Author: Ron McDonald

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Do we really need these words and phrases?

Do we really need these words and phrases?

  1. Athleticism: does anyone know what it means? I think it means “he can jump high.”
  2. Deconstruct: isn’t this a variation of destroy? Why can’t we analyze instead?
  3. Hydrate: doesn’t this have to do with drinking water? Can I just drink water instead?
  4. “My blood sugar is low”: what ever happened to “I’m really hungry”?
  5. Six-pack: do we really have to use a beer image for everything related to the gut?
  6. Earmark: does anybody really like using the image of ear-tags on pigs in our everyday conversations?
  7. Suck: how did this word become acceptable while other profane sexual images are treated like pornography?
  8. Enjoy: enjoy what? Just enjoy? Please tell me what to enjoy.
  9. “I gave it 110%”: Oh, really? I think once we go over 100%, which is all we got, we’re dead. So if you’re still alive, isn’t this a version of blasphemy?
  10. Power: are you tired of those “powerful new…” drugs, cars, ideas, weapons (and the worst) dramas? Is this power-madness a testosterone thing? Can’t we be merely strong, or just plain dramatic?

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Believe Memphis Grizzlies

Our Memphis Grizzlies are currently on a run in the NBA Playoffs that is a major surprise to most of the basketball world. These are the same Grizzlies who were maligned almost universally just two years ago; the same team that was rumored to be leaving for a better town (one that would support a perennially losing team). Then we won our first playoff game in San Antonio, sold out the home games, kept winning more than losing, making so much noise at games and in games that we became the darlings of Memphians and maybe even the national media. “Believe Memphis” became our motto, and we sold out a home playoff game against the Oklahoma Thunder in five minutes. FIVE MINUTES!

The team has been transformed overnight into a team known for its toughness and never-give-up attitude. One national headline said that Memphis was playing like a team that’s been here before. This was a team whose star player, Zack Randolph–“Z-Bo”, was labeled a “thug.” Its worst offensive player, Tony Allen, was the inspirational leader (because of his “like white on rice” defense). Its most versatile player, Rudy Gay, was sidelined with injury. Its anchor, Marc Gasol, was once a giant soft boy from Spain and Memphis. Its on-the-court leader was only recently about to be declared a bust. Its substitutes, who were the worst in the league as recently as last year, were now one of the best second teams in the league. Where did this come from?

It came out of the blue, as if there was some magical touch.

Half of my counseling sessions now begin with a short discussion about the Grizzlies, and I know why. They represent hope and change. From a dysfunctional, half-depressed team (and town) to a self-actualizing, confident community in a span only a few discerning fans could see happening. Isn’t this what we all want? Can’t we change what ails us?

Just look at the Grizzlies and the answer is YES! Hang in there; get down and gritty. Work as a team; move from group to true community; don’t ever give up. Someday in its own time, in its own way, the real team, the real person, will emerge from potential to actuality.

No one knows if the Grizzlies will become champions, and we (Memphians) can’t say we don’t care. Of course we want them to go all the way. And as good as they appear to be, so are other teams, and we’d be surprised if they go much further in these playoffs. But they’ve sure made their mark. For now, once again, we believe. We have hope. We KNOW change can happen, seemingly overnight.

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FATHER’S DAY 2011

Today is Father’s Day—a good day to write about my sons.

Just like me and my brothers, my sons are so very different from one another, and so very alike. Both are tall. Both can’t very well hide when they enter a room full of people. Both are good athletes and love hard physical work and being outdoors.viagra Both are very smart and have charisma that is unmistakable. Both are obvious leaders.

They are so different, too. One leads from an amazing grasp of what is happening and what needs to be done and is unusually articulate; the other leads from uncanny intuition with few words and guiltless assertiveness. One is powerful; one is nimble and quick. One dreams of making a difference in the social systems we live in; the other dreams of success in the work systems he is part of. One struggles with pressures from very high standards; the other struggles with his own fun-loving shadow.

They give me hope for what’s ahead, not only for them, but also for the many people they do and will influence.

I was fortunate to resolve conflicts with my father (real and imagined) and develop a friendship with him that is still alive and well. Now I’m participating in the development of a similar friendship with my sons. It is wonderful. It’s based mostly on mutual respect and appreciation, but it’s not much about equality. I will never have that intuitive leadership ability or grasp of the whole picture and ability to make complicated things seem simple. I’ll never have their power or nimbleness. They’ll probably never play guitar like me, either. Who cares, though? What was mostly resolved between me and my father was that childish (on my part) competitiveness with him, and I sense the same resolution going on from my sons towards me. What I am beginning to resolve is my illusion of parental superiority. The more I let go of the inclination to advise, the more available I am to them as a pure friend and admirer.

Maybe it’s because we’re so close; maybe because we are father and sons, that this essay isn’t really about my sons. It’s about me and them.

