April 8, 2023

Listening to Your Inner Child: From stranger to integration

“What is past is not dead; it is not even past. We cut ourselves off from it; we pretend to be strangers.” So begins Patterns of Childhood—Christa Wolf’s semi-autobiographical novel of self-discovery about coming to grips with a troubled past. Wolf imagines the child we carry always within us, and […]
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March 12, 2022

Making God Real and Present

God is the mother of all metaphors, Susanne Niemeyer muses. I imagine that many spiritual seekers like her find comfort in poetic metaphors, and delight in reimagining the divine in their daydreams. But there comes a point when Niemeyer’s restless curiosity presses for more—for something more present and obvious. How […]
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March 6, 2022

God is a Black Woman

Cleveland, Christena (2022) God is a Black Woman. New York: HarperOne. Definitely not The Shack. Rather, more James Baldwin and James Cone—black liberation theology from the current perspective of a black woman growing up in the USA and becoming a professor at Duke University’s Divinity School. Christena Cleveland, PhD, is […]
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March 6, 2022

On the Trail of the Unknown God

Röser, Johannes (2021) Auf der Spur des Unbekannten Gottes: Christsein in moderner Welt. Freiburg; Basel; Wien: Herder. “The traditional concept of God has become fragile and crumbles on the horizon of modern world experience.” ~ Johannes Röser Interview with Robert Mundle What is the main idea of your new book […]
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February 2, 2019

Agent of Connection

In this very short film by Ivan Cash, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station agent William Cromartie finds meaning as he greets 4,000 Oakland commuters every day with a hug, a fist-bump, or a handshake, transcending barriers so that we can better know and care about each other. Watch it […]
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June 5, 2018

Inspiration for your Spiritual Care Practice

Does your spiritual care practice need some fresh inspiration from time to time? Perhaps especially at mid-life and mid-career? Even chaplains can experience a slump every now and then. Maybe even a big one. Worse, they are at high risk for burn-out. Here are seven daring suggestions to help re-inspire […]
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May 20, 2018

Does being heard repair “ethical loneliness”?

What is ethical loneliness? In her book Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard, scholar Jill Stauffer looks beyond social isolation. Ethical loneliness does not come from being alone, from losing love or a loved one, or from feeling out of step with one’s surroundings. All of that is […]
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April 8, 2018

Engaging religious pluralism in hospital chaplaincy

Pluralism Hospital chaplains routinely encounter patients, families and staff of many different faiths. Each has their own spiritual and religious beliefs, needs and resources. Yet how can chaplains respond effectively to such pluralism? While remaining necessarily grounded in their own particular religious traditions, how can chaplains be of service and […]
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April 1, 2018

Seeking freedom through questions of loneliness

“I need to talk more!” My client who said this to me hadn’t had a conversation with another person in a very long time, and he feared losing his ability to speak before social isolation rendered him mute. The sound of his own voice struggling to enunciate horrified him. My […]
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March 13, 2018

*NEW BOOK COMING SOON*

https://www.jkp.com/uk/how-to-be-an-even-better-listener-1.html Listening is something we can all learn to do better. As grief psychotherapist Julia Samuel says, ‘The ability to listen well is by no means the sole preserve of professional therapists.’ Drawing on clinical examples from palliative care, as well as data from original research interviews with hospice volunteers, […]
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March 4, 2018

Books about listening

Spiritual Practice I believe that listening is a way to pay special attention to others and to provide care. It holds so much potential for each of us to connect, empathize, help, and possibly even heal others and ourselves where we hurt the most. Listening is my spiritual practice. It […]
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February 4, 2018

Clinically effective treatment for loneliness

Taking loneliness seriously. In January 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a Minister for Loneliness. In Britain, research has found that about 15% of the population, more than 9 million people, often or always feels lonely. One survey found that 360,000 socially isolated people over 65 had not had […]
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December 9, 2017

What Hitchens was trying to do (and why it matters)

Dead Authors What dead author would you most like to meet? For me, it would be Samuel Johnson. Or Plato. And, more recently deceased, Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011). Responding to this question himself in an interview he gave in 2005, Hitchens pondered first George Eliot and Nabokov. Then he named George […]
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November 23, 2017

Searching for Silence with Erling Kagge

What is silence? Where is it? How do we create it? Why is it important? These are the kinds of questions that compel Erling Kagge—Norwegian explorer, author, publisher, art collector, and father of three teenage girls. In his book released this week in English translation, Silence in the Age of […]
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October 25, 2017

Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing by Victoria Sweet

Slow Medicine In Slow Medicine: The Way of Healing, Dr. Victoria Sweet reviews her training and formation as a doctor. She talks about how she came to appreciate the space and quality of time with patients that slow medicine allows. Her book is a collection of stories about her approach […]
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October 7, 2017

On the Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal

Cardenal meets Merton In the fall of 1957, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal (1925-2020) traveled to rural Kentucky where he met Thomas Merton (1915-68) for the first time. Cardenal arrived as a novice monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani where Merton had been a Trappist monk for fifteen […]
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September 30, 2017

What those who are suffering need to hear from you

People often struggle with what to say to those who are suffering. They can struggle so much that they say things that sound really awkward and strange. Even worse, they can be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they end up saying nothing at all. That’s understandable. Reflecting […]
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September 17, 2017

On books that changed the lives of young readers

Books and readers “Once a reader finds that author and that book,” John Cole explains, “something remarkable occurs. Readers discover themselves within the pages of the book, and they begin to feel and understand.” Letters to authors Cole is the Director and Founder of the Center for the Book in […]
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September 2, 2017

