Pastoral Theology & Care

W1 intro photo- Carrie & man

Welcome!

This course is an introduction to the practice and theology of spiritual and pastoral care using spiritual, theological, psychological, and ethical perspectives. You will learn and practice competencies in interreligious, evidence-based, and socially just spiritual care. The course’s competency-based pedagogy will help you identify and spiritually integrate your own experiences of stress—especially academic stress—while learning and practicing the ways that spiritual care is different from mental health care.

We'll review the course structure and expectations in the

W1 intro photo- Carrie & man

 

 

Welcome to our first week together

 

 

This week we'll get to know each other, and you'll learn what you can expect in the course.

Required Profile Update

Help us get to know you by updating your Canvas profile with your photo and other information you feel comfortable sharing (this profile will be available on all of your Canvas courses). For example, you may want to include your degree program, how long you've been at Iliff, where you live, how you identify spiritually, and what you hope to do with your degree. You can see my Canvas profile as an example.

To edit your profile:

1. Select Account at the top of the left-column Canvas menu

2. Select Profile

3. Select Edit Profile at the top right corner of your screen

4. Save Profile at the bottom right of your screen

 

Required Videos

Carrie Doehring and Jeff Zust introductions (video and audio are about 4 minutes long):

Week 1 Introduction video.mp4  

Week 1 Introduction.m4a

Carrie's video about course expectations:

Week 1 Slides_ How the course works_Handout.pdf

Note: One update since the video/slides about course expectations were recorded: the Dean's Office now requires students to attend our zoom class sessions on these Tuesdays from 1 - 2.15 pm MDT: Week 2 January 12, Week 5 February 2, and Week 8 February 23. Email Carrie Doehring (cdoehring@iliff.edu) for how to fulfill this requirement if you are unable to attend any of these synchronous sessions.

Required Readings 

Doehring (2015) Introduction, pp. xiii –xxviii (15 pages)

2021 Learning Areas and Goals

Learning Covenant

Visit the APA website describing stress and explore these tabs in this order: nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, and endocrine systems 

Required Spiritual Practice

Spiritual practices play a central role in spiritual care, for both caregivers and care seekers. I wrote an article about the role of my spiritual practice of listening to sacred choral music in grieving the traumatic death of my son. 

Listening to sacred choral music evoked grief and an embodied sense of being held within a relational web of love, which became a safe space to experience lament and religious struggles arising from my religiously multiple identities….Intercultural, spiritually oriented care can help people find intrinsically meaningful body-aware spiritual practices that compassionately energize a collaborative search for meanings amidst traumatic grief. (Doehring, 2018, p. 1)

In this course, you will experiment with breath-centered, body-aware practices that help you pay attention to physiological and emotional experiences of stress that arise as you complete the weekly readings and assignments. Practices are spiritual when they foster self-compassion, self-transcendence, and therefore increase empathy for self and others. Consider, for example, a simple mindfulness practice, STOP, that has the potential to become a spiritual practice. When you experience stress:

In our Discussion forums, you will reflect on the spiritual practices you use in the course. 

Optional reading: Doehring, C. (2020). Practicing intercultural evidence-based spiritual care through chaplain intern conversations about calming practices.  Healing the Healers; April 6, 2020. Blog.

https://healingthehealers.org/2020/04/breathe-centered-welcoming-meditation-carrie-doehring-phd/

Reference: Doehring, C. (2018). Searching for wholeness amidst traumatic grief: The role of spiritual practice that reveal compassion in embodied, relational, and transcendent ways. Pastoral Psychology. doi: 10.1007/s11089-018-0858-5 Optional reading: Doehring 2019_Searching For Wholeness.pdf

. Explore all modules by selecting the Modules option on the left column Canvas menu.

You have 1 required textbook for this course: Note: Do not buy the 2005 edition.

Doehring, C. (2015). The practice of pastoral care: A postmodern approach (Revised and Expanded Ed.). Westminster John Knox.

Spiritual Care Conversation Assignments

In this course, you will complete a series of assignments based on fictional case studies that you explore in spiritual care conversations with a learning partner. In one spiritual care conversation, you will be the care seeker. In the other spiritual care conversation, you will be the caregiver. These conversations are opportunities to learn and practice our course learning outcomes (see document link below).

