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My personal story
Life, Faith, Confidence
The Reverend
Dr Geoffrey W. Cheong
PhD
My name is Geoffrey Cheong, generally called Geoff. My ancestry can be traced primarily back to England, Scotland and Wales through my mother’s family and to China through my father’s family. My maternal great-grandfather arrived in Australia in the 1820’s while my paternal great-grandfather arrived in Australia during the goldrush in the 1860’s. Ancestry.com indicates I am 1/8 Chinese.
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Born in 1947, I grew up in Melbourne, attending the local primary school before my secondary school education at Trinity Grammar School, Kew, in the 1960’s. Tertiary education was at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where I was a student within the Architecture School before changing to Theology.
My spiritual world was nurtured at the local Anglican Church, St. Matthews, Ashburton. The vibrancy of my faith was stirred by the sense of the mystical and sacraments and the hunger to learn to quietly meditate. After three years of Architectural studies I sought acceptance as a theological student for ordination within the Diocese of Melbourne. I completed my training at St. John’s College, Morpeth, NSW, before being ordained in 1973 as a deacon and 1974 as a Priest in St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne.
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While my spirituality was shaped by the interior yearning of the heart, my complementary interest was learning of the psychological explanations of the human experience. To probe the depths of the mind, has from these early days of my development, been of significant interest. The imperative of love elevated the pastoral relationship to the highest priority of my life and in time the focus of my formal study.
After several years of ministry, I moved to Canada to undertake intensive Pastoral training in the Canadian Supervised Pastoral Education program (CAPPE) the context of which was a Psychiatric Hospital. This training was supplemented with addition experiences in General Hospitals, Counselling Centres (General counselling, Drug and Alcohol, Marriage and family). In 1985 I was Certified as a Specialist in Pastoral Care through the CAPPE organisation.
In Canada, I married and together we had our two daughters. We returned to Australia in 1986 and have so valued our family life together even now as grandparents.
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On our return to Australia and parish life at St Augustine’s, Mentone, one of my major ministry development programs was the formation of a counselling service. It operated successfully for approximately twenty years. Through the following years of parish ministry at Balaclava and Elwood my work has been carried out hand in hand with the life time pursuit of understanding of the human experience. Since the first decade of this century, I have formalised my years of learning with an approach to spirituality I refer to as Relational Spirituality. As a student of University of Divinity and registered at Trinity College, Melbourne, I completed a PhD in 2018 with the title, ‘Secularology and Relational Spirituality: Towards an Integral Christian Spirituality.’
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In my early days of life and ministry people would have thought of me as conservative in nature and orthodox in thought. It was my determination to continue learning over the decades to ensure I spoke in as informed and honest way that reflected contemporary knowledge and connected with the daily experience of people, that opened new vistas in my understanding of life. Two major trends were taking place. The world was so dramatically changing across the planet through the twentieth century like never before. In simple terms it grew from a population of 1.6 billion to almost 8 billion, changing shape from nation state to globalising humanity. Through this change the church was being increasingly marginalised for its teaching did not keep abreast the new world unfolding. Consequently, the Church’s numbers were diminishing and membership was aging with predictions of its demise. The picture my questions led me to see painted a new era of history opening across the globe.
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​The vision I now see of the future is universal, non-dual, wholistic and inter-relational. It has been described as the new INTEGRAL ERA of history. It displays a vision for the peace of humanity, and for the flourishing of all people. It calls for a new respect for relationship particularly shaped by a ‘dialogical dialogue,’ where we truly respect one another.
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In my retirement I have established this ‘Blog-Site’ as my means to open my door to others who would welcome the chance to engage with this vision in mind.
An outline of this theory can be read in the articles included in the section, "The Integral Message".
My full doctoral thesis ‘Secularology and Relational Spirituality. Towards an Integral Christian Spirituality.’ is freely available on-line through a PDF made available by the Dalton McCaughney Library at the following link:
University of Divinity URI:
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13057/3720
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I hope you will value my regular contributions of the new Integral life in the section entitled, "Ponderings" on this site.