Community

The following is a excerpt from Carl Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections in chapter 2 “School Years”.

Several times my father had a serious talk with me. I was free to study anything I liked, he said, but if I wanted his advice I should keep away from theology. “Be anything you like except a theologian,” he said emphatically. By this time there was a tacit agreement between us that certain things could be said or done without comment. He had never taken me to task for cutting church as often as possible and for not going to communion any more. The farther away I was from church, the better I felt. The only things I missed were the organ and the choral music, but certainly not the “religious community.” The phrase meant nothing to me at all, for the habitual churchgoers struck me as being far less of a community than the “worldly” folk. The latter may have been less virtuous, but on the other hand they were much nicer people, with natural emotions, more sociable and cheerful, warmer-hearted and more sincere.

This reminded me of the movie Silver Linings Playbook. The families portrayed here were “less virtuous” than a religious community, but if a religious person could really perceive, they might see that these messy people were “much nicer people, with natural emotions, more sociable and cheerful, warmer-hearted and more sincere.”