Tag / Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly

by Michael

Advent Post #11

“Even Elizabeth…” (Luke 1:36)

The angel told Mary that her prophecy included her kinswoman, her relative. Isn’t that wonderful? God’s grand messages to us are never, solely, for us. They are for others. As much as they are about us, they are about others. They spread the miracle-working strength of God.

In this case, Elizabeth was advanced in years. Elizabeth wasn’t expecting to get pregnant. Like Sarah in Genesis, Elizabeth was old. I have teachers who wouldn’t let me call them that. One of my teachers said quite loudly to our peer group, “I am a senior!” There are people who have trouble with “old.” Bad connotations come with that word.

We discard old things. We replace them. We forget them. We prefer younger, newer, bolder, anything other than old. There are good reasons to be bothered by the word.

And then I have friends who I met through Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly who would gladly be called old. When I consider some of those friends, they would be thankful to be called anything by a person who cared for them, someone who was showing up regularly to listen to and talk with them like plain people. I am stretching it a bit, of course, to make the point. But when a person is alone and isolated, calling them old may be complimentary if you’re sticking around to hear their comeback.

In a way, my friends are like Elizabeth. They are the people who no longer expect God to act in them. They are so untreated and mistreated by society, that they believe God does them the way we do. They are resigned, withdrawn, and, many of them, hopeless because the world around them has “forced them out,” made no place for them, moved by them, and cared less for them.

We mistreat people who are old. We think little of them, and I hear Elizabeth’s blessing of bearing fruit as a reminder to remember that “people are people.” …Whether they bear another child, work another job, do something you and I think are contributions to current society or not.

Can you see Gabriel’s words not so much as a comfort to Elizabeth because she could do what everyone younger than her could but as a challenge to fix our thinking around the inestimable quality residing in people who have lived long lives?

They are senior leaders, senior members of the human community. Even if they “bear no more” or “produce nothing else,” can we not speak to them graciously, listen to them tenderly, serve them generously, and love them as we love ourselves? May these better acts be true of us.

We might be changed. We may learn to treat everybody that they matter, essentially, no matter what they do, what they produce, what they accomplish. And what a gracious world that would be. If only we could treat each other, no matter our ages, that we are loved and that we are important just because we’re here.

by Michael

Why Pastors Should Take CPE (1 of 2)

I’ve been writing this post in my head for more than a year. That doesn’t mean it’s good as much as it’s something I’ve been mulling over for a while.  I’m taking a series of units of clinical pastoral education (CPE) at a Chicago hospital.  I took a unit last year at a different site, Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly. And my thoughts are coming out of those experiences as well as loving theft of smarter people who’ve said things about the same.

Here are some random thoughts about the early reasons to take a unit in CPE. My next post will comment on the content and group work in ways that keep the right confidences:

The requirements are minimal. You do need a theological background, so you have to be friends with graduate theological education. But if you’re in the work of that or if it’s behind or under you, the steps to enrolling in CPE are doable. Getting in tends to be an extremely hospitable process, one where you are lovingly and graciously asked significant questions that will in themselves be an education.

The requirements aren’t minimal. In a sense, just by going through the application process, you know that people around the table, in your peer group, have taken the decision to attend very seriously. It takes recommendations and essays and answers to fairly deep questions to get an interview for a site. But you know that everyone has answered, or been pushed to answer, the same strong questions.  Once you start serving in your site and doing group work, you’ve joined a group of people who are generally good at making and staying with commitments.

CPE is a continuing education. Most people are familiar with CPE as part of a seminary education, but because I was working at a church during seminary, I didn’t take a unit in CPE. I didn’t have the time. The beauty of CPE is that you can take it at any point. And pastors need structured continuing education in theological reflection, in pastoral arts, and in group dynamics. The education provides for those.

Choosing gets easier. You have to choose your site, where you want to “do your unit,” where you want to learn. Part of that choice is in your experience of the interview with the potential group leader/clinical supervisor. This person will become either a very poor influence in your life over the months you’re learning or someone you “esteem among rubies.” In my case, my clinical supervisor was a critical reason I kept going forward to get more units. Her way and expertise with teaching us and me were outstanding. You should pray to have a supervisor like Sister Barbara at Urban CPE.

Praying gets harder. If you’re lucky, you’ll sit in a group with people as different from you as a new morning. That alone might shock you into transformation, growth, and learning. All of you being ministers, all of you won’t come from the same ministerial background. Welcome that for what it’ll do to how you approach God. You should find yourself using a broader range of words for God, expanding beyond your well-crafted experience of God, and, thereby, deepening in the way you’ve created that range and that craft. But praying may take longer. You’ll integrate yourself in prayer, listen to feelings and how they make their own prayers, and you’ll be heard differently as you pray for others in the intimate homes of people unfamiliar with your way of doing ministry. You may become a bit more humble.

