closeness isn’t there anymore. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the experience, but when I think about my favorite time, it was when I was a child.

Marion spent the rest of her adolescence and a good part of her adult life in New York City. She met and married her first husband there, had two daughters, both of whom grew up there as well. Over the years, she continued to search for a place, a church, some religious community where she could feel at home.

So what I was doing was just visiting various churches. My kids went to a Catholic school and I became very close to you know the community, the Catholic community and I even spent a time with one of the Fathers just talking and studying the Catholic faith. And I think that I was in a period then of you know—where am I, where am I going, what do I want to do?

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I would go from church to church to church because you know I was looking for something, looking for that right fit. I was at the Catholic Church, the church that my aunt was a part of was a Baptist church, so of course I was there.

And then I spent a lot of time in a church that was, I hope I’m saying this right, non-denominational, and it was a mixed congregation, all ethnic [groups], you know, and that was fun, It was fun but it wasn’t anything spiritual, you know. It didn’t fulfill me.

So for one reason or another, none of the churches that she had visited in her search seemed to right for her. She also had developed some familiarity with Islam.

Before they had married, Marion’s husband had lived and worked in Libya for five years where he was impressed with the faith of some of the Muslims he had come to know. He converted to Islam while there, but never even suggested that Marion convert because as she put it, “He was the kind of person, God rest his soul… that when he chose me he chose me because he liked me, loved me, had nothing to do with who I was or what I was.”

Eventually, Marion’s husband was transferred to North Carolina, while Marion remained in New York with their daughters until the end of the school year. The entire time that he lived in New York, he did not attend a mosque because the only ones available to him were those associated with Elijah Muhammed. This version of Islam he rejected as false. However, in North Carolina he found a mosque that was inclusive of different ethnic groups and which he believed to be true to the faith. Marion continued to explain:

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And he started going to a mosque in North Carolina and didn’t tell me about it.

So my husband was the kind of person that you know, as long as I’m happy and the kids are happy, he’s fine. And I found out, I think by accident that he was going to a mosque, and I said you know, maybe I’ll go. And he said, okay. So I went, and then I started studying again, studying the faith, and then—in fact, if you walk around here, you’ll see books galore. And, and that’s how I learned the religion of Islam.

She continued: And one of the things that, once I started reading and studying the religion of Islam, it brought back a lot of memories of my grandparents, and it made me think that possibly they were descendants of Muslims because some of the things that I read and some of the practices were things that they did. And because I was so close to them, again it gets back to that warmth, it made me read more, study more, and then, you know, and then I was just hooked.

When I asked her what practices in Islam reminded her of her grandparents, she explained: One of the things is I would listen to them talk about how they buried the dead.

They didn’t embalm. Okay. They would wash the body, and wrap the body, and then bury it. Well the religion of Islam teaches you that when you die, okay, there’s no embalming. The body is washed and then you wrap them in cloth.

And that’s the same thing that they did. And then when you, when they place you in the ground, you’re pushed, you’re placed pointed towards the east because that’s where Mecca is. And that’s one of the things. And another is just some of

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the religious things. My grandmother would say things like, “you should always start on the right foot.” And as a child, you know, you take that literally because you don’t know what she’s saying so you just step on your right foot… Well that’s one of the things that the religion of Islam teaches you. Not to physically step out on the right foot, but you know anything that you do you should do it in the right way. Even things like eating I mean. We cleanse ourselves with our left hand so you eat with your right hand. Just numerous things like that. And I started thinking about them and I said, “wow, there’s a possibility that, you know, they were descendants of Muslims. Who knows?” Just some of the things that they did. And that made me… and of course you know you love your parents, you love… my grandparents I adored as well as my parents. It just made me read harder and study harder.

Through Islam, Marion has experienced a profound reconnection with her grandparents, with her ancestors, and with the origins of her own experience of faith in God. Conversion to another faith tradition did not take her away from those early experiences, but reinforced them in her memory and in her adult faith. This is how she commented on the significance of this search and on the resolution of that search in her choice to become a Muslim: So the strong faith has always been there, but you know trying to understand if it’s the right faith was a problem for me. That right fit again was the problem for me.

Because even now I still think about, you know, the search and I think about being satisfied and I think about the warmth, even to this day. Even to this

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day. And when I go to the mosque and meet someone and… you know some of the sisters, we always embrace and we say “Peace of God be with you” the minute we see each other, that’s just that warmth of being accepted and being “a part of” means a lot to me.

As mentioned earlier, Timothy’s loss of his mother had a profound effect upon him and his understanding of God. This may be especially so because the experience was a slow and gradual process. She was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease when Timothy was twelve, and following years of continually deteriorating health, she died when he was twenty-two years old. This process severely tested the family’s faith and ability to function in a healthy way.

I think what the equation lost was my mother’s energy in that she was the elastic force in the family and I think that loss was fatal to the fabric of the family… we didn’t develop the coping mechanisms as survivors to somehow replace that energy, or at least find an alternative for it within ourselves. We just simply had the sun ripped out of the sky and didn’t really know how to grope our way around the dark… each one of us were kind of walking wounded, casualty of war people.

Reflecting on what made this long illness especially difficult for him, Timothy commented: I guess my Mom just had the ability to connect, and I think if I could have found a way to talk to my mother because the hard part about HD is that you know it robs you of speech. You know her insight into all of that would have been invaluable.

You know the way a mother can look at you and just know you. It says so much, though, and oddly enough my Mom could still do that but she couldn’t speak. So

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many things were happening in our family that were difficult to talk about under normal circumstances, but having that complex subject matter reduced it to [being] inarticulate. It was just very difficult to sort of deal with.

In a very real sense, Tim lost his father as well during this time. The man had tremendous difficulty in coping with his wife’s debilitating illness while raising four children and working full-time. Tim saw this difficulty reflected in his father’s abuse of alcohol and in his anger.

He had an incredible temper. But he also had a wonderful flip side to him— charming, gregarious, warm, very, very loving. But his rage was just, you know, it was complicated by the fact that he’s an unacknowledged alcoholic. So the rages were legendary, and then completely forgotten. So here you were living with this information and he’s like, “What are you talking about? Are you worried about this? Oh, come on get over that.” When you tried to call him on stuff, it’s, “I’m your father; you don’t do this kind of stuff”…

So this, then, is how Tim understood how these losses led also to a loss of the experience of God as significant in his life: I think the two of them were really my first awareness of God. The two of them together, who they were to each other. They were the primary, you know, they were the first people I saw and they were the first people who spoke to me about God. And um, when one parent, especially that one was removed—I would have been the same, really different but the same, had it been my father who was taken—but I mean with her removed from the equation, everything that I had

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associated with, I guess, beauty in life, just began to wither and began to… and I just didn’t see God alive in that world at all.

And I wondered why, why a good person was taken in that way so slowly and painfully. And so I looked to divine guidance because surely only God would know the answer to that question, you know, assuming that God was actually somewhere out there to tell me. You know that was what my assumption was.

But there was no answer that came to Timothy during these years. He and his father were frequently at odds with each other with the one trying to establish some order within the household with, perhaps, overbearing expectations, and the other trying to take control of his own life and future. Speaking of his father during that time, Tim said, “He ran the family like a business because that’s the kind of mode he understood.” And then continued, And order and structure and discipline kind of won the day, I guess. But then I looked at the world as Godless. I mean that was the time when God was out of my life. I mean there was just no way that that was a world that God was involved with. People would ask me, I remember the feeling at the time, “Do you believe in God?” I’m like, “Well, yeah,” but I mean I knew I was standing on really shaky ground because I couldn’t say I didn’t believe, but I was so angry I didn’t want to give it any more credence than I’d already given it.

And those years, I think honestly, were without any kind of God, without any kind of God presence. That’s in a sense how I made the association, or the dissociation rather, of anger and God.

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Here again, as when at age five he told God to “shut up,” Timothy expressed intense anger with God for being absent or not intervening in the struggles he had to face.

Yet he also spoke about his conflict with anger because of how it affected him and how it could be a source for controlling behavior.

I think it feels cruel to me. It feels destructive. Now that I think about it, that’s the face I’ve put on it, but that what it feels like to me. And I know what it feels like in my body. It feels like a hard kind of unresponsive energy. It kind of blocks your veins up like granite and doesn’t allow anything to flow.

It feels very, very unenlightened… And I know what it feels like because I have it in me. And I’m trying to just loosen the knot of that and understand that it’s something I have tightened, you know, that I have done. But it is that impulse to control or to express power—or to abuse power, I would say. I’m not going to blame it on my father, but you revert to your oldest coping mechanisms when you’re stressed, and I did that. And he probably has his own origin of it.

I look at anger as not a Godlike thing, but I have it and how do I cope with it? How do I deal with it? How do I not act out of it?

Though he struggled a great deal with anger, Timothy also recognized that it played a positive role in his own process of individuation. Because of his father’s inability to provide understanding or support, it took Tim some years to fully claim his identity as a gay man.

During my 20s I guess I was kind of like a bull in a china shop, but I really was the victim. I don’t think I wrecked anybody more than myself. I think I was destructive—how’s the best way to explain this? I was destructive by being

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afraid. I allowed fear in a sense to make decisions for me. I acted out of fear, not pursuing people I wanted to be with, not seeing myself in a God-like light for who I was. I thwarted my own growth… I certainly had some powerful obstructions.

I mean my father and other people, people I perceived as threats. But I mean I don’t have some of the horrible coming out stories that a lot of people have. I mean I always had a pretty good self-possessed sense of who I was despite the fact that I might have been upset or uncertain inside, I kind of navigated my way pretty well.

Eventually, Timothy made a decision that he felt to be a kind of leap in the dark.

His partner at the time was moving out of state for a new job, and he made a commitment to join him despite the fact that he did not have any job prospects there at the time. This is how he recalled that experience: I also knew, deep down, that there was just a grain of “right” about what I was doing. What I was doing was the right thing, but the knowledge was so small.

And I had everybody in the world telling me I was insane, I was crazy. What are you doing? And my father was like, uh! He was insufferable. I mean, we didn’t talk for 6 months. I was like, “Fine, fuck you!” I’d love to come for support and encouragement, but if that’s not going to happen, I will leave. I never felt more alone in my life. I had this deep down feeling that if I failed, then I would fail, but I would be OK. I had faith in the universe, in that moment, or faith in God. Maybe I hadn’t identified it as God at that point, because that was a good 10 years ago. Probably did, but I didn’t feel like God helped me. I was more like, “Just keep going, one foot in front of the other.”

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What I was doing at that time, and I didn’t really see it, was actually leaving home for the last time. I mean figuratively leaving home, maybe for the first time, leaving home, striking out on my own with my partner, out of my Dad’s heterosexual dread of what should be right. I was moving to __________ with a man he didn’t like, and he really didn’t have anything to say about it. But it wasn’t just my Dad; it was friends all who were just saying I was nuts… It was like letting go of the vine I was swinging from before the next one was in sight.

That move to another city and State became liberating for Tim, and led to some resolution of the problematic experiences in his life. It was there that he developed a career as an actor, and it was through acting that he experienced a reconnection with God. Acting became an epiphany for Tim, opening him to new ways of relating to himself, to others and to God. I began, I guess, to experience divine power again when I finally committed myself to my craft as an actor and understood what it felt like to have a character take you over and to allow that to happen. When you begin, all of a sudden there’s this kind of alchemy that happened when you don’t become another character when you act, that’s my belief. You find a part of that character that is you, and you turn the gas up on that so you’re liberating yourself into someone else. But that to me, it’s what—it’s the journey, that’s the lesson that I seem to need to keep learning is how to let go of who I am and I think that’s really only with God. And then there’d been some other moments where I felt really connected as an artist. I’m so aware that I’m basically opening myself to receive a message

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more than doing anything myself. And that’s the letting go of control aspect. It’s like the moments when I’m actually the most connected and the most on target, or when I’m not doing a damn thing. I’m just present, I’m there and I’m speaking out of that moment, you know? And I’m plugged into what that reality is which is omnipresent and much, much, much greater than my ability to make it, or change it, or shape it, or whatever.

This is how he came more fully into a deeper trust in himself, to let go of his need for control, and to rediscover his faith in God. As a consequence of this journey, he was also able to reconnect with his mother, and forgive his father.

But it’s funny though, oddly enough, I’ve become aware of my mother’s presence as time has gone on and I stopped being angry and really began grieving. I became aware of her like an angel. I remember when I became an actor and really began to do what I do as an actor that she just popped up everywhere in my work. There was a side of myself that I had never claimed. I had never allowed myself to feel… I began to flow again, you know—emotionally, spiritually, psychologically… So I just kind of felt that I had been receiving a blessing and that I hadn’t really lost her, and I thought, well, that’s God; that’s a gift. That was an awareness of the fact that I’d never left or my mother hadn’t really ever left.

She might have died, but she didn’t leave. She left this plane but through the power of God or through my love for her or my faith in her, she really was alive and I felt her alive in me—in my actions, how I handled things, how I dealt with things, the choices I made, the thoughts I thought. But there was a part of her in me, and as long as I lived responsibly and honored that, she wouldn’t be dead.

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You know it’s hard kind of talking about this, because I look at my father, and I don’t want to look at him as somehow deficient. He really, honestly did the best he could…But I’ve come to know my father, and I would have loved to have known my father without the reality that we had to deal with in terms of my Mom’s being sick, and living all the responsibility out and bearing that extra burden. I would have loved to have known him outside that situation, so ultimately I do have compassion.

Over time, Tim’s father accepted his son’s sexual identity as well as the man that Timothy eventually married. It is this relationship, in particular, which strengthened Tim’s conviction that God is at work in his life.

I found my spiritual partner. And he has the same kind of simple childlike faith in the goodness of this life, and I want to be around that as much as I can the rest of my life. I mean I love who he is and how he represents that, and how he believes in that and we bring that out in each other. We encourage each other in that regard… I would never have him if God were not in the world.

For Sr. Anna, fear of loss played a greater role in her life than loss itself. This is not because she did not experience loss, but rather that the fear of losing relationships began early in her life, and continued to affect her for years. She recalled that in her childhood, the only one that she could share her feelings with was her dog Whitey.

I always felt that I was sort of by myself. My dog was the one that I shared everything with because I took care of the dog… He was a white mutt, and I used to walk him up and down Fairmount Boulevard here, and sing songs to God. But

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I remember if I was upset about something, I would just tell him about it. He would just lick me like (he was saying) “what’s wrong?” and stuff.

Anna identified her difficulty with sharing feelings with a childhood experience that she recalled while participating in a summer learning program as an adult. This program included various speakers and activities designed to promote personal growth.

One of them was a Jungian analyst who invited the group members to draw a picture of a trauma they experienced as a child. Anna said that there was only one thing that she could remember that she might identify as a trauma, and so she symbolized it in the drawing she made.

I drew myself in a bed, with my bed breaking. And there were stars and the moon, like I’m up in space, and my bed is breaking and my world is falling apart, and it’s because as a child—my earliest trauma as a child was hearing my parents fight. And I got it in my simple mind, because I never talked to anybody about what I was feeling, they were getting a divorce. Now, they never got a divorce.

But when you’re a child and you hear your parents fighting. If I asked my mother, she’d probably say that she didn’t know what they were fighting about, we probably fought a lot. But that gave fear to me and I must have put the blame that if there’s going to be a divorce, it’s going to be because of my Dad and I wonder if that contributed to my being closer to my mother than my father. I don’t know. I never figured that all out, not talking about it.

And then later in the conversation, she continued:

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But another thing, I drew myself with no mouth, because I couldn’t talk about the thing that was scaring me the most. I drew myself with no mouth and I felt my world was falling apart. That I was going to drop into nothingness.

As noted in this account, Anna was not able to talk about her fear of losing the family through divorce, not even with her mother with whom she had a close relationship. In part this was due, she thought, to the fact that there was little time in family life to talk about feelings: Well, it never came up. This was in grade school, this thinking that they were breaking apart. By the time I got into high school, there wasn’t that friction, whatever it was before. My Dad, after he worked at ___________ during the day, then he taught music at night; he always came home late. My mother worked down at the court house, but she always managed to get home, most of the time, by suppertime. So there wasn’t a lot of opportunities, because I was doing my homework and stuff, and we were all doing our own thing.

Anna also spoke about the fact that she and her father could never discuss her decision to enter the Carmelite Order. He just said, “Goodbye” and left for work the day that she was going to the convent and for some time, he was unable even to visit her there. “…it was like, ‘my daughter was going into jail,’ so he never came. He couldn’t come to visit me. It was too hard on him.” After a time, he felt more comfortable coming to the convent when there had been changes that allowed for easier contact, and the bars that separated the Sisters from visitors were removed. Still the two never spoke freely.

When he was dying; when he was in the hospital and I was feeling really bad that I felt I had unfinished business with him… They let me call him on the phone and

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talk to him, but it was very hard for me after all those years to say what I wanted to say, that I’m sorry that I was more stand-offish with him…

And even though Anna felt very close to her mother, she also spoke about the experience of missing her, and perhaps losing her.

And see my mother worked and I was shifted from my aunts and stuff, and so it’s like, I didn’t have that stability of my mother home all that time, that would give me that reassurance. I think I was feeling very unstable because I called all my aunts “my mother” when I was with them, so it showed I really needed a mother, that I wanted my mother.

