In the last post, I described how flourishing is connected to value. Read The Shape of Joy for the details and the science. And yet, despite the findings from positive psychology, the practice of therapy tends to eschew value. This is mainly due to the, very legitimate, ethical concerns about imposing values upon clients along with the nonjudgmental posture therapists adopt to create a space of acceptance. Therapists allow their clients to espouse their own "personal values," taking these as givens. All this seems routine and obvious. But the question I want to raise in this post is if this value-neutral posture in therapy is more harmful than helpful.

I'm going to let James Mumford make this argument using his 2022 New Atlantis article entitled "Therapy Beyond Good and Evil: A nonjudgmental psychology is failing patients who need to hear hard truths." I discuss Mumford's essay in The Shape of Joy to raise the point about the role of value in mental health.

Mumford, an ethics professor, begins his essay in a psychiatric facility where he is undergoing treatment for bipolar disorder. In a group therapy session a psychologist is leading Mumford and his fellow inpatients through a "values clarification" exercise. Mumford describes the exercise:

I’m in psychiatric hospital in central London and the psychologist is taking us through a “values-clarification exercise.” I’m interested in what the psychologist has to say about values, because I used to teach ethics, at the University ofVirginia. But now I’m the student, because I’m the patient. And I’m about to be given a strong dose of moral relativism. I’m about to be told that there are no objective values and, by implication, that good and evil are merely projections of our minds. This, apparently, is going to make me feel better. “What does the word ‘values’ mean to people?” the psychologist begins. “What are some of our values?” Unfazed by an unresponsive group — a circle of depressives is not always the most forthcoming of audiences — the psychologist circulates a handout. It’s a list, including the following words: 

Swimming

Honesty

Wealth

Honor

Skiing

An odd jumble of hobbies and virtues, the psychologist asks us to circle the “values” we particularly identify with...

Presented with the handout listing various values, we’ve been asked to circle the ones that resonate with us. Next, the psychologist, with a flourish, ventures an observation. Each of us, he says, has different values. What’s more, we often disagree about our values. “So,” he concludes, “values are subjective.” And our recovery, our restoration to sanity, hinges upon our willingness to choose our own values. He lets us know that while morality “is externally imposed by society,” it is imperative that we be the ones to pick which ideals, morals, judgments, precepts, and rules to live by.

As Mumford recounts, values clarification exercises like these have become ubiquitous due to the rising popularity of Acceptance and Commitment Based Therapy (ACT). According to ACT, one of the sources of mental distress is caused by becoming alienated from your values and deepest concerns. Consequently, healing involves bringing those concerns and values into view. The values clarification exercise is a tool to help with this process. 

And yet, these values are choices. Which is why Mumford raises the charge of moral relativism. He goes on to unpack his criticism of the assumptions at work in the values clarification exercise:

Who would deny that it’s vital that my values be ones I’ve properly signed up for rather than had simply foisted upon me — by my parents, my teachers, my culture? But this truism — that I will more likely be able to live out a set of values if I have consciously adopted them — doesn’t exhaust the sense of what’s being said. My psychologist is implying something more radical when he insists on the pivotal importance of choosing your own values. When he claims that “values are subjective,” he is painting a picture of the world according to which the only values that exist are ones we have created. To say values are subjective is to say there is nothing independent of our own minds that answers to our talk of right and wrong. It is to say that our ethical beliefs do not track a reality which is “there anyway.” According to his picture, values are determined, not discovered, and selfhood — what it means to be a person — is therefore fundamentally about choice, not vision. It is about picking a course of action arbitrarily, not about seeing a reality that transcends you — goodness — and integrating with it.

Now, again, allowing the client to choose their own values might simply be a posture of non-judgmental acceptance. But Mumford sees something more sinister going on. Here's what he thinks is really happening in the field of psychology:

It may seem that the relativism on offer here is just professional etiquette. In a pluralistic society, isn’t it right that psychologists stay neutral and refuse to impose particular moral systems, refuse to foist upon us what the political philosopher John Rawls named “comprehensive conceptions of the good?” Isn’t the psychologist, taking me through my values-clarification exercise, merely showing restraint in keeping with his discipline? Isn’t he simply applying the golden rule that therapists must suspend judgment? “The first duty of a psychotherapist,” writes Frank Tallis in his recent book The Act of Living, “is to create a safe space, a situation where difficult and sometimes dangerous truths can be articulated and explored without fear of judgment, rejection, or condemnation.” Indeed, wouldn’t any other approach open up the whole enterprise to abuse, returning us to an age when the cause of lunacy was simply put down to “laxity of morals?”

I don’t think so. I think the psychologists are up to more than suspending judgment. I think they really believe they’ve got straight on what is and is not the case in the world, that they’ve really uncovered the truth of the matter, which is that there are no moral facts, that good and evil are not part of the fabric of the world. This is not just wariness on psychology’s part. It’s radical skepticism. The idea that “we as therapists shouldn’t talk about right and wrong” has become the very different idea that there is no right and wrong in the first place.

As Mumford goes on to discuss, from Freud to the radical behaviorists, "professional psychology has a long history of flirting with, or outright endorsing, skepticism about objective values." Mumford quotes the influential existential psychologist Irvin Yalom who has stated, "there are no rules, no ethical systems, no values; there is no external referent whatsoever; there is no grand design.” 

We can appreciate Mumford's point. It's one thing to be non-judgmental and respectful toward other people's values. It is quite another thing to deny objective values outright. Mumford's concern is that modern psychotherapy is trafficking in the latter rather than the former. Which, in light of my last post, raises the question: Can mental health be effectively pursued in an environment of radical skepticism? As Mumford goes on to explain:

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl insisted that we’ll never be able to treat mental illness properly until we acknowledge the existential dimension of depression. “Man’s search for meaning,” he wrote in 1946, “is the primary motivation in his life.” So long as we conceive of a patient’s suffering as resulting solely from a chemical imbalance that needs to be fixed with medication, we stand little chance of helping him. Even the most efficacious pharmacological regimen will not quell someone’s deepest questions about how to live.

