The College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy is a theologically based covenant community, dedicated to "recovery of the soul" and promoting competency in the clinical pastoral field.
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James Gebhart, CPSP Past-President & Francine Angel, CPSP President
The Rev. Francine Angel was installed as the Eighth President of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy at the 2008 CPSP Plenary held in Little Rock, AR this April.
She is an honor graduate of Morehouse School of Religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center, 1996. She received her M.Div in Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Care. In 1995 she was listed on the National Dean List and in Who’s Who among Students in American Colleges and Universities.
In addition to her academic accomplishment, she spent years being clinically trained that culminated in significant accomplishments in the clinical pastoral field: Board Certified Chaplain, Board Certified Pastoral Counselor and Clinical Pastoral Education Supervisor.
For many years she has been the creative force as the Coordinator of the National Clinical Seminar (NCTS) for the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. This seminar is scheduled twice a year (Spring and Fall). NCTS is geared toward offering continuing education and clinical consultation within a psychodynamic small group process. Under her leadership the NCTS has soared.
She served as the Acting Director for the Department of Pastoral Care and as the Program Coordinator of Clinical Pastoral Education Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Presently, The Rev. Francine Angel is a CPE Supervisor for Episcopal Health Services in Far Rockaway, New York. In this context she directs both the CPE Residency program and the Extended Evening CPE Internship program.
The CPSP community is delighted and honored that for the next two years we will have the talent, experience, wisdom and leadership ability of The Rev. Francine Angel, not only as a trusted colleague but as our CPSP President.
Perry Miller, Editor
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 8:44 AM
REPORT TO PLENARY
COLLEGE OF PASTORAL SUPERVISION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
MARCH 30, 2008
RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE, GENERAL SECRETARY
1. Introduction
I report to you that our professional community is prospering. We are seeing steady growth. In numbers of certified members, we are now the third largest organization in our field in this hemisphere. We have problems too. Some of our Chapters need more attention than they are receiving. We need not be embarrassed about our failure to be a perfect community. But we need to be more assertive in approaching under functioning Chapters, because those with problems tend not to ask for consultation as we expect them to do. And we need to do more in the public relations arena, informing persons and institutions about our uniqueness and what we have to offer.
2. The Changing Character of CPSP
18 years ago this month 15 persons met in Virginia and decided unanimously that we should create a new certifying community, that the then functioning organizations were not serving the professional community adequately. In the intervening years we have now grown to a community of more than 600 persons. Our progress has involved very little exchange of money, and no paid leadership. It has relied on grass roots motivation and the initiative of emerging leadership. We attract persons who want responsibly to shape their own professional destiny. Persons who like to rely on direction from corporate offices tend not to be interested in us.
We began as a group of specialists, clinical supervisors and psychotherapists. As the years have progressed we have evolved into more of a community of clinical chaplains and clinically trained congregational ministers. This is an evolution we did not anticipate, but it is a happy one. Instead of a community of specialists in supervision and psychotherapy, we have become a broad-spectrum community of religious professionals who are committed to clinical discipline.
When I was coming up in the 60s, pastoral supervision was seen as an elite corps of specialists very difficult to penetrate. Historically half of those who undertook two to three years of supervisory training failed in their attempts to be certified. Elitism marked the cadre, and the numbers of supervisors remained few. The quality of supervisory competence, one might argue, was maintained by such severe screening, but that argument was not sustained by experience. Elitism did have some value. Scarcity increases value, but it also tends to be self-defeating. The ACPE began is 1967 with an elite cadre of 400 supervisors, and 40 years later it has 500. When you factor in population growth that figure represents a net loss of personnel.
In CPSP we are moving away from elitism and toward a different vision: a vision in which every self-respecting religious professional is a clinician, not just a select few, and not just institutional chaplains. Every minister in whatever setting should be clinically prepared to do basic pastoral counseling or clinical chaplaincy. And the work of supervision, or of training the next generation, is now everyone’s business, not just an elite group. Every mature religious professional who is clinically trained should be helping in some way to bring up the next generation. Many very experienced working chaplains and congregational ministers possess wisdom through years of experience, wisdom that could be imparted to the next generation. Such person would never dream of dropping out of work for three or so years to undertake what has come to be known as supervisory training, and often has the character of hazing. These experienced ministers can learn the art of supervision while remaining in their current positions. The use of cyberspace helps make feasible. This is an invitation: For all experienced pastoral clinicians to rethink their obligation and consider joining us to bring up the next generation. This is not the obligation of an elite group. It is everyone’s obligation.
We must stand ready to assist all religious workers of every stripe to become clinically astute. My vision is every religious worker into a Chapter of peers where clinical material, material from the bedside, so to speak, is examined and explored and evaluated from the perspective of what makes for healing or therapy. I use ‘bedside’ advisedly. Clinical derives from the Greek word klini, bed, referring to giving attention to the body in bed, which is to say, the concrete condition of the person you minister. To be clinical means laying aside theories, programmatic agenda, organizational concerns, and attending to the specific predicament of the person before you. Such a person is qualified to be a minister. Ministers unwilling to learn the clinical process ought to find another kind of work. Thus the target audience of CPSP is every minister in this country, and beyond.