I’m a fortunate father!

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Why Does A Therapist Need Personal Therapy?

Chris O’Rear, Director of the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee (Nashville) recently invited me to discuss my book, Building the Therapeutic Sanctuary with them. One question poised to me was particularly stimulating to my thinking. A man who has extensive experience in pastoral care, training groups, and significant experience as a pastoral counselor said, “You write that one requirement for becoming a good pastoral counselor is that one have a few years of personal therapy. I haven’t been in personal therapy. What do you think of that?”

The thoughts I shared with him are that there are two benefits of personal therapy that cannot be easily duplicated in any other way. One is that personal therapy accelerates maturation and wisdom significantly. It is a fascinating ride through some amazing internal landscape. With a good therapist, exploring the self and one’s vocational calling is like hiking the Sierra Nevada Mountains with the great explorer John Muir. You can see the mountains on your own, but think of what you would learn from Muir!

The other is that if you’ve ever made the initial call for therapeutic help, you will not forget how difficult and humbling that call is. Correlated to that humility is how liberating it is to cross the threshold from humiliation to humility. Therapy offers a lot more than just humility, but the humility inherent in the asking for help and the subsequent open confession might liberate us in ways little else can. At its best, therapy is a dramatic and unique experience of faith and grace. It keeps even the most expert therapist humble and thereby makes that therapist better.

A reason I thought of later is that personal therapy teaches us to ask a question that doesn’t come naturally to most of us: what’s my part in this relationship mess? That is a crucial question in what I believe is the second phase of therapy. The first phase in therapy is problem-solving. Most counselees can get a handle on their presenting problem in four to six sessions. Most stop at that point, and there’s nothing wrong with quitting therapy after solving a problem. Some, however, decide to explore more deeply. They begin to ask why they developed the problem in the first place. This investigation inevitably deepens the relationship with the therapist, and before long, the very problem they came in to solve will be recreated in the therapeutic relationship. Almost always, the relationship between the therapist and the counselee gets stuck. It is the therapist’s personal therapy experience that offers the best way out, for personal therapy encourages the therapist to investigate not just the counselee’s part in the impasse, but also to investigate his or her part in it.

Another way of understanding this is common with me. Sometimes I get totally infuriated with certain politicians. Because I created a new instinct within myself through personal therapy, I notice when I cross a line between valid criticism and over-determined rage. I stop myself and ask other questions than just “How can that politician be so outrageous?” I ask, “Am I upset about something else as well?” “Is the politician a personal scapegoat for some unresolved issue of my own?” As I sort out my stuff from the politician’s stuff, I sharpen not only my valid criticism of the politician, but also insight into my own life.

Pastoral counseling hinges on a willingness to ask the harder question: what’s my part, my hang-up, in these difficulties? This is the insight question—the insight quest—that helps our counselees search for deeper meanings, solutions, and relationships. It is a quest that is profoundly reinforced by personal therapy for the therapist.

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HIDDEN LOVE

Wendell Berry once wrote about a deceased friend, “He is hidden among all that is, and cannot be lost.”

Recently, when my father was suffering from intense pain after open heart surgery, I shared with my mother the task of trying to comfort him, while also watching out for the fatigue and waning strength of my mother. It was hard.

What sustained us was not the hope for recovery, for it looked like Dad was dying and we wanted to accept that if necessary. What truly sustained us was the love that was hidden anong all that was present. It could not be ignored. It could not be lost.

Love doesn’t stop hurt; love doesn’t end suffering, yet when love is present it cannot hidden, it cannot be lost.

Once when Elie Weisel was but a mere teenager in a German Jewish death camp, he saw a young boy about his age writhing in pain while being hanged by the Nazi guards. The man behind him, walking past with Weisel, knowing Weisel was a religious lad, sneered, “Where’s your God now, kid?” Weisel thought to himself, “The God I know is being hanged with that boy.”

That’s the love that is hidden among all that is, even in pain and suffering.

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Foundations of Pastoral Counseling

In August I will be teaching a class entitled “Pastoral Counseling Foundations.” To prepare I’ve been reading three of the books that were central in my early development as a pastoral counselor: John Patton’s Pastoral Counseling: A Ministry of the Church, James Hillman’s InSearch: Psychology and Religion, and my own book, Building the Therapeutic Sanctuary.

To my surprise I’ve re-discovered the deep wisdom that first attracted me to Patton and Hillman, and found my own book (alas) grossly sub-par in comparison.

With regard to my own book, perhaps it’s normal to look back at my opinions and ideas from 12 years ago and see it from a new perspective—one that makes it seem shallow. Sometimes that feels right, for it might be that I’ve deepened, but it also is a little embarrassing to read some of what I once wrote. Oh, well!

