“Has anyone done a retrospective of the life and work of James Loder?” asked a colleague while we were standing in the academic processional line, awaiting a Convocation for a Doctor of Ministry intensive. “Yes, of course,” I answered. “But he was quite complicated and complicating, in his great light and great shadow.” I fleshed out what I meant in conversation with her, and the academic procession began. I’ve been thinking about this exchange ever since, with a felt-sense of invitation or a beckoning of some kind. Spirit plants seeds for our learning/teaching like this, I’ve found…[image from 2001, the last graduation Loder was to attend]. Thirty years ago I began my doctoral work with James E. Loder, after graduating with my masters and completing a senior thesis with him, in independent study “of how he arrived at what he offered.” Science and theology. Soren Kierkegaard. Michael Polanyi’s work and his own journey through a “transformative moment” into what he called the logic of t...
My gut is tight this morning amidst some emergent soulwork I had not expected, nor even desired. [Isn’t that the way of it, though? The soulwork that really matters is often quite disagreeable to the ego, to the feelings of personal preference. Such things tighten guts and send us to our amygdala for self-preservation, when the invitation is to get curious and expand…]. I think I fear losing a narrative that has been deeply sacred to me but is no longer tenable or shared with the person with whom it all unfolded, over a period of years . What does a sacred unfolding mean when one of you knows it to be of God/de and the other moves into questioning, sadness, fear, and shame/shaming? Who gets to tell the story shared, and how does the connection deepen if the stories diverge into a difference that had been nourishing for us, remains nourishing now only for one? Saddening or painful for the other? Part of the soulwork then, for me, must be empowering and living into my own anti-shame...
