VOICES SHARED

Article by Sheila McNeil-Lee, Supervisor, Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE), Sibley Hospital, Washington, D.C.

This year’s pastoral care week encompasses a broad theme that refers to how we as the caregiver engage and interact with those with whom we give care. The context of voices shared is varied and active. These voices from our clients and the consumers we serve are just as varied as the settings in which we practice including but not limited to: chaplaincy settings in prisons, hospitals, college campuses, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, retirement centers, and as pastoral counselors or faith group leaders in temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches, just to name a few. When I think about this year’s theme, "Voices Shared" it calls to mind the axis of engagement in my own supervisory practice. How do I hear the voices of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Students, patients, staff, family members, and the parishioners where I serve?

Theologically I think about God giving human beings the ability to relate to each other, often through the listening and or hearing of another’s voice. This relational aspect that I practice theologically reminds me that it is the creator spirit that according to the faith I practice spoke the world into existence. We don’t all have to speak with keen articulation. This reminds me that relationally, I can be with one who may be disabled and not have the full clarity of an audible voice. As I supervise students, I think about the spoken word of voice as a way for us to connect and understand one another, creating relationship that emanates from God.

Karen Baker-Fletcher, a womanist theologian informs my theory that God’s voice has empowered the African American woman to speak out of her experiences and voice toward a relational understanding of the world and movement toward self-actualization.i To self-actualize, is a way to encourage human beings toward the freedom to grow. Womanist theology, from an academic viewpoint is an area of study developed out of African American woman’s consciousness, experiences and personal relationship with God and ability to find words that describe how God relates to us.ii As an African American woman, with some womanist beliefs, I too claim this empowered experience that our pastoral care theme speaks to. Empowerment is used in my supervision in students making choices and decisions of self-enhancement that guide their lives. These decisions may not all be positive, but they are necessary for growth in self and as part of a community. God calls us into being through communal relationships not just any kind of relationships, but relationships that reflect of relational image –likeness- between God and persons. These relationships nurture persons through process of development in ways that empower them in the nuances to speak with their own voice and hear the other. For me a part of the praxis of my listening is within the context of CPE supervision. I listen to students with the intent of providing a loving space, a healing space toward restoration in places of brokenness, and a space of authenticity toward genuineness and empowerment.  We as caregivers are called to be pastoral with one another. From a multi-cultural context of all peoples and races, as caregivers we are all called to empower one another in shared voices, to encourage each other as human beings toward healing and wholeness. What better way than through "voices shared"?

Baker-Fletcher notes that voice names experience, community, God, and self…and ultimately leads to the call for reform.iii This is dialogue. Dialogue, creates community. In community, a creating activity of God is present, and our being hinges on that activity having taken place, Baker-Fletcher notes, where human beings and God form a communal inter-relatedness, dependent upon the other for relationship.iv Communal inter-relatedness does not happen without mutuality between God and human being. God speaks to us, but we are capable of speaking with God and our fellow human beings to form community. I like to think we are capable as we form community of engaging in shared voices. There are many elements to shared voices, but perhaps we can continue to practice having an empathic ear, bearing witness when there is struggle and anger, and being vulnerable with raised and outstretched arms to invite another along side us. As caregivers, we offer feedback and support, but also challenge.

Culturally, I value the dynamics of the spoken word, and how it has been empowering in my own life. There is value in a monolithic culture; however, Shared voices, pushes us a little further toward diversity. "Variety or difference in cultures is not the problem, but it is in the hierarchy ranking or punishing differences." v From my supervisory relationships, I am cognizant that not everyone can embrace their own expression of voice as creating conversation that allows growth or freedom. So as those caring for others, during this Pastoral Care Week where we celebrate ourselves, the good work we have done and educate and empower others, may we continue to journey with others remembering that listening transcends cultural boundaries toward increased understanding of others. In Voices Shared, there is an invitation to engage and be open through our own sense of spirituality toward community. Voices Shared reminds me not only to hear my own voice, but to hear the voice of the other, our clients, our patients, the families, the institutional staff and clients, and the consumers with whom we work.
 

iKaren Baker Fletcher and Garth KASIMU Baker-Fletcher, "Womanist Reflections on Jesus as Dust and Spirit," in My Sister, My Brother, Womanist and Xodus God Talk, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1997), 146.