THE PASTORAL JOURNEY

by Ross Kingham

1. BEING THERE FOR OTHERS

2. BEING THERE FOR SELF

3. BEING THERE FOR GOD

INTRODUCTION: CONCERNING THE NATURE OF PERSON

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of the soul was a mainstay in the understanding of persons that was advanced by theologians and philosophers and accepted by most people who took the time to reflect on the matter. All this changed quite rapidly in the early twentieth century. Suddenly, the soul became unfashionable. The reasons for this are complex. However, two are particularly noteworthy: the reaction of theologians against the prevailing Platonic view of soul and the rise of modern psychology.

Plato’s view of the soul had been singularly influential among both philosophers and theologians for two millennia. Corrupting the earlier Hebraic understanding of the nature of person, the Platonic view emphasised an immortal soul that was imprisoned in a mortal body and yearned for release at death. The rediscovery by theologians of the more holistic Old Testament view persons led to the discrediting of the Platonic soul and a rejection of the body-soul dualism associated with it. Tainted by its Platonic associations, the concept of soul receded to a back burner in the theological kitchen.[1]

Any conception of soul whatsoever was anathema to modern psychology. This was quite paradoxical since the word psychology literally means “the science of the soul.” However, under the over-riding influence of philosophical positivism, the science of the soul was about to become the science without a soul as psychologists avoided anything unobservable, taking behavior as their focus for study.[2] Seeking to align itself with science and distance itself from religion, modern psychology viewed the soul as unnecessary baggage from its past and sought to avoid it at all costs. Quickly, it became equally irrelevant to most other people in an increasingly materialistic, secular, and psychological culture.

What a surprise, therefore, when suddenly in the last decade the concept of the soul once again made a reappearance. Led by Thomas Moore’s best-seller, Care of the Soul,[3] publishers quickly recognised a new market and followed with a spate of other titles on the subject. Even more surprising is the fact that this renewed interest in the soul and its care occurs within a context of renewed interest in spirituality. Interest in souls has been accompanied by interest in angels, channelling, meditation, and Gregorian Chant. The soul that was rediscovered was, therefore, not some ethereal, immortal, Platonic essence of being, but a very vital, embodied, spiritual core of personality.

The significance of this re-emergence of the soul and the corresponding interest in spirituality is hard to overestimate. 0n the one hand, it seems to represent a reaction against materialism. Whatever else the soul is, it is unseen and non-material. As it simply was not supposed to exist in a culture that gave primacy to the pursuit of things that could be seen, felt, and put into bank accounts.

On the other hand, the spirituality that has been associated with the rise of interest in the soul in the past decade is also a reaction against religion, particularly Christianity. For many of those who are interested in the recovery of the spiritual, the last place they would look to find guidance in this quest would be the church. The rise of spirituality appears to be a response not only to the bankruptcy of materialism but also to the perceived irrelevance of the traditional religions of the West.

Sensing this, Christians have often viewed these developments with suspicion and animosity. Dismissively calling these spiritualities “New Age” and pouncing on the obvious points of divergence from historic Christian visions of the spiritual life, we have often failed to appreciate the spiritual hunger that is reflected in those who embrace the non-Christian spiritualities of the late twentieth century. We have also failed to understand the shift in dominant worldview that is associated with the current demise of modernity. As noted by many observers of this shift, the West is no longer simply post-Christian; it is now also postmodern. The recovery of the soul and the rise of interest in the spiritual both form a fundamental part of this development.

The English phrase, ‘care of souls’, has its origins in the Latin cura animarum. While cura is most commonly translated as care, it actually contains the idea of both care and cure.

The meaning of nephesh in the Old Testament is very rich indeed…ranging from life, the inner person (particularly thoughts, feelings, and passions), to the whole person, including the body. The soul is understood as that which distinguishes humans from animals and living from dead. It is also the source of emotions, the will, and moral actions.

Similarly, in the New Testament, psyche carries such meaning as the totality of a person, physical life, mind, and heart. Here, soul is also presented as the religious center of life and as the seat of desire, emotions, and identity.

Many biblical scholars suggest that the best single word for both nepesh and psyche is either person or self. Both words carry the connotation of wholeness.

Self is not a part of a person but the totality of a person.

“As a working definition, let us understand soul as referring to the whole person, including the body, but with particular focus on the inner world of thinking, feeling, and willing. Care of souls can thus be understood as the care of persons in their totality, with particular attention to their inner lives.”[4]

“Soul care is the support and restoration of the well-being of persons in their depth and in their totality, with particular concern for their inner life. The goal of such care can be described as fostering the psycho-spiritual growth and health of the inner person.”[5]

1. BEING THERE FOR OTHERS

We know well the theology behind being there for others!

It is the theology of ‘giving’. ‘Giving’ is of the very nature of God. “Every good and perfect gift comes from God”; God is “the Lord and Giver of life” (Nicene Creed); and in Paul’s emotional farewell to the elders in the church of Ephesus, he says, “In all things I have shown that by toiling one must help the weak, remembering the words of the lord Jesus, ‘it is more blessed to give than receive”‘, (Acts 20:35).

Thus, the image of the servant Christ is vividly etched in terms of sacrifice, the Cross in daily living.