IST 2012 Spiritual Care Conversation assignments and discussions: 48% of grade

Note: Each point is 1% of the final grade

W3 Spiritual Care Conversation Assignment: Find a partner -1 point for on-time completion

Find a learning partner for your spiritual care conversations, which you will record in week 7. When you have found a learning partner, go to this page, hit EDIT (upper right) and remove your name from under the heading Need a partner and then add your and your partner’s name under the heading Partners. Remember to hit SAVE (lower right) before you leave the page. Double-check that your change has been saved.

W5 Care Seeker Assignment: Develop your care seeker scenario – 3 points

Describe the crisis you want to role play and the scenario in which you have an initial spiritual care conversation of about 15 – 20 minutes. Do not make the crisis too complicated (e.g., about chronic mental health illness, suicide risk, or long-standing substance use disorders). Remember that this is an initial conversation in which you are wondering whether this spiritual caregiver is trustworthy. The care conversation will be about negotiating trust and not about searching for meanings, which usually happens once trust has been established. Note: this post is only read by faculty so that your partner in the role of spiritual caregiver does not know all of the details of what is going on when the conversation starts. Post to the W5 Assignment.

W6 Care Seeker Assignment: Share and negotiate your scenario – 3 points

  1. Negotiate the details of the scenario with your partner in their role-play as your caregiver. As the care seeker, you are going to prepare a description of how this conversation comes about. You will consult with your learning partner and fine-tune the details of this role-play scenario with your learning partner. Do not give your partner details about why you are seeking care or what is going on, since we want these conversations to unfold without the caregiver knowing the care seeker’s crisis in advance. What you want to negotiate in advance is the role of the caregiver, which could be a religious leader, a chaplain, or a student intern in your faith community or at your nonprofit.  For example, you might imagine seeking spiritual care from a religious leader in your faith community, but your partner might feel more comfortable role-playing a chaplain. Go back and forth until you have the scenario for a role play that feels comfortable and authentic for both of you. Then, as the care seeker, write up the description of the scenario and submit it in the week 6 assignment.
  2. In this conversation, find a 60” block of time with your partner when you will do your two 15-20” spiritual care conversations (one as caregiver, one as care seeker) on a zoom recording.
  3. Before your spiritual care conversation, do your own practice zoom record, where you record yourself talking for a few minutes. End the zoom meeting with yourself. Watch while the zoom recording goes into a file, and then locate that file, so that when you record your own conversation as the spiritual caregiver, you will know where that file is and how to post a link to it.

W7 Record two 15 to 20-minute spiritual care conversations with your learning partner – 10 points

  1. Use a spiritual practice that helps you respond with self-compassion to stress responses in your body as you do the readings and prepare for your spiritual care conversation. In ordinary conversations this week, practice using slow deep breaths that calm you, so that in your spiritual care conversation you can use this breath-centered practice to monitor stress in your body, especially when you are in the role of providing spiritual care.
  2. Do your zoom spiritual care conversations, save them, and post the file in the week 7 assignment.

W8 Spiritual Care Conversation Reflection Assignment

Note: This is the major course assignment, worth 20%

How you did/did not demonstrate course learning outcomes in this spiritual care conversation. Upload your spiritual caregiver video and your reflections to (1) the Week 8 Assignment and (2) to the Week 9 Spiritual Care Discussion Group Page – 20 points

You will post the transcription of what you said as the spiritual caregiver, with a summary of what the care receiver said.

Comment on 3 or 4 of your contributions (statements, comments, or questions you made/asked), in terms of how well you practiced socially just, interreligious spiritual care.

Reference material from the learning areas and outcomes described in Doehring & Kestenbaum (2021) and in the course learning outcomes.

  1. Using a spiritually integrative learning process

Spiritual care courses at Iliff prepare students to become community faith leaders and chaplains engaged in an ongoing collaborative process of spiritual integration who

  1. integrate key concepts on stress and spiritual ways of coping
  2. develop their interpersonal capacity for (1) differentiating between their physiological and emotional stress and relaxation responses; and (2) experiencing in their bodies and emotions a ‘felt’ sense of trust in transcendent relational webs,
  3. communicate with trusted others in order to be accountable for using a spiritually integrative learning process.

