There are occasions when it is good to pause and review where one has been and where one is going in ministry. The summer vacation period, though increasingly eroded by various requirements for the ‘efficient’ use of resources, is often one of those times for university chaplains. Before the advent of the new academic year, and before one rushes to commit to new plans, it is as well to take stock.
To gain genuinely fresh perspective it is necessary to escape the trammels of past thought and this can be achieved by enlisting the help of the emotions. Mark Wynn (Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding, (Cambridge: CUP, 2005)) and others have demonstrated that far from the emotions being the antithesis of reason, reason and emotion work together in concert in thinking aright. Emotional responses, which seem to be inherently more honest than reasoned argument, provide ways of processing complex and overwhelming data in a manner that is entirely complementary to logical analysis. Without the emotions we could become paralyzed by choice and fail to act sensibly in a timely fashion.
Here then is one exercise that draws on the emotions that I have found helpful. It is best practiced with a group of colleagues. After a period of stillness and quietness attempt to find an image that captures something of what one honestly feels about the chaplaincy task. This image might then be drawn – artistry is not required – and shared, if appropriate, with the group. It is dangerous to give examples for fear of falsely guiding the process, but some indication might be helpful by way of explanation. Thus images could include: fighting one’s way through a jungle; walking down endless corridors of closed doors; of being stranded on an island; the exhilaration of downhill skiing. The image is then used as a lens through which to interrogate one’s experience; it may need some working at over a period of days to gain the full benefit. But in my experience this exercise always leads to new and worthwhile insight that prevents one from allowing the momentum of present activity to unreflectively carry one in the same old direction.
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