Pastoral Care - it's all of our work

And finally, Part 3. of this 3-day message, our function, role, (and responsibility) at church is way more than as a "complaining consumer." We are all encouraged to "be the Church," rather than just "attend a church." We are connected, integrated "cells" in the same Body, grounded in Him, living out His will, not disjointed, individual, self-centered beings, acting out our own. When we remember this, it all works together. When we forget it, we get very right about everything, including what's wrong with the Church.

Pastoral Care

Seward Hiltner, later amplified by Henri Nouwen, communicated pastoral care as acts of healing, sustaining, and guiding. I understand those acts this way: healing is receiving and accepting responsibility to transform what can be transformed; sustaining is living with hope, endurance, patience, and character even when wounds cannot be healed; guiding is living as a bold pioneer of faith in order to discover new frontiers in the world of miracles and God's mission.

Nouwen characterized the guiding minister as one who: utilizes individual and collective memories, claims a prophetic function; uses storytelling as a ministerial art; teaches meditation and prayer as a way for the Word of God to shape and transform lives.

Along with the pastor, pastoral care is the congregation's work. The pastor is responsible to ensure that pastoral care is being provided and happening through the systems and networks of the church, e.g., Sunday School classes, small groups, women's ministries, men's ministries, church staff, deacons, and other individuals with specialities. The pastor decides what forms of pastoral care are best for him or her (and others) to be directly involved in. These may include: counseling, crisis intervention, intercessory prayer, relational conversations, hospital visitations, weddings, funerals, correspondence, journaling, and effective, inspired modeling.

-- D. Leslie Hollon, Ph.D.

In modern church life (no different than in business life), we who belong and go to a church (in business, this would be a company) regularly tend to dump way too much burden and responsibility for "corporate caring" on pastors (or, in business, our executive leadership teams), who are simply overworked, fatally-flawed, sometimes crazy and often clueless human beings just like us, and we abdicate our own responsibility for collectively "caring for the Body" (or team, or department, or company, in business terms) missing out on an amazing opportunity to "be the Church" vs. a "consumer of a church," as if it is a product that we mere sheep buy blindly (with the accompanying right to complain about it). There is so much more that we can do, so much more that we can share, so much more that we can be, together, if we become more aware of our own and others' giftedness, and equally aware of our own and others' pain, and look to pastors as merely the possibility (not even requirement) of powerful examples, vs. pious saints or exalted ones. I love what William Sloane Coffin had to say about this, in relation to both patriotism and Christianity:

“There are three kinds of patriots (and Christians), two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics - they are either blindly accepting, disengaged, or judgmental (while often uninformed and uninvolved) of their national (or church) agendas and leaders. Good patriots (and Christians) carry on a lover's quarrel (with the key word being lover's) with their country's (and church's) leadership, because they are totally committed and involved in the mission, with a passionate, vested interest in the well-being of the whole, which is simply a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with the whole world.”

And thank God He has mastered love for all time with his stroke of genius in Jesus, and that He no longer gives us what we so often deserve in our folly and foolishness. Maybe we can learn to be in "lover's quarrels" the way He does, with total patience and sacrificial love, fully recognizing that our perceived conflict with our brothers and sisters is only the terrible "inner friction" as we bump and grind into our own self-created and self-maintained blocks to Him. Overcoming and removing them on the inside eliminates the pain of outer conflict, which is no longer conflict, as it can't stay alive without two consenting participants. And church, that ancient and fatally flawed attempt to worship Him, sure stirs this stuff up. And that might very well be part of its job.

Remember, as Father Richard Rohr said,

"Pain (in the Body) that is not acknowledged and transformed is agitated and transmitted."

In other words, what we as a church community don't find broader, more creative, more integrated ways (and take all the time it takes) to feel and heal and minister to in people's despair and pain, spreads poison throughout and ultimately kills the Body, and this is no different than if your body could not feel and heal the pain in your foot from walking, and you kept walking on it, not feeling or attending to it, and ultimately that "ignorance" would "transmit" the "damage" the foot was suffering to all other parts of your body until you died (basically, this is leprosy). The brain (center of intelligence) is not the whole answer. Without the feeling cells themselves (and their role of simply "feeling" is essential), the nerve cells that locate and communicate pain to the place where it can be attended to (without getting bogged down in feeling it, but only communicating it), and the brain itself (where intelligence and answers lie), there would be no integrated, self-correcting solution to any of a myriad of small, specific problems, and each would then become systemic and deadly.

