Elizabeth C. Herron

Feeling, Art and Sustainable Civil Society (excerpt)

[This article appears in the Jung Journal of Culture & Psyche (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1525/jung.2009.3.4.112)

The issue is devoted to Marie Louise Von Franz' last lecture on Jung's idea of the role of the feeling function.]

"The exercise of expanded empathy, which allows us to identify with the experience of the intangible Other without loss of self, is the exercise of moral imagination... Each becomes part of the Beloved, as the Sufi poets say. This implies an unus mundi -- a conscious participation within the ground of being. The recognition of ourselves as interdependent within a multiplicity of interrelated systems, which together form a whole, leads to a consciousness that includes other species, forests, bodies of water, and people who live on the far side of the world whom we have never met. The capacity to feel for the most distant and seemingly unrelated Other arises when we can transpersonally conceptualize and feel ourselves a part of the whole."

Samples of My Work

Two poems from Reflections. . .

Dark Season

A chapbook of poems in response to war, prepared as part of a collaborative performance (with movement artist, Corlene Van Sluizer) for Quicksilver Mine Company Gallery.

The Poet's House

A book-length poem in four sections that refused to be turned to type and is thus handwritten in its final form.

Ordinary Mysticsm

Written for Orion Magazine, this article recounts the author's experience of a continually evolving earth, shared by species whose ancestry predates our own. The reader is encouraged to see her/himself within the context of a planet humming with life, and to see life as a gift in which each moment presents the opportunity for reverence.

Aesthetica Arts & Culture

2013 Creative Writing Award winner
A British magazine exploring contemporary art & design, film, music & performance with a special annual issue of poetry & fiction.

Feeling, Art and Sustainable Civil Society

Parabola Magazine, Fall 2005

An article on the enduring affection among all things.
Published in Parabola Magazine, Fall 2005, Issue 30:3

"Except By Light"

In this article, published in Parabola magazine's issue on "Body and Soul" (Volume 30, Number 3), I ask what we mean by the words spirit and soul? How do we acknowledge and honor the soul and spirit of another being? Where do we find it? What does it take to cultivate our capacity to perceive the soul of the world?