Reflection
Reflection is a critical element of pastoral counseling. It helps us maintain our mental health and supports our spiritual growth. Part of the pastoral counseling process involves reading or writing material that helps us through our time of pain. In therapy, we are often encouraged to journal.
Our mission here is to provide spiritual writing that may bring new insight to a problem or experience. Spirituality is an inward concern with things of the spirit. As we reflect on those inward concerns, we often find our stress relieved. Theological reflection helps us seek meaning, using the Christian tradition as a source of wisdom and guidance.
For visitors to this site, we hope these reflections are a ministry, an expression of faith. If you are a Pastoral Counselor and a member of the AAPC Northwest Region you may email your reflection to be considered for posting. Reflection may include entries about professional formation or your spiritual journey. Other topics might include your pastoral identity, faith experience, psychological theoretical orientation, life experience or clinical experience. Writing may include a poem or other forms of prose.
The poems on this page come from Special Visions: Poems by and for Pastoral Caregivers (edited by Orlo C. Strunk, Jr., Ph.D.), a 2007 publication of The Journal of Pastoral Care Publications Inc. Ordering Information can be found at the JPCP Inc. website or go directly to iUniverse Publishing. These poems are reproduced here by permission of the Managing Editor of The Journal of Pastoral Care Publications, Inc.
Internal Roadmaps by Ted Bowman
I traveled recently down a path
I did not recognize
I called it transition, loneliness, adjustment.
Strange isn't it
How seasoned travelers, professional journeymen,
Sometimes forget or lose their maps.
I knew grief was up ahead
But when I go there I did not see it.
How could I miss the obvious,
Not to name my experience for what it was.
How much like grief! |
Listening by Stephen Harding
In the stillness of the silence
created by the vastness of the sky's green dome of glittering light
the silence of the snow, punctuated by the cold crack of trees;
In the silence of the water's rising tide
seeping up the surface of the rocks and carrying me with it
gliding silently in a kayak to places
that only water will lead
with the heads of seals popping up
then circling around to check again
stillness so deep
that I hear the sound of the air against an eagle's wings
as it lifts itself out of its nest in a tree
rising, circling around and then flying away
stillness so deep I can hear the sound of each wingbeat
growing fainter and fainter away.
And so the sound of the stars in the winter sky:
This is the stillness that takes me into healing -
the level of awareness to hear
and to respond. |
Introvert's Delight by Bonnie Thurston
I am by nature
an out-of-doors
sort of woman,
a walker, a gardener.
But today,
sitting by the window
in a comfortable chair,
watching wind
make white dogwood dance
with blue spruce,
seeing petals
from an ornamental tree
fall like pink confetti,
relishing every moment
of spring's emerald symphony,
I realize I am content
to be inside looking out,
know I can only live
this interior life,
wonder how deep
the tap root
of my heart is. |
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