Reinventing the wheel -- the power of story

Right before Shabbat on Friday, I put up a post where I mentioned an excellent lecture I attended on Friday.

The lecturer there wonderfully expressed something that has been of a burning concern for me for some time now. He was talking about the issue of spirituality in medicine and about the explosion in recent years of writings and conversation about it. He noted that almost all of this writing and conversation has been by medical personnel -- doctors and nurses -- and _not_ by chaplains. Further, in making their definitions of spirituality, these doctors and nurses almost _never_ cite the works of theologians. Rather, they make up their definitions simply out of their own experience or by citing the works of other doctors writing about spirituality.

"We need to be intentional about being part of this conversation if we want to be part of it," the lecturer said.

I couldn't agree more. We, in the Clinical Pastoral Education movement, in particular, are not doing enough to let people know about the work we are doing. I believe that it is we who are the great experts on Spirituality in Healthcare and on how to bring Spiritual Care to people (and, especially, in how to train people to properly bring Spiritual Care). But, it seems to me that -- in fact -- we are only rarely seen that way by people outside our discipline. . . . . And, ultimately, I think this is our fault. We are not getting the word out about what we know and have learned. . . . Especially about the (excellent) training techniques we have devised to help people develop the ability to be present for a suffering person. . . . Especially about the training techniques we have developed to help people develop excellent listening skills and the ability to use those to help patients to tell their stories and to thus both feel heard and find profound healing. . . . And so, others are reinventing the proverbial wheel that we could have instead been helping them with.

I first wrote about this in a posting I put on the National Assocation of Jewish Chaplains mailing list in June. I was at a conference in New York on Illness and Loss that was put on by the Shira Ruskay Center (among other Jewish organizations). The keynote speaker, a physician by the name of Joan Borysenko, gave a presentation on "Spirituality and Healing". At the end, she gave a plug for a Spiritual Direction program she is helping set up . A key question in trying to formulate that program, she said, is trying to find out if there are ways you can "teach presence."

I felt like jumping out of my chair and shouting: "Teaching people how to be _present_ for ill people? That's what we've been doing in CPE for decades!!! Of course, you can teach presence!"

I did not, in fact, jump out of my chair. But I went up and spoke to her afterward, and asked her, What about Clinical Pastoral Education? Do you think we in CPE are not succeeding in teaching people how to develop the ability to be present?"

Her response: "Clinical Pastoral Education? What's that?"

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I thought again about some of these issues last Tuesday when I was at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg for a "CPE Day" that was being held there. I participated in a round table discussion led by Leonard Hummel, the associate professor in Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, PA. I learned there for the first time about Dr. Rita Charon and the Narrative Medicine program she has developed at Columbia University (check out this NPR report for a great intro to this).

The keystone of her approach is to ask medical students to keep "Parallel Charts" on their patients. These are in addition to the normal medical chart that is normally kept on each hospital patient. In the parallel chart, the students write a "narrative" describing their experiences with the patients and their understanding of the story the patient tells them. By writing reflectively there, Charon writes in one article , the physician learns to "more accurately understand what their patients go through and also what they themselves endure in the care of the sick."

Sound familiar? If you have had any experience in CPE it should. It sounds like the whole process of verbatim writing and presentation that we developed nearly 100 years ago now.

In the same article, Charon also writes:

What narrative medicine offers that the others may not be in a position to offer is a disciplined and deep set of conceptual frameworks -- mostly from literary studies, and especially from narratology -- that give us theoretical means to understand whyhow
acts of doctoring are not unlike acts of reading, interpreting, and writing and such things as reading fiction and writing ordinary narrative prose about our patients help to make us better doctors.

Wow, studying a patient's story with the same tools you would study a text. If that doesn't sound like the Anton Boisen's "living human document" I don't know what does! [Boisen was the founder of CPE. He introduced the concept of viewing each patient as a 'living human document,' who could be respected, valued and learned from. Essentially, he asked that the chaplain view each person as a source of the Holy and the source of learning, just as we might view a biblical verse as a source of the Holy and a source of wisdom. This concept of a living human document sits at the core of Clinical Pastoral Education.]

At the seminary in Gettysburg, Professor Hummel talked about a "five minute protocol" for doctors to interview patients about their lives and that this commitment of such a short period of time had yielded great gains for patients. . . . Looking at my notes, I can't recall whether that protocol is Charon's or if it is in a book I'm excited about seeing (we ordered it at the hospital). It's called Spiritual Transformation and Healing: Anthropological, Theological, Neuroscientific, and Clinical Perspectives. Professor Hummel co-wrote a chapter in there.

Here is part of what the publisher's blurb says about it:

Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Philip Hefner's new volume is unique in exploring the meaning of spiritual transformation and healing with new research from a scientific perspective. An intedisciplinary group of contributors-anthropological, psychological, medical, theological, and biological scientists-investigate the role of religious communities and healing practitioners, with spiritual transformation as their medium of healing. Individual authors evaluate the meaning of spiritual transformations and the consequences for those who experience it . . . .

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In reading about Narrative Medicine, I was reminded also of a great lecture I heard at the hospital here late last month by Dr. Ira Byock, an expert on Palliative Care who heads up the palliative care program at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Residents and other doctors at the hospital were extremely interested in talking with him at a small group session after the lecture. One doctor described to him a case about a young woman with a serious cancer who was very concerned about trying to maintain her physical appearance.

After the doctor described the case along with an extensive description of the patient's symptoms and the treatments offered, Byock responded, "you haven't told me very much about her as a person." He added that her suffering was likely not only from the afflicted body parts, but was from something broader.

He also talked about the importance of someone listening to the patient and hearing her story. He said that the problem that blocks this process is that patients are visited by members of the medical care team who "make people uncomfortable because they have their own agenda . . . and checklists that can block the forming of relationship. . . It is ultimately about being fully present."

All I can say is, "Amen, brother." This is what I believe CPE has always been about. About advocating for the medical care team to treat a patient as a person. About learning how to put our agendas aside when we enter a room so we can be fully present and open to forming a relationship with the patient. These are very hard things to learn how to do. We spend a great deal of time and energy in CPE helping people to build these important skills.

The questions is, as one of the doctors asked Byock at the session, why have doctors become the ones who are in charge of this? Why are doctors becoming the experts on spirituality with patients, and with issues relating to how patients can best deal with their own deaths? Haven't people had cultural ways of dealing with this through the ages? Why are doctors getting so involved in this now?

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Of course, I have to admit that I very much like the work of some of these doctors! One book I bought not long ago that I really liked was Communication Skills That Heal: A Practical Approach to a New Professionalism in Medicine by Dr. Barry Bub. He makes a very compelling case that a commitment of only five minutes or so by a physician to learn about a patient can make a world of difference.

What I especially like about Bub is how seriously he takes the issue of listening. Most people think listening is the easiest thing you could do -- you just sit there and listen!

But, as Bub points out, psychotherapists and chaplains go through extensive training to develop their listening skills. This is for a reason. Listening well is actually quite difficult. But, it can also be learned.

Bub -- and I really admire him for this -- went and got himself training both in the therapy field and in the chaplaincy field. I believe he did a unit of CPE at the Healthcare Chaplaincy in New York.

Another doctor who has written on these issues (and done quite well selling her books!) is Rachel Remen. Besides spending a few minutes with one of her books in a bookstore once, I haven't had a chance to read her stuff. But, she writes in the form of stories -- very short narratives -- in her Kitchen Table Wisdom -- Stories that Heal.

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I've only started to think about these issues. I'm not sure where it's leading me. . . . . But it seems important!! :)

The parapet

A good friend told me that my posting on dangers of Tylenol didn't seem to fit in with what this blog is all about.

