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Well, we're delighted today to welcome Reverend Doctor Karen D Shib, um who has returned to Candler as a scholar in residence. After retiring in 2020 as Professor of Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology. She began

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teaching pra pra practical and pastoral theology and Candler at Candler in 1998 and served as a director of the school's women theology and ministry program for many years. Her research interests include faith and health, theological and

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cultural dimensions of crises and trauma and narrative theory and therapy. She's the author of um all like all my favorite books uh that I've used in several classes , um challenging invisibility practices of care with older women

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. Um I've used that in my family and kin networks, class, pastoral care, telling the story of our stories of our lives. That, that book I've used in our Intro to pastoral care class

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. And um her most recent book Attend to Stories How To flourish in ministry. Um And this book is gonna be the top uh really the focus of our conversation today. Um She's uh distinguished for doing

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for a lot of service and a lot of other writing that you could look up as well. Um I just have always appreciated the depth of theological reflection and attention to human life and the connection of heart

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and soul um that uh characterizes Doctor Sh's work. It's just really a delight to be with her today . Um She is really uh stood out in recent years as someone who's been thinking deeply about kind of

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how our eccles traditions uh shape the imagination of our pastoral care. So, um I'm just thrilled to be here with you today, Doctor Shib and I'm looking forward to your presentation and our conversation together.

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So, thank you for being here with us. Well, thank you. Uh It's, it's an honor and thank you for that lovely um humbling introduction . I appreciate that. Well, I wrote this

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book, um I'll sh I'll show you the cover at 10, the stories How to flourish in ministry . Um because I was invited to give a lecture at the Georgia Pastor School, which is a continuing

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education event for North and South Georgia conference. I'm a member of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. And um I was a pastor before I went into teaching. So I was a pastor

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for about 12 years. Um And when a and had a experience of, you know, near, near burnout, which I decided a good way to deal with that was to go to graduate school.

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So anyway, I ended up teaching most of my career. Um 22 years at Candler and five at Saint Paul School of Theology. But I was invited to give a lecture on clergy self care. This

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was in probably 2014 or 2016 because the book came out in 2018, fairly soon after. And I found myself uh struggling with that language of self care . I think the idea is important but being in

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, I don't know if any of you are in the Methodist system, but in uh at least in the North Georgia conference, um uh candidates for ordination have to present a, a self care plan.

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And if there are issues of uh health issues around weight or you know, other health issues, those have to be addressed. And I found some of my students were more worried about their B M I

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than their theological answers for ordination and something's wrong with this model. So there's something wrong here. And so as I was doing the research for this, um there had begun to be a shift from the

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self care language to flourishing. But a lot of the early literature was what I call a medical model . And part of that was that some of the early studies on clergy health were done by uh Duke

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and it had kind of a medical focus partly because of the grant that shaped that. So there was discovery in, I think, you know, the 19 fifties pastors were pretty healthy but things starting in

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, in maybe the eighties. Uh there was a discovery that, that pastors had high rates of depression , high, um high incidences of um high, high cholesterol obesity, um uh anxiety, um high

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blood pressure. And so there was an attempt to in a sense address those symptoms. And so that's what I mean, a kind of medical model. And so the self care was around things like a

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lot of the books I read on self care was eat well. Um you know, reduce stress exercise . Uh and maybe some spiritual practices, well, you can't live in the United States and have not

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heard the advice, eat well, exercise, reduce stress. And yet clergy were still struggling to care for themselves. And one of the studies from Duke indicated that clergy knew they should care for themselves but

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were felt they couldn't do it until they've taken care of everyone else. And so having written the previous book on narrative, um the pastor care care, telling the stories of our lives. And I and

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I use narrative in the, in a book on aging as well. I was thinking about what are the stories we carry as clergy that keep us from flourishing? What are the stories that we carry about

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what it means to care for others or be in ministry that keep us from being able to attend to our own well being. Um And, and in 2019, Matt Bloom came out with a book flourishing

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in ministry. Some of, you may know it how to cultivate clergy well being. Um my book came out in 2018. Um But Bloom had been doing this work for some time and had um I

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has identified in that book four factors which contribute to clergy well being. Uh the other thing I think is there began to be the influence of positive psychology which shifts from sort of diagnosing the problem, which

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was the early approach to clergy health. It was sort of more focused on ill health and a shift of to in positive psychology on what fosters our well being and flourishing. Um And so that's, I

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think an important shift and bloom identifies um four factors of clergy well being and I will, these are slides from another workshop, but I'll pull some and I'll send them to Doctor Helsel. So you'll have

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these so you don't have to take extensive notes. But, and this is based on decades of research . He says the four elements of clergy well being are daily well being, which is a kind of

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the quality of our daily lives. And for him , that means there's a more positive emotions and negative emotions are going to be both, but that there's more of one than the other. The second element

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is resilience, which is our ability to adapt, change and grow. And I just wanna say here for those of you, um I've, I do a workshop on clergy flourishing. I'll say more about

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later. And a lot of the clergy we've worked with were appointed to new charges around the time of the pandemic hit. And for those clergy resilience was really stretched because there was so much rapid change required

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. Every time we thought we kind of turned the corner, something else happened. And so our resilience , I think for clergy has been really pushed to its limit. Um So finding ways to address that

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The third element, he identifies his authenticity, which is our sense of self, identity and dignity. But this, he links to what he calls an integrated self narrative and that's where it intersects with my

