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9/7/2005 Vol. 2, No. 15

Professional Practice
 

Gordon J. Hilsman on love-life pain

Seven Love-Life Spiritual Needs and Hoped-for Outcomes

“Love-life pain”has recently been included on the list of chaplain functions being studied in the Franciscan Health System’s (Tacoma WA) Department of Pastoral Care. It refers to a person’s hurting inside due to the natural inclination to achieve a lasting, pleasure-sharing partnership. Its place on the list acknowledges that a person’s romantic love life, gay or straight, is a spiritual arena all its own.

Love-Life Spiritual Needs

The traumatic relational events that occur in this arena–rape, incest, pedophilia, and domestic violence–are well recognized. Treatment for them may be expected to include spiritual wound components that can be assisted by skilled spiritual caregivers as treatment team members.

In addition however, lesser love-life pains need recognition and care from chaplains. If spiritual care is colloquially described as assistance with whatever eats at spirit and soul powerfully enough to affect one’s life happiness and healing, then a host of other situations of spiritual need deserve notice and care from ministers in general, and institutional chaplains in particular. Some less tragic, and yet painful spiritual needs frequently recognized as part of a spiritual assessment, including staff care, include:

1. Crisis Care –Listening to, notifying and facilitating connection of a crisis patient with his/her lover.
First on the mind of people on the “bad day”of a crisis event, is the whereabouts, condition and availability of spouse or “significant other.”The positive difference an available current lover can have on a crisis patient is enormous.

2. Partner Care –Support needs of a patient’s love partner. Not only do lovers contribute to the support of patients, but the lovers themselves benefit from spiritual care.

3. Prior Grief Work –Facilitating reminiscence of a widow (male or female) or bereft lover. Whether weeks, months or years after the loss, the grief experience of “lover-loss”requires a particular chaplaincy skill that helps heal the wound.

4. “Broken Heart” –Feeling the spiritual/emotional hurt of relationship breakup. Beginning to manifest the heart wrenching deterioration of a relationship to an available empathetic ear can be the beginning of addressing it more profitably in individual or marriage counseling. Adolescent suicide attempts following romantic breakups are well documented.

5. Guidance –Advice for finding success and overcoming obstacles to the flourishing of romantic love.
The vulnerability of hospitalization for any reason can precipitate openness to, and seeking of, advice from a chaplain as a person perceived to have wisdom in the romantic loving aspect of life.

6. Romantic Loneliness –Yearning for soul connection with a cherished lover one has yet to meet.
Whether a person is actively seeking romantic involvement, passively yearning for it to come along, regretting mistakes in romantic failures, or simply keeping an openness to romance if it arrives, their unwanted aloneness can be deadly in depressive moods and suicidal inclinations.

7. Bliss Sharing –Talking with energy about the wonders of being in love. When love is really “clicking”the excitement craves some sharing that enhances the enjoyment and confirms the expanding self-esteem that is commonly promoted by sumptuously being loved.

Chaplain-Defined Outcomes

In the Tacoma system, an attempt at defining outcomes for spiritual care functions addressing love life pain have made use of “brainstorming”by experienced chaplains on what they hope to see happen in such caring attempts. Four outcomes thus far identified for care of the spiritual need of “love-life pain”include that a person:

1. Mentions love relationship displeasure or delight –Verbalizing about the primary relationship in expressive negative, or even positive terms, gives indication of trust quickly building in the pastoral relationship.

2. Expresses emotion –Some level of emotional expression of the pain, anger, regret, and/or worry relative to the state of the relationship, indicates the beginning of sharing at some healing depth.

3. Shares stories –Relating pieces of stories about the ups and downs of the loving relationship is presumed to “double the joy and halve the pain.”

4. Considers referral –When it fits the situation, observing the person considering counseling assistance gives indication that the “help getting”process is proceeding.

Gordon J. Hilsman is an ACPE/NACC Supervisor, He is Manager of CPE at the Franciscan Health System in Tacoma WA and a Board Certified Chaplain in the APC. He currently writes about the spiritual benefits of intimate love and maintains the website www.sermonsfromthebed.com.

 

Do you have thoughts about professional practice you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail info@PlainViews.org.

 

 

 

Advocacy
   

The Rev. Martha R. Jacobs on taking a close look at ourselves

Are You Compassioned Out?

We are approaching the four-year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. As I ponder that “anniversary”I have been thinking about all that has occurred over the past few years. There have been a number of highly emotional events in our lives that have affected us. Whether through personal situation, work situation, national or international events, we as chaplains have been influenced by many stressors from both the outside and from inside. And that concerns me.

Some of you may have read the article in the recent issue of Chaplaincy Today that I wrote entitled, “The Unquiet Soul.”[1] This article was actually a speech that I gave less than a year ago. The article touches on the fact that I had overloaded myself with hospital work and volunteering at Ground Zero. I realized that a part of my soul had died and needed to be revived. I was busy using my energy to protect me from the dangers that might befall New York City at any moment. Instead of speaking out against injustices, I was quietly holding myself together hoping that there would not be a repeat of 9/11 but at the same time being “ready”if there was.

