Resources by Michael Koppel

Every week during my online course I assign a body-oriented spiritual practice that overlaps with what is often called “self-care.” I sometimes hesitate to use “self-care” as a descriptor because it has been so overused in some contexts that it has become a cliché catchphrase. Still, I recognize the need to take care of ourselves so that we can be of benefit to others. Resistance to meeting a need comes up regularly, too. A student wrote recently about her frustration at engaging a practice. “I don’t have time for this,” she poured out. “I have too many things to do.” I have compassion for such honesty. Even when the practice fulfills a class requirement, it can still be hard to do! We are often more attentive to checking items off our list, and just plowing through or getting on with it. Students and teachers alike are embedded in family and institutional systems that require attention and draw on our energy in differing ways. Where we can exercise control, it is helpful to do so. Hewing toward dutiful diligence comes with a price. The anger of the elder brother in the Lukan parable of the man and his two sons is a flashing signal warning us to pay attention to the need for spiritual and emotional sustenance while fulfilling daily tasks. Anger wakes us up and calls for beneficial action. Otherwise, it can morph into bitter resentment. A graduate school classmate once commented about our different approaches to work-life balance, as we encouraged one another through the writing of dissertations. “You work during the week and take the weekends off. I work on the weekends and take the week off!” The statement was a humorous exaggeration, even as it conveyed a point. We work within the bounds of our personalities, histories, and situations. In eastern philosophical systems, the term vasana refers to habitual tendencies and subtle inclinations imprinted in the mind that inform our desires and wants. Habit energy can carve deep ruts and fuel regularized healthy practice. We can choose its direction. Two years into a global pandemic, self-care is now more important than ever. Through it all, I have kept up whatever practices I could. When gyms closed, I put on my walking shoes and charted a three-mile course through several neighborhoods that allowed for an hour of outdoor activity. I bought a jacket that could help me keep going during winter’s freezing temperatures. When the local YMCA reopened, I resumed lap swimming. I am so committed to the practice that I hovered by the computer to reserve daily timed slots. I waited (sometimes not so) patiently at the facility to snag a slot left open by someone who did not show up. I have been attentive to exercise as a caring practice for years. During the pandemic, I have become vigilant because I know this about myself: I cannot focus and function well without releasing the anxiety and stress that resides in my body. I also begin each day with the rituals of contemplative silence and a few yoga poses. I even do the “chair pose,” a form of a standing squat, while heating the milk for my morning coffee. Such micro practices mirror a course exercise in which I ask students to be on the lookout for their own workable options. While the learning from practice is completion graded (meaning that students get credit for sharing), I always read the reflections with enthusiasm. I am curious to participate in their discoveries about self/spiritual care. I also glean tips for my own practice. Recently, a colleague remarked that she wanted to do better at self-care. “You are very good about it,” she said somewhat enviously about my daily regimen. “I cannot not do it,” I acknowledged. The habit energy creates its own momentum with noticeable benefits. A course participant shared a similar sentiment regarding how the weekly class spiritual/self-care practices were having an effect: “My wife noticed a difference in my mood, and said ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep at it!’” Through sustained caring practice, we recognize how restored of energy our body feels, and how much better we are at honoring our own and others’ emotional and relational boundaries. Living too dutifully with the burden of responsibilities can leave us brittle and grumpy. Learning to nourish ourselves with self and spiritual practices welcomes us home to who we are.