This early fear that her parents might divorce, that the family might dissolve, continued to inhibit Anna from talking openly about her thoughts and feelings for fear of losing other relationships.

So I think fear and guilt have been part of my shadow side that have made me keep my mouth shut when I should have talked. I still have to overcome that— even in community it was hard for me to stand up and say how I really felt…

Feeling I am going to fall down, fall apart, and insecurity—so if I am with somebody and I didn’t want to ruin the relationship, then I would operate out of fear rather than something else. Yes, that’s been with me, I think. That’s like one of those things you never get rid of.

Despite this fear, Anna never worried about losing her relationship with God: “But I never really doubted God. I don’t remember having a real crisis in faith.” Since childhood she prayed, spoke with her God and did not censor her feelings and thoughts.

Yet her initial experience of life in the Carmelite community was difficult.

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When I came to Carmel, I wasn’t prepared for the way we live so close. So after I made that leap of faith to come here, I was miserable in the novitiate, because they’d take a nap, a siesta. And I never took a nap. I felt like a caged animal.

They’re all sleeping and I am walking outside getting fresh air… And then to come in and have to go through these stupid things—you’d kiss the floor if you made a mistake. We all prayed together, morning and night, in the Choir together; we don’t do that anymore. But if you wanted to leave to go to the bathroom, you had to ask permission. You just couldn’t get up and leave, you had to ask. It seemed so stupid! We were all adults, why do you have to ask for permission to go to the bathroom?

Later, Anna continued this line of thought: “I wasn’t doubting God as much as I was doubting my relationship in this community, I think. This is where I really belong, and so I started praying to God. They’d vote on you periodically during Novitiate, and so I prayed they’d vote me out if I didn’t really belong here. But they never did. So here I am.” And life in this religious community did help Sr. Anna to come into her own. She learned to share her thoughts and feelings more openly, and even experiences of loss became the means for deepening her commitment to this way of life. As she described below: I know I was on retreat in the house, and I was walking in the yard—so I could have been in my late 30s or early 40s, maybe? I remember I had to say out loud what I had been thinking, that there will never be a person in this life for whom I am the most important person in their life. I had to say it in order to realize it and hear myself say it. And then I cried, and cried, and cried, because I knew…

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That’s why when you say you have to renew those vows all the time, you do… I had to say it out loud. I think that helped free me to realize that I am called to celibacy. That’s why I am free to love in a way that before I might not have been as free. I don’t know; it seemed to free me up a little to be who I am.

And also, the experience of living together in a small community has helped Anna to be more self-accepting and less fearful of losing the meaningful relationships she has formed with others.

As you get older you need more forgiveness, because we all do stupider things; we’re getting old and cranky. So the biggest thing in community is forgiveness and mercy. But bigger than all that is God’s love for us, God’s grace, that makes it possible for fifteen women to live together without killing each other. We are all so different. We are all strong in our feelings and passions. But underneath the external, we all love God and are trying to do God’s will. So when the chips are down, that’s what counts. And when somebody is sick, or dies, we are all there for them.

Yet, it was the death of Anna’s mother that challenged her faith the most. At that time, her fear of losing a precious relationship was fully realized, and she described the anger that she felt toward her God during that experience.

When my mom was dying, I was very mad at God… And what I’m mad about is that your faith tells you that this is something that we’re all meant for, that this is going to be forever. So we should rejoice when our loved ones go home. And I was mad that he made us so close—humanly, physically, emotionally, psychologically—that it’s such a tearing and a ripping that it’s so painful. So you

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have these two emotions of—I want her to go to God, I’m willing to let her go, but God it is so hard, and it’s so painful. You have these conflicting emotions and that’s what I was mad about. I wanted to do it joyfully and wholeheartedly and gladly, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Maybe there is not enough room in us to take in all those emotions at once. I don’t know. You have to cry at one point, and you have to be mad at another, and then let them go at another. But I felt that it was so painful. You just don’t want to let that last link go, and yet you know that this is what we’re meant for. So that’s what I was mad about.

And then as time went on, Anna’s experience of this most feared loss changed.

I felt like a midwife. Birthing my mother into heaven; that’s how I felt. After she died I felt, “Ah!” (letting out a deep breath), now she’s there, you know? …It was a very beautiful experience because she died peacefully. There was no agony and no struggle, no bitterness. Once she went into the coma… it was just the breathing getting slower and slower… It was just beautiful.

It is thought-provoking to recognize that in the acceptance of her experience of anger and of this most feared loss, Anna’s understanding of herself as well as her understanding and experience of her God deepened. She summarized that experience in the following way: If we didn’t have a heart, and if we weren’t human, it wouldn’t bother us as much.

I don’t know. But it’s a mystery. I wrote a song when my mother died: “My God, You are Mystery,” and that’s the mystery of God. We are meant for heaven and we should be joyful to let the ones we love go. And yet it is so painful, humanly, that it is hard to let go.

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Disillusionment and the search for integration.

For some of the participants, the key theme of their problematic experiences in life was neither trauma nor loss, but disillusionment. The difficulties encountered by Kaliq, Sarah, and Vanraj seem to fit this category best. Kaliq’s initial understanding of God was greatly shaped by his extended family who founded, and then became the primary constituents of the local African Methodist Episcopal Church. Though the experience there had been a positive one for Kaliq, by the time he was eleven years old, he had become quite disillusioned with religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Due to desegregation, Kaliq found himself in a classroom together with an earlier childhood friend, “Rick.” Rick was white, but he and his family had left the church to which they belonged because the Pastor there “preached bigotry and racism from the pulpit, and they had an issue with that.” At this period in his youth, Kaliq, as well as his friend, had found reason to question their faith tradition.

R.______ had a very ambivalent relationship with religion. And I was growing kind of wary of it myself, because I was old enough to start looking at what was happening in my house. And saying things to my mother like, “well how come Auntie So-and-So can go out on Saturday night and be as drunk as a skunk, and the next morning, get up and come to church and praise the Lord? What is that?

It seems kind of hypocritical. And I was using words like this, I mean, I was… pretty precocious, and had the academic stuff to back it up, had the language to back it up. And so at age 11, I told my mother that I just had trouble with church and I just didn’t think that I was going to go back anymore. And my mother had her hands full, and couldn’t go to church anyway because she had to go to work.

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My mother is as close to being a saint as anyone I know, but she had to work because she had to support us, and so she let me go. And so, on Sunday morning, I would go to R._____’s house and we would play a football game. We would play football, and that became my religion, getting together with R.____, all day on Sunday. And R._____ and I—we became the core of my existence. So then I had an ambivalent relationship in many ways with my family and with what my sisters would call “blackness,” and also with, certainly with organized religion.

Through, certainly through my freshman year of college—let’s say from 6th grade through my freshman year in college, I really didn’t think much about God; I didn’t think much about religion.

Kaliq decided to study Journalism. However, during his freshman year of college, for the first time he encountered difficulty in his studies and was put on academic probation during his first semester. Adjusting to college life was problematic for Kaliq; he encountered racism when pledging a fraternity, and for the first and only time in their friendship, Rick had abandoned him.

I was a very angry and lost young man, with that and with the other things I mentioned—academic probation, trying to get my bearing, trying to find some love somewhere. And so, I actually started to play with agnosticism and atheism during that year. I was very angry and I was listening to very anti-religious, very political music at the time. So, I was pretty lost that year.

From the above comments, it is definitely possible to see a connection between Kaliq’s disillusionment with life and his disillusionment with his God and with his faith.

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And in fact, when his grades had improved and things began to turn around for him in his sophomore year, Kaliq began to reconsider some elements of his earlier faith experience.

So I was starting to feel much better about myself, starting to attract some attention from women, and feeling a little better about who I was. And had a group of friends now, close friends whom I could really trust. And that was great!

So I began to feel better, and I also started to explore some forms of spiritual worship, because, probably because I was feeling better about myself, and I was feeling a little more hope. And you know, I was raised with God in my life, you know, until I was 11, and it’s like so I always walked with some light. I was always aware that there was some light, even in my darkest moments… And so I started studying a bit of Zen Buddhism, and I started learning more and more about Rastafari.

Following his sophomore year, Kaliq dropped out of school in order to pursue his interest in Reggae music and Rastarianism, an Africa-centric religion whose theology evolved from the ideas of Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist who wanted to improve the status of the black person. The beliefs of this religious movement were spread globally by the Reggae musician, Bob Marley. This is how Kaliq described his connection with Rastafari: I was the street corner philosopher of our alternative, underground world of alternative music and partying, and righteousness, or self-righteousness. And that’s when I really started to write poetry to work things out. So I was a big believer, early on in my life; I was a very idealistic political person—being committed to squashing racism, being committed to… not being afraid of being

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involved in inter-racial relationships… I was known as the black pope and I espoused wisdom, and I didn’t work, I didn’t have a job at that point. So people knew that if they wanted to come over and hang out, they would have to feed me, or whatever. And people would come and hang out, and I would espouse whatever… you know I believe Bob Marley is a prophet. I still believe Bob Marley was and is a prophet. And so a lot of the teachings of Rastafari, a lot of the teachings of Mr. Marley in specific—the psalms, all that… So primarily Reggae music, Bob Marley’s music, and then my own life experience and… calling on a lot of things that I learned, that were ingrained upon me from my youth, you know, essentially from the Bible.

During this period, Kaliq was in love with a young white woman who broke off their relationship “for something as silly as a woman’s mother finding out that she was really involved with a black man, and it’s like all of a sudden she realized that she was involved with a black man, so she broke my heart. That’s when I started losing some of my idealism, some of my enthusiasm about the world.” This new disillusionment led to another change in lifestyle.

And in the early 80s, early to mid-80s that was a time when one could actually get a job in journalism without having a degree. The times changed shortly after that.

And you know, you were from the old days, you know as long as you showed some chutzpah, some fire in the belly, and you were willing to go out in the middle of the night and cover a fire or whatever, and do the work, you could get a job in journalism. I caught the tail end of that and worked as an assignment editor, as an assistant assignment editor at a CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City for a

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year, and loved it and hated it at the same time. It is what I’d gone to school to do. It was the ideal situation—I was 23, you know, I was on the fast track to being the news director of a TV station before I was 30. So I was on the “fast track;” I was doing well but uh at the same time, I was working 6 day, 60 hour weeks. I had stopped writing poetry, which was my sanity, which was where I connected with myself and made sense of the world.

Despite his success in this field, Kaliq became disillusioned once again with aspects of this environment that did not fit with his personal values and goals. As he described it, the working situation created an internal conflict that was not easy to resolve: So I was actually a living a contradiction for quite a while… and it became a battle inside of me of what was going to win. The fact that I was 23, making more than either of my parents individually, you know, in this high power, high profile position, and doing quite well at it. Or the fact that I was helping to disseminate a bunch of things I didn’t believe in. And what was going to win?

We decided what was news and how it was going to be presented, and then assigned a crew to go do it. I would put together the people whom the reporters were going to interview, 8 times out of 10, to create the story. And then the reporters would go and do it, and put it together. But the “spin” came out of that news director’s office, and the news director got his “spin” from the manager.

And it was about, excuse me, by and large preserving and perpetuating the status quo which helped make him a rich man.

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I had great difficulty reconciling the fact that I was helping to perpetuate stereotypes. I was helping to perpetuate the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And it was killing me, you know, and because of my lack of “center” whenever I wasn’t working, I was drunk or high, just kind of trying to find some kind of balance.

The long working hours, the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and the discouragement that Kaliq experienced led to a point where he overslept one day, did not get to work, and was fired. It appears that he had been expecting or preparing for this consequence for some time, because in fact, this brought him some relief.

I never really felt sorry for myself or sad for myself losing this position because I always considered it. I mean the thing that I said was, “This is what the Creator intended; this must be the way it’s supposed to be.” So I packed my bags and I left. And that’s kind of the way that I live most of my life.

This last comment, I believe, is especially significant and represents a type of epiphany for Kaliq. It expresses his unique need “to pack his bags and leave,” so to speak, whenever there is a lack of congruence between his sense of self and the secular or religious environment in which he finds himself. At a later point in our dialogue, he phrased it this way: Everything in my being has to be in line politically as well as spiritually for me to be committed. I am incapable of throwing myself wholeheartedly into one thing if it’s in some sort of opposition, or even in a little bit of opposition with the other.

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One can hear in this comment, how important it has been for Kaliq to integrate all aspects of his life—his work, his politics, his religious or spiritual commitments must be aligned for him to truly commit himself to these endeavors. In this case, Kaliq’s intense disillusionment with work in television news became critical, to the point that he precipitated an abrupt ending. What followed was a period of transition and “regrouping” when he moved in with a close friend who owned a cabin in the midst of a wildlife refuge.

This wildlife refuge is where I really kind of reconnected with God, I’d say in a real way. I’ve always loved mountains, and I love climbing mountains, and I love being on top of mountains, and experiencing “us” in context—that we are a part of this scene, that we are, by and large destroying a lot of this scene, and that compared to the grandeur of the Creator’s work, we are extremely small and insignificant. So I think communing with nature, and with the mountains and that sort of thing helped get me together, and get what I call my “theory” together, my life together, my philosophy together. And it was time to put it into practice, so that’s when I moved to Chicago.

This move marked a major turning point in Kaliq’s life. He found new energy in committing himself to writing poetry and in connecting with a community of black intellectuals with whom he could relate. Prior to this, Kaliq had frequently felt ostracized by other blacks because, as he said, “I was articulate, because I was an achiever and an overachiever… why would I be around people who could talk about me as though the only thing being black about me was my skin?” This was no longer the case once he

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began to find a new life for himself in a new city. This is how Kaliq described the changes that took place in his life at that time: I became a man in Chicago. I grew up in Chicago. You know, where I found my first, well probably not my first, but certainly the most influential black male role models. And it’s where I began to forgive my father, and love myself. So, where I got married, where my career, my career as a writer, as an activist began to blossom, as I began to blossom, as I began to understand who I am, who I was.

A part of Kaliq’s discovery of finding himself and growing up included his conversion to Islam. Initially, this began with what he described as “a really strong pull” the mosque that he occasionally walked by, several months after he moved to the city.

Then, sometime later when ending a relationship he had with a married woman, the crisis led him to a sense that he was being called to Islam. Kaliq had a conversation with this woman about this experience and felt confirmed in his choice by a few incidents that he interpreted as signs from “the Creator.” Then, I went upstairs and I cried all night and I prayed all night, and I cried all night, and I read the Koran, and I was reborn. So that’s when I started on my path, my path to Islam. And I was on that path, pretty studiously, for 5 or 6 years.

When I went to that Masjid [mosque]…, I knelt next to Muslims of European descent. I knelt next to Muslims of Asian descent, and from everywhere in the world. And that’s what Islam is about—a universal brotherhood, a universal “humanhood,” right. And that’s the way I’ve always walked through life. That’s the way Mama and my Daddy taught me to be, and that will never change.

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In time, however, Kaliq became disillusioned with Islam as well, not so much for its religious tenets as for its political history and some current practices which he found to be similar to what he had rejected in Christianity—“What I mean is that it no longer made sense for me to abandon Christianity to accept Islam, when in fact Islam has, and continues to be involved or uses justification to be involved with the enslavement of Africans, just like Christianity was involved in the enslavement of Africans.” Despite these difficulties and Kaliq’s decision to abandon any formal relationship with Islam, there was still much that he valued from that tradition.

I can no longer call myself Muslim. I can no longer do that. But the discipline— it was very important for me at that time in my life. The discipline, the rigor, the commitment—the commitment required of Muslims. I guess the impact of it is that now I am a healthier, more balanced human being, more grounded. Certainly prior to that I was a little lost, a little “hither and yon.” And I needed the grounding, I needed the discipline, I needed the leadership, the rigors of Islam to help wheel me in and look at my center—who I was and who I was becoming, and what I wanted to do with my life, with the gifts that I’d been given.

One can see in this comment how Kaliq’s search for integration of self with the practice and profession of a faith has continued to evolve throughout his life. At the time of my interviews with him, Kaliq and his wife, whom he described as “fiercely Christian,” had explored some indigenous, African forms of ancestor worship which they’ve shared with their two young sons. She has kept to a Christian base while Kaliq still considered the tenets of Islam to be his base of practice.

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And so we began to explore a few, primarily West African, and Central African based—ISE, which is a form of Yoruba from central Nigeria, and some Mande language and culture from Sierra Leone. We both need to be more actively engaged in the practices, the active participation in the worship of these ancestors.

We both need to be a little more studied and practiced than we are right now.

We’re working toward it. We do what we can now. I think once our boys get a little older and we settle wherever it is we’re going to settle, that we will be more committed, more focused in doing so. Right now, it is a great framework for the way in which we live our lives, along with Christianity and Islam.

Kaliq described how he and his wife have kept shrines for their ancestors which contain their photos, as well as some scenes of what they liked in the world. On his father’s shrine, he keeps cigarettes and whiskey along with fresh flowers, as a way of “feeding” his father’s spirit. Kaliq believes that his father’s spirit visits him now and again, and he consults him through prayer concerning his own difficulties and questions about his life course. Through these practices, Kaliq has achieved some degree of reconciliation with his father that brings him peace.