That, of course, raises the important question of just what this blog is about. When I started it , I said that I expected the exact shape of it to arise as a work in progress as it went on. Clearly, Torah (along with chaplaincy and chaplaincy education) has become a central concern of the blog as it has developed over (just the) last few weeks. That reminds me of what one of my teachers in rabbinical school , Rabbi Ed Feinstein, taught us: everything that comes out of your mouth [or into a blog!!] as a rabbi is rabbinic speech. And you thus need to judge everything you say to others by the standards of rabbinic speech.

What then is rabbinic speech? Well, one of Rabbi Feinstein's requirements is that it "has a text." Specifically, a Holy text from the Jewish tradition.

Now, I have to admit that hardly everything that comes out of my mouth has a holy text in it!! . . . But Rabbi's Feintein's point has much validity. I probably need to consider everything I post on this blog to be rabbinic speech. And that, therefore, everything should have a text -- or some other kind of Torah -- associated with it.

So, I think my friend was very right. The Tylenol posting didn't fit on this blog. Not that the subject didn't fit -- in the spirit of אף עד כאן , I would say that a concern about something that causes people hurt and pain (a concern raised by my Tylenol post, for example) certainly is Torah and belongs on this blog. But there needs to be something that marks it more specifically as Torah.

So, the most obvious text that fits with my concern about Tylenol is definitely the parapet (Deut. 22:8):

כִּי תִבְנֶה בַּיִת חָדָשׁ, וְעָשִׂיתָ מַעֲקֶה לְגַגֶּךָ; וְלֹא-תָשִׂים דָּמִים בְּבֵיתֶךָ, כִּי-יִפֹּל הַנֹּפֵל מִמֶּנּוּ.

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof. So that you will not bring down blood upon your house when someone fell from it.

A parapet is a low wall that would keep someone from falling from the roof.

I need to take a little aside here to say something about the nature of Judaism . . . and why I love it so much. And how it is truly fundamentally different than (our sibling faith) Christianity. . . . . because this very text is just the kind of text that Christianty turned its back on (when it made it's New Testament, or new covenant/ברית with God) . . . and it's just the kind of text that makes me love my faith tradition so much. . . It's just the kind of text that is in the spirit of the words of Rabbi Akiva's students -- even this far? Even this far, our master? Does Torah -- and its daily and sometimes mundane laws and commandments -- extend even this far?

The answer, both I and Akiva say, is "yes". Yes, even this far . Torah goes everywhere. Even into how you build your roof. We Jews have kept the law. We are proud to remain a faith of law and not one that is belief and love-centered like Christianity is. Like (our other sibling faith) Islam, we value law and obedience as well. Proudly.

The parapet verse comes from one of the weekly Torah readings -- parshat Ki Teitzei (Deut. 21:10-25:19). While Christians seem to hold that the 10 Commandments is the main lawgiving in the bible, we Jews stick with the much more detailed lawgivings of this parsha and the one other great lawgiving in the Torah -- and the one that comes _after_ the 10 Commandments -- parshat Mishpatim (Ex. 21:1-24:18).

These two parshas contain laws on some of the most mundane things, especially about business dealings. Chapter 22 -- in which our verse is found -- starts out with the seemingly mundane commands to return to your fellow things that they have lost and even to go out of your way to go after their livestock should you see them wandering away.

American law -- with its obsession with individual rights -- almost never requires one to go out of one's way to prevent another's economic loss; if you see someone's barn burning down, you have zero obligation under American law to even call the fire department.

We Americans, however, do seem to be slowly, yet surely, starting to see the wisdom of an obligation to go out of one's way to prevent another's physical injury as Jewish law has since the time of our verse about the parapet. Our ancestors knew that we had to be required to do things to prevent physical injury -- the spilling of blood -- of others. Thus, the requirement to build the parapet.

We in America, however, don't seem to have fully understood this ancient wisdom. We are still -- again with our obsession with individual rights -- reluctant to legally require anything of anybody. We prefer to use the threat of lawsuits to encourage people to take steps to prevent physical injury on their property. It's an ugly and expensive system that fails to distribute justice equally. Some injured people receive nothing to compensate them, while others receive windfall amounts. Some property owners are influenced by this to create adequate safety conditions on their property. Others do nothing. Nobody wins.

One of those property owners who do not seem to see the wisdom of the ancients are the manufacturers of Tylenol. They have a drug that needs a parapet. It's not that Tylenol should be taken off the market -- anymore than people should be banned from building roofs. It's that it's too easy with Tylenol for someone to slip off and accidentally injure -- or kill -- themselves. The articles I cited show that between 20 and 25% of all liver failure cases in America are from accidental overdoses of Tylenol. Accidental.

This is a drug that hardly anyone is aware is dangerous at all. People think it's as safe as aspirin. It's not. It's incredibly easy to accidentally overdose. The manufacturers of Tylenol need to finally admit that and -- in partnership with government -- come up with a way of preventing these deaths.

The Torah says they have to.

When the evil prosper (Avot 1:7)

נתאי הארבלי אומר הרחק משכן רע. ואל תתחבר לרשע. ואל תתיאש מן הפורענות

Natai of Arbeil says, distance yourself from an evil neighbor. And don’t ally yourself with an evil person. And don’t despair of punishment.

One of the greatest challenges to our faith in God is to see the evil prosper. Our Mishnah instructs us to be patient: Don’t despair if you don’t see the evil punished. Have faith that their time will come.

The Mishnah also instructs us to focus on the things that we can control. We cannot make justice for the entire world. But we can fight evil in our own corner of it. We can refuse to ally ourselves with evil people. We can distance ourselves from them.

If all of us were to find the strength not to despair in the face of the evil prospering, and the strength to distance ourselves from evil people – even when we think that being in alliance with them might be to our gain – then the world, corner-by-corner, would become a place where evil could find no purchase.

May your corner of the world be a place of peace and justice, today.

A hero's day

יום ראשון כ''א בחשון תשס''ז

Today is the yahrtzeit of Hannah Senesh, who was an inspirtation to Jews the world over for her heroic efforts to save her fellow Jews from the Nazi geonocide.

Here is some of what the wikipedia article had to say about her:

Hannah Szenes (or Chana Senesh) (July 17, 1921 — November 7, 1944) was a Hungarian Jew, one of 17 Jews living in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel, who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during the Second World War in order to help save the Jews of Hungary, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz. Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission, and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where streets are named after her and her poetry is widely known.

May we all be privileged enough to know a small piece of the courage Hannah showed in defending her people.

What makes a chaplain?

That is, what makes a chaplain _different_ from a psychotherapist? We both mostly work with people by _talking_ with them and one of our main skill sets is listening (not as simple or easy as it sounds!!).

These questions are often on our minds as chaplains. One answer I heard from a colleague this week was that the difference is that a chaplain also acts as a representative of God while offering support to the patient (or family).

This raised an interesting question, however – does the person have to know the chaplain is a chaplain from the beginning of the encounter for this to be in effect? This is a very live question for us here at my hospital as we often work with families coming into our Emergency Department _without_ identifying ourselves as chaplains. Often, only after we work with them for a while do family members find out we are chaplains (we don’t identify ourselves as chaplains right away because we don’t want to unnecessarily frighten them; they might think a chaplain was called only because their loved one was dying).

I had another idea, today, about what makes the distinction. I was at an excellent lecture today on Theological Reflection. The teacher listed on the board the “Big Questions” that people might ask themselves. We listed things like: What is death? Where do I go after I die? Why does there have to be suffering? Why is God letting it hurt? What is the place of Evil in the world? Can we trust God? Does God exist? What is the meaning of my life?

