The Entertainment Center

Greetings,

The Lake home is a window into the surrounding wild life. The wild life are the owners of the lake and the woods. They just haven’t completed the paper work to claim their rights.

Yesterday provided a good window for the Canada Geese in residence. They came to my shore to come on board the front lawn. I watched the first pair. They had, five or six young goslings, they were staying so close together and moving so rapidly I could not be sure of the count at first. It turned out to be five. They were still young since instead of feathers they were more like a ball of fuzz. The parents have been at the lake a number of years. Early on the eggs must not have hatched or they didn’t have any eggs. The last few years this pair has been producing five or six a year. It is fun to watch them grow rapidly during the summer. First they mature to having feathers. Then the grooming lessons begin, preening. That allows the water to stay on the outside of their bodies. They coat their feathers with their saliva? Next flying lessons, where they do not quite get airborne. They practice landing feet first. By fall they are up in the air and circling in wider circles. By winter they are gone and most do not return. Which is good. We only have three pair and a lone Goose as regulars. That lone goose is another story for another time.

In the meantime, like yesterday, later in the day I spotted another pair of Canada Geese on the lawn with three goslings, even smaller. They swim well and even get up on the lawn to eat grass already. The parents are very skittish. All I have to do is go out on the four season porch and they are heading into the water. They allow me to watch from inside at the dinning room table. The lake is their safety net. The young stay really close to their mother and Dad is ever watching and protecting.

Now two families will provide entertainment during the summer. The third couple doesn’t seem to have young ones that I have seen. And maybe the lone one is staying clear while the young grow. They do put their heads down to make like a hunting spear to chase another goose away.

More will be written as the young goslings entertain as they grow.

God’s world is a wonderland, “All creatures great and small,” as it has been written. And sometimes, “All things bright and beautiful.”

From the edge,

Marlin

Retired hospital chaplain

Ex farm boy still tending the garden

Learning about the "container" metaphor

Learning from the Befriender history.

"My proposal was not accepted immediately or readily. I needed the approval of the Hospital Auxiliary, nursing service, and the medical staff."

The administrator rejected the first request to visit patients with trained story listeners. His reason, "we are only concerned about what takes place within these four walls." I was inviting people from the community, non professionals, to participate in patient care. That was in 1966. Now in 2017 and after a lot of study and reflection on how metaphors function in language his reply is a classic example of the deep metaphor "container." Fortunately a few doors and windows have been installed since. This is a story that remains to be told.

I had heard the "container" in parish life in a different way. "We have never done it that way before." I had wanted to do lay ministry training in the parishes and missions that I had served the nine years before becoming a hospital chaplain. My success was very low. My beginning had been written out in a paper I wrote my senior year in seminary, "The Ministry of the Whole Church." I am still working on that Baptismal paper and the outcomes appear in various forms. My beginning methodology in that paper has been confirmed, modified but still intact.

At the present time the "container" is getting a lot of press in how we treat immigrants. The desire of some to build a "wall" is another text book classic of this deep metaphor. The involved vetting process and targeting specifics joins the cluster around "container."

I am very sensitive to the implications of the "wall" and resistance to openness. Recently my sensitivities became an awareness when the local newspaper had a story about how people from Germany were treated prior to and during WW1. My mother encountered the "container" as a student in elementary school. Her first language was German. She lived on a farm near Tipton, Iowa. The Krienbrings had settled around Louden as immigrants, a German community. An Iowa law was passed in 1910 prohibiting speaking German. She was traumatized to the point of never using German words around her children or even wanting to talk about it. I was the oldest son and I did try to learn more about this. The subject was closed. The only time she spoke German was at the family reunions when German was still spoken by the older members of the family. The men played cards and drank their beer. The women talked and the cousins had fun playing games. My grandfather did teach me one phrase in German, "work makes living sweet." There is an ending to this about laziness which I did not bother to learn.