Now in one way my psychiatric hospital grasps this, making space as it does for patients to make inquiries about which values are worth pursuing. But in another way the hospital’s therapeutic regime forecloses that search for meaning by denying the reality or importance of objective, transcendent truths by which men and women have historically navigated their lives. The provision of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy whets patients’ appetite for meaning only to deprive them of real nourishment by extracting the very substance on which meaning depends: its orientation toward the absolute.

And lest you think Mumford's concerns are getting overly moralistic, the example of objective value that he turns to in his essay concerns the topic of my last post, the issue of existential significance and cosmic mattering. In the grip of his depression, Mumford describes the exhaustion of carrying what the writer Michelle Thomas calls the "weight of your own worthlessness." And cracking under that weight, Mumford raises his hand in the middle of the values clarification exercise to push back upon the psychologist leading it:

So here’s what I say to my psychologist. “The care I have received in this hospital is superb. The support, the understanding, the empathy. I am treated by your team as if I have irreplaceable value. When I am feeling worthless, you don’t act as if values are subjective. You don’t reply, ‘Yes. You’re right. If you feel worthless, you are worthless!’ No, you and your team always speak and act in ways that imply fundamental disagreement with my estimation of myself. Valuing my worth, you betray your proclaimed belief in the subjectivity of all values. You embrace truths far beyond any of our mere preferences.” 

Once again, mattering. And how mental health depends upon living in relationship to objective value. As I describe in The Shape of Joy it is the objective, existential, and cosmic nature of this value that keeps our worthiness and significance from becoming variable, fluctuating, and contingent. 

And if this is so, Mumford concludes, therapy has to step away from radical skepticism. Objective value needs to be reintroduced into the modern pursuit of health and happiness. As Mumford concludes his essay:

What would it look like for psychologists to preach what they practice, to accommodate the intrinsic value they presuppose their patients to have? It would not, I think, necessarily entail a return to Victorian-style moralism...Rather, it would see psychologists refusing to rule out from the outset a transcendent good that is the natural end of “man’s quest for meaning.” It would see psychologists encouraging patients to search for values beyond themselves, but making that quest for themselves. It would see psychologists echoing Iris Murdoch’s challenge, that each of us make “an attempt to look right away from self towards a distant transcendent perfection, a source of uncontaminated energy, a source of new and quite undreamt-of virtue.”

There are values and obligations and demands out there in the world that I may never have assented to, that simply come with the territory of being human. Any psychology that is going to be therapeutically beneficial, that is going to help people attain personal growth and become good again, will help us acknowledge and reckon with values — with truths — we may never have circled in an exercise.

In The Shape of Joy I make the argument, following the empirical research of positive psychology, that transcendence is good for you. Some of this is simply noting that studies have shown that faith and spirituality are positively correlated with mental health and meaning in life. But the other issue here concerns transcendent value, how we conceive and relate to the true, the beautiful, and the good. 

As an illustration of this, a psychological construct that I discuss in both Hunting Magic Eels and The Shape of Joy is what psychologists call existential significance or cosmic mattering, or more simply mattering. The word mattering points to our value, significance, and worth. And the words existential and cosmic point to the metaphysical grounding of this value, what I call an "invisible fact" in The Shape of Joy. 

The term "invisible fact" looks oxymoronic, but I coined it to be a provocation. By "invisible" I mean not empirical or scientific. Value isn't anything that registers on scientific measuring devices. You can't weigh value on a scale, measure it with calipers, or detect it with an x-ray. Value is invisible. And yet, when it comes to mattering, your value must be asserted as simple reality and obvious truth. Your worth isn't a fiction. Your worth is a fact. And it's this factualness, this enduring givenness, which allows mattering to stabilize our mental health. For if my value is simply the truth about me, this mattering exists independently of my shame and failure. I might not feel like I matter, but that doesn't affect the fact that I matter. As an invisible fact about my reality, mattering isn't anything that can change. My mattering simply is. 

Mattering illustrates what I mean by living in relationship to value, along with its mental health benefits. But mattering is only one illustration. Consider the cosmic mattering of other people. Because human persons have worth and value they are due recognition, respect, and care. And since people matter how we treat each other matters. Due to the invisible facts surrounding us we find ourselves embedded in a matrix of moral duties and ethical obligations. Again, these duties and obligations are invisible. But that doesn't mean they aren't real. Everyone assumes moral realism. We all believe in moral facts. Steal a person's wallet and they'll tell you to stop. And if you ask them why, they'll share a moral fact with you: "Because it is wrong." And if you disagreed, they'd be as puzzled as if you denied the law of gravity. Like our mattering, goodness simply is. 

In Hunting Magic Eels I describe our relation to value as "the primacy of the invisible," a phrase borrowed from the late pope Benedict. Science is important, but what is primary in our lives are the invisible facts. Our mattering. The mattering of others. Our moral concerns. The values that inform how I am pursuing a significant and meaningful life. This is precisely why the New Atheists floundered. In their scientistic materialism, the New Atheists denied the factuality of the invisible and in a stroke evacuated the world of all that was essential and primary in our lives--the ground of personal dignity, the worth of others persons, the demands of moral obligations, and the source of meaning and significance. 

Now, I've shared all this before. These are familiar beats I've discussed in this space and in my last two books. This post is just a review to set up the question and exploration of this series. I want to talk about value and therapy. More precisely, the place of value in therapy. 

