Lorraine Alison Smith-MacDonald
Episode 14, Dec 21, 2020, 11:44 PM
Since November 11th, 1931, Canadians have paused to remember those men and women who have served in our various armed forces. Shortly after attending this years’ service of memory in Ottawa I sat down with Lorraine Smith-MacDonald to think about her work listening to soldiers who have recently served in Canada’s forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. How has she come to prepare for this work and what has she drawn from it that we all need to understand?
As a child Lorraine sat on her uncle’s knee watching the television series MASH and eating vanilla ice cream flavored with creme de menthe. Her parents, one Scottish Presbyterian and one Irish Catholic, regularly invited their respected clergy over for dinner and hospitable conversation across religious lines. Not surprising she grew up with an interest in the depth of the Christian spiritual tradition. She studying philosophy and ethics at Dominica College University in Ottawa. It was here that the depth of Christian thinking about the spiritual life was opened to her. Building on her initial intellectual formation she went on to do her Master and Doctorate degrees with a research program on trauma and healing, on “moral injury”, the undoing of one’s sense of character, on guilt and forgiveness., on being both a victim and victimizer. Since the common psychiatric models have been largely ineffective with returning soldiers she has worked at finding the healing waters that spring from the continuous work on the spiritual life at the heart of Christian understanding.