Hello! My name is Robert Mundle, and I’ve been working as a hospital chaplain in palliative care, complex medical care, and rehab environments for almost 20 years. I completed my residency in Clinical Pastoral Education at the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven, CT, which is now part of Yale New Haven Hospital, and then went on to work in hospitals in Sudbury, Toronto, and Kingston, Ontario, where I live with my wife and son. Before all that, I studied music history, worked as an academic bookseller, and then taught English in South Korea for a couple of years, first in southern Busan, overlooking Haeundae Beach, and then in a northern suburb of Seoul, not far from the DMZ.
I’m a Certified Spiritual Care Practitioner with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care, and a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. In my clinical work I try to combine aspects of theory and practice in creative ways that come together in the moment of providing care. In listening to patients’ stories, for example, I seek to make connections to aspects of narrative theory to help me understand more about what my patients are really trying to say. Theory helps shape my way of listening to others. But I also believe that practice informs theory, and sometimes I wonder if theorists always “get it right.” I guess you could say that’s my street credibility talking, and my heart.
As for my academic credentials, I earned my Bachelor of Music, Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees from the University Toronto, and my Master of Sacred Theology degree from Yale Divinity School. There was a time when what I wanted most was to continue my studies in early Christianity in Egypt and ancient Alexandria. But then I got interested in bioethics, practical theology, and social justice, and things shifted quite a bit for me towards working in health care.
And so, this is where you’ve found me ~ at the intersections of theory and practice, practice and theory, filled with intellectual curiosity, but also grounded in clinical experience gained over the years providing spiritual care to patients and their loved ones in challenging health care environments. And it’s from this background and perspective on life and meaning and purpose where I hope to make a positive difference in this world of ours.
My Faith
I am a Roman Catholic layperson. I love how Catholicism has given me a sacramental view of the world. I am inspired deeply by St. Francis de Sales's simple approach to holiness, and by St. Ignatius of Loyola's approach to prayer and theological reflection seeing God in all things and experiences. My favorite retreat is to Loyola House - Ignatius Jesuit Centre - in Guelph, Ontario.
My Approach to Spiritual Care In my approach to spiritual care I focus mostly on the need we all share to feel heard and understood. Feeling heard and understood is vital to all of our relationships both at work and at home. And feeling heard and understood is paramount to patients in hospital, and to their loved ones, especially for those who are struggling with emotional and spiritual distress around the end of life in hospice and palliative care, including potentially devastating feelings of grief & loss, loneliness, fear, guilt and regret. Yet it can be so rare to feel heard and understood. Good listeners can be so hard to find! Active, empathetic listening is my vocation and my passion. It's the heart of my clinical practice as a Registered Psychotherapist and Certified Spiritual Care Practitioner in palliative care, complex medical care, and seniors rehabilitation. And it's what I love to teach others in my workshops and webinars for volunteers and professionals in health care environments. Listening seems so simple and easy to do. But I believe that we can all learn to be better listeners. And I believe that good listening can lead us into transformative spiritual journeys of compassionate care and support for others in need. It holds so much potential for helping and possibly even healing others and ourselves where we hurt the most. What does it feel like when someone really listens to you? People have described for me how the quality of listening they received from others in their lives made them feel relaxed, relieved, confident, clear, joyful, moved to tears, embraced, and loved. ~ It’s true. Listening can be that powerful! How we listen to others can make a real difference in this world, one conversation at a time. Based on these findings I wrote a book about listening called How to Be an Even Better Listener: A Practical Guide for Hospice and Palliative Care Volunteers. What I tried to do in this book is articulate a spirituality of listening that’s more about the human spirit in general than about any religious beliefs in particular. I used my original qualitative research to develop reflective strategies to help readers draw on their own formative experiences of listeners and listening in their lives to improve the quality of care they provide to patients and their loved ones in hospice and palliative care environments. Please be in touch As a spiritual care practitioner and clinical educator, my mission is to help others feel heard and understood, and I'd love to hear from you! Let me know if you or members of your team or association would benefit from learning more with me about the pivotal power of listening. Robert Mundle Productions Inc. In 2018 I launched a new company to help develop the kinds of creative projects I really want to work more on, like more IMAGINING and more CREATING live & interactive talks, workshops & webinars on aspects of spiritual health to CONNECT more with others. I love to work creatively with organizations to inspire people to pursue excellence in their own ways in the important work they do, with more resiliency, more passion, more curiosity, more confidence and determination, more connection, and more freedom to be their best, truest, and most authentic selves. I want to learn more with and from others about what matters most to each of us. At the heart of all this, I’d say that my mission with Robert Mundle Productions Inc. is to understand and help shape the subtle art