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 your clinical practice. Adapt them to fit your own work life circumstances and experiences.

PEER INTO A PAINTING

At age 51 theologian Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) experienced a mid-career slump. Then a Rembrandt painting gave him the inspiration he needed.

He said,

A seemingly insignificant encounter with a poster presenting a detail of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son set in motion a long spiritual adventure that brought me to a new understanding of my vocation and offered me new strength to live it.

Nouwen traveled to St. Petersburg to view the original painting in the Hermitage Museum. Then he wrote about his spiritual adventure and new insights he gained in The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming.

Nouwen reminds us to continue reflecting theologically, and to take up opportunities for new experiences and insights, however they might be presented to us.

While few of us can have the freedom and means to go off on similar trips to far-flung art galleries around the world, there are still masterpieces to discover closer to home. And we can always experience art on the web these days.

One of my favorite painters is Mark Rothko. I’m intrigued by his massive canvases of color panels that draw me in and engage my emotions and spirituality.

• Do you have a favorite painting?
• What new insights does it offer you?
• What feelings does it evoke in you?
• Where might it lead you?

Rembrandt’s painting of the prodigal son prompted Nouwen to make a radical change in his life and career. From teaching at Harvard and Yale, he went on to join a L’Arche community near Toronto.

He said,

Community life has opened me up to the real spiritual combat: the struggle to keep moving toward the light precisely when the darkness is so real.

FACE YOUR FEARS

Journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse lived with fear for nearly forty years. Then he dared to face his fears in a transformative spiritual journey across the desert—the Sahara desert.

It was because I was afraid that I had decided to attempt a crossing of the great Sahara desert, from west to east, by myself and by camel.

Audacious. Truly. Yet Moorhouse managed to travel an incredible distance—about two thousand miles in all.

He crossed Mauritania, passed through Timbuktu in Mali, and he made it as far as Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria, at which point he was forced to stop. He was less than halfway to his goal of reaching the Nile in Egypt.

Before facing the journey home to England, Moorhouse rested at the hermitage of missionary Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), high in the mountains about sixty miles north of Tamanrasset.

Sitting on the floor of Foucauld’s small chapel, he made peace with himself. The inspiration of that place, in the middle of the desert, became an important reference point for him, to be used in times to come, without which he said he would have been “quite lost.”

Instead of the Sahara, fears lead others more often these days to northern Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago.

In her book, Steps Out of Time: One Woman’s Journey on the Camino, American academic Katharine Soper said,

Faced with a milestone birthday, the death of my father, an empty nest, professional uncertainty, and for the first time in my life limitations imposed by health, I suddenly felt vulnerable—acutely mortal.

Propelled by all of this I decided to leave everything behind and head for Santiago de Compostela.

What are your fears?

Is it time for you to confront them?

How will you do it?

SEARCH FOR SILENCE

Distracted by our noisy digital age?

As a young man Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge skied across Antarctica all the way to the South Pole. He went by himself, and without radio contact to call for help in an emergency.

Kagge was searching radically for silence and for himself.

He said,

The quieter I became, the more I heard.

Now in midlife, Kagge searches for silence and inspiration closer to home in Norway—in quiet moments before waking, in his daily commute, and in music, in the silences between notes, from dance music beat drops to Beethoven.

Kagge says,

The silence I’m after is the silence within.

I tend to think about silence as a practical method for uncovering answers to the intriguing puzzle that is yourself, and for helping to gain new perspective on whatever is hiding beyond the horizon.

Silence is about rediscovering, through pausing, the things that bring us joy.

His advice?

You have to find your own South Pole.

Kaage laments how silence has become such a luxury in our everyday lives and activity. For this reason you might need to afford yourself the time and cost to journey to a spiritual retreat center in your own search for silence.

READ NON-FICTION

Stuck for new ideas?

Researcher Caroline Webb recommends reading one non-fiction book per week for inspiration. It’s a great way to explore some new ideas or think about old ideas in new ways.

You might start with Webb’s own book How to Have a Good Day.

Or read Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son.

Or you could start with Bill Gates’s blog— gatesnotes.com. It’s full of great suggestions for stimulating books to read.

TRY A NEW THERAPY

Stuck in your head?

Get out of your head and into your senses with a Forest Therapy Walk. https://robertmundle.com/podcast/what-forest-therapy-feels-like-and-why-it-matters/

Stuck in conflict at work?

Build your confidence with soulful singing. https://robertmundle.com/podcast/what-soulful-singing-feels-like-and-why-it-matters/

Is your imagination stuck?

Chaplain Sande Ramage started Jungian dream analysis to learn more about herself, and to keep her imagination alive. https://robertmundle.com/podcast/what-jungian-dream-analysis-feels-like-and-why-it-matters/

Or try some Sandtray Therapy

During some personal psychotherapy a few years ago I experienced how liberating, reorienting and re-energizing Sandtray Therapy can be. It was exactly the kind of inspiration I needed most. And it came through tactile, embodied therapy that got me out of my head – or around my normal cognitive thought patterns and defenses.

As Carl Jung said,

Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain.

GO DIG IN YOUR GARDEN

Creative gardener, Fran Sorin, has a mission:

To show new and experienced gardeners alike how they can use their gardens as tools for their creative awakening.

She says,

Training ourselves to see what is possible rather than what isn’t is the very essence of creativity.

I have seen so many clients change as a result of taking risks in their gardens.

BOOST YOUR BLESSINGS

Let’s face it, even spiritual care can become routine and dull sometimes.

Caroline Webb says that if you’re bored at work, a quick way to lift your energy is to figure out ways to make your work more interesting—to find something interesting about it.

Here’s a simple experiment for you to try in your spiritual care practice.

Dare to bless others more often.

It comes from psychologist Paul Pruyser’s classic book The Minister as Diagnostician.

According to Pruyser,

If pastors would feel free and disposed to bless more often, in whatever way, they might discover also its diagnostic value.

Who will accept such blessings heartily and gratefully? Who will submit to them with compunctions, who will resist them, who will place himself cockily above them? Who will be moved to tears, who will be gladdened, who will receive, as it were, new energies for tackling his problems?

We are now much in the dark about these questions, out of misplaced timidity on both sides.

Blessing your patients more often and more intentionally might enhance the quality of your spiritual assessments and documentation, and it might also spark your spiritual care practice in general.

You might even feel more blessed in your work and life too.

What inspiration do you need?

Please let me know if these suggestions are helpful to you.

Do you have any helpful suggestions for me?

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Jung, C. (1971) The Portable Jung. New York: Viking.

Kagge, E. (2017) Silence: In the Age of Noise. Translated from the Norwegian by Beckie L. Crook. New York: Pantheon Books.

Moorhouse, G. (1974) The Fearful Void. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Publishers.

Nouwen, H. (1992) The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. New York: Doubleday.

Pruyser, P. (1976) The Minister as Diagnostician: Personal Problems in Pastoral Perspective. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press.

Soper, K. (2013) Steps Out of Time: One Woman’s Journey on the Camino. Ann Arbor: Stellaire Press.

Sorin, F. (2014). Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening. 10^th anniversary edition. Philadelphia: Braided Worlds.

Webb, C. (2017) How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life. New York: Crown.