Can psychology and theology work together? Priest hopes so

The Rev. John Powell has published many books and produced several video programs. For those of you who are looking for a great daily meditation book, I recommend Powell’s “Through Seasons of the Heart.”

It contains 365 passages from his many works.

I have taken the following prayer from his video program entitled “Free to be Me.”

“Lord God of my life: here I am again filled with a thousand thoughts and feeling, desires and plans, joys and sorrows.

“I see two worlds, painfully distant from each other. They are the worlds of psychology and theology: the worlds of the human and the divine. I see so many of my brothers and sisters trying to make a savior of psychology. They are always play ‘growth games.’

“They dig into the darkest corners of their minds and the softest parts of their hearts. What they are doing is mostly good, but so much of the pain goes on and on. Sometimes it seems like a case of the blind leading the blind.

“I want to say to them, ‘You are not just body and mind. You are spirit, too! You can’t make it without God. You can’t be truly fulfilled unless your spiritual hungers are also filled.’

“We are, as you said, Jesus, the branches of your vine. Cut off from you, we begin to die, inch-by-inch, day-by-day. There is emptiness in us that only you can fill.

“But I also see the world of religion. I see some of my brothers and sisters trying to be religious without being fully human. They seem a little rigid and narrow at times, wanting to be holy, but not human.

“They seem to be winning a place in heaven, without realizing or enjoying the beauty of earth. They keep the Ten Commandments, but their observance looks so joyless. Such a world seems small the air in that world is stale.

“Sometimes we ‘religious people’ seem afraid to love ourselves as though that would be a sinful violation of some divine commandment. Any concession to humanity seems to be a compromise of humility. Some of us seem to do good for others without really caring about the broken, bleeding humanity around us. We seem to be crawling through a dark tunnel on bleeding hand and knees to get an eventual reward. Heaven is not cheap, we seem to be saying.

“Oh Lord, when I catch myself thinking and acting this way and when I see others taking this course, I want to protest, ‘We can’t be truly holy unless we are willing to be truly human! We can’t really say a yes of love to you, Lord God, unless we have first said it to ourselves (body, mind, and spirit!) and to our very human brothers and sister.’

“Lord God, I feel called by you to make some contribution to the effort of bringing these two worlds together, and I know where I must begin – with myself. I must bring both worlds together in me, if I am to be all that I can be – free to be me!

“For this I need your healing power: to enlighten whatever is dark in me, to mend that which is broken, to straighten whatever is twisted, and to revive whatever of life and love may have died in me.

“As I work for this, under the gentle influence of your love and grace, make me a channel of life and love for my brothers and sisters.

“Make me an announcer of good news, a bridge over troubled and dividing waters. Help me bring together humanity and divinity, the human heart in all its’ splendor and the heart of God in all your magnificent beauty.”