While these questions might come up in a psychotherapy session, I think they are only rarely the focus of the discussion. For us chaplains, however, talking with people about these kind of _ultimate_ questions is the bread and butter of what we do.

You’ll notice that some of above questions have “God” in them, but certainly not all. You can have “Big Questions” about life and the universe and existence without any belief in God.

It strikes me then that we sometimes _overuse_ the word “Theological”. Why do we call it Theological Reflection when we look for questions of ultimate meaning in experiences we have with patients and others? The “Theo” part of the word means “God”. But God doesn’t have to be part of the conversation that comes from a Theological Reflection. Shouldn’t we call it something else then? Spiritual Reflection?

Today’s lecture was only the first of five on the topic of Theological Reflection so I’ll have plenty of opportunity to continue to reflect on these questions in the coming days and months.

Shabbat Shalom!!!

End of fall

Last Friday when I drove from Reading to the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the leaves were spectacular along the PA turnpike. Today, most of the leaves were down as I made the same drive.

Still, it's quite a beautiful day. . . The beauty of winter is right around the corner. :)

More dangerous than metal fragments

יום שישי י''ט בחשון תשס''ז

Tylenol (or, more accurately, acetaminophen, which is the generic name for the drug most commonly known as Tylenol) is back in the news.

The AP reports that a massive recall is underway because of possible metal fragments in pills sold under store brands by Wal-Mart, CVS, Safeway and many other major retailers.

No deaths or injuries have been reported (at least not yet) due to this contaminant. But you can't say the same about what's supposed to be in the pills -- acetaminophen, itself. The dirty little secret about acetaminophen is that thousands of people are injured or killed every year from accidentally overdosing on this over-the-counter medicine that can be found in everything from cough syrup to prescription pain killers (anything, like Percocet, that has -cet at the end, has acetaminophen in it).

The problem with acetaminophen is that, unlike aspirin for example, the amount that can seriously harm you is not all that much greater than the recommended dosage. This article says that 42% of the new cases at liver centers are due to acetaminophen overdoses. About half those cases were accidental overdoses, not suicide attempts.

Here is the conclusion of an academic article cited on the wikipedia acetaminophen article:

[Acetaminophen] is a commonly used, moderately effective analgesic and antipyretic. In overdose it causes significant morbidity and mortality. The burden to health care services is considerable, with a high financial cost and many hospital admissions. According to the Medicines Control Agency Medicines Act Leaflet (MAL 82, March 1996), which gives guidance on changing the legal classification of a medicine to the General Sale List, a criterion for inclusion on the General Sale List is: ‘where the hazard to health, the risk of misuse, ... is small and where wider sale would be a convenience to the purchaser’. It is surprising that [acetaminophen] is available on the General Sale List, as it appears to fail this criterion for an OTC medication. [Emphasis mine]

Bottom line -- there is very real public health threat here, and something needs to be done. I hope the metal fragments stories will raise people's consciousness about the real risks of this medicine.

Teaching the judging (Avot 1:6)

I want to comment a bit more on yesterday’s Mishnah. Like almost all of the Mishnahs in Avot, yesterday’s Mishnah has three sayings within it:

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1. <>Make for yourself a Rav.
   
2. <>And acquire for yourself a colleague.
   
3. <>And judge everyone towards the positive.

We generally understand this Mishnah as being about Torah study. It is interesting then, that the last part of it is about something that we do not usually associate with teaching or learning – it talks about judging.

There’s nothing accidental about this. In the world of the ancient Rabbis, their greatest leaders were great for being great teachers and for being great judges. People, including their students, came before them looking for answers to their questions. To find out what the law instructed them to do. Even for settling disputes between parties.

The Rabbis believed that – in making themselves teachers and judges – they were following in the footsteps of God. That is, when they thought of God, they also thought of a teacher and they also thought of a judge.

For the Rabbis, then, God was the ultimate Rav – the ultimate teacher. The Torah was the gerat Instruction that this ultimate teacher had given them. In associating themselves – and the the Jewish people – with God, the Rabbis had made for themselves the Rav that the Mishnah instructs us to find.

The way of studying the great Instruction that their teacher had give them is found in the second part of the Mishnah – to study with a haver, with a colleague.

For me, this blog – and anybody reading it – functions as a kind of haver, a partner to help me in my encounter with our Holy Torah. The blog makes for me a place to offer my Torah in partnership with others. It's been a great help to me.

May you find a haver in your life, and may that haver strengthen your link to the Holy Instruction that God has given us.

Walking with God III (Parshat VaYeirah)

This week’s parsha begins with the most central of all texts in the Torah for pastoral care – the appearance of God to Avraham at the Oaks of Mamre.

And HaShem appeared to him by the Oaks of Mamre. And he was sitting in the tent door during the heat of the day. (Gen. 18:1)

The Talmud asks, why does it say the heat of the day? It answers, that “the heat of the day” informs us that this was the third day after Avraham’s circumcision and that God came to visit with the suffering Avraham and ask after his health. (Bava Metzia 86b)

Elsewhere (Sotah 14a), the Talmud adds that this text teaches us that we should visit the sick, just as God visited Avraham in his illness at the Oaks of Mamre. We need to follow God's example, the Talmud says.

The verse also teaches us something important about how we should carry out this command to visit the sick. As the Hezkoni points out, this is the only place in the Torah where the word וירא/VaYeirah (and [God] appeared) occurs where God doesn’t say anything afterwards (like with Moses at the Burning Bush). There is a great lesson for us here – just as God comforted the ill without saying anything, so too we can comfort the ill in silence, with our mere presence.

That is not to say that we should not talk with an ill person when we visit them. But, too often we feel crippled – sometimes so much so that we are afraid to visit the sick person at all – by feeling an obligation to speak. We think if only we had the right words we can help or heal a person. The silence of God in this verse frees us from feeling this crippling obligation. It lets us know that our mere presence is more than enough.

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The Midrash (which Rashi cites) further connects our verse to the need to not only visit the sick, but to care for all the needy and unfortunate.

What does it mean that Avraham was “sitting”, asks the Midrash? It answers, God told Avraham to sit, while God remained standing, as a sign to Avraham that one day God would stand in judgment over the world while Avraham's descendents had the privilege of sitting.

The Midrash finds this image of God standing in judgment in Psalm 82, which begins, "God stands in God's congregation; among the judges, God judges."

The Psalm continues:

Save the poor and the needy; from the hands of the wicked, rescue them. (Psalm 82:2)

But the Psalmist is not addressing these words to us. They are part of a plea to God to act as judge, to – as the final line of the Psalm says – rise (kuma/קומה) and judge the Earth. Bring justice. Let not the evil prosper.

In my work in the hospital, in the prayers I offer to the ill and to their families, a central piece of my plea is indeed kuma – a plea for God to rise. To rise and be with us as in the days of old. To bring comfort and peace and justice. Be with us as you were for Avraham. As you were for Yitzhak and Yaakov. Be with us as you were for King David. Do not forget us.

What can give such a prayer such power for me is that it is not just for me. It is not just for the patient. . . . In those incredible moments when true intention rises in my heart and tears come to my eyes, the cry for God to rise is indeed for me. And it is indeed for the patient. And it is also very much for the world as a whole. For all people. In that moment, a link happens. We are not alone. We are all linked together. And to what is eternal.

This is what the pastoral care we are commanded to do in this first verse of our parsha is all about. When we visit the sick – when we follow the commandment of bikur holim/ביקור חולים – we are not merely serving the ill person in the room. We are affecting the whole world. We are pleading with God for justice and for peace, for the dream we are promised of a world of wholeness and peace. And we are doing much more than just pleading for it. We are making it true. We are walking in the ways of God.