3. The Problem of Religion in CPSP
We as a community have some work to do on the subject of the multi-faith character of our life and work together. The clinical movement of Boisen was born in Protestantism. It remained within the Protestant sphere for a generation. Only in the 60s did non-Protestants begin entering the clinical pastoral movement. Curiously, there seems never to have been any serious thought given to the liturgical or doctrinal implications of incorporating non-Protestants in the movement.
Seems very odd to me that the clinical pastoral movement now close to a century old has been so slow to liberate itself from Protestant Christian triumphalism. I listened to a sermon recently by a novice pastor who had just completed a unit of clinical training. The preacher said that she learned from her clinical supervisor how to see the face of Christ in her hospital patients. I wondered if there were non-Christians in her training group. The clinical posture claims to be doctrinally and liturgically neutral. In practice it has become imperialistically Christian. The assumption that non-Christians will just have to put up with our Christian symbols is unacceptable. Offensive to open our doors to persons of all faith groups---Muslims, Hindu, Jewish, Unitarian, and others, and then confront them with Christian symbols and dogmas. This is unreflected upon aggression. It is predatory. Over the past 40 years I have been to countless meetings of pastoral clinicians, and I have witnessed countless prayers and religious services that were overtly and specifically Christian in language and reference, holding hostage non-Christians. This has got to stop. We must be more diligent in our self-supervision, and rid ourselves of Christian triumphalism.
We pastoral clinicians need to be more deliberate and self-conscious in reflecting on what we do with the fact that we come from extremely divergent, sometimes even antagonistic religious allegiances.
I propose the following two principles that should shape our actions in regard to our multi-faith posture:
1.We reject all assertions of the superiority of one religion over another
2. We promote a continuing critique clinical critique of our own religious symbols and practices, subjecting them to broad principles of love and justice, and we encourage others to do likewise
Religion is the reservoir of some of the highest achievements in human culture, as well as some of the most despicable achievements. Sorting one from the other is a burden that pastoral clinicians must take up along with others.
Having a clinical eye directed at religious symbols and doctrines does not rule our commitment or devotion to them. But if commitment and devotion neutralizes the clinical eye, then we are no long clinicians.
We must support the humane and just aspects in every manifestation of religion, and reject the inhumane and unjust aspects. And we must put to rest Christian triumphalism.
4. Chapter Life
The quality of Chapter life is the bedrock on which CPSP rests. A wide range of quality is apparent in the way individual Chapters go about their business of being a Chapter.
We ask Chapters to account for their life through annual reports, but the reports tell us only the bare essentials of Chapter life. Even more urgently we ask Chapters to make use of consultation. Perry Miller chairs the Chapter Life Committee that is continually available for consultation. The Chapter Life Committee is committed to empowerment, not policing.
In linking certification with Chapters we believe we have created a self-correcting process. That is to say, if a Chapter abandons its discipline, the Chapter is likely to fail. The failure of the Chapter means also the loss of certification for members of the Chapter. No one in CPSP has a warrant for automatic transfer to another Chapter.
This is a more effective and more humane approach to quality control. It is superior to attempts at quality control imposed from the top down. Policing from the top down, and policing by persons who are strangers, not known to us, is troublesome. It’s the way of the world, but it’s not the way of CPSP.
CPSP in another respect is unique in its quality control procedure. Most organizations load their quality control at the entry point, like the bar exam in the legal profession. They leave little or nothing in the way of continuing peer review. Once certified, one can go underground indefinitely, until a complaint is filed, after which one is typically judged by relative strangers. Baring a complaint, one is never placed in a situation where one is seriously engaged by peers. In CPSP we are rather more relaxed about controls at the entry point, but we are strong on continuing peer review and annual recertification. We think this is a more effective and more humane approach to certification.
And of course Chapters change through time, for better or for worse. I like to say that Chapter life is clinical training for life. Astonishing fact of history in the clinical pastoral movement that supervisors, once certified, never again submit their work to clinical scrutiny in any disciplined way. CPSP set out in 1990 to correct that lapse by emphasizing Chapter life as central to certification and recertification. Up to this point we are the only organization in our field to implement a serious peer review process.
5. Debate Between Pastoral and Spiritual
A trend has emerged in recent decades promoting the category ‘spiritual’ as a replacement for ‘pastoral.’ The argument usually made is that pastoral is too much tied to Christianity. I believe that to be a spurious argument. If persuasive, we should change our name to CSSP.
The word pastoral is rooted in the shepherding function. Shepherding is not specifically Christian. All religions have some kind of leadership role, creating flocks, groups, congregations, which require leadership, or shepherding – pastoring.
Spiritual has become the au courant substitute of choice for many recently. It is not an improvement over pastoral. Though spirit has good etymological roots in breathing and vitality, that source has been forgotten in modern usage. The current connotation of spiritual is too much tied to the other world, the world of spirits and ghosts, the arena of mental incorporeality, to cite Webster. The word spiritual in common usage has disengaged from the earth. Let’s not go there.