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in spiritual and social empathy with an interpersonal capacity for ‘seeing the other’ using these key concepts, and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

  1. Developing spiritual and social empathy

Spiritual empathy calls upon these three interpersonal capacities:

  1. Self-other awareness and monitoring of boundaries between one’s self and the other prevents enmeshment, emotional and spiritual fusion, contagion (too fluid boundaries), and/or emotional and spiritual disengagement (too rigid boundaries between self and other).
  2. Spiritual and social perspective-taking involves standing in the other’s shoes to the extent that one can, and imagining the world from the other’s spiritual perspective, especially the macro systems of intersecting social privileges or disadvantages within their cultural and political contexts. Perspective-taking helps students differentiate spiritually and emotionally while taking into account differences in social advantages and disadvantages, especially racial differences. Blurring one’s own and another’s perspective will lower empathic attunement and could contribute to spiritual neglect, coercion, and microaggressions.
  3. Emotional and spiritual regulation uses spiritual practices to track emotional and stress responses in order to stay on an even keel. Without emotional regulation, one is more likely to be overwhelmed and/or emotionally withdraw, which could entail spiritual neglect.

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in spiritual and social empathy with an interpersonal capacity for ‘seeing the other’ using these key concepts, and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

  1. Practicing socially just spiritual care

Intersectionality is a theory and strategic practice of identifying which systems of social oppression interact contextually to benefit or discriminate against persons in distress. In order to understand the interrelationships among systems of oppression such as racism, classism, and sexism, students need an orientation of post/decolonialism to name the overarching, pervasive and ever-present ways that colonialism exercises power over all aspects of ecological, transnational, political, and economic life. Bringing post and decolonial orientations to understanding spiritual care interactions makes students realize the impossibility of ‘doing no harm’ in a world organized by colonialism. This enormously challenging and always unfinished work can only be done through a collaborative learning process grounded in spiritual integration. The profound shame, guilt, grief, fear, and moral distress of such learning can only be supported through personal and communal practices of lament.

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in socially just spiritual care with an interpersonal capacity for seeing oneself, the other, and organizational contexts through the lens of colonial systems of power, and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

  1. Practicing spiritual and social reflexivity

Here we come to a challenging aspect of learning interreligious spiritual care that integrates:

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in spiritual and social self-reflexivity with an interpersonal capacity for self-reflexivity and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

W9 Watch the videos and read the three assignments of your discussion group participants (including your partner’s)

Post your reflections to the Week 9 Discussion Forum – 11 points

Mandatory Zoom Class Sessions

Students are required to attend our zoom class sessions on these Tuesdays from 1 - 2.15 pm MDT: Week 2 January 12, Week 5 February 2, and Week 8 February 23. Email Carrie Doehring ( cdoehring@iliff.edu ) for how to fulfill this requirement if you are unable to attend any of these synchronous sessions.

Course Documents

The following content will help orient you to the course structure, process, and requirements for success:

2021 Learning Areas and Goals

Preamble

Spiritual care that does no harm must be socially just, interreligious, and evidence-based in order to fulfill ethical mandates of spiritual care professionals described in the Common Code of Ethics for Chaplains, Pastoral Counselors, Pastoral Educators and Students (hereinafter referred to as spiritual care professionals):

When Spiritual Care Professionals behave in a manner congruent with the [following] values of this code of ethics, they bring greater justice, compassion, and healing to our world. 

Spiritual care professionals help people explore spiritual and/or religious[1] practices fostering trust and self-compassion, so that people can collaboratively search for beliefs and values that nurture compassion, healing, and justice for persons, families, and organizations. The term spiritual, with all of its limitations, is a short-hand way of describing the deep relational trust in and connection with transcendence and imminence that enliven compassion, healing, and justice in distinctive ways.

Learning spiritual care is a lifelong integrative process that weaves together knowledge, attitudes, relational abilities, and interpersonal skills. Spiritual care education and training uses standards of professional spiritual care to define learning outcomes. Students introduced to these core learning outcomes from the outset of their education and clinical training—in their first role plays in academic courses and their first spiritual care interactions in clinical training—will be engaged in a collaborative process of developing personalized learning goals.

 

Core competencies in socially just, interreligious, and evidence-based spiritual care

Spiritual care courses at Iliff use a spiritually integrative pedagogy to form students seeking competency in the practice of socially just, interreligious, and evidence-based spiritual care. Socially just spiritual care pays attention to interacting social advantages and disadvantages that may harm others and reinforce prejudice, contributing to systemic social injustice.[2] Spiritual care needs to be interreligious in order to (1) counteract colonialist ways religion has been imposed on others, and (2) establish spiritually trustworthy relationships that “demonstrate respect for the cultural and religious values of those they serve and refrain from imposing their our own values and beliefs on those served.”[3]  Spiritual care needs to be evidence-based by drawing upon research on aspects of religion and spirituality that help or harm persons, especially those experiencing religious, spiritual, and moral struggles arising from sexuality within coercive and violent relational webs.