May your week be one of peace. And one of justice.

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One element of the Jewish calendar is the weekly Torah reading, or parsha. This coming Shabbat's reading is Va-Yeirah, Gen. 18:1-22:24. The parsha begins with God’s promise of a son – Yitzhak – to the aging Sarah and Avraham, and ends with the birth of Rebecca, the woman who would become their son’s wife and whose progeny would continue the line of the Jewish people. The parsha also contains two of the most dramatic and challenging accounts of God’s judgment – the story of Soddom and Gomorrah and of the story of the Akeidah, or binding of Yitzhak. And it is here in this parsha that the story of the Jewish and the story of the Arabic people diverge when Yishmael is expelled from Avraham’s house at Sarah’s demand.

Finding a Rav (Avot 1:6)

יהושע בן פרחיה ונתאי הארבלי קבלו מהם. יהושע בן פרחיה אומר עשה לך רב. וקנה לך חבר. והוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות

Yehoshua ben P-rahya and Natai of Arbeil received it [the Torah] from them. Yehoshua ben P-rahya says, make for yourself a Rav. And acquire for yourself a colleague. And judge everyone towards the positive.

One thing that distinguishes Judaism from the other great monotheistic faiths, is its emphasis on learning. In the synagogue in which I was raised, we only seldom had the kind of discussions about God that were happening in the Churches around us. We talked about Torah. About what Torah meant to us. About what it instructed us about how to live our lives. About the ethics and values it instructed us to follow.

Today’s Mishnah includes one of the most famous sayings in Judaism about Torah study. It says that you should find a Rav, or Master, to teach you.

It then goes on to say you should also find a haver/חבר, which I have translated here as colleague. Many people choose instead to translate it as ‘friend’. Some also translate this statement as a continuation of the first, in effect saying it means, “If you find for yourself a teacher you will also find for yourself a friend.”

Surely, that way of translating the passage expresses a very beautiful sentiment. But I think it also can give us a false impression about why we should seek to have teachers of Torah in our lives. It makes it sound like we study Torah for our own personal gain -- that we study Torah so that we will have more and better friends.

But the truest reason to study Torah is for its own sake. We call this kind of Torah study, Torah lishma/תורה לשמה (Torah in its own name). What we ultimately mean by this is that we study Torah primarily as a means or worship. It is not about gaining things for us or even about gaining knowledge. It is for God. It is a way of building a relationship with God, of inviting God’s presence – God’s glory – into our lives.

May you experience a piece of God’s glory, today.

A long wait

יום חמישי י''ח בחשון תשס''ז

It's been so long . . . I've been disappointed so many times. I didn't even dare to dream it could really happen. But, I think I'm ready to stop holding my breath -- it looks like it's really true. The Democrats have taken Congress.

The list is so long of all the things that have made these long days of Bush control so dark for me. . . . . But none is bigger than the pain of all the American lives lost in this ill-conceived Iraq war. It's not that I think that American lives are more important than Iraqi ones. But, I think, just by being American citizens, we make an especially solemn pledge to our people in uniform -- to never send them to risk their lives unless it is absolutely necessary. . . . . And this war just didn't meet that test. I deeply fear that it was largely carried out because of one man's psychological desire to out-achieve his father . . . . and "finish the job" his father couldn't do. . . . . But, yet, I don't believe we can blame it all on Bush. We were all complicit in some way. We all -- including the Democrats who were then in Congress and voted to give Bush the power to go to war -- let ourselves be fooled -- and intimidated and bullied -- by Bush's lies. We are to blame, too.

Dear, Lord, please be with us now. Guide us. Give us strength. Let us not squander this opportunity. Help us to make your Holy Creation a world of peace and justice. . . . Thank You for this opportunity, Lord. I pray we do not let You down.

Wet day . . .

יום רביעי יז בחשון תשס''ז

. . . . it is here in PA.

Hope it's dry where you are!!

True hospitality (Avot 1:5)

יוסי בן יוחנן איש ירושלים אומר, יהי ביתך פתוח לרווחה, ויהיו עניים בני ביתך. ואל תרבה שיחה עם האישה--באשתו אמרו, קל וחומר באשת חברו; מכאן אמרו חכמים, כל המרבה שיחה עם האישה--גורם רעה לעצמו, ובטיל מדברי תורה, וסופו יירש גיהינם

Yose ben Yohanon from Jerusalem said, may your house be wide open [to visitors]. And may the poor be among the people of your house. And do not make too much conversation with your wife.

This is the first Mishnah in Avot that I would call troubling. The last clause I translated – to not make too much conversation with your wife [literally, “the woman”] – would strike many as sexist.

A traditional way of trying to explain this away is to say that the Mishnah refers to “idle chatter” and that it is actually saying that one should show respect for his wife by not overburdening her with idle chatter.

I am not convinced by this kind of apologetic explanation. Our Holy literature is full of troubling – or “problem” – texts. And one of the most pervasive troubling aspects comes from the fact that our Sages – for all their great wisdom – lived in a time when society held very different ideas about the role of women than we do now.

But, on the other hand, I would never say we should “throw away” or disregard a troubling text like this. It is part of our Holy literature. We should follow in the best tradition of our Sages by inquiring into it and trying to understand it . . . . and find the kernel of wisdom that truly does reside there amid the troubling material.

One way of doing that kind of inquiry is to notice the context in which the troubling text arises. In our Mishnah – as in most – there are three clauses (of which our troubling material is only the third). What is the subject implied by the first two clauses?

The first clause appears to clearly be about the importance of welcoming guests into your home. The second is about having a place for the poor in your home. That is, from the first two clauses, the Mishnah appears to be about hospitality in a profound way – the kind of hospitality that Avraham shows at the beginning of this coming Shabbat’s Parsha when he welcomes the three guests who appeared by the door of his tent in the heat of the day (Gen. 18:2). Avraham’s hospitality is one that extends far beyond merely being friendly all the way into tzedukah/צדקה (what Christians call charity). It’s the hospitality that a person of means shows to the unfortunate and the needy who are around that person.

The relevance of the troubling clause of our Mishnah may then have to do with helping us to understand the full dimension of what this profound hospitality is – what a truly open door means. It is not just about providing food or drink. It is also – as Avraham did – providing yourself. You should talk to the guests as well and not just spend your time talking to the existing members of your household (like, for example, your wife).

May you find a place in your day to provide a few minutes of conversation to one who really needs that bit of hospitality at this time.

[I did not, by the way, translate the whole Mishnah. You can find that here in Mishnah 5.]

The first of the zugot and the proper way to debate (Avot 1:4)

וסי בן יועזר איש צרידה ויוסף בן יוחנן איש ירושלים קיבלו ממנו. יוסי בן יועזר איש צרידה אומר, יהי ביתך בית ועד לחכמים; והוי מתאבק בעפר רגליהם, ושותה בצמא את דבריהם

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Yosi ben Yoezer of Tzreidah and Yosi ben Yohanon of Jerusalem accepted it [the Torah] from him. Yosi ben Yoezer of Tzreidah says, may your home be a gathering place for the Sages. And may you cover yourself with the dust about their feet and drink with thirst their words.

As the opening few Mishnahs of Avot record the chain of transmission of the (Oral) Torah from Moshe down through the ages, we arrive at a unique aspect of the Jewish tradition – the zugot. Literally, zugot means pairs. And a pair of great Sages – each one advocating for their own conflicting understandings of Jewish law – characterize each age of the Mishnah and Talmud. The genius of Judaism has been to – even when one of the understandings of those two Sages has come to be viewed as almost always the correct one – preserve both understandings.