No language is ever entirely satisfying, and furthermore, language, like people, changes, but for now pastoral better fits better what we are up to than spiritual.
6. A Critical Note about History
The clinical pastoral movement began in 1925 under the aegis of Anton Boisen. (There were some unheralded precursors, of course.) But by 1930 the Boisen movement faced a philosophical rebellion, and a reaction against Boisen personally because of his second psychotic break. Thus the clinical movement was early on sharply divided in two camps, one in the Council for Clinical Training (CCT), centered in New York and led by Boisen and Dunbar, and the other in the Institute for Pastoral Care (IPC) centered in Boston, and led by Richard Cabot and Philip Guiles. Some may think this was a bad turn of events. But that’s not the case. The clinical movement prospered through splitting, following the example of Baptists who split to multiply. Furthermore, the debate between the two camps was a rich one extending for over a generation, and wisdom did not emanate entirely from one camp. The arguments were many: about the place of personal transformation vs. skill development; the differing ways in which psychology was embraced by theology, the use of the case vs. the verbatim (which is to say, seeking the whole story vs. attending to communication skills), the value of training venue, one group preferring psychiatric settings, the other general hospitals, and others.
From 1930 until 1967 these two camps competed and debated with each other, and the dialogue was rich and productive. In 1967 the two groups merged into one, in the creation of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. Two things followed which were unfortunate. The tension between the two traditions more or less vanished, or went underground. The critical and controversial issues were no longer debated openly. Secondly, the ACPE began to reflect increasingly and officially the traditions of the IPC. That was documented in the 1990s when the Standards documents of the ACPE came to describe the clinical pastoral movement as founded by Richard Cabot and enlarged upon by Boisen. In fact clinical pastoral training was invented by Boisen, who was supported at first by Cabot, but who subsequently attempted to hijack the movement and dismiss Boisen. Cabot was a physician, not theologically trained, and his vision of clinical training was the preparation of chaplains to better assist physicians, whom he considered the authentic healers. Boisen held that ministers were healers if they knew their business, not handmaidens to physicians. The Cabot view is still alive and well. This revisionist history, asserting the preeminence of Cabot, also developed amnesia about the second most significant person in our early pantheon, Helen Flanders Dunbar, and her emphasis on the psychosomatic, virtually vanished from collective memory.
Ernie Bruder, George Tolson, Nick Ristad and others predicted the failure of the 1967 merger, but their voices were drowned out in the celebration of one united community of clinical pastoral supervisors. The majority could not see, or didn’t want to see that the merger led to domination of one voice, that of Cabot, and the silencing of diversity as a threat to unity. Division in the clinical pastoral world was cured, which was a desirable, but lost was the tension, dialogue and creativity that comes with them. It is not too much of an oversimplification to say that the agenda of IPC defeated the agenda of the CCT in the merger.
When CPSP appeared in 1990, it generally reasserted the primacy of Boisen side of the dialectic and it rediscovered Dunbar. CPSP reinstituted the creative tension and debate about the meaning of clinical pastoral training. The ACPE has been for the most part a reluctant participant in that debate, spending most of its capital on ignoring CPSP, or making public declarations about our inadequacies. We believe that is just a passing phase.
7. Collegial Relations and the Emergence of the Spiritual Care Collaborative (SCC)
Some of you are aware of the SCC, a recently organized group of six clinical pastoral organizations that are holding their first joint meeting in Orlando next Feb. CPSP has not been invited to Orlando, and in fact the SCC itself is not sure yet that it wants to sit at the same table with CPSP. Currently the member organizations are discussing whether to invite us some day to their table. We should not take offence at this. CPSP is a radically different model, and if we are going to be different, we should expect some suspicion to arise. Dialogue and collegial conversations can be enriching, and we will welcome them, but participating parties have to be ready, and it may just be that our prospective partners in dialogue are not ready. Meanwhile, we have plenty of other fish to fry, namely building our community into a more competent and effective force in a difficult world, and, for most of us, citizens of a nation that has come to be seen as a perpetrator of abuse on a wide front. We have plenty on our plate.
One aspect of the SCC that needs monitoring is its history of drawuing a circle around itself and declaring its members as the only legitimate clinical pastoral organizations. The SCC evolved in 2003 out of Council on Collaboration (COC), which in turn evolved from The Four Presidents (then Five) which was initiated by the ACPE in 1995. The purpose of the Four Presidents was allegedly to unite the various clinical groups, but the covert agenda was to circle the wagons against the emerging CPSP. When the Four Presidents evolved into COC John deVelder made formal and informal requests for a seat at the table for CPSP, and was refused. It remains to be seen whether this latest incarnation, the SCC, will maintain its earlier position of locking the door to CPSP. We are not holding our breath.
