Synchronicities, Priests, and Midwives of Grace

Marking a date: August 21

If You See Me As I Am Being Taken by Jan L. Richardson

Note: This is much longer than I prefer these to be. I do hope there’s something in here for you.

Carl Jung (1875-1961), the Swiss psychiatrist, author, illustrator, academic, and founder of analytical psychology, was raised Christian. He saw religion, including Christianity, as a powerful expression of the human psyche and the search for meaning that has animated humans from the beginning. Words commonly bandied around today in spiritual, psychological, and even psychedelic circles were uncommon or unknown before Jung: collective unconscious, complexes, archetypes, anima and animus, extraversion and introversion, shadow, and synchronicity among them.

Through my own study and my deep personal engagement with therapists, spiritual directors, psychedelics, and a Jungian analyst who was also a priest, much of Jung’s framework has been important in my own spiritual and psychological work. But it is Jung’s insight and teachings on synchronicity that I’ve been pondering since last Thursday. He saw synchronicities as gateways to deeper psychological and spiritual realities, believing that they reveal a hidden reality and purpose behind seemingly random events. Occurring during times of crisis, transformation, or significant inner growth, they are moments often associated with spiritual awakening and individuation: the process of becoming one’s true self.

I’m pondering all of this right now because I want and need to remember for my own spiritual deepening and my sense of call the synchronicities of a seemingly random date, August 21. And, I hope, my story might help you notice and value the spiritual significance of the synchronicities occurring in your life.

August 21, 2005. I was ordained to the priesthood in The Episcopal Church at 41. That Saturday in August, family, friends and colleagues from all parts of my life, the Bishop of Atlanta, other priests, deacons, and laypeople of the Diocese of Atlanta and beyond, and the congregation at St. Paul’s Church in Newnan, Georgia, all of us held by the Holy Spirit, gathered to make me a priest. At times it looked a bit like a coronation (we sometimes overdo things in The Episcopal Church), but at its core was a beautiful celebration of ministry: mine and St. Paul’s Church and its members, past, present, and future. At 41, I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to finally be doing the work I’d been called to do and that sacramental event marked the public beginning of what the Spirit had started stirring in me 25 years before. There was a direct connection to the events of August 21, 2005, my second experience with psilocybin at Hopkins, and the work I’m doing now, but that’s material for reflection at another time.

August 21, 2025. This past Thursday, exactly 20 years after my ordination, an article was published by the Religion News Service (RNS), picked up by other media outlets, and later featured on National Public Radio, that tells the story of me being deposed by the bishop of The Diocese of Georgia. Deposed is a legalistic and church-speak way to say that I was removed from ordained ministry. It sounds confrontational and cold, but in my case it was not. Well, it was a little cold, but it wasn’t confrontational and there was a pastoral sensitivity in it. What gets lost in the legal language is that it was my choice, which is not always the case in these situations involving canon law. Had I resigned my work at Ligare and returned to more traditional ministry, I could have remained a priest in The Episcopal Church.

August 21, 2025. Last Thursday, I was in London, making my way to a large outdoor weekend festival called Greenbelt near Kettering in the English Midlands. My friend and colleague Sughra, the only Muslim participant in the Hopkins/NYU Religious Professionals Psilocybin Study that I had been in in 2016, graciously offered me a place to stay the night before. Like me, her participation in the study led her to start an organization gathering and resourcing those in her tradition about the healing potential of psychedelic substances and experiences. Over coffee that morning, after reading the RNS article, she offered wise counsel and an outpouring of love and support, as she does every time I see her.

August 21, 2025. The New York Times published an “everything you need to know about psychedelics” article. It’s pretty good. Here is a “gift article” link if you’d like to read it.

August 21, 2025. Matthew Fox published an essay on the study I was in. If you’re not familiar with him, he is an Episcopal priest who was dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church after a 12-year battle with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict) for his work deemed outside the bounds: his feminist theology; calling God "Mother"; preferring the concept of Original Blessing over Original Sin; not condemning homosexuality; and teaching the four paths of creation spirituality – the Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa — instead of the church's classical three paths of purgation, illumination and union.

Fox’s book, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, recommended by a clergy colleague who had studied with Fox, was a significant resource for me as I was integrating my first two experiences with psilocybin. Two hours into the first experience, I experienced a full block of my throat chakra, a concept common in Hinduism and Buddhism of which I was only vaguely aware. In the book, Fox connects each of the 7 chakras to one of the church’s 7 sacraments. For the throat chakra, wait for it… it’s the sacrament of Ordination.

