2023 Conference

Timing

„For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven“
(Eccl 3, 1. ESV)

Existence is a matter of rhythms. From the beating of our hearts to the solar system. When rhythm is disturbed, we fall ill and enter into chaos.

During the last years the whole world has been put on hold due to the pandemic. Our time, pace, and patterns of living have changed, and we have had to adjust.

A time of war is present in our world and at the time of writing this text also in the midst of Europe. Wartime means everything getting out of order, even life and death.

In pastoral care and therapy the concept of timing is essential. It is a question of when we speak, when we keep silent, when we smile and maybe even joke, and when we refrain from any action and just make room for the sorrow of the counsellee . We enter a dialog involving our whole being in every encounter. This is the rhythm of life itself. Careful listening to one another is the core of both peace and health.

This time, in 2023, the North European Exchange of Experiences for Therapy, Pastoral Care and Counselling is turning half a century. This inspires us, on the one hand to celebrate a long time of work on integrating existential themes with health care, and, on the other hand to contemplate the past, think about the present, and try to find out where we are heading.

The main subject for our celebration is, however, not the conference itself but what it has endeavored to foster: the art of being in tune with creation and creativity, in other words, timing. This calls for times of yielding as well as times of opposing, times of acceptance as well as protest.

In the lectures and groups, we will explore how this issue is present in our time and individual lives, and how we respond.

Helena Enoksson (S) on behalf of the planning group

minister and teacher of pastoral theology at the Church of Sweden, psychotherapist, auth. supervisor, cert. EMDR-therapist