Challenges of A Psychotherapists

"In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?" - Carl Rogers. 

I have had many people ask me about what I do in the hospital and I have posted previously (scroll down in the older posts) about my role as a chaplain. Another role that Chaplains have or another hat we wear is the hat of a Psychotherapist. Psycho what? Yep! Psychotherapist!

Thinking about seeing a therapist but confused about the different titles? Psychiatrist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist. Point being is that there are a lot of psychos in the world :) So what is a Psychotherapist?

A Psychotherapist is really an umbrella term for any professional who is trained to treat people for their emotional problems. Depending upon their academic degree and clinical training, a Psychotherapist can be a Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Social Work, or Chaplain (among others), and work with individuals, couples, groups, families, communities to help navigate them with the emotional distress present. We use many different techniques to assess and provide different interventions. Many models of assessment and interventions are present so I won't unpack them all here but I would like to touch upon one point; the challenges a Psychotherapist faces. Our work can be demanding and sometimes we don't see "results" (whatever that means) immediately. According to Joyce Marter, a Psychotherapist, she believes the challenging to maintain a happy medium between letting clients rinse and repeat unhealthy patterns can be a challenge:

One of the most challenging aspects of conducting therapy is finessing the balance between meeting clients where they are at and also encouraging them to grow. I believe we all unconsciously recreate patterns in our life that are familiar to us as a way of working through our issues.

When a client presents for therapy, I will honor their emotional experience and reflect empathy as a way for them to express and release feelings that may be preventing them from moving forward. I will gently but directly encourage them to identify themes and patterns in their life that are no longer working for them.

When clients are ready to make positive change[s] in their lives, they will learn from these insights and empower themselves to choose roles and relationships that promote wellness, happiness and success in their lives.

However, sometimes we need to repeat these patterns over and over until we are ready to look within ourselves and make the changes. It is difficult when clients focus on others (who they cannot control) and continue to cycle in a way that is self-limiting.

It is at these times that I need to practice healthy detachment with love–the ability to unplug from my clients’ stuff and understand that they are exactly where they should be in their journey and they will make positive changes only when they are ready.

I often refer to the Serenity Prayer, which is, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” This reminds me that I should focus on everything that is within my power as a therapist, such as providing empathy, compassion, insight, interpretations, coaching on how to change self-talk and perspective, and increase copings skills and awareness through psycho-education.

I need to continually remind myself to let go of that which I cannot control, such as the clients’ responses, behaviors, progress, etc. I remember when I was in graduate school, a beloved professor of mine said, “Joyce, you are very good at being empathic and breathing people’s stuff in. You need to remember to breathe it out.” Her words were very wise and I reflect on them daily as I continue to grow as a clinician.

Creating positive change is taxing on the people you provide support to. And, naturally, it is also emotionally draining for clinicians. Christian Hibbert, a clinical Psychologist and postpartum mental health expert, tries her best to prevent emotional overwhelm as she summarizes in the following:  

For me, the toughest part about doing therapy with a client is ensuring I do not get consumed with the emotional drain. I strive to be fully present with my clients, to listen carefully and feel what they are feeling. Empathy and connection in the therapeutic relationship is key to helping the client make change, and it is rewarding to get to know these wonderful people in such a deep and intimate way.

However, it can also be very draining. I used to work longer days and I would come home depleted, with little left for my family’s needs. But now I work shorter days, which helps keep my energy levels up.

I also prepare myself before sessions through deep breathing and visualization techniques that help me feel prepared to be with my clients, to empathize and feel with them while they’re there with me, but to also leave it all in my office when I go home.

I don’t let the emotional experiences “stick” to me like I used to, and that makes doing therapy so much healthier for me, which makes me a better psychologist for my clients.

This was just a tad bit of what a Psychotherapist is and what it is that we do. Our work can look different depending on the place of work and the environment we find ourselves. However, one thing is certain with all Psychotherapist; the care of the human being is what pushes us to be present with everyone we come into contact with! 