Trust forms the basis for human growth, as many learned from Erik Erikson’s psychological stage theory. Infants need consistent, predictable, and reliable connection and responses from caregivers for healthy development. These qualities facilitate an environment that allows for the emergence of inner confidence and strong emotional bonds with others. While we are born with the capacity for trust, we learn to trust through lived experience over time. A piece of theory from D.W. Winnicott, British child psychiatrist, liberates caregivers and teachers alike from the burden of getting everything just right. Winnicott offers a supportive message to the tired and weary: you don’t need to be perfect. “Good-enough” is just fine. Reliable caregivers put supportive provisions in place, and they create space for others to discover and learn on their own. Caregivers and teachers stand close by and ready to respond. During the COVID pandemic, I have taught primarily in two modes: completely asynchronous courses using Blackboard learning modules, and blended courses using synchronous Zoom sessions and Blackboard modules. It has taken time to develop the skills to teach online. Thankfully the learning curve began well before the urgency of this time. When I think about “good enough” teaching, I need to check my own inclinations toward perfection, the need to: formulate precise learning objectives, create crisp podcasts and videos, and develop clear PowerPoint slides, among others. Certainly, these aspects of teaching matter. Participants need to be introduced to theory and practices and have their competence assessed. Yet, trust as an embodied capacity of being tuned in and responsive to course participants has always been an aspect of effective teaching and learning in some fields and for some faculty. Since the onset of the pandemic, such practice has taken on new significance. Course material opens participants to others’ pain as well as their own. I have observed body language and read reflections that reveal genuine struggle, trauma, and wrestling. I empathically respond to participants. I exercise caution not to coerce sharing of information or details that would leave the participant feeling exposed or overly vulnerable. Noticing the gesture or the comment is often sufficient. Embodying trust in the online/virtual environment is not about catching every nuance. But it is about practicing good enough teaching that tunes in and follows through on body language and verbal and written comments. Teaching online during the pandemic requires instructors to model trust for course participants. In a therapeutic relationship, a counselor creates an emotional and physical environment for care seekers to express themselves without fear of judgment. We certainly expect such trust to be demonstrated by a trained clinician. Instructors foster trust by taking seriously participants’ experience as they encounter course material. Fortunately, course instructors in their modeling of trust give permission for others in the class to offer their own supportive comments. Trustworthy instructors do not gloss over glaring statements that beckon for attention. In a class I taught recently, a student introduced herself by saying that she was a bit apprehensive about how the class would unfold: “I am afraid of what it may break open in me.” I acknowledged the comment made in a video post and encouraged the participant to offer herself compassion. In the relative privacy of a course paper, the student referenced ongoing challenges in an intimate relationship. I responded to the statement with a brief, nonjudgmental, and supportive comment of my own. In so doing, I offered care for the student as a person even though it is not my role to elicit the further sharing of details. Paying attention and responding builds relationship and helps foster inner strength for participants in these trying times. Both online Blackboard discussions and Zoom seminar sessions have created the space for a level of intimacy that I would rarely expect in the physical classroom. Intimacy has to do with the quality of participants’ sharing: an authentic encounter with course material and their own experience that reflects deep rather than superficial connections. Such deep dives occur through discussion board posts, journal reflections, presentations, course papers, summary exercises, and academic advising appointments. Holistic and trust-filled teaching and learning requires attentive instructors who listen, observe, and respond. Academic deans and other personnel can also exercise administrative leadership by recognizing the importance and value of such formative practices in theological education. Limiting the number of participants in online classes allows for tailored instructor engagement with participants, arguably the heart of trust-filled teaching and learning.

A college friend of mine took his life by suicide when he was only twenty-two years old. The death occurred just weeks before I began seminary in 1987. Theological study offered me a refuge in which to grieve Bill’s death and to try to make sense of it. I wrote papers and talked with friends. I had dreams that allowed my psyche to release the burden of guilt and responsibility. Questions asked with intensity have lingered for years. Why could I not have stopped him from making this choice? Why did he do it? Recently, as I completed a book on embodied spiritual care, I realized that theological questions which try to make sense of suffering have over time opened a deeper awareness of the need to listen to and tend to our own bodies. Such engaged listening practice allows us “to keep on keeping on” when we cannot make sense. It also attunes us to our own pain and the pain of others. I teach listening skills in online and face-to-face classes. When I have modeled listening in the physical classroom, course participants always mention how little I speak. Given the chance, some of them would want to fill in what feels like a vacuum. Pastoral caring and spiritual listening requires attentive presence that leaves space for people to express themselves, to hear their own voices, and to sense God in the story. We also need to learn how to listen to our own bodies. During those role-plays, I pay keen attention to my body by noticing feelings and thoughts, whether and where anxiety is being experienced, and images that come to mind. The debriefing of a role-play in the classroom becomes an occasion for teaching how to pay attention to and make use of one’s own internal process. I draw on my body story and experience to teach others how to pay attention to their own. Over the years, I have used different strategies for teaching embodied spiritual practices. In a course on the spirituality of pastoral care and counseling, I once invited participants to engage in slow meditative walking within the courtyard at my school. Zen Buddhists call this practice of listening with the body kinhin, which means sutra walk. The students willingly gave it a try, but I quickly realized my own self-consciousness around exposing the class to the watchful eyes of staff and onlookers. I have since learned the value of teaching from a place of vulnerability and giving students the choice of how they want to participate. Experience in pastoral ministry informs my sense that listening to our bodies matters for the ability to care with others. Cultivating practices such as yoga, qigong, focused breathing, body scanning, and labyrinth walking, among many other possibilities, helps to access and release frustration, stress, sadness, and anger held in the body. The practices also help us to tap into delight, hope, and joy. Tending our own body story opens listening possibilities for receiving the whole of another person’s or a community’s story and experience. Pastoral ministry calls for such listening. Seminary classes and instructors have a role in curating experiential learning to undergird it. Online asynchronous classes offer valuable opportunities for embodied listening. In the privacy of a secure learning space without anyone watching, students may engage practices that help them tune in to their own body story and experience. On a cautionary note, I urge participants not to engage or to halt a practice if a traumatic response is hooked. This component of the class is completion graded. Full credit is given for briefly describing how or why a practice may or may not be beneficial. My observation is that experiential learning carries transformative power as students give themselves to the process. While I have fully expected some students to go through the motions on the exercises, I have been quite moved at the personal and theological insights most participants share. Some note working through reluctance or resistance to a practice only to find themselves surprised by what opens for them. Some dislike or do not connect to a particular practice and share their honest reactions. Others rediscover a practice that once sustained them. These are profound and not perfunctory reflections. I revel in reading them. Pastoral ministry calls leaders to embodied listening that is genuine and real in their encounters with others and the Holy. This teaching method facilitates listening to ourselves, to our bodies, as a base for that vital practice.

