Loss of pastoral care and counseling centers and training programs

I first encountered Gerald May through his book Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology, (1982). At the time I was a full-time resident at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare), one of pastoral care and counseling’s premier institutions. We didn’t know then, but only one resident would come after me. Economics would slowly squeeze the educational program, until today it is a faint shadow of what it was.

Although almost nobody noticed, we lost one of the most valuable assets in the field, and not only at VIPCare. Across the nation pastoral counseling centers themselves are going out of business, and training and certification has been handed off to the university and the state.

Pastoral counseling uniquely focuses on the personhood of the counselor and her spiritual and professional formation. Secular training programs, modeled on the university, train the intellect and barely nod at the person, whose own largely unexamined unconscious and spirit will drive her counseling practice.

Active and passive praying

Anyway. Back to G. May and his writing. Gerald May’s The Dark Night of the Soul is deceptively simple. (G. May, of course, is distinct from Rollo May, also an outstanding psychologist and author.)

He gives an overview of the lives and writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, 16th century religious geniuses. John also is Spain’s national poet.

I’ve never had much success reading either of these people.

May defines “meditation” as primarily all the exercises and forms of prayer that we do, whereas “contemplation” is God’s sheer gift. All we can do with regard to the latter is “to welcome it with open arms.” These definitions vary with different writers. The definitions I’m more familiar with are:

• meditation, the first stage of praying, active, characterized by use of methods, images, thought.
• contemplation, a usually more “advanced” stage of praying, passive (receptive, welcoming with open arms), open, imageless, thoughtless.

I”m sorry to use the word “advanced” because it brings in all kinds of unwanted associations. But I can’t think of a better term.

May says prayer is active and passive. The two intermingle. You go back and forth from beginning to “advanced” phases. (There is no such thing as “advanced”; in prayer we’re all beginners.)

I like the image of God and soul as dance partners. (The “soul” is the deepest part of yourself, where you are most truly you, where God also is.) In active praying the human partner’s movement is more in view; in passive, God’s movement is. But both are interactive in both.

The human activity in the “passive” phase, however, is being receptive, welcoming with open arms. This is what Buddhists and others call “mindfulness,” a relaxed state of loving attentiveness to all that is.

(continued)

 Your feedback will be especially valuable to me. I hope you find these explorations of use in your daily walk with God.

It was the closest I’ve ever been to an ideal “church.”

The book (now online here) is As Bill Sees It, selections from the writing of AA’s founder Bill W. Organized topically, it addresses nitty gritty issues of personal spiritual growth.

38

Pipeline to God

“I am a firm believer in both guidance and prayer. But I am fully aware, and humble enough, I hope, to see there may be nothing infallible about my guidance.

“The minute I figure I have got a perfectly clear pipeline to God, I have become egotistical enough to get into real trouble. Nobody can cause more needless grief than a power-driver who thinks he has got it straight from God.”

(LETTER, 1950)

May wrote on contemplative prayer and psychology. His best are Will and Spirit (which will stretch you if mysticism is new) and Addiction and Grace. The latter is about “attachment” and grace, but the marketng department of his publisher thought “addiction” would attract more attention.

I haven’t read yet his book on the Dark Night of the Soul, on suffering. (Don’t have the title exact.) But I soon will.

His books helped me a lot when I did my major research project at VIPCare.

I’m always fascinated by the interface of psychology and contemplation.

Anyway: here’s to you, Jerry. As you dwell in unveiled light of the One you loved so well in this life, may you be joy. And I hope you’re still writing.

 Thanks to: PD photo.org

Kermit the Frog sings here.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures,” Psalms 23:2 (NRSV).

 As an adult, I’ve had to learn to walk twice.

 My spine is kinky, and I grow a lot of bone, which means I tend to squeeze off the spinal cord every few years.

 In addition, arthritis has destroyed most of the big joints — shoulders, knees.

 So I’ve racked up a lot of surgery and a lot of sack time.  I quarrel with the verse, “he makes me lie down in green pastures.”

Then there’s pain.

