There are no adequate words to describe my Loyola experience. As a writer, for the first time I feel as if I am wordless.

Vernon already expressed much of my parting sentiments in his article: Don’t Say Goodbye . . . say Thank You. Therefore, I go another direction and speak to the students who are new to Loyola’s Spiritual and Pastoral Care Program, or who are still discerning if it is a correct fit for them.

My life before beginning my MA was in a serious rut. I thought I would die of boredom and lack of fulfillment if I did not take a step. However, I did not know what that should be.

As I knelt in prayer, asking God to please provide divine guidance, I heard pastoral repeatedly in my head. “What is that?” I wondered. I Googled pastoral and found my way onto Loyola’s Spiritual and Pastoral Care website. I knew I was home.

As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him (1 John 2:27, New International Version).

Loyola has anointed me. I have humbly been part of many great formational experiences: Alpha Sigma Nu, Emerging Scholars, Professional Seminar Paper, wonderful MA professors, exceptional staff, spiritual and learned classmates, Graduate Assistantship experiences working on CACREP and Continuing Education Programs, coursework, service-learning, retreats, and more!

I have just been appointed a Lay Ecclesial Minister for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, specifically as a Director of Religious Education for a local Catholic Parish. Loyola has sent me forth to minister to God’s people.

Listen to your instincts, to your intuition, and to your God. You may not have your post-Loyola future all figured out, but that is the beauty of it. If God is truly the center of our lives, then we strive to follow God’s plan, not our own.

John Lennon said it well, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I planned to go to Loyola, and, with God’s grace, the rest just fell into place.

The author, JoAnn Harvan-Chin, with Dr. Jill Snodgrass, Dr. Ralph Piedmont, Dr. Tom Rodgerson, and classmate Pat Kennedy

I attended the Pastoral Counseling Department’s Retreat on Resiliency.  It’s my last retreat as a Loyola student. The sense of community found at Loyola is unique. We are so different, yet we are one.

I LOVE St. Anthony’s Shrine. I went to Loyola’s Self-Care Retreat last spring and wrote Shake Pray Love, one of my first blog articles. I come full circle writing this blog article likewise inspired.

I never thought I was resilient. To me, resiliency was a quality for those who have been through severe crises or hardships. It takes courage and resiliency to attend graduate school later in life, to complete a master’s program, to graduate, and to make a career change — all of which I have done.

I forgot what I always tell my spiritual directees, “Don’t judge your life.”  I judged my life story to be not particularly resilient. I was wrong. During the first break out session, we told our stories to each other. It was so healing and exhilarating to tell my story, to be heard, and to hear another.

I now see that I am resilient. I’ve gone through hardship, and not merely survived, but thrived! No longer do I judge my life. I embrace my cracks now, loving them for making me who I am today, and for the Light (God) that they let in. I want to shine that Light upon others.

While on retreat, we explored Post Traumatic Growth, and the APA’s Ten Ways to Build Resilience.

Through experiential exercises, I tapped into my resiliency to face graduation and everything else that lies ahead for me. It was great to reflect on my life, to celebrate my resiliency, and to realize that I can face whatever the future holds.

I now feel empowered. I know my resiliency. How are you resilient?

Another semester is almost over and the familiar routine begins. The furious rush to finish all papers, projects, and assignments that you knew about from week one. Then, that oft-repeated vow: that you will never wait so late start . . . again. The perfunctory filling out of class evaluations that you know you should spend more time on, but you don’t, and the lightning-fast goodbyes that we give to teachers and students alike as we dash toward the parking lot.

It is the last part of the routine that I take issue with. We say goodbye too easily. We often talk about “terminating” with clients and how much care is needed because of the emotional bonds that have been created. Yet what about the bonds created with that person who sat beside you for countless morning and evening hours? Saying goodbye to them should not be so easy. Take the time to thank them for their presence, their camaraderie, for their commiseration with you about the long nights, for their listening ear about the woes of your internship. And, of course, thank them for all the times that they agreed with you that your paper did deserve a better grade. Don’t just say goodbye, say thank you.