What Does it Mean to Forgive?

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a permanent attitude". Martin Luther King Jr.

The following is passage from Jean Vanier's book, "Becoming Human". This section is taken from the final chapter on, "Forgiveness".
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To forgive is to break down the walls of hostility that separate us, and to bring each other out of the anguish of loneliness, fear, and chaos into communion and oneness. This communion is born from mutual trust and acceptance, and the freedom to be ourselves in our uniqueness and beauty, the freedom to exercise our gifts. We are no longer contained and held back by fear, prejudices, or the need to prove ourselves.

So the sense of belonging that is necessary for the opening of our hearts is born when we walk together, needing each other, accompanying one another whether we are weak or strong, capable or not. This belonging will not bring feelings or superiority if we are walking towards inner freedom. It will not seek to exclude but to include the weak, the needy, and the different, for they have a secret power that opens up people’s hearts and leads them to compassion and mutual trust. This belonging becomes a song of gratitude for each one of us.

Of course, all this takes time. But are we not all called to take this journey if we want to become fully human, to conquer divisions and oppression, and to work for peace? If each one of us today begins this journey and has the courage to forgive and be forgiven, we will no longer be governed by past hurts. Wherever we may be-in our families, our work places, with friends, or in places of worship or of leisure-we can rise up and become agents of a new land. But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, Forgiveness, Pages 162-163.    

The Path to Freedom

"Being human is difficult. Becoming a human is a life long process. To be truly human is a gift." Abraham Heschel

The following is a passage from Jean Vanier's book, "Becoming Human". This section is taken from the chapter, "The Path to Freedom".
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To be free is to know who we are, with all that is beautiful, all the brokenness in us; it is to love our own values, to embrace them, and to develop them; it is to be anchored in a vision and a truth but also to be open to others and, so, to change. Freedom lies in discovering that the truth is not a set of fixed certitudes but a mystery we enter into, one step at a time. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an unfathomable reality.

In this journey of integrating our experience and our values, and of what we might learn we listen to others, there may be a period of anguish. We need to find links between the old and the new, links that will permit the integration of new, consciousness-expanding truths into what we already know and are living-our existing certitudes. As human sciences develop and the world evolves, we are called to grow into a new and deeper understanding of the source of the universe and of life. As we participate in this, our sense of the true expands. Freedom is to be in awe of this source, of the beauty and diversity of people, and of the universe. It is to contemplate the height and breadth of all that is true.

Freedom is to accept that when we belong to a group, a race, a tribe, a family, a community, a religion, that none of these are perfect, that each has its limits and weaknesses. Every community of humans has its light and its darkness. We are all part of something greater than ourselves. We all flow from a source that is unfathomable and we are all journeying towards it, carrying with us the light of truth and love. Each of us is called to be in communion with the source and heart of the universe. The infinite yearnings of our hearts are calling us to be in communion with the infinite. None of us can be satisfied with the limited and finite. Each cone must be free to follow the Spirit of God.

And this freedom is for love and compassion, to give our lives more totally and more freely to others. It is the freedom to be kind and patient. This freedom does not seek personal honours; it believes all, hopes all, bears all, and endures all. Freedom does not judge or condemn but understands and forgives. Freedom is the liberation from all those inner fears and inhibitions and that we need to ask forgiveness of those we have hurt.

There is a freedom that I sense exists but that I do not have. I cannot always describe it but I do want it. I sense I still have a long road to walk in order to reach this freedom. I see the goal but I am not yet there. I love and want it but sometimes I am frightened on the road I must take.

I am frightened of the disappearance of my walls of defense, sensing that behind them there is an anguish and a vulnerability that will rise up. I see that I still cling to what people think of me and am fed by the way people love, want, and admire me. If all that fell away, who would I be? But that is where freedom lies, the freedom to be rejected, if that is the path I am to take in order to live more fully. Is that not the freedom that Jesus announces in his charter of the Beatitudes, when he says, “Woe to you when people speak well of you”?