Close readings of narrative medicine and spiritual care

Rita Charon Meet Rita Charon—physician, literary scholar and the Founder and Executive Director of Columbia University’s Program in Narrative Medicine. Listening Reminiscent of Gabriel Marcel’s (1889-1973) understanding of “presence” as spiritual “availability” (disponibilité), Charon (2005) described her style of listening to patients in terms of “donating the self toward the […]
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August 20, 2017

Suffering (and joy) at the Heart of the Gospel

Paul’s focus on suffering The Apostle Paul speaks often about suffering: his own suffering, Christ’s, and the suffering of Christians as Christians. It is the ground of Christianity. For Pauline scholar Ann Jervis (2007) Paul specifies this understanding in his “first gospel”—1 Thessalonians—that accepting the gospel entails acceptance of suffering. […]
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August 18, 2017

Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People, by Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Ageing:  Decline or Intensity? In a counter-punch to ageism’s ideological narrative of “inevitable decline” (e.g., Gullette 2004), Jungian analytical psychologist Florida Scott-Maxwell said in her autobiography, at age 85, “I grow more intense as I age.” Today, age critic and social activist Margaret Morganroth Gullette would celebrate Scott-Maxwell’s growing sense […]
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August 13, 2017

As a communicator are you more like Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday?

To teach communication skills to their fourth-year medical students, Dr. Paul Haidet and colleagues use jazz music. In their course called “Jazz and the Art of Medicine,” they play two recordings of the same song, “They can’t take that away from me,” sung first by Sarah Vaughan, and then by […]
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August 13, 2017

Time-saving ways to read clinical practice and transform healthcare

Bridging theory and practice is crucial to any clinician’s professional role and continuing education. However, trying to read theory and keep up-to-date with healthcare’s burgeoning research literature can be time-consuming and feel overwhelming. Moreover, taking time out of a busy clinical schedule to pause and reflect on aspects of theory […]
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August 7, 2017

How to listen to insecure attachment narratives

How a client tells her story says a lot In her clinical practice as a relational psychotherapist, Patricia DeYoung has heard a lot of stories. One of the things she has learned about listening to stories is how differently clients tell them. In her book Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame […]
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August 7, 2017

5 life lessons your garden can teach you

For Fran Sorin, “creativity is not something we do—it is something we embody.” And the best way to learn how to live creatively is by shaking off fears, indecision and perfectionism, and risk stepping into your garden and nature. My mission is to show new and experienced gardeners alike how […]
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August 2, 2017

Learning to be physically active in mid & later-life

There’s more to increasing physical activity in mid and later life than just trying to make a plan and stick to it. According to Meridith Griffin (McMaster University) it calls for a reflective process that draws upon one’s strengths of existing knowledge gained through life experience, and that addresses one’s on-going […]
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July 30, 2017

My listening video playlist

Here are a few of my favourite videos about listening. It’s Not About the Nail still makes me laugh and continues to raise lots of questions in group discussions I lead.     Brene Brown’s video on the difference between empathy and sympathy is cute and helpful. An excerpt from […]
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July 28, 2017

Living today well with St. Francis de Sales

At the end of his Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) addresses potential objections to his work that he imagines readers might have. One is that his exercises for living a devout life are unreasonably time-consuming.  My own objection would be that sometimes I feel that it’s […]
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July 24, 2017

Jean Vanier’s three essential narratives . . . and your own

Jean Vanier is the much beloved founder and beating heart of L’Arche—the non-profit, faith-based organization located in 50 countries worldwide. In L’Arche, people who have intellectual disabilities and those who come to assist them share life and daytime activities together in family-like settings that are integrated into local neighborhoods. (www.larche.ca) […]
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July 22, 2017

Sabicas’s three rules for a passionate life

I was a teenager when I had a chance to hear the legendary flamenco guitarist, Sabicas, play a concert in Toronto. Sabicas was in his mid 70s then—a diminutive old master, dressed in black tie and matching toupee, nearly blind, but his purist flamenco heart still beating hypertensive picados. In […]
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July 20, 2017

Hugging my past, and being hugged by it

Years ago in my training to become a hospital chaplain I received some advice to hug my past, and be hugged by it. I’m not sure I really knew at the time what that meant, but I never forgot it. In the past few months I finally acted on that […]
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July 19, 2017
wisdom vision emotion power

Emotional intelligence for visiting the ill

In her illness narrative, My Stroke of Insight (2008), Jill Bolte Taylor described how at age 37 she experienced a rare form of stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As a result, she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life, and it took […]
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July 15, 2017
Feeling

How John Stuart Mill got his mojo back

J. S. Mill (1806-1873) set out in his Autobiography (1873) to document not so much his life as a whole, but more specifically to provide a record of what he called his “unusual and remarkable education.” In its pages Mill described how he began to learn to read Greek at […]
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July 14, 2017

Spiritual assessment and the risk of totalitarian care

Research Research shows that hospital patients want a spiritual assessment included in their care plan. Yet spiritual assessment isn’t easy. Rather, it’s a complex and challenging task that requires a number of personal qualities of clinicians. It requires the ability to: be “present” listen understand the message beyond the words […]
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July 4, 2017

Why I’m Here

Spiritual Health Spiritual health is a key part of holistic patient-centered care. As one writer put it, Being religious or spiritual is part of who many people are—it forms the root of their identity as human beings and gives life meaning and purpose. All the more so when medical illness […]
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June 26, 2017

What does it feel like when someone really listens to you?

Good listeners are hard to find Having someone’s full attention these days is rare. It’s so rare that when researcher Caroline Webb demonstrated to a group of business executives what she calls “extreme listening,” they said that the way she was listening felt to them like she was flirting with […]
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