“On a scale of 1-10, 1 being no pain, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, what’s your pain level now?”

That nurse (all business, having to log her/his own functions on computer, may be out of work tomorrow because the public hospital is cutting a fourth of its staff, has three kids, an out of work partner and a minivan with stale coke open in the cupholders) qualifies for my instant dislike winner.

On a scale of 1-10, pain is … not a number.

It’s a groan nobody hears, a burn nobody feels. It’s anger that has no place to go.

 I’ve had to lie down a lot more than I want to.  When I gripe about it, the Almighty says, “Green pastures, John, green pastures!”

 ”You’re the boss,” I say.

 I’ve learned from experience that God wins arguments.

 Enforced idleness—green?

 How?

 Well, there’s the psalms.  I read them aloud often. Every ten, I read 16 verses of 119, which all at once is mind numbing.

 There is a sense in which their voice is my voice, or mine theirs. Even the hateful psalms.

 Hate is human. When God gets it out of me, I’ll leave it out of the psalms.

 I wish I had some deep, deep, deep insight into prayer.  I don’t.

 Prayer is listening, prayer is talking.

 Prayer is being face to face with God, not in seclusion, not removed from life, but in the give and get of it.

 When I was offering spiritual direction for a brief time, I imagined God sitting just behind my fellow struggler.  I’d focus on God, while listening to the other person with my heart, my eyes, and any other faculty at hand.

 That’s prayer: focusing on God.

 Enforced idleness also gives me time to read.  During my years of active ministry I never had time to read a book like Les Miserables. 

 Green pastures?  I dunno.

 On a beautiful spring morning I’d rather be out for a run with my beautiful lab Cinnamon.

 But then I don’t have a lab.

 And I don’t run.

I found a sentence from the prologue to the Rule of Benedict that set my heart singing,  no small achievement in these dark cold days: “We shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”

Give me a break.

It’s 2:41 AM. I recited Vigils. How do you whump up cheerfulness when your first cup of coffee is five or six hours away?

You find treasures in the most unlikely places. Take, for example, the obscure little book of Habbakuk, hard to pronounce, hard to find, tucked among the minor prophets. It’s a quick read, but a great one. (All quotes from  NRSV.)

1. The prophet asks, O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
   Or cry to you “Violence!”
        and you will not save? Hab 1.2  
2. Another question: why are you “silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” Hab 1.13
3. The righteous shall live by faith. Hab 2.4
4. But the earth will be filled
        with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD,
        as the waters cover the sea. Hab 2.14
5. But the LORD is in his holy temple;
        let all the earth keep silence before him! Hab 2.20
6. Though the fig tree does not blossom,
   and no fruit is on the vines;
   though the produce of the olive fails,
        and the fields yield no food;
   though the flock is cut off from the fold,
        and there is no herd in the stalls,
   yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
        I will exult in the God of my salvation. 
   God, the Lord, is my strength;
        he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
        and makes me tread upon the heights. Hab 3.17-19

 Not bad. 56 verses, at least 10 world class. Any writer would take one out of five in a heart beat.

The thing is, we’re not in a position to discern what matters or what lasts. God is.

Our job is to keep on keeping on; do the next thing; speak to the next heart that braves the open spaces in hope of connecting.

Bonhoeffer writes, never take Christian fellowship for granted.

Bill Gaither has a beautiful song that keeps running in my head (I play it while riding the recumbent bike): Loving God, loving each other, making music with my friends. (That’s God’s plan.)

Sadly, after toiling long years in the institutional church, I wonder how you tell who your real friends are.

Which brings me to Hebrews, and a verse that (to me) makes sense of my life:

Jesus suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Heb 13.12-14

Like Andy Dufresne, I am not an institutional man. I’m seeking the Body of Christ that is to come. Because what I find too often is not the body of Christ, but the corpse.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish it was otherwise.

There’s no way, in my present state of mind, I can continue the planned essays on prayer. I confess I am royally screwed.