If the events in our country over the last few weeks have taught us anything, it is that life is precious and every day is a gift. Just like we can’t take life for granted, we also can’t take the relationships with our classmates for granted either. These are our present peers and our future colleagues, fostering and maintaining relationships with at least a few persons will produce unimagined benefits.

I have heard it said that part of what makes Loyola great is the students, and I would definitely agree. Even the students that I have disagreed with have added something to me. They have helped to clarify my voice, my views, and my beliefs and, in some cases, even my faith. That is a gift and I am thankful for it. And, to you who are reading this blog, I thank you as well for journeying with me and all the other writers as we have shared with you.

To the students I have met, the professors who challenged me to grow, and the friends I have made, I have been blessed by the gift of your presence.

I am not saying goodbye. I am saying thank you.

Unlike pastoral counselors who use a therapeutic method based on a theory such as: Adlerian, Freudian, Person-Centered, Gestalt, or Cognitive Behavioral, spiritual directors are much more free-form. We generally do not give homework to our directees, nor do we set goals for them. We are taught that the directee sets the agenda.  Our job is to listen for the Holy Spirit, discern God’s action, and to assist in cooperating with it. The Holy Spirit is the actual spiritual director.

We say things like: “What do you think God is inviting you to in that situation?”  “Where is evidence of God acting there?”  “Have you prayed about it?”  “Why do you perceive that God is not responding to you?” and “What do you discern when you pay attention to your interior movements?”

During my spiritual direction internship, we (my spiritual directees and I) had an education process to go through and a steep learning curve.  Some of them discontinued the process, and others never were really engaged in it at all. Perhaps spiritual direction was not what they expected?  Analogous to when Vernon Ware lamented about his counselees in his excellent article “The Nerve of Some Clients,” perhaps my directees had one idea of what their experience of spiritual direction should be and I had another.

I am in my last semester in the M.A. in Spiritual and Pastoral Care program on the spiritual direction track.  I am in the throes of writing my professional seminar paper and working out how I will respond to resistance in spiritual direction . . . more to come on that subject in an upcoming blog article.

I am far from having all the answers, but what I do know is that I want to meet my spiritual directees in the middle somewhere so that we can take each others’ hands, and together navigate that sometimes arduous journey of the spiritual life. I want us all to one day see God’s loving face smiling back at us.  After all, isn’t that the purpose of why we are here in the first place?

Deb Calhoun

JoAnn: How did you find your calling to Loyola?

Deb: While working with a special family – members of my Unitarian Universalist congregation – I learned pursuing pastoral care with greater commitment was my path. My minister recognized it before I did. When I thank her, she denies that she deserves the credit. At first, I could not use the word “calling.” I kept saying “no” until finally I couldn’t any longer. I stumbled upon Loyola’s program. It was the perfect fit for me.

JoAnn: What is your lasting impression of Loyola?

Deb: Spiritual and Pastoral Care with Fr. Kevin Gillespie shaped me as a caregiver. He taught us Care of the Entire Person or Cura personalis and – “where there is a story, there is hope.” Being present to someone listening to their story is the foundation of how I do pastoral care. When you are really attentive to the story, the heart of the matter is revealed. That is where God is! I come to it with the skills that I need and God does the rest.

JoAnn: How is God found in your work?

Deb: When I have the right words for someone that aren’t mine – during a baptism a Scripture verse comes to me that I didn’t even know I knew, or miraculously I run into someone and events just fall into place so that I am able to meet a need.

JoAnn: How do you use your education in your work?

Deb: I draw a lot on Loss and Bereavement and Crisis Intervention. A one-day seminar on suicide prevention came back to me when I dealt with someone who was considering suicide.

JoAnn: Since graduating from Loyola what have you been up to?