Specifically, if it is true that we flourish in relation to value, a relation I've re-sketched above, then wouldn't it stand to reason that the pursuit of mental health would involve an exploration of value? It would seem so. And yet, as broadly practiced therapy presumes to be value-free. This flows from the non-judgmental posture of therapy, expressing "unconditional positive regard" toward a client no matter their self-selected and self-directed vision of happiness. Therapy isn't moral education or direction. And it is unethical for a therapist to impose their own values upon a client. 

So, do you see the tension here? 

Value is good for us, but value isn't anything a therapist can suggest or impose upon a client. 

What can be done about this issue? Well, the most common thing therapists do is explore the values of the client and work from there. But upon a closer investigation, which we'll do in this series, things aren't so clearcut and simple. 

During our time in Ireland last May, my co-leader Claire Davidson Frederick guided our students through walking the prayer labyrinth at Glendalough.

Growing up in a low-church Protestant tradition, I was never exposed to prayer labyrinths. But they've become very popular. Our campus has one on the grounds.

Labyrinths pre-date Christianity, but they began to show up in the Christian tradition in the Middle-Ages. The most famous of these is the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, built around 1200 CE. The Chartres labyrinth is unicursal, one continuous path to the center. This is the most common form for a prayer labyrinth, which generally aren't intended to be a maze with dead ends. Here's the layout of the Chartres labyrinth: 

The labyrinth at Glendalough takes its pattern from the famous Hollywood Stone. Discovered in 1908, the Hollywood Stone depicts a labyrinth carving. The etching is generally dated to the Middle-Ages, though its actual age is impossible to determine. Here's a nifty 3D model of the stone you can examine.   

After the Holy Lands were lost during the Crusades, Medieval Christians increasingly began to use labyrinths as a substitute for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Walking labyrinths became a spiritual practice—a symbolic journey toward God. Generally, people use labyrinths as a contemplative practice of walking prayer. There's no standard or "correct" way to walk a prayer labyrinth, so you're free to adopt or create a practice of walking that suits you. 

After Claire's presentation to our students, I added some brief reflections about my own experiences with labyrinths. When I look at labyrinths, I shared with the students, I see a knot. A knot that looks like my life. I thought I was heading in one direction only to find myself backtracking and going in the opposite direction. Just when I thought I was making progress, getting closer to my goal, I found myself further away than when I had started. And for most of my life, I've never had a long view stretching out ahead of me. I've never seen the horizon. A sharp turn, a short way ahead, would always appear. And I've never been able to see around the next corner. 

Like I said, a knot.

And yet, though the path has felt like an inscrutable maze, I was always making progress, always moving toward the center, always being drawn toward God. I was not lost, though I felt like it. I was on the path. I only needed to keep walking.

So that's what I told the students. The labyrinth looks like a knot, but it's a meaningful knot. Just like your life. Snarled and twisted, you double back and reverse direction, you can't see what's around the next corner, and you often seem farther way from the goal than when you first began. But as Tolkien said, all who wander are not lost. Life is labyrinthian, but labyrinthian doesn't mean lost. God is drawing you. You've always been walking Home. 

So, yes, your life has been a knot, but it is a meaningful knot. 

"It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes."

This is my political theology in a nutshell. In my estimation, one of the most pernicious and lamentable developments within Christian life has been our relationship with partisan politics. On both the left and the right, Christianity has become instrumentalized, a tool of political power, a means of winning elections. Christians no longer trust the Lord. We trust Washington, DC. Or, more precisely stated, we trust in having our people run Washington, DC.

To be sure, I've wrestled with our democratic responsibilities and common sense appeals that Christians should and must vote to improve our shared existence as citizens. But what I'm naming here is trust, about where we're putting our confidence. And I think it's reasonable to infer where our trust is located by noticing where most of our attention, emotions, and energy is being directed. As Jesus said, where your treasure is there will your heart be. And I think it's pretty obvious that most Christians have their treasure and hearts invested in politics. 

What strikes me about the early Christians was their interest in evangelism. Their tool was persuasion. That, and the attractiveness of their shared life together. They lived within a wicked and tyrannical empire with a political equanimity that would flummox us today. They had their trust properly placed. Their treasure was in heaven, not in Rome. And they knew that their calling was to convert their neighbors rather than coerce them. They would change their world by calling people to God, not by controlling the government. Modern Christians, by contrast, have wholly given up on their evangelistic calling and have chosen, instead, to legislate their way to a better world. If you can't persuade them, force them. Don't evangelize, win elections.

Again, I'm not offering here a well-thought out political theology. That's a complex and snarly task. But what I do think any political theology has to reckon with is how twisted and malformed American Christianity has become. Our relationship to politics is sick and diseased. Our trust has become misplaced. We're idolators. And any vision of Christian political action that fails to account for this sickness is an adventure in missing the point. Our political action must begin and end in the heart. Before anything else the issue of trust has to be dealt with. As a Christian, you will not have a healthy relationship with politics if you are putting your trust in princes and Presidents.

The Hebrew word for "glory" is כָּבוֹד, transliterated as "kavod." Kavod literally means "heavy" or "weighty."

Psalm 19.1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

Creation is heavy with significance. 

The world bears meaning. 

Reality is not hollow. Reality is fullness. 

Creation, as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, is charged with the grandeur of God. 

The world is filled with the weight of the divine presence.

The glory of God exerts an ontological pressure upon all that exists. Meaning impinges upon matter. Significances saturate each second and space. 

After I publish a book, I get better and better with its elevator pitch. In the months following a book's publication, I often give long, windy answers whenever someone asks, "What's it about?" But after doing a few podcasts about the book, I become better at distilling its central theme and arguments. 

Here's how I've increasingly come to describe our predicament in The Shape of Joy, the observation that sets the agenda for the book, why the book exists.

