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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I welcome Barbara McGuire’s reflections on self love in the April Pastoral Report. It helps me to likewise sort out what I believe lies at the heart of CPSP.
I agree that to feel positive about oneself, to love oneself, is a vital piece of the equation. Most of us, regardless of tradition, can no doubt point to ways in which self has been negated, downplayed in ways that have been destructive. The alternative is to learn to love oneself. And this is where I become a little nervous. As vital as it is to come to a love of oneself I am not sure this is the starting point. Or the end either.
There is a story out of Greek mythology about Narcissus, the beautiful young man who in his beauty scorned the love of all admirers. A youth who Narcissus spurned in this manner prays that Narcissus might suffer a similar fate, that he might love unrequitedly. The god of retribution, Nemesis, hears the prayer and arranges that Narcissus stop to drink at a pool in which sees his own reflection. Instantly he falls in love with it. Unable to embrace the image in the water he lies there, unable to tear himself away, and dies.
I sense that, at times, CPSP runs the risk of lying by the water mesmerized by its own beauty. Again to love oneself is of critical importance, however I believe the staying power of CPSP, its origins and its beauty, lies further up stream.
Let me use Alcoholics Anonymous to illustrate what I mean. Surely AA has brought life to countless men and women, a life based, in part, on coming to treat themselves with respect. They are able to love themselves. The origins of this transformation, if I understand it correctly, lie in the AA story, in hearing it told. Somehow in hearing that story told AA members have their own broken, troubled tale redeemed.
I think that this is the genius of CPSP. When I am feeling down, when my story seems like so much junk, when I remember who I am and cannot bless it, my love affair with myself becomes difficult. How do you love the unloveable? Or, worse yet, as in the case of Narcissus, you become fixated on your own image. But then I go to a CPSP meeting and meet the sisters and the brothers. I meet them in the flesh. And I hear the story told, how the unwashed found hope, the unloved were changed.
At this past plenary in Virginia Beach I heard for the first time the details of how CPSP began, heard the story from Raymond of how he started a ratty little newsletter, how like minded folks responded, how it came to be that a few disgruntled brothers met and said let us be true to what we remember. I had heard a little of it before, now I heard it all again.
And behold it is the story I heard years before in Anton Boisen. It is the story I had heard from Jorjorian and Eichorn and Dollar and Madden. Each of you can name your own mentors, your own saints. I thought the story had been lost but 15 years ago I heard it recovered in CPSP and heard it again in Virginia Beach a month ago.
Luise Wienrick in the task force report on the future wrote: “Our unique history merits retelling and celebrating, and it is important that we keep telling our story and revisiting these roots, even as we continue to grow and change to embrace the future we are creating together.”
I couldn’t agree more and only suggest the task force spend more time elaborating on this statement as the very heart of what we are about and as a means of maintaining who we are.
I have no quarrel with the need to love oneself but I think it can be a deceptive image. So appealing you can stare at until you waste away. CPSP offers something more lasting, a story, one of brokenness and estrangement. But in the telling we hear our own story, a tale we can embrace as our own and feel again that all is well. That we are well.
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Contact Ron Evan by clicking here.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at May 11, 2009 7:18 PM