And it's equally foolish and ineffective to ask "damaged" cells (whether the damage is from disease, misuse, neglect, or overuse) to be or act like "brain" cells, because that might "seem" the more intelligent and right thing to be. But all are needed to be and do exactly what they are designed and called to be and do in each moment for the body to live and thrive ongoingly, balanced and in harmony with its surroundings. And the roles could certainly shift from time to time, where healthy extremities could rest and take care of a hurting brain. How perfect and flexible His design is when we remember. How rigid and ridiculous we become when we forget.

The tender, terrifying, triumphant nature of family work

And now for the family part of the work, and notice that this work totally depends on also doing the work of yesterday, the work of listening for and following intuition, God's loving instructions. Without doing that, the thoughts and distinctions below will be incomprehensible and foreign, maybe even repulsive. And they will most definitely be too painful to genuinely take on and carry out. They will sound "unreasonable." And thank you, Sharon, for these delicious, relevant, and timely morsels.

1. “We are always responsible for our actions, thoughts, and words, even if they're performed, thought, or said in response to circumstances and people for which and whom we are not responsible.” -- Massie, Allan

This means that we must stop looking at what we didn't or don't get from our family members, and then so often use that as a "cause" (or excuse) for our unloving actions or attitudes toward them, and instead focus all of our energies on what we continually get from our Perfect Father, who invites us to soak it all in for free, and then love others the same way He loves us, regardless of how others once treated or now treat us, which is "irrelevant." This is daunting, if not impossible, without "intuitive" access to His often "invisible" embrace.

2. “God's ideal for the family is that it be a harmonious unit (not fake, but true),
where love for God and neighbor are instilled into each member.” -- Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Where this is the most important human, relational work, for which all other work is mere practice. Home is not where you let your guard down and relax, expecting to be treated fairly and kindly, to be coddled and pampered. No, home is where your loving work is most important. The whole world is in your house. "Out there" is simply practice for "in here." Treat those in your home as your most important human treasures.

3. “A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.” --Swindoll, Charles

Notice it's where "principles" are "hammered and honed," not "each other."
It's about focusing on cultivating and "living" your principals regardless of what others
might be cultivating or living, and then consistently inviting them to join you as they can,
knowing that living true is hard at first, until it's easy. Expect less from others; expect more from God.

4. “Character calls forth character.” -- GOETHE (1749-1832), The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, 29, tr. T. Bailey Saunders, 1892

What we all want are examples. Be one!

I have a great quote on marriage for you, from Mike Mason's Mystery of Marriage, and, as you read it, please note and substitute "marriage and family life" forevery place where you see "marriage," because it so applies equally.

"... and hiding is not what marriage is about. Marriage means being in the spotlight, being under the unceasing scrutiny of another person, just as we are all under the constant gaze of the LORD our God. Marriage is about nakedness, exposure, defenselessness, and the very extremities of intimacy, respect, and trust. It is about simple, unadorned truth between two human beings - truth at all levels and at all costs - and it does not care about what pain or inconvenience must be endured in order for the habit of truth to take root, to be watered, and to grow into full maturity."

-- Mike Mason

Trusting the unreasonable and unseen

Today starts a compact, three-part message on one's responsibilities in connection to God, family, and church community. We have a responsibility to see and hear with eyes and ears other than those in our heads - to seek, listen, and obey with tools we've been given by our Creator, but that exist in the ethereal, invisible, relational, spiritual realm. This requires acknowledging, cultivating, understanding, and then, most importantly, fully utilizing these capacities and choices that were previously unheard of, or maybe heard of and disrespected, dismissed, discarded, and/or disallowed in the world of cold, hard facts. I think we're starting to realize that the world of cold, hard facts and logic and reason can be highly deceiving and is very overrated, and is quite often not really the truth at all - that what you see and hear is rarely what you get. Maybe there's something else. Starting with the very personal, here's a little gift from my buddy, Jerry.