We should continue to present ourselves as gracious colleagues to all who work in the same vineyard as we work, and CPSP generally has good relationships with the individual organizations that currently make up SCC. Jim Gebhart and John deVelder have been our principal emissaries in relation to our collegial communities. They have each established strong diplomatic ties with the leadership of the several collegial bodies. We have good relations with JAPC where a number of our certified people are active. Foy Richey has been holding joint meetings in CO with AAPC. Al Heneger was very well received at the Association for Professional Chaplains (APC) meeting last month, and that’s gratifying. However, at the APC membership meeting Al Heneger said of a woman present that she “was easy on the eyes.” A firestorm erupted. Al was charged by APC leadership officially and in writing with unprofessional conduct. The APC representative to this Plenary cancelled her trip and served notice to us that Al must be disciplined. (As an APC officer, it would seem that APC has that burden itself.)
If we ever needed a clear illustration as to why CPSP exists, and must exist, this is it. I now ask you each to turn to your neighbor and say, “you’re easy on the eyes.” Now that you’ve done so, I must inform you that you’re guilty of unprofessional conduct in the ethical system of APC.
Now in some small part the APC is correct. Al was not paying attention. This hardly warrants official and public charges of unprofessional conduct. However, we do want Al to pay attention. At the APC annual meeting last year Marie Fortune was a highlighted speaker, and Al was in attendance. Marie Fortune’s mission is to rid the religious community of heterosexual innuendo of any sort. One of her principal arguments is that the first step toward sex abuse takes place when a male in authority tells a woman she is attractive.
The CPSP leadership is, therefore, referring Al to his Chapter with the request that he use his Chapter to explore the meaning of his lack of attention to his environment.
Finally, let me add that this action against Al does not mean that the APC as a whole is not our enemy. CPSP and APC established a collegial relationship in the early 1990s until the ACPE members of APC organized and forced a termination of our official collegial relationship.
ACPE is the one organization where we have encountered historically the most negative reaction to CPSP. We understand the reason. The emergence of CPSP 18 years ago, out of the bosom of ACPE represented the end of ACPE monopoly in clinical pastoral training. Some, but not all, in ACPE leadership are determined never to forgive us for breaking glass and ending their CPE franchise/monopoly. Human mortality tends to cure such well-nourished hurts. As the older generation dies off we can expect more collegiality. But irrespective of one’s assessment of ACPE vs. CPSP, monopolies are not good for anyone, and ending ACPE monopoly in clinical training was a step up for everyone. If CPSP did not exist, we would need to create something like it.
Let us say to the SCC: We wish you well in Orlando next year. We hope you prosper. There is more than enough work to go around for all of us. If we spend our energy fighting each other we will all be diminished. The entire clinical pastoral field is a mere drop in the bucket in the larger scheme of things.
And to the ACPE: Give up your dream of a restored monopoly in clinical training field. Monopoly is not good for you, and not good for the wider community. And join with us as colleagues, with our radically different models. We are each committed to promoting clinically trained religious leadership.
We will continue to seek respectful relations with all our collegial communities. But we will also respond forcefully if we continue to be denigrated or characterized as illegitimate in the public arena.
CPSP and all the other alphabet communities will disappear from history one of these days – not next year or the year after, but one day. All of us are mortal, and all institutions similarly mortal. CPSP will die, but the basic values CPSP stands for will never die as long as life continues.
Like any self-respecting community, we promote high standards of professional competence and ethics, but we also stand for certain values that distinguish us from others.
We stand for:
-Local Control: The balance of political power invested in numerous small face-to-face communities, not in some corporate office.
-Self determination: The spawning of small groups of professionals for mutual support and consultation, for reviewing their work, and to think new thoughts and dream new dreams rather than minding all the p’s and q’s of bureaucratic directives.
-Disbursed rather than a centralization of resources: With the most minimal corporate office, the most minimal bureaucracy, and the most minimal taxation (CPSP is the faster growing organization in its field, with dues that are a fraction of the others.)
-Attentiveness to every voice: The recognition that each person has a distinct and different voice, that needs to be heard, so that we are one community with many idiosyncratic voices.
8. Conclusion
We are a peculiar people when it comes to religion. We embrace all religion but remain critical of all. We endorse and support religion where it edifies and upholds those pilgrims in pain of body or soul and we disdain religion when it abuses and inhibits the human spirit. We happily support persons who on their particular journeys move from one set of beliefs to another.
Certain recent biographers of Robert Kennedy write about Kennedy’s religious journey in ways that give some clarity to this matter, this seeming ambivalence toward forms of religion that may be universal. They write that Kennedy in his last years, after his brother John was assassinated, moved away from the Roman Catholic religious beliefs and practice of his upbringing. They say that he turned to the classics, to the ancient Greek philosophers and poets, for religious comfort and sustenance, unreconciled as he was to his brother’s death. They cite some lines from Aeschylus that they say Kennedy took particular comfort in:
He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain
That cannot forget falls drop
By drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair,
Against our will
Comes wisdom to us
By the awful grace of God. Agamemnon 1.1
I relate this story because I think that as Robert Kennedy moved more deeply into his own pain, his journey illuminates to some extent the kind of vocational burden we carry, the happy burden we carry. We don’t care whether a person is a Catholic or a Muslim, agnostic, loyal to the religion of their upbringing or striking out on new ground. We care only that our fellow beings enter deeply into their own particular experience, explores their own pain or suffering, and we hope, finds some way to say yes to life and love and justice. Apparently Robert Kennedy did this, whether with the help of another or not. Our vocation is to develop the kind of skill and empathy that prepares us to be ready to sit with the Robert Kennedy’s of the world when they need us, to be wise counselors who can also draw from the deep religious resources. But even more, to draw from the depths of our own souls, where deep calls unto deep.
