ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book focuses on to maintain a tension of opposites that is endemic in modernity. On one side of this strained pair of contraries stand the metaphoric and the religious tendencies in our very nature, which cannot be dismissed without deleterious results; on the other side and pulling in the opposite direction is our strong cultural preference for critical thinking, abstract formulation, scientific evidence and iconoclasm. In modernity, and now as well in post-modernity, we have to live at once with and without symbols of transcendence and the spiritual. David Tacey even speaks of a 'spirituality revolution' in our times and 'the emergence of contemporary spirituality' and locates pockets of evidence for his thesis in many areas of modern societies. In fact, scientific surveys indicate that there is a resurgence of interest in all kinds of spirituality in the modern world today.