We need feedback. As a pastor, I spend time telling people what I think, and I spend time helping people reflect on what they think. I needed an education that would come alongside me post-seminary which would enable me to regularly reflect on my practice of ministry and, as importantly, give me feedback. My experience of the pastoral care part of leadership is that you don’t get feedback normally.  Building a vehicle for it was important. Once you go through a group or two, you expect feedback, learn how to hear people, and learn what it feels like to be heard.

Supervision is a gift. Clinical supervision is a weekly meeting with your supervisor, a pastoral educator who has had–by the time they sit with you–years of post-seminary training in listening, group work, paper writing, grief, chaplaincy, and teaching. She’s been to therapy in order to sit with you. He’s been through what you’ve been through at least half a dozen times. So, when you close the door of your meeting room and talk about what you’re learning as you serve in your clinical area, you’re receiving something precious.

The education is somewhat tailored. You develop your goals for CPE. There are common outcomes because the education is accredited through the ACPE. There are standards to meet, but you determine how and whether you meet them. The grading is first very interior because the focus, from application to post-unit evaluation, is on you and what you need. My interview at Northwestern was an inviting time of discernment last summer. The first question they asked me was, “What do you need from us today?” Blew me away.

Pastors doing process notes change. Ministers do a lot and we could even do more than we think. In other words, we could do what we do and not think. Process notes are an essential part of CPE where you write weekly reflections to 5-6 questions. You write out of your experience at your site, thinking through what you’re doing, interrogating your experience. Over time, you read your notes, see your growth, and you change. You add the language of the noted question to yourself and begin to monitor whether an interaction is illuminating. If your supervisor comments on your notes, it’s increases the amount of wisdom you’re gaining.

We start asking better questions. On my current process notes template, our supervisor has this question, “Where did you meet God this week?” Can you imagine answering that weekly for yourself? Before you lead a meeting or close the study door or leave for your Sabbath or give a benediction or counsel someone, knowing that that question is waiting for you is framing and powerful and internally shaping. When we asked good questions, it turns us into good questioners.

by Michael

Singing with Brother Tom

When we first met, he seemed to be a stiff, jovial man.  The stiffness was only in his movements and not his heart.  He kept a full, broad smile on his face, wore glasses and a gray beard, and I could tell early on that he had jokes I wouldn’t understand.  Jokes, perhaps, I’d laugh at later.

I was told to call him Brother Tom because that was his preference.  We would get along because I could relate to his Christian faith, to the songs he sang, to the scriptures he went on and on about.  All those markers would be little pieces of Brother Tom’s deep faith.  He had an abiding song for his God.

On several occasions when I was with him, he had me pull his CD player to his side so he could play Gaither gospel, music I didn’t enjoy but lyrics I could follow.  The tunes’ texts were so familiar that I could follow them, even if I had to close my ears to their sounds.  Looking at Brother Tom’s face as he sang–closed eyes, his deep throat open–I’d think back to rehearsals with the Soul Children of Chicago when we would sing with all our selves.  I’d think about my days at church singing in the choir.  And I would join Brother Tom.  Sometimes.

We talked about the Bible.  We spoke of theology.  He always asked about my ministry and my leadership.  He wanted to talk about his writings, and I wanted to hear about his life.  Sometimes it felt like our conversations were dull in the sense that they were aimless, almost lazy.  But there was something building, an intimacy I wouldn’t know until my internship and time with him was ending.  Still, with all those important words shared between us, it was his music that marked our time.

He would sing in the middle of a conversation, offering a public display of affection, even next to sleepy residents in St. Paul’s house.  I didn’t want to wake up his fellow residents.  But he didn’t mind it.  He would simply sing.  Loud and never quietly, he’d open his throat as if God was before him, waiting and encouraging him to sing louder.

Donny Hathaway, a singer I’m sure Brother Tom was unfamiliar with, sang that “for all we know tomorrow may never come.”  But the faith residing in the deep bottoms of my old friend, old because he’d seen so many days with God and with people, old because he’d experienced plain loneliness and gripping isolation, old because he was aged by grace and suffering and illness, that faith had a different lyric.  In some ways, Tom Lopresti sang because he believed he would see a tomorrow.

On the first day of the week, when he died, Brother Tom’s voice joined another melodious chorale.  He wouldn’t sing along.  He would join the sounds of the stars and the unseen vocalists from all eternity.  In death, he would start a new chorus, hardly ending his lovely baritone rendition of thankfulness.  He would keep singing, even if I’d never hear him again.  Perhaps this time he’d open his eyes, but Brother Tom would sing.  For sure he would.