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work. And that's part of what I think I try to do and attend to stories is help us look at our narrative and the stories that make that up. It's a what are the stories that promote

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our flourishing and what are the stories that undermine that and how might we address those stories and challenge them and re revise them? And then the fourth element is thriving, which has to do with the values

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and beliefs that inspire us and um in the workshops , I do, I work with a, a partner, Doctor mcclure from bright, who has expertise in working with the hall tone of value scales which

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help us identify what our real values are and they're not always what we think they are, but often if we are in a place where we can't live out what we value and what gives us energy,

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then we'll find ourselves struggling. Um And so those two pieces are things we attend in the workshop. But my work particularly looks at um the work of narrative. Uh One of the things that Bloom says

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is that a pastor's identity, his or her sense of him or herself as a person and his or her sense of self as a pastor is at the core of pastoral well being and our identities form as

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life stories. And our brain wires them into an autobiography of our lives, what research co calls a life narrative. And so that's where and what Bloom does is sort of identify this factor. What he

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doesn't do is sort of give us tools of how to interpret that narrative or dig into it. And one of the things that I've done, I call this story care, um and it is, it

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is built on the theological notion that God intends our flourishing. I have come to have life that you may have it abundantly. So it's that notion which is I think very different than self care, which

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is kind of we have symptoms and we have to treat them. And what I found is the term self care often feels like to clergy. One more thing you have to do for yourself by yourself,

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which then you can end up not doing well. But if flourishing is God's intent, then that's something that we can claim as that as we intend to our flourishing, we're responding to God's desire for us

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to flourish and, or, and to help then others flourish. Because if we're not flourishing, we're not gonna help anybody else do that either. So the idea is that this is a, a quote

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from Dan mcadams whose work I use um as well . He says, if you want to know me , then you must know my story. For my story defines who I am. And if I want

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to know myself to gain insight into the meaning of my life, then I too must come to know my own story. The problem is is that we're of course living our story. So it's hard to

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get to see them often except maybe in retrospect and there are ways and, and what I develop in story care is, is a way to kind of dig into our stories um to understand uh what shapes

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us and our stories are not simply our own creation . They're formed in the context of our families, of our culture, of our religious backgrounds. Um Bill Randall uses the term um narrative. What is

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it, narrative environments, the narrative, the environments of the stories. So you might think of a favorite children's story you grew up with and might have shaped you in some way. Um For me,

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one of the stories was I'm old enough to remember The Little Engine That Could and did anybody remember that story. So um when I was about five or six to go to school, I had to ride

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up a big hill. And what did I do when I wrote up the Big Hill? I said , I think I can, I think I can , I think I can. So we carry these

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stories with us and we carry the stories of our family and sometimes the stories of our family are not always helpful. And I find that a narrative approach in family systems theory work very well together. And

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we might think of, if you think of Bowen related systems theory that we look at generational patterns, I think narrative can help us trace the stories that keep those patterns of relationship in place. Um So

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one of the, one of the things that I do with story care um is what I've called life story exegesis. And I use the term exegesis very purposefully. Um because I was intending to talk to

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clergy, it's something you do. If you're preaching every Sunday, you're doing exegesis, you're interpreting a text, you're looking at its background, how the story was formed, who told the story from what

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perspective when you preach, you, you'll preach on the same text many times. So we take, say the story of the good of um the prodigal son. You can preach it from the perspective of

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the father or the older son or the younger son and you get different views of it and I use the term exegesis, you could use the term close reading, which is from literature because I wanted clergy

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to say I have a tool that comes from my theological training that I can use to understand myself and others more deeply so that we're not dependent only on psychological theories and we can utilize those. But we

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have this sense that we are people of the story . We've been shaped by God's story. We are part of that and that we can look at our own story. And so we life story exegesis is

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a way of doing a close reading of our own life stories. And so that we can then identify those stories that are problematic and deconstruct them, revise them, reinterpret them, and also that we can

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construct a hopeful future story. Uh This is a language that um Andy Lester used uh also a pastoral theologian because what we think is possible in the future in some ways can be a projection of both our

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past and our present. And so if we see a kind of limitation in the present, we may not have the imagination that God intends for us to have. As Lester says, a future coming towards

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us to to create a hopeful future story. So this is this is the work of story care and this is a kind of a very quick and large overview, but that's, that's the work uh of

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story care. And uh in in the book and both in the workshop. One of the things I do is I demonstrate this exegetical model by looking at Barbara Brown Taylor and some other um pastoral memoirs,

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but especially Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Leaving Church. And any of you know that book, it's her experience of not leaving the V church but leaving a church um in the middle of a conflict. And

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I think it's her way of going back over and looking at what happened and part of what she realizes is the story she carried about ministry and call, kept her trapped in a feeling that she had to

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take care of everybody else, which then led to her own burnout. And if you know anything of her life, she reinterpreted her sense of ministry. So that writing and speaking became her ministry. And

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the first book actually after um leaving church was called an Altar in the World, which makes perfect sense because that's the move that she made. So, um again, I'll stop and see if you have

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questions. Uh I don't know how much detail you want me to go into the deconstruction practice. But um that's one of the things that I I in the book, I talk about um the different pieces

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of um story care, the different steps in story care. Um Yeah, I think that would be helpful if you looked into that a little bit for us. Yeah, thank you. So there are