That preservation of both begins here. Our Mishnah gives us the sayings of the first of the two, Yosi ben Yoezer. Tomorrow’s gives us the sayings of the other member of the pair.

It is no accident that the first sayings of the first of the pairs concentrates on showing respect for the Sages. Even when we disagree,we are to show our partners in Torah respect. We must treat them like great Sages and imagine that we are mere dust before them. And we must drink their words in fully, making sure we completely understand them. Only then have we earned the right to express our own opinions.

May a day come when our political discourse in this great nation – where we head to the polls tomorrow – will come to the show the ways of our Sages. May disagreements be expressed with respect and love. And with knowledge of the other’s position.

I missed it

[יום שני ט''ו בחשון תשס''ז]

יום שלישי ט''ז בחשון תשס''ז

Well, today was the first time I forgot to enter the Hebrew date in this blog since I committed to doing so every day (and, thus, you find above the Hebrew dates for the last _two_ days).. . . . . In my defense, I was on-call last night (was woken up from my nighttime slumber twice by the pager).

But the real _headline_ is that (mostly) I’ve been following my plan(s) to have regular Torah/Hebrew elements of the blog. . . . And, _more_ significantly, the plan seems to be achieving its goal – to increase the role of Torah learning in my life and to increase my awareness of the flow of the Jewish time.

Torah study, of course, is supposed to be an important part of every Jew’s life. We place an especially high value on what we call Torah Lishma (תורה לשמה), or Torah study for its own sake (literally, in its own name). . . . I think I need a little _help_, though, to make Torah Lishma more effective in my life. Specifically, I am the kind of person who needs to be teaching in order to be learning.

That’s the beauty of the blog for me (and what makes it perhaps even a spiritual practice): just the fact that someone might be reading what I write here turns everything that I write into a potential teaching. . . . . Being a teacher/blogger of Torah makes me a better learner of Torah.

I don’t yet know what the shape of this blog will be down the line. Perhaps it will become something that people will want to read. . .. Perhaps it will become more personal. Or, perhaps it will focus more on professional issues. . . . But for now I think this blog is really meant mostly for one person -- myself. It is blogging by me, for me. . . And I guess what I’m trying to say is that that is working out just fine for now. I’m really happy with it.

Anyway, it was when I was riding my bicycle, this afternoon that I realized that I had forgotten to write the Hebrew date in my blog. . . . I guess I could have turned around and made it back home before sundown . .. . But I really needed the ride. It was the first time I’d been out in about a week and a half. Went about 25 kilometers roundtrip down my usual route. Good weather. Temps around 10C. Fall is still near its height around here. Stopped at the supermarket on the way back and bought some groceries that I hauled home in the single pannier I had with me. . . . I was proud of myself for getting out on the road; I was pretty tired from being on call the night before and it took a lot of self-cajoling to talk myself into it. (1:49/13.3/24.38/45)

Blaming the student

On Friday, I heard an excellent lecture by my supervisor about coping with “impasses” in dealing with students.

He based his lecture in large part on a book that’s not about teaching chaplains and seminary students at all, but rather on the struggles psychotherapists have with difficult patients (Psychotherapy With "Impossible" Cases: The Efficient Treatment of Therapy Veterans by Barry L. Duncan, Mark A. Hubble, Scott D. Miller).

The issue of ‘blame’ really jumped out at me here. We are so often so quick to blame the student when there are problems. But the idea here is to throw out the entire concept of blame altogether and to assume that neither the teacher nor the student is to blame.

Rather, the idea is to focus on

• Relationship (between student and teacher), and
• The students desires, thoughts and feelings, etc.
  

That is, the teacher (or therapist or CPE supervisor) should not be so rigidly wedded to his or her own (learning or therapeutic) theory or curriculum. Rather than blaming the student when the student resists the theory or curriculum, the teacher should ask what it is that the student really wants to learn and ask whether this can be accommodated and nurtured. That is, the student should largely be directing his or her own learning and/or supervision.

This is an idea that has long had tremendous attraction for me. My main two experiences in university-level learning during my life have been my undergraduate education (Grinnell College) and my rabbinical school education (The University of Judaism). (I also have another couple of masters degrees from other institutions, but that's a story for another day!)

At Grinnell, believe it or not, we had _zero_ required classes. That is, there was no core curriculum at all. Students could sign up for whatever courses they wanted.

You might think that this would lead to laziness. But it was anything, but. Students – despite taking on something of a slacker and/or hippy exterior appearance – were amazing motivated and hard working. It was just an incredibly exciting learning environment. People wanted to do well. They cared about their classes. They studied things that interested them. Often, they hero-worshiped their teachers.

Rabbinical school was almost the complete opposite. Almost every class was required. There was almost no choice in the curriculum. The result worked very well for some people. But not so much for others. It had its strengths, but it lacked flexibility.

None of this tension between non-structured and highly structured approaches to learning is new. One prominent advocate of a non-directive learning approach was the famous psychotherapist Carl Rogers.

Now, in an age when cognitive-behavior therapy and other _hard_ and directive approaches have taken over the world of psychotherapy, it seems positively old-fashioned to cite Rogers.
But, I find myself more and more attracted to him. Here is how one web site sums up his approach to learning:

Rogers distinguished two types of learning: cognitive (meaningless) and experiential (significant). The former corresponds to academic knowledge such as learning vocabulary or multiplication tables . . . . The key to the distinction is that experiential learning addresses the needs and wants of the learner. Rogers lists these qualities of experiential learning: personal involvement, self-initiated, evaluated by learner, and pervasive effects on learner.

To Rogers, experiential learning is equivalent to personal change and growth. Rogers feels that all human beings have a natural propensity to learn; the role of the teacher is to facilitate such learning. This includes: (1) setting a positive climate for learning, (2) clarifying the purposes of the learner(s), (3) organizing and making available learning resources, (4) balancing intellectual and emotional components of learning, and (5) sharing feelings and thoughts with learners but not dominating.

According to Rogers, learning is facilitated when: (1) the student participates completely in the learning process and has control over its nature and direction, (2) it is primarily based upon direct confrontation with practical, social, personal or research problems, and (3) self-evaluation is the principal method of assessing progress or success.

I’m convinced by Rogers (at least for learning for professional adults). But, suprizingly, so much of the professional learning I see (especially in the medical setting) moves in the opposite direction -- it is very much what Rogers calls “meaningless” and which I might call content-oriented (the assumption being that you can indeed successfully shovel a certain amount of information into people’s brains as long as it is on power point slide). I also think this emphasis on standardized testing (for schoolkids) is moving us more and more towards a content-focused approached.

The problem is that non-directive learning -- as superior as it is overall -- requires a leap of faith. You need to trust the students and the teachers (especially that the teachers be both motivated and talented). It's very hard to certify and/or quantify that the learning is happening. Having a set amount of data in a powerpoint presentation that we can at least certify that someone sat through gives us the illusion we are _certifying_ that they are learning all the material in the presentation. So, we can certify something. We can measure something. We feel like we can justify what we are doing. And -- in a society that is more and more obsessed with numbers and evidenced-based approaches -- this kind of approach has a growing attraction.

Clinical Pastoral Education seems to be an island where what I would call a relationship-centered approach to education can still find a hold. . . I'm glad to be a part of it!!!

#*#

Why we serve (Avot 1:3)

אנטיגנוס איש סוכו קיבל משמעון הצדיק. הוא היה אומר, אל תהיו כעבדים המשמשין את הרב, על מנת לקבל פרס, אלא הוו כעבדים המשמשין את הרב, על מנת שלא לקבל פרס; ויהי מורא שמיים עליכם.

