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A Word for Professional Chaplains
The Rev. Robin Lostetter
Presbyterians for Disability Concerns (PDC) Leadership Team
The Network on Ministry in Specialized Settings awarded the Rev. William (Bill) C. Gaventa the prestigious COMISS Medal for his significant contribution to pastoral care during 30 years of ministry in developmental disability. The Rev. Gaventa is associate professor of pediatrics, and director of Community and Congregational Supports at the Elizabeth M. Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities in the Department of Pediatrics at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
His response, as he accepted the award whose previous recipients include Henry Nouwen and Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche Community, is a treatise on pastoral ministry. Here is an excerpt, focusing on community building:
1. Caregiving involves both “being with” and “doing for.” You know that in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) our first task with students is to help them realize, “Don't do something, be there.” One problem with many service systems is that they work on a paradigm of “fixing” and “curing,” which is not in itself a bad impulse, but many “others” in our communities cannot be fixed or cured, and they do not want that to be seen as a professional failure or lack of faith and effort on their part. They need and want to be sustained and included, as they are. “Be with me.” Hear my story. Don't try to fix or save me. Listen. Know me as more than my problem or deficit.
A few years ago, the word and process of “assessment” got redeemed for me when I read a short article by Gordon Hilsman (1997) on spiritual assessments in which he noted that the Latin root of the word “assessment” meant to “sit next to.” Too often, assessment has come to mean an over-against, objective, professionally distant picture of someone. Good assessments, such as the ones we will explore later that include “person centered” approaches, involve “sitting with” or, as the old adage goes, “walking in my shoes.” Once we have done that, there are all kinds of things to do, actions that can help build community and contribution, rather than being focused on fix and cure. Don't just be there, do something to the systems and environments that so often negatively impact others.
Miroslav Volf (1996), in his wonderful book, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, identifies this paradox in a different way when he talks about the drama or dance of embrace, in which an initial act of caregiving, to move toward a person to embrace them, needs secondly to stop, drop the hands down, and indeed step back, so that the person being embraced has the opportunity to say what they need to say, for truth to be told, so that those who wish to do good for an “other” just don't roll right over them with their desire to help. Only after truth has been told can the embrace be mutual. Nancy Eiesland, author of The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Understanding of Disability, calls this the time of “just listening,” listening with an ear to justice as well as empathy, recognizing that there are often real imbalances of power and privilege between caregivers and those whose needs seek support.
2. We build caregiving systems and services by development of specialized skills; we build communities by giving away what we know to help empower others. Caregiving systems have been built by community and public advocacy, leading to funding for specialized systems of services and supports. One unintentional consequence is that communities then believe that one needs special skills, degrees, or credentials to provide any care. For example, “I can't include that child with autism in my Sunday School; I don't have any special education training.” One of the key skills in community building for professionals is believing that others do care, and want to help, but often do not know how, or feel that they don't.
The professional challenge, then, is finding those people who would like to act on their impulse to provide help and care, and give away whatever we know that can help empower them to act. It moves against the grain of special funding for special needs, but it broadens the professional capacity to partner and collaborate with others on the recognition that we, in fact, cannot and should not be the only caregivers involved. That truly makes the other into “our clients” as professionals, and not “our people” in this community. The question for chaplains is how we see ourselves doing this with local clergy and congregations, and to be very, very careful we are not a substitute for them. Is our vision, as with the healing stories in the NT, that each is to go back to the priest and faith community and present themselves, for thanksgiving and inclusion?
“Gleanings from a Deinstitutionalized Chaplain”
COMISS Award Response by Bill Gaventa
January 7, 2008, COMISS Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
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