Louis Marteau, in Words of Counsel[6], tells the story of Ve ­ronica. According to tradition, when Christ was stagger ­ing under the weight of the cross up the slope of Golgotha, a woman called Veronica, moved with pity, went up to him and wiped his face with a towel. The imprint of his face was left on her towel. At that point, says Mar ­teau, “Veronica could not see how she could alter the pre ­vailing social structures to gain release for this innocent man; she could not see how she could remove his burden; she could only offer what little help she could in present ­ing him with a towel with which to wipe his face”. [7]

So it is in much pastoral ministry: just as Christ was able to wipe his face on that towel so that he could see and move on towards his eternal destiny, so we hope that the offering of our towel may enable others to be able to see, and so continue on their journey. But the towel we use is our ­selves, and the image of their suffering becomes im ­planted on (us), and we accept the pain, even though it leaves its mark.

“We have to say with Ivan Karamazov that nothing can make up for a single tear from a single child, and yet we are (called) to accept all tears and all the nameless horrors which are beyond tears.”[8]

There is a story told by Johannes Tauler (Dominican, mystic, C14th, of Germany): a Dominican sister, in her early childhood, repeatedly asked Christ to reveal himself to her. In the midst of her devotions, Christ did appear to her, but wrapped in thorns so she could not embrace Him without clasping the thorns as well. Thus, says Tauler, anyone who wishes to take the Christ Child must submit to suffering. [9]

“Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give of myself” (Walt Whitman, Songs of Myself). This applies to all in the helping professions.

But we know all this. Most of us know it too well: the images of sacrificial leadership litter the scriptures and church tradition;

they are reinforced throughout our theological education;

and all this is compounded by the very personality types that are typical of us who are people-helpers.

Hugh Eadie in a study of Church of Scotland parish Minis ­ters in the late sixties, describes ‘the helping personality’ (“principally motivated by altruistic ideals and the wish to be helpful and concerned”). This applies to about 2/3 of any clergy group.

‘Idealised Self Image’: The Appeal of Love.

This, based on ideals of being loved and lovable, is the springboard for the “helping personality”. The person sees him/herself as being essentially loving and is motivat ­ed by the wish to be helpful, loving and considerate, com ­passionate and affectionate. This is the ideal which the person tries to attain. Sometimes the helping person will impose these expectations and ideals upon him/herself: “I ought to be patient, generous to others, compassionate etc.”

Essentially, the helping person sees him/herself as a ‘mover towards others’.
“People helpers” are most vulnerable to anxiety provoked by experiences associated with isolation or aggression. Such anxiety can be reduced so long as she/he effectively pursues the ideal of being a loving person. But if she/he is frustrated in ful ­filling this idealised expectation at any point, then his/her anxiety is likely to be re-stimulated. When this happens, the refuelled anxiety will probably trigger a new effort to attain the ideal! So failure to attain the ideal intensifies re ­inforcement of it!

‘Compulsive-Obsessive characteristics’

This is another characteristic of the ‘helping personality’.

In order to achieve his/her idealised self, the person becomes ambitious, striving, hardworking, over-conscientious, and engages in compulsive over-work. People in caring professions tend to become perfection ­ists, at least in selected areas of their work, choosing to become exemplary models of responsibility, dedication and loving concern. They will then try to engage in per ­petual activity and excessive working hours, being ‘on-call’ 24 hours a day, and by appearing to be available and con ­cerned at all times. Otherwise he/she will fail to live to the idealised self-image. These compulsive-obsessive be ­haviours will always be rewarded by those whom we serve, but not by the family and/or the intimate friends of the people-helper. Those who are served by a compulsive-obsessive carer will cheer him/her all the way to a nervous breakdown, a cardiac arrest and/or the divorce court.

An additional complicating factor for the carer who em ­braces the role of ‘giver’ too passionately, is the possibility that his/her ego becomes identified with his/her role. (Archibald Hart) The ego is confused with the self-giving, loving, lovable, overworked image of ‘carer’. This is why we ask each other, “How are you? Busy?” And this is why some carers face retirement with deep fear: “If you take away my role, what will then be left of me?”

‘TEACH US TO CARE, (…AND NOT TO CARE)’, T.S. ELIOT
ASH WEDNESDAY 1930[10]

‘…Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still’.

This poem, Ash Wednesday 1930, follows T.S. Eliot’s conversion to the Christian faith.
All too often, our caring is based on the assumption that it takes place in a wasteland, rather than in a garden (in Four Quartets, Eliot sees the world as a rose garden).

Eugene Petersen points out that much of our caring is simply collaboration in sinfulness, in selfishness.[11] It is to collude with care-eliciting behaviour which is motivated by other than wholesome agenda. Such ‘care’ has nothing to do with ‘cure’. It can be exhausting but not therapeutic.

The late Fritz Kunkel practiced psychiatry in Los Angeles for many years. He used to talk about the ego-centric person as manifesting a particular range of behaviours. One of these behaviours is described by Kunkel with the image ‘Turtle’. The ‘turtle’ is the person who hides under her or his shell, away over there in the corner, out of the way, plaintively calling out, softly, “I’m alright! Don’t worry about me! I don’t want to cause anyone any trouble at all. You don’t need to be concerned for me! I’m doing OK here in my shell!” In making a show of being alright, and constantly calling others to his or her plight, the ‘Turtle’ dominates the whole show.

People who lack self-esteem and who are hurting and insecure, can take up a great deal of space in the world of relationships. And carers may be sucked in to the vacuum.

Some of the people with whom we minister are needy, selfish, ego-centric.