 

Practicing a spiritually integrative learning process

Spiritual integration is a collaborative and relational process of using spiritual practices for coping with stress compassionately, finding purpose through values, and understanding stress and suffering in a variety of ways, unique to persons, families, and communities.  Life-giving practices become a tether to the inherent goodness of one’s body, trustworthy others, lament for social injustice, and transcendent interconnections. The process of integration is what grounds students in their own religious and/or spiritual heritage, identity, and communities, in ways that enhance spiritual reflexivity and differentiation—two core abilities for socially just and interreligious spiritual care.

 

Learning outcomes for developing and demonstrating spiritual integration

Spiritual care courses at Iliff prepare students to become community faith leaders and chaplains engaged in an ongoing collaborative process of spiritual integration who

  1. integrate key concepts on spiritual and social empathy, as well as communication styles/skills
  2. increase their interpersonal capacity for (1) experiencing the mystery of the other using these key concepts and (2) differentiating between intersecting aspects of their and the other’s social identities (e.g., differences in how racial privileges/disadvantages play out in particular spiritual care interactions)
  3. communicate using appropriate styles/skills in particular learning and spiritual care interactions.

In weekly forum discussions and assignments, students report on how they are

 

Practicing spiritual and social empathy

Spiritual and social empathy is built upon these three interpersonal capacities:

  1. Self-other awareness and monitoring of boundaries between one’s self and the other prevents enmeshment, emotional and spiritual fusion, contagion (too fluid boundaries), and/or emotional and spiritual disengagement (too rigid boundaries between self and other).
  2. Spiritual and social perspective-taking involves standing in the other’s shoes to the extent that one can, and imagining the world from the other’s spiritual perspective, especially the macro systems of intersecting social privileges or disadvantages within their cultural and political contexts. Perspective-taking helps students differentiate spiritually and emotionally while considering differences in social advantages and disadvantages, especially racial differences. Blurring one’s own and another’s perspective will lower empathic attunement and could contribute to spiritual neglect, coercion, and microaggressions.
  3. Emotional and spiritual regulation uses spiritual practices to track emotional and stress responses in order to stay on an even keel. Without emotional regulation, one is more likely to be overwhelmed and/or emotionally withdraw, which could entail spiritual neglect.

 

Learning outcomes for developing and demonstrating spiritual and social empathy

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in spiritual and social empathy with an interpersonal capacity for ‘seeing the other’ using these key concepts, and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

In weekly forum discussions and assignments, students report on how they are

Practicing socially just spiritual care

Intersectionality is a theory and strategic practice of identifying which systems of social oppression interact contextually to benefit or discriminate against persons in distress. In order to understand the interrelationships among systems of oppression such as racism, classism, and sexism, students need an orientation of post/decolonialism[1] to name the overarching, pervasive and ever-present ways that colonialism exercises power over all aspects of ecological, transnational, political, and economic life. Bringing post and decolonial orientations to understanding spiritual care interactions makes students realize the impossibility of ‘doing no harm’ in a world organized by colonialism. This enormously challenging and always unfinished work can only be done through a collaborative learning process grounded in spiritual integration. The profound shame, guilt, grief, fear, and moral distress of such learning can only be supported through personal and communal practices of lament.

 

Learning outcomes for practicing socially just spiritual care

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in socially just spiritual care with an interpersonal capacity for seeing oneself, the other, and organizational contexts through the lens of colonial systems of power, and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction:

 

Practicing spiritual and social self-reflexivity

Breath and body-centered practices are especially helpful for developing spiritual self-reflexivity by increasing awareness of how one’s stress reactions evoke emotions and moral intuitions about differences named using categories of religious and social identity. Emotions like shame, guilt, and disgust may generate moral intuitions about such differences—values, beliefs, and ways of coping—reinforced by intersecting oppressions, such as religious sexism and religious heterosexism. Experiencing self-compassion and the compassion of a learning community help students understand and share these life-limiting orientations, so that they will be able to use critical thinking skills in theological and religious studies to search for values and beliefs complex enough to bear the weight of suffering and offer realistic hope for healing and social justice.

Here we come to a challenging aspect of learning interreligious spiritual care that integrates:

Learning outcomes for practicing spiritual and social self-reflexivity

The following are examples of learning outcomes for how students integrate key concepts in spiritual and social self-reflexivity with an interpersonal capacity for self-reflexivity and then use communication styles and skills appropriately in particular learning and spiritual care interaction

Practicing evidence-based spiritual care

Students in this course begin to develop research literacy by

[1] Lizardy-Hajbi uses the term “’post/decolonial’ in order to acknowledge both the separate contextual and theoretical streams from which challenges to coloniality have arisen in the literature, as well as to highlight their common foundational aims as critiques to colonial being-thinking-acting” (Lizardy-Hajbi, 2020).

