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On Nov 18, 2009, at 3:47 AM, "Paul Mowat" wrote:

Meg: Paul has taken years to make sense of healing from addictions and the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. His unpublished manuscript is searching for a home, but here is a two page description. Am sure he would love to hear from you.

Title of thesis: A Therapeutic Model that uses Desert Spirituality for the Healing of Addiction
Summary:

Pastoral/soul care is down to anyone who finds him or herself in a position to reach out and come alongside someone on life's journey. It is essential for christian pastoral/soul care to acknowledge the presence of God in the situation and share this knowledge with whomever he or she is seeking to care for. God's presence gives the individual sufferer the assurance of hope in whatever the circumstances.

The purpose of pastoral/soul care is to assist men and women, boys and girls to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. In essence this is the habitus model that this dissertation is concerned with. Moreover, although the root of pastoral/soul care is derived from the priest, prophet and wisemen of the Hebraic tradition it still remains the domain of everyone to show and demonstrate love of their neighbour.

Practically, when an individual’s life is devoted to Christ their life is an example of habitus: that disposition of the heart that exudes love. Moreover, any pastoral/soul evolves from the character of the pastoral/soul carer, a character that is fashioned by Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

The love in action that is pastoral/soul care is the brimming over of a life that is lived in and for love, and that is nurtured by love, “God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him.” (1John 4:16b).

The Egyptian desert was a harsh landscape geographically. Monastic practices sought to capitalize on this barreness in order to cultivate an inner disposition that would draw them, so they believed, closer to God.

So what were these practices and in what way, if any, did they contribute to the pastoral/soul care offered by the monks? Their practices arose from their central goal in life that of the Kingdom of God, a goal that was only achievable if their everyday goal of purity of heart was managed.

Their practices included prayer, fasting, keeping vigil, continual reading and meditating on Scripture, unceasing labour, being stripped and deprived of everything, and solitude. Nevertheless, these practices were considered as only tools to move them closer to fulfilling their ultimate and daily goals that of purity of heart which is holiness.

Central to this therapeutic approach is prayer. For three main reasons.

First, is that prayer brings one closer to God and by praying one discovers who he or she is.

Secondly, prayer is a weapon used to combat the demons.

Thirdly, as one prays and calls on Christ to forgive their sin healing occurs both for them and the wider community as he or she can now reach out in acts of love and by so doing initiating healing and wholeness to the world.

Prayer moves us into silence where wholeness is waiting to be found. As one ascends the steps to God one cultivates a disposition of humility that has as its principle tool the gift of God in prayer. Through prayer one is realeased into the individual that God had intended one to be from his or her creation. In an honest consideration of ourselves we can allow God to transform us.

This applies to anyone not only those in religious orders. It is the transforming power of God's love and the cultivation of it that is the healing model to addiction that is offered in this thesis.


Paul Cameron-Mowat.