A classmate in seminary, 19952-5, George Hayashi had been in the Japanese Internment Camp in California during WW11. I had read about the sociology studies in college but now I was meeting a person who lived through the experience. Not good. The "container" appears in a number of ways.

I am going to be reflecting on "scapegoating" as a form of "container." Metaphors allow for all kinds of connecting as I will continue to demonstrate. They are language in motion, fluid, filled with feeling and meaning.

Befriending and story metaphor listening help counter the "container" metaphor by demonstrating other metaphors from the seven deep metaphors.  

I am open for comments. How have you encountered the "container" way of thinking and living? Do you have a story of when your container became more open?

Shalom,
Marlin Whitmer
retired hospital chaplain

Today the blog may becoming operation and I am on a learning curve.

A Short history on the beginning of the Befriender Program

The Befrienderforum blog has a connection with the Befriender program at St. Luke's hospital beginning in 1966. A member of the hospital Auxiliary was disturbed by the rule, “do not talk to patients when you take the notions cart (candy and nick hacks) around.” Mavoreen found patients wanting to talk. How can we change the rule. Equally important to her question is the context in which she asked the question. I was reading a book by Chard Vara on how the suicide prevention group.   

My background, which will be revealed as we go along, made her think I could be of some assistance. She asked, "How can we change the rule?" I was in my second year as the first resident chaplain and Mavoreen had been a youth assistance when I was in charge of Christian education at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Davenport. This was where my ministry resided for three years before coming to the Hospital. She knew my interests in lay ministry training.

At the time she appeared I was reading a book by Chad Varah, The Samaritans. He had started a suicide prevention group in London and the book told the story of their beginning and well as some of the emotions in the lives of those they cared for. Their discovery was to incorporate lay people as front line responders. After lay people volunteered to serve tea to those waiting to see the professionals they found only half the people coming needed to see the professionals.

While reading I had been thinking that many of the same emotions were present in hospital patients. Could hospital patients benefit from a listener? Mavoreen gave me the opportunity to pursue this.

My proposal to the administrator was to train lay people to visit patients as "story listeners." As I made patient visits I found patients had a story to share. In fact, part of my training in Clinical Pastoral Education at Bellevue Hospital in New York City during the summer of 1953 had been with a supervisor whose approach was "story listening." I was to learn later that Fred Kuether was a pioneer in this endeavor. 

My proposal was not accepted immediately or readily. I needed the approval of the Hospital Auxiliary, nursing service, and the medical staff. The Auxiliary readily approved since they would have another volunteer service. Nursing service wanted the doctors to decide first. The Executive Committee of the Medical Staff took considerable time before giving their approval. It was reported to me, “they did not want amateur psychologists running around the hospital.” As a fact, at this time psychologist were not allowed, only psychiatrists.

Upon approval of all concerned, the task was to train a group to be the "story listeners." In the area at the time, Paul Swanson, was the pastoral care professor at the Lutheran Seminary in Rock Island. He had some experience with lay visitors when he was at Massachusetts General in Boston. 

I chose three people from Trinity Cathedral to be the first Befrienders. They had been part of our Youth Lenten discussion to facilitate and listen to the concerns of high school students. 

The initial course was 20 weeks, two hours a week, with listening being the major skill. An active listening approach was in vogue, although Fred Kuether was in the Rogerian, non directive approach of Carl Rogers .

After some initial training our morning schedule began with chapel time, Scripture reading, discussion, and prayers. We used shortened Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer.  Patient visits were then assigned. On the nursing floor they checked with the nurses about the advisability of seeing particular patient as well accepting referrals. The impact over time brought about a culture for story listening. Before leaving the hospital each Befriender wrote a short account of their visit to provide a debriefing session. The debriefing had multiple purposes, mainly to "keep our learning close to the practice" and “maintain confidentiality.” Over time a number of Aha!s were experienced. More about that as we go along.