_____________________________________
To contact the author, click here.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 2:38 PM
The 2008 Plenary of the College of Pastoral Supervision & Psychotherapy was held March 31 through April 2, 2008, at the Wyndham Riverfront in North Little Rock Arkansas.
During the Plenary many of the CPSP community enjoyed meeting and having conversation with this warm, engaging and compelling person. Her creative, insightful and deep understanding of Hospice was not only informative but contagious as she captured the sprit of care that is at the core of Hospice movement.
Carolyn Cassin has graciously granted permission for the Pastoral Report to publish the Power Point presentation, Open Access Hospice: America's Challenge, she use during her address to the CPSP Community.
Download file: OPEN ACCESS HOSPICE: AMERICA'S CHALLENGE BY CAROL CASSIN
Carolyn Cassin, an internationally recognized expert in end of life care, organizational management, and the efficient, effective delivery of healthcare services was one of the Keynote speakers for the 2008 CPSP Plenary.
She is considered a leader in the national healthcare community, in 1983 she helped guide the first Medicare reimbursement for hospice successfully through Congress. Since then, Carolyn has taken on the challenge of advancing both the quality and accessibility of hospice care.
In 2002, Carolyn joined Continuum Hospice Care in New York City. Almost immediately and for the first time in its history, she led the hospice to profitability. In only four years, average daily census has more than quadrupled to well over 450 patients, and Continuum Hospice Care’s facilities have grown to 2 inpatient units and a hospice residence, with another scheduled to open this fall.
Under Carolyn’s leadership, Continuum Hospice Care was recently honored with the prestigious American Hospital Association’s 2006 Circle of Life award. Formerly called Jacob Perlow Hospice, Continuum Hospice Care is now New York City’s largest hospice with a comprehensive program that reaches throughout the City, caring for patients in their homes, nursing homes, hospitals and Continuum Hospice Care’s own facilities.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 5:24 PM
Carolyn Cassin spoke to the facts and myths of Hospice. She gave us statistics and information about the state of the US regarding Hospice and Hospice legislation. As a matter of fact her PowerPoint presentation was perfect for the Ethics Committee meeting I chaired this week. She spoke to the dilemma of under utilized availability of hospice services. Carolyn spoke to the need to educate physicians, nurses, patients, and families to the fact that Hospice is not about dying, it is about living. She emphasized the need for earlier referral and the use of referrals to specialists in Palliative and Hospice Medicine. Carolyn spoke with a passion that made her presentation great.
The problem is that I can get her PowerPoint but I can’t take her with me each time I present the information. I am sure that others can relate to this dilemma. There was though another reason that I was so impressed with what Carolyn had to say. You see William I. Wilcoxson, 89, passed away Friday February 1, 2008. His story can be told with passion, even if you didn’t know him personally.
In early December 2006 my dad, Bill Wilcoxson, had an episode where he was too weak to get out of bed. Against his wishes, but in his best interest, he was transported by EMS to the hospital. He was found to have exacerbation of COPD due to an upper respiratory infection that had triggered dementia symptoms. After a five day stay in the hospital it was determined that he should be sent to a skilled nursing facility for rehab.
Dad was not keen on the idea of going to the physical therapy room and playing catch with a beach ball and being walked with a strap around his waist. He also was upset by the indignity of a precautionary diaper, since he didn’t make it to the bathroom in time once. After few days in the facility his first room mate died. He began to give up. He refused to go to therapy, eat, and even attempt to make it to the bathroom.
Christmas 2006 was not a merry one for him or mom. Even with visits from great grandchildren, he was totally uninterested. When his second room mate died, he gave up completely.
Like Marybeth Sammons said in her story in Eric and Sharon Langshur’s We Carry Each Other: “But though I am good at caring for many others, I am paralyzed when it comes to knowing what to do for my parents. I proclaim myself a struggling novice and brutal failure… I’m scared watching my parents get sick and old.” Regardless I had to do something or my dad was going just lay there and die.
I went to my dad and told him that I loved him and that I wanted to know what I could do or what he wanted that I could accomplish for him. He looked at me and firmly and clearly stated: “I want to go home. I want to sit in my chair and mostly sleep. When I want ice cream, I want someone to give it to me.”
I left shaking my head and thinking: how in the world could my mother be the caregiver for my dad when he was totally dependent, in a diaper, won’t eat, and has refused to walk for weeks. I thought of mustering my sister and our children to form a schedule to help make it happen. Then I pondered whether or not Hospice could possibly help. I contacted my friends from Vitas Hospice; I see them nearly every day in the hospital where I work. I told them what was going on and asked what I could do. Shockingly, but it was a joyous shock, they looked at me and said ‘no problem’ we can make that happen. Within two days, they had visited with my mother, arranged for all the necessary home equipment, sent a physician to evaluate my dad, and arranged for his transportation home. Added to all his chronic diagnosis was ‘adult failure to thrive.’