Many are beautiful people…generous hearted, lovers of God and of neighbour;

Many are open to ongoing personal development, although, in the case of the aged, with diminishing intellectual capacities…becoming more of themselves, braver, more thoughtful, more inward.
Some may be unwell and poor, but possess qualities of rich and haunting intimacy.
In the case of older persons, they have abandoned their stereotyped roles – such abandonment must be one of the gifts of ageing – and become more fully aware of their human qualities.
Their transitions have been frightening and immense, and they are more conscious than the many of us of the greater transition that lies yet ahead.
They know deeply the pain of darkness and fear, the warmth of human touch and divine presence, and the potential of prayer and of patience.

And we, the carers, are called to help others to listen to God, receive all of God’s gifts, and to recognise and love the God who is the ultimate One with whom they have to deal. We are called, if you like, to be carers of their soul, as hospitable companions.

In being there for others, we are called to a demanding ministry of both giving and, simultaneously, it seems, of receiving…receiving the offerings of women and men out of the richness of their older years, who frequently desire to be fellow pilgrims for us. In companioning others, we are ourselves companioned.

Henri Nouwen tells the story of ‘Bill’ [12] (Bill Van Buren, Daybreak L’Arche community)

….. Writing these reflections was one thing presenting them in Washington, D.C., quite another. When Bill and I arrived at the Washington airport we were taken to the Clarendon
Hotel in Crystal City, a collection of modern, seemingly all-glass high-rise buildings on the same side of the Potomac River as the airport. Both Bill and I were quite impressed by the glittering atmosphere of the hotel. We were both given spacious rooms with double beds, bathrooms with many towels, and cable TV. On the table in Bill’s room there was a basket with fruit and a bot ­tle of wine. Bill loved it. Being a veteran TV-watcher, he settled comfortably on his queen-size bed and checked out all the chan ­nels with his remote-control box.

But the time for us to bring our good news together came quickly. After a delicious buf ­fet dinner in one of the ballrooms decorated with golden statues and little fountains, Vincent Dwyer introduced me to the audience. At that moment I still did not know what “doing it together” with Bill would mean.

I opened by saying that I had not come alone but was very happy that Bill had come with
me. Then I took my handwritten text and began my address. At that moment I saw that Bill had left his seat, walked up to podium, and planted himself right behind me. It was clear that he had a much more concrete idea about the meaning of “doing it together” than I. Each time I finished reading a page, he took it away and put it upside down on a small table close by. I felt much at ease with this and started to feel Bill’s presence as a support. But Bill had more in mind. When I began to speak about the temptation to turn stones into bread as a temptation to be relevant, he interrupted me and said loudly for everyone to hear, “I have heard that before!” He had indeed, and he wanted the priests and ministers who were listening to know that he knew me well and was familiar with my ideas.

For me, however, it felt like a gentle loving reminder that my thoughts were not as new as I wanted my audience to believe. Bill’s intervention created a new atmosphere in the ballroom: lighter, easier, and more playful.

Somehow Bill had taken away the seriousness of the occasion and had brought to it some homespun normality. As I continued my presentation I felt more and more that we were indeed doing it together. And it felt good.

When I came to the second part and was reading the words, “the question most asked by the handicapped people with whom I live was, ‘Are you home tonight?’ ” Bill inter ­rupted me again and said, “That’s right, that is what John Smeltzer always asks.” Again there was something disarming about his re ­mark. Bill knew John Smeltzer very well af ­ter living with him in the same house for quite some years. He simply wanted people; to know about his friend. It was as if he drew the audience toward us, inviting them into the intimacy of our common life.

After I had finished reading my text and people had shown their appreciation, Bill said to me, “Henri, can I say something now?” My first reaction was, “Oh, how am I going to handle this? He might start rambling and create an embarrassing situation,” but then I caught myself in my presumption that he had nothing of importance to say and said to the audience, “Will you please sit down. Bill would like to say a few words to you.” Bill took the microphone and said, with all the difficulties he has in speaking,

“Last time, when Henri went to Boston, he took John Smeltzer with him. This time he wanted me to come with him to Washington, and I am very glad to be here with you. Thank you very much.”

That was it, and everyone stood up and gave him warm applause.

As we walked away from the podium, Bill said to me, “Henri, how did you like my speech?” “Very much,” I answered, “everyone was really happy with what you said.”

Bill was delighted. As people gathered for drinks, he felt freer than ever. He went from person to person, introduced himself and asked how they liked the evening and told them all sorts of stories about his life in Day ­break. I did not see him for more than an hour. He was too busy getting to know everybody.

The next morning at breakfast before we left, Bill walked from table to table with his cup of coffee in his hands and said goodbye to all those he knew from the evening before.

It was clear to me that he had made many friends and felt very much at home in these, for him, so unusual surroundings.

As we flew back together to Toronto, Bill looked up from the word-puzzle book that he takes with him wherever he goes and said, “Henri, did you like our trip?” “Oh yes,” I answered, “it was a wonderful trip, and I am so glad you came with me.” Bill looked at me attentively and then said, “And we did it together, didn’t we?”

Then I realised the full truth of Jesus’ words, “Where two or meet in my Name, I am among them” (Matthew 18:19). In the past, I had always given lectures, sermons, addresses, and speeches by myself. Often I had wondered how much of what I had said would be remembered. Now it dawned on me that most likely much of what I said would not be long remembered, but that Bill and I doing it together would not easily be forgotten. I hoped and prayed that Jesus who had sent us out together and had been with us all during the journey would have become really present to those who had gathered in the Clarendon Hotel in Crystal City.

