Flourishing in Faith

Theology Encountering Positive Psychology

Ambler, Anstey

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498296410
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

Flourishing in Faith: Theology Encountering Positive Psychology explores the fascinating dialogue between two scholarly traditions concerned with personal wellbeing, Christian theology and Positive Psychology, primarily from the perspective of theology. Although each works within different paradigms and brings different fundamental assumptions about the nature of the world, both are oriented toward that which leads to human flourishing and contentment. In such an encounter, can both disciplines learn from one another? Do they challenge each other? How can they enrich and or critique each other? With the widespread emergence of Positive Psychology in educational, church, and community settings across the world, many of which self-identify with the Christian tradition, many are wondering how this new branch of psychology integrates with traditional Christian belief and practice. This groundbreaking book explores this question from a diversity of perspectives: theology, biblical studies, education, psychology, social work, disability studies, and chaplaincy, from scholars and practitioners working in Australia and the United States.

Practical Perspectives

Chapter 10

Grief Experiences

Potential Catalyst for Post-traumatic Growth and Wellbeing

Gillies Ambler

Figure 1: Gillies and Sandra celebrating the birth of their only child Nigel

Grief coming, ready or not!

This is a photograph of my wife Sandra and me at the birth of our only child, Nigel, in 1974, in Leamington Spa, England. How proud we were embarking on parenthood and a future filled with delightful surprises. Who could have foreseen that Sandra would contract bowel cancer, dying seventeen months later, leaving a husband and son with broken hearts? Not only was I grappling with the loss of my wife, but I was also struggling to come to terms with raising our son away from our families and friends back in Australia. It would have been impossible to conceive then that twenty-seven years later Nigel would die in a car accident.

In the 1970s, academic research into grief was in its infancy. Nobody introduced me to Kubler-Ross’s emerging research into the stages of grief. I was not even aware of the concept of grief. As a topic of research, Seligman’s theory of wellbeing and its focus on positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishments (PERMA)208 was some decades away, as was Positive Psychology, the scientific study of what goes right in life.209 What I did understand after Sandra died in 1976, was that a fog had descended on my life. I could no longer see clearly the way ahead. Life had been stripped of meaning. I experienced alienation from the world I once called home. I was repeatedly told, “You are young, forget Sandra, move on, and find someone else to marry,” advice that compounded my loss and slowed my path back to everyday life.

I was an advocate of the Enlightenment. I loved philosophy, majoring at university in physics, mathematical physics, and pure and applied mathematics, which I taught with passion at a large high school. This knowledge was meaningless in the face of such a major loss. My left-brain strengths of logic, ability to synthesize facts and order knowledge with analytic skill, proved powerless in the face of this tragedy.

Intuitively I began to write poetry, surprising me with the intensity that flowed line by line. With no mentors to guide me, I returned to prayer, my adolescent faith relationship with Jesus and the Psalms, especially those that grappled with the subject of loss. Charry eloquently highlights the power of the Psalms to enable people who are languishing to flourish once again.210 They yielded insightful concepts and images that enabled me to identify some of my confusing responses, while offering hope that, through God’s grace, I could flourish once again. I struggled to articulate consciously what was happening to me. My right-brain processes were being awakened, stirring creativity and imagination, birthing a grounded spirituality and allowing a dialogue with many complex dimensions of being human, less accessible to the strict framework of scientific research. I did not abandon analysis, logic or a passion for order. This was an unsophisticated attempt to integrate right and left-brain processes, while struggling to make sense of this traumatic loss.

With a profound sense of call, I returned to Australia in 1979 to train as a Uniting Church minister, now traversing the dangerous and complex terrain of loss, well on the way back to everyday life. Falling in love with and marrying Wendy in 1982 completed my journey back to wellbeing. Love possesses great healing power. I found little help from experts or books on grief when it would have been most beneficial. Not surprisingly, one of my passions on entering the ministry in 1988 was pastoral care, especially for people lost in grief.

In 2001, police informed us that Nigel, our son, had died in a car accident in Brisbane. My friend grief emerged again. This was heartbreaking, as I had now lost my “first” family. This tragic event, however, did not shake my foundations as severely as that first time. I had discovered ways to travel this confusing and complex path towards wellbeing and a loving life, honed from reflecting on my grief and many years of counseling. This journey, however, was still arduous and demanding and would test many of my core beliefs and spiritual principles. Wendy persuaded me to enroll for a doctorate exploring the ways I had discovered to heal my broken heart following Sandra’s death, and how to embrace these and new ways to wholeness a second time.

Opening dialogue with Positive Psychology

The Flourishing in Faith: Positive Psychology and Theology Conference211 provided me with the opportunity to share my approach to grief and wellbeing with Positive Psychology. I shared research findings from my thesis212 and later self-published book.213 I discovered that research into grief parallels trends in psychology. In the twentieth century both have largely focused on the negative and most demanding of life experiences and responses. My thesis explores positive ways to grow th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Framing the Conversation
• Biblical Perspectives
• Theological Perspectives
• Practical Perspectives