Our modern pursuit of mental health has becoming increasingly introspective and self-referential. This self-referentiality keeps us stuck within ourselves, trapped in our own minds. But psychologists are discovering that introspection isn't good for us. This turns the story we've inherited from Sigmund Freud completely upside down. Here's how the psychologist Ethan Kross explains where the science is at:

In recent years, a robust body of new research has demonstrated that when we experience distress, engaging in introspection often does significantly more harm than good. It undermines our performance at work, interferes with our ability to make good decisions, and negatively influences our relationships. It can also promote violence and aggression, contribute to a range of mental disorders, and enhance our risk of becoming physically ill.

Simply put, the Freudian "turn inward," digging into ourselves in the pursuit of mental heath, has significantly undermined our emotional stability. 

Next, notice what so many of our current mental health recommendations--mindfulness, flow, gratitude, and awe--have in common. None of them involve introspection. In fact, mindfulness is explicitly aimed at stopping introspection, ceasing the inner chatter. Less well known in relation to mindfulness, gratitude, and awe is the research on humility, but it makes the same point. Humility isn't about thinking less of yourself (it's not a self-esteem move) but is, rather, thinking about yourself less. That is, humility is a hypo-egoic state, a capacity for self-forgetfulness. Note, again, the connection: Self-forgetfulness, rather than self-focus, is the path toward mental health. And on top of all this, the commonsense, but very powerful, recommendations to "go take a walk" or "go bake some bread" when anxious or distressed, finding some mental occupation to focus on to pull you out of yourself and stop your emotional looping.

A question I've been asked since the publication of the book is the role of therapy in our mental health journey. Doesn't therapy cause us to focus inwardly, asking us to become introspective in the search for self-awareness? The answer is that some therapeutic approaches do exacerbate rumination. But the most effective therapies, as I recount in the The Shape of Joy, make it a treatment goal to prevent cognitive rumination. So yes, therapy works, but it works best when it gives you the skills to stay out of your head.

So, that's how the opening argument from The Shape of Joy has evolved into a tighter elevator pitch:

Our mental health has become self-referential. We're trapped within ourselves. And left alone, the mind poisons itself. Freud was wrong. The research on mindfulness, gratitude, awe, and humility all tell the same story: We need to get out of our heads.

During our time in Ireland we had some free travel days, and I used one of mine to visit Kildare, the town where St. Brigid's monastery was located. 

Kildare, Cill Dara in Irish, means "Church of the Oak." Legend has it that Brigid founded her church at the site of an oak tree. This association, of course, also has pagan overtones. Some scholars believe that the name "druid" comes from two Proto-Indo-European roots, dru meaning "oak" and wid or weid meaning "to see" or "to know" (as in "wisdom" or "seer"). Put together, then, "druid" could mean "Knower of the Oak" or "Wise One of the Oak." Given that oak trees were sacred places for the druids, you can seek how Brigid's "Church of the Oak" would pull in druidic associations.

Another pagan connection concerns the "perpetual flame" that Brigid and her sisters kept lit at their monastery. A late hagiographic account of Brigid by Gerald of Wales describes how Brigid and her sisters attended a perpetual flame at Kildare, a fire that men were forbidden to approach and which miraculously produced no ashes. Many, again, see pagan overtones in the legend of Brigid's flame. Recall, the goddess Brigid was the patron of smith-craft. So, is there a fire/forge connection here? 

Last year, in 2024, the town of Kildare celebrated "Brigid 1500," a commemoration of the 1,500 year anniversary of Brigid's death. Two murals of Brigid can be viewed downtown. This is the most striking one:

This depiction portrays Brigid more as the "pagan goddess" than as the Catholic nun and saint, though you can see a halo around her head. Note the symbol on her chest. This is St. Brigid's cross, found throughout Kildare and Ireland. Irish children make St. Brigid crosses from rushes or straw the night before Imbloc, the spring festival which is also St. Brigid's feast day. It's a springtime folk tradition similar to coloring Easter eggs and, obviously, is yet another location to observe pagan/Christian syncretism. When I was at Glendalough I sat down by a stream, gathered some rushes, and made a St. Brigid cross:

There's a lovely holy well associated with St. Brigid in Kildare, complete with a statue of Brigid:

On the site where Brigid's monastery once stood is St. Brigid Cathedral, which is, a bit incongruously, an Anglican church. Outside of the church is the location where it is believed Brigid's perpetual flame was located:

Exploring the town, I discovered that a relic of St. Brigid's skull was at St. Brigid’s Parish Church, which is Roman Catholic. After her death, Brigid's skull was taken to Europe. A piece of her skull had been in Portugal since the 13th century. This relic was given back to Kildare in 2024 in commemoration of the 1,500 anniversary. The reliquary is a lovely silver oak tree: 

And the relic is found at the base of the trunk:

St. Brigid, pray for us.

Okay, if you've followed this far we have made two separate connections in this series.

First, St. Brigid, as "Mary of the Gaels," is a Marian figure in Celtic Christianity.

Second, Sophia, as the divine feminine figure that co-creates, suffuses, and guides the natural world, from solstices to animals to the medicinal properties of roots, is a Christian vision of what many pagans appeal to when they speak of a "nature goddess."

So, to summarize:

Brigid ---> Mary

Sophia ---> Divine Feminine in Nature

But this doesn't connect St. Brigid to the divine feminine in nature. To bring Brigid into a conversation about the divine feminine we need to connect Mary to Sophia. That's the goal of this post.

Perhaps a good place to start is with cosmic visions of Mary. In Marian iconography you'll often see Mary depicted crowned and standing upon a crescent moon. The vision comes from Revelation 12:

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

This is the celestial Mary. Mary Queen of Heaven. Now, this celestial Mary isn't described in Revelation as Sophia, but this more cosmic vision of Mary starts to push the Marian imagination beyond the human Mary. To be sure, we're pushing the Protestant imagination too far, but these associations are coming from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. So, to follow this argument, you're going to have to play in that metaphysical sandbox. Of course, you don't have to agree with any of the Marian theology, but if you want to see the shape of the argument you'll have to adopt the priors as a practice of sympathetic understanding. 