The rest of the story is the fun part to write. It is for the Wilcoxson family a happy ending. For my dad hospice was not about dying. Within a few days of being at home he got up from his chair and walked the few steps (assisted at first) to the table to eat. It wasn’t long until he was out of the diapers. Over the next fourteen months he had his good days and his bad days. He got to the point where he would ride with my mother to the Post Office, bank, and grocery store where he sat in the car a few minutes while she picked up what she needed. On one occasion he surprised everyone by getting out of the car and pumping gas. He enjoyed another wedding anniversary, Valentine’s Day, a birthday, Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. He enjoyed the birth of two great granddaughters and was able to hold each of them. He enjoyed seeing and being with his family and we certainly enjoyed being with him.
Late in January of 2008 dad went on ‘crisis care’ twice. On February 1, 2008 a little before noon he looked up at the ceiling and took his last breath. My mom was next to him, holding his hand and talking to him. He died without pain, peacefully, in his own home, and with dignity.
Vitas Hospice continues to take care of the emotional and bereavement needs of my mother. My girls and my niece will be taking some of dad’s clothes to hospice where volunteers will make teddy bears out of those clothes as remembrances.
And for me, my friends from Vitas come by on a regular basis and make sure that I am taking care of myself. Writing this is a part of my grieving process.
My hope is that some one will read this or tell this story so that someone can become involved with hospice in time for them to experience the gift of living with their loved one just one more day, one more week, or one more month. I hope they can give their loved one a pain free death, in the environment that is comfortable to them, and make their death be with dignity.
Thank you hospice for all that you do.
__________________________________________
Chaplain Fred D. Wilcoxson, Ph.D., PC, BCCC
Supervisor Pastoral Care
Health Central
407-296-1815
Convener Orlando Chapter
College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 9:45 PM
Dr. Mario Ceballos is the newly appointed Endorser for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
We welcome Mario to his new position and look forward to our continued association with him.
Mario is leaving his current position as Vice-president for Spiritual Services and Mission at the Kettering
Health Network in Dayton Ohio where he has been administrator for Diplomates Henry Uy and Basharat Masih.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 9:19 PM
From left to right: Rogelio Williams, Evelyn Sanchez, Beverly Staton, Simon Weinstein, Ernesto Espiritu
A Clinical Pastoral Education Training Center since 1994, the Department of Pastoral Care and Education at the Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Brooklyn, New York, remains a center of excellence in professional pastoral education.
Continuing a tradition of excellence begun at the LICH CPE Center under the leadership of the Reverend Dorothy Greet, CPSP Diplomate and CPE supervisor from 1994 through 1999, the Reverend Dr. Belén González y Pérez assumed the leadership of the Pastoral Care Department and CPE Center as director and CPE supervisor in 1999.
Dr. Belén González y Pérez, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is proficient as a bilingual educator in Spanish and English and has effectively developed the CPE training program to prepare bilingual professional chaplains in the art of pastoral care and ministry. He brings to bear in his training program experience as a Civil Air Patrol Chaplain, Police Clergy Liaison, NYC Transit Authority Chaplain, Red Cross Spiritual Response Team member, and a NYC Family Justice Center Interfaith Spiritual Care Giver. Characteristic of his own specialized training and endorsements, Dr. Belén, also a CPSP Diplomate, offers a specialized CPE training program that awards his trainees certification in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Asked “Why teach REBT in a CPE program?” Dr. Belén says that “Chaplains need to be on the cutting edge of intellectual technologies and counseling modalities that can offer a well-rounded theoretical foundation for chaplains to assess and provide effective care to persons in crisis.” He goes on to say, “It is not enough that chaplains become familiar with their respective sacred scriptures, family systems theory, conflict theory, or have a cursory familiarity with behavioral science. A chaplain is a professional that would do well to be expert in multiple counseling modalities and experienced at their applications in real time.” In 2007 REBT training was initiated at the CPE Center at the Long Island College Hospital.
A genuinely complementary fit to Clinical Pastoral Education training, REBT focuses on uncovering irrational beliefs that often lead to unhealthy negative emotions and teaches how to replace them with more productive healthy rational alternatives.
Albert Ellis, Ph.D. (1913-2007), arguably the therapist of most transformative effect on psychology in the 20th century, is REBT’s author and creator. Its central premise is that events alone do not cause a person to feel depressed, enraged, or highly anxious. Rather, it is one’s beliefs about the events that contribute to unhealthy feelings and self-defeating behaviors (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org). REBT teaches the client to identify, evaluate, dispute, and act against his or her irrational self-defeating beliefs; helping the client to not only feel better but to get better (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org).
The three major insights of REBT are: 1) Take much responsibility for disturbing yourself and do not cop out by mainly blaming others. 2) Face the fact that your early disturbances do not
automatically make you disturbed today; rather, your still strongly held irrational beliefs and unhealthy feelings and actions do. 3) No magical forces will change you, but only your own
strong and persistent work and practice (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org).