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four steps of um of life story ex of Jesus . And there anytime you put steps, it makes them seem separate, but they're also, they're always kind of moving back and forth. So the first

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thing is to, um and this is the, this is what you find in the attend of stories . I have a version of this in the pastoral care book, but I simplified it. I think

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this is a more helpful version is that we attend to the best story that's sort of the personal history , the influence of the family story. Um And we also look at the, at the culture and

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that we're part of, that's also related to step two. But if you, if you read a novel, it always starts in the middle and when people tell stories or we tell our own story,

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we sort of start where we are in the middle . There's a memoir called um Why Be Happy when You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winters Winters, Winterson , Winterson. I think the opening line is my

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mother used to tell me the devil sent her to the wrong crib. Wow, that's it. That's like what, what's the back story? What's what , why would she say that? I mean,

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obviously something her mother told her. So a family story that she's been told that she carries, which can't be one that helps her flourishing that she was the devil sent her to the wrong crib. So

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she was an adopted child and the only book allowed in her house was the Bible. So she went to the public library. This is she grew up in England and read through from A to Z basically

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. And part of her memoir is the way reading stories opened her imagination to craft a different story for her own life. So the so attending to that back story, the influence of family stories, the

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second step is analyzing the narrative environments, um the culture, the community, the, the church that we're part of also part of the narrative environments is something that um uh Bill Randall calls master narratives.

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There's larger narratives about uh gender, race, sexuality , uh ways of knowing that sort of shape us . Um I was I learned to read using the Jane and Dick um reading books. OK. I

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see somebody nodding that you're old enough to remember those . Um And they were supposed to be teaching us to read, but of course, everybody in them was white. Jane wore pink and stood by the

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sidelines and did nothing. Dick was the only one who was active or maybe the dog spot. So they not only taught us to read, they also contain these master narratives about gender and race and other

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things that we better have become part of our stories . So part of this and this also draws from narrative therapy that uses a kind of um that looks at the um dominant discourses in the culture. And

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how they influence our own stories and sort of what's possible for us are not possible. And master narratives also in a sense, set rules about who gets to speak and whose speech is believed. And that's

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another thing that, that impacts our narrative. So we look at those things in our stories. Another step is to name stories that um are problematic stories or the stories that leave us languishing and I talk

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about specific types or many times. But stories that confine us that say and this can be related to master narratives. I worked with a lot of students who came out of traditions where women didn't preach and

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they had to change tradition to follow their call or um you can't do that because of your gender or uh you can't do that because that's not what pastors do. You can't behave that way or wear those

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clothes or I'm sure you all have stories that, you know, because parishioners have their own stories of what a pastor is and they don't always fit who we are. Um And then also stories that are

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under told that we don't, they can be stories of our own competence, but they can also be stories of things. We don't pay attention to both in our lives or the congregation. And Barbara Brown

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Taylor, the church she was at was a church in North Georgia and she had been a pastor in Atlanta and she and her husband had driven to North Georgia to look at this little, they found this

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basically white, little white church in the country and she said, I want this church, but there was a pastor in it. Well, he died suddenly and she became the pastor of that church.

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And one thing she never really fully addresses in the memoir and it may be enough choice or it may just be that it wasn't fully addressed. She never fully addresses the congregation's grief at leaving that lo losing

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that pastor. And I often wondered how the conflict that she ends up in was relate, was related to the grief that was unresolved. So that's, and, and often churches have these untold stories and

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we also may have untold stories that can affect us . Um And then finally, as we sort of work through these dimensions, we hopefully move towards a revising our stories, reinterpreting them. Um And a

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or restoring is the term again that I borrowed from Bill Randall to promote our flourishing. So those are the sort of the steps of um that we go through. And in the book, I do,

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I work through those steps with in looking at Barbara Brown Taylor's own life. Um To give an example of what that looks like. Another thing I talk about in the book is the importance of self compassion

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when we're doing this work um is to be gentle with ourselves. It's easy to look back and say , oh, I should have done this or I should have done that or I should have known that

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. Um And so I have a, a section drawing on the work of um Christian KNF on self compassion. And I also being a Methodist draw on Wesley's general rules which would do no harm, do

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good and attend to the Ords of God. And when Wesley is talking about do good, he introduces that by saying, do mercy of every kind, mercy and compassion are synonyms. So we are to

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be merciful to ourselves. And again, there is AAA text, Old Testament text be merciful is your God is merciful. One of the stories I think some of us inherit is, is I would say

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a misinterpretation of the um great commandment. Uh This I learned about this when I moved to the South , I'm from the, the West coast, the acronym Joy. Have any of you heard of that

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? Jesus? First, other, second yourself. Third. Well, I'm pretty sure if we look at the text that the, it says love God with all your heart, all your mind, all

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your soul of others as yourself. It's, they're not hierarchical. The assumption is we can't do one without the other, but often a kind of theological story we pick up is that they're hierarchical the first

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, I love God and then I love others. And if I've managed to do as well, then I can love myself. I, I that's why I think the other problem I think with the term

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self care is, is that to a lot of clergy, it feels selfish and if we're trying to love others, then it feels like a conflict. So uh so being compassion is being merciful to ourselves

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, as we say, look, I inherited these stories. So when I, I'll tell you one of mine quickly and then I'll take a break. When I was 14, my mother was diagnosed with

