Parabola interview with Bishop Katharine.

I liked this interview with Bishop Katherine very much, not least because she used scientific data to help think about spiritual life. Here's an excerpt:

P: You emphasize living the path and the truth that the scriptures are shot through with mystery. But isn’t the mystery closest at hand why it is so hard to get down to the essence of Christ’s teaching, to love one another and love God?

BK: Because we live in tension with selfishness. The question is always how can we get beyond our own narrow self-interest and see that our own salvation lies in attending to the needs of other people.

P: Is selfishness a biological inheritance? Is fallen-ness hardwired?

BK: A physiologist would point to some neuroanatomy and neurochemistry and say that when we’re threatened we retreat into our lower brain where the question is about survival. Our base instincts come from that. We defend ourselves against any threat. The human journey is about encouraging our own selves to move up into higher consciousness, into being able to be present in a threatening situation without responding with violence. That was the great teaching of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They both said we will respond in a nonviolent way and it will change the world.

P: That’s faith in action.

BK: That is what practice is about. The scriptures say grow up into the full stature of Christian. Become less animal in the sense of instinctive response and more godly, more spiritual, not divorced from our flesh but capable of using it in service to a higher aim.



I thought that was pertinent to the ways chaplains bridge physical healing and spiritual space.