Finding Peace
Posted on 01. Mar, 2018, in Christian Values, Church Teachings, Community, Conflict, Faith and Justice, Prayer, Retreats1 Comment
Dr Annemarie Paulin-Campbell heads up the spirituality work of the Jesuit Institute South Africa and is a spiritual director and psychotherapist working with victims of trauma. In this interview with Pat Coyle, Annemarie discusses the interface between Christian spirituality and psychology in a place that is still severely affected by the apartheid era.
“We’re still really trying to come to terms as a society with much of what happened in the apartheid era,” says Annemarie. In her position, she focuses on how people come to a place of healing and reconciliation in these circumstances. While acknowledging the important role of psychology, she says, that spirituality can play an added role in the healing process in terms of making sense of what has happened. She tells of those who discover “the one who loves them unconditionally, who knows what they need at their deepest place of pain.”
Having grown up herself in a privileged position in South Africa, Annemarie only came later in life to understand that South Africa was a vasty different country for others living there. Here she begins talking with Pat about that journey and how she uses psychotherapy and spirituality to bring people to a place of peace.
This is an excellent interview. To hear someone owning her growing awareness of her place in an unjust system is most freeing. Annemarie’s openness gives me permission to deepen my awareness of being a settled person in a society where Travelers have a lesser place, for example. I am also conscious of how blind I am to what it is like to be a nationalist in the North of my country. As the interview progressed, it is great to hear from Annemarie of the imaginal space and how spaciousness can open up from a place of deeper consciousness. The story of the woman confronting Jesus and coming so feelingly to a whole new awareness of the person of Jesus is wonderfully moving. Pat’s interview gifts are most apparent in this interview also. It is making a big impression on my today and I thank God for that.