Spiritual Care in Pluralistic Cntxt

Instructors: Rubén Arjona, PhD 303-765-3124 rarjona@iliff.edu

Carrie Doehring, PhD 303-765-3169 cdoehring@iliff.edu

Spiritual care in health care and military context needs to be intercultural and evidence-based.  An intercultural approach uses a particularist approach to religions in the world, in order to pay attention to what is unique about particular beliefs, values and practices that arise in stressful experiences. An evidence-based approach uses research on how a person’s beliefs, values and practices might be harmful or helpful in coping with stress and searching for meanings. Research often uses a pluralistic approach to religion and spirituality, defining common experiences, like religious struggles, in order to measure them and study their impact on aspects of health. This course uses our own experiences of having spiritually fluid identities in order to integrate what we are learning in journal assignments. Our journal assignments will focus on the ways our religious/spiritual identities shaped how we responded to a life changing experience. We will identify how our initial response, especially our stress reactions and related emotions, generated a lived theology or spiritual orienting system with values, beliefs about suffering and hope, and ways of coping or experiencing sacred that may have been shaped by childhood and childhood religious and spiritual orientations, as well as by intersecting aspects of our identities (like gender, social class, able-bodiedness, race, sexual orientation). The last section of the journal assignment will explore the spiritual practices we used or could use that foster compassion and connection to sacred/goodness/mystery, in ways that generate beliefs about suffering and hope and values that we now want to put into practice.  We will share these journal assignments with a learning partner who will explore with us the tapestry of our hybrid religious identities/spiritual fluidity. The peer learning and support experienced during sharing these journal assignments with our partner and in our small groups of four students will help us practice an intercultural approach to spiritual care that fully acknowledges the mystery and alterity of our religious worlds, spiritual fluidity and hybrid religious identities. This self and theologically reflexive learning will enhance our formation as pastoral and spiritual caregivers who deeply engage religious and cultural traditions within a spiritually, socially complex world.

These journal assignments, along with video recorded consultations with learning partners, will be part of the readings in small groups of four students that continue over four weeks (weeks 6, 7, 8, 9), helping students reflect on how well they put into practice the following competencies in intercultural, evidence-based spiritual care in pluralistic contexts: using their own spiritual practices to cope with stress in an embodied process of spiritual integration, establishing trust with care seekers, exploring stress-related beliefs and values (their own and their care seeker’s), seeking self-differentiation in order to not impose their beliefs and values on care seekers, using theological empathy, using research on when aspects of religion are harmful or helpful, and using a justice orientation to care that explores intersecting social oppressions within persons, organizations and communities that exacerbate harm.

Course Objectives

Iliff MDiv Curricular Goal related to Theology and Religious Practices (PR): engage in analysis of contemporary religious traditions and institutions in order to assess, design, and perform meaningful leadership practices with sensitivity to contextual realities and relationships.

Iliff MAPSC Curricular Goals Central to this Course

The course is designed to meet the needs of those preparing for the specialized vocation of pastoral and spiritual care. Students take courses in pastoral and spiritual care that implement an intercultural approach to spiritual care, integrating contextual understandings of religious truth with a social justice orientation.

Specific Goals and Outcomes of This Course

Goal 1. Understand the two key ingredients of intercultural spiritual care as

1. Establishing trust by (1) respecting care seekers’ values, beliefs, ways of coping and connecting with the sacred, and (2) helping care seekers experience self-compassion and safety by finding intrinsically meaningful spiritual care practices that involve their bodies.
2. Finding life-giving intentional beliefs and values about suffering that arise from experiencing compassion. Compassion helps care seekers understand the ways automatic stress responses often make them feel anxious, angry, ashamed and guilty, which in turn gives rise to life limiting values and beliefs and consumer ways of coping shaped by intersecting social oppressions.

Outcomes: Students demonstrate how they implement these two key ingredients in intercultural spiritual care in their journal assignments and spiritual care conversations. Students reading journal assignments and watching video conversations learn to identify these key ingredients in intercultural care.