REBT training at the LICH CPE Center was provided by Master Therapist and REBT Fellows of the REBTNetwork.org. Upon successful completion of the program, chaplain interns were awarded a Primary Certificate in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Congratulations to the chaplains and to the CPSP CPE Center at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.
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Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 5:33 PM
“Don’t worry,” said the smiling but very tired resident, “You’re doing fine and I am going home now. I will see you in the morning.” I glanced at the clock and with its big numbers, I read, 2:00 AM. Then the Chaplain in me tuned in and said, “Yes, you look so tired, please go and get some rest.” Then I closed my eyes, punched my morphine button, said a prayer for the resident and blissfully drifted back to sleep. Some three hours later I was awakened by the doctor; the team of residents that had done the surgery and follow-up, and their news was good. They had removed a basketball-sized tumor and various other parts from my abdomen and the preliminary report showed that it was not cancerous. A tear slipped from my eye with that news. Yet, that good news would slip from my mind as I faced the reality found in the hours, days and weeks to come.
Here I was a Chaplain and had been one for about twelve years. And even before that, I had been one who seemed to always have the right thing to say when people were down and hurting. I didn’t know what to say at this point except thank you to the doctors and thanks be to God. Yet by 4:00 AM the next morning, I was a mess and I wanted to scream. I was terrified and I was in excruciating pain, but I could not find words, prayers, anything or anyone that would bring comfort. What was I to do?
I got up. Went to the door and looked down the hall for a nurse. Low and behold, there was one directly across the hall just coming from another room. I asked her to please get my nurse for me and I went and sat in a chair. Two hours later someone finally came into the room. It was the same resident as the night before. When she asked me to get back into bed, I could barely walk. By the time I got the pain medication I needed, I could walk and talk, but the terror had not diminished and then, the doctor came in and said I was going home that day. I asked for one more day, just to calm my nerves. The answer was NO!
Suddenly, I began to hear in my mind different patients who had begged me for one more day, one more time, one more hour, and I had prayed with them and gently smiled and walked away thinking nothing of it. But now… but now… I understood things from a different perspective. You see now I knew what it was like to be a patient.
I survived that day and I am recuperating. I have new eyes and ears for patients and families. I have words of wisdom to offer to those that have become set in their ways as a Chaplain -- spend some time in the hospital as a patient!
Do you know what it means to be on a bedpan when the Chaplain comes in? When you want so badly to speak with the Chaplain that you keep sitting on the bedpan until after the Chaplain leaves? After the Chaplain leaves, it is only then that you discover that you are stuck to the bedpan.
Do you know what it means to not be listened to? Think about it. We are all compassionate, caring people or we wouldn’t be in this business. I would gently ask us to consider the question, have we grown too accustomed to our work? Are we truly listening to the patients and our family members as well as the staff members that we see each day, or are we thinking about the next committee meeting or the patient we just left or what we get to do when we go home. Do we bring our own agendas into the patient’s room and never give the patient the opportunity to have a voice?
As a patient, I discovered that I wanted just a few basic things.
• I wanted the best medical care possible
• I wanted to be accepted as a person of worth and treated with dignity and respect
• I wanted to be believed
• I wanted to be listened to and responded to
• I wanted someone to pray with me when I couldn’t pray for myself
I was fortunate that I had the best in healthcare treating me and I had the best Chaplains as co-workers. Still, I found myself dealing with the difficulties involved when these very basic issues popped up day and night. I believe that I am not unique as a patient. As people entered the room I had been assigned, they entered the room with a “Hermaneutic of Suspicion.” I, as the patient, was doubted and wasn’t listened to. It did not matter what, or whoever entered the room, because everyone had been taught or learned the hard way, to take everything that was said with a grain of salt. It did not matter that I was a Chaplain because to them I was a patient and patients were suspect. I believe that patients go through this each day, day after day.
Since I have returned to work, I have had this verified again and again. So, if my experience just helps one person to simply be aware and to take the time to listen to those that they may meet in a new way, maybe they won’t need to experience fully what it means to be a patient after all. However, some of us, like me, have to learn things the hard way and if you are one of those, I know some excellent surgeons. Whichever way, just remember that as we have been called to serve those that we come in to contact with, we should come as God’s representative to a needy and hurting world, wherever we serve.
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Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 5:26 PM
Curriculum is generally understood as the academic courses or programs offered by a school or other learning institution. The academic structure is divided into different fields, areas, or departments on the basis of the subject matter with which each field deals. Most schools make a genuine attempt to prepare their academic programs across the various disciplines.
Understanding that curriculum is not just a synopsis of the courses offered by a school is paramount to its construction. Curriculum is the articulation of the very purpose and method of doing theology in context. While affirming diversity in perspectives, the curriculum of a school must recognize certain common and basic affirmations. First, that commitment is the first act of doing theology --- commitment meaning the promise to transform one’s self, the church, society, and the earth. Second, that the epistemological privilege of the victims, the traumatized, the dispossessed, and the sick is an act of praxis in solidarity with the underside of history.
