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Rev. Catherine Garlid
August 6, 2006
Deuteronomy 6: 4-9
I Corinthians 1: 26-31
''South on the Post Road''
Some people lead with their heads and some with
their hearts. Do you know which is true for you? For those of you who lead with
your hearts, I envy you, because I think that generally it makes it a little
easier to live the life of a good and faithful Christian. There is no question
that I lead with my head, alas, and that that is the first place I go (to my
head) when I am under stress or feeling insecure.
First let me take a moment for definitions:
''The heart is the chambered muscular organ
in vertebrates that pumps blood received from the veins into the arteries,
thereby maintaining the flow of blood through the entire circulatory
system.'' Biblically and even colloquially the heart is ''the vital center
and source of one’s being, emotions, will and sensibilities,'' as in ''a
subject dear to my heart,'' or ''that boy won my heart'' or ''in my heart of
hearts.'' ''Heart'' and ''soul'' are often used interchangeably. [Dictionary.com]
And ''the head is the uppermost or forwardmost part of the body of a
vertebrate, containing the brain and the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and jaws.
Biblically and colloquially it is also the seat of the faculty of reason,
the seat of intelligence, intellect, or mind, as in, ''she has a good head
for math'' or ''he has a swelled head.'' Parenthetically, the head is also
the one in charge, though that is not our focus today. [Dictionary.com]
These tend to be pretty deeply set personality
traits, leading with the head or with the heart. But does that mean that we need
to be stuck in our heads or stuck in our hearts? Let me provide a bit more of a
context for these questions:
Some of you may remember that 7 years ago when the Helmsley Building opened at
Greenwich Hospital, part of the religious dedication ceremony included a 4 way
covenanting service among the parties of First Congregational Church, Greenwich
Hospital, the Fairfield West Association of the United Church of Christ, and me
as the Director of Spiritual Care at Greenwich Hospital. This was something the
Church Committee of First Church approved and that the congregation and pastors
supported. It made formal what had already been true and has continued to be
true now for almost 24 years – that First Church has a special supportive
relationship to the pastoral care ministries at Greenwich Hospital and, I
believe, to pastoral care ministry in general. We are partners in care, and I
believe in a sense, in mission beyond the walls of the church. I am very proud
to belong to a church that has always been committed to pastoral care ministry
and has lived out this commitment in the local and even city hospitals, in the
nursing homes, prisons and among the homebound. The decision to call Ron
Halvorson as Minister of Pastoral Care, with his specialized training and
experience in chaplaincy, further demonstrates First Church’s commitment.
Pastoral care ministry is my passion and I would like to explore that shared
ministry of ours a bit further with you through the lens of head vs. heart. For
any of us to offer good pastoral care, we have to bring the heart and the head
together.
Pastoral care has been developed in theological education over the past 70 years
with a fervor that makes it almost a ''movement.'' Before World War II the care
of the marginalized, the sick and dying, the victims of violence and war, the
lonely or the lost sheep had become heavily moralistic and preachy. If someone
was depressed, scared or ill, he needed a pep talk or she needed a carefully
chosen admonition. As soldiers came home from World War II, however, they said
that what they needed in the trenches was not a sermon, but a good ear. They
needed to be heard and the chaplains who had been there with them didn’t
necessarily know how to listen. And so the pastoral care movement was born
around the same time that psychology started to take hold in American society.
In those early years of the 1940’s and 50’s there were 2 distinct schools of
thought and teaching in pastoral care about the human person and what
constituted a healthy life of faith. [Dictionary of Pastoral Care] The
first had its home in Boston. It was the school of what William James in his
classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, called the ''Once
born'' religious experience. It portrayed the spiritual quest of the human
person this way: ''learn to be rational, face the facts, overcome
self-deception, conform to the real and trust God to carry you to health and
fulfillment.'' Health and fulfillment are achievable. And, one more thing, while
you are on the rational path, ''be happy.''