Goal 2. Engage in a process of spiritual integration by finding and using intrinsically meaningful spiritual practices to connect to goodness within one’s self, one’s relational webs and this learning community, increasing aware of stress-based reactions/emotions that give rise to more life-limiting or socially oppressive beliefs, values and consumer ways of coping

Outcomes: Students become accountable for reporting each week on their use of spiritual practices to become more aware of stress reactions and to compassionately understand and practice self-care.

Goal 3. Develop and demonstrate an intercultural approach to pastoral and spiritual care that respects what is unique and distinctive about each person’s religions, spiritual, existential orienting system (values, beliefs, practices).

Outcomes: Students will demonstrate their intercultural capacity in the ways they respond to (a) each other’s forum discussions; (b) the journal discussions; also in (c) the journal assignment and (d) their spiritual care conversations.

Goal 4. Demonstrate self-differentiation by tracking one’s personal theology/orienting system (stress-related and intentional beliefs, values and practices for coping) and discerning how it shapes a care-giving relationship.

Outcomes: Students will demonstrate self-differentiation in the ways they respond to (a) each other’s forum discussions; (b) the journal discussions; also in (c) the journal assignment and (d) their spiritual care conversations. 

Goal 5. Demonstrate theological empathy by (1) stepping into the particularities of the care seeker's religious world and their consultant's orientation to spiritual care, and (2) using their pluralistic understandings of spiritual care and beliefs/values about suffering and hope to co-create meanings

Outcomes: Students will demonstrate theological empathy in the ways they respond to(a) each other’s forum discussions; (b) the journal discussions; also in (c) the journal assignment and (d) their spiritual care conversations. 

Goal 6. Develop and articulate the differences between a particularist and a pluralist approach as lived out in the journal assignments written and reflected upon in this course.

Outcomes: Students will demonstrate their knowledge of these comparative approaches to religions of the world and how they shape intercultural spiritual care, tin the ways they respond to the religious beliefs, values and practices in journal assignments and in spiritual care conversations and forum discussions.

1. Class participation: class members will be expected to do the readings and reference them in weekly reading forums. (Weeks 1 and 10: 4 points each = 8%; Weeks 2 – 9: 7 points each=56%)
2. Students will work in pairs as spiritual caregivers on journal assignments. They will use the journal assignment outline Journal Assignment.docx, along with Carrie Doehring’s journal assignment Doehring Journal Assignment Revised 9-2-2018.docx as a model, to each write a journal assignment (worth 25% of grade for caregiver). They will then video record a zoom spiritual care conversation with their partner, who will ask questions about what it was like to do the assignment, what spiritual practices they used, and how their searched for meanings involved the layers of their religious identities (worth 11% of grade for consultant).  By week 2, students will sign up for the week in which they present their journal assignment and video-recorded spiritual care conversation. They will submit their journal assignment to their partner and Dr. Doehring or Dr. Arjona two weeks before their week to present, and then they will video record their 20” consultation conversation and post that one week before it is their turn to present. Their journal assignment and video will then become learning resources for that week. We will have two pairs of student per group, with four weeks (weeks 6, 7, 8, 9) of using journal assignments and conversations as our learning resources.

ZOOM instructions: If you do not have a zoom account, you will need to create one.  Our IT staff has a helpful video about using zoom.https://iliff.bloomfire.com/posts/1440512-from-zoom-video-to-youtube-to-canvas 

Exchange your zoom account name with your partner and then you can schedule a meeting using zoom. You can test zoom by recording a meeting with yourself.  Once you open zoom, you hit start a meeting, then click, join a meeting. You record the meeting by hitting the record button on the bottom of the screen.  When you end the meeting zoom will create a file of the video recording, and I think it should create a zoom folder on your computer where this is stored.  Practice this ahead of time and let the faculty know if you have questions. There is a 40" limit, but you should only need about 20" or so for your conversation.

Learning Covenant

Academic, experiential and chaplaincy learning: This is not simply a theoretical course that requires students to demonstrate knowledge. It is an intercultural spiritual care course where we will integrate theory and practice through experiential models of learning. Forum discussions are designed so that students bring concepts from readings into dialogue with journal assignments and their own process of spiritual integration.

