‘Love and Healing: The Spirituality of Counselling and Pastoral Care’
|
|
|
|
Details: |
‘Love and Healing: The Spirituality of Counselling and Pastoral Care’
BPF a member writes: ‘Empathising with your boss is the secret of many successes plus, just possibly, taking her advice! Acting on this led to my first BPF Conference, a turning point which proved a life-transforming experience.’ The 2010 Conference in St. Andrews has President, Dr. Jim O’Donoghue, as main speaker, and his theme is ‘Love and Healing. The Spirituality of Counselling & Pastoral Care.’ Dr. O’Donoghue has founded and directed four community Counselling Therapeutic Centres in Ireland, and been a visiting lecturer in two universities.
In Jim’s own word
“I have come to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were blazing already!” (St. Luke 12:49)
All of us, in some mysterious way, long for completion.
“Only Love
Can bring individual beings
To their perfect completion as individuals
By uniting them one with another.” DeChardin.
This LOVE can be both ecstatically joyful and excruciatingly painful. It is hugely demanding. It has moral and cosmic implications. It comes as GIFT and calls us strongly to the SPIRITUAL:
“Life and Peace can only come with concern for the Spiritual” (Romans 8:7)
The Spiritual Journey itself uncovers the pain. It has been described as:
“A series of humiliations of the false self so that what prevents us from being available to God is gradually evacuated”
(Abbot Thomas Keating OCSO)
It is this “evacuation” that is the process of Psychotherapy/Counselling and Pastoral Care.
These three Plenary Sessions will be interactive meditative considerations on the tenderness, compassion and spiritual empathy required in our responses from the interior depth of self to those who invite us to accompany them in their search for healing, for communion with their own inner light.
The Counsellor or Pastor and those who seek help from them are haunted by a ‘Ghost’ that constantly calls for attention. This often-ignored ‘Ghost’ creates in us an infinite thirst for Presence, Real Presence in each moment of our lives. If we are open, we are drawn into a depth experience where fleeting glimpses of brilliant light that is both embodied and more than body tantalizes us.
Jim O’Donoghue
Venue
ST.ANDREWS, FIFE
The town of St. Andrews has much to offer visitors: beautiful buildings and wonderful stretches of sand. There are several visitor attractions, including the Sea Life Centre, Golf Museum, East Sands Leisure Centre, Castle and Cathedral ruins (each with a visitor centre), plus the recently rebuilt Byre Theatre.
ST. LEONARDS
St. Leonards is a private boarding school, set in 35 acres of ground in the heart of the town, next to the harbour and ancient cathedral. Its pleasant stone buildings are encircled by the walls of the old Abbey, and there is ample parking in the school grounds. The oldest part of the school dates back to the 15th Century.
Dates
Monday 12th to Friday 16th April 2010
Contact
Maureen Leggat 0141334 5460
Places are limited; so you’re wise to book early… don’t say you weren’t warned!
More information and application form.
www.bridgepastoral.org.uk/scottishconference.html
| |
|
Start Date: |
Monday 12 April 2010
| |
|
Dates/Times: |
Monday 12th to Friday 16th April 2010
| |
|
Location: |
St Andrew's, Fife
| |
|
Contact: |
Maureen Leggat
0141 334 5460
www.bridgepastoral.org.uk/scottishconference.html
| |
Accessibility:
 |
Wheelchair accessible.
| |
| |
|
|