In addition to these practices, Kaliq has also found that the Ise belief in a goddess has meaning for him and has helped him to accept and develop his own feminine side: I am a writer and a poet because I acknowledge, not only acknowledge but celebrate the feminine as well as the masculine. And that’s probably part of the reason that I’m not a homophobic human being and why I’m not a misogynist human being, and why I try to be a respectful human being of all people and all

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cultures, and everything. And so I think that the simple acknowledgement and nurturing of the feminine in me has a great deal to do with how I walk the earth.

In this and in so many other ways, Kaliq has found ways to expand his understanding of the universe, of his God and of himself. I think it is safe to say that at each turning point along that journey, Kaliq experienced an epiphany moment which led to the next stage of his spiritual development. He is certainly still searching for the means for integrating his sense of self as a black man, as a husband and father, and as a person who finds meaning in a relationship with his God representation. In reflecting on this representation, Kaliq said the following: I believe that the Creator, that God lives in all of us just like Satah or the devil resides in all of us, that we all possess the power to create good and to create evil, or to perpetuate good or perpetuate evil. I believe that God is feminine and masculine energy, but I believe God is much more feminine energy. Most West African, and actually most acknowledged African forms of spiritual worship preIslam and outside of Islam believe in the Goddess, in the Feminine Supreme. It was with the advent of an agrarian society and of Islam—those two things—that things became patriarchal. I firmly believe more in the Goddess than in God. In his work toward integration, Kaliq concluded: “I am in no way whole, certainly. I think I’m a lot closer toward wholeness, closer toward getting myself together.” As he has done in throughout his life, Kaliq will most likely to continue to draw from many different sources of inspiration in order to better understand his identity and place in the world as well as his God.

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I am wary to define myself as anything more because I’m very wary of labels and classifications and the parameters that humankind creates to include or exclude or justify by the creation of lines of demarcation. So yes, I have studied many things and I draw upon all of those things, but I do not consider myself Muslim nor Christian, though I do go to church with my wife and my sons fairly consistently.

So I continue to look upon myself as a flawed child of God who’s struggling to heal and to work toward healing.

Sarah is another participant in this study whose experiences of disappointment and disillusionment compelled her to seek new ways of integrating her evolving sense of self with her faith commitments. As mentioned earlier, Sarah’s memories of her childhood are rich with religious meaning in both home and synagogue. She adored the Rabbi of her local synagogue, loved leading Friday night rituals in her family home after her father left, and felt herself to be the privileged mascot of the men gathered on Sabbath afternoons at the temple. All this formed the loving context in which she developed an understanding and experience of her God. However, a very long struggle with her faith tradition began at about age 12, when she began to be aware of her mother’s difficult situation in not being able to obtain a divorce from her mentally ill husband. This is how Sarah described it: Well in traditional rabbinic law a man marries a woman who consents to it, but it is his initiative and his act, and divorce similarly is his initiative and his act. She can ask for it. In previous times in Jewish history she could ask the court and the court could compel him to grant it, but it is his act. If she doesn’t get that religious divorce, she is a married woman and she is not free to marry anybody

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else. It’s a situation called an agunah meaning “a chained woman.” And that’s what my mother was. My father was mentally ill. He was competent to give her a divorce, but he refused. He was paranoid schizophrenic and became convinced that, you know, she was out to dispense with him in her life so the last thing he was going to do was facilitate it. When I was 12, she started to try to get what’s called… it’s a Biblical Hebrew word, “Get,” which sounds like the English but it means the rabbinic writ of divorce. She tried to get it, but she never succeeded.

Basically, she never got a divorce from this man and he died when I was 26. So that experience which I just described to you—how utterly religious I was, and it was seamless; the rabbis were the best things since sliced bread. I loved it all, I mean you’re hearing it—and then there was this situation.

In this account, one can also hear her adolescent disillusionment with the leaders of the religious community in whom she had placed so much trust. At age 12, there was nothing that Sarah could even begin to think to do about the situation. However, over time, that changed.

So I was 12 years old; I could not do a whole lot with it then except just be confused, torn, and in pain about it. But when I got to college—I went to Barnard in New York; it was a very feminist campus, this was the 70”s—and by that time I had put together the chronology of the tragedies of my mother’s life and decided that this was one that we could fix. I couldn’t undo what the Nazis had done and I couldn’t undo my father’s illness, but I sure as hell could get her free so she could have a life. And I was going to do it. I remember saying it: “I’m gonna do it or I’m gonna die trying.” “I’m just gonna get that one—it’s not right.” And so

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when I was in college I started to pursue it and speak to the various rabbis, including the rabbi who was very well connected in orthodox circles, very politically prominent… and to make a long story short, it never happened. But the experience of trying and confronting—basically male power and privilege— was very radicalizing.

I remember saying to him, you know pretty loud, and I was a very obedient kid but I was angry—“This is a chilul hashem, which in Hebrew means it’s a desecration of God’s name. And I said, “this is a woman who lost everybody; she is a holocaust survivor. She has two kids. She’s raising them in an orthodox home. We’re kosher. She sent us to Jewish schools. He doesn’t keep anything, and you know, what’s wrong with this picture?” So I realized in a way, that it’s different from book learning—that the rabbis are men. This could never happen to them. It’s like, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament—that kind of realization, that they can give me this kind of response because they never have to worry about it happening to them. And they’re not going to challenge male prerogatives here; that’s what this is. So that was a real crisis.

This “real crisis” for Sarah did not mean that her disillusionment with the rabbis had led to a disillusionment with God. Rather it meant that she had begun to question her commitment to orthodoxy, which was no small matter. This religious world had shaped her understanding of herself as well as of God, and to depart from that tradition implied some loss of self. Sarah explained this dilemma perfectly.

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You know when you’re raised Orthodox, you’re basically taught a kind of domino theory that if you play with any of it, you know the whole thing goes. It’s either all or nothing, and it’s very frightening. What was I to be? My whole life was this. If I lost it, who would I be? I wouldn’t even know how to begin to define myself. It was terrifying… but I do remember saying very consciously that the rabbis do not have authority over women, and I know full well—I know what Orthodoxy is; I grew up in it—that you can’t say that and still be orthodox. It doesn’t matter what you are putting in your mouth or not, doing on Saturday or not. If you say that the Rabbis don’t have authority over some major part of life, then you are not Orthodox. And I knew I wasn’t Orthodox anymore, so what the hell am I? I certainly wasn’t going to be Reform or one of the other… I knew enough to know that doesn’t fit. I didn’t know what I was.

As time went on, Sarah’s struggle with her identity as an Orthodox woman deepened. Her elder sister had married and was practicing what Sarah described as a “macro-orthodox life.” Meanwhile, Sarah became increasingly influenced by feminist philosophy, was questioning herself for continuing to keep an orthodox Sabbath even when the demands of her doctoral study made it extremely difficult to do so. As Denzin indicated, it is just these types of problematic experiences or crises that can lead to new insight, to an epiphany moment. And that is what happened for Sarah.

So I was also studying for orals at this point, and you have this enormous reading list. It’s a huge exam; you study for about a year, and you take this huge exam.

And I was taking off Shabbos, Saturday; it’s 25 hours. And there’s no point in reading that stuff, I mean it’s not like reading Newsweek. You either take notes

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or there is no point. I wasn’t going to take notes because I do not write on the Sabbath. So I am sitting there and basically kind of staring at the ceiling a lot, and was saying: “in God’s name; in the name of what am I not taking notes?” I don’t believe any more that God will punish me if I do, or reward me if I don’t. I don’t believe that any more. So what am I doing? Why am I doing this? And I’m missing a whole day; I could have read two books! And then I remember thinking about it, standing in the doorway to the kitchen in that apartment… I used to make Friday night—by myself—white tablecloth, candles, wine, and make a nice meal; sing the songs by myself. What if it’s a Friday night, only it was like Tuesday night, and the radio was on and I was compulsively drinking coffee, and I’d be taking my notes and I’d be in my nervous kind of frame of mind, and I’d be studying for my orals and it would be Friday night? And there was a sense of unbelievable desolation and loss. Why would I want another Tuesday in my life? Why would I want to lose Friday, to get Tuesday? So that was it. I knew that that was good enough, and that’s why I would not give up the Sabbath—not because God was going to do something, one way or the other, but because it would be a terrible, stupid loss. So then I knew some things. I knew some boundaries about what I would or wouldn’t do.

Not everything was resolved for Sarah through this epiphany moment, but it was a beginning. It was now very clear to her how critical the traditional celebration of the Sabbath was to her sense of self as well as to her experience of God. From this point forward, Sarah began to integrate what had previously been experienced as disparate and conflicting parts of herself, of her diverse beliefs and interests. Since she chafed at the

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separation of women “behind the fence” at the Orthodox synagogue she attended regularly, Sarah began her own means of worship. She gathered a group of women interested in praying together, found a Torah they could use, and began having services in her apartment on Friday evenings, and the group continued to meet together for five years. Sarah found this to be a deeply rewarding experience, especially so because it provided her with an opportunity to worship in a way formerly denied her: “It was the first time that I led prayer and the first time that I learned how to chant the Torah reading, and I always liked it.”

There were a number of other experiences which contributed to the evolution of Sarah’s new insight or epiphany regarding the unique way that she would live out a relationship with her God. While completing her doctoral studies, she met and married her husband. Though problems in the marriage developed over time and the couple eventually divorced, early in their relationship there was much that they found in common.

I was dating Jewish men. They weren’t Orthodox because I knew I couldn’t live in that world anymore, and I thought: I don’t know how I’m going to find somebody because I am very Jewish and I’m very observant, but not in an Orthodox way, and I just fall between the worlds, and I don’t know, you know?

He came from France and he was raised in a home that was pretty traditionally observant, and he had a Ph.D. in Jewish history and studied in Israel at a Yeshiva for a year. And he was about as close to me religiously as you could get. He was observant but he was not orthodox. And it was like I hit the lottery! And I have this friend who used to say that a Hebrew speaking date was like an aphrodisiac,

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and it was; it was. So I felt an immediate closeness to him, and it was just a joy and relief that finally, and literally, someone spoke my language… The feminist stuff was new to him, but he was open to it. He had voluntarily left France and come to the new world, and this was part of the new world. Philosophically it was fine with him that there should be equality.

Sarah’s husband was also helpful to her in the painful process of individuating from her family. It had already been clear to her mother and sister that although Sarah was “observant” of Orthodox practices, she no longer identified with the tradition in the same way that they did. Conflicts began with the process of planning the wedding itself.

Referring to her mother’s reaction that the couple was planning “an egalitarian ceremony” on a college lawn, Sarah said the following: Well, she knew that I was doing things that in her world are just nutty, and certainly not her cup of tea. But to do a wedding—we had Hasidic relatives and they were going to come from Brooklyn, and they were going to see this bizarre thing, and it was going to be her daughter who was going to be humiliating her.

She really, really, really did not want me to do it. At that point, I had been to therapy for a while and mostly focusing on separating from her—being able to say no to her and not being afraid that she would die. I was sure if I ever got her angry, she would die… I stood my ground. But she told me that if a woman, including me, said anything under the Chuppah, she would walk away, as in like, make a demonstration. I did not know what she was going to do. At a certain point, I’m standing there half eyeing her, not knowing what she was going to do.

So I thought: “screw this.” I’m going to get married; I’m not going to look at her.

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She’ll do whatever. So I kind of turned so that whatever it was, I wouldn’t see it… But she was crying, and didn’t talk to me for a few months, which for her, that was a lot. But I just called her every day anyway, and she would make it a quick… and get off the phone, and I would just continue to call her anyway. In that case, too, I remember my sister was giving me incredible grief. There was one time when she called up and she said some stuff. I was very calm answering her, but I was very upset, and when I hung up, I just cried. I burst into tears, and (husband’s name) had been listening to this and he knew what was going on. He heard the end of the conversation. I just said, when I could speak, that I couldn’t believe what my family was doing. He said, “I am your family now,” which I thought was right.

This very real struggle to be true to herself was enhanced by her first full time teaching experience. Following the completion of her doctorate, Sarah accepted a position at a Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where she taught an intensive course in Jewish Studies. While being somewhat shocked and dismayed at the students’ lack of knowledge concerning Jewish history and of the Hebrew language, she found that herself increasingly impressed by their deep spirituality, which in turn had an impact upon her own spiritual life.

I was coming out of a world where rabbis—whatever they were—knew a lot.

They were just very learned. That is the definition of a rabbi. And here were these people who didn’t even know Hebrew and thought that in five or six years they were going to be rabbis—like made me insane! And when you teach people who are very bright and have had mature religious experiences in other places,

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you have to utterly translate this stuff in very basic ways. So the experience of teaching them the stuff that way was really extraordinary for me, and I learned a tremendous amount from them because they would talk about Eastern spirituality or they would talk about their own spiritual practices and what they were searching for in Judaism, and why they were becoming rabbis. And we talked about this a lot explicitly in class. They would ask very searching questions including questioning monotheism. And I’ll never forget this—the president of the place walked by and I was having a shouting match with one of these women: “What’s ethical about monotheism?” So just this radical thinking about everything and learning deeply from them because they did have personal spiritual practices. And what that experience did for me, I wasn’t Orthodox anymore; I knew I was a feminist. The experience with them really started to give me a new vocabulary to think of new ways of being religious, small “r.”

Sarah continued this line of thought in reflecting further on how this particular branch of Judaism influenced her thinking and later experiences: Reconstructionism has also become the locus for something called neo-Hasidism, which is quite interesting given that they are starting out from this naturalist perspective. But they have very much been influenced by mysticism and neoHasidism, and this also started to give me a vocabulary for an experience of God that was inner. I was observant, but it was quite different. That I did. So that helped, and then, my child, I had three miscarriages before and two after him. It was very, very traumatic, and then, God help me, I got pregnant with him and stayed pregnant. And that was a mystical experience. You co-create. I mean,

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there you are; it’s taking place right inside of your body. You’re making all those little connections. It was a very, very powerful experience and very, very religious. Even the giving birth to him. You know on Friday night, because of the light or something, there’s almost something, almost like a feverish quality… and there was that quality in the room when I was giving birth… And I was giving birth at night, and I wanted it quiet, and it was. And I also kept having visions of like the clouds in Jerusalem… And I was euphoric; the baby came out healthy, and all that stuff, and I had prepared blessings and we did it right there.

We recited blessings.

Raising her child, having him home with her when preparing for the Sabbath and drawing on Hasidic traditions which not only flowed from her contact with Reconstructionist Judaism but also were a means of a deep reconnection with her mother and her mother’s ancestors—all this became the source for intimately connecting with her God. You clean the house. You go shopping. You make a meal like you haven’t had the whole week. You lay a tablecloth. You have candles. You so psyche yourself that by the time it comes you’re in another plane. So I used to keep him home on Fridays to save money, but to keep him home because here is a day I am home anyway, at least let me be with the child. I’d be cooking and I connected it with my mother because that is what she did, and I felt the connection even though I was in California and she was far away. I have a very large collection of Hasidic music, which is an extraordinary tradition. That stuff is powerful; it is incredible stuff. I would play it, and at that point much of it was new to me. And

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I was listening to it with fresh ears, and some of it is quite moody and moving and quiet, and some of it is ecstatic. And I’d pick up that baby. We had a large living room and the windows faced west, and the sun would be streaming in, in the afternoon, and I would dance with him. And we would laugh, and would be so happy. And there was one time that I was dancing with him—I even remember the Hasidic music. And I looked out the window and there was a ray of sun coming, and I just felt like, something from the edge of the universe was just…

You know, God, was just happy with me, deeply affirming of my happiness. I took it in, and it was very, very intense. It was powerful. And I remember I took it in, but immediately, or fairly quickly, I said, “okay, but it doesn’t make what had happened okay”—you know, with my mother’s family. This is real but that was too. And it was really a very intense. [Sarah started crying.]

Finally, one other experience that was especially meaningful in Sarah’s search for integration of her personal beliefs and experience of God with her faith tradition took place through her involvement with the Women at the Wall. She had attended the First International Conference of Jewish Feminists in Jerusalem, and while there had heard about a meeting being planned for a women’s service at the Wall of the ancient Temple which had been destroyed in 70 CE, perhaps the most sacred site in Judaism. This was, and is still, considered a radical idea because as Sarah commented: The service was going to be orthodox. There are certain prayers that women do not say. They are said in the presence of a minyan and a minyan is defined as a forum of ten men above the age of 13. So you can have 300,000 women and Orthodox women could not participate unless it was done in that way.

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The women who were planning this event wanted every Jewish woman to participate and did not wish to alienate their Orthodox constituents. So together, the group members decided to omit certain prayers. As Sarah explained, “If we did that, if we compromised, we would all get to go as self-respecting Jewish women with a Sefer Torah, which was a hell of a lot better than being ideologically pure and not going at all.”

