A Search for Integration: Minding Spirituality by Randall Sorenson

I met Randy Sorenson a few years ago just before his long-running study group reconvened after summer break. Members of the study group, whom I liked and admired, had invited me to join. Anxious to be a good member, I had arrived early for the meeting and, seated quietly in my car, was rereading the assigned texts. Suddenly, my passenger door opened and in squeezed a rugged bear of a guy: Randy Sorenson. After folding himself into the seat, he said, “I hear nice things about you. Let's get acquainted.” In the 15 minutes before the group gathered, we covered a lot of territory: his religion and mine, his family and mine, psychological research, his teaching in a Christian seminary, his coaching of his daughters' swimming teams, his love of science and scientific gadgets, his interest in music and philosophy, my love of literature and music, and our mutual commitment to psychoanalysis and the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Randy Sorenson was clearly a man who wore many and varied hats—hats that covered a large, restless, and searching brain. And his eyes enchanted me, mild curious eyes with copper flecks, eyes that honed directly in on me. I thought, “What a wonderful, funny, fascinating human being!”

In our relational study group, Randy was always chasing ideas and language as though they were darting butterflies. Similar to an entomologist with his specimens, turning them over to examine the colors and markings of their wings and sinews, Randy carefully explored new psychoanalytic ideas and their language chrysalises. He wanted to understand the genesis