Category / Work

by Michael

Perspective Transformation

Perspective transformation is the change to how you see something. I think a lot about perspective transformation. I am sitting with an educational theorist (Mezirow) whose theory is about the power of perspective transformation. I’ve also found reframing to be a pretty nifty pastoral skill over my years. The two are very related.

When I was getting consultation on a paper draft last month, one of the supervisors scribbled something on the page. Now, I should back up to say that when we present at this particular monthly meeting, we get immediate verbal feedback. Your work is engaged and your person is engaged. It’s great but it’s labor. You get a massive amount of constructive, careful, powerful, and pointed critique from pastors who have been therapists, educators, and chaplains for years. I can’t live without the stuff in some ways. But, again, it’s work being in the room!

I bring all my papers to the hospital the next week and flip through my friends’ comments. I imagine that I also review the event, almost writing a verbatim in my head about the presentation and the feedback in particular. Of course, the presentation comes up in my own supervision with my training supervisor as a major conversation topic.

Well, one piece of feedback on my theological theory was to consider writing it as a devotion. We had been working through the expectation of me exhibiting “mastery” (something on the grid that tells you what you need to pass essentially) and how I thought about that. The supervisor knew I wrote devotionals and he asked me how my theory would come across if I looked at it similarly. “What if you wrote this as a devotion?”

He was offering me a potential perspective transformation. He used something I could relate to and employed it in what has become a change of my view. Not all changes of view are comfortable. And they always require work. But they can be gifts. They can be good gifts.

by Michael

Given the History of Misunderstandings

Friday I read an article about the President-elect’s conversations with world leaders and how they were, consistent with his earlier manner, clear departures from the way diplomatic leaders and ambassadors think he should participate in such conversations.

Mark Landler’s NYT article quoted a former Pakistani ambassador who said that in his country history and details matter most. He said that his country and our country has between them many misread signals. I thought: given the “history of misunderstandings” some conversations need more than a leader’s reactivity.

I don’t know that the President-elect’s conversation was reactive. But I do know that some conversations require patience and consideration. In other words, a considered approach is a more thorough one given the history between your conversation partners. Wisdom seems to be in knowing which conversations require us to dispense with history and tradition and which require pronounced appreciation for them.

In which relationships do I need to pay attention to what’s happened before? I think most relationships call for that. I can’t think of any situation where knowing and respecting what happened before you arrived at the next seminal isn’t important. Then, you choose according to your wisdom.

by Michael

My Blog: Trauma 2

The quickest responders are the ones who count. That’s what I usually say to myself.

Those are the medical personnel. Together, the team is between 15-20 people: physicians and nurses and respiratory techs. Security and a chaplain and a hospital administrator. We rush within minutes from all quarters in the hospital.

The medical folks address the medical crisis. They attempt to stabilize the patient all while deciding if and where the patient will be moved to a different unit in the hospital.

That could mean transporting someone from the lobby to the Emergency Department. It could mean a patient, once stabilized, is taken from a medical floor to one of the intensive care units. In most cases, movement for the patient is presumed. Even if it takes time to accomplish.

Chaplains come with the primary focus on the family in order to support anyone present who may be with the patient and with a secondary concern for our care providers. Watching trauma unfold is its own participation in trauma.

Participating in trauma does things to people. It anchors you and disrupts you. Both happen. In a trauma, someone else’s and your own, the world that you knew flips.

Time changes. People move quickly and they don’t move quickly enough. The room is noisy and the floor cluttered with needle caps and clothes and ripped packages that once held tubes and lines and other medical implements.

It is an essentially upsetting, unsettling, and uprooting experience. Have you experienced something like this? Perhaps not a medical crisis but another version of trauma? What’s helped?

by Michael

My Blog: Rested

I was reading KevinMD, a physician’s newsletter, that comes to my inbox. It’s a regular list of interesting articles discussing the ways physicians and care providers practice.

Among the recent posts was one about sleep deprivation and how necessary a culture shift is for doctors, those in training and those teaching. It made the point that working up to 100-hour weeks is unhealthy. Sleep is a medical necessity.

This is something I’ve wondered about with the healthcare professionals I’ve served as a pastor. Further, they and the blog have me thinking about what’s necessary for me to get rest, what’s necessary to my feeling rested, and what by virtue of my choices exhausts me.

Perhaps good posts like those on KevinMD’s blog will get us to thinking about how to support our care providers and how to live healthy lives.

by Michael

My Blog: Sparkling Eyes

When I heard your explanation of your new position, it made me leap inside my heart. I can see you being a chaplain over there, seeing your patients, pushing the borders of your pastoral identity. I could see you praying and preaching and leading.

Your eyes sparkled as you spoke. I noticed it even though I kept my listening face. I guarded the treasure of your brightened countenance. I thought of the other residents and students in our CPE program. I thought of my chaplain colleagues and the pastors I know who are open to call. I saw them and the fulfillment of their hopes in your sparkling eyes.

You weren’t entirely happy with everything–and who’d expect that given your description of the social climate of the place–but you possessed a vision of what could be. That’s what came through your speech, through your eyes.

The vision of your next days, the long moments with others where you’d have an impact, where you’d do some more good in the world. Good for you. Good for them. Good for us.