Sarah was one of the leaders of the prayer service, and read the Torah at the Wall. This is how she described what followed: So we got together the next morning. I prepared the section I did and went, and we had this extraordinary service at the Wall, early in the morning; it was about seven in the morning. It was really chilly and very cold because it was December, and we had this beautiful service. We read Torah, and by the end of it there were men who saw what was going on and they got hysterical and started to scream and threaten violence. There were police who basically said that “you’re finished.” But we had this extraordinary, really, really wonderful experience. It was a religious experience in the full sense of the word. I mean, we walked out of there; I was euphoric, we were euphoric. I mean we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We were so literally carried away with what we had done and how wonderful it was. And I remember, you know I was doing research and it was a wonderful year for me altogether, but I remember walking around the streets and I just kind of had this almost beatific smile. I was just so happy! I was walking around and I just felt generous to strangers. I felt like I was slightly off the ground. I was just happy… It felt whole. I absolutely felt whole. Because the Jewish part and the female part were affirmed and celebrated. They were not

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going to become whatever it is I am. Instead of feeling like we were giving something up, it felt like we had just knitted everything together. And that, I think is integral. We just felt it is right, it is holy, it is good, it is wholesome.

This was truly an epiphany moment. What had been problematic for Sarah in her interpretation of her relationship with God was resolved, at least for the moment, in this experience of everything being “knitted together.” As is often the case, this high point in her life did not last for long. Though Sarah is still affiliated with the Women at the Wall movement, the group has experienced setbacks and conflicts that continue to interrupt their efforts to pray together peacefully at this sacred site. As in the case of Kaliq as well, Sarah continues to work toward integration of her life experiences and intellectual interpretations of that experience with an ongoing relationship with her God. In her journey toward this, there is no community in which she feels herself to fully belong.

I mean, I’m idiosyncratic. I do cross lines, and frankly at this point I don’t fit in any of the movements either. I definitely don’t. I’m eclectic. It’s also because I am an academic. You think about things. You’re critical and you’re creative, and that’s what you do. It is normal for me. That doesn’t mean just because I think something, I would enact it. But I play with it, and that’s not typical of the synagogue Jews that I meet. So there are a few, but not that I can say that I have a community.

Unlike either Kaliq or Sarah, Vanraj did not experience a major disillusionment in life until he began to think about retiring from his work in real estate and mortgage financing. As discussed earlier, he did of course experience significant losses in the death of both parents while he was still a child, and in his elder brother’s disappearance

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from the family in order to pursue the life of a sadhu monk. Also, another brother died when Vanraj was about 21 years old. In reflecting back on these experiences, he commented: “So those kind of incidents, you know, (you) try to question, ‘Why does it happen to me, or to my family?’” Yet for the most part, Vanraj felt secure in his family relationships and found support in his faith tradition throughout most of his life. This was his comment on what he had been taught in his youth, and which continued to sustain him throughout the years: I think the most meaningful [thing] that I found through the Jain and Hindu philosophy [is] that God has given us this opportunity to elevate ourselves to the highest level possible, including we can become God ourselves or we can become a godhood.

In accordance with this teaching, Vanraj emulated and prayed to these “liberated souls” who had elevated themselves to this state. As he explained, “they were born and raised as a simple human being like me, but they elevated themselves to the highest level possible and became a liberated soul.” This belief and practice probably contributed to some of the discomfort and disillusionment that he began to experience, especially during the last years that he was actively engaged in the business world.

When I was a professional person, doing my profession whether as a real estate realtor developer or a finance broker, the hardest part was the greed, the deceit, the jealousy, and constant comparisons to my fellow human beings in terms of how good I am in terms of materialistic values. That was the hardest part. I think during that time, because everybody else around me was doing things the same way, I believed that is the only way to live the life. I think that when I detached

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myself in the last 3 years and completely retired, then reflecting back I realized that there are so many other ways of living the life.

Vanraj spoke of his retirement experience as one of detaching himself from these prior values which had dominated his working life. Over time, the business world which had formerly provided him with a clear sense of identity and means of success had become more and more problematic to him. He began to feel that he was spending his energy on what was less and less important to him, and he was increasing disillusioned with his work. And there were several experiences he noted that left a significant impact upon him, eventually contributing to his decision to retire.

There was one small incident which marked me quite a bit at that time. Five years back around Christmas time, the local newspaper always had one story of one organization helping the poor or sick or disabled, from December first until Christmas, and then they list 10 or 20 organizations where you can send your help. I did send a thousand dollars to distribute to the various organizations, and I just made the decision, you know, that in January or February following that year, I would visit each one of them to see what they were doing. I did it for 2 or 3 years, but I never visited any of those organizations because I was so busy, so worked up, I said that when I retire I’m going to follow up on this. And I said, “What is this stupid thing meaning business, all this thing about paying the bills and getting a new customer.�

And prior to retirement, 2 or 3 times we went to Mexico and looked at a lot of poor people living on a subsistence level. Many times they were picking up the food from the garbage, OK? I think then I started appreciating what I have.

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Even in India when we were visiting home, we saw a lot of people living in the slums—in the cottages, in the huts—having a 10 by 10 hut to raise a family of 6 or 8 people, you know? And I was so fortunate; I was so much blessed, you know. And slowly, I started getting the message that I must do something different in my life.

Prior to retirement, I’d been associated with a lot of Temple activities, my religious activities. But a lot of those activities were more geared toward the rituals, and much more outside bazaars about the religion. And I heard a lot of discourses by sadhus and monks. I read a lot of books. But then slowly, a few people helped me to learn meditation, and I think meditation offered me the opportunity to reflect on what I had been reading and what I had been doing ritualistically. And slowly I started putting the meaning behind some of the things I was doing. Today my main belief is that I would put into practice what I learned… before I want to acquire more and more knowledge.

So these two kinds of experience—a deepening awareness of the deprivation of others along with a deepening sense that practicing his faith was more important than learning about it—led Vanraj to the decision that he wanted to make some significant changes in his life. While his decision to close his business was supported by his wife and children, this choice was still challenging for him because his friends were perplexed, and did not immediately approve of that decision.

Three years back when my wife and my children supported me to close down, it was a very trying decision. I was making good money; I was bringing paycheck home from my business. I was paying a lot of expenses and other things. To cut

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the umbilical cord of bringing the money home and going blank… And even my social security didn’t start at that time. That was a tough decision, but a lot of my friends were saying, “What are you doing; you are still young. You’re healthy, you don’t have any physical problem. We don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

Despite this, Vanraj went ahead with his decision to retire, hoping to find a new way of being of service in the world. But as with so many major transitions that people make, he found himself to be quite lost for a period of time until he discovered something that provided him with a sense of purpose, with what he described as a mission in life.

When I retired, I was blank. I don’t know what I’m going to do. My wife and my children—“where are you going to spend all your time?” And for 6 months, I really fumbled around, going to various volunteer services—food bank, Habitat for Humanity. And I didn’t get what I was looking for you know. But then, my (inaudible) says, “why don’t you go to American Red Cross? Maybe you’ll find something.” And I did go down there. They gave me a meaningful assignment to work with the group and to train the people. And after three months, there was an earthquake—January 26, 2001. Huge outbreak in India. And that transformed the whole mission of my life. American Red Cross helped me to raise money.

American Red Cross helped to establish a lot of other resources. And we became a team on a daily and weekly basis.

This transformation of Vanraj’s mission in life is reflected in the multiple commitments in serving those in need that have evolved from his participation in the Red Cross. These also have provided him with a deep sense of connection with a God he

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perceives as leading him to expand his outreach to an ever widening circle of communities in need of assistance.

In the last year, year and a half, I’m doing so many projects that I see God’s hand in guiding me, taking me where he wants to take me. For example, the American Red Cross after the January 26 earthquake in India, we Asian-Indian Committee established a strategic partnership with the Red Cross. We did a lot of phone-athons and walk-a-thons and raised lot of money for the earthquake victims in India. Now that happened 10,000 miles away from here. But because of the magnitude and the number of people who died, and the number of people who are still suffering touched me so much, that I’m still involved even after 10 months.

I’m part of the group that is taking a medical camp to India in month of January 2002. I’m also taking another 40 people to do more like Habitat for Humanity work, to work on the houses and the schools in India. Looking back, if I were busy with my own profession, all of these things would not even thought about. I would not even venture. I was so busy pursuing my material goals, that there was no space in my mind or there was no space in my day to allow this kind of work and thinking.

And again: The second project I’m working on is sending medical equipment and supplies to India. I started with my wife in a very small way at a warehouse working about 2 hours a month, where they collect a lot of reject supplies and materials from the various hospitals. We sort it out, and slowly I got involved on a monthly basis.

So we send it to Third World countries. In the beginning, I sent some few boxes

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to India. Then because of my work there I was introduced to another warehouse: Mission of Love. They gave me 150 wheel chairs to send to India for the people who might be affected by the earthquake. All of these things start touching me, you know, that God has different purpose and meaning for me in my life. Today I’m working with about 9 warehouses, and I sent about $300,000 worth of medical supplies and equipment. I don’t care how many years I might have worked professionally, I would not have been (in a situation) that I would be able to do that. I would not have got the financial backing. But I think now looking back, God is constantly leading me, counseling me, coaching me how to get these kinds of resources, and help the people who needs the most.

Every journey that Vanraj took, either with his wife on a medical mission or as part of his increasing engagement with the Red Cross, he experienced a deeper connection with the rest of humanity and with the whole universe. One trip that he and his wife took to Haiti had a special significance for him. Here is the way that he described that experience: About 2 years back, we went to Haiti to see the Mother Teresa’s Home for the Children. I do remember we reached there, I think, Thursday evening and we were going to visit Friday morning, next day. And I was very excited to visit the home. We reached there about 9 o’clock. All the gates were shut. So one of the nurses came and open the door for us. And my wife and I were feeling that they would walk us through the home, and explain their system and how they do. In about two minutes of being in the home in the midst of about 200 children affected by HIV and AIDS, and they were looking for love, so they immediately

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came and hugged us. And that was the first time I really experienced that there is no division between the various races, between various faiths, between various colors and language. That is the first time I really experience that even the 2 year old child, when he or she hugs you, you feel that you are part of the total universe, without any boundaries.

What is interesting about this experience is that it embodied the teachings that Vanraj had heard from his youth, namely that all people are equal and that everyone can become divine. But as he said several times, there is a “big difference” between hearing these things and experiencing them firsthand. Vanraj commented that he and his wife “don’t see any walls—whether you are Christian or whether you are Jain or whether you are Hindu… To me, when you are working with humanity… it doesn’t matter—race, color, religion.” But Vanraj’s affirmation of the shared human experience extends to his appreciation for perspectives on divinity which differ from those which formed his understanding. Nevertheless, he attributes his capacity to do this to a central teaching of the Jain tradition known as Anekantavanda.

“Anekantavanda” means you respect everybody’s faith and belief. OK? The truth has many faces. There’s no criticism of religions. That’s the way I grew up and that was the philosophy. Now, in this country I have been exposed to a lot of Christian beliefs and Christian traditions, you know. And I have read a lot of things in the Bible. I do watch Dr. Robert Schuller on Channel 43, “Hour of Power,” you know. And I read about 20 of his books. I love his preaching you know. He talks about how to elevate your human potential to the highest level, “possibility thinking.” And he draws upon the Christian beliefs, Christian

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sayings. So when I’ve started assimilating Jain philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Christian philosophy, I believe I am strengthening my soul, and my belief.

There is an openness and expansiveness in Vanraj’s description of what he is learning and experiencing at this time in his life. He joked about his attempt to explain to his wife his experience of transformation since he had retired: “I tell my wife, you have to accept me, that I’m being transformed from what I was, and what I’m feeling.” This is something that she has a hard time understanding.” One of the ways that he notices this change is in how he wants to spend his time and his money: For example, in the last 3 years, I do not have any yearning to take any vacation, only to go to the medical camp, and then you do some sightseeing around there.

But if somebody said, “OK, let’s go to Alaska,” it doesn’t excite me anymore. So slowly I’m withdrawing, quote-unquote from leisure or entertaining things.

Second thing, I do not have any yearning for buying new clothes, and even money which I do have in retirement you know. My wife is always complaining, I only want to give away for various medical, social causes. She says, “You’re too generous.”

In everything that Vanraj shared about his understanding or experience of God, it was clear that he has remained open to new insights and that his vision of God has been shaped by multiple influences of study, meditation, and experiences of service to others.

At this point in his life, he has a sense of increasing integration and fulfillment in the choices he has made and the direction in which his life is going. This is his way of summarizing that reality:

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Really, when I was a child and growing up in Jain circumstances, maybe the seeds were planted. And when you’re growing up, going to the school and college and to the professional life—the seeds were there, there might be a little bit of nurturing, putting the water somewhere here or there. What I’m looking today in the last years, I think the harvest has come in.

Who or What is God? How would you define or explain God? How would your life be different if you did not believe in God? For three of the participants, their initial reaction to this question was to insist that there was no adequate definition or explanation for God. Of these, Christopher was the most adamant about this, saying “God is indescribable. Who is God? I don’t know if I can answer that. I just know God is. I guess that would be my answer, God is, and then that’s open to all possibilities.” That is where he preferred to leave it, adding no further comments on the topic. Concerning the second question about how his life would be different if he didn’t believe in God, Chris added quite simply, “Oh, it would be chaotic.

I see people out here who don’t have a relationship with God. Their life is chaotic. It is truly chaotic.”

The other two participants who initially resisted any explanation of God were Sr. Anna and Amy. Though both of them went on to explain their understanding of the term “God,” the following is how they responded at first:

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Sr. Anna: I could never put God into one word or phrase. You think—there’s God. Well, that’s a part of God, but we’ll never know the whole God because we can’t.

We’re human and we’re finite, and our minds can’t take in.

Amy: I don’t use the word “God,” I don’t like the word “God” because for me it is one group of persons’ word for reality that is bigger than that—that some people call Yahweh, some people call Allah, some people call Source of life, some people can’t put any word to it, the Great Spirit; I don’t know what.

Rather than attempting to categorize the diverse responses of all the participants to the above questions, I think it best to let each one speak for themselves. Then, following their remarks, I will make some summary comments.

Sarah: You know, when I was really challenging whether I was going to be religious at all, and thinking in this almost adolescent way that if you don’t believe everything you can’t believe anything. There was much that I didn’t believe any more. But rock bottom, I believe that God is Creator. I never doubted it. That, yes!

[Describing her studies in Israel] So we had Bauer, who is one of the biggest names in Holocaust Studies and I remember in the last class, he just got

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up and said: “Look, this has been a fantastic class.” He said, “I see some of you are religious, and if you’re religious, you believe that God is omniscient, which means God knew everything that I talked about the last 6 weeks. And you believe that God was omnipotent, which means that God could do something about it.

And then you believe that God both knew and could do something about it, and clearly didn’t. So to me that’s Satan. You want to believe in Satan? You go ahead, but not me.” And I remember being just struck by the force of the logic, and I felt it was inescapable. And I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I said, “he’s right, he’s right, he’s correct, but I still believe that God is Creator.”

I was very angry about the Holocaust. And I remember thinking, I believe God is a creator; I think he’s evil, but I am his creature and I am going to continue to worship… To be worshipping God in anger, that is basically what I was saying.

I said, “You own me. It’s like I’m your slave. You made me; I know it. So, fine!

I think you stink. You stink, but you made me, so I’m yours. Okay, good. It makes you feel good if I say it? I just said it.” So I was at that point, a low point, but I never lost, that was rock bottom—that God created.

Well frankly, how I maintain sanity is having gotten to a point where I don’t see God as evil, or as directly intervening, frankly, because if God intervenes one way, God intervenes another way. I really needed to come to a point where I stopped believing that because you just go crazy if you think there’s a God out there who’s evil… or omnipotent. But then what it became (her understanding of God) as I gave it a chance to develop, was a more joyful way of looking at God as Creator and taking pleasure in that and celebrating it. And, you

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know, nature, like the psalms and all of that stuff… it infuses the writer or writers of the psalms. But I don’t think that God is somebody who rewards and punishes me individually, or that kind of stuff, which I did I think as a child; I know I did.

But just in a more peaceful and happy way, and also an understanding that since I am human and fallible and finite, that I cannot just relate to God as a physicist would or an astronomer. So I need to put it in metaphor and poetry. And do I believe literally those metaphors? Would I enshrine them? No, as literally, but they’re absolutely essential, or how else do you relate to something like that, that is a creator, that is something you can’t begin to fathom.

[On life without God: not addressed.].

Kaliq: I believe that the Creator, that God lives in all of us just like Satah or the devil resides in all of us, that we all possess the power to create good and to create evil, or to perpetuate good or perpetuate evil. I believe that God is feminine and masculine energy, but I believe God is much more feminine energy. I firmly believe more in the Goddess than in God. Because feminine energy possesses the gift of life. I am a writer and a poet because I acknowledge, not only acknowledge but celebrate the feminine as well as the masculine.

To me God is love, and we all possess the power to love, and we all possess the power to hate. I think the Creator is one, and that there are many names for the Creator, but there’s one supreme God. And then I think that there are many lesser gods, lesser deities who work with the Creator who have aspects

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over different elements. Or I should say who have control or design over different elements. But I believe that there is but One. [On imagining life without God] No, nor would I want to for a couple reasons. First of all because I believe God is love, God is peace that without love and without peace there would just be more negativity, more destruction, more death, more evil, and more of Babylon’s rampage than we have now. So no, I couldn’t nor would I want to.

