Interview - Full Response

Thomas Moore   with The Rev. Wayne Walder

(TM):

The question then maybe is, how to prepare yourself? How can you become the kind of Minister that you aspire to, that you admire and hold up for yourself as an ideal.

And, the problem is that people are very susceptible to the latest idea and superficial notions of what that might be, certainly I have found that to be the case.

Therefore the only solution is to deepen the place from which your people think and live. That’s the only solution I can think of – to go deeper – to give a more solid foundation.

Now, I try to do that, if I use myself as an example – when I write my books. Almost everything refers back to the history of ideas – almost all of it. Especially the history of theological, spiritual and psychological ideas. So I go back into the history of religions and I read these old writers who I think have been totally neglected and have wonderful things to say. Just going into the past doesn’t necessarily deepen. But the cream has risen to the top throughout history and so there are some very substantial resources back there. And, that’s the way I try to give grounding and depth to my work.

I don’t try to work off the top of my head, I don’t read the current writers. Everywhere I go, people say “Have you read this person?” “or that person?”, and I say no, I feel ignorant – because I don ‘t even know who they are. But I’m not interested in that because I recognize the ephemeral nature of this recent work. It doesn’t go deep enough.

One way that Ministers could get a deeper foundation and not be susceptible to pop religion and psychology is by being exposed to really solid thinkers and writers in their own history. I am sure you are already exposed to basic texts in the world religions. Can you go deeply into them? I don’t mean a book report. Really get into them, to really grasp what the essentials are.

And finally, can you go into other areas like depth psychology or literary studies or art history or some other area where you could get a deeper, a better foundation for what these writers were doing?

I think the problem is, if you go at the spiritual realm and you don’t have much of a foundation, both breadth and depth, you’re going to be susceptible to these passing fads. I know this is a huge task, but I think it could be broken down to something that’s manageable. I think if people could just be given a little bit of guidance as to how to deepen the place from which they think, and from where they do their work, my guess is that they wouldn’t be going after these passing fads.