So, if we adopt a more cosmic view of Mary, is there a connection between Mary-as-cosmic-principle and the vision of Sophia in the Old Testament? A few connections can be made.

To start, both Mary and Sophia function as mediators between God and creation. God creates the world through Sophia. And God is born into the world through Mary, the Mother of God. Both Mary and Sophia function as bridges between God and creation. Christ comes to us through feminine mediation. Cosmically, the Logos is mediated through Sophia. And the Incarnated Jesus is born as the son of Mary. What Sophia is to creation, Mary is to the Incarnation.

Next, both Mary and Sophia are set apart from the created order. Sophia was the first of God's creation and works alongside God as co-maker and co-creator. Mary is not described as pre-existing creation, but she is set apart from creation in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. That is to say, Mary is the only created being who was not touched by sin. Again, while the correspondence is not exact, both Sophia and Mary are creatures who are uniquely set apart from the rest of creation. 

Mary and Sophia are also described in similar ways. In Proverbs, Sophia is described as "a reflection of eternal light." Mary, in Revelation, is described as being "clothed with the sun." 

Lastly and most importantly, both Mary and Sophia express the divine feminine. 

All these allusive correspondences have caused some theologians to make a connection between Mary and Sophia. Sophia is the divine feminine aspect of God's creative work, and Mary is the perfect realization and embodiment of that aspect of creation. We might put it this way: Mary is the incarnation of Sophia, the divine feminine made visible in a human person. 

For example, Teilhard de Chardin wrote a poem in 1918 entitled "The Eternal Feminine" where he connects the Old Testament vision of Sophia with the Virgin Mary. Here's a sampling from the start of the poem:

When the world was born, I came into being. Before the centuries were made, I issued from the hand of God — half formed, yet destined to grow in beauty from age to age, the handmaid of his work...

I am the beauty running through the world, to make it associate in ordered groups: the ideal held up before the world to make it ascend.

I am the essential Feminine.

In the beginning I was no more than a mist, rising and falling: I lay hidden beneath affinities that were as yet hardly conscious, beneath a loose and tenuous polarity.

And yet I was already in existence.

In the stirring of the layers of the cosmic substance, whose nascent folds contain the promise of worlds beyond number, the first traces of my countenance could be read. Like a soul, still dormant but essential, I bestirred the original mass, almost without form, which hastened into my field of attraction; and I instilled even into the atoms, into the fathomless depths of the infinitesimal, a vague but obstinate yearning to emerge from the solitude of their nothingness and to hold fast to something outside themselves.

I was the bond that thus held together the foundations of the universe.

For every monad, be it never so humble, provided it is in very truth a centre of activity, obeys in its movement an embryo of love for me:

The universal Feminine.

You can see all the imagery being pulled from Proverbs 8 and Wisdom 6-7. In the middle of the poem de Chardin describes how humanity can come to misuse nature--the divine feminine--or falsely worship it:

For a long time man, lacking the skill to distinguish between the mirage and the truth, has not known whether he should fear me or worship me.

He loved me for the magic of my charm and my sovereign power; he feared me as a force alien to himself, and for the bewildering riddle I presented.

I was at once his strength and his weakness — his hope and his trial. It was in relation to me that the good were divided from the wicked. 

Indeed, had Christ not come, man might well have placed me for ever in the camp of evil.

Humanity, therefore, has to approach nature and the divine feminine in a chaste and holy manner. Because of this, the divine feminine declares in the poem: "Henceforth my name is Virginity." And yet, in the very next line: "The Virgin is still woman and mother: in that we may read the sign of the new age." We can see here the poem building a bridge between the divine feminine of Proverbs and Wisdom with the Virgin Mary. This connection comes into full view toward the end of the poem where Sophia finally discloses her identity,

Lying between God and the earth, as a zone of mutual attraction, I draw them both together in a passionate union.

— until the meeting takes place in me, in which the generation and plenitude of Christ are consummated throughout the centuries...

I am Mary the Virgin, mother of all human kind.

Russian sophiological theologians, like Sergius Bulgakov, also make connections between Sophia and Mary. 

To be sure, these connections between Mary and Sophia are all very speculative, but I think generatively so for the St. Brigid conversation. Specifically, if a connection between Mary and Sophia can be made, then St. Brigid as "Mary of the Gaels" can enter into a conversation about the divine feminine in nature. And importantly for my interests, this wouldn't have been done through a pagan pathway, but flows wholly through a Christian imagination. What we view in the life of St. Brigid, then, are visions of both Mary and Sophia, each manifestations of the divine feminine. No nature goddess needed.

"Praise the Lord, all nations!"

Psalm 117 is unique as a call to praise. Most of the time, the Psalms call upon Israel to praise the Lord. But Psalm 117 calls all nations and peoples to the praise and worship of God:

Praise the Lord, all nations!
Glorify him, all peoples!

There is a dance here between the particular and the universal. God calls a particular people--Israel--but gives this people a universal vocation. 

My next book is scheduled to come out this spring. Titled The Book of Love: A Better Way to Read the Bible, it has a chapter on this dialectic between the particular and the universal. One of the points I make is how love gets distorted when it is pulled too far in either direction.

On the one hand, there is the particular. We are not called to love generically or abstractly. I am called to love the particular people God has put within the scope of my care. My family, my friends, my church, my city. I am called to love a particular people at a particular place. And yet, this love of mine can become insular, xenophobic, and ethnonationalistic. 

This was precisely the temptation Israel faced. We see that play out in Acts 10, where the Holy Spirit has to nudge the Jewish followers of Jesus toward the goyim, away from the particular and toward the universal. As Peter declares at the end of his hard lesson, "God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean."