I also realized that the questions we get asked as chaplains from time to time were really bothering me because I did not have the answers. I could not respond to “Why did God do this?”or “Why did God allow this to happen?”. As a chaplain I was taught not to justify or defend God. I usually can just let those questions go, but in the years following 9/11, I found it harder and harder. I then realized that I started asking those same questions. I had no answers, not even for myself. Then, the Rev. Richard Sparrow, a friend and colleague who works for the United Church of Christ’s Parish Life and Leadership Ministry, sent me an article that helped me begin to put this into perspective. It is entitled, “The sturdy, reliant, self-destructing pastor.”[2] While it was written from the perspective of church pastors, there were many similarities.

As chaplains we know that we are serving the One in whom we believe. We have been endorsed by our faith group and so have the stamp of approval of our denomination to do the work we do. We face life and death every day through our work with patients and families. We have found ways, as individual as we are, to handle the pain that we see, feel and even touch. And yet, as I have come to realize and deal with my own pain around 9/11 and the lives and memories of those whom I served in the hospital for so many years, I wonder how my colleagues are doing. I wonder how the readers of PlainViews are dealing with their pain and sadness.

My colleagues in other parts of the world have dealt with much more terrorism and natural disasters than I have. They have seen death on a level that I can only begin to imagine. And so I wonder how my colleagues are doing in other parts of the world.

While I do not believe in being self-indulgent, I do believe that we need to advocate for ourselves to ensure that we remain healthy…or get healthy. We deserve it…and so do our families…and so do our patients. Don’t wait until you feel no compassion, have little or no patience, start questioning your call to serve. Take the time now to take care of yourself. Do a self-evaluation –ask yourself those tough questions that will help you determine whether you have really been able to let go of the pains and the hurts and the fears and the grief that you have witnessed and perhaps felt. Give yourself the time to heal and to gain a clearer perspective on your work. The difference that you will feel as your soul starts to revive will be remarkable and you will serve others, yourself and God in a whole new way.

 

[1] Jacobs, Martha R. “The Unquiet Soul,”Chaplaincy Today, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring/Summer) 2005, 33-36.

[2] Guess, Ben. “The sturdy, reliant, self-destructing pastor,”United Church News, February 2005. (Available at http://www.ucc.org/ucnews/feb05/pastor.htm)

In addition to her role as Managing Editor of PlainViews, the Rev. Martha R. Jacobs is the associate director of outreach and community-based programs at The HealthCare Chaplaincy. An ordained minister of The United Church of Christ, she is an adjunct professor at New York Theological Seminary and serves as the chair of the Ordination Committee of The Riverside Church. For eight years Martha served as chaplain for The HealthCare Chaplaincy at New York United Hospital Medical Center, Port Chester, NY. She received an M.Div. from New York Theological Seminary where she is currently pursing a doctorate degree (ABD), exploring the attitudes of UCC clergy around death and dying issues. She is a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sits on the Quality Commission of the APC,and is the president of the United Church of Christ Professional Chaplains and Counselors.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.

 

Education & Research
   

 

Chaplain Judith Seicho Fleischman on music as transformational prayer

Going Forth

Earlier this summer, I was privileged to offer pastoral care at a long-term healthcare facility on the verge of closing its doors permanently. I had trained there for eight months but left the facility in the spring when the Pastoral Care Department was closed. I was invited to return three days prior to the closing date to help the staff and a handful of remaining residents cope.

The situation was riddled with conflict energy, and strong emotion. The staffs of the various departments were paralyzed by their impending loss with no effective ways to engage feelings and meaning. The community appeared fractured to me. People who had worked side by side for over thirty years now faced feelings of rage and disappointment, which led to a great sense of isolation, distrust, and marginalization. I wanted to offer a service that was inclusive and co-creative.

We began by singing, “Kumbaya,”which means “Come by here.”Everyone joined in. I then offered a spontaneous prayer, which set the theme of “Going Forth.”

Next, I invited people to share stories that connected to the meaning of having served in this facility. This was met largely with silence. The process of “naming and claiming”the grief was stalled somehow. I realized that people did not feel safe and perhaps their pain was too great to be engaged directly.

I turned again to music, lifting up a tambourine, whose surface was decorated with a healing prayer and a painting of many hands encircling a rose blossom. I said, “Sometimes, words are insufficient. Sometimes, the pain is so great that it needs to be expressed in another way. Sometimes, all we can do is play what is in our hearts.”I then let my hand fall forcefully on the tambourine. A loud and sharp sound reverberated throughout the room. People jolted in their seats. I called attention to the hands painted on the instrument.

I invited each person to play the tambourine and then pass it on. With tears in her eyes, a senior administrator shook the tambourine. She then smiled gently towards the director of nursing and handed her the tambourine. The director shook it as well in her own unique way.

Their leadership served its purpose. Soon, that tambourine was passed throughout the group and played by everyone. We began to sing. For me, this became a transformative