In a contemporary university, characterised by an all-pervading sense of busyness, of tight systems and efficient processes, living with the open-endedness of the chaplaincy task and its inherent degree of redundancy (by comparison with other urgent and universally acknowledged requirements) can be hard to sustain. There is, therefore, a strong temptation to join the prevailing culture in which people can take pride in the sheer amount they are doing, wearing the conspicuous pressure they experience as almost a badge of honour. This temptation to justification by works can take at least two forms.
First, there is the intentional, engineered busyness that comes from creating a formidable round of chaplaincy events. Look how worthwhile my work must be because there is so much of it! But there is a very real danger that in pursuing this option one becomes absorbed and trapped by the very machinery one erects to provide shape and meaning to one’s work. It demands more and more of one until there is no time for anything else, yet freeing oneself from its grip feels like admitting failure.
Secondly, there is the busyness that naturally grows over time. The product of having said ‘yes’ to accumulating invitations which have come about by becoming increasingly better known. In fact, in chaplaincy work, there is an almost inevitable drift from the work being primarily about personal encounter towards the sustaining of events, projects and commitments.
However such suffocating busyness arises, a good Lenten discipline (though also applicable at other seasons) is to review, prioritise and prune back. In doing so one needs to ask from whence one’s value and sense of identity arises. From being held in the gaze of God’s loving attention, or from the attempt, via the generation of systems and activity, to justify oneself?
As in all ministry, there is a difficult and counter-cultural requirement for humility. Christopher Moody (1999) is surely correct when he observes that often one has to work anonymously and with little results in terms of personal reputation or congregational growth (p.17). Yet Moody also recognises that behind every momentary meeting lies the possibility of ‘disclosure and life-changing encounter’ as long as this work is not threatened by an imposed demand for measurable results or a lack of humility and patience on the part of the chaplain (Ibid., pp.17f).
The need for humility and resistance of self-justification also come together in another requirement. The perspective from which we operate, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is not shared by all. It is our task to help generate questions of purpose and meaning yet we cannot impose, in advance of the asking, how such questions should be answered. We exist to serve the quest for truth, to promote its vitality and integrity, but not to prescribe the where, the how and the content of its discovery. We are more often called to be hidden catalysts rather than recognised, active agents.
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