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May 22, 2009
First comes love, and then comes the story, then comes the CPSP allegory . . . By Ronald David
First comes love, and then comes the story, then comes the CPSP allegory . . .
I did not attend the 2009 Plenary in Virginia Beach and, therefore, feel like an interloper having eavesdropped on the dialogue between Barbara McGuire and Ron Evans. Still, their observations and declarations made public in the CPSP Pastoral Report invite me to comment. In particular, I offer a meditation intended to deepen Barbara’s reflections on love of self so as to (hopefully) allay Ron’s ambivalence on the matter.
I am struck, first, by the lack of clarity regarding two pivotal words used—“love” and “self.” Should one infer from Barbara’s reference to Oscar Wilde that romantic love, as commonly understood and misunderstood, is the love about which she writes? And is that experience simply “to feel positive about oneself,” as noted by Ron? And to whom or what is “the self” referential? Is the collective membership of CPSP that “self,” and/or is that “self” the individual person?
Second, I am also struck by, and moved to challenge, Ron’s assertion that the story precedes the experience of loving one’s self—however love and self may be defined.
Allow me, then, to begin this story again with reflections on “love.” I would not choose the wild, not to say hedonist, Oscar Wilde as a spokesperson for love. Rather, I turn to the sacred texts of virtually any religion. I discern from these readings that love is akin to a gravitational force holding or drawing back into relationship the increasingly differentiated yet simultaneously integrated elements of the Cosmos. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described love as “the supreme unifying principle of life.” For me, God is that force or principle. God is Love.
Love is not an emotion but gives rise to a panoply of emotions both positive and negative; nor is love a romantic inclination though it may be manifest as such. Love, again, is a force field that holds all things in relationship, committing those “things” to differentiation and integration, autonomy and community. And the ongoing process of individuating and communing can be as discomfiting as it can be pleasing, as negative as it is positive.
The self is embedded in the relational context compelled by love. Karl Marx states the case plainly: “The self is an ensemble of social relationships.” F LeRon Shults says it poignantly: “My sense of self is called into being and formed through interaction with other persons within my particular set of overlapping communities. This mutual confrontation evokes an ambiguous transactional drama in which the boundaries of self and other are explored, negotiated, transgressed, or reified.” (Reforming Theological Anthropology, page 2.) Or, as expressed more poetically in the African idiom of ubuntu, “a person is a person through other persons.”
The words of an ancient admonish, indeed commanded; “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Interpreted in the context of the meaning I make of love and self, and with the hope of luring Barbara and Ron to greater agreement with less ambivalence, this verse might read as follows: Be embraced, informed, and inspired by the force field that holds you [plural] as relational, interdependent selves; resist living the narcissistic illusion of the individual, independent self.
Contrary to Ron’s assertion, then, I argue that love and love of self are the beginning and end, the ground and destiny of our being. The story is in the middle and accessory after the fact. That is, love is a given. We know this viscerally, affectively, and intuitively before we have words for its gravitational effect on us. It is the inchoate experience of love that gives impetus to “primary speech.” (I think that this is the experience about which Ann and Barry Ulanov wrote in their book of the same title.) Our most moving stories are those told about the tragedy and triumph of love. So, when Ron is “feeling down,” and when his story “seems like so much junk,” it is perhaps the feeling of anomie and/or ennui that gives rise to his “junk” narrative. But when he meets his sisters and brothers “in the flesh” he then knows love again—for when two or three are gathered in God’s name . . . well, there goes love in their midst! It is the remembrance of love in that relational context that impels him to articulate a narrative of redemption.
The history of clinical pastoral education generally, and of CPSP specifically, is one of wounding and healing, of breaking and mending, of love’s triumphs and tragedies. At this moment it is a history that culminates eloquently in our covenant and our proclamation (short stories!) in celebration of our differentiating/integrating selfhood. We are a model or metaphor for covenantal community. Said differently and succinctly—First comes love, and then comes the story, and then comes the CPSP allegory.
__________________________
The Rev Dr Ronald David
Department of Pastoral Care
The Hospital of the Good Samaritan
1225 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90017
To contact Dr. David, click here.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at May 22, 2009 12:48 PM