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a fast advancing non remitting form of MS. Now this was in, she died in 1979. So this would have been 19 69 I was 14, I think. Um and they didn't make those distinctions

00:23:12.390 - 00:23:23.670

at the time. So by the time I graduated from high school, she was pretty much bedridden and was unable to feed herself probably when I was around that time. So one of my jobs was to

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feed her. Um We had, didn't have home health care wasn't available at that time. She was too young. We didn't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare . So my job was to make sure she ate

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. I had to feed her, literally feed her . So what did I learn from that story that taking care of another is a life and death matter . That's not a helpful lesson to carry into ministry

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. It made it not easy for me to say no if taking care of someone. And that was sort of, it's not a story that was told to me. So when we talk about the stories

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we carry, they're not just things that are told to us, they're the way we experience or interpret our, our own life events. And so I carried the story that, that caring for others was

00:24:06.750 - 00:24:18.160

the life and death matter. And then when I was ordained, um and this is when I was ordained, uh an elder is a two step process . At that time in the Methodist church, I

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was working with a senior pastor who'd been the conference secretary and for those who aren't Methodist. So he works with the bishop and they serve a term and he was finishing his term and the bishop was congratulating

00:24:29.680 - 00:24:40.220

on his job well done. And he said he works 1214, 16 hours a day. He kept increasing the hours. And for me, that was the story of this is what's expected of you in

00:24:40.230 - 00:24:51.020

ministry. So I loaded that story on top of taking care of people as a life and death matter . And without, until I could, could become aware of those stories. And some of this work

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for me frankly was through therapy. But I do think we can begin on our own to begin to identify what stories am I carrying that um are inhibiting me from, from flourishing and from caring for myself

00:25:04.570 - 00:25:14.990

. Um And so that's, that's the work that , that I do in this book and that I do in some of the workshops um I found myself really like underlining a lot of the book, but

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I underlined a lot in the restoring chapter. And I found myself um kind of underlining a phrase, not knowing God's love in our broken places. And then also a phrase I think it's from your own

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journey here. I can lose what's dear to me and not be lost. Um I just found uh these um discoveries that you shared with us out of kind of the depths of your own personal experience in

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your journey to be so intimate and tender and wise and such a gift to us as we think about caring for our stories. Um You talk about not always feeling the freedom to love from the depths of

00:26:00.740 - 00:26:10.940

your soul. Um And it was just really like , profound to be led through that journey. I also really like, I, I was also really drawn up by the exercise at the end about the

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person that you had a hard time loving. I like, like I didn't like that one. I just learned from immediately like, you know, it didn't even take me any time, but I learned

00:26:18.660 - 00:26:27.450

a lot from it. Um I, I don't know, I don't, I don't know if I have a question as much as just a couple of comments and you could go wherever you want with them

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. I was wondering kind of like, how do people slow down and see if their stories no longer fit. Um, how do you help students who are burned out from family caregiving? But like,

00:26:38.560 - 00:26:49.370

but yet that yet they're pursuing seminary or something like that. I mean, I think sometimes people come to seminary as a kind of major story change. Um, uh, and then I also thought about

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kind of the concept from Buddhist meditation about like a story maybe being defensive. And I don't know if you've, oh, that's just a story, you know, like, kind of like our thoughts.

00:27:00.670 - 00:27:12.220

Like sometimes the stories we tell have an element of like, like cheerleading ourselves or like defending the be best version of ourselves over and over again. I don't know. I just, that's a, like

00:27:12.630 - 00:27:22.370

those are just a couple of thoughts that I had and I don't know, you could take those words . I mean, for one thing, stories are built on memory and what we now know about memory

00:27:22.380 - 00:27:33.470

is that memory is highly unreliable. I and most of us I think even me still tend to think of memory as if it is this like computer memory , there's actual information there. And what we know

00:27:33.480 - 00:27:44.200

about our brains is that basically memories are recreated every time we think of them. It's, it's pulling on something but you know how they're stored in our neurons. You know what we know about neuroscience now

00:27:44.210 - 00:27:56.840

. It's, it's, it's, it's amazing there's any consistency to our memory at all. Um So , and, and often we do forget things. So, um, we remember in them in a

00:27:56.850 - 00:28:06.080

particular way and I don't remember if I told this story in the book about that. I was hospitalized when I was a child three times and, you know, as a child and that was in a

00:28:06.090 - 00:28:15.030

day when Children were just put in the hospital and parents were only allowed to visit during visiting hours. And I was seven years old. It was really scary. And I had, um I had,

00:28:15.040 - 00:28:26.890

I had, I ended up, it was a blood related illness, uh called I T P and somebody came in every day to take blood. And um, you know, in my experience was kind

00:28:26.900 - 00:28:36.550

of feeling abandoned really by my family. Like why did they leave me here? And it wasn't till I was an adult that I could say, well , they were taking care of me because they wanted

00:28:36.560 - 00:28:45.690

me to be well. But as a child, I had that kind of emotional experience and I had to relearn, you know, that part of the story. And as I said, a lot of

00:28:45.700 - 00:28:57.000

this work, I think any good therapy really is a kind of re story is, is, is helping us understand the stories that we carry that. And I do think part of the story work is

00:28:57.010 - 00:29:08.060

learning to hold them loosely that they do reflect stories do shape who we are and reflect who we are . But we can hold them loosely and, you know, one thing would for me to say,

00:29:08.070 - 00:29:19.140

well, if my parents were telling the story, how, what does that story of my illness look like from their perspective? How does it give me a different understanding and see the broader picture? You

00:29:19.150 - 00:29:30.620

know, how might I tell that story from God's perspective? You know how God was in that? Um And one of the experiences was I had a , they thought I might have leukemia. So I

00:29:30.630 - 00:29:41.290

had a, a bone marrow test and we had a family physician whose daughter was my age and we were in school together and he came to take me to the test. My parents weren't there and a

00:29:41.300 - 00:29:49.610

nurse brought in a wheelchair and he pushed the wheelchair aside and he picked me up and carried me in his arms to the test. Now, if that's not grace, I don't know what it is.