Lizardy-Hajbi, K. (2020). Frameworks Toward Post/Decolonial Pastoral Leaderships. Journal of Religious Leadership, 19(2), 98-128. 

 

[1] Humanist, pagan, and first nations communities are examples of traditions/cultures that do not use terms like spiritual or religious to describe themselves. Use of these terms may be less relevant for them.

[2] Spiritual care professionals are ethically mandated to “promote justice in relationships with others, in their institutions and in society” Common Code of Ethics for Chaplains, Pastoral Counselors,  Pastoral Educators and Students (Council on Collaboration, 2004), 4.1.

[3] Collaboration. Short Common Code of Ethics for Chaplains, Pastoral Counselors,  Pastoral Educators and Students 1.3.

 As students integrate theory and practice through experiential learning, they develop critical thinking skills used in developing competencies for spiritual care. The competencies that shape these learning goals are also part of covenants necessary for intentional learning communities.  

Confidentiality

Personal disclosures are not to be discussed outside of class without agreement and permission. Students can talk about their stress/emotional reactions with trusted others, as long as the focus is on them and not the content of what other students share. In case study assignments that are not fictional, students need to disguise the identity of care seekers.

Students must be aware of and abide by the mandatory reporting laws of the state in which they provide professional care. If they are designated spiritual caregivers within their religious tradition, they need to also be aware of what their religious organization requires. If students have reason to suspect or have first-hand knowledge of recent, current, or ongoing child abuse or neglect perpetrated on a child currently under the age of 18 years, elder abuse, sexual and domestic violence, or threats of homicide or suicide in any of the pastoral situations they use for fulfilling the requirements of this course they need to seek immediate consultation with supervisors, denominational leaders, and the professor of this course so that proper reporting procedures can be ascertained. Current information on (1) "clergy as mandated reporters" and (2) links to state laws can be found here at the Children's Bureau of the US Department of  Health and Human Services.  Faculty will abide by the bounds of professional and Title IX reporting laws rather than absolute confidentiality (detailed in our Canvas Policies & Services).  Under Iliff’s Mandatory Reporting Policy, all employees, with the exception of the Dean of the Chapel and Spiritual Formation, are mandatory reporters.[i] The primary purpose for sharing this information with the Title IX Coordinator is to ensure the impacted party receives information about rights and resources, and that Iliff is able to respond appropriately to such incidents.

Self-Differentiation

In preparing forum posts and responses, assignments, and spiritual care conversations, students are responsible for (1) tracking how they experience stress in their bodies and stress-related emotions and (2) using practices that foster self-compassion and empathy, such that their emotional/stress reactions are resources for learning, not liabilities.

Self-Disclosure

The purpose of self-disclosure is to develop competencies in spiritual care, and not for personal healing. In deciding how to use/disclose personal experiences in assignments, students need to track their levels of stress as they work on assignments and not use/disclose experiences that overwhelm their capacities for self-differentiation, spiritual integration, and critical thinking. Students need to use their support systems when they become overwhelmed and when making decisions about what kinds of personal experiences to share in weekly posts and journal/case study assignments.

Respect for Differences

Students are responsible for using social and theological empathy to imaginatively step into and respect the worlds of those who are different from them in terms of beliefs, values, practices, and social location.

Faculty Availability

Faculty will normally respond within 24 hours to emails sent through the Iliff system (Contact Carrie Doehring by email). Messages sent within Canvas are sometimes hard to track amidst other Canvas notifications. Spiritual care faculty offer support but not spiritual care or counseling. Faculty are available to help students with referrals for spiritual care, spiritual direction, and counseling.

Student Self-Care

If this course makes you aware of sources of stress you'd like to work on with professional support, please see details about these professional services available for Iliff students: Self-care for students through Iliff's EAP. You can find resources for spiritual self-care here: Spiritual Self-Care

Academic Standards

All students are expected to abide by Iliff’s statements on Academic Integrity, as published in the Masters Student Handbook.  Students should demonstrate academic and professional communication skills that include coherent expression of ideas, use of good grammar, and appropriate citation of sources referenced in responses and assignments. In this course, we use APA format for citations and references.  Iliff's writing lab has a link to suggested sites for writing resources and style guides. Use this link to find the Purdue Online Writing Lab, and their guide to APA 7 formatting.  All course participants should use inclusive language and language that respects the diversity of sexuality, gender, and sexual orientation.