As we landed, I said to Bill, “Bill, thanks much for coming with me. It was a won ­derful trip and what we did, we did together in Jesus’ name.”

2. BEING THERE FOR SELF

(‘TEACH US TO CARE,)….AND NOT TO CARE’, T.S. ELIOT,
ASH WEDNESDAY[13]

‘…Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still’.

More and more clergy, lay church leaders and other people-helpers are realising the importance of discerning and observing boundaries between personal and professional roles in preserving their welfare.

We can note further to Hugh Eadie’s understanding of the ‘helping personality’, that in thinking again about the idealised self-image being one of being loving and lovable, the car ­er may adopt a negative attitude to his/her own personal needs: “I should not be concerned with myself, self-centered, irritable, impatient. Intolerant, angry, frustrated, hostile, hurting, demanding or dependent on others”.

He/she is influenced by the need to appear loving and lovable above everything else, and so personifies the ideals of self-effacement and self-denial. The carer is most likely to deny his/her self-care needs. He/she is of ­ten resistant to receiving from others. Stress, internal conflicts, depression, and anxiety and apparently mild psychosomatic complaints tend to be ignored or con ­cealed, in order to maintain the ‘helping image’.

Many of us have been trained in such a way that we feel it our bounden duty that, at all times and in all places, we should minimise our self-care needs.

1. BOUNDARIES

“Teach us to care, and not to care…”

Caring becomes dangerous if it becomes our obsession and our main source of esteem: we come to believe that we only have value if we are there for and with others. But to promiscuously inflict ourselves on others is not really caring. Not to collude with persons who have deep dependency needs does not mean that we choose not to love.

There is a common fear of silence, of drawing aside to be alone with oneself. Morton Kelsey tells the story of a clergyman on the ragged edge of breaking down, who once went to see Carl Jung for help. The clergyman had been working fourteen hours a day and was feeling emotionally exhausted.

Jung asked if he wanted to get well. The clergyman, surprised and indignant, replied that of course that was what he desired. Jung then told him to work just eight hours a day, and to sleep eight. The remaining hours, he was to spend in quiet, alone in his study.
The clergyman was willing to do as he was asked, and was hopeful that this would help him with his problem.

The next day the clergyman was careful to work only eight hours. At the evening meal, he explained to his wife what Dr Jung had said, and then went to his study and closed the door. He stayed in that room for several hours, playing a few pieces by Chopin, and completing a Hermann Hesse novel. The next day he followed the same routine, except that in his study that evening he read Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, and played a Mozart Sonata. Soon after he went back to see Jung complaining that he was feeling no better than before.

Jung listened attentively to the clergyman’s account of how the previous two days had been spent. ‘But you don’t understand”, Jung told him. I didn’t want you with Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, or even Mozart or Chopin. I wanted you to be all alone with yourself ” At this point, the clergyman was shocked and gasped, “Oh, but couldn’t think of any worse company!” Jung then made the reply which has been repeated so often since, “And yet this is the self you inflict on other people fourteen hours a day.”[14]

Clearly, to heed the call to embrace being so that, affirmed and strengthened, we may be effective in our doing, requires special openness and courage. It is easier to deny the call and to accept less than our Creator’s intention for us: the inevitable result is a considerable workload, but poor quality of work and of living.

One of the difficult lessons we have to learn in life is that the quality of our being can be lessened by that doing which is done badly. We have become so convinced of the need to express our faith in action, that we fear that the moment we pause in our doing, we will be diminished as persons. It is as if we have come to believe that the sphere of doing is the most real one in which we can live, and that the sphere of our being is to be embraced only fleetingly, as a momentary luxury which we can indulge ourselves in the most tentative manner, before returning to where real reality exists. And so some of us fear the sphere of being.

As Thomas Merton says, “everything depends on the quality of our acts and experi ­ences. A multitude of badly performed actions and of experiences only half-lived exhausts and depletes our be ­ing’.[15]

The point is that we suffer in our inner land when we allow our outer land to be the passion of our lives. In wanting to be able to point to our significance in outer land achievements, be they buildings erected, or programs completed, or positions held, or people blessed, we can be impoverished. Outer land achievements have the power of take-away junk food to sustain us for the journey: often attractive, comparatively easy to attain, but destructive over time. The challenge is to find room for myself, my own self, for the care of my own soul.

2. BE YOURSELF

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Lewis Carroll

ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I – I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’

‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid sir’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

‘I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘I’m afraid I can’t put it more c1early,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’

‘It isn’t’, said the Caterpillar.

‘Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet’, said Alice. But when you have to turn into a chrysalis – you will some day, you know – and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

‘Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; ‘all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.’

‘You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. ‘Who are you?’

Each of us is called to be who we are, in the fulness and uniqueness of that incarnation of the Divine Presence.

Abbe de Tourville:[16] “We are the brothers and sisters of the saints. They became holy in their way; we must become holy in ours, not in theirs… Come, come! We must wake up and try to be that which we are reasonably meant to be and not that which other people have been. One does not become holy by copying others but by making good use of what is truly part of oneself…”

3. RESPECT YOURSELF!

a. Emotional life.
The business of denying self-care needs is a tiring one, and can demand quite a frightening expenditure of energy. John Sanford describes this in terms of the individu ­al maintaining his/her ‘persona’, the front, or mask, which is assumed as a way of coping with the outer world[17]. For example, the ener ­gy expended by the carer in not allowing anger to be visi ­ble to others, presenting a mask of diplomacy and pa ­tience, can be deeply draining, and leaves many in a continual state of low grade depression.