Sr. Anna: God is everything. He is the creator, he’s the redeemer. He’s the lover, he’s the brother. I don’t know, God is so much. And I think as we live, we see more of God in people and in situations through people around us…

We only learn of God through other people, because they show forth God’s generosity, and mercy, and forgiveness. First I found God in nature, then in camp, but now as I’m getting older, I find him just in people.

Michael Crosby [Franciscan priest] said when you receive the host at Mass, and the priest says, “This is my body,” what you’re receiving is not just God. What you are receiving is the community that you are a part of… That community is who I am taking in, and who is taking me in.

I think he is more loving and gentle and merciful than we thought in the past. Howard Gray, you know is up at John Carroll and we’re so lucky, we get him for Mass a lot. And as a Jesuit, he always stresses the humanity [of Christ].

The Gospel story must have been about the last judgment, and the parable of the

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sheep and the goats being separated. And he said, “Just picture God putting his hands up and saying, “This one belongs to me.” I love it. She’s mine. This human way and that’s something I think other people don’t have.

[On life without God] A priest said, “Just imagine, waking up in the morning, being aware there is no God, so you could live your life however you wanted.” There is no relationship to a God. Well, I would be pretty miserable! I thought, why bother to get up! It wasn’t a very pleasant meditation. Because God is so much a part of who I am now after living 48 years in religious life, in this kind of an environment.

Without God, I don’t think anything would give me satisfaction or a sense of meaning. It’s so hard to imagine that when it is so much a part of your life.

Marion: I guess I would have to start with saying that God is the Supreme Being, that God is perfection. God is never ending. God is always and always and there’s no beginning, no end. And if you think about it, it’s really mind boggling just to think about it.

So my description of God would be the fact that God is perfection as I say God is the Supreme Being. I mean you’re not going to see God in dollars, you’re not going to see God in abundance. He didn’t put us on this earth to reign down wealth to us. A lot of us have to use the intellect and intelligence that he blessed us with in order to get ahead, and for some of us even using that you’re not going to get ahead. Some of us will some of us won’t. But that again is part of his plan.

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I believe, and I guess I’ve always believed that everything that happens, I believe somehow or another that it all stems from God. And I believe that if He chooses for something not to happen it’s a matter of saying ‘be.’

I’ve always been conscious of God… I can remember once in my later teens, I had a dream and I always remember this. And in that dream I had some kind of problem. I don’t remember what the problem was, but there was this large light and it was a matter if I followed that light, you know, everything would be all right and I would constantly, just whatever happened to me, if I just constantly watched that light, follow that light—to me that was a symbol of God. [On life without God: not addressed.]

Timothy: I think you can see with certain people who are aware, who are trying, even though they may not know they are, there’s a light, there’s a presence, there’s a sense of glow or radiance or a spiritual reach about them, you know, and I think it’s—God is really to me the light between who you are and who you wish to be to yourself and other people, the best part of who you wish to be. And just that radiant space between who you are and what your intention is as you extend yourself to other people. Christianity calls it love in action. There’s other determining words. I think Sufism refers to it as balance. But I do believe that the kingdom of heaven is within you, at every step of the way.

I think anything you do that reaches out in understanding or tolerance or compassion or reflects the acquisition of wisdom is a God-like act, and I believe

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that again God is who speaks out of the best part of our nature, as we achieve that kind of universal transcendent understanding about our shared divinities as human beings.

[Reflecting on 9/11] God exists in the anger and the rage that people feel at what happened but God also exists in the impulse to understand. I mean, if I were to sit down in front of Osama Bin Laden, the first thing I would ever want to do is listen to what they have to say. I don’t condone or countenance that kind of… but there’s obviously a deep well, a belief that’s actually something that I have in common with these people that I would want to understand. I would want to know who they are and why they feel this way.

I found my spiritual partner, and he has the same kind of simple childlike faith in the goodness of this life, and I want to be around that as much as I can the rest of my life. I mean I love who he is and how he represents that, and how he believes in that and we bring that out in each other. I would never have him if God were not in the world.

[On life without God]: Yeah, I can imagine myself without it; I don’t like the picture. I can imagine myself as a cold, controlling, angry person believing that they were really solely in charge of their own destiny, responsible for everything, and ignorant. I can’t imagine a life without God; I cannot. I mean I can imagine the material aspects of what it would be in a physical substance, but I cannot imagine what it would be in terms of the whole totality of my being. It’s just so much a part of it now, you know? It’s what holds it all together. It’s a monumental—in one sense, in earthly language—it’s a monumental piece to

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separate yourself from. It kind of feels like you’re taking the air out of your body, you know, taking that lift that keeps you… with which you sustain yourself, with which you reach out to touch other people or what helps you find good in yourself and other people, and it’s a very hard thing to imagine myself without.

Vanraj: Because this is a philosophical and theological concept, I do not try to argue what or debate with anybody whether God is “the” person or “a” person. I believe there is some super-energies who helps you to guide your life, though you’re doing a lot of things yourself. But there’s a mysterious force guiding you and helps you to elevate yourself to a higher and higher level. In Jain philosophy and Hindu philosophy we call it Tirthankara. This is the person who overcomes the human weaknesses like greed, anger, deceit, jealousy—and he or she is beyond all of these human weaknesses, and very dispassionate. You know our Jain prayer, which is very dear to all the Jains—we pray to all liberated souls. Now liberated souls by birth may be Jain, may be Christian, may be Moslem, may be Hindus, but all liberated souls we pray to every day, in the morning and in the evening.

So we are not praying to the person or one person.

Instead of debating or arguing the concept of God, let him or her look at the flowers outside, and let him or her think—how does this flower get that color.

Why do the flowers out there make this process, and how does this strike his or her heart? Let him or her describe it all. Where do the trees come from? How come the leaves will all fall down in the fall, are gone in the winter, and in the

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spring, again it blooms? It is better to let him or her—own experiencing this.

Talking about God—just look at the trees, look at the sun that comes up so bright in the morning, lights up everything. It think it’s enough to experience the nature.

I believe very strongly, from Jain and Hindu philosophy, we are all destined to be divine, to the highest level possible. It is up to us to constantly practice and elevate ourselves. God is giving the insight to someone or to group of people what they need to elevate themselves.

[On life without God]: I think it would be a vacuum. All of us need some anchor, to put our faith and trust in some super-human beings, OK? Whether we call it “God” or we call it “universal energy.” Or if you do not have that, life becomes a vacuum, and you started doubting everybody. And I think your relationship with the human beings becomes very non-trustworthy. And I think there’d be more hate, more fear, more anxiety.

Amy: My current understanding, when I use the word God, is that God is a creation of human beings have made… and that it was changed through the generations. And each group’s communal agreement is to be honored, including my own.

[Describing her experience when her mother died]: And then I saw my mom’s soul leaving this whole field with all of us skitting around, going from… changing from one religion to the next, one home to the next, one partner to the next. And I felt that that’s where the ground is, somewhere that is under and

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beyond this whole life journey. I don’t use the word “God”, but the ground of all of this is bigger than this one particular journey. It’s like a definition of God. I think the ground of being, and again I think this comes from that book, Journey of souls, is evolving itself. I don’t think there is a static being and I think every soul is an expression of that ground of being expressing itself and working itself out, and growing. And I think that each person on earth has some kind of commitment to accept whatever the pain is in this particular manifestation of being. In doing so and growing with it, it’s the growth of God. And there’s joy in it, when you do it right.

I feel animals, nature, wind, water—all of those have the essence of the ground of being. But I do think human beings most reflect the evolution of this ground of being. Part of why I continue in therapy is to honor my own self as a temple and my ability to really see the beauty of the spiritual depths that are in human beings.

I think that religions are attempting to help people be aware of what is the ground of life.

[On life without “the ground of being”]: If I didn’t feel there was a ground of being that I was connected with, that there was some meaning to life, I think I would be very depressed and probably choose not to live because why would I live without some meaning to it or something? So the ultimate meaning is not able to be contained in words, but is sensed and felt the same way I sensed by own soul.

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So, when one considers the diverse ways in which these participants described their God-representations or concepts of God, several themes emerge, some of which contradict each other: 1. God is beyond comprehension, indescribable; open to all possibilities.

2. God is the Supreme Being; God is perfection.

3. God is the Creator.

4. God is our creation.

5. God plans everything that happens; knows everything.

6. God is evolving.

7. God is more feminine than masculine.

8. God is seen in creation, other people, ourselves.

9. We are destined to be divine, to become “God.” 10. God is in anger and in compassion.

11. The “ground of all being”/ the mystery “beneath all” is more meaningful than the term “God.” Yet, without God, some believed that there would be a significant loss of meaning in their lives, as well as greater chaos, destruction, and negative energy in the world.

Some were quite straightforward with their “definition of God,” while others expressed more complexity and ambiguity. Nevertheless, it was their experience of their Godrepresentations over the course of their life development that provides a greater depth and understanding of who “God” is for them in relationship, than do their definitions.

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How do you understand the problem of evil/suffering and God? When Christopher spoke about this issue during the interview, his first response was to discuss his former alcoholism and how he understood this as a “grace” in his life, in that it had led him ultimately to a relationship with God. While he clearly acknowledged that the multiple experiences of abandonment in his life had resulted in his struggle with isolation and anger over the years, Chris was inclined to interpret his suffering as the result of his own poor choices. One of his favorite sayings in AA is this: “when I feel distant from God, I have to ask the question, ‘who moved?’” He understood himself to be the one who moved, and by his own experience was convinced that God would have been there to help him whenever he decided to ask for it. This is how he explained his understanding further: God gave us self-will and so you know pretty much we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. Um so you know this certainly isn’t a perfect world and you know things aren’t fair and I’ve always said if things were I’m glad that things aren’t fair, because if they were I probably wouldn’t be here today if I got really what I deserved. But I think there’s evil in the world. I mean I don’t doubt that but I think that God gives everybody self-will and we can do the things that we want to do, like what I do is pray and ask God for help, and get me through this and protect me, and protect my family and all those around me and all those folks that I don’t even know.

When reflecting on his experience of social injustice, however, the problem became more complicated with the result that Christopher could not as readily find the means to adequately interpret where or how God might be recognized in these situations.

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You know there’s a lot of white privilege that we just don’t even think about.

Like this whole affirmative action thing. I mean I believe that white folks have had affirmative action for ever and ever. You know there’s this thing about Bush, you know. He would have never gotten into Harvard if it wasn’t for affirmative action, if his daddy and his grandpa hadn’t been there. So, but folks don’t just think about those kinds of things. And I guess the next question is where does God fit into that? Where does God fit into this thing? I really don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how. I think we’re all supposed to have an equal opportunity but you know the truth is everybody isn’t equal. Some people are smarter than others and some people aren’t as smart you know, and some people have opportunities and some don’t. You know, I don’t know why. I don’t know why. But yeah, so where does God fit into this stuff? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Yet despite Chris’ difficulties in contending with the problem of evil, there was nothing that shook his confidence that he could rely on God to get him through whatever difficulties came his way.

So much as already been documented in this paper concerning Sarah’s experience of personal, familial, and communal suffering, and the ways in which these affected her struggle with her faith and her God, that there is little that I can add here. She lost her father due to his mental illness. The impact of the Holocaust on her mother and her entire family created a significant wound that could never fully heal. Her awakening to feminism and to a broader worldview placed her outside the religious community to

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which she had been so strongly attached, and led to a deep fear of rejection by her mother.

And there were other events for which there was no room to include here.

However, I think that Sarah’s most significant remark concerning the problem of evil was to identify it with her God representation. As noted above, there was a period of time during which she was so angry that God had not intervened during the Holocaust that she thought to herself “I believe God is a creator; I think he’s evil, but I am his creature and I am going to continue to worship.” She felt herself to be enslaved. However, over time that experience became transformed into “a feeling of submission to the reality of this immense whatever it is.” This immense reality was no longer omnipotent, as she went on to explain: I remember coming back [from a wedding], and there was a terrific electrical storm, and that plane was really getting tossed around; it was a not pleasant moment. And I thought to myself: “what should I do? Should I grab a prayer; should I do something?” And then I just felt with, I mean, with rock utter certainty that it would not make a whit of difference if I babbled that prayer, that whatever was going to happen was going to happen. And that was it. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. I kind of gave up that whole way of relating, either expecting “goodies” or “baddies.” I don’t see it that way anymore…

Because otherwise it is Satan worship. Somebody said to me that the big thing in going through life is not taking it personally, because otherwise you can just feel that somebody is out to get you.

And then again, later in our dialogue,

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So I do strongly believe in God as Creator and I take great pleasure in it… I have a cousin in California who says she’s utterly atheist or agnostic or whatever, and she finds me endlessly interesting. And when I say stuff like that, she says: “so what’s Jewish about that? That’s not particularly Jewish.” And I say: “you’re right, it’s not!” But my idiom for it is Jewish. And if you read psalms, and you read the stuff in that prayer book, and “the men on tiptoe when the moon is first visible again”—that’s my idiom, so why should I throw it out? That’s ridiculous.

In many ways, Kaliq’s experience has some parallels with Sarah’s. Both experienced an ongoing evolution of their God-representations while being continually challenged with both their positive and negative experiences in their relationships with others. Their tendencies toward theological and philosophical reflection also influenced this process—in Sarah’s case, with her struggle to integrate feminist thought with her traditional faith, while for Kaliq, the appeal of diverse religious traditions to help him heal from experiences of loneliness and disillusionment was most significant. Kaliq’s rejection of Christianity at age 11 was the beginning of his journey to understand and cope with the problem of suffering. To his thinking at the time, Christianity was fraught with hypocrisy, and he found it to be of no help with the problems he was encountering in his family life. Throughout his youth and adulthood, Kaliq continued to search for, discover, and often leave behind religious philosophies that helped him to make sense of his own, as well as the sufferings of others. Unlike Sarah, he did not experience a time in which he thought of God as evil, but as mentioned, he did believe that “God lives in all of us just like Satah [sic] or the devil resides in all of us.” Domination of women and

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domination of the powerful over the weak or over “outsiders” were the particular evils of humanity that disturbed him.

During the second interview, Kaliq spoke about three events that continued to impact his understanding of God and the problem of evil or suffering. In the same year, Kalig experienced the following: his life-long friend, R., died in a tragic fall from a cliff, with his body not found until one month later on a river bank, Kaliq’s mentor in African Studies and poetry died of an illness, and Kaliq himself was working in New York City at the time of the 9/11 tragedy. Caught on a subway train near the twin towers during the attack, Kaliq described the following: So the conductor just starts yelling, “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I can’t hear the two-way!” And so everything becomes deadly quiet. And he speaks on the twoway, and he says, “You’ve got to get us out of here; you’ve got to get us out of here. We’ve been down here for a half hour, you’ve got to get us out of here!”

And the guy on the two-way says, “Yes, you probably have 15 minutes of breathable air left.” We hear that clear as a bell. So now people are weeping or crying; people are hyperventilating, having panic attacks. People are stunned, dazed. And I’m standing by the door—I’ve been standing all this time—I’m standing by the door and I’m breathing heavily, breathing deeply I should say, just trying to keep my composure. I’m meditating a bit, and I’m praying a bit about, you know—“well, if it’s your will.” But mostly, I’m trying to remain calm, remain composed. And I’m looking to help out where I can.

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Eventually, the passengers were evacuated through the Wall Street station, but there was so much dust and debris that it was impossible for them to orient themselves.

Kaliq continued: And, I thought at the time, I thought we were inside a large building where the lights had been knocked out of because I couldn’t see the sun. In the middle of the morning on a beautiful day, I couldn’t see the sun. Actually, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. And so, all of us were covered in death; we were covered in death.

In a very real sense, that year and some years to follow were “covered in death” for Kaliq. He spoke about the fact that the deaths of two very significant people in his life led to a period of self-centeredness and that “exorcising this pain in the unhealthy manner that I did had also to do with questioning my spirituality, questioning my place and position with the Creator.” In the end, Kaliq explained his belief that somehow God is involved in this experience of death. Speaking of his friend, he said: I mean I have to believe that the Creator wanted R. to come home, you know?

But it’s certainly not my first choice, but I’m not writing the script. But surely that’s the only, that’s the only thing I know. That’s the only thing that I can rest on because all the rest of it makes me cry, makes me sad, makes me quiet, you know.

When asked what had brought him to this understanding, Kaliq said, “Certainly it was something that was introduced to me in my youth, but then I abandoned all of those teachings for some time in my teens, early adult years.” At that moment, he suddenly recalled how upset he had been as a boy when his sister gave birth to a child though she

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was not married. Kaliq recalled his mother objecting to the notion of his being considered illegitimate or a “bastard,” saying: “This child is ours; this child is God’s.

This child is a part of our family, and this child is none of those things and this child will be loved.” As it turned out, Kaliq adored his nephew, and now looking back he understood what his mother was trying to say—that God is present in every situation. He found this thought to be consoling, and it appeared to help him accept what he could not explain about the problem of God and “evil.”

In reflecting on her own experiences of suffering, Sr. Anna commented, “whenever I hear about other people sufferings, mine seems so ordinary.” She frequently reiterated the fact that she “never really doubted God,” and that none of her struggles had ever led to a crisis of faith.