Antignos from Socho recieved [the Torah] from Shimon HaTzadik. He used to say, do not be as servants who would serve their master only in return for a reward. Rather, be like servants who do not serve only for a reward. And may the fear of the Heavens be upon you.

The Hebrew word that I have translated here as 'servant' is eved (עבד), a word that can also be translated as slave.' The Mishnah and the Talmud often depict humanity as being slaves or servants in relation to God.

The message here is not that we should be like simple mechanisms who obey God -- or the ones who claim to represent God's word -- reflexively and blindly. The ancient Rabbis who passed down to us endless volumes of their arguments about what exactly is God's will would never say that.

Rather we should be like servants before God in terms of our attitude towards God and the way we feel and express our love for God. This Mishnah tells us that we should carry out our Master's commands -- that is, God's mitzvot -- with joy and out of love, and not because we expect a reward in this world or the next.

Too, often, today, people seek religion because they expect it to do something for them. That is, they expect some kind of reward, whether it be happiness or fellowship or something else.

There is nothing wrong with wanting those things -- and a life of faith can indeed yield them. But, our Mishnah teaches us, that it is false to serve God only because we are hoping for those things. We need to serve out of love.

May you find it in your heart to give -- and receive -- love in the days ahead.

A terrible mistake

יום ראשון י''ד בחשון תשס''ז

I won't even start to go into the long litany of Jewish sources against capital punishment. . . I won't say anything about the preciousness of life. . . . . All I can say now is I am deeply saddened by the death penalty verdict for Saddam Hussein. . . . It is a dark cloud. . . One that portends nothing but more violence in the future. . . . I feel terrible grief for the innocent lives that are at risk . . . . Too many martyrs. . . And now we are making one more.

Holding up the World (Avot 1:2)

יום שלישי י''ב בחשון תשס''ז
the yahrzeit of Rachel Imeinu, and Yitzhak Rabin, also the Cherynobyl rebbe.

שמעון הצדיק היה משירי כנסת הגדולה. הוא היה אומר על שלשה דברים העולם עומד. על התורה ועל העבודה ועל גמילות חסדים:
Shimon HaTzadk was one of the last of the Great Kenesset. He used to say, the world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the worship and on acts of loving kindness.

Of Shimon HaTzadik's three pillars, the first and the last – Torah and acts of loving kindness (g-milut hasidim) – are ones that we can carry out to this day. But, the middle one – the avodah (the sacrificial worship service that was carried out in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem – we can not.

And, yet, the world has not collapsed without that great supporting pillar. We Jews have learned to replace the Temple with our acts of prayer and other forms of service to God.

Next time you say a prayer – whether it is something that just comes into your heart during your regular day in or if it is part of a service in your synagogue – close your eyes and try to imagine that you are helping to hold up the world. Try to feel the power in that. See where that takes you.

I hope you will have opportunity to take part in holding up each of Shimon HaTzadik’s three pillars in the days ahead.

A fence around the Torah (Avot 1:1)

יום חמישי י''א בחשון תשס''ז

Yesterday, I posted about the first Misnah of Pirkei Avot, and the plan was to move on to the second Mishna, today. But I had some more thoughts that I wanted to share on that first Misnah (Avot 1:1):

Moses accepted the Torah from Sinai and passed it down to Joshua. Joshua passed it to the Elders. The Elders to the Prophets. The Prophets to the men of the Great Kenneset.
They said three things: be deliberate in judgment, raise up many students and make a fence around the Torah.

The common understanding of fence around the Torah is that it refers to things that are forbidden by the Torah, like eating pork or mixing milk and meat in the same dish. Building a fence means adding an extra level of things forbidden beyond what the Torah explicitly forbids. The reason for this extra level is to prevent you from accidentally slipping into doing something that is forbidden.

A commonly cited rabbinic fence then would be the ban on mixing chicken and dairy (think, chicken parmiagian). The Rabbis understood the Torah (that is, the first five books of the Bible) to explicitly ban eating beef and meat together; dairy and fowl were not so banned. And so the Rabbis added the fence of banning fowl and dairy together to prevent confusion about the law. They feared that someone might see a rabbi eating chicken parmiagian and think that it would be ok to eat beef and dairy together, too. The fence would prevent that.

We can apply this principle of a fence around the Torah -- that is, around things that are forbidden -- into parts of our lives that have nothing to do with eating. Certainly, no decent person, for example, would make a joke about dead babies (believe it or not, dead baby jokes were quite popular when I was a youth) if they knew a person in earshot had recently suffered the tragedy of losing an infant to sudden infant death syndrome. Any person with kindness in their heart would consider this forbidden.

But we can never know for sure what the experience and background are of the people we are in a room with. And, so, we should build a fence around this forbidden thing and refrain from dead baby jokes altogether. So, too, we should refrain about joking about people going up in ovens for fear of a relative of a Holocaust survivor being in the room. So, too, we should refrain from joking about lynching for fear that someone who is the descendent of someone who was murdered this way is in the room. Building a fence around the forbidden things helps us avoid causing unnecessary pain and hurt. We should always be asking ourselves where we need these fences in our lives. That is the practical lesson of the fence around the Torah.

May your day be free of pain -- and free of inflicting pain on others.

Walking with God (II)

Last week, we contrasted between Noah’s walking with God and how Avraham walks before God in this week’s parsha. But there is another important difference besides physical position. With Noah, the Torah is just describing something about Noah and what he does. But for Avraham, the walking comes in the form of a command:

And HaShem appeared to Avraham and said: "I am El Shaddai -- Walk before me and be perfect!!" (Gen. 17:1)

This is just one of many times in this week’s parsha where God issues a command. In fact, the reading begins with one: the command of lech lecha – go! – to Avraham. “Go from your native land. . . to the land I will show you.” <>
The command to “walk before me” is, significantly, followed immediately by a promise, a promise to make an agreement – a covenant or ברית/brit in Hebrew – with Avraham.

A brit, like any agreement, requires two parties. Each party agrees to do something for the other party in exchange for what the other party promises.

God’s promise here is to make Avraham a father of many nations and that God will be with his descendents throughout the generations. Avraham’s side of the deal is that he – and his descendents – will practice circumcision, ברית מילה/brit milah in Hebrew.

Circumcision is a most physical of acts. You might have expected God to demand that Avraham promise something of his mind – that he believe in God, for example. But Judaism commands not only that we show our faith through our beliefs, but also through acts of our bodies. Sometimes those acts are sacrifices. They remind us that our bodies – as much as we may treasure them – are only on loan to us. God has simply entrusted them to us.

So many of us in this materialist, self-gratification-obsessed day and age have lost any sense of being commanded by God and have forgotten that we are merely stewards over our bodies. So many people have forgotten that a relationship with God is a two-way covenant – they think that it is God who should serve us, and forget the need to also serve God.

In my work in the hospital, every day I see the difference between those who have forgotten, and those who remember we are mere stewards over our bodies and that we are commanded by God. Those who forget despair easily in the face of illness. But those who remember are the ones who have the strength to do what I call “Choose Life.”

Choosing life sounds like a no-brainer – isn’t it the easiest thing in the world? Why wouldn’t a person choose to live? But, the Torah teaches us that choosing life is not easy.

The words “Choose Life” themselves are uttered by Moses in the wilderness to the Children of Israel (Deut. 30:19). He begs them to choose life. He pleads. He cajoles.

Certainly, Moses would not have had to plea so desperately if choosing life was so easy. Giving up – choosing death, in effect – is much easier. It was much easier for the Children of Israel to choose the death of the beautiful, but empty and idolatrous, promises of the Golden Calf. So, too, it’s much easier for the drug addict to choose death than it is to endure pains involved in choosing life – the physical pain of detoxification, the emotional pain of facing how much you have hurt the people you loved and how many opportunities you have squandered for the sake of some powder, and the pains of the setbacks and relapses, and the starting all over again that they entail. So, too, for the person who has been in a terrible car accident, it is much easier to lay in bed and feel sorry for one’s self than it is to endure the pain and struggles and disappointments of months of physical therapy.

