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.
2008 CPSP PLENARY
MARCH 30, 2008
LITTLE ROCK, AK
CPSP PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
FRANCINE ANGEL, CPSP PRESIDENT
When god asked Solomon, “What do you want me to give you?” Solomon responded, give me wisdom. I ask god today for wisdom to know how to go out and to come in among this people.
First and foremost to God be the glory! To our esteem General Secretary, Raymond J. Lawrence to this company of stalwart presidents, my predecessors who have set the bar high and paved the way for me to continue moving our organization from good to great: Jim Gephart, Richard Liew, Foy Richey, John Develder, Ken Blank, to our plenary planners George Hull and Al Henager and great honor to you the Diplomates, Pastoral Counselors, Clinical Chaplains and members of this CPSP community! I would be remiss, if I did not give honor to the three supervisors who trained me, Richard Liew, Joel Harvey and Joel Warner. Honor to the Convener of my Chapter (New York/New Jersey) Steven Voytovich.
I think that I ought to tell you that I am aware that I tread In the footsteps of IllustrustIous PresIdents those who have made and wIll continue to make their mark upon this our beloved CPSP community through the newly formed Council of Presidents.
I t is with a deep sense of gratitude that I enter this term as President of CPSP. In assuming this responsibility I invoke the power of the almighty God in whose hands, I firmly believe our destiny is shaped, solid and secure! CPSP is here to stay! I also call upon our ancestors and invoke their spirit to be here and to help guide us along our journey. In particular, Robert Cholke who was my presenter for my review committee and Tim Fauvell who walked the journey with me during very difficult times. I stand on the shoulders of our founding fathers and mothers.
It is my promise to continue to administer in the spirit of our founding principles, recovery of souls, midwifing, always cognizant of denouncing even a hint of a predatory nature. We are each other’s keepers! We have converged on this corner in Little Rock to celebrate who we are as an organization and more importantly as an organism. One that is living and thriving. I embrace and hold dear that every member is a vital link and every member's voice is valued. I have surveyed the community and included in this address are your responses, your dreams, if you please. So allow me to address you briefly on casting a more perfect dream
Our chapters are the place where our dreams, imaginations and visions can have leaps and bounds…our Chapters are the vehicles that will mobilize CPSP into the realization of the best of our dreams. It is your signature dream that we endeavor to keep the genius of our investment of primary authority to certify members and to conduct peer reviews within the Chapter.
You have addressed and stressed that every Chapter needs to hold every Chapter member accountable. Never settling for being a good Chapter but a great chapter. We must continue implementing an annual review of every member in the Chapter. We have heard from many Chapters who are attentive to primary process and are engaged in producing competent chaplains and counselors, while yet maintaining a spirit of collegiality. While grace should abound, incompetence cannot! Your dreams include expanding education about CPE in community ministries, cultivating good will. At the local level, we need greater accessibility for laity and clergy, which means we may have to rearrange our calendars to accommodate persons with very busy lifestyles. A major dream is the creation of an employment networking system for our members who are looking for jobs and not simply tell them to relocate. There is a request for the Governing Council to develop a national strategy to inform the major care corporations of CPSP Standards, requirements and mission. Thanks to the efforts of Mary Davis, we now have a hard copy of a Convener’s Handbook and we encourage each convener to download it as soon as possible. Your dreams indicate that we need to appoint a committee to advocate and intervene for military chaplains and civilians employed in military health care institutions. CPSP chaplains should be on the front line of care for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines deploying to and from Iraq and Afghanistan.
We must work with other organizations who cherish the dreams that we cherish. There is a need to increase regional meetings, avoiding an eastern elitism. There is a suggestion that we bring in the deans of seminaries as presenters at both the regional meetings and the plenary. We need to develop a universal packet or pamphlet that key persons in every region can distribute to seminaries, community agencies and clergies at large. We need to form a committee whose sole purpose is to identify institutional partners to strengthen and develop CPSP ties with academic programs in counseling, pastoral care, pastoral theology and healthcare ministry. An urgent dream is that of establishing Regional Coordinators who will help plan regional seminars, nurturing and midwifing one another. Utilizing the National Clinical Training Seminar as a model. We are in the initial stage of proposing regionalization. In the very near future I plan to call upon many Chapter Conveners to assist in this effort. Information that comes to the Conveners rank and file members has to filter to all members
Whatever national organization we join, we cannot afford to lose our soul.
Our dream includes continuing to foster collegiality among cognate groups. We must balance our leadership at large with more representatives across the board from varying Chapters. We must penetrate the schools, correctional facilities, business industries, military and community agencies. We are blessed to have our international members connected with us and we must strengthen those ties by helping CPSP international members to develop their own foreign Chapters and develop a cognate chaplain association.