00:29:51.290 - 00:29:59.900

You know, that that experience of being cared for in that way to me is more than just his care. It's being sort of held in, held in love. And to me, that's the center

00:29:59.910 - 00:30:11.740

of my theology as you know, is, is love is central to that. So, um I , I think that um it's hard to do this work on our own. I think to do this

00:30:11.750 - 00:30:23.960

in a small group. Um That's why we offer uh op you know, these workshop opportunities to do it in therapy, um to do it um in a safe clergy group, uh I say safe because

00:30:25.140 - 00:30:36.460

sometimes denomination put us in clergy groups and they aren't always helpful. But to find uh a group of people with whom we can work together. You know , if I'm struggling in ministry. Um and stories

00:30:36.470 - 00:30:45.600

are not only our own stories come from the inside out, but also there are stories put on us by others. And this is a challenge in the church because every prisoner has a different story of what

00:30:45.610 - 00:30:56.840

a minister should be. The denomination has a story , what a minister should be. So we have these outside in stories put on us. And one of the things I talk about and revising is what

00:30:56.850 - 00:31:07.640

I call narratives of resistance. How do we push against those stories that are imposed on us that are not helpful to us. Um That, that are asking us to be not our authentic selves, which

00:31:07.650 - 00:31:17.900

is again, part of what um Bloom says is , is central to our well being as ministers. One thing that struck me that a lot of pastoral care books is they tell you how to do it

00:31:17.910 - 00:31:26.920

right? Or they give examples how somebody did it right? But they rarely give examples of when someone did it wrong or what they learn from it. And so I was very intentional in both books of

00:31:26.930 - 00:31:37.290

showing how I messed up and what I learned from that um in terms of pastoral care because none of us get it right. The first time. So I think as you said, being willing to look

00:31:37.300 - 00:31:49.670

honestly at ourselves, which is a confessional act, right? To look honestly at ourselves, helps us then to be honest with each other. And I think people in churches are longing for that kind of

00:31:49.680 - 00:32:07.310

authenticity both from us as pastors and to be able to do that. And if we can model that , I think it helps people do that with one another. So the last chapter of the book,

00:32:07.320 - 00:32:17.900

I talk about different practices for flourishing. And one of those for me is writing um one of the practices of self care, but I have a whole chapter on writing as a spiritual practice. And there

00:32:17.910 - 00:32:29.570

is a kind of writing called Expressive Writing. The expressive writing is a kind of journaling where you take a particular issue struggling with or it may be a relationship. This may be what he's referring to of

00:32:29.580 - 00:32:38.920

a person you have a hard time with and you write a journal about it for 15 minutes a day , for a set period of time. I think it's three or four days. Um The, there

00:32:38.930 - 00:32:52.000

are books on um Panna Baker and Smith have written a book called Expressive Writing Words that heal um that tell you how to go through this process. And they've done a lot of research on this, using

00:32:52.010 - 00:33:01.670

it in lots of um lots of different groups. And so you pick something particular, you're struggling with you write on it for 15 minutes a day, not just your thoughts, not just complaining, but

00:33:01.680 - 00:33:19.580

your emotional state really think about it thoroughly and then to kind of process it and work it through. Um And when they've tested groups before and after their blood pressure is lower, they have lower stress hormones

00:33:19.590 - 00:33:32.030

, they have all kinds of their physical outcomes. They have fewer doctor visits in the time after this process of writing. And so I think for clergy who often can't discuss everything they're doing. Um the

00:33:32.040 - 00:33:42.910

write, this kind of expressive writing can be really healing. So there's a lot of research that shows that it is a, a healing practice, another practice, I don't know. And there is um

00:33:42.930 - 00:33:53.580

and, and do no harm. The idea is that um one of the things Wesley says is do not engage in uncharitable or unprofitable conversations. We often do that to ourselves. We have unprofitable and charitable

00:33:53.590 - 00:34:06.560

conversations with ourselves. Our inner critic gets a little too big and another exercise that I can't remember if I mentioned in the book is um telling your inner critic. Thank you for your um opinion. I

00:34:06.570 - 00:34:16.930

have another one. You're free to go and sort of letting them I can go. And that's also being compassionate to realize we carry those inner critics. But that, and we get to a point where

00:34:16.940 - 00:34:35.380

we can sort of speak back to them and have another perspective. Well, let me say a little more about the workshops I do. So um some of you may be interested. So I've been working

00:34:35.390 - 00:34:49.100

for the past about six years with Doctor Barbara mcclure at Bright Divinity School. And they have a grant through the Lily Foundation which is thriving in ministry. And one piece of those is called the flourishing and