Walking the sometimes challenging road of choosing life is so much easier when we have God in our lives, when we have God walking with us.

When we know that our bodies truly belong to God and that God commands us, a weight is lifted from upon us. God takes the weight. God takes a piece of the burden of helping us choose life. When God is in our lives, we know that it is not truly our choice. God has already chosen for us. God has commanded us to choose life. Our job is just to discern as best we can how to do that, and to go on with the work. God will walk with us all the way.

I hope that you will find a way to bring – and keep – God into your life and that you will, as Avraham did, walk before God as a servant walks before the King who the servant is in service to. And I hope that the place in which you walk will help you to truly choose life when the day comes when you are challenged or tested.

__________________________

One element of the Jewish calendar is the weekly Torah reading, or parsha. This coming Shabbat's reading is Lech Lecha, Gen. 12:1-17:27. Here the Torah turns its attention away from the creation of mankind as a whole and toward the specific story of the Jewish people. The parsha begins with an order and a promise – God’s command to Avraham to go to the Land of Canaan and God’s promise to make Avraham a great nation there. The parsha ends with a dramatic act of commitment that Avraham makes to God and that has marked the Jewish people throughout the generations – the act of ברית מילה/brit milah, or circumcision. The parsha also includes the stories of Avraham and Sarah’s journey to Egypt, the story of Abraham rescuing his nephew Lot during the 'War of the Four Kings' and the story of Hagar and her son Yishmael. The so-called 'Covenant between the Pieces' can also be found here.

Not so fast (Avot 1:1)

I am endeavoring to add some regular Torah features to this blog . . . I'm trying to push myself, but I don't want to push myself too hard (that is, add so many regular features that, from exhaustion, I suddenly stop doing any of them). . . So this is one of those features: I am going to go through Pirkei Avot (often translated as "The Ethics of the Fathers") one-mishnah-a-day and just say something very brief about what I find meaningful or notable in that day's mishnah. . . . I've always avoided studying Avot for some reason . . . . I guess, in part, because in a kind of "rabbinic macho" I wanted to go straight to more _serious_ texts. . . . the kind of texts that the more _serious_ scholars spend their time on. . . . And Avot is a typical "beginner's" text in Judaism, in part because it's one of the most accessible and understandable on first read.

But, I think I've really been missing something with my "macho". Avot is full of wonderful wisdom and, as my teacher Rabbi Pinchas Giller says, it's a wonderful thing for a rabbi to have little bits of wisdom from Avot in his or her pocket to be able to bring out as the moment demands . . . to help people find inspiration and meaning.

So, here's my first entry: I'm starting at the very beginning, Avot 1:1:

א,א משה קיבל תורה מסיניי, ומסרה ליהושוע, ויהושוע לזקנים, וזקנים לנביאים, ונביאים מסרוה לאנשי כנסת הגדולה. והן אמרו שלושה דברים: היו מתונים בדין, והעמידו תלמידים הרבה, ועשו סייג לתורה

Moses accepted the Torah from Sinai and passed it down to Joshua. Joshua passed it to the Elders. The Elders to the Prophets. The Prophets to the men of the Great Kenneset.
They said three things: be deliberate in judgment, raise up many students and make a fence around the Torah.

What does it mean to be deliberate in judgment? Albeck comments that it means to not complete judging anything until you have thoroughly investigated the issues involved.

We live in a age where we are saturated by 15 second television commercials and other quick images urging us to make decisions -- that is judgments -- about everything around us. About who we want to be. About what kind of people we would like to be connected with. About what makes our lives meaningful or worthwhile.

This extends even to our political choices. The political ads blare, asking us to make decisions that impact the future of our nation and our communities based on mere impressions that come from quick images and short soundbites.

When you go to the poles (and I hope you do!!) next Tuesday, take a breath before you pull the lever (or hit the touchscreen, as the case may be). Have you been deliberate in your judgment? Have you made an effort to investigate the issues.? Or are you lettting others -- and their images -- decide for you?

Have a great rest of the week!

My Birthday

יום רביעי י' בחשון תשס"ז

And a beautiful day it is here in Reading, PA. Taking the afternoon off from work. Planning on getting outside and enjoying the fall a bit. . . . . . When I was living in Boston a couple of years ago, REI's fall catalogue came out with this title on its cover:

No crowds, no bugs -- we love Fall!

I couldn't agree more. It's just a great time to be outside. I went for a short bicycle ride late last week -- about 25 kilometers round trip on this road (Rt 625) that follows up Wyomissing creek close to its source about 600 feet above Reading proper. I love climbing up there and then _flying_ back down to get back home.

On the way up, the creek is visible most of the way, running first through woods and then through farms and fields. It was a sunny, crisp day and most of the trees still had leaves, which had taken on their fall colors. . . . People who live on the West Coast miss the beauty of this -- the chance to see a landscape change and morph with the rhythm of the year . . . To see new views start to appear as fall goes on and winter comes with its promises of white and purity and calm. . . It's a priviledge to be able to do the same ride through the same landscape throughout the year . . . And I've come to love the landscape of Berks county -- its mix of woods and fields, its one-step-shy-of-mountainness character. . . Although I must admit that I miss the rides I had in Massachusetts. I also then had a route that ran along a stream for a good part of the way. I can picture the beauty of it running through the pure white on those winter days when I found the strength to go out in the cold.

On my ride last week, I thought some more about an idea I have -- in the cool and cold weather, why not wear a bib to block the wind? . . That way, you can leave your back exposed and sweat could escape easily (if you are, for example, wearing a wool sweater for warmth). But you still get good "wind chill" protection when you are going fast down a hill. . . I think I will try it soon, but I'm not sure what kind of bib to use.

Today, I do not plan a bike ride. But I think I will go up to Hawk Mountain and walk around for a bit.

Halloween

יום שלישי ט' בחשון תשס''ז

. . . I am barely aware this year of this _holiday_ coming. . . . . Which is something worth reflecting on -- I see it as an indicator of how deeply immersed I am in my job and the spiritual work it involves. When you're so immersed in something so intense, you might not notice some of the things that make up important elements in the community of people around you. And, I think, for a spritual leader and caregiver, it's important to try and notice when you're _not_ noticing something big. . . like Halloween. . . . . . and so this blog entry is my way noticing that I'm "not noticing". :)

I also have barely noticed that tomorrow is my birthday. A friend sent me an "e card" this morning and I found myself wondering, "why is she sending me an e-card? What could that be about." . . . It was only when I opended it up and saw the Happy Birthday message that I realized, "oh, yeah, tomorrow's my birthday."

I've decided to stop putting the Hebrew date in the title of a blog entry every day. Instead, I'm just going to do one short "just a bit of what's going on in my life and the world" blog entry every day and to put the date in that entry at the top.

יום שני ח' בחשון תשס''ז

OK, so, I still think I like the basic idea of entering the Hebrew date in the blog every days (as a _spiritual_ practice) to build my awareness of the Hebrew calendar and the rhythm of the Jewish year, etc. . . . . but I'm not sure this series of title-only blog entries in Hebrew make for a readable blog . . . so i need to think about a better way of doing this. . . . Today was a fairly good day. A normal work day. . . . Kind of busy. #*#

Become what you are . . .

. . . was the name of an album by Juliana Hatfield, an underrated indie rocker whose music was extremely meaningful to me for a good number of years. . . and it's also what I think Spiritual Direction is about -- becoming who you are.