So, love is universal. As Psalm 117 declares, Israel wasn't just to love herself. She existed to love the nations. And yet, a universalized love has its own temptations. Can you love the entire world without that love become generic, abstract, and disengaged? That is to say, we can love the world in principle but, as I point out in Stranger God, in practice love is local, a face to face interaction. Far too often we love the world at a digital distance via expressions of social media solidarity. Love becomes a meme. Loving everyone universally tends to mean loving no one in particular.

This is a crude contrast, but conservatives tend to make love too particular, with all the attendant temptations. Liberals, by contrast, tend to make love too universal, and suffer their own temptations in that direction. Psalm 117 places us in the middle. A particular people are reminded of a universal calling and concern.

In light of the St. Brigid tradition, we've been talking about pagan nature and fertility goddesses. As I've argued, the link between the Irish goddess Brigid and St. Brigid is thin, really just the similar names. Plus, the goddess Brigid wasn't a nature or a fertility goddess. In fact, the notion of a nature goddess in modern neo-paganism really became established during the modern period with the 18th and 19th century Romantic movement. Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon gives a good account of this.  

And yet, I do think a sympathetic conversation between Christianity and neo-paganism can be had in regards to how the divine feminine relates to nature. The bridge here is the vision of Sophia from the Old Testament.

Proverbs 3 describes how Sophia (Wisdom) was "the first of his [God's] acts" of creation. And once created, Sophia is depicted as a co-creator with God, standing "beside" God as "a master worker." Proverbs 8:22-36:

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
when he had not yet made earth and fields
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

“And now, my children, listen to me:
happy are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
and do not neglect it.
Happy is the one who listens to me,
watching daily at my gates,
waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the Lord,
but those who miss me injure themselves;
all who hate me love death.”

Simply, Sophia is a divine principle, imagined as feminine, that co-creates and pervades the natural world. More, we are called to live in attunement with this divine, feminine principle. Whoever finds Sophia, says Proverbs, "finds life" and "obtains favor from the Lord." Negatively, those who "miss" Sophia "injure themselves" and those who "hate" Sophia "love death."

These connections deepen when we turn to the Deuterocanonical book of Wisdom, found in the canon of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Admittedly, this is a long passage to share, but if you're a Protestant you've likely never read it and it would be illuminating to give it a close, attentive reading. It's a pretty startling and mind-bending text:

Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her
and is found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths
and meets them in every thought. (Wisdom 6:12-16)

May God grant me to speak with judgment
and to have thoughts worthy of what I have received,
for he is the guide even of wisdom
and the corrector of the wise.
For both we and our words are in his hand,
as are all understanding and skill in crafts.
For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists,
to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements,
the beginning and end and middle of times,
the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons,
the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars,
the natures of animals and the tempers of wild animals,
the powers of spirits and the thoughts of human beings,
the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots;
I learned both what is secret and what is manifest,
for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
agile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God and prophets,
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be more radiant,
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
and she orders all things well. (Wisdom 7:15-8:1)

Like I said, a remarkable passage. Sophia is a "pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty." Sophia "pervades and penetrates all things." Sophia is the "fashioner of all things" within the created order, from the solstices to the nature of animals to the varieties of plants to the virtues of roots. 

As should be obvious. there are resonances here between Sophia and the neo-pagan vision of a nature goddess. Both describe a divine feminine principle that infuses and suffuses nature, from solstices to herbal remedies, that we must live in attunement with. 

Now, can Sophia be connected to St. Brigid from a Christian perspective? It can, and it comes through that Marian association we've already discussed. We'll turn to that issue as we wrap up this series.

One way to tell the story about the relationship between paganism and Christianity in the West is that Christianity co-opted and stole pagan practices, rebranding them as Christian holidays, rituals, and symbols, from Christmas trees to Easter eggs. In this telling, there is a primitive pagan "core" to the Christian practice that has been occluded and which might be recovered by removing the Christian accretion. 

In the Brigid tradition, as I've shared, there is a convergence between her feast day and the festival of Imbolc. As one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, which include Bealtaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain, Imbolc likely has pagan origins as a celebration of spring and the lambing season. These fertility and birthing connections pull in divine feminine imagery. And given that Brigid's feast day falls on Imbolc we might suspect that, once again, Christianity is rebranding a prior pagan practice. Imbolc, a pagan fertility celebration, has now become the feast day of St. Brigid.

This case is strengthened because there was a goddess named Brigid (or Brigit). Brigid was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods and goddesses of Irish lore, the deities of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland. A 9th century Christian account of the goddess Brigid describes her as being associated with poetry, wisdom, healing, smithing, and the protection of animals. The argument therefore has been made that St. Brigid is a Christian syncretization of the goddess Brigid. And yet, this account has a few problems. First, and most significantly, St. Brigid was a real person. St. Brigid, as a historical woman, is not a syncretistic co-opting of a pagan legend. Second, the goddess Brigid wasn't a fertility or nature goddess. Her main associations were poetry and smithing. Third, and relatedly, there is no particular association between the goddess Brigid and the festival of Imbolc, which became St. Brigid's feast day.

Basically, the only link between the goddess Brigid and St. Brigid is the name. The goddess Brigid wasn't a nature goddess. Nor is there any connection between her and Imbolc. Still, there are just enough threads of association to be woven into a neo-pagan tapestry. St. Brigid shares a name with a pagan goddess. St. Brigid's feast day falls on Imbolc, which may have origins in pagan fertility rites. Therefore: St. Brigid was primordially a nature and fertility goddess. The pagan goddess became the Christian saint. But upon closer inspection, as pointed out above, this case falls apart. Mostly, again, because St. Brigid was a historical person. St. Brigid didn't become a Christian, take vows, and become an influential abbess because she was "stealing" or "co-opting" the persona of a pagan nature goddess. She was simply her own true, historical Christian self and would be quite horrified at how she is being depicted and venerated in Ireland today. So while it is true that Christians have syncretically borrowed from pagan culture, this didn't happen with St. Brigid. As I put it in the first post, the St. Brigid tradition isn't a case of Christians stealing her from the ancient pagans but is, rather, modern pagans stealing St. Brigid away from Christianity to remake her into a pre-Christian nature goddess.

