“For you did not make God, but God you. If, then, you are God’s workmanship, await the hand of your Maker which creates everything in due time; in due time as far as you are concerned, whose creation is being carried out. Offer to Him your heart in a soft and tractable state, and preserve the form in which the Creator has fashioned you, having moisture in yourself, lest, by becoming hardened, you lose the impressions of His fingers... the moist clay which is in you is hidden [there] by the workmanship of God. His hand fashioned your substance; He will cover you over within and without with pure gold and silver...”
Gold and Clay: Healing and Transformation in Jungian Psychology and Orthodox Christianity
On May 13th, 2017, under the auspices of The Sophia Institute International Center for Eastern Orthodox Thought and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, we held a preliminary meeting of Orthodox Christian theologians, clergy, chaplains and counselors and Jungian psychoanalysts.
The topic of the meeting was a sharing of perspectives on healing and human flourishing in light of modern societal trends, including those within mental health care and pastoral care. The first part of the day was a private consultation between the core participants, followed by two panel discussions open to the public from 2pm-5.30pm.
Meeting Chair: Pia Chaudhari, Ph.D.
Meeting Co-Chair: Fr. Adrian Budica, Th.M.
partial list of TOPICS FOR MORNING CONSULTATION
The Symbolic Life and Liturgy
The Uses and Dangers of Fantasy
Eros and Desire in the Church and in the Clinical Setting
Ontology and Psyche (e.g. The Uncreated Energies of God and Psyche as Creation)
Deification and Individuation
Trauma, Healing and Salvation Narratives/Sacraments
The Feminine
Human Experiences: Despair, Suicide
The Priority of Experience: Religious and Psychic
Personhood
Public Panel:
"Descent into the Heart: Clinical and Pastoral Perspectives on Anxiety and Depression"
Margaret Klenck, MDiv, LP
President, Jungian Psychoanalytic Assocation
Jungian Analyst
Rev. Sean A. Levine
Priest, Orthodox Church in America
Chaplain (Major) US Army
Michael Monhart, M.A., S.T.M.
Candidate-in-Training
Jungian Psychoanalytic Association
Rev. Adrian Budica Th.M.
ACPE Supervisor & Director of Field Education
St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
"Images of Healing: Transformation, Transfiguration and Destiny"
Laura Josephson, CCH
Iconographer and Homeopath
Priscilla Rodgers, M.P.S.
Jungian Analyst
Jungian Psychoanalytic Association
Luis Joshua Salés, M.A.
PhD Candidate
Visiting Professor, Early Christianity
Morgan Stebbins, M.Div, LMSW, NYPsyA, D.Min
Jungian Analyst
Jungian Psychoanalytic Association
5:00-5:45pm The Jesus Prayer
“…individuation is an expression of that biological process – simple or complicated as the case may be – by which every living thing becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning. This process naturally expresses itself in man as much psychically as somatically.”