I've been giving a great deal of thought to Spiritual Direction ("SD") over the last year or so. . . . There's a phrase in the Information Technology field -- "a late adopter." My Father, of Blessed Memory, was a classic late adopter. He loved computers (he was a Systems Analyst) and technology in general, but his experience wtih technology made him very suspicious about the flashy hype that people put up around new computers and software. You really had to prove to him that it was worth adopting something new. But when he did adopt it, he did so with great seriousness and fervor (witness how he kept track of even the minutest detail of his finances on it when he finally bought a PC!!).

I'm a sort of late adopter to -- especially when it comes to new _spiritual_ technology. I'm very suspicious of all the breathless _flash_ that comes along with _new_ spiritual practices. I need to feel that something is serious, rigorous legitimate and well-rooted in the thousands-years old Jewish tradition.

And, so, I've sort of come to my interest in SD in a backwards way. First I tried something very rigorous and serious -- the world of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education). CPE, for those who don't know, is the standard way that Chaplains (hospital and otherwise) are trained. It's called "Clinical" because it -- like most medical education -- does _not_ take place in a classroom. Rather, it's an on-the-job sort of training where the student learns through intensive review of his or her experiences with patients.

Most mainline Protestant denominations require their seminary students to do a summer of full-time CPE (something students often dread intensely because of the intensity that CPE, and hospital work in general, has a reputation for). But only a small fraction of rabbinical students do the training. I was one of those few.

There are so many things I love about CPE (I love it so much I've signed up for a two-year full time residency that I am in the middle of right now). But one was the opportunity to talk seriously with my supervisor and others about what Christians call "discernment" -- the process of trying to determine just where it is that God really wants you. Or, more specifically for the rabbinical student, where and how you should best serve as Rabbi (and whether you should become a Rabbi in the first place).

For a wide variety of reasons, I did not find much room to do this discernment when I was in rabbinical school. I was able to learn many things in rabbinical school -- and am grateful to my teachers and for the great friends I was able to make there among my fellow students -- but I simply did not find it to be a "safe space" for sharing my struggles with fellow students and professors. I felt as though I was expected to have arrived at the school's doors essentially already fully formed and not as a 'work in progress.'

CPE, then, was a breath of fresh air for me -- here "discernment" was highly valued and encouraged. It was supported.

As I've developed in my work as a resident chaplain -- and as I've considered whether I should try to become a CPE supervisor (a kind of educator and guide who trains other chaplains) -- I've had more and more opportunities to help other CPE students with their discernment process. I have found that I love this work. It's an amazing opportunity to have a kind of intimate engagement with another person -- to join them for a bit in their (beautiful) struggle to become what they are . . . . It's a Holy work. . . . because it's God's call that people are trying to hear, the call to serve God. . . .and one of the most beautiful things to find in other people is their desire to be part of the Holy. . . to be connected to it through what they do in, and with, their lives. And, so, the moment of the struggle to discern is a moment that a person is at his or her most beautiful. . . it's a real priviledge to be able to be present at such moments.

And so, now, I think I've fully made the journey here in this post _backwards_ to Spiritual Direction. . . . because what I wrote in the last paragraph sounds a lot like SD to me. . . . Or, at least SD as I understand it at this point. When I was recently starting to read a book on Jewish Spiritual Direction, edited by Howard A. Addison and Barbara Eve Breitman, I wrote down my definition of SD (as it stands now):

SD is about learning one's own unique, personal path re how to serve God [and Israel] through the help of a guide or director. The main tool for this task is self-examination and reflection.

This seems a bit different than this definition that Addison gives (pg. xviii):

For many, spiritual direction might best be described as a contemplative practice through which people companion one another over time as they reflect on their spiritual journeys and expand their awareness of the sacred dimensions that underlie the ordinary and extraordinary events of life. (emphasis mine)

What's missing to me in the above definition is a concept of _service_. That is, it seems to be all about developing _awareness_ of God (or what some people might call developing a God relationship).

To me (and, in Addison's defense, I am only quoting one sentence from a whole book), this is at best only _half_ of what a true spirituality is really about. It's only about the indvidual. It's entirely inward looking. But a real spirituality -- certainly, at least, in the traditional spiritualities of both Judaism and Christianity -- is outward looking as well. It is about community, and, yes -- dare I say it -- about obligation. It's about holding something in common with other people of faith. It's about acting in the world. It's about trying to make this world more like the world God wants from us. It's about service.

Some years ago, I read a really great book called Spiritual, but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America by Robert C. Fuller. He lamented that too many Americans are living this sort of half spirituality, a spirituality that is all about the self and satsifying the needs of the self. He thought this ultimately is an empty vision of spirituality. I could not agree more.

So, if Spiritual Direction is _only_ about connecting with God then I don't think I'm much interested in helping people with it. But, if it's also about finding where God wants you to be -- about finding how God has made you to serve -- then I am interested.

In the coming months and days, I'm going to be trying to get a better sense of this. I have some great opportunities here at the hospital to find out more about spiritual direction. Some of my colleagues here, especially the Catholic ones, have had much experience with either being directors or being directed. I want to find out how their own understanding of spiritual direction matches up with my own.

And I'm starting to reach out within the Jewish community to find out about people's experiences with SD and about training programs. Last week, I had a phone conversation with Jinks Hoffman, a Toronto-based spiritual director and psychotherapist who has a chapter in Addison and Breitman's book. I also recently spoke with an RRC rabbinical student who meets once-a-month with a spiritual director as part of a program they have there.

I'm also continuing to investigate whether training to be a CPE supervisor might fit into my future, and I had a phone conversation on Friday with somebody at the Healthcare Chaplaincy in New York to try and determine whether that might be a place for me in the future.

So . . . getting back to the become what you are idea, I think that some would criticize _my_ definition of spiritual direction above as being _too_ close to psychotherapy. Obviously, there should be a difference.

I had a fascinating on-going debate with a good rabbi friend about this over Rosh HaShanah. He thinks therapy is very important and should perhaps maybe even be required of rabbinical students. But he's very suspiscious of Spiritual Direction, finding it to be a kind of gimmicky thing.

I argued that there is more in common between the two than there are differences. Surely, there are differences. The goals are different. The players are different. In Spiritual Direction, God is also in the room. It's not just about fully actualizing your personal potential. It's about finding the direction that God wants of you and getting closer to God. Spiritual Direction might be more narrow, in this sense. It might only be about discerning where God calls us, about such narrow questions of whether one should become a rabbi or not. Or what kind of rabbi once should become.

But, I think the core techniques and the core process is the same -- they are both counseling relationships where the main goal is for the client/directee to learn more about his or herself. In both, the big issues ultimately revolve around relationships with figures of primal authority, whether they be the Deity or about the parents that raised us. The same kind of unresolved issues -- the same kinds of hurts and joys and defining moments -- are in both.

So, I'm going to keep thinking about this. I'm going to read some more of the chapters in Addison and Breitman. I'm going to keep talking to people. Jinks Hoffman told me that there's a Intro to Spiritual Direction retreat to be held in August at Isabella Freedman (I think she told me Aug. 14-19); I'm going to see if it's possible for me to attend that.

So, that's all there is on this for now. . . . . but I'm sure I'll be writing more about it in the future.

PS -- Other works (besides Hatfield's album) called become what you are include:

• Become What You Are, by Alan Watts (a book interpreting Eastern thought for Westerners)
  
• Become What You Are: Spiritual Formation According to the Sermon on the Mount, by William W. Klein

PSS Some Jewish spirituality and spiritual direction sites

• Institute for Jewish Spirituality
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