Further, in ‘living the persona’ we are in danger of getting out of touch with our own self. As Sanford points out, no one can be saintly and religious, filled with faith, patience and selflessness all the time. We can strike a pose and seem this way, but if that is not what we genuinely are and feel at the time, we are not real but something of a fake[18].

Clergy tend to fall into two roles in particular: the hero, or the clown (from ‘recovery’ literature on dysfunctional families, quoted by Hands and Fehr[19]). (The other two roles learned in dysfunctional families adopted as survival strategies quoted by Hands and Fehr are scapegoat and the lost child.)

i. Hero
The hero fixes on others, achieves status in the community, and focuses energies and affect on the problems of others. The hero works long hours, skips holidays, or if on holiday is bored and restless. She/he is well trained to run away from the emptiness and loneliness that might be uncovered during ‘time off’, feeling it is safer to keep working. This culminates in the development of the ‘Messiah complex’, the hero’s delusion that his or her efforts are both supremely ordained and indispensable for the salvation and health of others.

ii. Clown
The mascot or entertainer. This person tries hard to divert attention from the abuse, neglect or lack of love in the family of origin. The clown’s attention, like the hero’s, is directed towards others – but to make them laugh or to keep everyone smiling. The clown’s emotions are limited to one tolerated feeling – ‘gladness’. Clowns are conflict-avoidant, even to the point of phobia. They are chronically nice, and this blandness is unfortunately often equated with virtue. They placate, and tend towards burnout due to the expenditure of energy required to stay ‘nice’ and therefore to keep repressed all other natural feelings that were forbidden in the family of origin.

‘Brian’, in a demanding ministry situation, slamming the table at an Elder’s meeting that had got bogged down discussing a simmering issue in the parish regarding acoustics in the church, was reprimanded for not siding with one group or the other. He bellowed “This job is bloody impossible!” The impact on himself was quite remarkable, and sobering. The impact on the elders was miraculous. The way was opened for genuine, mutual caring that was fresh and vitalising.

In some way, it is crucial to name our feelings and face them honestly, as our friends. Otherwise, we survive the first half of life, but face increasing ambivalence and exhaustion as we enter the transition to midlife, when it is imperative that we work at the agenda that Jung speaks of, of the ‘afternoon of our life’.

b. Welcoming our own process of ageing.
About four years ago I was first asked “Senior’s card?” I was so taken aback that I turned to the lady next to me at the counter of the coffee shop, a complete stranger, and yelled, “No-one has ever asked me that before!”

Jung claimed that we cannot live the second half of life in the same way as we live the first half; that there are issues peculiar to the second half of life that demand our acceptance and our courageous attention. We become vulnerable on more and more fronts. The issues of dealing with the undeveloped agenda from the first half of life cry out for attention.

In facing the questions of our ‘shadow’, it might be helpful to consider the words of the apocryphal gospel of St Thomas: “If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you; if you do not bring forth that which is within you, it will destroy you.”

c. Intimacy Needs: Our Openness to Genuine Friendship.
Many clergy are deeply lonely. Charles Schultz has a character in Peanuts ask, “Do you know what you are going to be when you grow up?” Charlie Brown’s reply – which is echoed in the hearts of many clergy – is “Lonesome!”

It is not a sign of weakness to be hungry and thirsty! It is not a sign of failure to be dependent, or to enjoy a friendship. We are created with these needs! It is a sad form of psychologi ­cal and spiritual flagellation to pretend that we are super ­human or inhuman. Hunger and thirst for friendship are vital for our health!

“If we are to love all people, we must begin by loving someone – then another, and another, like a stone send ­ing out ripples across a lake. Loving everyone is often an excuse to avoid the pain of loving someone.” (Cardi ­nal Newman).

“…And so praying to Christ for one’s friend and longing to heard by Christ for one’s friend’s sake, we reach out with devotion and desire to Christ himself. And suddenly and insensibly affection passing into affection, as though touched by the gentleness of Christ close at hand, one begins to taste how sweet and how lovely the other is. And thus with that holy love, with which we embrace our friend, we rise by that to which we embrace Christ. It is, as it were, only a step to heaven where God is all in all. (St Aelred of Rievaulx, Abbot of a 12th century Cistercian community near York).

“What is friendship, when all is said and done, but the giving and taking of wounds?” (Frederick Buechner, God ­ric).

Recently, a minister was sharing with me the dilemma of finding she is constantly being a friend to others in parish ministry, but finding it hard to receive friendship from oth ­ers. Her father had died two weeks earlier, and she told me of her grief, and of the love of those in her parish for her, expressed in so many ways especially in the previous fortnight. Yet all these signs of love for her seemed to be hedged in with strong feelings of reserve. Then she told of times of deep intimacy she had shared with some of those same people – at times of their joy or pain. “That’s it”, she cried, “It is there for them! Always for them!”

Conclusion

It is all a question of balance. If we tilt too much towards being givers, we run the risk of becoming worn and jaded. If we tilt too much towards being receivers, we become too dependent, too cloying, too fragile to exercise leadership in any real sense. We need the great wisdom to know how to plan the days and months of our lives so we can enjoy the scintillating sensation of being able to stay on the tightrope, enjoying the thrill and the challenge of such a feat.

