Redeeming the Past: My Journey From Freedom Fighter to Healer - Hardcover

Michael Lapsley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1570759928 ISBN 13: 9781570759925

Publisher: Orbis Books, 2012

Synopsis

In 1990, Fr. Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and monastic from New Zealand, exiled to Zimbabwe because of his anti-apartheid work in South Africa, opened a package and was immediately struck by the blast of an explosion. The bomb suspected to be the work of the apartheid-era South African secret police blasted away both his hands and one of his eyes. His memoir tells the story of this horrendous event, backing up to recount the journey that led him there particularly his rising awareness of the radical social implications of the gospel and his identification with the liberation struggle and then the subsequent journey of the last two decades. Returning to South Africa, Lapsley saw a whole nation damaged by the apartheid era. So he discovered his new vocation to become a wounded healer, drawing on his own experience to promote the healing of other victims of violence and trauma. As he writes, My visible brokenness creates a bond with others whose brokenness is often less visible but just as real. The truth is that pain unites human beings. In my work as a healer, many people say they can trust me because I know pain. In the end, though, what matters most is whether we are able to transform pain into a life-giving force.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Lapsley was born in New Zealand and ordained a priest in Australia after joining the Society of the Sacred Mission. The society sent him to South Africa as a missionary in 1973. There he became chaplain to Anglican university students and became active in the anti-apartheid movement, ultimately joining the African National Congress. Exiled to Zimbabwe, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Later, he returned to South Africa and participated in the transition to the post-apartheid era. In 1998 he founded the Institute for Healing of Memories, a project that has taken him around the world to work with victims--as well as perpetrators--of violence and trauma. Stephen Karakashian is an American psychotherapist who has spent a number of years working with Fr. Michael and the Institute in South Africa. He lives in Portland, OR.

Review

Although he was broken physically, he has become the most whole person I know, truly a wounded healer. --Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Michael s life represents a compelling metaphor . . . a foreigner who came to our country and was transformed. His life is part of the tapestry of the many long journeys and struggle of our people. --Nelson Mandela
--Nelson Mandela

Michael s life represents a compelling metaphor . . . a foreigner who came to our country and was transformed. His life is part of the tapestry of the many long journeys and struggle of our people. --Nelson Mandela

Not quite three months after Nelson Mandela was freed from Robben Island in 1990, Anglican priest and African National Congress chaplain Lapsley opened a letter sent in the mail. The bomb in it blew off both hands, sent shrapnel through his body, and destroyed one eye . . . . Though severely injured, his mind and tongue remain intact, producing this most amazing memoir of a man who writes he "has never made a distinction between human liberation and my Christian witness." . . . Within three years of his attack, he opened the doors of The Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town, in the new South Africa, and launched a global Healing of Memories program. The book's final section highlights stories from this work, from Rwanda to Northern Ireland, from Colombia to North Carolina. With dry, self-deprecating wit, Lapsley treats readers to an emotional, gripping tale of a priest, his prosthetics, and his promise, as St. Teresa of Avila put it, to be Christ's hands in the world. --Publishers' Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Orbis Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1570759928
• ISBN 13: 9781570759925
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256