Deb: Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE).  I did one unit each at the Hebrew Home, Sinai Hospital and now Johns Hopkins. I have had different supervisors, groups, and clinical components and learned a variety of skills. Typically, someone does a full-time chaplaincy residency in the same place for all four units.  It is 60 hours a week – physically and emotionally intense. That was not the correct path for me. I have Muscular Dystrophy and I was not sure that I could handle it physically.

JoAnn: In your work in CPE, have you worked with people of various faiths?

Deb: Yes! My current supervisor is a ṣūfī, my supervisor-in-training is Episcopalian, and I had a Jewish Rabbi supervisor. I am comfortable praying with people of all faiths. I am leading the worship service at Johns Hopkins every other Sunday, and it is a surprise to me how much I love it.

JoAnn: Do you like your work?

Deb: Oh yes! I am where I am supposed to be. People ask: how can you do it? It is so sad to see people suffering. I think how lucky am I to be able to do the work that I do!

Deb Calhoun receiving John R. Compton Integration Award from Dr. Tom Rodgerson

Who is someone that you look up to as a counselor? Adler, Frankl, Freud, Perls (yes, Fritz and Laura), Ellis, Beck, May? The list of names goes on and on, but I wanted to suggest one name that you might not have considered. Jesus. One of the many titles that is conferred upon Jesus is “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6) and I would hope that at least being “good” counselors is something that all of us have as a goal. So with that in mind, I wondered this simple question, WWJP? What Would Jesus Practice? Can we look at the life of Jesus and detect a partiality to a specific theory of counseling?

Would Jesus be considered a proponent of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) when he counseled a rich young ruler to consider giving up all of his riches to the poor, so that he could truly be fulfilled?

Would Jesus’s time with his disciples be considered a very intensive Reality therapy session since Jesus asked them to make the choice to be in relationship with him and the other disciples to change their lives?

Would Jesus be considered a proponent of Person-centered therapy because of his brief group therapy session with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11) and the men who accused her, where he asked very few questions but changed the behaviors of both the men and the woman?

Would Jesus be considered an Adlerian because of his transformative meeting with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9)? Jesus met with someone who was hated, even by himself, and in one conversation changed his thinking about himself and fostered Zacchaeus’ social interest so much that Zacchaeus said that he would repay those he had cheated four times over.

Jesus broke many of the conventions of that time: working on the Sabbath, having conversations with women and having connection with Gentiles, just to name a few.  So could we conclude that he was a proponent of the Existential approach since he championed the freedom of persons to choose their own direction in life?  

And while it is uncomfortable for me to put Jesus and Sigmund Freud in the same sentence, I do have to admit that Jesus did have a skill at getting through other’s Ego-defense Mechanisms.

There is obviously much more that can be said on this topic and I hope that you will respond and do just that! I would love to hear your feedback and get your answer to WWJP – What Would Jesus Practice?

I am ‘spiritual, but not religious’ seems to be the mantra nowadays.  So I did a little research on the subject.  Alan Miller, Special to CNN, expresses some strong opinions in his article, My Take: ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’ is a cop-out.

My niece remarked that she has yet to find a parish that fulfills her needs.  She lamented that the music, liturgy, communication, and activities were all substandard.  She observed that her church consisted of a change-resistant, older congregation that even her pastor could not convince to allow for implementation of new ideas.

My niece admits that she and others of her generation pick and choose the ideas/rules/beliefs that they like about their faiths and disregard the rest.  In Catholicism, we call that being a “cafeteria Catholic.”  Christians also apparently use the term cafeteria Christianity, but whether they’re Catholic, Christian, or neither, they all prefer to call themselves, ‘spiritual, but not religious.’

In my Pastoral Care Integration class, one of my classmates used the term ‘spiritual but not religious’ while presenting her final paper.  She did not like the statement and did not understand how the two (spirituality and religion) can be divorced.  She stated that she is in the leadership of her parish and they are working on increasing membership.  Despite her dislike of the term, she and the others in church leadership try to appeal to that demographic.