3. BEING THERE FOR GOD

‘…Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still’.

T.S. ELIOT
ASH WEDNESDAY 1930[20]

In Belfast, for over 30 years, leaders of the IRA and the Protestant Unionist have met secretly, hosted by Church leaders, in a long series of meetings striving for peace in that land. They have always met in the same building, and in the same room. At one end of that room is a large mural: it is a depiction of a tree; and each time those leaders have met over the years, each person has attached a leaf to that tree… a cry for the healing of the nations. (James Haire’s father once showed him that mural and explained the meaning of it to James).

Let me offer you an image: the tree growing beside the river of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations! Revelation 22:1-4.

One aspect of our openness to the renewal which is our Creator’s intention for us lies in the degree of our preparedness to be recipients of grace.

Saint Elizabeth Seton, the first US born saint of the Roman Catholic Church and founder of the Daughters of Charity, was a woman who endured incredible personal and family suffering. She once said: “We must be so careful to meet our grace.”

a. Stillness of heart
The psalmist expresses it simply: ‘Be still, pause a while, and know that I am God.”
(Ps. 46:10).

By such an approach to God, we are able to move beyond prayers of habit and tradition, words which come easily to the lips as the occasion requires (and which often are entirely necessary and appropriate), to prayers of the heart. Such prayers need an environment of mental stillness, an inner privacy and devotional attitude. This is the place of the heart praying in secret, with the door firmly closed against pace, pressure and a watching audience (Matt.6:6). It is here, in this place of quietness, that we are blessed by communion with the Lord. Here, in contemplation, prayer is not something we do. It is rather an experience of being.

Human beings were not created for perpetual motion. We find it difficult to become inwardly still, in the words of John V. Taylor, ‘because we are forever whisking through the present moment. We almost never live in it. We are like champion sprinters in the 100 metres race, leaning forward, pushing our center of gravity several metres ahead, so that if we suddenly become still we should fall flat on our faces. So the world around us, the reality of this present moment, is blurred, unclear, empty in fact, because we have already left it behind. “[21]

John V. Taylor also tells how he began to learn in his missionary days in Africa of the gift of an experience of total presence. In village life, he recalls how a child or an adult might enter the room where Taylor was, and how the visitor would squat on the floor with no more than an occasional exchange of words after the initial greeting, while Taylor simply continued with whatever he was doing at the time. Then, after half an hour or so of simply being together, the visitor would stand, saying, ‘I have seen you’, and go.

He says, “I can imagine that people who have not outgrown such simplicity would find it quite natural to sit, silent and attentive, in the presence of God for an half an hour, saying only ‘I have seen you’ at the end”.[22]

b. Willing to be Blessed in Body and Mind.
Remember the first of the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness, to turn a stone into bread? Christ’s reply to Satan was “Scripture says, man does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4). Perhaps you have had an experience when, in the midst of a time of intensely demanding ministry, others have been caused to comment on what they see in you. They may even have suggested that you have been work ­ing too hard, or perhaps with questionable priorities, and that you might be in need of a rest. At such times we need to hear again Christ’s subtle reply to the Tempter: not “Man shall not live by bread” but “Man does not live by bread alone”.

We are not angels or disembodied, pure spirits. Such things as rest, leisure and appropriate forms of physical, psychological and spiritual refreshment are essential for our health. We must learn to resist the temptation to re ­ply: “I do not need bread”.

One form of ‘bread’ that we need, and some of us need it more than others, is solitariness. In Paul Tillich’s words “language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone and the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”

Life is more than ‘doing’; it also embraces the magic of ‘being’. All ministry is more than ‘doing’, which can sometimes be a way of distracting ourselves when we should be allowing ourselves to be more comfortable with solitude. How easy it is to try to fill our diaries with every conceivable commitment to such a degree that we shield ourselves from facing our own self in times of aloneness. For such a facing of our own self can be a painful, and ‘busy-ness’ can be an anaesthetic for the pain that we fear we might experience if we were to allow ourselves to be alone. “Come apart and rest awhile” is one way Jesus describes this drawing away from the busyness of ministry to be better equipped for the demands of ministry.

But more than that, to be more and more comfortable in solitude can also release us for what Nouwen calls ‘the ministry of absence’ (cf. the ‘ministry of presence’). That is, we are ministering to our parishioners when we are ab ­sent from them, thinking of them, praying for them, gain ­ing new perspectives on their lives from a point somewhat removed from them.

In addition, to plan for, and protect, times of solitude re leases us from cloying, unhealthy dependencies upon others. There is an unbalanced kind of adherence to oth ­ers, whether it be constantly hankering after their physical presence or uncritically devouring their articles or books, or attending conference after conference! Some fill as much of their spare time as possible with others, effective ­ly preventing times of personal solitariness. Take a walk,
lie on the lounge room floor, go for a swim, sit under a tree, meditate as you gaze at a lit candle, take the phone off the hook!

c. Willing to be touched in the Deep Places by the Spirit: Disposed to Encounter.
It is so easy, especially given the demand of our work on our time, gradually to lose the fire in the belly, to be re ­duced to going through the motions. As Carl Braaten ex ­pressed it, “You may teach a musician to compose, but that does not put music into his head[23]”. No amount of in-service training to improve the skills of caring can substitute for the music! Hear the music!

