Spirituality in the 21st Century: Journeys beyond Entrenched Boundaries

217 Pages·2020·2.561 MB·English

by  Wim van Moer, Duysal Aşkun Çelik, and John L. Hochheimer

st
Spirituality in the 21 Century
Critical Issues

Series Editors

Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith
Advisory Board

Karl Spracklen Simon Bacon
Katarzyna Bronk Stephen Morris
Jo Chipperfield John Parry
Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter
Peter Twohig S Ram Vemuri
Kenneth Wilson

A Critical Issues research and publications project.
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/
The Ethos Hub
‘Spirituality in the 21st Century’

2013
st
Spirituality in the 21 Century:

Journeys beyond Entrenched Boundaries

Edited by

Wim van Moer, Duysal Aşkun Çelik,
and John L. Hochheimer

Inter-Disciplinary Press

Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network
for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and
encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and
which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,
Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom.
[phone]

ISBN: 978-1-84888-257-7
First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.
Table of Contents

Preface vii
John L. Hochheimer

Introduction xi
John L. Hochheimer, Duysal Aşkun Çelik and Wim Van Moer

Apophasis and Askêsis: Mystical Facets of Contemporary 3
Spirituality
Agata Wilczek

Spiritus(,) Carminis 13
Richard E. McGregor

A Self-Report Measure for Familiarity with Mental Silence 23
Joshua N. Pritikin and Karen Schmidt

What Does Oneness Mean to You? A Survey in a Spiritual 33
Organization
Duysal Aşkun Çelik

Mindfulness, Psychosis and the Fine Tightrope 43
Kate Spiegelhalter

Before Good and Evil: Giorgio Agamben’s Ethical Elements 55
and Masato Ogata’s Spirituality
Yuki Miyamoto

Secular Humanism, Spirituality and Mourning Rituals: 67
A Transformational Journey without God
Wim Van Moer

Dancing the Process of Living-Dying: Contemplations 77
on Life-and-Death in Japanese Butō Dance of Ohno Yoshito
Michael Weiss

Educational Theory and Spirituality 89
Ferdinand Röhr

Teaching to Transform 99
Jan MacLean
Meditation: Using It in the Classroom 109
Jennifer Mata

Spiritual Awareness within a Religious Frame: A ‘Responsive 121
Evaluation’ of One School’s Approach to Chaplaincy
Phil Fitzsimmons, Edie Lanphar and Barry Hill

From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained: Homecoming in 133
Anne Rice’s Called Out of Darkness
Kerstin W. Shands

Investigating Narrative Fiction and the Spiritual Dimensions of 141
Childhood: Occasions for Revelation
Margaret Myrtle Power

Spirituality and Addiction: The Role of Twelve-Step Programs 153
in Eden Robinson’s Blood Sports
Stephanie McKenzie

Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents: Octavia Butler 163
and Spiritual Ecofeminism
Paloma Villamil Agraso

Spirituality, Feminist Subjectivities and the Construction of 173
Intercultural Relations: Analysis of Twelve (12) Interviews
in Québec, Canada
Denise Couture and Tanja Riikonen

The Secular Use of Gospel Singing in Japan: Cultural 183
Appropriation or Spiritual Exploration?
Steven G. Morgan
Preface

John L. Hochheimer

Engagement with what has been termed Spirituality has, of course, been
ongoing for many centuries. It has been thought of, defined and redefined,
debated, practiced and taught within, among and between cultures throughout
most of recorded human experience. Its contemplation is both intensely private
and yet highly public; its practice has been focused both within and without; its
relation to personal and public life has varied over time, of course, but its
relevance to the human experience has never varied.
It is fundamental to the questions of: What is life? Does it have meaning? How
can we be guided in our relations with others? How do we relate with our
forebears? What do we think is most highly important to pass along to our
children, and to theirs? Is there something, or some dimension, that is deeper than
everyday human experience? Is it the same as religion, or is it somewhat different?
Does it operate in the same realm across time? Across cultures? Do men and
women experience it in the same ways? Across the span of one’s life? Before
and/or after conscious life? These questions have grounded what may be an almost
universal quest.
Spirituality lies at the foundation of what each and all of us most deeply believe
to be true. It can be felt along the long arc of one’s life, and yet it can be felt most
deeply in an intense moment of crisis. It can be perceived in moments of longing,
fear, love, hate, laughter, grieving, birth, death, the exhilarations experienced during
moments of high accomplishment or the depths of abject failure. It is both a thing
and a process, a noun and yet a verb. It can be known, yet it cannot adequately
be described. Our language is wholly incomplete to share what we feel, and yet
it is something we can each embrace. It has no logic, and yet it is not illogical.
Ever since the Enlightenment spirituality has for the most part been shunned
within the western scientific community due to its empirical imprecision. For many
years spirituality, rooted in the recognition of an underlying connection within and
between all people, has been considered not to be a critical component of ‘serious’
scholarship. The focus built on human disconnection as being the most valid way
to good scholarship, management and education. Connections between scholars
and research ‘subjects’ were considered as tainting the validity of good research.
Doctors and other health-care professionals, for example, were trained to treat the
disease, but not the patient, so as not to allow a human interconnection to muddy
doctors’ judgments. Families of the ill were kept away from the serious work of
scientists so that the focus could be fixed on the disease itself, and not on the social
milieu within which patients lived. Management leaders in business were taught to
treat workers as ‘human resources,’ disconnected parts of a greater machine, rather
than as self-actualizing partners in the health and growth of companies. Teachers
were trained to teach a subject, rather than to educate persons.
viii Preface
__________________________________________________________________
In the East, no such disconnect between the spiritual and the everyday realm has

