At nineteen, sitting in her church’s outdoor amphitheater before a Sunday service, Angela Meer heard a sentence bubble up inside her that she never chose: Surely there is more to Christianity than this. She was a missionary kid who had done everything right. The sentence was not rebellion. It was thirst.
In this second episode of the Foundations series on The Christian Jung, Angela explores what Carl Jung called the religious function of the psyche: the soul’s built-in reach for God. She tells how Jung, as a young psychiatrist at the Burghölzli in Zurich, took seriously the images his patients carried, why he insisted the soul is naturaliter religiosa, naturally religious, and how, in his 1961 letter to Bill Wilson of Alcoholics Anonymous, he footnoted Psalm 42 to name the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness.
Angela grounds the episode in Scripture: the Psalmist’s soul thirsting for the living God, Jesus at the well declaring that God is spirit and seeks worshipers in spirit and truth, Jesus crying out at the Feast of Tabernacles that anyone who is thirsty may come and drink, and John’s word that the living water is the Holy Spirit. She turns to the Old Testament prophets, who met God in visions, dreams, and fire: Jeremiah with a fire shut up in his bones, Elijah hearing God in a still small voice, and David hearing God in the sky and in the Scriptures side by side in Psalm 19.
The episode teaches three movements of life in the Spirit: the soul reaches before the mind explains, symbols carry more than concepts, and what we ignore does not disappear. It includes a short guided moment of contemplative prayer and closes with Anselm of Canterbury’s prayer of longing from the Proslogion: let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking.
If your theology is sound but your soul feels dry, this episode is for you. Your thirst may be the most faithful thing in you.
Closing block (paste at the end of the description):
📖 Read the full article and guided practice: https://www.read.AngelaMeer.com
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Angela Meer is an ordained minister with graduate degrees in Jungian studies.
It’s time to awaken holy wonder.
Show notes:
Scripture referenced (World English Bible): Psalm 42:1-2; John 4:23-24; John 7:37-39; Jeremiah 20:9; 1 Kings 19:11-12; John 10:27; Psalm 19:1-3, 7; Romans 8:26; Jeremiah 1:11; 1 Samuel 3:9-10.
Key terms: The religious function of the psyche (Jung’s observation that the soul is naturaliter religiosa, naturally religious; Psychology and Alchemy). The symbolic life (Jung’s phrase for a life that lives by image and meaning, not intellect alone). Burghölzli (the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zurich, where Jung worked in the early 1900s). Living water (Jesus’ image for the Holy Spirit, John 7:37-39).
Jung’s letter: C. G. Jung to Bill Wilson, January 30, 1961, with its footnote to Psalm 42:1.
Prayer: Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, chapter 1 (translated by Sidney Norton Deane).
Episode tags: Foundations, Carl Jung, contemplative prayer, Contemplative Series, Anselm of Canterbury, Jung letter to Bill Wilson, John 7 living water
