Board Spotlight #3: Our Secretary, Dr. David Thornton
Meet our most enthusiastic ambassador!
For our March board spotlight article, I have the great delight of featuring my wonderful husband, Dr. David Thornton! We met in Fall 2017 and will celebrate five years of marriage next week. When we first realized we were meant to be together, we had many dreams and ideas about how our vocational callings might intertwine, from music to teaching to couples’ retreats. Building a holistic healing center from the ground up, though, is a whole other level of endeavor, and while I knew I could count on David’s strong support, I wasn’t sure whether he would want to be an active participant.
I was so glad when David expressed a desire not only to be on the first board for CATHARSIS, but also to be one of our full-time therapists when we are up and running. He is a passionate, articulate communicator with such sparkling energy that makes him an ideal ambassador for CATHARSIS in his many communities of connection. (Stay tuned for future announcements about concerts we will be giving together to spread the word and receive donations! :)
Tell us a little about yourself . . .
“I am an enthusiastic encourager, an energetic advocate, an intuitive empath, a lover of people and animals, a faithful friend, an endlessly curious and increasingly open soul. I love to prepare feasts, to bake sourdough bread and make wine, to learn the artful secrets of new cuisines. I dream and write about dreams, the ones of sleep and the ones while awake. I read almost constantly and have between eight and fifteen books in process at any given time. I am awed by Nature, by forest walks, by working with wood, by soil and the magic of plants. I am profoundly indebted to all who have done and are doing deep work in the field of inner growth and development: people from many centuries, many backgrounds. I am a singer-songwriter, a momentary mystic, enchanted by the play of light and sound, of solidity and texture.
“I love to write: I love the weight of words, their lapidary strength and feather softness. I feel that I am only beginning to find my authentic voice, dropping more and more the stilted tone of the academy. I am not writing anymore for professors, praise or publication, but to put down on a page the trails and tracks of ideas within me.
“I was raised in a fundamentalist church that had no truck with other branches of our faith, much less traffic with other religions. A series of most fortunate events has led me to appreciate and marvel at the many colors and shapes of world religions, and to discern that at the heart of all of them is a mystery. We’re all trying to live into the mystery, by rote, by repetition, by ritual, by rare flash of insight.
“And I am married to Dr Laura, my greatest gift and rarest treasure. Behold how blessed I am!”
What excites you most about CATHARSIS?
“Most? Wow, that’s tough. I'm excited by the name, the concept, the history, the ‘facts’ surrounding CATHARSIS. I love the Freudian backdrop behind ‘catharsis,’ the freeing release of a stuck, bottled-up place: a cathexis. I love the rich history of the Cathars, the peaceful perfect ones who thrived in the 1200s in the Languedoc region of what is now France, the southwest corner that has more in common with sun-baked Barcelona and Catalonia than cool, butter Paris. (They grow lots of olives and grapes there. Recall that I like to cook and make wine?) But, if pressed (like olives and grapes to make oil and wine), I will avow that what I love most is the vision of CATHARSIS to provide high-quality, low- or no-cost holistic healthcare to a beautiful and underserved part of our society—the highly sensitive and transliminal folks. It has been hard for those, like me and many others, to find therapists who understand how we see and feel, so that we have the safe surroundings where we can viscerally experience being seen and soothed, so that we have the chance to do the intimate, deep, quiet (or very loud) work of healing.
I am excited when I see the future, a place where the aroma of coffee blends with the fragrance of herbs growing in the Zen garden, where sighs of relief in the bodywork room blend with the music coming from the art room, where people from a variety of faith backgrounds find peace in the multi-faith chapel.
In my vision, I see it complete and functioning. I don’t see all it will take to get to that point— leases and zoning hearings, architects and engineering and interior design. But I can see, in my mind’s eye, clients who will thrive there. I can even see friends and colleagues I have loved and lost thriving there. I can see many who never found the help they needed in life walking those halls and rooms, cheering us on, thanking us for bringing a beautiful center into being.”
Why did you decide to serve on the board?
“The vision for CATHARSIS, long before it had a name, arrived many years ago in Laura’s imagination. That imagination was fueled, fed, and fostered by the writings of Susan Howatch, a brilliant English author who created a fictional parish-based center in a chemically and spiritually complicated, dangerous and suffering part of London, one of the wealthiest, most sophisticated places on the planet. After Laura and I met, we began a most salutary practice of reading aloud to each other, passing the books back and forth at breaks in the story or when our voices got tired. She introduced me to the Starbridge and St Benet’s series, both by Howatch, really one long story told across many decades through many voices.
In the St Benet’s series, there is a healing center at the parish. During the week, people from all walks of life - drug addicts, barristers, financiers - came for something like psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, healing prayer, and medication management.
This St Benet’s model became part of my imagination. So when Laura received the full-blown idea for CATHARSIS in a divine download, I was immediately onboard. I want to be part of this kind of purpose-filled healing vision.”
What are you most looking forward to about our journey this year?
“Two things spring simultaneously to mind. One is working with the other board members, whom I truly like and deeply admire. The other is having repeated opportunities to share the vision of CATHARSIS with people who haven't heard it yet, as I did last weekend, and to see in real-time the transformation of a person from tired and jaded into youthful and energized. Many people don't ‘get’ the idea right away, but for those whose hearts are so inclined, whose history tells them that this is a much-needed, long-lacking piece of the whole fabric of a healthy society, those people light up like a sunrise, and it is beautiful to behold.”