I stumbled across an untitled “hymn of praise” in St. Nikolai’s Prologue of Ohrid,* last week which pulled me out of a funk, the type of funk I get into only when I pay too much attention to the news. I’ve never been into religious hymns, per se, even Orthodox Christian ones, but this one…
“What do you seek?” (John 1:37). These are the first words from Christ to those who would become disciples; a question as simple as they come, and no less profound. I often ask my clients in therapy, “what do you want?” And I leave the question there, hanging in ambiguity. The usual reply is,…
The primordial man says of his wife, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen 2:23) St. Nikolai of Ohrid on this verse repeats a familiar consensus of the church saying, “this is the foundation and reason for the mysterious attraction and unity of husband and wife.” As with…
I’ve loved Kierkegaard for 2 decades and have managed to read nearly everything he wrote, many two or three times. Yesterday during my second run through of The Concept of Anxiety I was struck by a passage that spells out the task of psychology in a way I’ve never heard it; something that I apparently…
Originally posted on Eric Hyde Counseling:
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the notion of what I call the “Noble Line,” i.e. the psychology of ancestry. It used to be that growing up a person had a sense of family roots – roots not limited to one’s immediate parents or grandparents, but roots extending…
“Partisanship,” writes Aldous Huxley, “is a complex passion which permits those who indulge in it to make the best of both worlds. Because they do these things for the sake of a group which is, by definition, good and even sacred, they can admire themselves and loathe their neighbors, they can seek power and money,…
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” This is the new fun phrase from Nike’s new ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick circulating social media. I have no interest in getting involved with the NFL kneeling thing or the time-wasting delirium of debating Nike’s intentions with the ad, but I feel a need to…
If you don’t know who Anthony Bourdain is it’s probably because you hate traveling and good food. He was THE perennial all-star travel and food critic; he held the job that I, and anyone with any sense of sense, dreamed of having. And besides the actual Anthony Bourdain – the witty, sarcastic, crass storyteller, chef…
Seeking counseling at church can be highly precarious. Many are left with a choice between equally bad options: do I (a) tell my pastor about my affair, addiction, suicidal thoughts, hatred, etc., and risk getting ostracized, or (b) self-medicate, keep my mouth shut, and hope the guilty feeling goes away some day? There is of…
The loneliest one is not the one who knows he is alone in the world. To know one is alone is actually the beginning of emancipation, and has little in common with the dread hopelessness of being truly alone. Awareness of loneliness has the power to make one at home in the earth, to integrate…
I often find myself wishing I were living the savage life. I use savage in the old sense to mean pre-civilized man. The savage had many advantages that modern man will likely never have, or even conceive of. For example, the ability to see the full night sky. Modern lighting has made this spectacle nearly…
There is a “very specific quality that distinguishes [man from animal],” says Rousseau, “about which there can be no argument: the faculty of self-perfection.” A horse never strains to be a horse but every man strains to become something other than what he is. And while every person is in pursuit of perfection they never…
Nihilism is a tricky mode of existence. How does one continue existing, in an existence one finds thoroughly meaningless, when one’s very being demands love and relationship with others to survive? Dostoevsky has a scene in the Brother’s Karamazov where a man, an elder of an Orthodox monastery, explains how the more he “loves humanity…
In political discourse (if such a thing still exists) one often hears various religious groups claim that atheism is just another religion and therefore the removal of God from the public square is the same as instituting yet another religion, atheism. Though I understand this sentiment, the fact is atheism is anything but a religion.…
“The present contains nothing but the past,” says the great Henri Bergson, “and what is found in the effect was already present in the cause.” Is this true of the human psyche? Is our present state of mind merely an aggregate of our total experiences and affects from birth to the present? It may be…
George Kelly defined guilt as: “A perception of one’s apparent dislodgement from his core role structure.” This “core role” develops out of our relationships with significant others whom we construe ourselves in certain ways: loving, responsible, secure, etc. It seems to follow that any religious paradigm which casts human beings as essentially good makes guilt…
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced" -Kierkegaard
Doctrine Matters
Neither polemic nor compromise, but engagement
Eric Hyde's Blog 