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, The Path to Freedom, Pages 117-119.

Belonging

The last entry looked at how we as humans can use strength and weakness to live with others. Becoming human is a struggle of finding your strength in weakness. For the following entry I would like to look at belonging and what it means to belong. Living in Canada this can be a difficult task because of the multicultural environment we find ourselves living in. Toronto is culturally the most diverse city in the world. What does it mean to belong?

Belonging, like anything else, can be a place of opening up as well as a place of closing in. It is a place where we discover what makes our humanity. Family, language, humanhood, culture, food, communication, love and respect for others sums up this notion of belonging. If we accept this then we must accept that at the heart of belonging, is the fact that, we have received our existence from others and need to grow and develop as individuals, physically, psychologically, and humanly.

Let's use the example of a child to see how a child can become a product of the society that we build around ourselves. Belonging is not an individual act but involves an entire group. The child goes to school, shares in the life of the community, and discovers a wider sense of belonging with others from the same city, region, country, religion, language and culture. Sometimes the child meets people who are different, strangers, people with disabilities, immigrants, people from different religious backgrounds etc. The child will quickly pick up, through the adults attitude whether such people are to be accepted and loved or ignored, or even ostracized because they do not belong. And so from a young age we learn, without realizing it, that those who are different, those who standout, are either acceptable or dangerous.

When a child acquires a language and learns how to relate to adults, to friends, to God, when he learns the customs and values that have been taught to him through his culture, how to deal with death, pain, sorrow, he cannot but think that what he has been taught is the only way of being and living. As children we learn that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything. We do not ask questions instead, we obey. As we grow to adulthood we begin to questions the values learned during our childhood. This is why many adults and youth go through a crisis of faith and of trust. Belonging begins from day one. We must constantly seek to grow our humanity by accepting everyone as a human being. "Differences" should never be a factor in accepting others. Let us cultivate a society that nurtures the ideals of love and acceptance no matter how one looks, talks, or eats. To be a human is to belong and to belong is to love all without any pretext or conditions. Love is at the heart of belonging and once we belong to a community we learn to love unconditionally.

Beauty Will Save the World-Part 2

Firstly, we must respect all human life (those who are rich and those who are poor) because just like the rich build our society the poor teach our society. Secondly, the quote points to a central theme within humanity; the struggle and tension between physical and spiritual beauty in the midst of suffering. In the midst of trial and suffering how can one see beauty clearly? Beauty is a path leading to the truth but the modern world is disfigured and trapped in darkness. How can we overcome this train of thought? Authentic beauty unlocks the desire of the heart, the craving to know, to love, to unite with others and to reach beyond our capabilities. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us closely, that it sores us, that it has the ability to open our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing and most importantly to grasp the profound meaning of our existence. This is portrayed in the life of the idiot. The saving power of beauty could not overcome his sickness, but nonetheless illumined his vision, “What matter though it be only disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and analyze the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in the highest degree-an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with unbound joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?” In the midst of his suffering, he saw, in a paradoxical manner, the heart of reality.  

The fight for beauty is a battle of the soul and is linked to the crisis of faith. Dostoevsky indicated this tension in his epic, The Brothers Karamazov, “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man”. What looks beautiful might not be beautiful, and what seems terrible, such as a dead body, may show true beauty. Dostoevsky manifests this tension by placing the idiot in the midst of his suffering and insanity to speak the line, “Beauty will save the world”. Beauty is understood only in paradox. How can we see beauty in that which is good? We won’t appreciate beauty if we see it in good actions. However, when we encounter suffering or maybe death, it is at those moments that we begin to appreciate and clearly see beauty. As an individual dies we remember all the good moments and events he or she enjoyed when they were alive. Beauty that begins to develop from the deepest and darkest point of the heart is the starting point of authentic beauty. 

