…the world sets in to making us into what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. This is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.
–from Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets: A Memoir
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is
the person that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God—because Truth, Light—knows nothing about him. And to be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy…
To be a saint means to be my true self. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I truly am and of discovering my true self, my essence or core.–from Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Taking foundational stories of our Faith
(the “Fall,” the temptation of Christ,
the Parable of the Prodigal Son,…)
and integrating them with insights
from psychology,
from contemplative theology,
and from film
makes this series a most meaningful
engagement of what
John Eldredge has called,
“The Sacred Romance.”
Session foci/titles include:
- Heart Matters:
The Gospel as a “Sacred Romance” - The False Self, Part 1:
The Formation of the False Self
(Arrows, Adversaries, & Ambiguity) - The False Self, Part 2:
Expressions of the False Self
(“You Might Have a False Self if…”) - The Journey Home, Part 1: Overview & “Awakening”
- The Journey Home, Part 2: “Purgation” & “Illumination”
- Homecoming: “Union”