Transforming Spirituality: Integrating Theology and Psychology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006)

Reviewed by Bruce H. Lescher

A Conspiracy Revealed: The Divine Conspiracy (by Willard, D.)

When I (Paul) first obtained Willard’s book The Divine Conspiracy, I could not help but notice the attractive painting of two ripe plums on the cover. “What a nice touch,” I thought. “A fine painting—a little color, artistic shapes, and angles. It grabs my attention.” But after feasting upon the wisdom behind this finely decorated cover, I came to appreci-ate the symbolism of fruit on the tree. In The Divine Conspiracy, Willard gives maturing Christians an opportunity to reconceptualize their place in the kingdom of heaven. As a fitting completion to Willard’s wisdom-filled “trilogy on the spiritual life” (p. xvii), The Divine Conspiracy stresses discipleship to Jesus as the heart of the gospel message. He challenges the reader to set aside common misconceptions, what he calls “consumer Christianity” and “bumper-sticker faith,” to reclaim one’s present position in “the kingdom among us.

Virtue and flourishing in mental healthcare

[The key thesis across many virtue traditions that growth in character strengths and virtues should lead to growth in human flourishing remains untested in the context of mental healthcare. We need to empirically test this big idea with appropriate attention to the potentially complex relationships between mental distress, virtue, and flourishing among diverse individuals and contexts over time.]Supporting documentatio

Analysis in mixed method designs, part 1

Supporting documentatio

Positive psychology, virtue, and flourishing in psychotherapy

The field of mental healthcare in the United States largely promotes a view of the human person as "clusters of negative symptoms" and focuses predominately on reducing these negative symptoms in individuals rather than on additional pathways towards social and relational well being. This dominant approach, based on the medical disease model of mental illness, includes certain strengths and efficiencies. However, the large body of positive psychology research since the 1990s has advanced scientific understan dings of human strengths and virtues with related investigations of individual and communal flourishing. By "virtue," we mean embodied traits of character that tend to promote resilience and the integration of ethics and health toward the ultimate goals of both personal and communal flourishing (e.g., humility, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and justice among others; Hill & Sandage, 2016). A goal of "flourishing" moves beyond hedonic or subjective forms of well being, and each of the research teams in this panel are informed by eudaimonic or developmental theories of well being characterized by relational maturity, meaningful purpose, integrity and the pursuit of virtue, and communal concern through prosocial behavior (Boettscher, Sandage, Latin, & Barl ow, 2019; Waterman, 2013). To date, efforts at integrating positive psychology into psychotherapy have tended to involve the development of new "positive psychotherapies," however we will consider the possibilities (and challenges) of integrating positive psychology into mainstream psychotherapy approaches. Drawing on work from a multi site Templeton grant, this panel will describe ways these complex topics of virtue and flourishing can be engaged in psychotherapy research and practice.Published versio

Exploring virtue ethics in psychodynamic psychotherapy: latent changes in humility, affect regulation, symptoms, and well-being

[Empirical exploration of a salutary role for virtues on both mental health symptoms and well-being has increased. Yet, tests for this role in psychotherapy have not matched research in other contexts. As such, we tested the virtue ethics premise that growth in humility could facilitate changes in symptoms and well-being in the context of contemporary relational psychotherapy (CRP; Sandage et al., 2020). CRP is grounded in three premises: (a) conceptualizing clients within their historical, familial and sociocultural contexts, (b) understanding distress as stemming from maladaptive intra- and interpersonal patterns, and (c) prioritizing a here-and-now focus within the therapeutic relationship. We proposed experiential avoidance as the mechanism whereby humility influences symptoms and well-being.]First author draf

Relational spirituality, intercultural competence, and social justice in systemic therapies

The Relational Spirituality Model (RSM) builds on relational, psychodynamic, and systemic approaches and serves as an orienting framework for clinical services and training. In this article, we provide an overview of the RSM, a pluralistic contextual approach to spirituality in clinical practice that (a) considers developmental dialectics of spiritual dwelling and seeking and (b) explores diverse ways that religious and spiritual dynamics can range from salutary to harmful. In light of growing attention to racism in U.S. society, we review salient research on justice-seeking spirituality and consider the roles of humility, differentiation, and hope in developing intercultural competence. Throughout, we consider implications for clinical practice and training.Published versio

Mental health, well-being, and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed methods practice-based study

First author draf

Evolution of Li, Be and B in the Galaxy

In this paper we study the production of Li, Be and B nuclei by Galactic cosmic ray spallation processes. We include three kinds of processes: (i) spallation by light cosmic rays impinging on interstellar CNO nuclei (direct processes); (ii) spallation by CNO cosmic ray nuclei impinging on interstellar p and 4He (inverse processes); and (iii) alpha-alpha fusion reactions. The latter dominate the production of 6Li and 7Li. We calculate production rates for a closed-box Galactic model, verifying the quadratic dependence of the Be and B abundances for low values of Z. These are quite general results and are known to disagree with observations. We then show that the multi-zone multi-population model we used previously for other aspects of Galactic evolution produces quite good agreement with the linear trend observed at low metallicities without fine tuning. We argue that reported discrepancies between theory and observations do not represent a nucleosynthetic problem, but instead are the consequences of inaccurate treatments of Galactic evolution.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX. The Astrophysical Journal, in pres