| Abstrakt: |
Spiritual education, at its best, fosters growth and helps the individual to search for meaning. These processes are by no means painless for the learner: either by ignoring the search, or by engaging in it, s/he may experience frustration, loss, confusion, sadness, anger. The argument will be that we can summarize these painful experiences and name them as woundedness. From a reading ofjungian analysis, religious classics and our own experience, we can see woundedness as a fundamental characteristic of all learners, by virtue of their humanity, but especially children. The child, as a learning spirit, can be understood to be wounded; the process of spiritual education can be understood therapeuti‐cally, knowledge can be understood as self‐recovery. In this understanding, spiritual education is not therapy in itself, but can be metaphorically understood as such, and can have some therapeutic effects. Some complexities and weaknesses of this metaphor are considered towards the end, and its considerable implications for spiritual education are sketched in outline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