In order to prosper during these critical times CPSP has to be rigorous but not ruthless. Being rigorous means that we will consistently apply our exacting standards at all times and at all levels. We are determined to credential the best Diplomates, Pastoral Counselors and Clinical Chaplains. Yes, CPSP is growing at an exponential rate, but we are not simply be into head counting, or bean counting but we are into competence. Let us continue the path of power to the Chapter, power to be, power to create, power to cultivate the rich soil out of which Chapters are producing competent clinical chaplains who are skilled diagnosticians. Tim Fauvell was one of those, even after his death, he was honored for his work at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York City. And CPSP trained him!
We are a blessed organization, for we are blessed to have members in Korea, Tanzania, Italy, Philipines, Bahamas, Malaysia and Singapore, seven countries, God’s perfect number, what other organization can boast of this?
Your dreams indicate a use of our creativity in birthing other avenues of ministry. Foy Ritchey has begun this endeavor. We have taken other steps in this path. Thanks to the vision of Richard Liew, the blessings of Cecily Broderick, and the work of Maria Lopez, our prison ministry is taking shape. I had the blessed opportunity to take my Resident Chaplains on a field trip to Bedford Hills Correctional Center and we were elated, to say the least to hear the stories of former CPE trainees, we heard them talk about spiritual restoration, their major shifts, their metamorphoses into something of great worth and dignity; they shared how they were able to transform toxic shame into healthy shame.
We are moving from good to great. I affirm and celebrate our indigenous work that is traveling unchartered territory. We must maintain a fanatical adherence to our standards and a willingness to shun mediocrities. Our ethics must serve as our mantra as we are entrusted with the training of our present and future caregivers.
There is a plea for some new blood to come forward to head up committees. A task force has been organized, Luisa Weinrich is chairing this effort to assess the needs of our organization and forging a new vision. While we lack bureaucracy, we cannot be top heavy; we must empower the community to move toward positive visioning for the future.
There is a call for a committee to create a newsletter to judicatories and institutions, highlighting our story, our standards and our stability.
We must embody paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. We cannot solve challenges unless we do so together. We cannot afford to react or become motivated by fear. We are not just an organization, we are an organism. In the words of Perry Miller: The College of Pastoral Supervision & psychotherapy’s (CPSP) mission is dedicated to "capturing the light that's in the air" for the Clinical Pastoral Movement. As a community its dedication is: to see what others have not seen, to embrace the new rather than cling to the old, to risk rather than play it safe, to reinvent itself rather than re-package the old, to imagine the unimaginable, to let go rather than holding on, to create rather than duplicate, and to dream dreams that have never been dreamed
Lastly, as we continue in the spirit of recovery of soul, let’s not dream apart; let’s dream as whole!
Francine Angel, CPSP President
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 10:22 PM
– Comments Honoring the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Thornton –
delivered at the Plenary in North Little Rock, AR, on 31 March 2008
on the 65th anniversary of the publication of
[Helen] Flanders Dunbar’s Psychosomatic Diagnosis
Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD
The College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy has had a lot of fun, I’d like to suggest, with its annual presentation of The Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) Award for Significant Contributions to the Field of Clinical Pastoral Training. Those honored thus far include G. Allison Stokes, Myron C. Madden, Robert C. Dykstra, A. Patrick L. Prest, and Henry G. Heffernan.2 Tradition dictates that the audience be kept in a bit of suspense, so let me construct a conceptual picture of our next honoree, focusing not on the work for which he has become most famous – but focusing, rather, on the notion of clinical pastoral transformation, for which he should become more well known.3
Fifty years ago our honoree, then not quite age 33, apparently, sent an inquiry to psychologist Carl Jung, whose proffered guidance seems to have been taken to heart:
“if you feel enough solid ground under your feet,
follow the call of the spirit.”
Notice the “if” in Jung’s comment:
“if you feel enough solid ground under your feet,
follow the call of the spirit.”4
As our honoree later rephrased this guidance with its caveats:
“if the Spirit wants me to do something …,
the Spirit will not mind repeating the instructions.
I do not need to act impulsively.
I only need to act obediently –
once the guidance has been repeated so that it is clear, and
once I have had time to check it out in the community of faith.” 5
The last thirty-five years, especially, of our honoree’s life have been spent first ascertaining if he stood with faith community colleagues on solid ground, then following the call of the spirit, wherever it seemed to want to take him.
