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This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all.
The great existential psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger famously pointed out to Freud that therapeutic failure could “only be understood as the result of something which could be called a deficiency of spirit.” Binswanger was surprised when Freud agreed, asserting, “Yes, spirit is everything” (Binswanger 1963, p. 1).
The life of Angelo D'Agostino S.J., M.D. illustrates both Freud's assertion and the sentiment expressed by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi that “this being human is a guest house.” The soulful life of Fr. Dag,