Why does someone identify as spiritual but not religious? Perhaps something has turned them off to religion and/or church? As Dr. Rodgerson recounted to us regarding his church adventures, some of the nastiest, pettiest, most flawed people can be found behind those double doors.

We read Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What by Peter Steinke. He certainly has some church horror tales to tell!  Steinke analyzed church dynamics from a Bowen theory and systems theory standpoint.  He voluntarily goes into troubled churches and attempts to fix their problems.  Talk about a job I would NEVER ever want…

Some of my classmates have expressed their dissatisfaction with church and their ideas of how to facilitate change. They fleshed out these ideas in preparation for writing the Pastoral Care Professional Seminar paper.  As a spiritual director, I understand that people resist change.  It is difficult enough to get an individual to entertain the concept, let alone an entire organization!

My prayers go with all of those visionaries who want to ameliorate church. If we are to believe the ‘spiritual, but not religious’ among us; church needs to do a better job of meeting people’s needs to stay viable now and in years to come.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius

In pastoral counseling at Loyola, students invest long hours preparing for the
diversity of clients who we will counsel during our clinical internship and afterwards in the “real” world. We learn to identify and treat depression, anxiety, trauma, and personality disorders. We learn how humans become who they are and the dynamics of family life. We investigate the insidious disease of addiction and avenues of therapy. We choose our theoretical approach to practice and how to integrate psychology and spirituality. When I took a class in career counseling, however, I puzzled about its usefulness in pastoral care.

Then, America found itself in a recession. Suddenly, my internship was full of clients who were unemployed and looking for more than self-esteem boosters. They knew why they felt bad and what would help them feel better: a job. I turned to Loyola affiliate faculty, Deb Rollison, Ph.D., who teaches career development, for some guidance.

The people who were having the hardest time finding employment were in their late 50’s and early 60’s. For these clients, Dr. Rollison recommends:

• Do not put dates of graduation on resumes
• Summarize work experience that is ten years or older
• Reframe what older means by exploring advantages: experience, loyalty, fewer sick days, wisdom, and perspective
• Think in terms of accomplishments, including volunteer experience; list 6 to 8 PAR key accomplishment statements that show:
  • Problem – what did you face?
  • Action – what did you do?
  • Results – what happened specifically and measurably?

Exploring your clients’ accomplishments, what they enjoy, and how they effectively managed difficult times in the past is key to helping people develop self-reliance and coping skills. I encourage and coach unemployed clients to talk about what they have done and why it mattered. This helps them sell themselves both to prospective employers and to themselves. It is a constant reminder of their self-worth.

AARP’s job hunting web page is a good resource for older Americans. America’s Career InfoNet is a gateway available to everyone to explore careers, State job banks, occupation and industry information, and much more.

The longer unemployment goes on, the more strain there will be on relationships, finances, and families. If you are counseling a person with a history of substance abuse, unemployment may be a trigger or a slippery place. I have helped clients with social services, fill out forms, identify their current assets and budgets, and find the closest AA meetings.

Deb Rollison put it very clearly: Career is not just a job but a whole life – it is leisure, priorities, and purpose. In helping others define their careers and make their lives whole, my career and life as a pastoral counselor become whole.

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Matthew 25:40

It might have been my first year in the Pastoral Counseling program at Loyola University Maryland, when a professor asked what type of client we would not want to treat. I thought for a moment, and then proceeded to conjure up the most depraved type I could imagine. Several of us raised our hands to share our opinions. I do not recall any answers being validated, and as the class progressed, it occurred to me that it was a trick question. As counselors we are called to be healers, and it is not our role to determine who might be worthy of counseling. What a valuable lesson I learned that day.