Demonstrating knowledge and academic skills: In order to function in academic and professional contexts, students need to be able to demonstrate knowledge according to academic and professional standards of writing, grammar, and in-text citation using APA formatting. Forum posts and responses are expected to meet professional and academic standards, not the more casual standards of many kinds of online discussions. Points will be deducted for inadequate proof reading or citations.

Demonstrating a capacity to differentiate one’s own emotions, values, beliefs and practices from others: The content of the course will elicit emotional responses, and we will each need to take responsibility for experiencing, interpreting, and channeling feelings in appropriate personal and professional ways, especially those arising from our personal experiences. Ultimately, we want to be able to experience our emotional/stress reactions as resources and not liabilities in our learning. You will need to demonstrate differentiation of self in all forum posts and responses and in the journal assignments and spiritual care conversations. We will be sharing spiritual practices that we use to help us to emotionally regulate our reactions.

Demonstrating intercultural capacities with each other: We come to this learning experience with a range of experiences, thoughts, and feelings about spiritual care, as well as religion and spirituality. In our forum posts and responses, we agree to demonstrate intercultural attitudes that respect what is unique and distinct about each other’s values, beliefs, and practices (demonstrating skills of respecting radical religious and spiritual differences, and the capacity to step into another religious/spiritual/existential world as respectful guests).

Demonstrating theological empathy: Theological empathy is the reflexive capacity to imagine how another’s stress-based emotions generate a lived theology or orienting system of values, beliefs, and practices that may be life limiting, when intersecting social oppressions make people judge themselves as bad. Theological empathy is an extension of the cognitive capacities for interpersonal and social empathy: self-other macro-systemic awareness, perspective taking, emotional regulation, and contextual understanding of systemic barriers and privileges. In their journal assignments and spiritual care conversations with each other in this course, students are expected to demonstrate theological empathy.

Confidentiality: Personal disclosures are not to be discussed outside of class without agreement and permission. Students can, however, talk to people within their support systems about their own reactions, as long as the focus is on themselves and not the content of what class members share, and as long as any identifying information about other students is disguised. Keep in mind, however, that Iliff is a small community where others can be easily identified. Faculty will abide by the bounds of professional rather than absolute confidentiality. Syllabus guidelines regarding Colorado reporting laws and practices will be followed.

Levels of self-disclosure: Everyone is responsible for their own level of self-disclosure. The purpose of self-disclosure (as with any self-disclosure in spiritual care conversations) is to enhance group learning. Students can use their support systems when they need to process their own experiences.

Commitment to our learning community: In order to build and maintain relationships of trust and dependability, everyone needs to abide by deadlines for group postings, responses and assignments. When students post late, this creates stress for students that post on time and want to be timely in their responses. If emergencies arrive that prevent on time posting, students must notify faculty and members of their forum. Points will be deducted for late assignments.

Availability of faculty: Faculty are available for support, clarification, and advice. They are not able to offer ongoing counseling or therapy; they will help students evaluate the extent to which counseling may be helpful and make appropriate referrals.

Language framework: We use inclusive language that respects all forms of religious traditions, theological, and political perspectives, and gender and sexual orientation diversity.

Revising and monitoring ground rules: We all share in monitoring and revising these ground rules to ensure safety and engender trust.

Presenters will use the journal assignment outline Journal Assignment.docx along with Carrie Doehring’s journal assignment Doehring Journal Assignment Revised 9-2-2018.docx as a model, to write a journal assignment (worth 25% of grade for caregiver).

Two weeks before their week to present, journal presenters will go to the week's discussion, hit reply and attach their journal assignment to their spiritual care quarter.

Presenters and their partners will then video record a zoom spiritual care conversation, in which their partners ask questions about what it was like to do the assignment, what spiritual practices they used, and how their searched for meanings involved the layers of their religious identities (worth 11% of grade for consultant). The partner will go to the week's discussion, hit reply and attach their zoom conversation, so that both the journal assignment and zoom conversation are available to the spiritual care quartet one week before the discussion posts are due.

These deadlines are listed below.