Discussion posts and responses are also expected to meet these academic standards (vs. more casual standards that apply to other online conversations/emails). Please proofread assignments and discussion posts before you submit them. Seek support from the Iliff Writing Lab as needed.

Timeliness

Timely submissions are critical for effective community learning. Notify the instructor if you have an emergency. The instructor will only consider arrangements to submit late work without penalty in rare instances. If assignments are consistently late or if late assignments will jeopardize their learning partner’s deadlines, students may be required to withdraw from the course. Normally "Incompletes" are not granted in this course because all learning in the course is collaborative.

[i] College and university chaplains are included in the category of Confidential Resources, which usually includes those working in the Counseling Center, Health Center, and the University Chaplain. Faculty/staff members who happen to be similarly licensed in their field (e.g., who may be accredited as professional chaplains or licensed mental health professionals). are not exempt from reporting. Student chaplains are usually mandated reporters.

 

IST 2012 Pastoral Theology and Care Winter 2021

Faculty: Carrie Doehring cdoehring@iliff.edu  Jeff Zust jeff.zust@du.edu

2021 Learning Areas and Goals

IST 2012 Learning Covenant

Textbook

Doehring, C. (2015). The practice of pastoral care: A postmodern approach (Revised and Expanded Ed.). Westminster John Knox. Note: Do not buy the 2005 edition.

All other readings will be posted. 

Assignments

  1. Discussion posts and responses: 52% of grade Note: Each point is 1% of the final grade
  1. Spiritual Care Conversation assignments and discussions: 48% of grade IST 2021 Spiritual Care Conversation Assignments and Discussions

Final Grade Scale (Note: at Iliff professors determine grading scales they will use to assign final course grades) A 97-100; A- 93-96; B+ 89-92; B 85-88; B- 81-84; C+ 77-81; C: 73-76; C- 69-72; D+ 65-68; D 61-64; D- 57-60; F 0-59

Week 1

  1. Update your Canvas profile
  2. Read 2021 Learning areas and goals 2021 Learning Areas and Goals
  3. Read Course Learning Covenant IST 2012 Learning Covenant
  4. Read Doehring (2015) Introduction, pp. xiii –xxviii (15 pages)
  5. Watch Carrie and Jeff’s video introducing themselves
  6. Watch’s Carrie’s video introducing the course
  7. Visit the APA website describing the effects of stress on the body https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress/index
  8. Post/respond in the Week 1 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)

Week 2

  1. Use a breath-centered spiritual practice
  2. Read Doehring (2015) Chapters 1 – 3 pp. 10-72 (62 pages)
  3. Read Doehring, C., & Kestenbaum, A. (2021). Practicing socially just, interreligious, and evidence-based spiritual care (23 pages)
  4. Read Spiritual Care Conversation Tasks & Assignments (2 pages)
  5. Watch the video Spiritual Care Conversation Between Pastor Lou and Lois (15:53)
  6. Post/respond in the Week 2 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)
  7. Attend the mandatory Week 2 Zoom Class Session on Tuesday, Jan. 12 from 1 - 2.15 pm MDT. Email Carrie Doehring (cdoehring@iliff.edu) for how to fulfill this requirement if you are unable to attend the synchronous session.

Week 3

  1. Use a spiritual practice
  2. Read Doehring (2015) Chapters 5 & 6 (pp. 85-152) (~70 pages)Watch video clips of pastoral care conversations from the film You Can Count on Me (~8 minutes total)
  3. Watch Carrie and Jeff's conversation
  4. Post/respond in the Week 3 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)
  5. Complete the Week 3 Care Seeker Assignment: Find a partner (1 point)

Week 4

  1. Use a spiritual practice
  2. Read Doehring (2015) Chapter 4, pp. 73-84 (12 pages)
  3. Go to https://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/resources/articles/clergy-ethics, to find this article: Fortune, M. M. (2014). Confidentiality and Mandatory Reporting (6 pages).
  4. Go to this website: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/laws-policies/statutes/clergymandated/ to find and read their information on clergy as mandated reporters. Become familiar with resources on child abuse and teen dating on the FaithTrustInstitute
  5. Find your denominational/professional code of conduct, including sexual misconduct policy
  6. Find your state requirements on mandated reporters of abuse
  7. Watch the video
  8. Post/respond in the Week 4 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)