For good or bad, beauty has power. This power is not found in materialism and secularism but rather it is a power that illumines the path toward truth and goodness. If beauty does not point toward the truth and the good, it becomes divorced from our beings. It becomes a darkness, which makes human beings turn on each other. The Idiot demonstrates this when he said, “Such beauty is real power…with such beauty as that one might overthrow the world”. This beauty can be found in every simple act done with our fellow human. From eating a meal to talking to the stranger on the bus, beauty has the power to save humanity from utter destruction. When beauty sheds its light in the right direction, it saves the world, not overthrow it. It is in suffering that we find joy. The realism of suffering is scandalous (Christ on the cross), but suffering represents itself as an opportunity (Christ rose from the dead). We must learn to work with each other to overcome the darkness imposed by the deceptive beauty the world throws our way (materialism etc). In contemplating the suffering of Christ, in particular, we see a beauty which starts with Christ taking on our fallen nature and overcame the darkness. Christ suffering leads to the resurrection, a resurrection not done as a selfish act but rather as a redemptive one. This explains why the icon of the resurrection is always showing Christ rising from the dead holding in his hands Adam and Eve. It is a challenging beauty, but a powerful one-with power to transform our own suffering and lack of beauty. It is a beauty that scares us and makes us vulnerable and ultimately is the same beauty that will save the world.

Dostoevsky was a Christian philosopher, and a person who contemplated the mystery of man. Even as a religious individual he allowed himself to grow as a free-thinker and a powerful artist. Being a religious man, a free-thinker and an artist were not differentiated in him and did not exclude one another, but penetrated all his thoughts and works. In his beliefs, he never separated truth from good and beauty. In his artistic creativity he never placed beauty apart from good and the truth. I agree with how Dostoevsky intertwined these three topics because these three lived only in unity with each other. If we separate the good, truth and beauty, they all become an indistinct feeling, a powerless surge; truth becomes empty words; beauty and good become nothing more than a mere idol. These three, understood in unity, form one absolute idea. The human body, having been revealed and become God, fitting into itself all aspects of Christ-becomes the greatest good, the highest truth, and perfect beauty. If Christ is understood as the perfect human, the one who personifies all that is good, beautiful and true, then we are called to live and to be held in the same standard as Christ. Truth is good, perceived by the human mind; beauty is the same good and the same truth expressed in living form. The full expression, the end, the ultimate goal, and being united to God-already exist's in everything. This is why Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world. The world and life comes in full circle to its creator. If beauty saves the world then all that is beautiful and good is expressed in truth through humanity.  

Beauty Will Save the World-Part 1

"Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to them. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty" Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

The Great Russian writer Fydor Dostoevsky wrote, “Beauty will save the world”. I never thought much of this. Going to seminary challenged my way of thinking and the more I was challenged the more I was forced to think outside the box. I began to read more of Dostoevsky’s works and came to the conclusion that this challenge is not to be feared but embraced. At first I thought this idea was romantic, something expressed by such sentiments as “there’s beauty in everything, if we would only stop and appreciate the beauty around us.” This idea suggests there is a divorce between the world and ourselves. Today, I realized what Dostoevsky meant; beauty is the paradigm of our life. Beauty is not an influence that is found outside of human life; it is the principle which characterizes all that we do. Everything we do must be done with beauty. From the moment we wake up to the moment we sleep we must see the beauty in everything. This does not mean we are trying to make our waking up and going to sleep “beautiful”, rather, it has to do with the way in which we execute the task; the way we live every minute as we do what we do. It has to do with being attentive to the activity at hand, acting without being concerned with how we look as we act. Acts of beauty are innocent, not concerned with appearances or the perception of peoples' thoughts; it is not concerned with being treated fairly, with showing off or making impressions. I would even go as far as to say that it is not even concerned with acting out of certainty that this action “is God’s will”. Beauty is simply making the beautiful gesture. All that we do and say is beautiful. Why? 