But now, having said all that, I don't want to be too deflationary. As a historical person, St. Brigid is not a syncretic nature goddess. That much is sure. But I do think a sympathetic conversation can be had with paganism when it comes to the divine feminine and nature in relation to the St. Brigid tradition. I'll turn to that topic next.

I was struck, a few months ago, how the late pope Francis elected to be buried outside of the Vatican. Francis chose to be buried at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Francis made this decision to be forever close to the revered icon of the Virgin Mary at Santa Maria Maggiore. Before and after his international travels, Francis visited the church and the icon.

Mary was a vital part of Francis' life. During the darkest years of his life, when he was "exiled" from Argentina to Germany, Francis frequently visited the Baroque painting of Mary in Augsburg. Entitled "Mary, Undoer of Knots," the painting depicts Mary untying a long ribbon of knots, each symbolizing the problems, sins, and struggles of human life. Devotion associated with the painting emphasizes Mary's help in untangling the messes we cannot fix alone. Which was precisely what Francis was needing at that time in this life. Due to Mary's help, Francis returned to Argentina a changed man, becoming the pastor his people called "the priest of the slums." 

I bring up Francis' devotion to Mary to make a point so obvious it hardly bears making. In contrast to Catholicism (and Orthodoxy), Protestantism is wholly devoid of feminine imagery. Now, it is true that the priesthood and episcopal structure of Catholicism is "patriarchal." But it's also true that, through its Marian devotion, Catholic spirituality is suffused with the maternal and the feminine. Again, look at pope Francis. Much of his spiritual life was lived in intimate communion with a woman. So much so, Francis wanted to be buried next to her.

And this is a worldwide experience. The spiritual gravity of Mexican Catholicism, for example, orbits a woman--the Lady of Guadalupe. Walk the Hispanic section of any cemetery here in Texas and you'll see just as many, if not more, images of the Lady of Guadalupe as there are of Jesus. Because of Mary, Mexican and Hispanic spirituality has a deeply feminine aspect. 

Thanks to Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, it can be a bit woo woo to talk about "the divine feminine." Feel free to roll your eyes. But the term is apt for Marian devotion. Perhaps "sacred feminine" is better than "divine." Still, there are doctrines associated with Mary in Catholicism that push her toward a quasi-divine status. For example, Mary was born without sin (called the Immaculate Conception). More, Mary never committed a sin during her life: "By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long" (CCC 493). And finally, at the end of her life Mary was assumed into heaven. Some even hold that Mary never died, that her assumption into heaven allowed her to escape death. Add to all this Mary's powerful role in Catholic intercession along with the prominence of the Rosary and the "Hail Mary":

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

There is, in all this, a divine and sacred feminine aspect to Catholic spirituality. As we see in the "Hail Mary," the words "women," "womb," and "mother" are central to Catholic devotion. Words and images said over and over and over again. It is not uncommon in Catholic devotion to spend more time with the Mother than with the Father. The math of the Rosary makes this clear: 50 "Hail Mary's" to 6 "Our Fathers" are said. You say "Mother" way more than you say "Father."    

Again, all this is well known. I'm underlining the point in this series to highlight how, through her connection to Mary as "Mary of the Gaels," St. Brigid gets pulled into the "divine feminine" conversation in Irish spirituality. Due to these associations, Brigid is now regularly, and increasingly, being described as a "goddess." Veneration of Brigid in Ireland has been drifting away from the Christian toward the pagan. And the bridge is the Marian divine feminine link. 

During the class on Celtic Christianity I led in Ireland with my students in May, we visited one of the many holy wells associated with St. Brigid.

In Hunting Magic Eels I talk about the place of St. Brigid within Irish Christianity, and how she's become a location of pagan and Christian syncretism in Ireland. It is regularly claimed that St. Brigid was a Christianization of a pagan goddess. The case for this is thin, and rests mostly upon the fact that St. Brigid's feast day falls on February 1, the same day as Imbolc, the first day of spring. Some scholars trace Imbolic back to a pre-Christian, pagan festival that celebrated the start of the lambing season in Ireland. And when you look at the life of Brigid, many of her miracles have to do with agriculture and farming. Cows giving milk, supplying honey, making beer, affecting weather. In light of these miracles, along with the association with Imbolc, people sense some sort of pagan "nature goddess" lurking behind the Irish veneration of Brigid. 

My take on the historical literature is that the case for "Brigid as pagan goddess" is a modern phenomenon attempting to wrest Brigid away from Christianity. I'll share more about this in a post come. For now let me say that I don't think Christianity stole Brigid from the ancient pagans. It is, rather, modern pagans who are stealing Brigid from Christianity.

That said, there are some odd things within the Brigid tradition. Specifically, how Brigid is associated with Mary.

Brigid is called "Mary of the Gaels." The Gaels being the Irish. Now, throughout Catholic history there have been Marian visitations and apparitions, from the Lady of Guadalupe to Our Lady of Lourdes. In these cases, Mary appears as herself, though sometimes, like the Lady of Guadalupe, in changed form. What we don't see is a living woman being identified as Mary. And yet, that's what we find in the Brigid tradition. As "Mary of the Gaels" Brigid is treated very much like a Marian apparition within Irish spirituality. For example, in one of the early lives of Brigid the story is told of a holy man who had a vision of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, leading a company of virgins across a plain to bless an episcopal synod. Soon after, the holy man sees Brigid, accompanied by her virgin sisters, making their way across the Plain of Liffey to the synod. Upon seeing Brigid, the holy man exclaims, "This is the Mary I beheld!"