The other school had its home in New York. It was the school of the twice born
religious experience. It portrayed the spiritual quest of the human person this
way: be autonomous and free yourself of rigid destructive patterns and
self-expectations. Recognize that life is chaotic, that God is in the chaos too,
and that non-rational feelings, emotions and inner conflict are here to stay and
to be integrated into who you are, how you love and how you see the world. It
was ''twice born'' because it involved the cross, the terrible shock and
betrayal of the cross, what in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians Paul calls
''Christ crucified…the weakness of God that is stronger than men.'' [I
Cor.1:22-25] It involved a face to face encounter with suffering and evil. In
addressing melancholy, or what we would now call depression, William James
reminds his readers, ''The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any
of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil
gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic’s visions of horror are
all drawn from the material of daily fact…Here on our very hearths and in our
gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird
fluttering in her jaws.'' [Varieties] To be twice born requires heart.
One might be once born and stay in the head.
I would like to share a personal story that some of you may have heard in
another context. When Peter, my husband of 25 years this coming Tuesday and I
were first dating in Seattle, WA, I was doing a year of full time parish
internship midway through Yale Divinity School and he was working in a book
store. I had a head full of theology and how many angels could dance on the head
of a pin, and Peter was not sure he believed in God. As you can imagine, we had
some intense discussions about this difference. One evening he invited me to
dinner and after we had sat down to a lovely meal he asked, ''Do you mind if we
pause for a moment to give thanks?'' And who was I to say ''no'' to the moments
of silence we then shared. Afterwards, I am embarrassed to say I asked, ''So who
are you thanking?'' And his answer was, ''I don’t know…I just feel so grateful I
have to let it out.'' Wow! Who really was the believer? I was stunned, disarmed,
and lastingly humbled, realizing that up to that time I didn’t think I had never
experienced such a feeling. I was stuck in my head, in my intellect.
So my journey has been a journey south on the Boston Post Road, a journey from
the Boston school of pastoral care to the NY school. I was born to a family of
academics and intellectuals, raised in Belmont just outside of Boston, attending
the First Congregational Church of Cambridge, Massachusetts. No wonder I lead
with my head! My journey has been a journey of descent into my heart. The
scripture lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians might have been a letter
to First Church in Cambridge as, in retrospect, I experienced it. Corinth was in
Greece across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus. Many of the members of the church in
Corinth considered Paul ''‘rude in speech’ and wished he would give more
attention to the refinements of expression, like the Stoic philosopher-preachers
to whom they were accustomed. But Paul insisted upon talking simply and directly
in the plain speech of everyday life.'' [James Stalker, The Life of St. Paul
(Edinburgh)]. He spoke from his heart about Christ crucified, reminding those
church members, ''not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not
many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish
in the world to humble the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to humble
the strong.''
Given my own background it is no wonder that in teaching pastoral care to
clergy, seminarians, and lay people in the hospital context, I have been
committed to the struggle of helping them to pay attention to their feeling
lives and teaching them to do the same for the people they care for in pastoral
ministry. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher at the University of Chicago and a
convert to Judaism, recognizes how limiting it is to be trapped within the
bounds of reason without full access to the influence of the heart. She reviews
the history of Western philosophical and theological thought that has separated
reason from emotion, noting how tradition has discounted the value of emotion in
human social and ethical development. Nussbaum argues that our emotions inform
our very intelligence and identity because they are connected to the value we
place upon the persons and objects that we cherish. Our passions, including our
erotic and aggressive passions, help us embrace the fullness of life. [Martha
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (Cambridge)]
So…do you lead with your head or with your heart? How are you at bringing
them together? Can you face your own pain, the pain of others, and ''the
material of daily fact?'' If we cannot, not only do we make lousy pastoral care
givers, but we can’t live with integrity as Christians in the world because we
can’t face or stand up to pain, to violence, unfairness, or tragedy.
I would like to conclude by repeating the reading we heard earlier from
Deuteronomy. It is known in Hebrew as the Shema. It stands as a
cornerstone of both the Jewish faith and the Christian faith where it is known
as ''The Great and First Commandment.'' [Matthew 22:38] It sounds like this in
Hebrew: Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad. ''Hear O Israel: The
Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul and with all your might (or as it is translated in
Jesus’ words to his disciples, and ''with all your mind''). And these words
which I command to you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach
them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your
house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.''
Amen |
