The Emergent Self

Questioning what we're told it means to be human

Topic

Articles

Longer essays and arguments on how we become who we are: through humiliation and recognition, belief and doubt, loss and meaning.

Watercolor of a man standing in a doorway with his back to the viewer, a black clerical shirt left on a chair in the dim room behind him and a bright 1990s office ahead, where a plane climbs past the window.

Leaving Can Be Its Own Kind of Arriving

After I left the priesthood, I spent a year in temp jobs, standing in a doorway between who I had been and who I would become. Leaving, I have come to believe, is its own kind of arriving.
Watercolor of an older hand resting gently on another person's open hand across a wooden table, symbolizing human presence beyond thoughts and prayers

Beyond “Thoughts and Prayers”: A Former Priest on Where Healing Really Happens

A former priest on why "thoughts and prayers" fall short, and how presence, practical help, and human connection carry the healing that prayer once promised.
A hiker stands at a fork between a wide, easy road and a narrow, rocky path climbing into misty woods, with index cards scattered along the narrow path

The Road Less Traveled: Why Becoming Asks More Than Getting

Why do most of us take the path of least resistance? A dissertation Chair, nine drafts, and a social constructionist look at what it means to become, not just get.
Older woman standing in an open doorway, looking out from a cozy room onto sunlit countryside — starting over later in life

Starting Over Later in Life: Why We Never Stop Becoming

We tend to think becoming happens early, and that after middle age we just maintain what we have. My retired friends prove otherwise.