00:34:49.110 - 00:35:00.520

ministry workshops. We do them twice a year. We started in 2018 and then of course, in 2020 we, they were in person the first uh year uh through 2018 and 19. And then in

00:35:00.530 - 00:35:13.630

2020 we went online um and they were originally a week. It's now I think three, we started on a Sunday and we finish on a Wednesday. And um we do, we go through this process

00:35:13.640 - 00:35:25.440

of story exegesis. So why you have the opportunity to look at? I, I go through some of this information in more depth um the, the practices of story care and we do uh it's participatory

00:35:25.450 - 00:35:35.810

. We, we, we work on our own stories or several exercises. I use the tree of life. We, we give you an opportunity to identify a story that's problematic and to work through that

00:35:35.820 - 00:35:46.170

to revise it, to create a hopeful future story . It's, that's the piece of the workshop that I do and that work is related again to Bloom's notion of this authentic self in an integrated life narrative

00:35:46.490 - 00:36:01.510

. The second piece star Doctor mcclure does on Tuesday is using the hall to of values inventory. And Hall and Tona were two religious educators that developed this value instrument to help identify the values that um really

00:36:01.520 - 00:36:17.200

shape our lives that we're often unaware of. And um our values and our stories are connected because our values often are reinforced by stories. Um And um so that the two of those pieces go together.

00:36:17.210 - 00:36:28.370

So the second part of the work we do is discovering the values that guide us. And it's the values that Holland to define have very particular definitions. So they're a little different than sort of like we

00:36:28.380 - 00:36:43.300

might say honesty, but they may be things like word is a value which has to do with communicating to others in a way that transforms their life or uh another value I'm thinking might be um solitude and

00:36:44.350 - 00:36:55.110

connect compassion, solitude. And I can't remember the , the other term of it is um companionship, but it, the idea of both being alone and with others. But they look at the way those

00:36:55.120 - 00:37:09.490

form us and also how they are expressed in or our organizational life. And um by discovering those values , often, we find that people aren't aware of , they're aware on one level what the value is

00:37:09.500 - 00:37:21.920

, but not sort of the, how deep it is ingrained in them. And they're often discovered that they're not living out their values, which is part of why they feel like they're languishing. And because

00:37:21.930 - 00:37:34.990

of that, that piece of values is connected to uh what Bloom describes as thriving, that being able to know what our values are and live them out authentic, authentically. So these workshops are offered twice

00:37:35.000 - 00:37:45.980

a year. We just did our October workshop, October 8th through 12th and we'll have another one in April. I don't know if the dates are set yet, but you can um if you're interested can

00:37:45.990 - 00:37:58.580

just email me um Doctor Heel can put that up for you. Um It may be on, there is a, I tried to find it on their website at Bright. It's not up yet. Um

00:37:58.590 - 00:38:09.150

It's a Sunday through a Wednesday. There's a small fee the most that you would pay is 100 and $75. And that's based on that's assuming your congregation has a budget of more than$40,000. So it's

00:38:09.160 - 00:38:21.990

very affordable and the grant also will pay you to stay in a retreat center. So you can focus on this work. We do a lot of writing prompts. We do small group work. It's deep

00:38:21.990 - 00:38:32.780

, intense work, but we've seen people's lives, I've seen people just this last group, people come in, exhausted and drained and they find new energy . They find uh an, an open future story

00:38:32.790 - 00:38:45.750

, they find possibility and it's largely they work the work they do with each other and with themselves. We just set the frame and, and provide that guidance and those will be continuing or at least the

00:38:45.760 - 00:38:57.610

next three years, the grant continues. I think uh Doctor Shive, I just love all your work . And your first book, challenging invisibility um uh practices of care with older women is just really a

00:38:57.620 - 00:39:07.420

radical and revolutionary book. And whenever I bring it around with me and read it, I have older women talking to me about their experiences of being invisible . Like they, they just tell me about it

00:39:07.430 - 00:39:22.050

because I have the book out. Um I didn't know if there was like, and I love what you did in that first book with. Uh I trust it as your first book with like um understanding

00:39:22.060 - 00:39:35.460

the narratives that come to us from culture and deconstructing those. But also having in mind another narrative for like for old age and for the life cycle, it's, that is such rich, like theological work

00:39:35.470 - 00:39:45.870

that you're up to in that book. And I don't think there's anything quite as good about aging and pastoral care in our field right now as that book . Um So I just, I think that's such

00:39:45.880 - 00:40:00.350

an important issue as well. I don't know if there's any themes that you see that tie through your earlier works that you might wanna pick up or say , I, I think about that differently now or

00:40:00.360 - 00:40:14.880

like just um makes the connections for us. Well , yeah, I mean, that was my first book. It was not my dissertation. My dissertation was um I used Daniel Stern's work because my training

00:40:14.890 - 00:40:28.950

was more psychodynamic and psychoanalytic. And I was really looking at sort of what's pastoral about pastoral counseling. And I looked at the interpersonal sphere and how that shaped and now that's related to kind of an eye

00:40:28.960 - 00:40:39.280

to eye relationship and what that was my dissertation, which I didn't publish. So after I finished the dissertation, I actually ended up doing a certificate in gerontology and it was that, that sort of led

00:40:39.290 - 00:40:47.990

me to this. And when I wrote that book , when I was in my forties, now I'm 69. Um Yeah, I was probably 49 because it came out a while ago. It's not new

00:40:49.390 - 00:40:59.340

. Um And now I am an older woman. I wasn't then. Um But part of the reason I wrote that is that my mother died at 46 . So I didn't have her as an example.