Intuition - One's Spirit-based, naturally-connected knowing capacity. An inner knowing; the immediate apprehension of Spiritual Truth without resort to intellectual means. The wisdom of the heart. God's guidance mechanism. It is very much surer and truer in guidance than the head. When one trusts Spirit and looks to it for understanding, a certain confidence in the "invisible good" develops. This faith awakens the so-called sixth sense, intuition, or divine knowing. Through the power of intuition, man has direct access to all knowledge and the wisdom of God. The key then becomes to trust and act upon it without over-ruminating.

The Invisible - Reality that cannot be seen, touched, or comprehended by any of the outer senses. In this realm, great and mighty works are always being accomplished, usually underneath our senses and outside of our normal attention span. To awaken to be able to see this (previously) invisible beauty and creativity and awesome power is to see with God's eyes.

In the past couple of months I have had several miraculous experiences of feeling, hearing and seeing (but without my physical senses, but with something else way more powerful, my own intuition and heart) another person's intuition, in the realm of the invlsible (for them), even while they were only coming to grips with the fact that something strange and quite possibly wonderful was going on inside them. I could literally see their hearts speak; I could see their connection to God and His wisdom; I could see the instruction they were being given, even before they had words for it or were willing to accept it, and in some cases they were already hard at work in rejecting it with their minds. And yet the power of the capacity and the choice lingered in the air, causing great consternation between us, because it was both undeniable and unacceptable to the person's brain and ego, and in the midst of that phenomenon, we would look at each other with that "deer in the headlights" look, both knowing that something supernatural was going on, with me being relentlessly faithful about it, and the other person a whole lot more doubtful about it, and my role was clearly to simply keep the light on it, until it could be more clearly seen and recognized for what it is by the other person - God's hand directing, enveloping, focusing, guiding, holding, inviting, loving, pleading (to be seen, heard, and followed) beyond all previous comprehension.

Giving and Receiving


"Give way beyond what is comfortable or even reasonable (but, in reality, what and how you are being instructed to give), and you will receive way beyond what is conceivable or even imaginable."

-- Yours Truly

This is being proven to me time and time again these days, and I am so aware and thrilled to know that all there is, is to give, after overcoming my own internal fears of and impediments to giving (while my ego is so desperately wanting to be receiving), and then giving way beyond what is practical or smart. As my Dad said to me so clearly on his deathbed 5 years ago, fully aware of God's Truth for the first time ever in his life, "Jim, we have nothing to worry about." And as Jesus said in the message from the other day, "Don't ever be afraid of missing out on anything. You're my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself."

I really believe Him.

"It is the nature of the ego to take,
and the nature of the spirit to share."

Let your spirit soar! Give it all away!

He will always provide what you need.In other words, don't be "squirrely" in your giving. :-)

Yesterday I gave of myself til it hurt, and then I gave some more, until I was completely given away, and then stuff started flowing through and out of me that clearly couldn't have been me anymore, and in the process I came fully alive. I'm sure, through it all, that I angered some, disappointed others, frustrated still others, and maybe touched a few in a positive way, whatever that means, but, in the end, none of that really matters at all. My life can only become fulfilling, rich, self-sustaining, true, and totally worth living when I lose myself completely in it, in full surrender to His calling and obedience to His purpose for my life, and it's never really about "being pleased with myself" or "pleasing the audience," anyway, because the "results" are always up to Him.

This is still a new and very cool phenomenon for me. He's doing His thing "in" me. He's doing His thing "through" me. He's doing His thing "with" me. He's doing His thing in and through and with others, as well. I'm clear about that. After all is said and done, and I've laid my head down on my pillow at night, I couldn't ever have really "finished the job", "given enough", or "got it right". Why worry about such things (once again, it's not about the result, but the process). But by letting it "all" flow through and out, with no concern for keeping or hoarding anything, I can find access to Him as He flows through me in the vacuum, and, through that process, find the way to truly live. Without the vacuum - the total void inside me - He can't flow through. Without Him flowing through, I'm just left with me, and that can be very squirrely.