I don’t remember having a real crisis in faith. I may have it at some time yet… I think my faith is going to be tested on my deathbed or some time before that… I want to stand before God and have him say: “Well done, good and faithful servant,” that sort of thing. And I think my last temptation is going to be that God is going to say, even now, that you made a mistake. “You didn’t do the right thing. You didn’t do my will, because you didn’t follow your real vocation.”

That would really devastate me. You know, this life takes a lot of faith. You believe in prayer, but you don’t see the fruits of prayer.

So even when Anna imagines the possibility of a crisis of faith, she frames it as a temptation without real substance because her entire way of life has been rooted in prayer and in trusting what one cannot actually see.

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As mentioned earlier, the one experience that was most challenging for Anna was the death of her mother. It was the experience of being separated from someone she loved so much that led to anger with God that this kind of “tearing apart” was part of the human experience. It was through the guidance of her own faith tradition that she was able to come to terms with this dilemma. By associating the experience of death with the life and death of Christ, Anna could experience such loss as a part God’s plan.

I want her to go to God, I’m willing to let her go, but God it is so hard, and it’s so painful. You have these conflicting emotions and that’s what I was mad about…

And yet, God became human, and he went through all that. So that’s the way he worked it out; that’s the way he planned it to be. If we didn’t have a heart, and if we weren’t human, it wouldn’t bother us as much.

Anna also held to an understanding of how suffering could be “redemptive,” that is that it could in a mysterious way be helpful to others. She reflected on this as she recalled the suffering of an aunt who also had been a nun. Following a nervous breakdown, her aunt was sent to a mental health facility where she was extremely lonely, and never had the opportunity to return to the community life that previously meant so much to her. Anna thoroughly believed that her aunt’s suffering was not without meaning and purpose.

Because of my piety, I said, “Mom it’s making her a saint. Did you ever hear her complain or criticize?” “No.” She was just so grateful for anybody who did something for her. Just the idea that you gave your life to God and now you ended up in a hospital where you can’t even get to Mass! But I was her niece, and

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probably the fact that she knew I was interested in religious life—I’m sure that she prayed for me and so I felt that maybe she won the graces that I needed.

This notion that the prayer and struggle of one individual can bring about good for another was in so many ways the “ground” on which Anna had built her life’s work of prayer and silence. In the final analysis, however, everything for her is mystery. As noted earlier, she wrote a song, “My God, You are Mystery.” For Anna, life and death, suffering and joy are intermingled in the mystery of her God. Marion experienced a life changing conflict regarding the problem of suffering when at age 11, her grandmother died. As has been discussed, she could not reconcile her grandmother’s death with the fact that she was such a spiritual, loving woman.

However, after a period of intense reflection, Marion came to the conclusion that everything that happens has to be part of God’s plan even if it did not make any sense to her. In fact, this is what she had been taught, but evidently, it was something that she needed to relearn through her own life experience: “There’s a reason for everything.

“There’s a reason for everything… As my grandmother would say, don’t question God.” This belief became the bedrock of Marion’s faith in God; something she turned to again and again in her comments. Referring to our experience in the world, she commented: It’s not a place for perfection. It’s not a place, I mean everybody’s not going to be wealthy, and being wealthy doesn’t mean that you’re better off than the poor person. And being poor doesn’t mean that you’re godly and being wealthy doesn’t mean that you’re ungodly. You know it’s a hodgepodge. It’s a mix of all of that and it’s a mix of all of that for a reason. And that reason is something that only God knows, we don’t know. So again I guess I would say and I know I

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would say that it’s all in the master’s plan. It’s the plan of the Supreme Being… I mean you’re not going to see God in dollars; you’re not going to see God in abundance. He didn’t put us on this earth to reign down wealth to us. A lot of us have to use the intellect and intelligence that he blessed us with in order to get ahead, and for some of us even using that you’re not going to get ahead. Some of us will some of us won’t. But that again is part of his plan.

And again, Well I believe, and I guess I’ve always believed that everything that happens, I believe somehow or another, that it all stems from God. And I believe that if he chooses for something not to happen it’s a matter of saying ‘be.’ So 9/11 happened for a reason. In his infinite wisdom if he didn’t want it to happen you know he would have just stopped it. You know it’s just like the birth of Jesus. It was just a matter of saying and planting the seed in Mary without a father. And you know he’s all powerful. He can do whatever he chooses whenever he chooses. And there’s a reason for everything. Of course we don’t know what that reason is or why. But I believe that there’s a reason for every single thing that happens.

Even when other participants came to a similar conclusion that somehow God makes sense out of what appears to be senseless tragedies, their struggle to understand or explain this was evident. For Marion, it was never a question. If anything, she saw these experiences as a “test” of faith, one that would influence whether or not one would eventually enter heaven.

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And I think a lot of the things that happen are a test for us. Because just think about it. He allowed Satan to be, and that’s something that all he had to do was simply say ‘not to be.’ So he allowed Satan to be and as a result some of us will follow Satan, but in the end you know that’s, that’s—you either go up or down and I just pray I’m not one of the ones that go down.

Just think about Lazarus in the bible with his affliction. Think about Job. And these were people that God chose for this affliction for a reason. And eventually, if we make it to heaven, we’ll probably see them. And I pray I make it.

As an example of “being tested,” Marion spoke about her family’s difficulty in accepting the serious illness of her youngest sister. She was diagnosed with “Lou Gehrig’s” disease, and was experiencing quite a few medical consequences from it.

Marion said that her older brother, “was really upset because she’s the youngest of us and his mind you know she shouldn’t be going before the rest of us” and that the other siblings were also finding it difficult to accept. But Marion commented that “she’s probably the one who can deal with it more so than the rest of us because she was the strongest. And to this day, she’s at home and she’s going into her eighth year with it…”

Her sister’s ability to come to terms with her suffering is what inspired Marion the most: And then when I look at her I think about how strong she is and was and I think in my mind, and maybe I’m wrong, in my mind and my way of thinking that’s why she’s the one who’s suffering. In reality she’s not suffering but she can deal with it more so than the rest of us. And that was the thing that stopped me from being like my older brother.

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And after some thought, she adds: We’re blessed that it’s good, good nursing care she’s getting and she can blink once for yes and twice for no and that’s how we talk to her. But she can understand everything we say, I mean, but she just can’t verbalize it. But I think again that’s the will of God. I believe that. And I believe because she was the strongest. And maybe it’s something for us for the other the five us, maybe it’s a lesson for us maybe it’s something that we should pay attention to, and maybe it’s something in our lives that we need to rectify because of this. I believe that. I’m probably the only one in my family who does want to believe that. But I believe that.

For Timothy, coming to terms with suffering had more to do with the intention of the people involved in it than with any intentions of God. When he reflected on the 9/11 tragedy, this is what he concluded: But I really think that the people who died, this might sound crazy, but it’s my belief—the people who died volunteered to die and they knew they were going to go a long time ago. And I think it’s the only way I can come up with to understand and rationalize or honor what seems to be a random, senseless act of violent destruction. I think that these people on some level knew, on a soul level, a divine level that they would be instruments for peace ultimately and that their death. My belief in God now tells me that their death will not be in vain. It’s easy for me not attending 5,600 memorial services, from the comfort of my distance to say that. But their anger is not my anger, and I can empathize, but my grief process is different than theirs.

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I think, September 11th was enormous for me. It was an enormous. The impact we’re gonna be feeling for generations to come. But my honest belief is that this will get worse before it gets better. The World Trade Center wasn’t the worst of what we’re gonna experience. I think we’re gonna have worse but I think it was the beginning of the awakening that will help us hopefully turn to each other instead of against each other. God only knows what that will bring.

Timothy’s experience of 9/11 was intimately connected with the death of his brother, which occurred just prior to that event. Reflecting back on that experience, Tim recalled that: We really didn’t have a chance to grieve or mourn him, and then September 11th happened, and I was just filled, I think, with this pot full of anger at God, at my brother, and I think, not only for the fact that this happened but because of the work I now knew I needed to do in order to get to the place I needed to be… because there is no explanation. What other explanation could there be for this craziness, for this rage, for the extent of our, for the lack of a better word, malfeasance? Our need to change must have been so great to require such a sacrifice.

The deaths of his brother and the deaths of all the people who died during 9/11, and in fact the deaths of all people who died during all of history’s tragedies made sense to Tim only if understood as some kind of choice that might lead to the betterment of others, of the human race. In this perspective, he had been encouraged by his study of metaphysics and the several spiritual guides that he had turned to for guidance over the years. As he explained this further:

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On the metaphysical level, we exist in soul space as we exist in physical space. I think our souls have chosen this body, I think our souls have chosen this path, and the rest. There’s a wonderful line in Shakespeare, I can’t remember it all, but basically what it says is, “it’s destiny that shapes our ends, roughhew it though we may.”

So while we occupy our physical body, we’re often divorced from our ability to live in soul space. So I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying figure out how to make that connection. So it’s my belief that on this linear, on this sort of metaphysical plane, there was concord somewhere, there was an agreement, there was a pact made among the souls of the people who died, to go, and I think this was written, or maybe not written, spoken a long time ago. I mean, it’s why stories about the Ark were written, why plaques came, you know, in a sense there’s this tremendous destruction and out of that destruction there is always, always salvation or a rebirth of some kind.

Timothy readily acknowledged that this understanding was for him an attempt to explain what was essentially unexplainable. It fit well with his concern to be a healing presence in the face of conflict. As he said earlier: The idea of healing and what that means, and healing conflict—that doesn’t mean making it go away, but healing to me is kind of—r ather than looking at what’s wrong, look at what’s right and see what falls away. Once you’ve got that picture, and then really put your energy there. You know it’s a reverse, it’s a paradigm shift for me, but I think it’s a necessary one.

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In the final analysis, it was this perspective which provided Tim with a sense of meaning and purpose within chaos. As he concluded for himself: The simplest explanation for why I embraced that was because I thought—you know, I’m going out on a limb; I think we all have an impulse to order, systematize, categorize, and that was my attempt, I think, to get my head around all this.

For Vanraj, suffering and the problem of evil was an expected part of life. He did not try to explain it so much as to accept it, even as it did cause some temporary questioning about where God might be in it.

Sometime when I experience a tremendous amount of difficulty in my personal or professional life or when I lost some loved ones, sometime I do have some questions or doubts about the concept of God. However, that’s more like temporary phenomena. Again, after the turbulence, my mind gets settled, my life gets settled, and again I go back to the fundamental thought—there’s something like God in the universe.

Vanraj definitely saw more good in the world than evil. He calmly recalled the deaths of his parents and one of his brothers, as well as the loss of a brother who left home to become a monk and whom he never saw again. While the losses were very real, the more salient experiences for him was the care provided by his older brothers, his ability to go to college and establish a professional life, and the relationships with his wife and children. He commented that: “reflecting back at my age now, I feel that God has a meaning for everything. And when you need him most, he does help you in a very mysterious way.”

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And again, Well during my professional life, in my realistic work in a business, I had a lot of quote-unquote conflicting challenges. And I got so frustrated you know, when there was a question of money that we might lose because of the laws and everything. I did question, “If there is a God, why does God want to hurt me so badly?” But down the road when I think of those things today—God has a purpose; God has a meaning. And that’s how I resolve it.

Since his retirement, Vanraj discovered meaning in reaching out to those who were suffering. Rather than question why there were so many crises that caused physical and mental suffering, his goal was to find ways of alleviating these problems through his work with the Red Cross and other medical assistance programs. For him, it was a core truth that the suffering of others was an invitation, a call to respond to that need for which there were numerous possibilities.

Instead of asking why God does this or God does that, I always remember Mother Theresa who said they asked Mother Theresa in India, how many babies are you going to take care of? And Mother Theresa said, “This is the baby I have in my hand; it is the only one I care about.” She sees the face of Jesus in this one, and “that is the only thing I am worrying about.” Look at what Mother Theresa did; we are “doubting Thomases.” Who knew 40 years back that Mother Theresa was going to have so many homes? Nobody knew!

Finally, Amy is clearly one of the participants who had thought very deeply about the problem of evil and suffering. Most of her reflections evolved from her own struggle to come to terms with the abuse she had experienced throughout her childhood and

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adolescence. One of the first issues she discussed was how she had come to terms with the conflictual relationship she had with her mother.

My mother at the age of 30 was pregnant with her 5th child in a house that was horribly damaged and her husband was in the hospital for 6 months. And I did address with her in the hospital in the last few months of her life. I said, “Mom, how did you do that? How did you get through that?” And for the first time in my life, I saw tears come down her face, and she said, “What else could I do? I decided that no matter what was going on, I was still going to have fun and so were my children.” And for the first time I saw that what I did not like about my Mom, which was, how can you be drinking and laughing and partying with so much pain all around? How can you have money for cigarettes and alcohol when you don’t have money for the kids’ lunch money, and the nuns at school are pitching in so that we can have our books, and our lunch, and our uniforms. How can you do that? That what I felt was irresponsible, I finally saw was she was going for a good, she was going for the ability to laugh.

This capacity to recognize that not only her mother, but all people are “going for a good” even as they were causing pain for themselves and others provided Amy with a sense of peace even in the midst of struggle. As did Timothy, Amy firmly believed that she had in some sense chosen to experience the problematic events of her life and that through them she had gained strength and was given a purpose that benefits herself and others.

I heard a lot about reincarnation. But this book [Journey of Souls] was the first one that really gave me, I’m sure, the idea that as human beings we have the

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body, but who we are is really our spirit because when we die the spirit is gone, but the body is still here. And this was an exploring of what happens between the reincarnations? When we die the choice would be to stay with the ground of all being, with the source of life or maybe come into another form, and how we might choose and why we might choose to come back. I found it absolutely fascinating! And I found that in some ways what I felt from reading that book is that instead of just being the victim for what I experienced both with family of origin and with the Catholic Church abuse and neglect that I experienced. I think I signed onto this on some level. I think there is a part of me that feels it’s OK, and I’m alright. I don’t know; I’m still dealing with it. But it had an effect on me in saying I don’t think all of this is just accident or just victimization. I think by getting my voice and speaking it, I’m doing something, that my soul feels good to speak for the many people who can’t speak, I don’t know; there is this thing about, a feeling of empowerment that I’ve gotten from that book [Journey of souls] that says maybe I am doing what I came here to do. Whatever the soul is that chose to come into this body, had some purpose and I think that the purpose was to get through it and be able to speak the truth of it.

Through her life experience as well as through what she had learned from selfstudy, Amy found joy and suffering to be fully intertwined and both a necessary part of one’s journey. Unique to her was the belief that these experiences contributed not only to one’s own growth but to the evolution of “the ground of being” or God. I think all human beings have pain and suffering and it is not going to end until we pass on. Not that we don’t have joy. Not that we can’t laugh while we’re in

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it. To me the trick is to be able to enjoy your life with the pain and suffering. If I get overwhelmed by the pain, I’ve lost the balance that I need. So, pain and suffering is an inherent part of being. I think every soul is an expression of that ground of being expressing itself and working itself out, and growing. And I think that each person on earth has some kind of commitment to accept whatever the pain is in this particular manifestation of being. In doing so and growing with it, it’s the growth of God. And there’s joy in it, when you do it right.

Ultimately all of our pain is so similar. It’s just the… someone once told me that she had read the words, “Every human being comes on earth to receive and transform a sacred wound.” I found that very interesting in that we are all sacred beings. It is an ultimately spiritual journey to transform whatever the wounds are that we experience is the growth of what you might want to call God or the ground of being.

Just as there were different and contradictory understandings or explanations of the symbol “God” among the participants, there was a corresponding diversity in their attempts to understand suffering, death, and evil in the light of their God-representation.

Among all of them, there was a common intuition that somehow, ultimately everything that happens has some meaning, makes sense in the final scheme of things. Yet there understanding of how this was so varied greatly: 1. Suffering is the result of our self-will; a misguided “going for good.”

2. Suffering is the consequence of the fact that Satan as well as God lives in each of us.

3. Suffering is a test or lesson for us.

4. Suffering is a part of God’s plan, whose purpose we do not understand.

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5. Suffering is not caused by God; God is not omnipotent.

6. Suffering is chosen as a means to bring healing or peace to others.

7. Suffering can transform us; can lead us to God. 8. Suffering is an inherent part of existence.

9. Every human being is called to receive and transform “a sacred wound.” In doing so, this leads to the growth of “God” or “the ground of all being.”

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Chapter V

Discussion and Conclusions Summary of Results There are five key outcomes of this study that are indicated by the data described in the previous chapter. These five results can be summarized as follows: 1. From early childhood, each of the participants in this study was provided with some type of God-representation/relationship based on their cultural and religious environment.

Even though all the participants ascribed to some form or religious faith or philosophy, it is striking that each one of them grew up in an environment which taught them about God within the framework of a particular religious tradition, and that none grew up in an atheist or agnostic household. Some, like Sr. Anna and Christopher found the Christian tradition of their childhood to provide the primary source for their Godrelationship in adulthood. Sarah and Vanraj, while remaining Jewish and Jain respectively, adapted or borrowed from other traditions as needed to fit their life experiences. Others—Amy, Kaliq, Marion and Timothy—either adopted new faith traditions or simply abandoned the one they had known in order to remain true to their mature sense of self, changing life circumstances, and evolving experience of God.