Week 5

  1. Use a spiritual practice
  2. Watch zoom video conversation between Carrie and Jeff on COVID stress
  3. Re-read Doehring (2015) Chapter 5 (pp. 85-116) (31 pages total)
  4. Read Nelson, S. L. (2003). Facing evil: Evil's many faces: Five paradigms for understanding evil. Interpretation, 57(4), 399-413. (14 pages)
  5. Read Gauthier, T. J. (2016). Hope in the midst of suffering: a Buddhist perspective. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 26(2), 133-137.   https://doi.org/10.1080/10649867.2016.1244412   (5 pages)
  6. Reflect on examples of what Carrie and Jeff said about COVID stress, using spiritual care practices, and how these helped them find values and meanings for spiritually integrating COVID stress
  1. Complete the Week 5 Care Seeker Assignment: Develop your care seeker scenario (3 points)
  1. Post in the Week 5 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)
  2. Attend the mandatory Week 5 Zoom Class Session on Tuesday, Feb 2 from 1 - 2.15 pm MDT. Email Carrie Doehring (cdoehring@iliff.edu) for how to fulfill this requirement if you are unable to attend the synchronous session.

Week 6

  1. Read Doehring (2015) Chapters 7 & 8, pp. 155-186 (31 pages)
  2. Read revised Doehring & Kestenbaum (2021) (30 pages)
  3. Read Lartey & Moon (2020). Introduction. Postcolonial images of spiritual care (14 pages)
  4. Watch video conversation between Carrie and Jeff about how social advantages and disadvantages shape COVID stress and strategies for care of self and others
  5. Post in the Week 6 Discussion Forum (8 points; 8% of final grade)
  6. Care Seeker Assignment: Share and negotiate your scenario (3 points)

Week 7

Note: there is no discussion forum this week.

  1. Review revised Doehring & Kestenbaum (2021) (Week 6 reading) (30 pages)
  1. Do your zoom recordings in a 60” time block, recording two 15 – 20 minutes spiritual care conversations with your learning partner. In one conversation, you are the spiritual caregiver, and in the other conversation, you are the spiritual care seeker. You will record and post the conversation in which you portray the spiritual caregiver.
  2. Before you begin each conversation, talk with your partner about the momentary spiritual practices you are going to try to use to stay focused and centered in either role.
  3. Post the zoom recording in which you portray the caregiver to the week 7 assignment page. (10 points)
  4. Provide your learning partner with a copy of this video.

Week 8: Major Course Assignment Note: This is the major course assignment, worth 20% (Note: There is no discussion forum this week.

  1. Caregiver Assignment: Transcribe what you said as the caregiver and summarize what your care seeker said. Complete written assignment on how you did/did not demonstrate course learning outcomes in this spiritual care conversation. Use the detailed instructions in the Week 8 instructions; also found on this page: IST 2021 Spiritual Care Conversation Assignments and Discussions
  2. Upload your spiritual caregiver video and your reflections to (1) the Week 8 Assignment and (2) the Week 9 Spiritual Care Discussion Group Page (20 points)
  3. Attend the mandatory Week 8 Zoom Class Session on Tuesday, Feb 23 from 1 - 2.15 pm MDT. Email Carrie Doehring (cdoehring@iliff.edu) for how to fulfill this requirement if you are unable to attend the synchronous session.

Week 9

  1. Watch the videos and read the three assignments of your discussion group participants (including your partner’s assignment)
  2. Post your reflections to the Week 9 Discussion Forum (11 points)

Week 10

  1. Reflect on course content and what you learned
  2. Post to the Week 10 Discussion Forum (4 points)

Policies & Services: S ee the link on the left side menu for information about Iliff-wide course policies.

If this course makes you aware of sources of stress you'd like to work on with professional support, please see details about these professional services available for Iliff students:

If you feel like you need professional support, please know that you are eligible to receive free services from EAP (Employee Assistance Program).  All of Iliff students are enrolled in the EAP.  This is a comprehensive support service that provides counseling, coaching, and thousands of other resources. Regardless of where you live, you have access to this service!  Usually, an EAP service is provided for staff and faculty in higher education, but we have extended it to Iliff students! 

