Chaplain Mark La Rocca-Pitts on the dynamic between being and doing

Pastoral Presence: Navigating the Flow

The philosopher’s stone of pastoral care and counseling is often summed up with the concept of “presence.” Our Gordian Knot, however, is unraveling presence in terms of being and/or doing. Concerning presence, Clinebell considers it the foundation and key ingredient in any and all caring relationships, which he defines as “being with the burdened person,” which involves “concentrating on listening, and responding with caring empathy.”[1] Accordingly, pastoral presence involves a combination of being and doing. This combination, however, involves more than a sequential movement from being to doing, or vice versa; instead, presence means being alertly and agilely poised in the dynamic crossroads where being and doing intersect or overlap. Leaving this dynamic point of intersection to enter the unilateral mode of either being or doing means leaving presence behind. Presence is when and where the state of doing intersects with the act of being.

Jalaluddin Rumi, a 13th century Sufi mystic, provides a poetic image that underscores this understanding of pastoral presence.[2] Though this poem reflects on the mystical process of experiencing the Other Self, it also speaks to the relational process of experiencing another (human) self. The first couplet reads as follows:

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

Rumi is building on an image of a river flowing between two banks: the riverbed is “the way” (our presence), the two riverbanks are “voice and presence” (our doing and being), and the flowing water is the “information” (what the other reveals through story). The riverbed is defined by the two riverbanks, which in turn are determined by the surrounding terrain. As these riverbanks contract and expand due to changes in the terrain, so the current changes.

In this analogy, the current is the flow of information and affecting this flow are two interdependent factors: the pastoral care context (the “terrain”)[3] and the relationship between being and doing (the “riverbanks”). As the dynamic relationship between being and doing contracts and expands in response to changes in the pastoral care context (i.e., from hospital, to home, to faith community, from acute, to chronic, to palliative, to end-of-life, etc.), so the flow of information is affected. Thus, pastoral presence is the maintaining of the inter-relational dynamic between being and doing as that dynamic responds to contextual changes thereby allowing the other self to emerge in information.

A flowing river, like the unfolding of another’s story, can also be slowed or stopped by impediments. Rumi addresses this in the second couplet.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

In order for the other self to reveal his/her story freely and openly, “disciplined silence” is required, whereas “wandering talk” cuts off the other’s story. Pastoral presence requires a silence that is disciplined by a judicious and appropriate use of talking. Both wandering talk and an undisciplined silence reveal one’s own anxious self, which blocks the other self from unfolding through story.

Pastoral presence is the alert and agile resting in and response to the dynamic shifting in the relationship between being and doing caused by contextual changes in the pastoral encounter that balances a disciplined silence with an intentional use of talking for the purpose of allowing the other self to open and unfold through story. Pastoral presence is more than “going with the flow”: it is navigating the flow.

 

[1] Howard Clinebell, Basic Types of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Resources for the Ministry of Healing & Growth, (Revised and Enlarged, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 75 (emphasis in original).[2] Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi, Trans. Coleman Barks, with Reynold Nickolson, A.J. Arberry, John Moyne, (New Expanded Version, HarperCollins: San Francisco, 2004), p. 32.[3] Larry Austin, “Spiritual Assessment: Contextual Issues in Treatment,” Healing Ministry, 2004, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 171-178.