Page 102 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 22

Walter Thiessen is Professor of Counselling Psychology at
St.Stephen’s University, a graduate school focusing on hybrid
programs in theology, peace and reconcilia�on. He also has a
private counselling prac�ce (St. Croix Counselling Services) and
is the author of Glimpses of a Good Life. He and his wife, Carol,
have raised three children in St. Stephen, NB (Canada) and love
gardening, walking, and drinking coffee on the pa�o. Walter’s
studies have focused on the personal and communal search for
a life of wholeness.

Walter Thiessen
(Canada)

Comment to

„Living and Working with a Friend – How Spiritual Gi�s Take Shape“

It is good to see someone like Katrin Kroll share For me the discernment around what is Spirit
an awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit and what is personal intui�on is so fine and
in her own life and work as well as in the lives precious that we need to treat it very carefully
of others around her. Her framing of this both in ourselves (i.e. guarding against
presence as "friendship" is reflected also in the expressing our own thoughts as if they had
gentle sensi�vity that she displays as she divine authority) as well as in others (i.e.
comments on her examples. guarding against quenching what could be the
I resonate with the importance of this inner Spirit's voice in others who may disagree with
friendship with the Spirit, and she reminded us). For this reason, I most o�en imagine my
me of recently encountering the words of own spirit and God's Spirit as conversing and
contempla�ve theologian, Howard Thurman interac�ng in a secret place, and what I
(who greatly inspired Mar�n Luther King Jr.), consciously "hear" is the fruit of this
when he wrote: “There is in you something conversa�on. I always assume that such
that waits and listens for the sound of the insights are a mixture that enables, and
genuine in yourself…. If you cannot hear the necessitates, both humility and confidence. I
sound of the genuine in you, you will all your appreciated the way that Kroll sensi�vely
life spend your days on the end of strings that supports the people in her examples as they
someone else pulls” (from a Baccalaureate grow in prac�cing and expressing that
address, 1980). How badly we all need to grow discernment.
in our confidence in hearing that "sound of the
genuine," and this is what I hear reflected in
Kroll's ar�cle.

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