Here is a summary of their services, and you can find all of their available services and how to access them by clicking HERE:

Spiritual self-care resources:

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Resources on Spiritual Self-Care

Engage Spiritual Depth: Every Sunday Professor Cathie Kelsey shares a link to a short (5 min) video called "engage spiritual depth." She uses practices from many sources and adapts them to studying as a graduate student who also has a "life" beyond school.  If you want to check out past videos, go to: https://www.iliff.edu/engagespiritualdepth/

Iliff meditation group: If you have any interest in joining a meditation group, you might consider trying out the Iliff Meditation Group led by Iliff alum William Jeavons. The group meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 2 p.m. (Mountain Time). This group is open to everyone and beginners are welcome. Here is William’s description of the group practice: “Our typical practice is a check-in as folks Zoom in for the first 10 minutes, flowing into a brief discussion about a theme for the day’s meditation, and then about 25 minutes of still, silent meditation.  Participants may, of course, use any favorite practice rather than the offered theme (often a Buddhist koan: a succinct teaching story or a question).  A time to share insights or questions (optional) follows the meditation. Shared meditation is a surprisingly powerful way to support one another just as we are and can be a lovely reset in a busy day!”  

To get the Zoom link, or if you have any questions, please contact: wjeavons@iliff.edu   

Other Resources:

Shelly Rambo has compiled a list of “Practices for trauma studies and community care” that she uses in her courses on trauma at Boston University School of Theology. Rambo 2020 PRACTICES AND RESOURCES FOR TRAUMA CARE - 08.24.20.docx

The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab has compiled “Spiritual Care Resources for Religious Holidays (Passover, Easter, and Ramadan) during the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Carrie Doehring has made a video on Religious, spiritual, and moral stress of religious leaders in a time of pandemic: Spiritual self-care, which is part of a Luce-funded collaborative project on​ ​theological dimensions of life in the pandemic​ lead by Professor Zachary Moon (a JDP alum) at Chicago Theological Seminary.​ The content​ ​will be published in two ways: this recorded “guest lecture” running 45-60 minutes and as a written book chapter. The​ ​recorded videos ​are being​ made widely available ​on this website: https://doingtheologyinpandemics.org/

Do a five-finger meditation by Tara . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/well/mind/election-anxiety-stress-relief-calm.html: This is an easy way to calm yourself, no matter where you are. (I tried it in a dentist chair, and it worked for me!) Start by holding your hand in front of you, fingers spread. Using your index finger on the other hand, start tracing the outline of your hand. Trace up your pinkie, and down. Trace up your ring finger and down. As you do this, breathe in as you trace up, and out as you trace down. Continue finger by finger until you’ve traced your entire hand. Now reverse the process and trace from your thumb back to your pinkie, making sure to inhale as you trace up, and exhale as you trace down. You can find more tips for beating stress in my story, “Peak Anxiety? Here Are 10 Ways to Calm Down.”

The benefits and challenges of making new habits (like adding a spiritual practice to our lives): How the science of habits can help us keep our New Year’s resolutions, with Wendy Wood, PhD: Podcast posted by Carrie Doehring

This is the website associated with the 10 Percent App I use for medication https://www.tenpercent.com/ Dan Harris started this application after a panic attack on live TV, ABC news anchor knew had to make some changes. Harris recounts his journey from skeptic to meditator. Mark Landes

Let Carrie know if you have any questions. We look forward to our time together!

Carrie Doehring Email: cdoehring@iliff.edu

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Jeff Zust email: Jeff.Zust@du.edu

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DateDayDetails
Jan 08, 2021FriWeek 1 Discussion due by 06:59AM
Jan 15, 2021FriWeek 2 Discussiondue by 06:59AM
Jan 22, 2021FriWeek 3 Discussiondue by 06:59AM
Jan 25, 2021MonWeek 3 Spiritual Care Conversation Assignment: Finding a partnerdue by 06:59AM
Jan 29, 2021FriWeek 4 Discussiondue by 06:59AM
Feb 05, 2021FriWeek 5 Discussiondue by 06:59AM
Feb 08, 2021MonWeek 5 Care Seeker Role-Play Scenario Assignmentdue by 06:59AM
Feb 12, 2021FriWeek 6 Discussiondue by 06:59AM
Feb 15, 2021MonWeek 6 Care Seeker Assignment: Negotiate your role-play with your partnerdue by 06:59AM
Feb 22, 2021MonWeek 7 Caregiver Assignment: Record & Upload videodue by 06:59AM
Mar 01, 2021MonWeek 8 Caregiver Assignment (Major Course Assignmen worth 20%)due by 06:59AM
Mar 05, 2021FriWeek 9 Spiritual Care Conversation Discussion (Post Wk 8 assignment here)due by 06:59AM
Mar 13, 2021SatWeek 10 Discussiondue by 06:59AM