Extending freedom to the extreme - healthy, loving detachment

"For as long as you can remember, you have been a people-pleaser (although clearly they haven't always been pleased), totally depending on others and their responses to you to give you your identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You might have genuinely wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily, even if naively and superficially. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must now stop focusing your attention on being a people-pleaser and reclaim your identity as a totally free, healthy, whole self, in love with his Maker, willing to follow instructions and let go of all else that would limit or poison life, if ever so sublty, so that you can relax and thrive in His loving presence."
-- Henri Nouwen

"The single most important step in inner healing and deep relational work is detachment. It is developing a detached level of consciousness - an observer/witness perspective - that allows us to start practicing discernment in relationship to both our inner and outer processes. This facilitates the process of learning how to have internal boundaries so that we can start having the wisdom and clarity to integrate a loving spiritual belief system and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into our emotional relationship with life. Then we are able to start achieving some emotional balance and integration, and start owning our power to be a positive, conscious co-creator of our life experiences - a loving, mature, empowered force in our own lives, instead of an unconscious co-creator out of the negative, self abusive, self sabotaging reactions that are caused by our emotional wounds and the codependent behavior patterns adopted in childhood."

-- Robert Burney, Therapist and Author of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

"For years, I have heard about the concept of detachment, often referred to as healthy or loving detachment. As the child of an alcoholic who went on to be a practicing addict in several areas myself, it is not a term I understood or appreciated, particularly with the words healthy and loving used together with it. Then I saw the following, and it struck a chord!

'Today I will practice detachment by letting go of things I can't and shouldn't control. Detachment means standing back and looking at a situation without having or needing to have a hand in it. Watching fireworks is practicing detachment. Flying a kite is not. Allowing friends the freedom to have their own opinions is practicing detachment. Feeling compelled to change their actions or minds is not. Watching a child create her own drawing is practicing detachment. Holding her hand while she draws is not. I can't control other people, their actions, or their beliefs by forcing them to act or believe as I do. Detachment helps me see the big picture, since I can see things more clearly from a distance. Today, and from now on, I will practice taking care of myself better by lovingly detaching from people or situations that aren't good for me or that don't really need my involvement. God is in charge, and I can let go. Today I will pay closer attention to when I am trying to force the issue or am succumbing to others' need for my entanglement, and I'll remember that my time would be better spent loving while leaving things alone.'

Now I better understand! In my journey to a more abundant, big, healthy, and loving life, I have learned much about detaching; the world runs just fine with me as a calm observer, and this is particularly true of my relationships with those who I love the most. In finding me and liking what I’ve become, it is much easier to let go of needed results or things. This is one of the things God (or my Higher Power) helps me with every day, and is a benefit from some of the wonderful coaches I've had."

-- Keith Bray, Life Transformation Coach and Addiction Mentor

Sometimes I can get overwhelmed by the perceived and so-called "need" for me (or something) out there, with so much chaos, confusion, and pain boiling and spilling over (and sometimes exploding) from one person to the next, from one community to the next, from one nation to the next. But it is all illusion. Chaos is Divine Order. It is simply life churning and flowing and growing, in its normal state. God is in control. All is well. Even when we're in a panic. I have seen that this is so in the natural evolution of my own life, from blindness to pain to panic to putrification to purification to peace.

But when I feel a little overwhelmed, or am just getting a little sick and tired of it all, which leaves me very dull and weak in my awareness of my own makeup and internal processes, I externalize (project) things and then feel the need to be involved and fix them, usually making bigger messes in the process. That is when it is time to lovingly detach, for my own health's sake. When I take a moment to gain a little distance and perspective, I see how blessed I am, that I get the honor and privilege to love and to hold a hand and to calmly be a beacon of light, a cleansing focus, a milepost of progress, an opening for peace, a shoulder to cry on, a voice of calm serenity, and, most importantly, a holder of God space - intending with Him, interceding for Him, introducing Him, inviting Him, invoking Him. And when I am doing this about, for, and with Him, I gain access to all of His awareness and power, where it's at my disposal, for my own good.

What a deal!

Fully-attained freedom

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way, no matter what has happened or is happening."

-- Viktor Frankl

"The average man doesn't want to be free (that is way too dangerous, because it offers way too many choices and possibilities); he simply wants to be safe from harm. He doesn't want a liberator; he wants a just dictator."

-- H.L. Mencken

"What is the seal of fully-attained human freedom? - it is no longer being ashamed while standing in front of the mirror, being totally honest, completely naked, and at peace, able to look others squarely in the eye without anger, fear, judgment, or self-doubt."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Shame is the leading cause of death of the potential for fully self-actualized giftedness."

-- Maria Rocamora

"Freedom is simply 'what you do' with 'what you've done' and 'what's been done to you'."

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

"Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last, shame them derides."