The Place of Silence

Silence is an act of worship. I have found, in short times of meditation, as well as a on an extended retreat, that in periods of silence there can be a profound engaging of human spirit with divine Spirit. Sometimes it is at that place beyond words, beyond the reception of sight and sounds, that our spirit (as well as our mind) can interact with the living God. Silence becomes, in Thomas Merton’s phrase, ‘an act of worship’. Silence is thus ‘holy ground’, to be preserved and valued for the sense it offers of the ‘holy’.

There is a particular wisdom that derives from being comfortable silence. It is a wisdom that can impact upon others:

In the words of W.B. Yeats:

“We can make our minds so still like water
That beings gather about us that they might see,
It may be,
Their own images,
And so live for a moment with a clearer,
Perhaps even with a fiercer life,
Because of our quiet” [24]

T.S. Eliot has written,
“Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence… “[25]

THE ADORING

There is a time for being singular,
Enjoying vertical slivers of grace
Alone.

We, who love community,
Need separateness too
For the adoring.

Protestants, thinking to be right
(The sign of true worship!)
Have argued long and hard
About the ‘Real Presence’:
Is that bread, that wine, now Christ?

These friends don’t argue,
They adore.
For them, the one all-powerful drawing centre
Is not in music or preacher or any such thing.
For hours on end, day in, day out,
Their centre is God.
Their program, Love.
They make their retreat with generosity of
heart,
A gentle dropping of obsessions,
In silent devotion.

Not a whisper in the room of prayer,
Scarce a sideways glance,
Just carpet, stained glass windows and
The Blessed Sacrament.

Moved by the responding, sitting, kneeling, lying
in silent love-filled praise,
I, too, kneel and pray.[26]

Silence provides a setting for impregnation by the Spirit.

Buber’s ‘voice of the hovering silence”[27] is the voice of wisdom. This action of the hovering, caring Lord is a reminder of the almighty God who refuses to be trapped in an immersion in our world view, but who watches caringly over us, from the wide perspective of all-seeing grace. Our need is to find the humility and the grace ourselves in the presence of the hovering silence, and to do it often enough to demonstrate our conviction that the Lord’s wisdom is our only desire.

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you? Thomas Merton[28]

The Place of Waiting

It is only in tranquillity that our spirit can absorb true wisdom. This place of gentle quiet is not readily sought out by most of us. We can abuse even ‘silent prayer’ so that in our praying we destroy the quiet of expectant waiting on the Spirit. Some of us will do anything except wait!

John Bell, in May 1999, told of Celtic insights into Christian spirituality. He said, “Perhaps we don’t wait because we don’t love!” (“If a salesman, selling something I don’t especially want, phones and says, ‘Can I visit you at 3.00pm tomorrow?’ and I agree, if he hasn’t arrived at 3.00pm, I maybe will wait five minutes for him. But if someone I love deeply phones and says, ‘May I visit you at 3.00pm tomorrow?’ If they haven’t arrived by 3.00pm, then I will wait 24 hours for him/her!”)

In one of his prayers, Thomas Merton urges us to endeavour to attain silence and peace:

Set me free from the laziness
that goes about disguised as activity
when activity is not required of me,
and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded,
in order to escape sacrifice.

But give me the strength that waits upon you
in silence and peace.
Give me humility in which alone is rest,
and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens.[29]

The Place of Healing

The images of the world – beauty, success, power, wealth, blitz us by day and by night, and induce inadequacy and guilt. We may buy that fridge, save for that 5-star holiday…but there is always an endless array of yet more enticements which are too many to ever claim in total, too grand, too numerous, ever beyond reach, and so we are left with a perpetual hangover, stunned by our sipping this bitter-sweet wine, envious for what might-have-been.

On the other hand, we have this dream of the tree by the river of life, with its leaves being for the healing of the nations! A source of wisdom and a source of the greatest love…vitality for our polluted, wearisome planet.

In St George and the Dragon and the Quest for the Holy Grail, Edward Hays tells of a wise old dragon who talks with George, the middle-aged, urban, non-hero who is on a spiritual quest…

“We are all wounded, George. As we journey through life we have all been injured – hurt by parents, brothers, sisters, schoolmates, strangers, lovers, teachers … the possible list of the guilty is long….”

(The dragon then tells George a story by way of illustration…)

“Once upon a time, a great samurai warrior with two huge swords hanging from his belt approached a monk and said, ‘Tell me, holy monk, about heaven and hell.’ The orange-robed monk looked up at the warrior from where he sat and replied in a quiet voice, ‘I cannot tell you about heaven and hell because you are much too stupid.’ The samurai warrior was filled with rage. He clenched his fists and gave a fierce shout as he reached for one of his swords. ‘Besides that you are very ugly,’ added the monk. The samurai’s eyes flamed and his heart was incensed as he drew his sword. ‘That,’ said the little monk, ‘is hell.’ Struck by the power of the words and the wisdom of this teaching, the warrior dropped his sword, bowed his head and sank to his knees. ‘And that,’ said the monk, ‘is heaven.’

‘You see,’ continued the dragon, ‘the words of the monk touched old wounds, perhaps wounds that were made when the warrior was a child and was called stupid, dumb, or ugly. It was his wounds that caused hell to capture him…’”[30]

The place of worship is the place of healing.

The Places of the Unknown

St George again…..

George is trudging through the night on his pilgrimage into the unknown. He is met by a dragon…

“’Do you have a name?’ asked the dragon, looking me straight in the eye.

‘Well, yes, I’m called George,’ I replied.

