Exploring spiritual dimensions: Toward a hermeneutic of divorce

While the divorce experience can confront people with brokenness, limits, sinfulness, and changing concepts of meaning, it can also challenge them to move to new places, to choose life in a new way. Moving through this process not only allows a person to come to terms with various aspects of the divorce in a psychological sense, but also to see the movement of God within the suffering, healing, and the emergence of new life. This essay touches on various issues which emerge in the stages of death-gestation-rebirth and how they may ultimately act to strengthen the foundation of faith.Excerpted from The Effect of Divorce on Spiritual Growth: A Study in Protestant Spirituality (unpublished thesis).     

The spiritual experience index: A measure of spiritual maturity

The Spiritual Experience Index was developed to measure spiritual maturity in persons of diverse religious and spiritual beliefs. The scale was constructed from a developmental rather than a multidimensional conceptualization of faith. Initial findings from a religiously heterogeneous college sample indicated good reliability for the SEI and supported its use as a unidimensional measure. Higher scores on the SEI were significantly related to lower dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity. The SEI was also moderately related to higher religious participation and positively correlated with intrinsicness and quest. However, compared with the intrinsic and quest scales, the SEI emerged as the strongest indicator of adaptive spiritual functioning. Directions for future research are suggested.     

Retrospective spiritual narratives: exploring recalled childhood and adolescent spiritual experiences

This paper draws on a collection of retrospective narratives of childhood and adolescent spiritual experiences to explore the qualities and characteristics of the spirituality of the young. They recall a range of spiritual experiences that touch on death, mortality, visions, and perceptions and connections beyond the self. Their experiences include varying intensities of emotion and invoke a range of responses in them and others. The paper considers the social, emotional and familial context of these early life experiences and their impact on spiritual experience and the possibility/impossibility and freedom/lack of freedom to express, and integrate spirituality.     

Crises and spiritual growth

The principal concern of this essay is the spiritual growth which life crises make possible. My assumptions are a) that every crisis can arouse within us a fresh awareness of the transcendent source of and goal for every human life, and b) that precisely in the trauma which every crisis brings, we are given the opportunity to reassess the principles by which we have lived, in the direction of a more encompassing and adequate set of values, informed by a deeper faith. For such reassessment to occur, however, we must be willing to call into question our whole lives, and not just those decisions contributing to the specific crisis now confronting us. I believe that close to the very heart of pastoral work is that enlivening and encouraging pastoral presence which supports change in the face of obstacles and overwhelming anxiety, and which mediates the Giver of Life in a way which makes radical change truly possible. I elaborate upon this conviction in two sections: the first discusses the role of the pastor in crisis intervention and the second advances the claim that exacerbating a sense of crisis for the sake of facilitating peoples' growth in faith is the uniquely pastoral contribution to helping people in crisis.     

An object relations paradigm for spiritual development with highlights from Merton's spiritual journey

This essay reviews personality development from an object relations perspective. The major principles of this personality theory are then applied to spiritual development. The validity of this application is revealed in a consideration of autobiographical text from Thomas Merton. Merton's seemingly divergent experiences of contemplation and action are placed within an object relations paradigm of spiritual development thus highlighting the applicability of bridging object relations theory to spiritual development.     

Hypnotic aspects of spiritual experience

This article presents hypnosis as a concept, process, and perspective from which to view religious and spiritual events. Spiritual experiences are seen as internally-based occurrences which bear noticeable similarity to the characteristics of self-hypnosis. This is considered in reference to biblical accounts, mysticism, contemplation and the Jungian collective unconscious. Finally, the unconscious, which is accessed through hypnosis, is explored with regards to its role in spiritual experience.     

Self-mutilation: a spiritual endeavor

This article explores the phenomenon of self-mutilatory behaviors among practitioners both today and throughout history with the intent of exposing what the author finds to be a radical correlation between mental illness and spirituality. It is the author's belief that today's strong focus on the biology of mental illness, though essential, will extend us only so far in our comprehension of mental pathology; and that an investigation into the spiritual needs of humankind may serve to round out our understanding.     

The plausibility of spiritual intelligence: spiritual experience,problem solving and neural sites

Australian teachers in Church related schools have begun to use the term ‘spiritual intelligence’ in their educational discourse. Is it accurate to describe spirituality as a form of intelligence? This paper explores whether the notion of spiritual intelligence is plausible. It addresses this firstly by discussing the notion of spiritual experience as a mechanism for problem solving—one of the central themes that underlies the concept of intelligence. Secondly, it examines some of the neural sites of the human brain that have been found to be active in those who apperceive spiritual experience. In light of this discussion, this paper argues that although some concerns prevail in considering spirituality as a form of intelligence, the concept of spiritual intelligence may nonetheless be rendered as plausible.     

Theological foundations for spiritual care

Five theological tenets are described which may undergird the integration of religious awareness and spiritual care into nursing curricula. The five all emphasize addressing the articulated needs of the patient within the context of the nursing process. These tenets, while Wesleyan in emphasis, suggest ways in which any nurse may engage in the common ministry of all Christians without usurping the role of clergy or chaplains.This article is a revision of a chapter of Dr. Brittain's doctoral dissertation from St. Mary's Seminary and University.     

New faces of spiritual pride

Contemporary counseling and psychotherapy, including pastoral counseling and psychotherapy, frequently claim as their domain the total person, including the spiritual dimension. Within the traditions of spiritual direction is a deep concern for the phenomenon of spiritual pride, If counseling and psychotherapy are to deal with the person's spiritual development, counselors ought to be aware of this disruptive dynamic. It is suggested that the counselor's own personhood may be a primary condition for leading to spiritual pride and that the process of termination may be a specific illustration of this phenomenon. The negative power of spiritual pride is significant in that it leads to premature closure relative to the growth process.