While the writings of Helen Flanders Dunbar and her colleague Anton Theophilus Boisen are rather easy to read, because these two honed their words and their concepts evolved in depth and breadth over time, the writings of our honoree have consistently presented a challenge, as he would drop nuggets of wisdom almost in passing and would reverse direction during an argument. At first this might seem a bit bothersome, but then one recollects that many classic religious authors take a similar approach, forcing readers to consider several incongruent pronouncements on the same topic – that is, forcing initially complacent or confused readers to follow the logic, to think. While a hallmark comment of our era, “I voted for it before I voted against it,” initially prompts derision, deeper thinkers are forced to consider why a person viewed one proposition in two opposite ways. Similarly, while many think they know the thesis of our honoree’s best-known work, closer readers are forced to notice that he has changed his mind at the end. Indeed, our honoree actually contributed to a series titled, “How I Have Changed My Mind,” thus consciously joining a tradition of teaching through counter-arguments dating back to Karl Barth’s three essays on How I Changed My Mind, and even further back to Augustine’s Retractions critiquing his own work 6 More than just changing his mind, our honoree has, time and again, tried to discern the call and allow himself to be transformed.
Our honoree had been preaching since 1942, learning, successively, “the doing,” then “the knowing,” then “the being” of his ministry, but some thirty years along the way – thirty-five years ago this month, he tells us – he experienced a profound personal awakening and transformation, in which he allowed himself to become, in his words, “unselfconsciously immersed in a longing love for G-d.” During earlier years, living in the “absence of G-d” brought him discomfort, but now, awakened, he “experienced the absence of G-d as acute pain.” “After waking up,” he tells us, he first saw “the next problem” as “staying awake.” Soon, however, he realized that all states of awareness were to be appreciated as part of one’s spiritual journey. Eventually he understood that “spirituality thrives” not only in the “desert and wilderness” times of our lives but also in the “garden” of everyday experience. 7 After two decades of promoting academic educational techniques for “producing” “pastoral identity” in chaplaincy trainees, he did an abrupt about-face, abandoning educational techniques per se. He re-conceptualized his role as one of helping others, during their journey through everyday life, discover and recover “a quality of life centered in seeing the unseen Spirit”. 8
Dante’s Comedy, depicting the depths and heights of a spiritual pilgrim’s journey and transformation, captivated our honoree, like Dunbar and Boisen before him, and thereafter he was never quite the same. Dunbar’s work on symbolism, of course, was and is world famous. Boisen had his Beatrice and kept Dante’s picture on his wall. Our honoree valued Dante’s pilgrimage, from hell through purgatory to heaven, as “a story that helps make sense out of life.” 9
Our honoree’s frequent reference to St. Paul’s admonition – that we be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might discern the will of G-d – is echoed, he discovered, in Dante’s portrayal of the pilgrim finally opening up to renewal – to transformation – to discernment of then conformation to the will of G-d 10 Our honoree viewed studying Dante’s Comedy as perfect for a group experience that would help chaplaincy trainees better appreciate “the spiritual journey – their own and that of their parishioners.” 11 Through Dante our honoree discovered then conveyed the power of the story and of story telling. He re-conceptualized his role as one of helping others discover that “the ultimate meaning” of one’s spiritual journey would be in discerning spirituality in everyday life, in “allowing” oneself “to be transformed.” 12 His notions of professional training, of professional education, gave way to ones of professional transformation – Boisen’s “becoming” – as the model for an ongoing process in clinical pastoral ministry. 13
As I reminded this group last year,
Twenty-five years ago, an editorial,
“The 'Secret' of Clinical Pastoral Education" noted that
the soul of the process HAD been in that supervisors' goal was
"not education but transformation –
transformation of themselves first of all and ultimately of their students."
Consigning, however,
this “mystery of the laying on of CPE hands” to the dustbin,
the editorial went on to praise "objectification, quantification, and verification."
That brief essay, in a nutshell,
defined a key tension that has remained within the movement –
how to function as a knowledgeable professional AND to retain one’s soul. 14
Notice how the argument starts one place – praising the notion of spiritual transformation as one becomes a clinical pastor – then goes somewhere else – praising the notion of objectification, quantification, and verification – prompting us to ask if these programs must be opposites. Our honoree’s essay should have provoked a lot of discussion. As best I can tell it did not. Perhaps, however, his essay was the one more item that led toward the first Plenary of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy ten years later.
This evening, we are honored to have the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Thornton as the 7th recipient of The Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-59) Award for Significant Contributions to the Field of Clinical Pastoral Training.
Let us give thanks for being alive, sustained, and enabled to share together this day.
__________________________
The fully endnoted version of Dr. Powell's, Discerning Spirituality in Everyday Life – and Allowing Oneself to Be Transformed, can be downloaded as a Word document by clicking Download file
To email the author, click here.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at 5:52 PM