They were to be loftier than I can manage at the moment. I started using the short Benedictine Breviary, but am finding it a lot more busy than I want my prayer life to be, so I have retreated to the fall back position of

• AM psalms + gospel;
• PM psalms + epistle, and
• the Hebrew Bible when I get around to it, which is not often enough.

For several days I’ve grumped at God, a consciousness like that of morning minus sunrise and coffee.

Hoping for better days, I’ll pass along a nugget from my preaching course with George Buttrick. It’s a bit dated but still lustrous.

He said preaching is like the boardwalk at Atlantic City. The preacher needs to preach on the ocean, not the amusements.

• 1. The Ocean: listening
• 2. The Shore: putting into words, symbols

The Ocean

Vast expanse of oceans cover much of the globe. They remain a mystery to us, even as human pollution wreaks havoc we cannot imagine. But the point regarding prayer is their immense presence, like the cosmic silence we enter when we seek to come before God.

I was amazed by an episode of the Dog Whisperer. A small pup barked incessantly when its keepers left the apartment. Cesar Milan, the DW, prescribed exercise and a kennel (small pet carrier). Large spaces make the dog anxious. So if he has plenty of exercise and affection when keepers are home, they best put him in the kennel during the day while they’re away. It serves as his den or cave!

We humans also feel anxious when confronting immensities that defy understanding. So we create small spaces to live in, to feel safe. Unfortunately, the spaces we create might suit a terrier but not a Great Dane. (J. B. Phillips’ book Your God is Too Small.)

Doubt sometimes occurs when we outgrow our kennel.

One aspect of prayer then is opening the intellectual, emotional kennel, attending to the energies of the Divine that swirl us about. We must be like the ice dancer, who keeps her orientation by focusing on a single point, while she spins.

The liturgy of the hours—spoken, sung, enacted—is like a leash that God uses to guide us. It establishes limits within which we can safely experience the illimitable.

As I wait in the silence I hear:

• ticking clocks
• whir of city, passing cars
• pain
• imagine being in a small boat, the glare of sun on the water
• doing the business of fishing

The ticking of clocks, pain (3-4 on 10 scale), call me back to the surface and the present.

How in those moments have I experienced You, been with You, God, differently than in all the moments when You are always present? (But maybe I am not?)

I’d welcome your recommendations of best books about or of prayer.

I’ve been searching for a less intellectual, less wordy prayer method. My goal is to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5.17). Over the years, I’ve found help in these books:

• The psalms
• Seekers After Mature Faith, which I value as a good bibliography of spiritual classics (which I discovered in Glenn Hinson’s Classics of Christian Devotion course)
• Rosalind Rinker, Conversational Prayer, learning the value of unstructured oral prayer with others
• The Cloud of Unknowing, beginning to unhook the intellect
• The Tao Te Ching, mostly unfathomable, except in the Stephen Mitchell translation, which I suspect is as much Mitchell as Lao Tzu; helped me become aware that I’m riding the Gulf Stream of the unconscious
• St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul (for me the title says it all, I get lost in the mysticism)
• Thomas Kelly, Testament of Devotion, equating prayer with breath
• John Fortunato, Embracing the Exile, a real eye-opener for me, and based on Isaiah 40-55, which is the biblical Holy of Holies for me
• The Way of the Pilgrim, taught me the prayer of the heart

As far as prayer books are concerned, I’ve found the following useful:

• Celtic Daily Prayer, this I use for enrichment; I found it didn’t have enough daily variety for every day
• Book of Common Prayer (USA, 1979) and sister volumes; so much of this is in my DNA as an English-speaking Christian
• Glenstal Book of Prayer, the basic outline of the Benedictine Liturgy of the Hours; I like this for its simplicity, ease of use
• Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary, 2266 pp. I got this for Christmas. You gotta approach it with humility and humor. But I like the richness of readings from Christian tradition. As a Protestant, I grew up thinking Christianity started with Martin Luther, well, really with London Baptists of the 17th century. I’m learning this book, which is pretty well laid out. There are a few conventions I can’t figure out, and can’t find an explanation for. As for the whole, ask me in 10 or 20 years. I’ll be a bona fide beginner by then.