00:40:59.350 - 00:41:07.570

But my grandmother lived with us to help take care of my mother. And I, I think I say in the introduction, my first college roommate was my grandmother because we shared a room together in our

00:41:07.580 - 00:41:20.980

house when I grew up. And I, um I, I found when I was teaching at Saint Paul, a lot of my students were in parishes with mostly older adults, largely older women and they

00:41:20.990 - 00:41:32.240

had various stereotypical notions of them. And I wanted to get a sense of what the experience of aging was like for older women, which is a fine research question but a terrible interview question. So I

00:41:32.250 - 00:41:43.460

, I just started with, tell me something about your life and one of the questions is, what does it mean to be old? And almost every woman started and I completely relate to this. Now

00:41:43.470 - 00:41:54.220

, I'm not old but, but the image of age was the cultural image of that. You are disconnected. You're not interested, you're not interesting, you're not active. Um And that was not at

00:41:54.230 - 00:42:07.820

all what I found in, in the women. And the title came from the interview. It was originally my title for the book. Um But from the interviews that when women told me they felt invisible

00:42:07.830 - 00:42:17.720

. And of course, one story is of this um older couple, lesbian, couple, one like to shop and her partner didn't. So she would stand in the shopping mall and juggle she wasn't invisible

00:42:17.730 - 00:42:30.510

. Then. Um One of the stories was a , a woman I knew was a friend of mine pastor's wife who talked about being in a church event , setting up for an event with two younger women

00:42:30.520 - 00:42:39.130

standing next to her, talking about how they talked to some older women in the church. And it was very interesting. They actually enjoyed it while completely ignoring my friend who was standing next to them.

00:42:39.720 - 00:42:51.100

So I, I, I, I guess I have a different perspective now because I am in that category at the time, I was interviewing women over 65 and now, now I'm there. Um So

00:42:51.110 - 00:43:01.560

I both see that. Um So in terms of changing my mind, I'd have to think about that . Um I, I think, I guess I feel if anything, it's more of how we live

00:43:01.570 - 00:43:13.550

out those narratives of resistance to be different than, um you know, the expectations or the assumptions that are, that are put on us. And it's not related just to aging, it relates to all

00:43:13.560 - 00:43:23.230

kinds of categories, right? Where we, where we constrain people into particular ways of being. Um but I even then I was working with the narrative , not in the same depth, but the idea

00:43:23.240 - 00:43:35.700

that our stories shape us because I did interviews and , you know, we uh the interesting thing was and I think as I did more narrative work because I would just start with tell me something about your

00:43:35.710 - 00:43:47.680

life story. And it was really interesting to see where people started. Some people started from birth, some people started from what was happening right now in a challenging event. One woman, uh I remember

00:43:47.690 - 00:44:01.580

this started with her conversion at age seven when she went up and, you know, took Jesus and her husband had just died and there was a bible sitting on the table. And part of what she

00:44:01.590 - 00:44:12.270

was saying in that story is my faith is important to me and that's what's helping me cope with the death of my husband. So that's where I began . I think even on those interviews to begin to

00:44:12.280 - 00:44:23.940

say that stories aren't about information, they're about who we are and how we see ourselves and how we see God moving in our lives. And that when we listen for stories, it's not just, and

00:44:23.950 - 00:44:37.690

it's a little different than active listening, we do that, but it's also inviting someone to imagine dimensions of the story they haven't thought about um or for us to hear. And one of the, this

00:44:37.700 - 00:44:50.820

, this is actually I learned in a writing workshop , tell me your story and I'll find mine when we listen to another person's story. And this happens in the workshops and we have people dig into their

00:44:50.830 - 00:45:04.120

stories and share with each other. People who on the surface seem to be quite different, sometimes have stories that are quite similar and that those things we struggle with. We're usually not the only person struggling

00:45:04.130 - 00:45:13.730

with that someone else has a similar may have a similar story. So that's I think stories are really just powerful. And of course, as a, as a people of faith, we are a story

00:45:13.740 - 00:45:22.010

. We are people of story, we're people of the book, we're shaped by a story. Um you know, God is, and I'm using story in, you know, a loose sense, but

00:45:22.020 - 00:45:38.770

in that sort of narrative of, of, of how we understand ourselves as, as people say called the Halton and its values inventory. And so there are some publications about it there is, um,

00:45:38.780 - 00:45:52.500

if you Google it, you'll also find there's an organization that gives the test. Usually it's, it's not easy to self interpret the test. Usually there's someone who's trained. So, Doctor Mickler is trained

00:45:52.510 - 00:46:04.390

in giving this values test and we do that as part of the, um, workshop, you take the test and then part of what she does is help you interpret it. Um, because it's,

00:46:04.400 - 00:46:15.710

it's not, it's not quite like the Myers Briggs , you can sort of just understand it on your , on your own. Um But you may um I know that uh there are people that do this

00:46:15.720 - 00:46:27.430

work. Doctor mcclure does some of this on as a consultant on a consultant basis. We do it in the workshops. I think it's called Values Tech is the company that administers the um the test.

