An article by Kimerer LaMothe, Ph.D, takes a look at spirituality from a perspective previously unknown to me. This quote from the article one I can embrace:

It is not a world in which she can live, and Augustine guides her in making new moves. It is Augustine who teaches her that the proper response to our sinning selves is sorrow and sympathy—not punishment. It is Augustine who affirms that there are multiple possible interpretations of the Bible—not just her father’s. It is Augustine who identifies God as Life, Love, and Beauty—and not just a personified male. It is Augustine who guides her to see how God works through the desires and passions of our bodily selves—rather than judging us for having them. It is Augustine who encourages her, by his own example, to “relax a little” from herself, in humility. For as he repeats again and again, while on earth, we humans only know through a glass darkly. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...can-we-recover

LaMothe concludes:

We can find, in the energy of our desire, guidance in creating values and ideas that better align with what we need to become who we are and give what we have to give.

Interestingly, when read as Miles reads him, Augustine too is moving his readers towards a kind of conscious participation in their bodily becoming. He attends intently to his feelings of frustration and discomfort and disease, and insists on finding in them signs of a need to move differently—toward God. He seeks to transform or recreate the meaning of his pain, such that it becomes the enabling condition of his greatest pleasures.

And so does Miles. In writing, she too is transforming the meaning of her pain. While she may still be “a fundamentalist,” what it means to be one is far different for her now than it was when she was young, and is not at all what her parents had in mind. Her “fundamentalism” is an enabling condition of the freedom and understanding and pleasures she has found. In calling herself a "fundaughter," she is naming herself, and bringing into being the world in which she wants to live. As did her parents.
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We don’t just find Beauty, we make it. We participate in its unfolding, as best and as consciously as we can. And because we do, the question is ours to ask: what will we create? The health and well-being of our selves, our communities, and our planet are at stake. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...recover?page=2

May I say, Amen?

[gma45]

Thanks B, Once again another great article!