existed. Wholly different ways of experiencing one’s life, and the life within a
culture and community, have existed for millennia.
Despite this set of disconnections, for the past one to two decades there has
been an increasing scholarly interest in the spiritual dimensions of human
experience, and the ways in which the spiritual dimensions of people’s lives,
grounded in personal, interpersonal and transpersonal dimensions might well be
essential components to human health and well-being. Growing numbers of
scholars and practitioners have been focusing their efforts on spiritual dimensions
in such widely divergent fields as women’s studies, medicine, hospice care,
communication, management, art, music, theatre, dance, sport, police work,
veterans’ care, psychology, psychiatry, social, work, education, environmental
studies, alcohol and drug abuse therapies, child development, post-war
refugee/resettlement/ reconciliation projects, prisoner rehabilitation, etc.
Conference panels have been formed, books written, articles have begun to be
published in internationally recognized scholarly journals, and some journals
focusing on spirituality have been started in fields such as nursing, hospice care,
education and management.
Reading across this emerging literature one is struck by how many differing
bodies of study have been focusing on similar questions not knowing that scholars,
practitioners and teachers in widely divergent fields are asking the same things.
Similar research methodologies are being developed to address issues of common
concern. The scholars and practitioners had been focusing on the connections
without connecting with one another.
It was in recognition of this disconnect that the Global Conferences on
Spirituality: Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy were developed. Our hope was that
this, the third such conference, would continue to help lay a foundation upon which
collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts could take root.
In all 38 scholars and practitioners gathered in Lisbon, Portugal for three days
in March 2013 to share definitions, methodologies, projects, questions and
results across a wide array of disciplines. Participants were chosen following a
rigorous double-blind review of submitted proposals and abstracts. During the
conference, each participant made an oral presentation of roughly 20 minutes,
with 10 minutes of follow-up conversation. These presentations set the
environment for further discussion and dialogue. To facilitate participation and
dialogue, all attendees sat in a large circle so that each of us could engage others
directly. We allowed for no hierarchy of professional position; rather, each of us
engaged the others as equals in the common quest for human understanding of
matters bigger than any, or all, of us. In this way, conversations begun within
sessions extended over coffee breaks, during meal times, and on into the evening.
The outcomes of this Conference were manifold: new ideas were engaged, new
methods were explored, new connections were made, and new collaborative
John L. Hochheimer ix
__________________________________________________________________
projects were begun. This book is the third such collaboration. The previous books
are Spirituality: Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy, edited by Martin Fowler, John D.
Martin III and John L. Hochheimer, and Spirituality: New Reflections on
Theory, Praxis and Pedagogy, edited by Martin Fowler, Michael Weiss and John
L. Hochheimer. The first book provides a snapshot of the March 2011
conference, and the second book provides a snapshot of the March 2012
conference, both held in Prague, Czech Republic. Each includes most of the papers
presented at their respective conferences. More information about these books, as
well as copies, are available at our project web site: http://www.inter-
disciplinary.net/.
The present book provides a forum for selected participants to expand upon
what they presented at the conference in light of the discussions and feedback they
received there, and to engage the other authors in dialogues about their work. The
particular chapters were selected to present readers with the range of issues,
theoretical approaches and methods upon which particular attention is currently
being focused. It is our hope that these will provide points of comparison and
departure for others, and that we can continue to move the central focus of
Spirituality Studies out of the margins and into the mainstreams of academic and
applied discourse and analysis.