Aug 09 | Retreat Diary: Monday

I took several books on my retreat, some of them for fun, and two of them to expand my own learning. For this week, I brought a book on pastoral care and a more devotional book of Scriptural reflections. I recommend both.

HOLY READING

Widening the Horizons (Charles Gerkin): This book argues that pastoral care in the ’40s and ’50s, shaped by gains made in psychotherapy, focussed on self realization, even for those who were sick or bereaved. This definitely seems similar to how I experienced providing it to some of the people I worked with in CPE. My question becomes, How can my own expression of pastoral care keep what was good about that model and discard what is no longer fruitful?

There are many “new” factors in society that complicate the old model. This book was written in the ’80s but many of these factors seem largely unchanged:

* Pluralism

* Loss of moral context: Gerkin suggests that people struggle with their moral contexts because they do not have the same sort of moral homogeneity that they used to, presumably, in Christendom. As a result they have multiple moral contexts where morals contradict each other – church is governed by one set of morals, while one’s circle of friends, one’s place of work, and any other contexts are each governed by different sets. I personally think that people today try to do more to synchronize their worlds, but that could be myopic, as I tend to associate socially with people who do that.

*Tribalism

*Privatism: I don’t think this is the case anymore as Gerkin describes it. People live loud with the internet and social media.

*Altered Patterns of Psychopathology: This suggests that those who seek professional help often model the conflicts of society. I don’t know if I totally buy that but it’s a compelling theory.

I would add the internet/mass/instant communication and loss of emotional privacy through the apparent need to share every life’s moment through these avenues.

This writer suggests pilgrimmage as a metaphor for thinking about the self. This is how humans imagine these things – in terms of story.

Pastoral care should therefore always be grounded in theology. But pastoral care is fundamentally practical.

The Sacred Mirror (Herbie O’Driscoll): “All spirituality is founded on our human experience of being encountered by that which is other than ourselves.” (9) “[T]he great step of faith we dare to take is to affirm that there exists a love between creator and creation, and that creation issues from the ceaselessly burning fire of that love.” (10)

The first reading (reflection? pun intended) is about Moses and the burning bush. Moses was the “brother identity” given to me by my pastoral care supervisor in his blessing prayer for me. “To be other than afraid to look back at God would be to reveal that we know neither ourselves nor God. We would be aware neither of our own finitude nor of God’s infinity, neither of our own sinfulness nor of God’s perfection. If our worshipping life is to have any vitality, it must bring us, even if only once in a lifetime, to a sense of presence that convicts us of this awesome gulf. There must come at least one touching of the bread to the hand, one flowing of the chaliced red wine to the lips, to convict us of the immeasurable cost by which this gulf has been crossed, and with what great love.” (17) “If that which we have encountered is true God, then we will not be allowed to dwell forever in the house to which we have come, even though it be truly ours; but we will be sent from it to do the will of him who brought us home.” (17)

God’s answer to our cry of inadequacy is serene and simple: I will be with you. We do not easily trust, though. Our brokenness is evident in our betrayals received and given. Moses plays for time by asking for a name: an authority. Everyone clambers for it, even in our world where we pretend to be wary of authority. The answer is “I AM” – the ultimate authority.

Moses then says no-one will believe this authority was conferred on him. “God may have called, touched, appeared to, spoken with other people. Perhaps God has come to the great saints, perhaps even to someone of particular sanctity whom we know, but surely never to me! God does not call people like me. I am ordinary and pedestrian. I have problems. I am not the stuff of encounter with God. So we all contend. It is essential to realize that every saint, every spiritual giant, once held this assumption. It is built into our humanity. It is the devil’s last defense, so that even when we do feel called, Satan can rally us back to his side by our inability to think that we might be called, our fear lest we be regarded as crazy or pious or arrogant if we were to claim an encounter with God.” (19)

I definitely heard divine patience being tested in my visions experience! “I will do as I wish.” “What we communicate is not by eloquence so much as by the reality of who we are.” In the gift of Aaron, Herbie ruminates, there is a gift of a flesh and blood companion – and so is Jesus our Lord. We may also find others who possess gifts that we lack.

The second reading was about Elijah and the still, small voice. Sometimes at our greatest moments we are brought low. We know we must face our conflict and fear, but it is not always wise to do so immediately. Elijah took the time to go to the mountain. When he buries himself within, he is seeking rebirth. Am I buried here? Surrounded by mountains and ocean, I’d say so. And so while I may hope and pray for God in the melodramatic, God will choose the still small voice.

I love how the third reading is the passage from Isaiah most often heard by Anglicans at ordinations – and this book was written the year I was born. How auspicious, heh heh. “Not only Isaiah but we too feel ourselves tainted and contaminated, both by our personal weakness and by the shortcomings of society, with all its compromises and ambiguities. Not only have we “unclean lips” but we feel that “we dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Yet even here we cannot escape the call.” (32) And we are answered by having coal touch our lips: scorched lips, hands, and hearts.

Herbie cautions us in limiting the channels of grace. It is not bound but can come at any time. Lord, how I know that! Herbie gives the image of a broken, blasted tree that still contains seed, and its morphs into the wood of the cross.

The fourth reading is the valley of the dry bones. Sometimes utter realism (the valley) can be therapeutic, even galvanizing. We may first ask ourselves, “Can these bones live?” Can we survive the pressure, the sorrow, the alienation? Ezekiel’s answer is perfect: “Any faith today that has not felt itself forced into silence by the facts of the human situation, is not worthy of of the name. Real faith exists, and must always exist, in a context of potential doubt.” (39) But then we are told to prophesy to the bones. We do it out of hope. We prophesy to broken dry people and broken dry institutions, because we are commanded to, and then we prophesy to the breath. We are physical and lifeless…until God fills us with the nephesh, the ruach. We prophesy by proclaiming it is God who breathes, and fills us with life.

-Clarity