Converging Horizons. Allan Hugh Cole

      Converging Horizons

      Essays in Religion, Psychology, and Caregiving

      Copyright © 2015 Allan Hugh Cole Jr. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-821-1

      EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-830-6

      Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      Cole, Allan Hugh, Jr.

      Converging horizons : essays in religion, psychology, and caregiving / Allan Hugh Cole Jr.

      xvi + 162 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-821-1

      1. Pastoral care. 2. Pastoral counseling. 3. Pastoral psychology—Study and teaching. I. Title.

      BV4012 .C57 2015

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      For Donald Capps,

      teacher, colleague, friend

      converge: to come together and unite in a common interest, focus, or goal

      horizon: a range of perception or experience

      Essays in this book have appeared in other publications.

      With kind permission from Oxford University Press, USA:

      “Helping with Loss, Grief and Mourning,” ch. 12 in Church Leader’s Counseling Resource Book: A Guide to Mental Health and Social Problems,” edited by Cynthia Franklin and Rowena Fong. New York, 2011.

      “Working with Families from Religious Fundamentalist Backgrounds,” ch. 69 in School Services Sourcebook, 2nd ed.: A Guide for School-Based Professionals, edited by Cynthia Franklin, Mary Beth Harris, and Paula Allen-Meares. New York: 2011.

      With kind permission from Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., “Pastoral Theology,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, edited by Erwin Fahlbusch, et. al., 82–88. Grand Rapids: 2005.

      With kind permission from Springer Science+Business Media:

      “Male Melancholia, Identity-Loss, and Religion,” Pastoral Psychology 58:5, (2009) 531–49.

      “A Spirit in Need of Rest: Luther’s Melancholia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Religiosity,” Pastoral Psychology 48:3 (2000) 169–90.

      “What Makes Care Pastoral?,” Pastoral Psychology 59:6 (2011) 711–23.

      “The Church: In Transit and Intransigent,” Pastoral Psychology 52:1 (2003) 51–67.

      With kind permission from Westminster John Knox Press:

      “More Religious than Spiritual,” in A Spiritual Life: Perspectives from Poets, Prophets, and Preachers, edited by Allan Hugh Cole Jr., 1–11. Louisville, 2011.

      Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

      Foreword

      Christians live a narrative existence. All people do. We live by a set of stories carefully chosen from Scripture, tradition, and other sources. We often retell the history of Israel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, or the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. We imagine ourselves into those redemptive and creative stories and faithfully attempt to live into them. We also tell stories about our lives; about the joy and pain we know so intimately; about death and the sadness of broken relationships or lost dreams; about the trauma of abandonment and abuse. Being curious about one’s own story, the stories of others, and wondering how one’s story connects to the story of someone else or the stories in Scripture is a sign of maturity and certainly of excellence in leadership and caregiving.

      One narrative that Christian care providers incarnate is found in 2 Corinthians 1. This “story” comes to us as a source of hope and as an imperative. Verse 3 identifies Jesus’ Father as “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.” This God, we are told, comforts us in all our troubles, “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (NIV). It is grace to know that God is with us—God Emmanuel—in everything we experience. And what a privilege it is to be invited to be players and partners in God’s story of compassion! But also, what a challenge we face to be able to extend comfort to persons in “any trouble”! Like me, you may sometimes wonder whether this is actually humanly possible. Yet, this is the challenge a pastoral theologian or caregiver embraces to discover—that, with God’s help, it is possible.

      To exude compassion through empathic and forgiving kindness and to provide comfort through restorative conversations—the essence of soul care—is not easily accomplished. We all know that boundaries continue to shift and traditions change rapidly amidst ever-increasing personal, interpersonal, and societal violence, with the concomitant emotional and relational fallout. Responding to these shifts or changes with violence, retreating into fundamentalism, or rigidly holding on to what once was does not lead to human flourishing. Soul care, as readers will discover, encourages a different approach. Seeing the whole person, in his or her entirety, in relationship to the living God, this care is a deep need in our world and the distinctive responsibility and task of being a pastoral caregiver.

      Care providers, whether they embody compassion and comfort in congregations, schools, hospitals, or in consulting rooms and offices, and whether they are lay, ordained, or licensed, know that caregiving is a skillful art honed over time while immersed in theory, practice, and various healing, mentoring, and supervisory relationships. Converging Horizons: Essays in Religion, Psychology, and Caregiving is an important and transformational book for exactly this reason. In Allan Hugh Cole Jr. one finds a person who has practiced this art of soul care for many years and in different settings, always opening himself to being mentored and informed by theory. Moreover, he invites his readers on an exciting journey, empowering them to embrace the identity of being a pastoral theologian and a caregiver, someone who can weave together (converge) a common interest from divergent theories, knowledge, and envisioned outcomes (horizons) while facilitating healing and restoration. My own experience as a pastoral theologian and caregiver has taught me that this integrative act is difficult and requires something akin to having faith, and engaging in practices and ways of scholarship with a trust that a congruent whole, a restored person, a revitalized community, or new insights will be the result. Cole embodies such faith and those around him benefit from it. These essays also show how in one’s work, over time, common themes and conversation partners return, ever deepening and widening our practices, insights, and knowledge.

      Most readers, I imagine, will identify with Cole’s transparent disclosure that he, like many pastoral theologians, is both unconventional and temperate (or traditional), or that being a pastoral theologian in the academy, the church, or society is not always easy. He echoes fellow pastoral theologian and dean, Michael Koppel, who writes that some leaders are “misfits”—“persons [with] qualities and experiences that do not correspond to dominant perspectives” (Koppel, 2008, 3). Misfit leaders, Koppel argues, are excellent leaders. We can add that misfit caregivers and