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3 Pastoral Caring through Spiritual Narratives Pastor Melissa wearily opened the door and put down her briefcase. She could still hear Mary’s voice, “I just can’t believe he’s dead.” Mark and Mary were a young couple in the congregation. Pastor Melissa had performed their wedding three years ago. Mark died quite unexpectedly from a heart attack. They had planned to start a family and now that dream was gone. The church was filled with church members mourning Mark’s death. He was the youth group leader and a trustee. Now Pastor Melissa wondered how she could listen to Mary most fruitfully. How would she understand her faith stories in light of Mark’s death? How should Mary talk with her? Pastoral care often quietly listens to the grief of people having lost loved ones, confronts in the face of addictions, supports steadily when illness arrives. Pastoral care also celebrates with the start of coupled life, blesses new life, congratulates job promotions. The minister is privileged to join with people in their seasons of life through pastoral care. Pastoral care occurs in many contexts. It sits on the front stoop of an East Coast city home. It talks in the church office of a pastor. It goes to the community room of a nursing home. It keeps a vigil in an intensive care unit of a hospital. Pastoral care shines forth in many faces. It looks through the eyes of a hospital chaplain in a hospital emergency room. It shows on the face of a pastor counseling a premarital couple. It focuses through the glance of a minister working at community center for the homeless. Pastoral care speaks through different words, dialects, and languages. It listens in various life transitions, difference places, and unique ministries of care. Yet it shares the common shape of story. Story has many different plots. The meaning that is conveyed through acts of pastoral care has the power to deepen 33 faith. Discovering a story that is part of one’s fabric of spiritual narratives can deepen faith more than pastoral care that does not explore such stories. We now turn our attention to the task of uncovering those spiritual narratives. Uncovering Spiritual Narratives In our previous discussions, we have identified some narrative and liberative practices that can be helpful in pastoral care and ministry. Power and hope emerge from narrative practice and liberation. Ministers can use these as questions in pastoral care to thicken the spiritual narratives of their church members both individually and collectively. How is power both a help and hindrance in those narratives? In what way can thickened stories lend hope as persons discover hopes and dreams in those spiritual narratives that have previously been undiscovered? The beginning of uncovering spiritual narratives can be described as “a commitment to assisting people in reflecting upon the effects of internalized discourses that contribute to social injustice and maintenance of problem storying” (Duvall and Béres 2013, 205). The minister must be attentive to identifying what spiritual narratives may be blocking the careseeker’s spiritual journey. Spiritual narratives, as previously defined, are those stories in one’s life that give spiritual meaning through either an explicit belief system or an implicit spirituality that gives rise to spiritual beliefs that give meaning to life. They touch the vulnerable spirit of a careseeker. So, the minister must be sensitive to the sacred trust the person has given him or her. A starting point for the minister in pastoral care is to establish a relationship with the careseeker that invites conversation in a mutual space. This role of the minister fits with the narrative position of the therapist as de-centered and influential (M. White 2005). In a similar way, the minister needs to take an inviting position that honors the careseeker as being most knowledgeable about his or her own life, while gently guiding the person to recognize those aspects of his or her story that they experience as most enriching. As this relationship is developed, space is created for God’s voice (Griffith and Griffith 2002). Thus, the sharing of the spiritual narrative that the careseeker1 is most aware of will have tones of the voices of past religious leaders, Scripture, his or her voice, and voices of significant persons. Most importantly, the sacred space created holds God’s voice. The way in which the 1. The term careseeker will be used in this book to refer to persons desiring pastoral care from...

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