South African sunset last August. Photo by Wade Jones.
This
past Sunday afternoon I was invited by St. Julian's Episcopal Church in Douglasville,
Georgia, to lead a session on “Care for the Caregiver” as part of a long series
supporting lay people in ministry. I was a little overwhelmed by the detailed content
I was given to present in an hour’s time. The night of the day I began
preparing I of course had a dream of leading the event, and I feared
running out of time, though in the dream I had a whole day to work with, not
just one hour! But my sleeping brain (or should I credit Holy Spirit?) gave me
an idea how to approach the challenge.
Part
of the challenge was that the small group attending had either been part of a
centering prayer group for years or were enrolled in an Episcopal Church multiple
year program about faith and ministry fundamentals, or both! In my dream I said
to them, “I am stepping into a river that has flowed a thousand years,” meaning
their combined experience, and added, “I have more to learn from you
than you from me.”
Yet
we are all part of a two-thousand-year-old movement initiated by followers of
Jesus who were so good—so kind, compassionate, and hospitable—that
others wanted to be like them. And here I refer to Elaine Pagel’s Beyond
Belief, in which she affirms that this evangelism by attraction is how the
first “Christians” inspired converts.
I
realized “care for the caregiver” is what this blog has always been about. I
wanted to equip progressive Christians, who are not only care-givers but
justice-seekers, with what I had been given to sustain my activism: a prayer
life, contemplative ways of undergirding, strengthening, inspiring, and
(perhaps most vitally) sustaining a ministry of compassion and care.
The
course was trying to impart the wisdom of Saint Benedict, who saw spiritual
community as the stabilizing foundation of a ladder to rise to great heights,
to touch the face of God as well as that of other creatures through work,
study, and prayer, with order, balance, and moderation.
So,
still in my dream and then after as I woke in the dark to reflect on it, I
began coming up with questions to solicit the wisdom and experience of the
group. The members of their Community of Hope are the ones who will be there
for years after my “splash in the pan” appearance—best to help them remember
that and for me to recognize I am their beneficiary not their benefactor.
I’ve
decided to share with you some of what I shared with them.
How
do you care for yourselves? I asked. I explained not to judge any self-care methods, just
be honest. As an example, I listed my own self-care practices: morning prayer
and reading, of course, running and weightlifting, healthy diet and a good
night’s sleep—all admirable, but also, watching old Frasier and Murder,
She Wrote episodes and comfort food and chips and wine.
Do
you have difficulty saying “no”? A denominational church leader came to me for regular
spiritual guidance for a season and I advised her to tape “I can say ‘no’” to
her office phone. A book entitled Ministry Burnout points out that often
it seems to take as much emotional and spiritual energy to tell someone “No, I
cannot do that” than it takes to just do it! But, as Jesus sensed healing
energy going out from him when the woman with a hemorrhage touched him, anything
we do may deplete our energy and effectiveness, so focus and boundaries are
needed.
Do
you trust your spiritual community? What I meant by that is do you believe in the variety
of gifts you’ve identified in one another as you’ve come to know each other? I
invited them to speak about those gifts, and I was moved by their readily
offered affirmations.
I
explained the “joke” in the first church I served after seminary was that, if
you identify a need the church should address, you take the lead in that
ministry! After all, you are the church! That’s how we started our jail
ministry for gay inmates, our outreaches to homeless gay youths, our sack lunch
program for the homeless.
Identifying
our own gifts, strengths, and weaknesses and inviting others in our spiritual
community to identify theirs, we better know when to refer to meet an expressed
need or how to best assign and offer assistance. None of us have to be everything
to everyone.
What
is your motivation?
The curriculum provided an exercise to help us sort “sympathy” from “empathy,” listing
distinctions that, to me at least, were too clever and convenient, suggesting
the first was controlling and the second detached. Somewhere in between is the
word I would use: compassion, which means “suffering with,” and compassionate
has been applied to both the Buddha and Jesus who respectively represent
detached mindfulness and sacrificial love.
Compassion
requires attentiveness and listening. Henri Nouwen gave the example of an
incident from his early years in ministry when he gave beds to a family that had
been sleeping several to a bed. Upon his next visit he discovered they had sold
the extra beds and gave a party for all their friends. What they needed was a celebration,
not more “things.”
When
I worked with first-time AIDS volunteers and workers in the early years of the
pandemic, I invited them to consider the values motivating them and identify their
“spiritual community,” encouraging them to be creative in discerning the
latter. One woman had the “aha” that her women’s tennis group was her spiritual
community. Over the years they had been there for one another through births,
divorces, deaths, jobs, unemployment, illness, and emotional ups and downs. I
suggested that their values and their spiritual communities would help sustain
them in this new work.
What
are your boundaries and limits? Recently, working with someone with mental health
and addiction issues, I am cognizant of how narrow the line between compassion
and enabling can be. This is where a spiritual community and/or a spiritual
director can come to the rescue. The curriculum on care advised ministering in
pairs, consulting each other, and gaining input and support from the larger group.
Do
you trust healing is possible? Healing and growth and fruitfulness seem to me
built into the very nature of things. As Henri Nouwen once wrote, if you keep
digging up a seed to see if it’s germinating, it never will grow. A physical
therapist told me that wounds heal from the inside out. A massage therapist
friend begins each session invisibly making the sign of the cross over the
client’s body before applying his healing touch.
During
the commissioning service of a trainer of hospice workers, she was to be given
a charge by two clergy. The first minister went on and on and I have no recollection
of what he said. The second minister cut to the chase. She said, the people whom
hospice workers serve want to know two things: Am I alone? And am I loved? I
believe that’s true of all who need care.
I
recommended the best book on care I’ve read, How Can I Help? by Ram Dass
and Paul Gorman. The authors’ presentation of first person narratives from
care-givers and care-receivers from around the world suggest that the least
patronizing and most satisfying care is experienced as mutually beneficial.
As
an example of that, something I didn’t mention in my recent reflection on my mother-in-law’s passing was that, like other times we enjoyed talking, we
continued to “talk” with each other in her final days when she rarely spoke at
all. I brought reading material when visiting, but didn’t even look at it, I
was so taken with simply watching her.
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