If we look to the starting point of scripture we see this is the paradigm that is given. God created everything and he saw that it was good. All that was created was good and God let it be. Beauty is at the centre of all God’s creation. Beauty is where God is present. As I was cleaning the putrid washroom at work, I suddenly realized that I must do this seemingly repulsive work as a beautiful gesture. This is the only free action available to me. If I act out of resentment (because others are not cleaning the washroom like I am), or anger (because no one takes care of the washroom), then I am a slave to myself and my work will be exhausting. The opposite of this can also become a form of slavery also. If I work out of a sense of pride (I’ve got to make the washroom look good) or cleaning the washroom because it is my duty ("God expects me to do it" and somehow this will make me a good person), I am still a slave to myself. The only way to go about this task with joy, as a free human being, is to work in the presence of God realizing God is present in all. This is how beauty will save the world. When we realize we are free and doing actions by living for others. All my actions and thoughts become a beautiful gesture and if humanity comes to this understanding it is then the world will be saved through beauty. The paradigm is found in living for each other. If we can see that we are created in the image and likeness of God, it is then that we will realize that beauty will save the world.            

Dostoevsky spoke these words in his classic, The Idiot, because the struggle between humanity’s understanding of good and evil was ever-changing during his time (19^th century). Dostoevsky used the main character from the book to speak this line. Out of the mouth of the idiot, comes a clearer vision of beauty and reality that those around him did not see. His clarity and way of thinking heightened even in the midst of his sickness. Can the words of an idiot set the tone for our response in the modern world? In a world that is characterized by its madness, maybe only the idiot is sane. It seems that we must trust him, now that the words of an idiot have become the stepping stone to everyone’s salvation. In a world that has largely rejected the ability to reason to know the truth and the moral order toward the good, this is the time to show humanity how beauty can save all. Beauty and its simplicity can show both the intellectuals and the uneducated that we are all created equal and created in order to live for one another. This quote is significant for many reasons. 

To be continued...

Healing the Wounds of Chalcedon

I collaborated with the main editor of Theologues regarding the council of Chalcedon. He allowed me to write a small entry on the history of the council and the implications for all Christians today. The following is the link to the original post (click here). I would like to thank Zach very much for giving me the opportunity to write on a delicate topic that needs to be treat with care and love. My philosophy is based on love; a love that unites in the body of Christ. Chalcedon was an event that for many, and I mean many, reasons divided the body of Christ. However, with time, wounds have begun to heal and I believe we are in a position today to finally let out a deep breathe, and with with confidence say, we can start moving forward and living out that unity once again! Leave your comments and questions and I hope this small piece will deepen your search for the truth! 

Healing the Wounds of Chalcedon

Top: Patriarch Ephrem II of Antioch and Patriarch John X of Antioch 

Bottom: Patriarch Tawadros II of Alexandria and Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria

Pope Francis and Patriarch Tawadros II 

I love, Therefore I Am

The following is an article I stumbled upon from 2009 written by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Metropolitan Kallistos is a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Great Britain. From 1966 until 2001, he lectured in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford. In 2007, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate elevated Bishop Kallistos to Titular Metropolitan of Diokleia. He is a member of the advisory board of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. His books include The Orthodox Church, The Orthodox Way and The Inner Kingdom. This text (first published in Again magazine) is adapted from a lecture he gave in August 1998 at the Eagle River Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Alaska.
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Most of the time we think we know who we are. But do we, in fact, know in the full and profound sense who we are?

One text that is very important for the Orthodox understanding of the human person is Psalm 64:6 [LXX 63:7]: “The heart is deep.” That means the human person is a profound mystery. There are depths or if you would like, heights within myself of which I have very little understanding.

