Why back to school? grad school reflection

Since the beginning of my discernment, my call to ministry has been to ease spiritual suffering. I continue to passionately believe that the environmental, social and physical suffering in this world will never heal if we do not first address the spiritual suffering. If our sense of self and sense of community were fully realized, how could we live in voluntary ignorance and destructive apathy? After 6 years of answering that call in chaplaincy, I wish to grow as a caregiver and scholar. Participating in the cultivation of theologically and pastorally trained leaders is a natural progression of my call to ease spiritual suffering in the world. To do this, I am seeking a PhD program to study and expand my base of knowledge in pastoral theology, cultural anthropology, psychosocial theories and pedagogy. As a pastoral theologian and scholar, I want to expand the conversation in postmodern theology and to make it applicable to today’s society, especially within the realm of fertility and infertility.  The school I'm applying to has a progressive postmodern voice that is important to me and to accomplishing these goals.

The path to finding a spiritual calling can be an interesting one, but looking back, each step along my path led me with a clear and passionate purpose towards the work I now do. Even before I could name it, discovering meaning and purpose defined my life’s path. The spiritual abuse I received as a child in a fundamentalist Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church steered me towards science and as far away from religion as possible. However, by studying and working with science, I discovered that religion is not the only place cognitive dissonance lives. During that journey, I found my best conversation partners were with progressive Christians.

My healing did not solely happen by leaving the place of abuse or by discovering a replacement faith system. Through secular counseling, I learned how to pull apart my emotions and thoughts, how to distinguish self from group, and how to empower myself and others to live fully. Through earnest and honest seeking, I discovered the joy and peace that the spiritual experience brings. Spiritual direction, monastic retreats, and many other experiences also helped heal my connection with God.

Then, after all that, seminary helped me dismantle and deconstruct hidden precepts and assumptions not only about religion, but about life. I began seminary with a passion for biblical interpretation, seeking to dismantle not only the misconceptions I was raised with, but also to address the assumed authority and power scripture has. My past may have taught me that scripture was the key, but seminary taught me that history of church, theology and even pedagogy are just as key.

Seminary is  a place of crucial integration. By increasing contextual awareness and understanding in many subjects, a person with a call to help others turns into a beautiful  kaleidoscope of skills.  However, my time in CPE and working among professional ministers and chaplains revealed a genuine lack of theological integration with the pastoral care they give. How people view God affects how they view themselves and the world.  As pastoral care providers, I feel we are called out not only to have a clear understanding of our own theology, but also how it relates to traditionally held beliefs. Often, when people have holes or inconsistencies within their theology, it can be due to lack of language to describe their feelings and thoughts about it.  As we listen to people, we should be able to reflect back confusing thoughts with different and hopefully clear language. In order to do that, however, we must do the work of theological construction and integration long before the conversation happens.

Many who seek such understanding attend seminary and labor through CPE, hoping and anticipating some of the theological and spiritual fog will clear. I help with Mid-Year Consultations for CPE residents and each year I’m assigned to a student from an evangelical background, often with a theology that creates separatism and exclusivism. The struggle and pain this brings them is hard for me to observe. I have no desire to convert the world to my way of thinking, but I do desire to ease these spiritual leaders’ suffering. I desire to aid them in exploring the struggle that exists for a theology that may give comfort in some ways, but cause conflict in other ways.  I want to help them discover not only how to fill their own theological gaps, but also how to minister to the diverse world compassionately and competently.

Professional chaplain gatherings also revealed to me several things.   I observed that many chaplains who teach and lead come from faith traditions rife not only with visible cognitive dissonance, but also with moral conflict. In addition, I noticed that chaplain leaders from progressive faith backgrounds often redirected or avoided uncomfortable theological subjects by encouraging religious diversity and focusing on psychosocial or ethical theories.  The field would benefit from more leaders who bring integrative and constructive postmodern theology not just to the discussion table, but to the practitioners in the field. I desire to expand my knowledge of theology and how the work in pastoral care interacts with it. My passion is for the postmodern voice, one that is steeped in understanding modern logic, but acknowledges that to authentically reflect reality, the voice of experience and context must always be heard.

Currently, my ministry entails working in hospice as a chaplain and bereavement educator. The time spent as a child ministering with my grandmother in nursing homes and to elderly church members imprinted not only an awareness of, but also a comfort around physical limitations and end of life.  So, here I am, walking the path with many, a path we all will or have taken: facing our own limitations and mortality. My personal limitations currently involve fertility, conception and pregnancy. When I faced accepting infertility, I had to search deep inside myself for the balm to my spiritual suffering. I had no ready way to process it.

My Master’s thesis combines feminist and process theology, so it should be no surprise that the language of co-creator is comfortable for me. It makes sense for a woman with a biology degree and healthy suspicion of power structures to want to find a theology that not only supports but empowers the individual. Accepting that I am unlikely to conceive life felt like I was sacrificing the very foundation of my faith system as a co-creator, not because I cannot envision other ways of creative being, but because the sacred unique creation of life is no longer within my grasp.

When I studied biology and biochemistry, they fed my desire to understand and revel in the mysteries of life as a creative and distinctive process. It laid the foundation for my understanding of who we are and how we relate to God and the world. What happens when someone with such a foundation finds out that she is not part of the cycle of life?  A piece of writing or the influence I have on people's hearts or minds is not the same as creating life. We must acknowledge the unique and complex process of creating life and the sacredness of such creativity. We cannot deny that all life is sacred and that the ability to create it is sacred as well. Therefore, the loss of such a sacred identity means infertility is not just a loss of function, but a complex web of experience. Infertility is not just a disorder or a dysfunction, it is not just a loss of anticipated future, and it is not just a loss of identity. It is all of the above combined with constant ethical and moral dilemmas, decision making that determines the rest of one’s life, and continual exposure to familial as well as societal pressure and judgment.

 I want to develop a way for pastors and chaplains to approach this rapidly growing area of spiritual discernment among individuals and families. I want to make the language of fertility issues normalized and eliminate the negative repercussions of shame and guilt. Above all, I wish to find an integrative postmodern theology that not only provides comfort to the infertile, but also provides a spiritual and ethical compass during a difficult time. I have my own thoughts and experiences, of course, but I want to dig deeper as a scholar and as a chaplain to add this particular context to the training of our pastoral leaders.

My call to ease spiritual suffering continues to evolve and I greatly desire to be a postmodern theological and pastoral voice in our world. I wish to not only contribute to scholarship, but also to the transformation and growth of pastoral care providers. The PhD program at this school combines the crucial elements of respected scholarship with the spirit-filled mission to cultivate competent and compassionate pastoral leaders. I request approval for admission to the PhD program for Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care.