Sermon suggests soul of sex touches the divine

Last year, Rev. Roger Bertschausen gave a sermon that relied heavily on Thomas Moore's Soul of Sex for the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Appleton, Wisconsin. Rev. Bertschausen says in his address: "I want to begin by observing again the weird paradox at the heart of so much of American society today: we both repress sexuality and are obsessed with sexuality. We are simultaneously prudes and voyeurs; we simultaneously flee from sex and are preoccupied with and consumed by sex. I think this troubling paradox probably came to life in America during the Victorian age—and we have not yet escaped its shadow. Maybe this is Victoria’s real secret—a secret we haven’t yet really figured out!
Moore suggests that the answer to all this is soul. As an Emersonian, I find this to be a very appealing answer! After all, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who famously said that the remedy for what ails our world is “first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul.” So I agree with Moore: soul is the answer to our repression/ obsession view of sexuality."

The sermon is downloadable as a 5-page PDF file.

Creativity, spirituality and the art of aging

In its March 2006 issue, Conscious Choice (Chicago) features,
"The Joy of Aging" by Marla Donato. "Think growing old is all about deterioration and decay? Well, think again. Some scientists are now saying that as your brain ages, it can actually regenerate brain cells, and the second half of life may be when you are at your creative best for your highest calling." Donato talks about Carl Jung's ideas about aging and includes:

"Jung "truly believed the second half of life was as important as the first, and that it had very different tasks, both psychological and spiritual," said Jacquelyn A. Mattfeld, the executive director of the Evanston Jung Center. About five years ago, she decided to develop a creative aging program specifically aimed "at the challenges of aging in our society from spiritual and psychological point of view… rather than more practical (matters)." Besides offering regular seminars and partnering with several local colleges including National-Louis University and Oakton Community College to offer courses with titles such as "The Art of Aging," the center recently sponsored a national conference on later-life creativity. It drew speakers from around the country, including author Thomas Moore and musician Johnny Frigo."

Thomas Moore's ideas fuel business consultants

Basing their approach on this quote from Moore's Care of the Soul, a consulting firm in Melbourne, Australia offers services to make business teams more effective:

"Soul is not a thing but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart and personal substance."

According to the homepage of Soul Dynamics: "In the new knowledge economy, and its ever-increasing demands for agility, adaptability and resilience, organisations depend more than ever before on the skills, creativity and focus of individual people - the business team. Soul Dynamics is a niche resource consultancy, based in Melbourne, Australia, providing you with a unique integrated view of business process and business change to support your organisation becoming the best it can be."

The company offers service descriptions, white papers and presentations in its Documents section.

Thomas Moore linked to Filipino art: Nostalgia

Today the Manila Standard published Cid Reyes' review of Filipino artist Roland Santos' new one-man show, Nostalgia : "Shrines of the spirit". In his review, Reyes says that Santos' exhibition shows "an intense longing for the past and the irretrievable. The show departs, however, in the choice of imagery, which is essential architectural in structure, but hint[s] at a vanished lifestyle of elegance and grace, stillness and quietude. . . What Roland Santos has evoked in these paintings is the enchantment of his own imagination and sensibility. Deeply attuned to the wonders of nature and the aesthetics of noble structures, he has caused these paintings into existence in order to create an enchanted world."

Referring to Thomas Moore's book, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life , Reyes says that Moore wrote:

"of the necessity in connecting our lives with the spirituality of a place. He wrote of the garden as 'a proper place of the soul, where concerns of the soul for beauty, contemplation, quiet and observance take complete precedence over the busier concerns of daily life.' Of one's own domicile, he remarked: 'Home is an emotional state, a place in the imagination where feelings of security, belonging, placement, family, protection, memory and personal history abide.'
Next to nature, art is a primal source that opens us to the world of the spirit. In his vocation as an artist, Roland Santos regards his paintings not merely as acts of self-expression, but as shrines to the spirit, drawing us closer into an interior world of contemplation and enchantment."

Roland Santos' show Nostalgia opens today at Art-tique Gallery, Katipunan Ave., White Plains, Quezon City, Philippines.