00:46:28.010 - 00:46:38.700

And they may also have people that can help you interpret that. Is there small, there's a small fee to take the test and um that you do sort of need someone to help you understand it because

00:46:38.710 - 00:46:52.020

it's, it's um again, the way they use values. The interesting thing is Holland Tona developed this when working with um Pao Frere. So it was based on what Frere learned that people learn to read

00:46:52.150 - 00:47:05.250

when they were reading about things that matter to them . So that uh is what sparked their interest in what, how do people's values motivate them and shape the way they live their lives. So it has

00:47:05.260 - 00:47:15.440

an interesting background to it. I don't know if we have time for one more quick question. Doctor Shive. I wonder if you would just, do you have any words for people out there whose stories

00:47:15.450 - 00:47:27.290

are just kind of tender right now or difficult to bear? Maybe this is a challenging story season or they've walked through a very challenging story season in their life that kind of has taken them by surprise.

00:47:27.420 - 00:47:43.500

Do you have any um uh words of advice or guidance for them? Oh, well, let me think about guidance advice once I heard advice is worth what you pay for it. So if it's free

00:47:43.510 - 00:47:58.240

, you know what that say. So, um but um I, I would go back to saying to be compassionate. Um think of again, see yourself through loving eyes. If someone else you knew

00:47:58.250 - 00:48:08.400

were going through the same tender story, what would you say to them? How would you be compassionate to them? How would you listen to them? I, I, I did this 11 exercise you

00:48:08.410 - 00:48:19.540

can do is to the, you're sort of saying in that you're in the current situation is to write a letter to yourself. I actually did this in a prison setting. I had inmates, women's prison

00:48:19.550 - 00:48:30.640

inmates write a letter to the younger self to forgive themselves for the mistakes they made because they were made . Perhaps, maybe they were doing the best they could at the time or the things they didn't know

00:48:30.960 - 00:48:47.700

. So I, I think to be merciful to yourself, to be compassionate to yourself, to be uh accepting that we're, we're only human. Um And one of the a and to be um sometimes

00:48:47.710 - 00:49:04.660

as preachers, we're really good about proclaiming God's love to others. And we're maybe not as good as allowing ourselves to feel the depth of that love embracing us. So that to me is to, to

00:49:04.670 - 00:49:16.540

be self compassionate, is to open ourselves to God's compassion that surrounds us in God's mercy. So, um thank you so much, Doctor Shib. I'm really glad I got a chance to ask that question

00:49:16.550 - 00:49:30.350

. Um That was such a good answer. Um Well, I have learned so much today about kind of um the narrative environment that we all live in . And um I've learned like how saturated we are

00:49:30.360 - 00:49:43.420

by stories and how like even the, the self care story itself doesn't work very well. Um When you think about the complexity of ministry and like the medical model that it comes from. And for me

00:49:43.430 - 00:49:58.100

, you're revising of stories that you lay out here with the help of others um with some trusted people who can help you deconstruct what's come to you without being aware of it. And um you really guidance

00:49:58.110 - 00:50:10.640

all the way through towards a through point of compassion um that really comes from taking the time to witness your own self. I think really adds something significant to me um in my understanding of what it means

00:50:10.650 - 00:50:22.220

to love yourself as your neighbor. Um And so , uh I just am really grateful for your presentation today, Doctor Shaven, for what it's given us . I think it's been a very distinctive contribution to

00:50:22.230 - 00:50:34.380

our series. So I'm really glad you took the time to be with us. And um if people come up with questions later, because sometimes it takes a while, if, if anyone sends questions to

00:50:34.390 - 00:50:49.140

you, um feel free to forward them to me and I can answer back. I noticed someone said that um, oh, something about this is the dissertation about the difference between pastoral care and psychological care

00:50:49.150 - 00:50:59.600

. And I, I think that's one of the things that, and I think you've written about that too. Phil haven't you? About psychological care is , is that, you know, the pastoral care

00:50:59.610 - 00:51:09.190

draws on psychology, but it should be theologically grounded . And I think sometimes we, we lose sight of that and, and that's, you know, I started as a pastor and I sort of became

00:51:09.200 - 00:51:22.480

a scholar accidentally is what I sort of feel. And so that, that's what guides me is, is that, you know, that call to be um um to be, to be pastoral, to

00:51:22.490 - 00:51:32.850

be compassionate is, is, and we can use the psychological tools. But again, for me, it's rooted in the notion of God's love that's central to my theology. I think that's what we're called

00:51:32.860 - 00:51:44.230

to, to do to be with one another and with ourselves. And, and I think that, um, we've struggled with. There's been a lot , there's a lot of history and I talk about

00:51:44.240 - 00:51:57.340

this in the book about um self love that we think somehow that's a bad term. But if God loves us, how can we not love ourselves? And we have to just think about what that means

00:51:57.350 - 00:52:13.430

and we do that not for our own self aggrandizement , but in order to be the people, God has called us to be so we can be with and authentically a ministry to others. Yeah. Thank

00:52:13.490 - 00:52:22.780

you. Thank you for the opportunity. It's been a good conversation and nice to see you. And so to all those of you out there listening, bless you. May you flourish in ministry. May

00:52:22.790 - 00:52:30.580

you be kind and compassionate to yourselves? And may you find the stories that give you life so that my, my benediction for you? So that is