Many other lessons were learned since, some tangible, and some not. Among them was the manifestation of God’s grace in the counseling environment. As a pastoral counselor, I have the added benefit of incorporating spirituality in my work. This is not an alien concept, especially since many clients have a spiritual foundation, even if they are not actively involved in a faith community. In my experience, incorporating spirituality in my work enhances the healing process. It also allows me to experience God’s grace through my clients.

Even as I offer the thought of experiencing God’s grace, I realize the intangible nature of this statement. Grace is a gift that is freely given by God. We cannot earn it, and we cannot claim to deserve it. We also cannot touch it or present it concretely. It manifests as awareness, and I have found it to be present in the therapeutic environment. Each client has her own special manifestation of grace. It might be the hope she feels at the end of a particularly intense session, or it can be a feeling of peace that accompanies sacred silence during counseling. Each manifestation is unique.

I have wondered who benefits from God’s grace during therapy, and I realize that both client and counselor do. God provides what is needed when we acknowledge Him in the counseling environment. He supplies the counselor tools to facilitate healing, and offers the client the ability to receive and integrate the treatment. Loyola’s Pastoral Counseling program encourages and expects its graduates to invite God into the therapy room. In so doing, we should have no reservations about treating all clients with respect and compassion, regardless of who they are, and what their circumstance is.

JoAnn: What led you to Loyola’s Department of Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Care?

Tiffany: I got my undergraduate degree from Mt. Saint Mary’s and knew I wanted to stay in Maryland.  While looking for graduate programs in Clinical Psychology, I saw Pastoral Counseling, but I had no idea what it was. I researched it, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that it was the perfect fit for me with its blend of psychology and spirituality. I was not comfortable pushing aside my faith in my career path. I discerned Loyola was a good fit for me.

JoAnn: How was it at Loyola?

Tiffany: I loved Loyola from day one!  Starting class with a prayer, meeting people from different faith backgrounds, experiencing everyone’s passion to help other people, and the way they integrate spirituality into their work was so inspiring for me from my first class to my last and now.

JoAnn: What were your most memorable experiences?

Tiffany: Dr. Sharon Cheston’s and Dr. Frank Richardson’s classes stood out for me. Family Counseling and Pastoral Integration were my favorite classes. The clinical portions of my studies were meaningful for me. Getting hands-on experience with different supervisors was extremely helpful.  Two years of internship gave me the confidence to go out into the workforce and know that I was ready.

JoAnn: Where did you do your internships?

Tiffany: My first one was at St. Francis Academy, a Catholic High School in Baltimore, and the second year I was at Lighthouse Youth and Family Services. I had a practicum supervisor, an on-site supervisor, and a small group supervisor in my first internship and two supervisors in my second.  I learned so much from all of them and would advise students to make the most of the supervision that they receive.

JoAnn: I heard you got married, bought a new house, went on your first ever cruise for a honeymoon, got a new dog, wrote the Professional Seminar paper, and got a new job!  How did you juggle it all?

Tiffany: Through the grace of God!  And, with very supportive family/friends and self-care. I did a lot of knitting and crocheting blankets/scarves. I prayed and journaled. I had a “keep my eyes on the prize” mentality.  Everything that happened, while stressful, was a positive thing, so that helped.  Knowing that I was called to be a counselor helped me to get through the program.

JoAnn: How was the job hunting process?

Tiffany: I started job hunting my second to last semester before I graduated. Perhaps I was a bit pre-emptive, but I am glad I did. The process was frustrating and discouraging! I put out so many resumes and only got only two bites. I was in a catch-22 situation. I had not yet graduated or gotten my license. I interviewed with Contemporary Family Services. I told them I wanted to be a school-based counselor and they were looking for a counselor for their charter schools in Baltimore. They offered me the job on the spot! I will start as soon as my LGPC (Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor) certification is completed.

JoAnn: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Tiffany: I am thankful, grateful, and blessed to have gone through the program, graduated, and to be where I am now.  I enjoyed my years at Loyola in the PC
Program and I miss it much more than I thought I would.