The Emergent Self

Questioning what we're told it means to be human

Topic

Philosophy & Meaning

Ideas from philosophy, from Spinoza onward, and what they offer for living a meaningful life without inherited answers.

A luminous figure dissolving into flowing fabric and light in golds and warm tones, suggesting human transformation and becoming

People Are Verbs: The Quiet Rebellion Against How We’ve Been Taught to See Ourselves

What if you are not a thing at all, but a happening? Whitehead's quiet rebellion against the grammar of nouns — and the freedom it offers.
Open doors of a grand Catholic church, seen from the altar with a green chasuble in the foreground, looking out on a neighborhood street where neighbors talk together

From the Altar to the Streets

I loved the liturgy and served a near-northside Indianapolis parish as White flight hollowed it out. Spinoza helped me understand why I had to leave, and what true piety asks of us.
Watercolor of a man seen from behind on a bench in a dim office break room, a second coffee cup set beside him as dawn light comes through the window, asking whether depression was really a gift

Was My Depression Really a Gift?

Was my depression really a gift? A former priest tests his own claim that the dark years after he left the priesthood were a gift.