of caring for others to reveal the full potential for healing in this world of ours ~ physically, emotionally, spiritually ~ via the quality of our relationships with ourselves, others, and the sacred, through personal learning & growth, creative self-expression and effective communication, with deep concern for social justice and ethics, and by coming to grips with practical theology in the here-and-now, to inspire true and lasting success in business, excellence in health care, and resiliency through all kinds of personal and professional change and development. Thinking about you and your organization . . . How would feeling more heard and understood enhance your work and organizational culture? What does spirituality mean to you? How might practicing a spirituality of listening improve your teamwork and customer service? What challenges are you are facing, and how might you work more creatively to meet them? What does it mean to be authentic in your line of work? What do you need more of to reach your goals and achieve more? What are the questions and opportunities that are calling you to explore more fully and deeply at this time? What do you long for in your life and relationships?How do you connect? Let's talk! Talk to me about your needs and objectives, and let me know how I might be able to help you and your team or organization. I’m dedicated to working with you at your next event to deliver new and exciting content tailored to your audience that provides effective strategies for reflection, inspires new insights about spirituality, and motivates authentic ways of being in this world by attuning ourselves to pivotal moments in providing compassionate care, quality service, and helpful support to others at work and at home, from our customers and colleagues, to our family and friends, and to ourselves, in the crucial daily balance of work and life. I look forward to hearing from you. To your spiritual health and continued success! ~ Robert ROBERT MUNDLE, MDiv (Toronto), ThM (Toronto), STM (Yale) Certified Spiritual Care Practitioner | Registered Psychotherapist | Prison Ministry Volunteer President, Robert Mundle Productions Inc.Q & A
In your opinion, what makes a good listener? I think that really good listeners demonstrate a particular kind of attention and care for others that is revealed through subtle gestures of body language and stillness, and also through the kinds of “quality” questions they ask that invite further conversation and that allow for deeper reflection, without ever losing focus on the person speaking. That’s easier said than done, but I think it’s something we can all learn to do better. Listening is so important, and it makes a deep impression on others. I think it’s important to remember that. In my research for the book I was delighted to come across the following description of how St. Francis de Sales listened in his role of providing care to others: "He received all comers with the same expression of quiet friendliness, and never turned anyone away, whatever his station in life; he always listened with unhurried calmness and for as long as people felt they needed to talk. He was so patient and attentive that you would have thought this was all he had to do."I’m not sure how he learned to listen like that. But I think we can learn from his style. Even more directly, I think we can learn from our own experience of how we have received, or longed to receive, good listening from others in our lives. That's what my book is about.
Emotional burn-out is a risk for palliative care workers, as they take on the emotional burden of listening to their patients' worries and traumas. Do you have any advice for readers who may be experiencing burn-out?
In healthcare, we learn how to be with others in their pain. But it’s more difficult, I think, to learn about our own strong feelings that are roused within us in the face of suffering—our own pain, and what to do with it. Not knowing what to do with the pain we experience can lead to feeling overwhelmed and burnt out. Therefore, it’s so important, I think, for all of us to take the time to reflect on our own feelings, needs, and boundaries. Sometimes we can become so focussed on tending to the needs of others that we forget to tend to our own, or even to recognize and admit that we have our own needs! So, it’s vital, I think, for each of us to find our own listeners—to have others in our lives to talk to who can really understand what we’re dealing with in hospice and palliative care on a regular basis, including its steady drumbeat of dying, death, loss, and grief, and the emotional and spiritual burden it imposes on us personally while we’re trying to provide quality care for patients and their loved ones professionally in very difficult circumstances. In this way, it might be helpful to confide in a manager, peer, or small supportive group of peers who meet regularly to debrief and help each other recognize and acknowledge the feelings and responses we have to dying and grief, to de-stigmatize grief in the workplace. Seeking this kind of listening care might be a good first step to receiving additional kinds of help and support we may need.
Your book is primarily for hospice care workers, but could the learnings be applied to other professions?
Absolutely! Listening is paramount to providing quality healthcare at all levels, and I believe it is vital to enhancing the quality of all of our relationships, professional and personal. Lawyers, bankers, teachers, anyone at all, really, could provide better service to their clients, and better attention to family members and friends, with better listening. We all want to feel heard and understood, don’t we? I think people are really longing for that kind of deeper communication and connection in the world today, perhaps especially in this digital virtual world of ours. The curious thing about listening, I find, is that it seems so darn obvious, yet good listeners can be so hard to find. Why is that? Listening is such a rare gift to receive. It’s powerful. I think we could all share it much more abundantly with each other in all of our relationships, in each of our various roles and responsibilities.