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2. The unique quality of the participants’ earliest experiences with their Godrepresentation/relationship continued to play a role in the evolution of their experience of God following childhood.

The critical issue here is that whatever the participants’ earliest experiences had been with their God-representation/relationship, this did not remain unchanged or static throughout their lives. Whatever the initial experience had been, the representation or relationship with “God” evolved as needed in order to respond to the individual’s changing sense of self or the world. For example, as noted previously both Amy and Anna’s first associations with God had to do with emotional experiences of awe and mystery. For Amy, this began with the discovery that a carrot comes out of the ground and not the refrigerator, and for Anna with the religious processions with the Eucharist in her local church. Both of them spoke about their experiences in “Nature” as well. For Amy, this became a sustaining force in her life-long relationship with “the ground of all being,” once “the symbols” of her Catholic tradition no longer worked for her. In the case of Anna, it was yet another realm in addition to private prayer, the liturgy of the Church, and her relationships with others—all of which reinforced a sense of mystery through which she experienced a relationship with her God. Kaliq, Sarah, Marion, and Vanraj all described vivid memories of the Christian, Jewish, and Jain communities which had been so integral a part of their childhood years.

For Kaliq, the African Methodist Episcopal congregation to which he belonged consisted primarily of his own extended family members. As his poem declared, “I was made at St. Stephen’s church on choir pews behind an ageless pulpit.” So even though he rejected Christianity at age 1l, the need for a faith community led him to continually

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widen his circle of belonging and to experience a God who was more and more inclusive—black and white, male and female, East and West in description. His search led him full circle back to family roots and to the building of an altar honoring his father.

For Marion this line of development was very direct. The memories she had of the “warm” Christian community she belonged to as a child set her on a search to recover that experience in adulthood. She never found it among the various Christian denominations that she visited. However, she rediscovered the God she had known there by a journey that led her to Islam. Becoming a Muslim not only enabled her to reconnect with her grandparents who kept practices associated with Islamic tradition, but also extended her family through the warm connection she experienced with Muslims of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. The structure of prayer and clarity of Islamic teaching became for her, the path for maintaining a relationship with the God in whom she had always believed.

Finally, both Sarah and Vanraj continued to find meaning throughout their lives with the God-representations they first encountered in their faith traditions. For Sarah, this required several experiences of having to “work through” the conflicts she had with many aspects of her Orthodox tradition. She had to decide which practices and beliefs “fit” best with her self-understanding as well as her relationships with others. Yet in the end, Sarah’s relationship with her God was maintained, as she said, within “a Jewish idiom.” On the other hand, Vanraj did not experience any conflict with his faith tradition.

He enjoyed participating in the Jain temple rituals and learning about the people who had become “divine beings” through their ascetic practices. Throughout his adult life, Vanraj was an active member of his local temple in the U.S. But in addition to this, he was

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exposed to a lot of Christian thought, both through television, personal reading, and work with Christian groups in medical outreach programs. So that for him, the notion of a monotheistic God merged with his early representations of divine beings, and he did not find a conflict between these two. Instead Vanraj concluded: I do not try to argue what or debate with anybody whether God is “the” person or “a” person. I believe there are some super-energies who help you to guide your life, though you’re doing a lot of things yourself. But there’s a mysterious force guiding you to elevate yourself to a higher and higher level.

3. All the participants in this study went through one or more problematic experiences which led to new insights or experiences of the relationship with their God-representation/relationship.

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These problematic experiences included such experiences as:

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the loss or death of a loved one

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disappointment or anger with God resulting from the experience of abandonment

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loss of a faith community or conflict with one’s faith community

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disillusionment with or trauma caused by the “representatives” of God, namely some of the leaders within one’s religious tradition

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normal life transitions the experience of personal suffering and/or the recognition of the suffering of others

All these experiences contributed to the participants’ need to re-evaluate or alter their understanding of God and/or their relationship with their God-representations.

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4. Each participant experiences the God-representation/relationship as a real relationship even though they might find that relationship or understanding of God difficult to define, explain, or describe.

Both Anna and Christopher said that they had never really doubted God, but both resisted any particular definition or description of God. Christopher said, “God is indescribable” and “I just know God is.” For Anna, there was no one word or phrase that could summarize her experience of God because “we’re human and we’re finite, and our minds can’t take (it) in.” Kaliq and Sarah felt most comfortable with the description of God as “Creator,” and both spoke about evil and good within God and human beings, while Marion interpreted God as “perfection” and called God, “the Supreme Being.”

Timothy provided several explanations of God that may be summarized simply as “God exists in everything, in every emotion and every experience.” At the same time, Vanraj said that all one had to do was look at the flowers, the trees, and the seasons to see “God” at work, while he also believed everyone is destined to become divine. And for Amy there could be no other representation for “God,” a word to which she strongly objected, than the phrase “the ground of all being.”

Whatever their understanding of the symbol “God,” all the participants spoke clearly of their God-representation as experienced through their relationships with themselves, others and the world, and through their intuition of a “presence” that transcended any particular concrete object or experience. Their descriptions of “God” sometimes contradicted each other, but it was very clear that whatever terminology that was used, the relationship to their God-representation was very real to each participant.

What is particularly important about this outcome is that it demonstrates the validity of

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Rizzuto’s finding that: “The psychic process of creating and finding God never ceases in the course of human life. The God-representation is re-elaborated through defense, adaptation, and synthesis, as well as through relations with oneself, others and the world at large” (1979, p. 90).

5. Each participant of this study found a way to reconcile the problem of evil and/or suffering with their God-representation.

Explanations for the problem of evil/suffering ranged from the most straightforward that “suffering is an inherent part of existence,” to another interpretation that “suffering is a part of God’s plan,” through various other explanations and ultimately to an understanding that “suffering can transform us.” Whatever the response given, it was clear that each participant gave this problem some thought. That is because there was either a long pause during which the individual took time to consider their response, because their comments were clear and concise or just the opposite, demonstrating a history of considering alternative viewpoints. Whether that response was built upon a deeply felt trust in their God-representation/relationship or upon much reflection given to the issue, it is evident that the problem of suffering and evil did not lead any of these men and women to become atheists. Nor did this dilemma exclude them from the experience of a real relationship with their God.

Personal Reflection Before discussing the theoretical and clinical implications of this study, I want to focus first on what I learned through this process of interviewing these participants and interpreting the data gleaned from those interviews. One of the first things is how

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important it is to be sensitive to the need to listen more deeply to the unique elements of each individual’s understanding of their God-relationship, and the impact this has had on their life story. The process of writing out each of the interviews word by word led me to a more conscious awareness of how some of my questions or comments at times interrupted the participant’s line of thought. In reviewing these occasions, I realized that my own internal reflection on either the psychodynamics of the person or my fascination with their theological and/or philosophical perspective was at the forefront of my mind.

The long process of writing and then reviewing the material over and over again made deeply aware of those tendencies and how they can interfere with the practice of clinical social work.

In this regard, the methodology offered by Denzin was very helpful. His approach to research replicates much that takes place within the clinical setting. Through this research method, one reviews the “problematic experiences” encountered by each individual and attends to the when and how that these experiences lead to new insights or what Denzin calls “epiphany moments.” In the clinical setting, the worker is also attempting to facilitate new insights and/or a deeper self-awareness that can allow for new ways of relating to self and others. Listening closely to the way in which a client has been able to work through such conflicts in the past can provide significant clues to the worker as to how to proceed with the current concerns or conflicts of the individual.

In this case, what I sought to understand was how the Godrepresentation/relationship was able to either facilitate a resolution to those “problematic experiences” or hinder a positive outcome. As Denzin commented,

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To make the invisible more visible to others is, after all, a major goal of the interpreter (Marleau-Ponty, 1968). This means that we want to capture the stories of everyday persons as they tell about the pains, the agonies, the emotional experiences, the small and the large victories, the traumas, the fears, the anxieties, the dreams, fantasies, and the hopes in their lives (p. 139).

In the post-modern world in which we live, “God” is very often a problem. We live in a time in which technological advances, the demand for empirical evidence, and the loss of any poetic vision or sense of mystery tend to impoverish one’s experience of the world. Now it is true that one may discover a sense of mystery and of the transcendent in many different ways without positing the notion of “God.” But I do believe that for those for whom the symbol “God” is a locus of meaning in their lives, the stories of these participants “pains, emotional experiences, traumas and hopes” may provide validation for their own experiences.

In these individuals, the sense of self and its reality is directly and vitally connected with the God representation experienced as an existing reality. I postulate that in these individuals the elaboration and reworking (or lack of reworking) of the parental imagoes into a God representation, further elaborated through fantasy and secondary process, is so deeply related to the endless process of separation-individuation from the parents, and also to new identifications with them, that to stop believing in God is to cease to be oneself (emphasis added, Rizzuto, 1979, p.51).

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Theoretical Implications In considering again the contributions made by various psychoanalytic perspectives to the understanding of an individual’s development of a God-representation and relationship, the results of this study bear out the contribution and validity of object relations theory, as will be discussed in greater detail in the next section. The diverse experiences of these participants and their continued re-working of their context for or their understanding of their relationships with their God cannot be limited to the classical Freudian perspective. As discussed in the first chapter, Freud equated the need for God with a denial of the human condition, while one can recognize in the narratives provide above that just the opposite proves to be true. These individuals utilized their understanding and experience of their relationship with their God as a primary means for accepting their humanity, as well as for working through the particular circumstances encountered in their lives. That being the case, I will review the three major object relations theorists discussed in this paper and provide just a few examples of how their understanding of God as a transitional and/or transformative object applies to the data gathered here.

Application of Object Relations Theory to Findings The three major object relations theorists discussed earlier in this paper, illuminate how their understanding of God as a transitional and/or transformational object applies to the data gathered here.

Winnicott’s understanding of the role that “play” has in the development of the self as well as one’s relationship with others was found to be significant in this study. To

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review briefly, Winnicott (1971) described how the transitional object originates as a symbol of union with mother at the very time the child is intensely experiencing his/her separateness, and that all transitional phenomena can be located in the “potential space between the individual and the environment…” (Winnicott, 1971, p. 100). And for Winnicott, “man continues to create and re-create God as a place to put that which is good in himself, and which he might spoil if he kept it in himself along with all the hate and destructiveness which is also found there” (p.94). In other words, in many respects the God-representation often embodies the good within each person and within humanity as a whole. In this manner, the God-representation as a transitional object often originates in the cultural and religious tradition inherited by an individual. More significantly, Winnicott explains, the interplay between the individual and the tradition he/she has inherited represents “just one more example, and a very exciting one, of the interplay between separateness and union” (p. 99). The following are just some of the examples gathered from the data provided in the previous chapter that are representative of Winnicott’s understanding of how the transitional phenomena called “God” serves as an interplay between separateness and union.

One can see this interplay between separateness and union in the diverse ways in which the participants’ relationship with their God evolved over the course of their lives.

Recalling the early childhood experiences of Sarah and Marion, one can recognize that their initial associations with the concept of God had to do with what each named as the feeling of “warmth.” For Sarah, this was embodied in the memory of sitting on her father’s lap in the synagogue and being enfolded by his prayer shawl, while for Marion it was experienced within the tightly knit African-American Christian community of her

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youth. Marion spent much of her life searching for, one might say “playing” with the possibilities of which church might fulfill her longing to recapture that warmth.

Ultimately, she discovered this, not in a church but in a Muslim community whose rules and rituals reconnected her with the memories she had of her grandparents. In Sarah’s case, there were many other “warm memories” from her childhood growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community. However, as she later developed conflicts with the leadership and theology of that community, it became more and more difficult to maintain her connection with it. While being true to her own self-identity, Sarah did find a way to maintain a connection with her God through what she called “a Jewish idiom.”

And so for both of these women, the path of creative play led to a healthy sense of both separateness and union.

The need to create a God-representation or God-relationship as a place in which to put the good one experiences in oneself is particularly evident in the life narratives of Kaliq, Christopher, Timothy and Amy. All four spoke clearly about the power that their earliest experiences within their Christian traditions had for them. Likewise, all four encountered challenges concerning how to remain true to their developing sense of selfidentity while maintaining connections with their God and with others. For Kaliq, the need to continually re-create an understanding of who God was for him has continued throughout his life. He left the family church at age 11, “played” with atheism and agnosticism during his early college days, found his way to Islam and eventually Yoruba with its female representation of God. In recalling a time when he was fired from an important position, Kaliq commented: “So I packed my bags and I left. And that’s kind of the way that I live most of my life.” This became his approach to conflict whenever

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there was a lack of congruence between his sense of self and the secular or religious environment in which he found himself. As he explained it further: Everything in my being has to be in line politically as well as spiritually for me to be committed. I am incapable of throwing myself wholeheartedly into one thing if it’s in some sort of opposition, or even in a little bit of opposition with the other.

In this way, Kaliq has been able to maintain his sense of separateness while sometimes experiencing and always seeking the union with others and with God for which he longs.

Both Timothy and Christopher discussed the interplay of separateness and union in their relationships with God and others. For Timothy, this began with his childhood ability to claim his rights in saying, “Shut up, God,” when he sensed that God was critical of him for his anger toward his mother. He went on to describe his life-long difficulties with anger which may have served as a way for him to maintain separateness when he felt impinged upon by his father’s temper or, for example, when his father demonstrated disapproval at the time Timothy “came out” as gay. In any case, his concern was how to prevent his own anger from causing any harm: I look at anger as not a Godlike thing, but I have it and how do I cope with it?

How do I deal with it? How do I not act out of it?

I acted out of fear, not pursuing people I wanted to be with, not seeing myself in a God-like light for who I was. I thwarted my own growth and then there’d been some other moments where I felt really connected as an artist. That I’m basically opening myself to receive a message more than doing anything myself and I’m plugged into what that reality is which is omnipresent and much,

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much, much greater than my ability to make it, or change it, or shape it, or whatever.

His experience as an actor, as one who “plays” before an audience has provided him with a significant insight. And so this letting go of control, this ability to accept reality as it is, was for Timothy one of the ways through which he could experience both separateness and union in his relationship with his God and with others.

In his childhood, Christopher did not have very much experience of union with others, rather his early experience was primarily one of abandonment. His mother gave him up at birth, for the first few years he lived in a foster home, and then was removed from that home when he was adopted. His adoptive father, to whom he was deeply attached, died a few years later, and his adoptive mother was often absent from the home because she travelled frequently. Though he did not recall saying it, his mother told him that when his father died, Chris said that he hated God. Though he did experience genuine love within his adoptive family, during his young adulthood he began acting out the anger and pain of through an addiction to alcohol. During this time, he believed that he had abandoned God. When at the age of 37 Christopher joined Alcoholics Anonymous, he rediscovered his connection with his God and came to the strong conviction that “God does not abandon me.”

I look back in retrospect and I guess, you know I had a firm grounding in the church and in religion, and what was right and wrong, even though a lot of what I did was wrong. But I think I still I knew in the back of my mind, what was the right thing to do. And through all that time I always paid child support, alimony and child support, religiously. I look back and I’m not sure why, but I believe

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that the divine intervention of God was working in my life, even though I didn’t know it.

I know that it was God’s doing that got me sober and has kept me sober.

When I came into AA they told me to pray and I did that every morning, and so I know that prayer works and I know that God has worked in my life to keep me sober. I can’t, I can’t believe that there’s any other reason why this has ever happened.

This conviction that God works in his life and never abandons him has enabled Chris to accomplish many things he would not have done while actively alcoholic. He searched for and found his birth mother and his biological relatives, he was able to confront his adoptive mother, in a loving way, about the effect her frequent absences had upon him, and he has expanded his circle of belonging both through AA and through his Church. All this has enabled him to develop and maintain a sense of both separateness and union in all his relationships, including the one he experiences with his God. Both Sr. Anna and Vanraj experienced a strong sense of belonging in their families and in the religious traditions in which they grew up. Through the religious heritage each was given, they found a path in which to maintain a relationship with their God, and each demonstrated a clear sense of self in the direction they chose for their lives. According to Winnicott, this would reflect an early, healthy experience of separateness and union in relationship to their caregivers. Of course, each encountered difficulties in the course of their lives which had an impact on the experience of their God-relationship. In Anna’s case, the origin of such difficulties can be recognized in the fear that her parents might divorce. The fear of losing a family with whom she had such

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a strong bond had its reverberations in Anna’s fear that her religious order of nuns might reject her for membership, and also in the fear that her last temptation in life will be that: God is going to say, even now, that you made a mistake. “You didn’t do the right thing. You didn’t do my will, because you didn’t follow your real vocation.”

That would really devastate me.

Yet, these fears she realized were unfounded. Over the years, she was able to voice her thoughts more and more freely without the fear of being rejected. Her prayer life and religious study deepened her faith in her God whom she continued to find in Nature and “just in other people.” Anna came to a time in her life when her experience of separateness and union with others and with her God became a natural part of her daily life.

So the biggest thing in community is forgiveness and mercy. But bigger than all that is God’s love for us, God’s grace, that makes it possible for fifteen women to live together without killing each other. We are all so different. We are all strong in our feelings and passions. But underneath the external, we all love God and are trying to do God’s will. So when the chips are down, that’s what counts.