Who am I? The answer is not at all obvious. My personhood as a human being ranges widely over space and time. And indeed it reaches out beyond space into infinity, and beyond time into eternity. Our human personhood is created, but it transcends the created order. I am called to be a “partaker of the divine nature,” as Peter said in his second letter. I am called to share, that is to say, in the uncreated energies of the living God. Our human vocation is theosis deification, divinization. As St. Basil the Great says, “The human being is a creature that is called to become God.”

I am reminded of the story of the Fall at the beginning of Genesis, of the promise of the serpent, who says to Eve, “You shall be as God.” The irony behind that story is that this was exactly the divine intention. The humans were indeed called to divine life. But the Fall consisted in the fact that Adam and Eve grasped with self-will that which God, in His own time and way, would have conferred upon them as a gift.

The limits of our personhood are very wide-ranging indeed. We should adopt a dynamic view of what it is to be a person. We shouldn’t think that our personhood is something fixed. To be a person is to grow. To be on a journey. And this journey is a journey that has no limits, that stretches out forever, that goes on even in heaven. Some people have an idea of heaven as a place where you do nothing in particular. But surely that is deceptive. Surely heaven means that we continue to advance by God’s mercy from glory to glory. Heaven is an end without end.

St. Irenaeus remarks, “Even in the age to come God will always have new things to teach us, and we shall always have new things to learn.” Even in heaven, we shall never be in a position to say to God, “You are repeating Yourself. We have heard it all before.” On the contrary, heaven means continuing wonder and unending discovery. To quote J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Road goes ever on and on.”

Now there is a specific reason for this mysterious and indefinable character of human personhood. And this reason is given to us by St. Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the fourth century. “God,” says he, “is a mystery beyond all understanding.” We humans are formed in God’s image. The image should reproduce the characteristics of the archetype, of the original. So if God is beyond understanding, then the human person formed in God’s image is likewise beyond understanding. Precisely because God is a mystery, I too am a mystery.

Now in mentioning the image, we’ve come to the most important factor in our humanness. Who am I? As a human person, I am formed in the image of God. That is the most significant and basic fact about my personhood. We are God’s living icons. Each of us is a created expression of God’s infinite and uncreated self-expression. So this means it is impossible to understand the human person apart from God. Humans cut off from God are no longer authentically human. They are subhuman.

If we lose our sense of the divine, we lose equally our sense of the human. And that we can see very clearly from the story, for example, of Soviet communism in the 70 years which followed the revolution of 1917. Soviet communism sought to establish a society where the existence of God would be denied and the worship of God would be suppressed and eliminated. At the same time, Soviet communism showed an appalling disregard for the dignity of the human person.

Those two things go together. Whoever affirms the human also affirms God. Whoever denies God also denies the human person. The human being cannot be properly understood except with reference to the divine. The human being is not autonomous, not self-contained. I do not contain my meaning within myself. As a person in God’s image, I point always beyond myself to the divine realm.

I remember a visit in my student years in Oxford from Archimandrite Sophrony, the disciple of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos. He gave a talk on Orthodoxy, and there was a discussion afterwards. Towards the end, the chairman said, “We have time for just one more question.” Somebody got up at the back of the audience and said, “Fr. Sophrony, please tell us what is God?”

Fr. Sophrony answered very briefly, “You tell me what is man?” God and the human person are two mysteries that are interconnected, and neither can be understood apart from the other. “In the image of God” means there’s a vertical reference in our personhood. We can only be understood in terms of our link with the divine.

But then, let’s think of another point. “In the image of God” means in the image of the Trinity. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” That is what as Christians we mean by God. We don’t understand God as a series of abstractions. We understand God as three Persons. And that we see very clearly from the Creed. We begin in the Creed by saying, “I believe in One God.” And then we don’t continue by saying, “Who is an uncaused cause, who is primordial reality, who is the ground of being.” This is the way many modern theologians speak. But in the Creed we say, “I believe in One God … the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” We continue, that is to say, in specific personal terms.

God for us is Trinity. And if we’re in the image of God we’re in the image of the Triune God. What does that mean for our understanding of our personhood? Let’s think first of the Trinity, and then of ourselves.