I re-read Hillman’s book first and it reminded me of the essence of the task of any pastoral counselor: the inward search. There is a primary reason one seeks counseling help that goes beyond the initial “help me solve this problem.” We also seek wisdom, and the pastoral counselor is a human embodiment of the wise person archetype—the grandparent-like wise one we idealize. We want some of what he or she seems to have. That is why it is so important for the pastoral counselor to spend his or her life searching inward for wisdom, acceptance of self, and divine presence.

John Patton’s book has been important to me for two reasons. First is that he expresses perspectives on pastoral counselor that have been essential in my professional formation, particularly his emphasis on the counseling relationship as central to healing—he calls it “relational humanness.” Second is because he’s one of my favorite pastoral counseling friends—a man I am honored to know, care for, and even play music with. He is in many ways for me the wise old man, and he’s a mere friend—a human being whom I can argue with and see as flawed like me. My friendship with him is an embodiment of relational humanness.

I can say more clearly now who I am vocationally. Perhaps what I say will apply to other pastoral counselors, but all I know is what I can say about myself right now. I am a pastoral counselor who seeks to field requests for help by being skilled in psychotherapy that can solve problems, and who also seeks to create a relational environment that provides the kind of sanctuary that allows for openness, vulnerability, courage, compassion, and the quest for wisdom that enables us to live a full life.

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Tribute to Joan Kelly: Teacher, Dancer, Artist

We’ve lost a giant among us, and she didn’t know that we knew it.

I met Joan while she was an art teacher in the Memphis City Schools. My wife, the school’s librarian, who has an eye for good educators, spoke highly of Joan. Though I only knew Joan for about a dozen years, I really saw her talents at contra dances and in her developing art.

Joan Kelly”s stature was evident when she would light up a dance floor with her grace and giggle. She loved to dance, and anyone who learned to dance well quickly learned that she was one of the best. Plus she had passed along that grace, quick response, and light-footed touch to her daughter, Erin. When those two were nearby on the dance floor, it was special—for Erin was so special to Joan, and vice versa.

We saw Joan grow up as a caller. She applied that teaching experience and ploughed through those three familiar stages of calling: joyful playfulness, irritation with those who keep messing up the normal flow of the dance, then the acceptance of a seasoned caller coupled with clarity and authority. When Joan took her turn as our caller, we could expect the best dances of the evening.

We saw it in her participation in the choir her brother leads at Balmoral Presbyterian Church where she found community that embraced her wonderful contributions.

We saw it in her progress as a wood-turner. Those early simple, beautiful bowls had evolved into complex, magnetic pieces of art. All those years of artistic expression were finding a medium she was mastering.

Alas, the very medium that had become home for her blossoming expression betrayed her. Working with a difficult piece of cedar, it exploded from the lathe and killed her in the prime of her creative life. The consolation is that she died doing what she loved.

The tragedy is that she left us wondering what more she would have done and created, and, though she felt loved by many, she somehow felt underappreciated and unrecognized. We now know that the gratefulness for her gifts that are so talked about as she passes on, were just on the verge of the recognition and honor she deserved. She lived a wonderful life.

Her legacy might be contained in a query: why not work on the most complex and difficult pieces so that our creativity is a deeper expression of life, love, and God? That’s what she was doing at the point of her death, exclaiming to Ernest minutes before the accident that it was the most difficult wood she’d worked with.

It took two weeks for that chunk to fully take her life, during which time we circled together in a dance of love and sadness that some felt was being called by Joan—she saved the last dance for all of her friends and family.

Joan Kelly, our loved one, died in her blossoming years at 59. We miss her.

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Institutionalization Issues

A quotation from W.T. Jones’ book, History of Western Philosophy: The Medieval Mind, (New York, Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1952), pp. 55-56:

Movements tend to be radical and extreme. As they are institutionalized, they become conservative and resist the very excitement and ferment that gave them birth. This is almost inevitable. An institution constitutes a lot of [people]; rules are needed to reduce the number of separate decisions that are made and so to minimize the changes of contradictory policies being initiated in different parts of the organization. But the rules are perforce designed for the general case, and since all actual cases are particular, the rule never exactly fits.

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WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

What is the church?

This question becomes more important when the church finds itself in a crisis. It’s easy to take for granted what a church is when all is moving along smoothly. The input of a crisis, though, creates tension that often leads to disagreements, dismissals, controversial changes, and confusion. We find ourselves asking, if the church is just like the corporate world, the work-a-day world, or the dog-eat-dog world, is it really worth sticking with it? Why be part of the church when it’s no longer a sanctuary from the difficulties we seek refuge from? What if we perceive the church as just as bad as the outside world we joined the church to get some separation from? What if our involvement in the church is just as confusing and upsetting as other settings which we have low expectations of?”

