Disgust Matters - with Dr Sally Longley

The language of our bodies is not easily ‘heard,’ but it cries out to us. So it is with disgust, which is a bodily felt-sense response, with origins in helping prevent illness or disease (such as our response to maggots in meat). The healthy body’s disgust response may range from gagging to actually expelling that which could harm us.

However, a problem arises when our experience of disgust towards others means people become the objects of expulsion, albeit more subtly. This requires us to listen deeply and honestly to our inner responses.

This session would look at the following.

1.         The way the very subtle presence of disgust within us as and our pilgrims, acts as forms of theology we call boundary and expulsion theology

2.         It will offer a forum for discussion around how we can be our best selves when we encounter disgust within ourselves or within our pilgrims.

3.         Discuss what spiritual practices can help us to control our naturally inbuilt disgust responses when they are inappropriate.

About Sally:

I have lectured in both South Africa and Australia, and since 2007 have been a spiritual director and retreat leader, as well as a conference speaker and supervisor. I have an eclectic spirituality in that I was profoundly honed in South Africa and my involvement in the Anglican church there, yet Ignatian spirituality has been very formative for me, (I am a qualified Giver of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises), and I am an anabaptist at heart, studying at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in the USA, and later a doctorate focusing on the formative role of silence in our lives.  My husband Jim and I are currently pastors for the very small Avalon Baptist Peace Church. I have published a booklet with 3 set MP3 “Christian Meditation: 5 Ways to Pray” (2015), and two books, “Walking the Labyrinth as the Beloved in John’s Gospel” (2016), and “Conversations with Silence: Rosetta Stone of the Soul,” (2021). 

Image by Fiona Pfennigwerth © Fiona Penningwerth