During a crisis, we need trustworthy practices. In challenging circumstances, when our bodies are anxious and tense, learners and teachers need a sturdy undergirding to navigate life as thoughts race and emotions fluctuate. At least, that is my view as a pastoral theologian. Ten years ago, Denise Dombkowski Hopkins and I published a book entitled, Grounded in the Living World: The Old Testament and Pastoral Care Practices (Eerdmans, 2010). We briefly explored the unfortunate use of platitudes in ministry; phrases such as ‘it could be worse,’ ‘she is in a better place,’ ‘look on the bright side.’ Clichés and platitudes are superficial thoughts and comments that stifle further exploration as they reduce complexity to simplicity. Proof-texting with the Bible also functions as a platitude. People are not comforted and much harm can occur through the use of these seemingly innocuous remarks. In a time of crisis, we realize how unsatisfying a platitude can be. A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast on the topic of care during a pandemic. I responded to a question about “rethinking” leadership practices by suggesting we need not “over think.” A former student and current pastor wrote saying how much he appreciated the passing reference. We need practices that can hold us together since many people are, in his words, “operating in a type of panic mode that is causing an overload to our systems.” Platitudes such as ‘this, too, shall pass,’ and ‘God is bigger than this virus’ serve as knee jerk thought responses that prematurely call the question rather than open the conversation. Recently, I was listening to recording of Joko Beck, founder and teacher at the Zen Center of San Diego. Joko died in 2011, but her teaching lives on. She had a no-nonsense, platitude-free style. I became familiar with her teaching while a Ph.D. student in Claremont, California. I relearned what I had heard many times before and seek to communicate in my pastoral care classes: meditation practice helps to release the thoughts that loop in the mind. Meditation is a kind of unloading of the system. Contemplative prayer and other spiritual practices serve a similar purpose: to let go of the thoughts and tap into God’s presence. Psalm 46 calls for calm amidst a creation in chaos and a world in turmoil. “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth” (v 10). “Be still” means “to stop, desist, don’t do anything.” That’s the heart of spiritual practice: to be still in a world turned upside-down. Even if you cannot be calm, I tell students, at least practice being less anxious than the people in your care. The world teaches us to keep pushing the “thinking” panic button, but pastoral leaders need to model a healing alternative for showing up in the world. That alternative allows for the embrace of our whole experience regardless of whether we are seething in anger at injustice, fearing for others’ and our own lives, grieving losses, or reeling with anxiety. Embodied spiritual practice makes space for it all. I have discovered it easier to foster such practices in the online class. I find myself teaching more boldly. Students can engage freely without being self-conscious. They get credit whether or not they engage the practices, as long as they write a brief reflection. Most students do all of them; a few opt out on occasion. The evaluation method signals their inner authority is what matters. Some probably still write to please me. Overall, though, I trust students to learn through their own meaningful activity. The abrupt shift to online teaching is simply a mirror of a new unknown reality into which we have all been catapulted. I know myself as a co-learner with class participants. I engage the practices, too. I know that being with fear and anxiety is immensely difficult as agitation stirs in my body. I know being present in and to experience takes effort. Yet, I also know from years of practice, that being still puts us in touch with the energy forces at work within and around us. All is quiet in the eye of the hurricane, but getting there/being here is a challenge. Platitudes run roughshod over experience. They put a superficial happy face on matters. Yet another possibility exists. The poet Rumi muses: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Spiritual practice allows for holding the both/and together instead of denying the negative or forcing the positive. It is the field of being and heart of pastoral caring. Suggested spiritual practice drawn from various traditions: • Sit in a comfortable position • Notice and let go of all platitudes/thoughts/feelings • Focus on your breath and/or sense your heartbeat • Acknowledge what’s happening in your body • Be still for a while I’ll meet you there in the stillness.