The second year six people were accepted into the training and visiting. Folks came from different congregations. An application procedure for acceptance was put in place. In a few years our training involved 30 weeks with a two year commitment. There was no charge for the training. The 30 weeks were divided into three units. (1) The art of listening informed by the Incarnation,  (2) The different focus areas of our listening informed by reconciliation, and (3) a discussion of the three verbatim visits each was required to write informed by community building. They began to visit patients during the second unit and shortly after that they chose visits for the verbatim.

With this beginning we were about to learn as we went along making changes where needed. Antoine Boisen’s instructions, “study the living documents” became a guiding principle as well. The program is now into the 50th year and counting. I managed the Befrienders for 25 years. Now others are continuing to lead. More about our continuing history will be added to the blog.  

Shalom,

Marlin Whitmer

Listening Triads with speaker, listener, and observer

During the 25 years doing Befriender training Listening Triads with speaker, listener, and observer became an important exercise. Howard Clinebell, a pastoral theologian who conducted two three-day workshops in different years in the 70’s, introduced us to the exercise. I like it better than role-playing which I was never comfortable using.

Triads were more realistic for me since the speaker tells a story that is fresh in their mind or they could pick a story from the category chosen for the session, like an illness story, elderly story, family crisis, dying patient story, grief story, etc. Our two-hour training sessions had a presentation and discussion in the first hour and a practice session in the second hour based on the presentation. Triads were our most used training exercise during the practice session. Verbatim and practice responses were also used.

In Listening Triads listening was the main focus. The speaker started a story and the listener could only interrupt to give a summary of the story told up to that point. The listener could not ask questions or tell a story of their own or give suggestions. They had to stay with the story being told and only repeat a summary as they went along. The observer was a double-listener, listening to the story of the speaker and the summaries of the listener. After the speaker finished the observer shared where the listener was on target with the summary and where they missed part of the story.

Persons in the Triad rotated so all had the experience of being speaker, listening, and observer. This took time and there was no rush. We usually had four or five Listening Triads going at one time. After they started it was my task to answer any questions a Triad might have. When the groups were finished all were debriefed, speakers were asked, “What was it like being speaker? What was it like being listener? What was it like being observer?”

The speakers usually affirmed the value of having a listener that allowed them to tell their story in full. Listeners felt the constraint of just being a listener. Being a listener only was not an easy assignment. They wanted to ask questions or offer some help during the story or do what is called, “leap frog” what was being said. Observers had the challenge in listening to both and offering helpful observations to the listener as to where they were catching what was being said and where they came up short.

I remember a time when I was doing the Triad exercise with a new class for the Home Maker Service. Mrs. Bell had me come down and participate in their orientation with a listening session. The Homemakers would be hearing the stories as well as doing the work they were assisted to do in a given home. Being a listener would be their role rather than giving advice.

I started with a demonstration Triad for all to watch and listen. This time the speaker told her own grief story in great detail and in a moving way. The listener did a good job of listening and repeating back from time to time what she had heard. The observer commented on both. During the debriefing time the listener complained she could not make suggestions or give advise or feel helpful. The speaker affirmed that being able to tell the story without the advice or extra comments was the must helpful. The importance of being the listener was affirmed.

The listener has an advantage in one respect. The speaker can only talk 125 words per minute on average while the listener has 400 to 600 words going in their head. The extra words help the listener sort out what is important in the story being told. The other side of the issue, the extra words can also serve as a distraction in staying with what is being told.

The discipline of story listening requires holding in check our own stories, telling a better story, leap-frogging with helps and answers, etc. The real test comes as the feelings become stronger in a story being told to not let the feelings interfere with our listening and staying with the story. As story listeners we receive the story, the meaning and the feelings as well. The latter can make listening more difficult, especially when strong feelings accompanying the story connect with a similar story in the listener.

As stated in the Mary and Martha story, she has the better part and what she has cannot be taken away from her. She receives a blessing. The experience of being a listener who makes a difference makes a lasting impression on both the listener as well as the one telling the story. A mutual benefit is experienced in story listening. I believe Jesus acknowledges the same in Luke 10:43.

Shalom,
Chaplain Whitmer, Ret. BCC