-- William Shakespeare, in King Lear

Another seal of freedom, methinks, is the ability to quote Frankl, Mencken, Nietzsche, Rocamora, Sartre, and Shakespeare in the same breath and context without concern or hesitation. :-)

Keep this in mind: guilt is from having committed or participated in a wrong or experiencing some serious failure in actions, thoughts, or words, and involves a bad feeling about something I have done or has been done to me, often accompanied by a desire to hide it; shame (especially of the false and toxic variety), on the other hand, is from a deeper, more chronic feeling that "I am bad, worthless, and/or wrong," which, it would then naturally occur to me, can't be hidden - because it's not just about what I've done but who I am, therefore, in this condition, it tends to need agreement and constant reinforcement from others, which I would then unconsciously and continually "re-create" in my relationships.

For a provocative point of view, packaged in some pretty sound advice for young people just starting out:

"Fail early and grandly and often, and get it all over with (and get over it, this misunderstood 'failure and guilt thing,' so that you're not left languishing in shame). If you learn to deal effectively with failures, and learn from them, you can then learn to abide and thrive in intimate relationships. You can even grow to raise teenagers. And you can have a worthwhile career (that would actually be a piece of cake compared to the previous two). You can learn to breathe when you embrace failure (your own and others') as a natural part of life, not as the determining characteristic of your life."

-- Rev. William L. Swig, in the Stanford 2007 Baccalaureate Celebration

"There is no shame in failing or 'not knowing;' the shame lies in not figuring or finding it out."

Come on, everyone, it's time to rise and shine!

And then, just as I finished gathering the pieces of this message together, the last Bible verse
shared in the sermon at church yesterday was, by sheer coincidence (yea, right), and of course:

"Get out of bed! Wake up! Look up!
Put your face in the brilliant sunlight.
God's bright glory has risen just for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in their own deep darkness and despair,
But God rises on you, His sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come in search of your light,
kings to your sunburst brightness.
Look up! Look around!
Watch as they gather;
watch as they approach you:
Your sons coming from great distances,
your daughters carried by their nannies.
When you see them coming you'll smile—great big smiles!
Your heart will swell and, yes, burst with joy!"

-- Isaiah 60:1-4 (The Message)

Yes, time to rise and shine, indeed! How about we create a brand new relationship with our frequent, inevitable, unavoidable mistakes (where we are totally honest, open, real, reconciled, redeemed, sharing of the whole process), thereby allowing for the elimination of guilt and the reduction of toxic shame (as a way of being) to full meaninglessness.

True Success

"If you wish to truly succeed in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother,
and hope your guardian genius."

-- Joseph Addison

And God your only god, I might add.

It's so simple, really, so simple and small and startlingly straightforward that it's so easy to miss it in the hurry and scurry and worry of life, so ...

"What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax (and breathe Him in), to not be so preoccupied with 'getting' so that you can respond to God's 'giving.' People who don't know God and the way He works fuss over these things (human, material, worldy concerns), but you know both God and how He works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You'll find that all your everyday human concerns and needs will be met as well. Don't ever be afraid of missing out. You're my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself."

-- Jesus in Luke 12:31 (The Message)

"There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any man-created experience or thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known to us through Jesus."

-- Blaise Pascal

Yep, I've tried everything else, while never, ever thinking it would come down to this - this amazingly clear, wonderfully simple "God-reality" conclusion - to think that life could really be so untormented, untorpedoed, untortured, untoxic, untragicomedy by simply living it the right way - His Way - consistently, relentlessly, keeping it clean and simple and very thankful in every step. I have always known how to have the adrenaline-laced, feverish, over-compensating highs that left me breathless (even if for only about 15 seconds). They were my naive and youthful "secret to survival." I soon found that they not only took my breath away, but my breathing as well. I am finally learning that slow, steady, regular breathing is better, far better than I could have ever imagined. The peaceful satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, awe that I get to experience pretty regularly these days (like at Abby and Dan's wedding last night) far surpass - in intimacy, meaningfulness, and purpose, as well as splendor - any giddy spikes of fleeting pleasure that I vainly sought or indulged in in my clumsy, feeble, irresponsible attempts to feel like a desired, included, recognized, and worthwhile human being. Steeping myself in Him, letting go of all self-concern, He has met my every need, starting with the deepest, re-building my life from the inside-out, and thank You again.