Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy Week 2016AD

SPIRITUAL RESILIENCE

In marking this year’s Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy Week, 2016AD, the international body has given us this topic to consider in all activities we put forward to mark this year’s pastoral care and chaplaincy week globally “Spiritual Resilience.”

Before attempting to do justice to this topic, we must seek to understand the key words in the phrase:

1.     Spiritual:

This can be defined as the spiritual aspect of a living being, especially a human being. It can also rightly be said to be the part of the human being that is the spirit. It can be unambiguously be defined as anything that pertains to the soul and spirit.

2.     Resilience:

This can be defined as the action or attempt to restore or return to normalcy people after traumatic and harrowing experiences in life. It can also be said to be the efforts, action and attempt on the part of a professional such as care-givers and Chaplains in restoring normalcy to people who have been subjected to traumatic events or experiences in the recent past or to help professionally ensure that people are able to return to the normal lives they had lived before the ugly incidences that made them experience trauma and unpleasant pains beyond their expectations in life.

NB: As we desire in pastoral care and chaplaincy profession globally to give the people of our contemporary world, wholistic care and therapeutic treatment as professionals, the topic for this year’s pastoral care and chaplaincy week is a welcome development.

We understand that man is a tripatized being consisting of;

a.     Soul.

b.     Spirit.

c.      Body.

The provision of wholistic care for mankind thus entails caring for the spiritual aspect of man, caring for the soulist aspect of man and caring for the physical body of man.

The happenings in our contemporary world, which is full of violence of all kinds, terror unleashed unto many innocent people and incessant rapes especially of the minors with impunity has in no small way expose people unto traumas, pains, agonies and suffering that has in no small measure assisted in eroding the spiritual stability, the emotional stability and psychological stability of many.

The erosion of spiritual stability in people is our concern in this discourse and the professional mandate given to pastoral care-givers and professional Chaplains in bringing such people out of the woods, presenting them with enabling environment which will make live again as if they had not being traumatized, violated or stigmatized in life.

Resilience provides for them ability to live beyond their situations, living as if nothing disastrous and injurious has never happened to them before.

There so many happenings and occurrences in our world today that affects the spiritual equilibrium of people and destabilizes them.

When the spiritual equilibrium of individual becomes eroded, the stability is affected and the resultant effect is confusion and negative thoughts and as soon as this occurs, the person begins to loose trust and confidence in the Ultimate God, begins to ask many questions such as:

a.     Why has God allowed this?

b.     Why I of all people?

c.      Where is God when they took me hostage and violated my rights, subjecting me to torture?

d.     Where is God when it hurts?

e.     When will my avenger come?

What we are now looking for are:

a.     Pastoral Counselors.

b.     Pastoral Care-givers.

c.      Professional Chaplains.

Who are professionally trained, nurtured and equipped to answer the questions posed at us by the traumatized and victimized people, without allowing their trust and confidence stray away from the Almighty God who remaineth the Ultimate for eternity.

 We are in search of professionals who understand that:

a.     God of the mountains is the same God of the valleys.

b.     God of the noon time is the same God of the even tides.

c.      God of the day is the same God of the night.

We are seeking professionals who have the ability, capacity and capability to make people keep God in focus as the Ultimate, without loosing their trusts and confidence in Him no matter what happens.

We are looking for professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who are highly intelligent, professionally skilled and competent to return people who have undergone harrowing and traumatic experiences to normalcy by providing the needed resilience especially spiritual resilience.

We are seeking for professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who worth their onions and can minister to the people of our world who have experienced some forms of trauma and have been destabilized spiritually, restoring them to normalcy.

We are seeking for professionals who can help rekindle the spirituality in those whose spirituality has dwindled and are in doubts because of what they have been subjected to in life by circumstances which are not pleasant.

We are seeking for professionals who themselves enjoy spiritual stability and equilibrium, and are able to bring around those whose stabilities have been eroded to the point of stability one more time.

We are seeking professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who will give the needed attention and concern for the spiritual care and need of the traumatized, helping to provide the needed resilience for such people in life.

Chaplain Prof. Mike-David