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.

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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

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