Fox’s full essay is well worth reading, but it’s behind a paywall. I’ll push the boundaries just a bit and share just this part:

As a spiritual theologian, which is by definition about mystical experiences and the prophetic work that follows, I offer the following reflections on this new trend of including psychedelics. First, humanity is in a crisis today, and it shows in deep ways, such as turning our back on the truths of global warming and dangerous out-of-control masculinity (the reptilian brain on steroids), and the rise of fascism, along with the denial of all the above. One necessary way to address all these realities comes by way of mystical experience. However, religious institutions can be so out of touch with their mystical heritage and how to teach it that it is necessary that many efforts be applied to bring the mystical brain alive again. (Emphasis mine) What Einstein called the “intuitive brain” is needed to balance the rational brain because that is where values are to be found (Einstein again).

August 21, 2025. That afternoon, I arrived at the Greenbelt Festival with Annette and Julian, both spiritual directors, active leaders and participants in Ligare’s work in the UK and Ron Cole-Turner, the American theologian and author of the recently published Psychedelics and Christian Faith: Exploring an Unexpected Pathway to Healing and Spirituality. For the second year in a row, Ligare organized a panel discussion, and we hosted a booth, or as they say in England, “a stall.” When we arrived to set up our stall, the woman doing the same for hers two doors down, asked, in a very friendly way, who we were. “Ligare” we said. “Oh my,” she said, “I just heard you on a podcast yesterday. I can’t wait to learn more.” She then looked in the backseat, “Are you Hunt?”

Over the weekend, there were 11 of us sharing our experiences and staffing our booth/stall. We were women and men ranging in age from 30 to 75. We were therapists, spiritual directors, priests, scholars, teachers, nurses, facilitators, businesspeople, and a psychiatrist/psychedelic researcher. Through the stories my friends shared so freely, their commitment to this work, plus the approximately 225 people who came to our talk and the 275+ people who visited our booth, I saw clearly why Ligare needs to exist.

August 21, 2025. Thursday. There are at least two others, but I’m going to stop there lest you think I’m making all of this up. It’s almost too much.

The day after I signed the bishop’s letter closing out a chapter of my work, I came a across a quotation from Matthew Fox, the priest quoted above. He was writing about the archetype of the priest, which is certainly connected to the order of ministry of the same name, but is much more expansive and inclusive than how the institutional church frames it. The archetype of the priest, Fox says, “is one who is a midwife of grace.” All of us, regardless of role or religiosity, have the sacred potential to answer the call to be midwives of grace. Let me repeat: All of us, regardless of role or religiosity, have the sacred potential to answer the call to be midwives of grace. And thus, a priest.

Most years, sometime around my ordination anniversary, I pull out the worship booklet we used that Saturday afternoon back in 2005. I read through the lessons from scripture, the prayers, the ordination vows, the copy of the sermon I have, and the hymns I chose. The annual review grounds me and reminds me of what I am up to and what I aspire to be and do. Since I was away from home this year, I didn’t have those documents, but I remembered the hymn we sang before the Gospel lesson was read and I share it here now. “He is the Way,” Hymn #463/464 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982, is the concluding section of W. H. Auden’s Christmas Oratorio, “For the Time Being.”

It’s hard to sing, but frankly, I didn’t care. I wanted the prayer/poem/hymn included in the mix of what the Spirit was doing. The text was extremely important to me then; maybe even more so now. It also redeems John 14:6, so often misused to exclude non-Christians from the love, grace, and mercy of Jesus’ teachings.

He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

I’ll reread this essay in a month or two. Maybe I’m onto something, or maybe I’m not. As is the case with all good discernment, the insights of others and a bit of time will tell. But if you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. I do hope that this story inspires you to notice the little nudges from the Divine presence that are happening in your life too.

We truly live in what Auden calls a Kingdom of Anxiety. Let’s remember that the way of Jesus, the truth of Jesus, the life of Jesus, is not restricted to the institutional Church. You can certainly find him there, some places more than others, but that’s not the only place where his resurrected presence is known and shared. If you’ve ever worked with psychedelics or had a significant mystical experience of any kind, then Auden’s Land of Unlikeness, where “you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures” might truly resonate. It does for me.

Onward,
Hunt