Finishing the Story: Aging,Spirituality, and the Work of Culture

ABSTRACT

Society projects its death anxiety onto old age and the aging, who are isolated from generative human contact, with no conversation expected. Any shared, common language atrophies. Broken connection becomes a cultural expectation. Society and the aging lose sight of developmental tasks appropriate to old age. We do not seek or foster last careers devoted to finishing the human story, to completing a sense of meaning about life. Such a last career would raise questions about soul-making and invite awe and wonder at life and death. But no one is called to do such work today, so unfinished cultural business accumulates. We should anoint or commission the aging for their last career because of its significance for them and for culture. When the aging take up such last careers and find themselves immediately confronted with the task of life review, they may discover opportunities for repenting, mythologizing, and sacralizing. The work of culture gets done, and gifts to the future are offered by the aging. The broken circle of conversation is closed, re-connections are made, and human communities, including the worlds of the living and the dead, are made whole.     

PERSONAL PARTICIPATION: Michael Polanyi, Eric Voegelin, and the Indispensability of Faith

In this paper I focus on the central role faith plays in the thought of Polanyi and Voegelin. I begin by indicating how both find the modern conception of scientific knowing seriously wanting. What Polanyi terms “objectivism” and Voegelin calls “scientism” is the modern tendency to reduce knowledge to only that which can be scientifically demonstrated. This errant view of knowledge does not occur in a vacuum, though, and both men draw a connection between this and the political pathologies of the twentieth century. I then show the complementary ways in which these two thinkers believe recovery is possible: an epistemological solution encompassed in Polanyi's personal knowledge and an ontological reorientation that is the core of Voegelin's insistence that we must recover an awareness of human participation in transcendent reality.     

Imaginative Faith: Apocalyptic,Science Fiction Theory,and Theology

Abstract : Both pastors and academic theologians have struggled with the place of apocalyptic language and imagery within the modern worldview. Many have dismissed apocalyptic as escapist and have alleged that it is divorced from the political and social concerns at the heart of contemporary theology and practice. Yet, contemporary critical theorists have overcome similar suspicions about science‐fiction and now embrace it as a unique vehicle for thinking about the ills and the promise of contemporary culture. This essay suggests that within contemporary critical theory one finds useful tools for reading and using apocalyptic language and imagery as a means for engaging a world threatened by sin and violence.     

Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Children,Parents, and ‘Best Practices' for Faith Formation: Resources for Child,Youth, and Family Ministry Today

Abstract : One of the most important ways to strengthen the faith formation of children and young people, and child, youth, and family ministries is by engaging and supporting parents or primary care‐givers. This article seeks to address this challenge by mining resources from the Bible and Christian theology about the roles and responsibilities of parents, the complexity and dignity of children, and ways to pass on the faith. By taking into account theological perspectives on parents, children, and faith formation, church leaders can better engage both children and parents, and they can strengthen all areas of their work with or on behalf of children and young people, whether in children's ministry, youth and family ministry, religious education, or child advocacy.     

On the historical and conceptual background of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

In this paper, we describe the development of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). We trace the history of sorting tasks from the studies of Narziss Ach on the psychology of thinking, via the work of Kurt Goldstein and Adhémar Gelb on brain lesioned patients around 1920 and subsequent developments, up to the actual design of the WCST by Harry Harlow, David Grant, and their student Esther Berg. The WCST thus seems to originate from the psychology of thinking ('Denkpsychologie'), but the test, as it is used in clinical neuropsychological practice, was designed by experimenters working within the behaviorist tradition. We also note recent developments suggesting that, contrary to the general impression, implicit learning may play a role in WCST-like discrimination learning tasks.     

Perceptual visual grouping under inattention: electrophysiological functional imaging

Two types of perceptual visual grouping, differing in complexity of shape formation, were examined under inattention. Fourteen participants performed a similarity judgment task concerning two successive briefly presented central targets surrounded by task-irrelevant simple and complex grouping patterns. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 22 scalp electrodes and source current density estimations were conducted for the net response to the task-irrelevant background patterns, using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA). Although participants’ subjective reports indicated that neither type of organization induced awareness, electrophysiological results showed they both evoked significant activation in occipital, parieto-temporal and frontal brain areas. Behavioral results demonstrated that only grouping of the simple pattern arose under inattention. In contrast to the complex pattern, the processing of the simple pattern was associated with an initially longer latency and higher activation beginning at 130 ms. These results support the distinction of grouping patterns differing in complexity of shape formation.     

Unpacking outcome dependency: Differentiating effects of dependency and outcome desirability on the processing of goal-relevant information

Outcome dependency has been shown to have a substantial impact on impression formation. Perhaps because the outcome dependency variable is a composite variable (including variation in amount of dependency, desirability of outcome, or both), many different effects have been described by researchers. The current research unpacks the outcome dependency variable by separately examining effects of dependency (when outcome desirability is held constant) and effects of outcome desirability (when amount of dependency is held constant). Using research methods adapted from those used in the attitudes domain, variation in the amount of dependency on a target person influenced the level of objective processing of target information (when outcomes were not substantial, Experiment 1), but variation in the desirability of the outcomes influenced biases in the processing of information (when dependency was relatively high, Experiment 2). Furthermore, personal motivation mediated effects of desirable outcomes on positive biases in processing (Experiment 3).     

Spiritual practices children understand: an analysis of Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy,A Wind in the Door

The following essay is a close reading of Madeleine L’Engle’s science fantasy novel, A Wind in the Door, in which young Meg Murry travels first to outer space and then into her younger brother’s ailing cells. The novel is a fine example of high fantasy (also known as heroic fantasy) wherein a humble protagonist is called to a quest to fight a cosmic battle between good and evil. The essay analyzes specific expressions of evil in the novel: impersonality, narcissism, despair and blind empiricism. Meg’s quest demonstrates particular spiritual practices that promote spiritual maturation and the ability to overcome evil: ‘kything’, Naming, deepening and holding. L’Engle portrays these practices in a fresh way that can help both children and adults incorporate them into their day‐to‐day lives. Moreover, there are links between kything and holding and the metta and tonglen, two types of Buddhist meditation. L’Engle affirms children’s innate relational consciousness and presents spiritual practices that are relational, non‐sectarian, practical, and eminently hopeful.     

Faith schooling: implications for teacher educators. A perspective from Northern Ireland

The separate and parallel systems of schooling in Northern Ireland that largely reflect Protestant/Catholic divisions have been much criticised on the grounds that they have failed to promote social cohesion. These divisions are also evident in teacher education provision and attempts to offset the negative effects of this separation have made only a limited impact. By means of a brief survey of the relationship between two de facto religiously separated teacher education institutions, from the early twentieth century to the present day, this article considers the issues for teacher educators and argues that separateness at this level has been disadvantageous in relation to the challenges of preparing student teachers to work in a diverse, plural society.     

Faith development theory: a case for paradigm change

Despite its influence, James Fowler's theory of faith development is in need of fundamental reappraisal. Doubts over Fowler's use of a structural model of human development and the adequacy of his research techniques have been added to in recent years by his inadequate response to the challenge of post‐modern thought. It is suggested that, despite Fowler's position, key elements of the theory are very much in tune with post‐modern thought and if the abandonment of the theory's underlying structuralism were to be allowed, these might be taken to point a constructive way forward.