‘George? Is that all, just plain George?’ asked the dragon. ‘Nothing in front of it, like Saint George or Sir George? How can you be treated with respect as one on a quest if you have no title? Who will believe you if you are just plain George?’ … ‘Sorry, George… We will have to give you a proper title if you wish to go on a quest.’ With a dramatic flourish the dragon drew himself up to full height and announced in a deep, regal voice, ‘I, thew Celestial Dragon, dub thee with the title ‘ST.’ You may have it printed on your laundry tags for your socks and underwear and have it painted on your letterbox – hence to be known by that title to everyone.’

‘With all due respect, Dragon, you can’t do that. Only the Pope can make someone a saint.’

‘ST, my dear quester,’ said the dragon, ‘doesn’t mean “Saint”; it is the abbreviation of the four-letter word ‘Sent’. You, my friend, are George-who-is-sent, or Sent George. You have to be sent before you can become a saint….’[31]

As with Abraham, we are called, sent, into the unknown, the place of mystery. Let us never forget that. The unknown is where God is.

God’s call leads us ever from self, and from an undue appreciation of our strengths and gifts, towards the heart of God.

The Place of Hospitality

‘No one ever perished from overwork. We only suffer burnout if we are not fed enough bread along the way.’[32]

Our hosts on our life-journey include:

~ The Spirit of Christ

~ Our own giftedness – we are to befriend the whole of our own self

~ Spiritual direction

~ Attending to the smallest things. Even the most fragile, passing moments of beauty, of wonder; deeds of kindness, the smallest of crumbs, have a sustaining, nourishing power

~ Community – worshipful communities of the Spirit,
where power and weakness and grace are all acknowledged,
where we may be held,
where there is to be heard the sweetest, finest music,
where others will help you lay aside what you need continue to carry no longer

… like the paralytic man’s ‘four friends’, community is the place where other exercise faith on your behalf, and minister grace to your grief and your agony.

The Place of Contemplation

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, tells of the criminal Jean Valjean, who spent twenty years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. Valjean has a life-transforming encounter with God after a chance meeting with a small-town Bishop who accepted and loved him unconditionally.
It wasn’t any theological words or arguments that won Valjean’s hard ­ened heart – it was the
Bishop’s love. The Bishop is pictured this way:

“The Bishop’s day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words and good actions. Still, the day was not complete if cold or wet weather prevented him from spending an hour or two in the garden before going to bed… He was then alone with himself, collected, peaceful, adoring…affected in the darkness by the visible splendour of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God.

“…He dreamed of the grandeur and presence of God… Without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed at it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by God. “[33]

——————————————————————————–
[1] Jeffrey Boyd, Reclaiming the Soul: The Search for Meaning in a Self-centred Culture (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, 1996)
[2] Robert Woodworth, Psychology: a Study of Mental Life (Methuen, London, 1923)
[3] Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul : a Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life (HarperCollins, New York, 1992)
[4] David G. Benner, Care of Souls – Revisioning Christian Nurture and Counsel (Paternoster Press, UK, 1998)
[5] Ibid, p.23
[6] Louis Marteau, Words of Counsel (T. Shand, London, 1978 pp. 82,83)
[7] Ibid, p.83
[8] Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (Bison Books, Linclon, Nebraska, 1997 p.131)
[9] Johannes Tauler, in Richard Kieckhefer, Convention and Conversion: Patterns in Medieval Piety
[10] T.S.Eliot, Selected Poems (Faber & Faber, London 1967, p.84)
[11] Eugene Peterson, Teach us to Care and Not to Care, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada (Cassette)
[12] Henri J.M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1997, pp.75-81)
[13] T.S.Eliot, Selected Poems (Faber & Faber, London 1967, p.84)
[14] Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence (SPCK, London, 1977)
[15] Thomas Merton, from a prayer in The Shining Wilderness, ed. Aileen Taylor (Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1988)
[16] Abbe de Tourville, Letters of Direction (Mowbray, London and Oxford, 1939, pp.29,30)
[17] John A. Sanford, Ministry Burnout (Paulist Press, New Jersey, USA, 1982, p.11)
[18] Ibid, p.14
[19] Donald R Hands & Wayne L Fehr, Spiritual Wholeness for Clergy, (The Alban Institute, 1993)
[20] T.S.Eliot, Selected Poems (Faber & Faber, London 1967, p.84)
[21] John Vincent Taylor, The Christlike God (SCM Press, 1992)
[22] Ibid
[23] Carl Braaten Eschatology and Ethics (1947, p 147)
[24] W.B. Keats, The Celtic Twilight (Cuala Press, Dublin, Ireland)
[25] T.S. Eliot, ‘Ash-Wednesday 1930’, in Selected Poems (Faber and Faber, London, 1944)
[26] Ross Kingham, Whispers (JBCE, Melbourne, 1994)
[27] Martin Buber, in Dorothee Solle, The Inward Road and the Way Back (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975)
[28] Thomas Merton, ‘Strange Islands’, in “Emblems in a Season of Fury”, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New York, 1977)
[29] Thomas Merton, from a prayer in The Shining Wilderness, Aileen Taylor (ed.), (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1988)
[30] Edward Hays, St George and the Dragon and the Quest for the Holy Grail (Forest of Peace, Kansas, 1986), p.13
[31] Ibid, p.11
[32] Lynette Glendinning, Human Management Consultant, Canberra – unpublished paper, 1988.
[33] Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (translated by William Walton, Vol 1, Part 1, 1903)