One opinion is that the church is a place where like-minded people gather for mutual support in their efforts to make a difference in the broader world. When the gathering fractures, some choose to get out and find a church home elsewhere, some choose to stay together and work through the fracture’s meaning, recreating a different commonality, a new church.

Another opinion is that the church is a gathering that moves from simple associations to true community that lifts its members to unusual achievements, joyfulness, and service. Communities have a way of holding people up to higher standards that have tremendous influence. But when fractures occur and some of the unity and strength of community is lost, the gathering has to choose between letting go of past community dreams or renewal. If the church craves the deep and vital strength of community, it will choose renewal, a difficult path, but not nearly as discouraging as giving up. A willingness to accept itself as a mere group of people doing very limited activities (like entertaining worship or shared child care), means that it can survive, but the strength of community is not part of its identity. This choice is for institutional power that is different from community strength. Renewal requires a courageous and diligent inner search for the answer to what the church is now.

All church fractures create a choice between loss and hard work. Do we give up or do the ensuing work of renewal? Frankly, some fractures are so deep and destructive that giving up might very well be the wiser choice. But even when one chooses to let go and move on, part of the moving on needs to be a renewed effort to find meaning and insight from the fracture. Fractures ought to lead us into our very hearts. The correct response to a broken community is the inward journey.

In the movie Gandhi when Gandhi asks one of his old friends, “Charlie,” to depart from leadership of the Indian revolution, Charlie is not sure how to say goodbye. Gandhi replies that “For you and me there are no goodbyes,” adding that “wherever you go we will always be in one another’s hearts.” It is a statement very similar to Jesus’ “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be also.” Perhaps this is what the church is about: wherever two or more gather to discover and do good, they are at the heart of God. They join with the love of God that gives us some insight into what truly good thoughts and actions are. This is where community begins, or where community is renewed.

Thus, this question—what is the church?—leads us back to two prayers of petition. One is “What is good?” This cannot be answered outside of community, though, for its answer is found in dialog. We need others who are willing to seek the good with us. The other petition is “What good should we do?” I can seek to answer the question “What good should I do?” by myself, but when “I” is replaced with “we,” community is involved. That community is the church, a gathering of people seeking to discern the good and do what is good.

Not an easy task, but once you’ve experienced the transforming nature of community life, anything less is unsatisfying.

The church, when it is the true church, draws us inward where we ask the hard questions of our day in dialog with others, then do something new with courage and hope. The church is where faith is deepened through openness with others and God, providing the open door where grace can transform life into confidence, caring, and courage. And the church is where faith is put into action, where the transformed person, the true community, and the shared resources are used to serve and transform the culture and state we live and work in. This is how the church draws us to the divine: it opens us up to the transformative activity of God.

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After the Recession, A Balanced Budget

AFTER THE RECESSION, A BALANCED BUDGET

When President Clinton left office in 2001, America had a balanced budget: income equaled expenditures. President Bush cut income (taxes) and raised expenditures, creating a massive deficit budget. In 2008 the great recession hit, further cutting income, and, in response, Bush and President Obama thought it was wise to increase expenditures to seek to soften the recession. The deficit soared.

If it is true that President Obama seeks to eventually move us back towards the balanced budget days in the late 1990s, then income must rise and expenditures fall. If we continue to rise out of this recession, then taxes will rise as personal and corporate income rises. When the recession is over, the “stimulus” spending will end with it. When the wars end, spending should decrease. Then all we have to look at to balance the budget are three things:

(1) we must decide if part of the spending budget will include paying down the national debt;

(2) we must decide if part of the spending budget will include cuts in entitlements;

(3) we must decide if part of our income will be new taxes, or the repeal of some or all of the Bush tax cuts.

In my opinion we should weather the deficit spending until we are clearly out of the recession—which must include a rise in employment. We all borrow money when we have to, and it’s not improper for the federal government to borrow money now.

However, when the recession is over, we must not ignore the national debt. Paying it down must be included in our expenditures. That’s the way families insure their financial futures, and common sense says that that’s the way governments should operate, too.

Entitlements have to be analyzed objectively and honestly. There are so many stories of the federal budget subsidizing out-of-date operations that we simply must not treat pet projects of a powerful representative as sacred cows. We need to trim the fat. Furthermore, we must end contracts that make people rich. No one should get rich from government contracts. That’s the people’s money, and it is being abused.

Tax income will rise once the recession is over, plus states, because of they have to balance their budgets, will have already raised taxes. Should the federal government raise taxes? I think we should look at this after we have truly been honest and tough with spending cuts. Long-term government spending is the real problem, not income.

I believe that the missing ingredient in this agenda is courage. Cutting spending after the recession ends, including debt reduction in the future budget, and considering raising taxes secondary to pet project cuts will require a level of political courage—which means the courage to do what’s right when it might mean you are voted out of office—that our representatives usually don’t have.

We can hope, though, can’t we?