The sources for doing theology are yet another important aspect in one’s search to re/define curriculum. The traditional sources such as the scripture and tradition of the church need to be approached anew from the perspective of the sufferers. One needs to broaden his or her understanding of both scripture and tradition. Plurality of the scriptures and the theological authority of oral traditions are quite important. A new understanding of ecclesia must lead one to search for tradition in the so-called “heretical communities,” and also in the emergence of social movements and faith-based communities of the Dominated/Developing World.
Who the author of theology is yet another critical issue that theological curriculum needs to examine closely. Who develops the curriculum? While we reject the “banking” system of education, it is still the educator (professor/teacher) who prepares the curriculum, as though s/he is the repository of all knowledge. An authentic learning community is synonymous with responsible students and professors with humility. Curriculum packages in the classroom or via the internet need to be a collective endeavor of, by, and with the learning community.
Theological education must not be a straightjacket endeavor. It must be flexible so as to give space to the movement of the Spirit in the world today. The objective of a course is not solely to fulfill the requirements and complete the readings and required papers. These are important, but sometimes one must allow the course to act as a journey with conduits to unimaginable horizons of praxis, discovery, and new insights.
The academic programs of the school must also reflect the overall life of the school. The school’s hiring policies, admission policies, scholarship policies, trade-union activities, worship life, student activities, investment policies, cafeteria consumption patterns, community life and living, and even the physical plant of the school must reflect the life of the learning community.
Nowadays, it has become fashionable to incorporate the politics and spiritualities of such theologies. There is danger in commodifying the pathos and struggles of the people by way of turning their moans and groans into “theologies” for the intellectual stimulation of the elite and armchair theologians. Margaret Kassman reminds her readers that, “Where people try to share in the midst of poverty, where solidarity is practiced in the midst of oppression, wherever life is created, we are co-creators of the God of life.” She calls for a Theology of Life – “a theology linked to experience; it emerges from community and aims at community.” Therefore, she concludes, “theology does not belong to the experts anymore. The people of God become the point of reference.” Contextual theologies must be learned by way of praxis. And oftentimes the victims, traumatized, sick, socially dislocated, or dispossessed are the most qualified teachers and mentors for such theologies, whether in the community or at the bedside. The commitment to live with these people must become a basic course requirement for those who teach theology, and more so, for those seeking an ordination, a consecrated life, or ministry.
Schools must invite representatives of “subsistence” or “heretical” communities to teach theology of life-related and affirming topics. For example, a gardener has a better epistemological privilege to speak about nature than a theologian or a congregational minister.
To this end, I envision and propose the following for theological education:
• That the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) level program require one semester with a residential component where the serious student lives with “subsistence” or “heretical” community to become involved in the diverse ministries/programs of such community.
• That the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) or Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) level program in different fields of concentration incorporate a component for field education in which the candidate is expected to immerse him/herself in social movements, community organizations, and the like.
• That the colonial or imperialist spirit of the past in theological education be eradicated. For example, an alternative in the required modern language examination in doctoral degree program need not be limited to European or Western languages such as French, German, or Spanish. Such required language examination must broaden its horizon to include the Dominated/Developing World languages. Indeed, this will be a challenge for a theological curriculum and its would-be seekers of the professorial chair and academic endowment.
• That for faculty appointment or tenureAtship, commitment to and involvement with a people’s movement and their struggles, become part and parcel of their curriculum vitae; that in their evaluation and promotion such commitment and involvement be considered carefully along with their publications and scholarship. A theology or any discipline for that matter, without praxis involvement, ethics, social, or prophetic consciousness is impoverished, if not a lie!
• That an Admissions’ Policy to persons from underserved and underrepresented communities with past involvement in social movements and future plans for the same be given close attention. This means that points scored by required testing of any sort must be balanced by the larger picture of richness and diversity that this representative from the underserved and underrepresented will bring to classroom interactions, discussions, studies, and research.
I wonder whether the relevance of re/structuring a theological curriculum from the underside of history in the 21st century is what Brueggemann (1986) in Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile, calls a “liberated imagination that has the courage and the freedom to act in a different vision and a different perception of reality” (p. 99). I wonder whether we, in our endeavor “to act in a different vision and a different perception of reality,” can offer an alternative paradigm to traditional ways of communicating God, the human person, suffering, the environment, and theological pedagogy. I wonder whether an aimaginative way of theologizing interactively in a less structured academic way without surrendering substance and context, can be seriously implemented. I wonder whether a space where the contributors to and articulators of a liberative theology; namely, pastors, theologians, bishops, students, victims, the well and sick, dispossessed, etc. who are engaged in doing theology, can come together without any resort to power, privileged position, or jargon. Multiple entry points for critical thoughts, analyses, discernments, and consultations need be given room to make theology real, compelling, and nourishing where a theological curriculum is, indeed, food for the mind, heart, and soul!
Theological curriculum needs to endeavor to incorporate various options and perspectives, since a dynamic and robust curriculum calls for a meaningful dialogue with life in context and the world around us, which is not only about God-talk but also God-praxis.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 4:37 PM