“Among all my patients in the second half of life – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them have been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing to do with a particular creed or membership in a church.” Carl Jung, “Psychotherapis

“Four pivotal human virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The human virtues are stable dispositions of the intellect and will that govern our acts, order our passions, and guide our conduct in accordance with reason and faith.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, page 869. Have you read “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen?” If not, get it right away, and do yourself a kind favor: read it with deep curiosity and be rewarded with deeper insights. Jane Austen i

Who are you? What is your true identity, and your role in God’s great design? Well, to start with, you are not who you think you are; at least, not only. It is difficult enough to learn to see yourself as other people see you. Others see so many things that we do not see about ourselves; and how much better off we would be if we could know how we are seen by other people. But can you learn to see yourself as God see’s you? Only quite partially, now on earth. That awareness

We sometimes hear the rather foolish comment that ‘it is a man’s world.’ That peculiar remark seems to be made in reaction to excesses of power and violence demonstrated by some men. But sinful instances of unjust power and violence exerted by men never leave the circles of this world. Sin is locked within the circumference of the fallen natural world, and cannot reach to heaven, cannot participate in divine eternity. Cruel displays of power and violence don’t pass the boun

Contemplative poetry: is it something to define, or something to enter? Is it something one knows when one feels it, or when one is told about it? Is a contemplative poet known by reputation, or discovered by surprise? The contemplative poet might be the one knocked silly by the discovery of having written such a surprising poem. The soul is called into a contemplative quiet. The inward aching yearns for words to convey what cannot be said. Only prayer would do, no other

Our whole lives have been spent in time, and are measured by time. We mark the day of each birth, and celebrate it annually. We engrave the dates of birth and death on grave stones. We organize each day and week for the proper use of our time. We read the daily news, and study the history of events through time. We might be bored by the slowness of time at one moment, and dismayed by the swiftness of its passing in the next. We ought to be fully familiar with and understandi

We encounter many kinds of storms as we journey through this world, for some, they are more destructive than for others. We naturally react with fear, and worry, and anger over why it must be this way. God knows we are passing through a fallen world, and He asks us to try and see things as He does, or to trust that He is in control, and will guide us all the way. As a psychotherapist, I work with clients who live in nursing homes. An elderly man who I will call Alex, recently