Page 182 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 3

Letters to the Editor

As I was reading through Issue 1 of the EMCAPP journal, We are called to regain control of our lives starting from
I kept asking myself about my identity as a Christian and self-awareness and self-perception. We are to restore our
psychotherapist. Where am I within the Body of Christ boundries and take responsibility for our lives. We are to
– my brothers and sisters in faith? Is that a safe place to establish and retain intimate emotion-shaped connection
grow and develop as a psychotherapist? Is that possible with God, our inner selves and others.
for psychotherapy to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Am I hope that the EMCAPP will facilitate and cherish the
I really walking alongside my patients to the Father‘s experience of moving together and being restored in di-
house? versity and unity.

All the questions raised have brought me to understand Paweł Surma (Poland)
a little bit better the notion of ‚moving together‘ high- Psychotherapist, The Association of Christian Psycholo-
lighted by the EMCAPP. ‚Moving together‘ expresses gists
both my spiritual and therapeutic perspective. It points
towards mutual serving and learning from each other. It
defines a community of faith in which we can share our
deeply-felt longing to be restored by God and to God.
This seems particularly true for Poland and is absolutely
necessary to move forward in love.
I was delighted to see the first issuse of the EMCAPP
journal with my homeland in focus. Going back in time
to the founding of the Association of Christian Psycho-
logists, pondering over social, cultural and historical
background of my older fellow countrymen, the conflict
and struggle they had to face, and admiring their passion
and commitment to making a difference by their attempts
to integrate spirituality into psychotherapy, I feel really
pround that I can be a part of it and carry on this zeal for
therapeutic work even further.
I think that some great contribution has been made by
placing articles from Poland both in Polish and English
although I have an impression that certain things might
have been lost in translation. Unavoidable as it may seem,
it makes room for deeper reflection and feedback.

The experience of being restored, so much present
through all the articles of the journal, is for me at the very
heart of every psychotherapy. Not only do we yearn for
freedom that reflects our dignity and identity, but we are
also desperate to be recognized in love, in personal rela-
tionships.
We suffer when there is no love. The lack of love trauma-
tises us and leads to despair. In the state of despair our
perception of the reality is to a great extent distorted. Yet,
our inner yearning for love (no matter how far we have
fallen from grace) has been left intact and calls for the
whole person to be restored. This is so true for therapeu-
tic experience.
The reflections presented in the journal made me realize
that if we fail to recognize that only God is able to res-
tore love in us, we will also fail to understand our hu-
man condition and fall into a trap of playing God. If we
rely solely on our will power, we will inevitably fall out of
God‘s grace by losing sight of who we really are – of our
trust-based dependence on God. This is not to say that we
have been reduced to merely God‘s audience. Far from it!

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