The curiosities continue. In Broccán's hymn to St. Brigid, Broccán describes Brigid as the mother of Jesus: "mother of my high king" and "she slept the sleep of a captive--the saint, for the sake of her Son...she was One-Mother of the Great King's Son." In the An Leabhar Breac, an early vita of Brigid, this claim is repeated:

This is the father of this holy virgin--the Heavenly father. This is her son--Jesus Christ.

Reflecting on these texts, Phillip Campbell observes:

Historically, there has been a general Christian sensibility that the motherhood of Jesus is predicated of Mary uniquely--that, however perfectly a woman may model Mary spiritually, calling her Jesus's "mother" and He her "son" is a line never crossed. That Brigid's early biographers were at ease crossing this line is a peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism, one that authors of later generations felt the need to carefully walk back from.

This "peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism" in treating Brigid as a Marian figure--Brigid as the mother of Jesus--along with her feast day falling upon Imbolc, makes the Brigid tradition, both ancient and modern, a fascinating place to reflect upon divine feminine imagery within the Christian tradition.

"I was helpless, and he saved me"

We haven't talked about this much in this series, but Psalm 116 is one of those psalms that create the different numbering of the Psalms in Catholic Bibles versus Protestant Bibles. I expect most Protestants aren't aware of this, but if you've ever picked up a Catholic Bible you might have noticed how the Psalms, in some spots, seem to be off by one or two numbers.

The difference has to do with the role of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate in the Catholic tradition. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Old Testament made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. This Greek text was the basis of St. Jerome's initial Latin translation of the Psalms, though he later produced a Hebrew-based version as well. We should also note that the Septuagint contained the Deuterocanonical books (also called the Apocrypha). The Vulgate functioned as the Bible of the church until the Protestant Reformation.

After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, rabbinic Judaism worked to standardize the Hebrew text of the Tanakh (what Christians call "the Old Testament" or "the Hebrew Scriptures"). This work was safeguarded and preserved during the 6th–10th centuries by the Masoretes, Jewish scribes in Tiberias, Babylonia, and Palestine. Their work produced what is called the Masoretic Text. This text had different numbering for the Psalms compared to the Septuagint and Vulgate. The Masoretic Text also did not contain the Deuterocanonical books. During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers began to base their translations of the Old Testament on the Masoretic Text rather than the Latin Vulgate. Consequently, Protestant Bibles have different numbering for the Psalms and do not contain the Deuterocanonical books.

Basically, it boils down to the Septuagint versus the Masoretic Text as the basis for the Old Testament. 

The different numbering of the Psalms in the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are due to four splits/combinations. These are:

Masoretic Text Psalms 9–10 = Septuagint Psalm 9

Masoretic Text Psalms 114–115 = Septuagint Psalm 113

Masoretic Text Psalm 116 = Septuagint Psalms 114–115

Masoretic Text Psalm 147 = Septuagint Psalms 146–147

As you can see, Psalm 116 is one of those places where the split/combination occurs. In Protestant Bibles, Psalms 116 is a whole. But in Catholic Bibles Psalm 116 is split into two. Where does that split occur in the poem? It happens between verses 9 and 10. In Catholic Bibles, Psalm 114 ends with:

I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

Which is verse 9 in Psalm 116. Psalm 115 in Catholic Bibles then begins with verse 10 of the Psalm 116:

I believed, even when I said,
“I am severely oppressed.”

///

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is the sort of stuff I enjoy. Let's get back to some devotional thoughts. 

Psalm 116 is an expression of thanksgiving for deliverance. Recall, again, how Psalm 116 is a part of the Hallel psalms used during Passover. The poet finds himself in a dire situation and cries out: 

The ropes of death were wrapped around me,
and the torments of Sheol overcame me;
I encountered trouble and sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

The Lord hears and rescues:

The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is compassionate.
The Lord guards the inexperienced;
I was helpless, and he saved me.

One of my concerns with how salvation is described in progressive and conservative Christian spaces is how moralized they are. To be sure, they are moralized in different ways, but both focus upon some vision of moral purity.

For conservatives, the moral purity is achieved juridically, being "justified" before God due to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. I am "clean" because Jesus' righteousness is imputed to me. Downstream of justification, we also see conservative concerns about moral purity in places like evangelical purity culture.

For progressives, moral purity is more performative than juridical. (Progressive Christians hate penal substitutionary atonement.) This is the moral influence view of atonement. We are saved by emulating the love of Jesus. And insofar as we love, we are saved. The purity aspect of this moral performance shows up in what I've described, way back in 2015, as the "purity culture" of progressive Christianity. In progressive Christian spaces being complicit in oppressive structures creates an experience of moral contamination. This causes progressives to embrace puritanical displays of moral purity and social quarantine. Cancel and callout culture are examples. Progressives leaving Twitter/X because of Elon Musk is another example, fleeing a morally contaminated space for the purer Bluesky. It's the social media version of social distancing. Recently, I've seen progressives leaving Substack for Ghost because Substack hosts Nazis. Since Substack is morally contaminated, purity is regained via social quarantine. All this is purity culture behavior, fearing contamination through contact. A pursuit of moral purity in a world where “everything is problematic” is also what drives the radicalization of progressive spaces, where purer and purer expressions of solidarity and commitment drive the community toward extremism and individuals to moral exhaustion. If you’re trying to be 100% free of complicity in a world where being morally compromised is unavoidable you’ll never be fully or wholly clean. See Unclean for more about purity psychology. 

My point, again, is how both progressive and conservative Christians define salvation as moral purity.

But as I've argued in this space, what moral purity misses is our need for help and assistance. As the recovery community puts it, our lives have become unmanageable and we need to rely upon a power that can restore us to sanity. And that is the vision of Psalm 116. 

I was helpless and he saved me.