“God is love” declares St. John in his first letter, and goes on to say, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” In true love there is no exclusiveness, no jealousy. True love is open, not closed. God is love. There is no fear in love. And so God is not the love of one. God is not love in the sense of being self-love, turned in upon itself. God is not a closed unit. God is not a unit, but a union. God is love in the sense of shared love, the mutual love of three Persons in one.

When the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century are describing God, one of their key words is koinonia, meaning fellowship, communion, or relationship. As St. Basil says in his work on the Holy Spirit, “The union of the Godhead lies in the koinonia, the interrelationship, of the Persons.” So this then is what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is saying: God is shared love, not self-love. God is openness, exchange, solidarity, self-giving.

Now, we are to apply all this to human persons made in the image of God. “God is love,” says St. John. And that great English prophet of the eighteenth century, William Blake, says, “Man is love.” God is love, not self-love but mutual love, and the same is true then of the human person. God is koinonia, relationship, communion.

So also is the human person in the Trinitarian image. God is openness, exchange, solidarity, self-giving. The same is true of the human person when living in a Trinitarian mode according to the divine image.

There’s a very helpful book by a British philosopher, John Macmurray, entitled Persons in Relationship, published in 1961. Macmurray insists that relationship is constitutive of personhood. He argues that there is no true person unless there are at least two persons communicating with each other. In other words, I need you in order to be myself. All this is true because God is Trinity.

From this it follows that the characteristic human word is not “I” but “we”. If we are all the time saying, “I, I, I,” then we are not realizing our true personhood. That’s expressed in the poem of Walter de la Mare, “Napoleon”:

What is the world, O soldiers?

It is I:

I, this incessant snow,

This northern sky;

Soldiers, this solitude

Through which we go

Is I.

Whether the historical Napoleon was actually like that or not, de la Mare’s point is surely valid. Self-centeredness is in the end coldness, isolation. It is a desert. It’s no coincidence that in the Lord’s Prayer, the model of prayer that God has given us, and which teaches what we are to be, the word “us” comes five times, the word “our” three times, the word “we” once. But nowhere in the Lord’s Prayer do we find the words “me” or “mine” or “I”.

In the beginning of the era of modern philosophy in the early seventeenth century, the philosopher Descartes put forward his famous dictum, “Cogito ergo sum”  “I think therefore I am.” And following that model, a great deal of discussion of human personhood since then has centered round the notion of self-awareness, self-consciousness. But the difficulty of that model is that it doesn’t bring in the element of relationship. So instead of saying “Cogito ergo sum, ought we not as Christians who believe in the Trinity say, “Amo ergo sum I love therefore I am”? And still more, ought we not to say, “Amor ergo sum”  “I am loved therefore I am”?

One modern poem that I love particularly, by the English poet Kathleen Raine, has exactly as its title “Amo Ergo Sum.” Let me quote some words from it:

Because I love

The sun pours out its rays of living gold

Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.

Because I love

The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green

The transparent sunlit trees.

Because I love

All night the river flows into my sleep,

Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,

And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.

This is the key to personhood according to the Trinitarian image. Not isolated self-awareness, but relationship in mutual love. In the words of the great Romanian theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, “In so far as I am not loved, I am unintelligible to myself.”

If, then, we think of the divine image, we should not only think of the vertical dimension of our being the image of God; we should also think of the Trinitarian implication, which means that the image has a horizontal dimension relationship with my fellow humans. Perhaps the best definition of the human animal is “a creature capable of mutual love after the image of God the Holy Trinity.” So here is the essence of our personhood: co-inherence; dwelling in others.

What is said by Christ in His prayer to the Father at the Last Supper is surely very significant for our understanding of personhood: “That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21). Exactly. The mutual love of the three Divine Persons is seen as the model for our human personhood. This is vital for our salvation. We are here on earth to reproduce within time the love that passes in eternity between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.