Jung suggests that the dragon, a mythological beast common to virtually all cultures, is unconsciously an archetype that reflects human potential. After all, a dragon is a snake that can fly! Spiritual people need to rise above the situational ethics that ignores moral misconduct in others that allows them to slither more than their soar! Remember, a snake doesn't have to bite you to be a snake.

Despite the insistence on being the “land of the free,” the United States is the global leader in both total number of prisoners and per capita rate of imprisonment. The prophetic vision of proclaiming release to captives and letting the oppressed go free is a good opportunity to reflect on the vision and practices of the restorative and transformative justice movements. These approaches invite us to look more intentionally at the world we have, and then ask what kind of world we want to create.

The world as we know it has been shaped by an approach to development and success that has fueled terrible inequality, catastrophic climate change, and now, vaccine inequity. Thankfully, other approaches have been offered that help us re-think how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the earth. The development of a patent-free vaccine called Corbevax is one example of how we can reimagine society to prioritize personal and social well-being and realign our policies and institutions to create conditions where our human potential can be fulfilled.

Fiction author, Kurt Voneggut, once pointed out the hypocrisy of many loud conservative Christians who demanded that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public buildings and court house lawns without ever asking to have the Beatitudes publicly posted. He was certainly no theologian but he hit on a very good point. Religion that is "useful" in controlling the conduct of civil society is always going to be popular with the "law and order" crowd but the moral teachings of Jesus about love, hope, forgiveness, generosity, and compassion, those tend to make the self-righteous pretty uncomfortable and therefore are largely ignored.

Jesus Seminar founding member, Marcus Borg, first described the message of Jesus as being “radical compassion.” Peer and fellow seminar member, Karen Armstrong, took that concept to an interfaith (or no faith) form of spirituality, saying, The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

The opposite of spirituality is not atheism. It is, in our partisan, narcissistic, and cannibalistic capitalist society, more akin to sociopathy. The good news is that we get to choose which path we want to follow.