yes, this is what pastoral care can look like.
I was on the phone with Nina, a good friend of mine earlier this week. She has the great habit of asking me what the best thing from my week has been. I love it when I don’t have to think about it and a story comes flying out of my mouth. She seems equally aware of the good in her life as well. Although, it seems the question is often asked after we’ve shared a partciularly yucky story, or a series of them, depending on the week.
Nina hadn’t asked this question yet in our conversation and I found myself in the middle of a “I can’t believe how sad and complicated this is” sort of story about a congregation member here. While I wasn’t sharing all the gory details with Nina, I was trying to give her sense of the sadness this person lives with every day. This person and I had had a particularly intense conversation after church one Sunday.
All of a sudden it dawned on me. While I was painting this picture, I realized I hadn’t given Nina the setting I was in. A wide smile crossed my face as I said “Wait! I just realized something.” I had been listening to this person’s story, with tears and hugs and all, dressed as Professor Gizmo. I will say that I did take off the wildly flashing yellow plastic glasses and my blinking headlamp during this conversation at church. But I still wore a pig tail on the top of my head, my bathrobe, my wild hawaiian pants with skirt.
There on the phone that night a question I had been asking since cpe settled into a deeper sense of knowing. Who is pastoral care about, anyway? It’s not about the pastor, the vicar, the intern. It just isn’t. And it’s easy to get sucked into thinking it’s about you, believe me. This person didn’t care one bit about how I was dressed, how I looked. In this case, it didn’t even matter what I said. Listening and being there were my main roles.
I think the pigtail looks especially attentive, don’t you?
