The Gypsy Rover

We sang the Gypsy Rover in church on Sunday and talked about the soul and had a great time reading Isaiah 60 with everyone with loud uproar.  Kaye whistled in church, and we had a bunch of new folks.  And we played with Twelve Days of Christmas -- the legend about it being a code of some kind appears to be wrong, so we just had fun making up our own ideas for what all the images might mean.

For those of you who haven't come across him, C.G. Jung, who was a disciple of Freud, is one of the great gifts to the church in the last century.  He and his followers have looked deeply at the language of image and dreams, and especially the collective archetypes that govern much of our life journey.  When we look at the insights this field of study has given to anyone dealing with spirituality in the last seventy five years, we can't thank him enough.

On Sunday, we used the story of the Gypsy Rover to highlight some important points about the journey of the soul.  This particular myth describes vividly the awakening of the soul that often happens during our teenage years, the loss of the soul as human being concentrate on developing some mastery of the concrete world in the formative working years, and something of the mess that occurs when people begin to discover in later years a deep hole where the soul used to be.  This can begin a discovery process in the last half of life that can lead to a deep sense of peace and creativity -- where a whistle of spirituality can turn into the music and richness of a full life.  This growth only occurs if we learn new things about our lives and walk in those places we have not gone before.

There are piles of books written by C. J. Jung and his followers.  A great one to start with is his autobiography Memories, Dreams and Reflections (written around 1956 but reprinted constantly since it was first written).  For books looking into deeper meaning of stories and myths see books by Robert Johnson (like "He" or "She").