ZOOM instructions: If you do not have a zoom account, you will need to create one.  Our IT staff has a helpful video about using zoom.https://iliff.bloomfire.com/posts/1440512-from-zoom-video-to-youtube-to-canvas 

SPIRITUAL CARE PARTNERS and DATES TO PRESENT:, SUBMIT YOUR JOURNAL TO YOUR PARTNER AND RECORD A SPIRITUAL CARE CONVERSATION

WEEK 6 (Oct 15) for presenting Journal assignment and for the conversation with your partner. The journal assignment must be submitted on October 1 and the video on October 8.

Sara Keith (presenter), Elisa Erickson (partner); Deb D., Cazandra

Michael LeBlanc (presenter) Stephanie Seth (partner), Jamie, Robin S-C

Tom Cruse (presenter), Skip Murphy (partner), Kathy, Carla

Kevin Garman (presenter), Robin Darrow (partner), Deb M., Rachel

Karl Krebs (presenter), Trent Lockhart (partner), Reed, Julie

Nicole Dick (presenter), Berry Wilson (partner), Nikki, Ben

Amanda Newsome (presenter) and Candace Woods (partner), Sylvia, Terresa

Jordan (presenter) and Leigh (partner), Andrea, Jen

Maxine Christopher (presenter), Dee Torell (partner), Janita, Lynne

Week 7 (Oct 22) for presenting Journal assignment and for the conversation with your partner. The journal assignment must be submitted on October 8  and the video on October 15

Leigh (presenter) and Jordan (partner), Andrea, Jen

Stephanie Seth (presenter) Michael LeBlanc (partner), Jamie, Robin R-S

Sylvia Canty (presenter) Terresa Newport (partner), Amanda, Candace

Skip Murphy (presenter), Tom Cruse (partner), Kathy, Carla

Deb Dahlke (presenter), Cazandra Campos MacDonald (partner), Sara, Elisa

Reed Tanner (presenter), Julie Hiramatsu (partner), Karl, Trent

Nikki Kranzler-Gacke (presenter), Carrie as partner, Nicole, Berry

Dee Torell (presenter), Maxine Christopher (partner), Janita, Lynne

Robin Darrow (presenter), Kevin Garman (partner), Rachel, Deb M.

Week 8 (Oct 29) for presenting Journal assignment and for the conversation with your partner. The journal assignment must be submitted on October 15 and the video on October 22

Janita McGregor (presenter), Lynne Tabb (partner), Maxine, Dee

Berry Wilson (presenter), Nicole Dick (partner), Nikki

Robin Stretch-Crocker (presenter) and Jamie Schwoerer (partner), Michael, Stephanie

Elisa Erickson (presenter), Sara Keith (partner), Deb D., Cazandra

Kathy Albers (presenter) and Carla Friedli (partner), Tom, Skip

Deb Metcalf (presenter) & Rachel Carter (presenter), Kevin G., Robin D.

Candace Woods (presenter) + Amanda Shaw Newsome (partner), Sylvia, Terresa

Andrea Kennedy (presenter) and Jen Simon (partner), Jordan, Leigh

Trent Lockhart (presenter), Karl Krebs (partner), Reed, Julie

Kevin Buskager  (presenter) & Deirdre Brouer (partner)

Week 9 (Nov. 5) for presenting Journal assignment and for the conversation with your partner. The journal assignment must be submitted on October 22 and the video on October 29.

Jamie Schwoerer (presenter) and Robin Stretch-Crocker (partner), Michael, Stephanie

Cazandra Campos MacDonald (presenter), Deb Dahlke (partner), Sara, Elisa

Julie Hiramatsu (presenter), Reed Tanner (partner), Karl, Trent

Carla Friedli (presenter) and Kathy Albers (partner), Skip, Tom

Terresa (presenter) + Sylvia (partner), Candace, Amanda

Jen Simon (presenter) and Andrea Kennedy (partner), Jordan, Leigh

Deirdre Brouer (presenter) & Kevin Buskager (partner)

Berry (presenter) & Nikki Kranzler-Gacke (partner), Nicole

Rachel Carter (presenter) & Deb Metcalf (partner), Kevin, Robin D.

Lynne Tabb (presenter) and Janita McGregor (partner), Maxine, Dee