Soaring architecture underlines James Hollis message

The soaring ceiling of St. Andrews Wesley church in downtown Vancouver is often used for concerts, readings and other cultural events.

Last weekend, it was the site of a talk by the well-known Jungian author James Hollis, who spoke to an audience assembled from members of the CG Jung Society of Vancouver as well as interested individuals like myself.

As he had when I first heard him on CBC twenty years ago, he raised an interesting question. At that time, he asked the question addressed in his book The Middle Passage (1993), "Who am I apart from my roles?"

This time, the topic was mature spirituality, and he invited us to ask ourselves what would bring us nearer to achieving what our souls demand of us.

It seemed to me a singularly suitable question for our time, and the church, its lovely architecture reminding us of vanished certitudes, seemed exactly the sort of place to address such a question.

More recent books by Hollis include Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Why Good People do Bad Things, and his 2013 publication Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run our Lives. On Saturday at the Vancouver Museum, he gave a seminar on that topic.