Vanraj’s experience was quite different from Anna’s. He spoke of the comforting aspects of being raised by his elder brothers and the advantage of having what he called a “joined family.” He was comfortable with his Jain faith and with its rituals of praying to those “liberated souls” who had become divine. He chose to become a professional entrepreneur, and for many years found this occupation, as well as wife and children, to provide his primary source for a healthy self-identity as well connection with others. His experience of separateness as well as union with others was in balance. However, upon

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retirement Vanraj lost his sense of purpose and meaning in the world. It took some time, but eventually he found this in service to others—on medical missions, and in obtaining or personally providing medical equipment or other basic goods needed by those who could not afford these items. During this time, Vanraj also began to experience a deeper relationship with the divine. He drew from other faith traditions, primarily Christianity, as he had grown familiar with its teachings. He commented on his deepening appreciation for both the teachings of his own faith as well as others by saying: “So when I’ve started assimilating Jain philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Christian philosophy, I believe I am strengthening my soul, and my belief.” That transitional phenomena called “God” has now become for Vanraj the key source of his self-identity as well as his relationships, of both separateness and union. Even when faced with some personal problem or loss, he is able to return to a trusting relationship with what is called “the divine”: Sometime I do have some questions or doubts about the concept of God. However, that’s more like temporary phenomena. Again, after the turbulence, my mind gets settled, my life gets settled, and again I go back to the fundamental thought—there’s something like God in the universe.

For Amy, that initial experience of being enfolded in the arms of her grandmother while together they pulled a carrot from the earth became the paradigm of her life-long experience of separateness and union. She called it her first “God-like experience,” one in which she felt intimately connected with her grandmother while at the same time having her own unique response of awe at the wonder of this event. “God” was intuited through this experience, and was given a name only later in her childhood. Yet that

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word, “God” lost all meaning for her in her young adulthood. The abuse imposed upon her by a trusted Catholic priest and the long-term trauma this caused, led to a deep distrust of all the religious symbols as well as with the God associated with those symbols—all which had previously held so much meaning for her. During the period of time in which the abuse occurred, Amy had lost her sense of her own identity and needs, her separateness from others because she became subsumed in the worldview, needs, and expectations of her abuser. She began to fear that she might lose her sense of self in any religious environment, and so while she respected and learned from other religious traditions she was unable to find a home in any of them. Instead, Amy continued to draw upon and elaborate that earliest experience of awe in discovering a carrot within the ground. For her, “the ground of all being” became the title of all that pointed to any experience that transcends the habitual, and which discloses a deeper meaning in life.

I feel animals, nature, wind, water—all of those have the essence of the ground of being. But I do think human beings most reflect the evolution of this ground of being.

If I didn’t feel there was a ground of being that I was connected with, that there was some meaning to life, I think I would be very depressed and probably choose not to live because why would I live without some meaning to it? So the ultimate meaning is not able to be contained in words, but is sensed and felt the same way I sensed by own soul.

So for Amy, the need arose to re-elaborate her earliest experience of some type of God-representation without being able to utilize any of the later, intermediate symbols of that representation. She found a way to do this and the path she forged for herself made

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it possible for her to maintain a sense of separateness of self as well as union with others, including “the ground of all being.” This is where Rizzuto’s further development of object relations theory is helpful in understanding the experiences of the participants of this study. Rizzuto, like Winnicott, emphasized the importance of parental imagos in the development of the God-representation, but did not limit those imagos to the actual parent. As quoted earlier in this paper, she commented: Not only the parent of real life but the wished-for parent and the feared parent of the imagination appear on equal footing as contributors to the image of God. This is because the object representations are not entities in the mind; they originate in creative processes involving memory, and the entirety of psychic life … (Rizzuto, 1979, p. 44).

One can certainly recognize in the narratives of these participants how parents, as well as other parental figures in their lives, had an impact upon their evolving Godrepresentations. Since this study focused on the participants’ conscious memories and interpretation of their life experiences that influenced the development of their Godrelationships, their creative use and re-elaboration of their early God-representations holds special significance in the results described in the previous chapter. As revealed through their narratives, each individual’s adult understanding and experience of God had its origins in their early life, but was later re-worked to accommodate the exigencies of both positive and negative life events. This confirms much of what Rizzuto had to say about “God”: …throughout life God remains a transitional object at the service of gaining leverage with oneself, with others, and with life itself. This is so, not because

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God is God, but because, like the teddy bear, he had obtained a good half of his stuffing from the primary objects the child has “found” in his life. The other half of God’s stuffing come from the child’s capacity to “create” a God according to his needs. The psychic process of creating and finding God—this personalized transitional object—never ceases in the course of human life. It is a developmental process that covers the entire life cycle from birth to death (1979, p.179).

The participants continued to create or re-create their God over the course of their lives, as indicated in their responses reported previously under findings. However, it was not always or only the God-representation that they recreated. Sometimes it was the religious or philosophical context in which they found the early God-representation that they needed to change in order to accommodate the evolution of that early representation, as was the case most clearly for Amy, Kaliq, and Marion, and to some extent for all the other participants as well. As Jones (1991) suggested, it is important to pursue “the connection between the coming of a new sense of self and the development of a new image of God” (p.66). I believe that this study provided some examples of this process, and I also agree with Jones that Rizzuto may have focused too much on the Godrepresentation and not enough on the God-relationship (pp.45-46). This emphasis on a relationship with “God,” with the “ground of all being,” or with “liberated souls” is clearly evident the concerns raised by the participants of this study, and reflects their deepest beliefs about a transcendent mystery.

Bollas’ comments about the transformational object warrants some discussion here as well.

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Not yet fully identified as an other, the mother is experienced as a process of transformation and this feature of early existence lives on in certain forms of object-seeking in adult life, when the object is sought for its function as a signifier of transformation. Thus, in adult life, the quest is not to possess the object; rather the object is pursued in order to surrender to it as a medium that alters the self…

(1987, p. 14).

And further, I think we have failed to take notice of the phenomenon in adult life of the wideranging collective search for an object that is identified with the metamorphosis of the self. In many religious faiths, for example, when the subject believes in the deity’s actual potential to transform the total environment, he sustains the terms of the earliest tie within a mythic structure. Such knowledge remains symbiotic (that is, it reflects the wisdom of faith) and coexists along other forms of knowing. In secular worlds, we see how hope invested in various objects (a new job, a move to another country, a vacation, a change of relationship) may both represent a request for a transformational experience, and at the same time, continue the “relationship” to an object that signifies the experience of transformation (p. 16).

Much of what Bollas describes here is borne out in the experiences of the participants in this study. All of these men and women spoke of their ongoing need, maybe not so much for a transformational object called “God,” but with experiences of a transformational relationship with the God of their creation. And though all the participants continue to elaborate their understanding and experience of that relationship, some experience that relationship as more or less satisfactory while others seem to be

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seeking a deeper transformational experience with their God. In either case, the capacity of these men and women work through whatever conflicts arise in their lives by reflecting upon their God-relationships is indicative of their creative ability to rework and expand upon early relational ties. As Rizzuto commented regarding the Godrepresentation/relationship: It also provides us with a beautiful illustration of the ingenuity and creative symbolic ability of the human mind in the effort made by the individual to master his private reality, his past, and his contemporary context, as well as of his need for transcendence and meaning in the context of the universe at large (1979, p.90).

Clinical Implications Contrary to Freud’s view that one must give up a belief in God in order to be psychologically healthy, I think that this study confirms previous research noting that faith in “God” can serve as a healthy coping mechanism. However, the individual struggles of the participants in this study with their concept of God, with their relationships with that God, and with the faith context or philosophy through which they experienced that relationship—all of this suggests that “God” is more than a coping mechanism. The God-relationship often maintains or introduces coherence when life events may be incoherent. The metaphors used for the participants’ God- relationship continued to evolve through life as a way for them to re-interpret their unique life experiences and sense of self. Finally, the participants’ experiences of trauma, of loss, and of disillusionment were not only affected by a belief in God, but their God-

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relationship and understanding of God were in fact shaped by these experiences as well as by other life events.

There are several significant implications for the practice of clinical social work.

When providing therapy for an individual for whom the symbol “God” is a locus of meaning: 1. Take time to explore the unique nature of the person’s God-representation or relationship.

2. Inquire as to how this God-representation/relationship evolved over the course of life.

3. Discover the way in which this God-representation/relationship has helped and/or hindered the psychic growth of the individual. Do not assume, based on one’s own belief, that it has served only a positive or negative role, or that these can’t alternate.

4. Learn from the client that which is meaningful about the religious or philosophical tradition for their God-representation/relationship. Learn as much as you can about this tradition, but recognize that each individual has their own unique interpretation or emphasis concerning this tradition.

5. Support the client’s use of their God-representation/relationship for further growth in service of separation-individuation as well as their union with others. This may mean supporting further development or relinquishment of their current understanding of God, but this should evolve from the client’s expressed need to do so, rather than from the therapist’s suggestion.

6. Help the client to utilize their God-representation/relationship as a means of reconciling with reality, especially with experiences of conflict or suffering. If he or she is not able to do this, be supportive of their struggle to work through these issues.

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7. Be careful not to impose one’s own or another’s theological perspective upon a client.

However, when an individual has outgrown a God-representation/relationship that no longer “fits” with their experience of self and others, it may be helpful for that individual to know that there are alternative ways of relating with “God” and to encourage him or her to explore what might be possible in their God-relationship.

In the course of their interviews, both Sr. Anna and Sarah mentioned that they had experiences of working with a therapist/counselor. For Sr. Anna, the circumstances of that encounter were negative. This was due to the fact that when she expressed concerns about her difficulty in adjusting to convent life, the counselor’s response was, “Well, I have dealt with other priests and nuns, and I don’t know you yet, but it looks like you’re probably going to leave the convent.” This was extremely upsetting for Anna. She was looking for guidance about how to understand and work through her difficulties; instead she received a forgone conclusion based upon what others, known by the counselor, had decided to do.

For Sarah, on the other hand, the experience of therapy was quite positive. She described her first therapist, a social worker, as being the most helpful to her because she assisted her in recognizing and naming her own experience. For example, on one occasion Sarah referred to her mother as “my other.” This provided an opening for the therapist to explore how enmeshed Sarah had become with her mother, and why this led to her need to protect her mother from her own feelings and reactions. The experience of both Anna and Sarah provide some indication of the ways in which the clinical setting can either provide the opportunity to foster greater insight and acceptance of self or, on the other hand, lead to a deeper distrust of oneself.

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In the final analysis, what I found was that for people who find some form of a God-representation/relationship to be meaningful in their lives, the possibility of reworking and reinterpreting that relationship to fit an evolving sense of self and the world seems almost without limit.

Limitations of the Study and Further Research The primary limitation of this study results from the limited number of only eight participants. There is no way of generalizing the results obtained here to all individuals for whom a God-representation or relationship is particularly meaningful to their experience of self, or to their relationships with others and with the wider world. What this study has done is to explore the landscape, that is, to reveal the very wide diversity of experiences, understandings, and difficulties as well as rewards that people have encountered in their use of the symbol “God” as a locus of meaning. As a qualitative study, it contributes to a greater depth in understanding and helping to interpret the experience of such individuals. It certainly reveals the complexity of the lived experience of “God” that have not been captured by the stereotypical categories or over-simplified summaries of how such faith plays a role in the day to day events of people’s lives. The results of this kind of study taken together with the outcomes in quantitative research in this area of research should yield significant insights regarding the diverse meanings that the God-relationship for whom such a relationship is meaningful.

Secondly, all the participants in this study were fairly articulate about their life history as it relates to their experience and understanding of “God.” While some needed more questions in order to help them to respond, others were able to speak at length and

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provide multiple examples of their experiences. Nevertheless, all were very comfortable with the topic, and all had clearly reflected on their God-relationship. The outcomes might be quite different for those who find it difficult to express their beliefs and experiences so readily. So this would be an important area for further research, and consideration should be given as to how to structure this kind of research so as to obtain the needed data.

A third limitation of this study is that it was confined to those individuals whose cultural and/or religious environment provided them with images of “God” of or divine beings from the earliest years of their life. This was not known to me until I completed the interviews, however, it points to another area for further research. It would be helpful to explore in future studies, the evolution of the God-representation/God-relationship for those who were not provided with any form of God imago in childhood, as well as to learn to what extent their experiences do or do not validate object relations theory.

Finally, further research is needed to explore the many ways in which not only the God-relationship, but the “capacity to believe” (Winnicott) in some transcendent element of life, can serve to promote the healing of trauma and to reconcile individuals with the painful exigencies of their lives. This means something more than mere “coping.” I believe that such research can provide ever clearer insight into the role that the “transformational object” and “transformational phenomena,” as described by Bollas, has in our lives. In turn, this can further assist therapists to provide the appropriate support needed by so many of their clients.

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Conclusion In the opening chapter of this study, I quoted the famous Rabbi Bal Shem Tov. When trying to avoid misfortune for his people, he could not recall the appropriate prayer or ritual to be used. Instead he said, “All I can do is tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient. The stories shared by the participants of this study have proved more than sufficient to disclose the way in which their lived relationship with “God” has served not only as a locus of meaning in their lives, but as a challenge for further growth and transformation. Some have come to a point of peace and comfort in this relationship, others continue to seek some form of denouement for which they long.

In either situation, they all continue to find that some kind of relationship with God, with “the ground of all being,” or with those human beings who have been transformed into the divine, to shape the experience of themselves and of the world. Each one’s “story” contributes to the breadth and depth of our collective understanding of such a relationship and how it can contribute to a sense of one’s place in the universe.

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Appendix A Informed Consent

243 INSTITUTE FOR CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK INDIVIDUAL CONSENT FOR PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH I, __________________________________, acting for myself, agree to take part in the research entitled: “Stories of God, Stories of Self”: How Adults Use the Symbol God as a Locus of Meaning. This work will be carried out by Judith Wood MSSA LISW (Principal Researcher) under the supervision of her Dissertation Chair). This work is conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago, Illinois.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of how adults use the symbol of God (that is, your own understanding and/or experience of your God) as a means for finding and creating meaning in life. From the results gained from this research, implications for the practice of clinical social work and/or psychotherapy will be draw.

PROCEDURES USED IN THE STUDY AND THE DURATION The design of this study is qualitative, utilizing biographical research as a means of data collection and analysis. The study will use a collaborative interview format consisting of an initial 90-minute interview, to be followed by a second interview as needed.

Participants will be asked to share their experience and/or understanding of their God as it has evolved over the course of their lives. All interviews will be conducted by Judith Wood who is a doctoral student at the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago.

These interviews will be audio recorded and transcribed for the purposes of the study.

BENEFITS Benefits that participants may gain from being a part of this study include the opportunity for reflection on one’s life experience and a clearer understanding of one’s self-story or identity, as well as one’s relationships. It is expected that the results of this study will provide some benefit to society by contributing to the general knowledge base concerning adult development and spirituality. It is also anticipated that there will be benefits to those who practice psychotherapy by providing some insight for them regarding ways to listen and respond to those clients who need or wish to discuss their experience of their God. COSTS There will be no monetary costs associated with participation in this study. The researcher will meet with participants at locations convenient to them.

POSSIBLE RISKS/SIDE EFFECTS There are no serious risks anticipated as a result of participation in this study. This may involve some inconvenience for participants due to time and scheduling commitments.

Also, participants may experience some distress if the interview process uncovers painful memories or personal hurts that have remained unresolved. If this should occur, the

244 researcher will provide up to three de-briefing sessions under the supervision of the dissertation chair. Referrals for treatment and/or support services will be provided by the researcher as needed or requested.

PRIVACY/CONFIDENTIALITY The only person who will know the identity of participants is the researcher. Identifying data concerning participants will be disguised in such a way that they will not be recognized as participants in this study. Confidentiality will be respected, and audiotaped recordings will be destroyed following the completion of this study to insure the privacy of participants.

SUBJECT ASSURANCES By signing this consent form, I agree to take part in this study. I have not given up any of my rights or released this institution from responsibility for carelessness.

I may cancel my consent and refuse to continue in this study at any time without penalty or loss of benefits. My relationship with the staff of the ICSW will not be affected in any way now or in the future, if I refuse to take part, or if I begin the study and then withdraw.

If I have any questions about the research methods, I can contact Judith Wood MSSA LISW (Principal Researcher) at (216) 229-2420 (day) or (216) 721-6166 evening). If I have any questions about my rights as a research subject, I may call Mary Wood Schneider, Ph.D., Chair of Institutional Review Board, ICSW, 68 E. Wacker Place, Chicago, IL 60601 (312) 726-8480.

SIGNATURES I HAVE READ THIS CONSENT FORM AND I AGREE TO TAKE PART IN THIS STUDY AS IT IS EXPLAINED IN THIS CONSENT FORM. _________________________________ Signature of Participant

_______________________ Date

I CERTIFY THAT I HAVE EXPLAINED THE RESEARCH TO _________________ (Name of subject) AND BELIEVE THAT THEY UNDERSTAND AND THAT THEY HAVE AGREED TO PARTICIPATE FREELY. I AGREE TO ANSWER ANY ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS WHEN THEY ARISE DURING THE RESEARCH OR AFTERWARD. _________________________________ Signature of Research

_______________________ Date

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