I did not send the prophets,
     yet they ran;
I did not speak to them,
     yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council,
     then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way,
     and from the evil of their doings.

Jer 23:21-22 (NRSV)

On this Sunday morning I woke early, got a breakfast bar, cracked open a diet coke; sat down in front of my WordPress Write post screen, and began thinking about what to write after a Christmas week that I think of as heart bruising.

Most Sundays of my life by this hour I’d be going over my sermon. It would be outlined, at least; often written out in full, and I would be mentally rehearsing it. What phrases did I want to hang on to? What transitions?

Most of all: what outcome?

Only in my freshman years in the pulpit did I read a manuscript. Reading a sermon is like reading “I love you” to your lover. It just doesn’t work.

African American politicians have a secret weapon; they’ve all been trained in the tradition of the African American pulpit. The best preaching in the history of the world has occurred in the black pulpit in America. I hope it still is.

Sermons are good or bad based mostly on what hearers do because of them, or rather because of how God speaks to hearers through them,

Do hearers re-examine their lives? Change priorities? Forgive their husbands, wives, siblings, parents? Do they begin to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God?

If so, then, the sermon is a good one.

George Buttrick told his preaching class he once graded a sermon. The preacher disputed the grade. “Sir,” he said, “this sermon has won 110 people.” Buttrick replied, “Won them to what?”

Our culture’s preference for statistical evaluation can’t do right by most sermons.

I personally like time bomb  sermons, the subversive kind that you carry home in a pet caddy, feed, house break, and cuddle every night—only to find you’ve adopted a pet that eventually breaks your house, makes your present lifestyle unlivable.

Now that I don’t preach three times a week, as I did for 30 years, there’s a hole in my life. Small group Bible studies help fill it, but cannot entirely.

I miss the gale of gospel wind. I miss the still small voice.

Preachers hold in trust the Word of God for their people.

I don’t mean, as one fundamentalist said, that the preacher is the only one who knows the Word of God. I mean, God gives to the shepherd the food for the flock in a way they can’t get for themselves any other way.

Using a different metaphor, if preachers don’t stand in the council of the Lord, they don’t have hammers, wind or fire they need to build the spiritual building.

I miss the preaching that comes  not just from an intellectual commitment to scripture, but from an experience of nothing worthy of God happening in the church that doesn’t arise from its encounter with the written and living Word.

What a treasure it is to be called to stand before the fire for the sake of a people.

I’ve divided my NT & Pss into sections: gospels, epistles, psalms, ps 119. Three or four times a day (ideally) I read first a psalm or two, then either a gospel or epistle chapter. Each time I finish ten psalms, I read a page of ps 119. (This system doesn’t do justice to the Hebrew Bible as a whole.)

To a degree I put my brain in neutral as I read. Trained in the critical method, I have all the tools for vivisecting the Word at the ready. But this isn’t that. This is simply soaking in the Word, letting words and phrases I’ve known all my life wash over me—being still that I might know.

I check on day’s events through msnbc.com, mostly, reading at random for a few minutes. What’s happening I don’t understand, unless it’s as simple as it seems: the Selfishness at the heart of Capitalism run amok. How else could you explain a man who thinks making $500 million reasonable while his company vanishes in debt?

Can you afford Hope in such a time?

Or do we now have proof that both Communism and Capitalism are unworkable economic models, and there isn’t a good one out there?

I’m not a good enough economist even to know how to ask the question.

Nor do I know enough about political science to know what to make of recent events. We’ve elected an eloquent, informed, idealistic man to be President. (Oh, yeah, and that other thing.)

Will we let him govern?

Or will we play the game so popular in Washington D.C.: in rare event something good occurs, take credit for it; spend most of your time and energy in negative mode, blaming everything on everybody else. The bibble babble of Democracy grinding to a sound byte, while Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee point fingers and say “‘Twas he.”

Or, amazing things may happen.

Maybe it’s the chocolate.

Maybe it’s eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Christ.

Maybe it’s Hope.