For the last post in December, I have some shameless publicity about my latest book. Just published in December, it’s for sale through Amazon, through Wipf and Stock, and from your local book seller:
This is how it begins:
“I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.”
This extraordinary statement from the analytical psychologist Carl Jung came to him during his own night sea journeying, an exploration to re-find his soul. If, as he suggests, our soul is a divine child, then what happens to our soul when we have been traumatized and abused in childhood? This book is an exploration of both the damage that is done, and the soul recovery that can happen, if we allow it. The suggestion is that whilst therapeutic help is important, spiritual change and awakening is essential. It is a book about finding oneself at the deepest dimension; about the process of becoming free from the limitations that a traumatic past has imposed on our personal sense of self. It is about finding our true purpose in life, and how childhood trauma once integrated can feed into this purpose.’
From the back cover:
The universal myth of the night sea journey, and parts of St Mark’s gospel, provide a framework for reflecting on the mind, body, and spirit journey needed to overcome and get freer from past pain.
Insights from trauma-informed theology, analytical psychology, psychoanalysis, and from yoga teaching are illustrated by drawing on the experiences of amongst others Thomas Merton, James Finley, and Carl Jung. Alongside this the reader follows in each chapter the compelling stories of two people in spiritual direction, who through different and sometimes very unexpected ways have confronted their inner anguish, and found soul recovery, spiritual renewal, and psychic integration.
The beginning of one journey:
‘I’ve always been a sucker for videos of animals who have been held in captivity for years … then they are rescued, and the film shows them being let out of their cage, sniffing fresh air and for the first time ever walking on the earth, feeling grass. … I’ve never been … subjected to that sort of cruelty, but I have been caught up—or tied up in the past—it’s a bit like being occupied by someone or something else— … and it leaves me in so many ways searching to be free and fully alive. But free from what—nothing extraordinary or sensational, but free from never feeling good enough, or loveable, or being able to trust … or and this is painful to say feeling free to be joyful. It’s a longing to be really alive …
What I want to describe for the book are some of the times when the searching has got me somewhere, or I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough into awareness. … but it’s mostly been so slow, so perhaps it’s only when looking back that I can think yes, I was out of the cage … or, yes, I did feel the grass and see the sky, and knowing there is something more I took steps out into the wider world and breathed deeply.’
Extracts from endorsements:
‘A powerful, unsentimental exploration of trauma’s impact on the soul. …Fiona Gardner guides readers from brokenness to restoration.’ Belinda West, Psychoanalytic psychotherapist and priest.
‘This deeply insightful book …’ Larry Culliford, Psychiatrist and author of ‘The Psychology of Spirituality’
‘To read Fiona Gardner’s Night Sea Journeying is to be touched. Gardner writes with rare compassion and profound wisdom .’ Stephanie Arel, lecturer Fordham University, New York.
‘Night Sea Journeying is a wonderful book’. Ed Sellner, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Spirituality, St Catherine University, Minnesota.