Separation and Silence as inexpensive forms of pastoral care in the Caribbean.
Pastoral Care is the ministry where community journeys in community to compassionately acknowledge and address the needs within community while facilitating the actualizing and the awakening of the community’s potential (Dieleon-Diedrick, James, Millette, Warner, 2012[i]). In the Caribbean, pastoral care is sometimes prohibited because of limiting socio-economic factors and religious taboos, which inhibit many ability to achieve wholeness as they seek to find meaning in their lives. How can such individuals achieve wholeness and remain on this path in an inexpensive spiritually uplifting way? I believe this can be achieved through the disciplines of separation and silence.
Separation is posited here as a discipline. Separation literally means what it implies. That is, through physical, psychological or spiritual means, removing oneself from the routines of life. The discipline of separation is not new. The historical Jesus practiced this discipline regularly in order to maintain wholeness in His life and to aid others to maintain wholeness in their lives. For example, each day after Jesus taught at the temple, he separated himself by spending nights at Mount of Olives (John 7:53-8:1). Matter of fact a more intentional reading of the gospel will show that Jesus separated himself from the disciples and the crowd more times that we may care to admit (Luke 21:37-38). In this way the Godman knew and exercised the will of God for His life.
Similarly, during the early church parents’ crises involving such like the nature of Christ, the Holy Spirit and so on, they held councils which were forms of “separation from” and “separation unto” so that decision can be arrived with less distraction and more focus. For example, the first ecumenical council of Nicaea (325AD) called by Emperor Constantine, to deal with the Arian controversy. The Arians separated the historical Jesus from God, so that they believed Jesus was a created being. Moreover, the same can be said of the Council of Constantinople (381 AD), which met to refute Apollinarianism. Apollinarius taught that Jesus was a combination of the divine Logos spirit, a human soul and a human body. He taught that Jesus did not have a human spirit. All these councils were forms of separation to deal with issues affecting the church and society at large.
Pastoral Ministry in the Caribbean has to capitalize on the concept of separation, as a pastoral care disciplinary response to the issue of life. In a practical way this may be literally removing persons who are affected by circumstances of life from one physical location to the other. For example, recommending separation as a temporary and terminal solution in situations of abuse. This could be as simple as recommending and releasing a member to serve at another church location because of some abusive experience he or she would have experienced in their home church. It could also mean sending both members and clergy alike, to places where they are separated from much human activities in order to reflect, pray, seek forgiveness or reconcile relation with themselves, others and their deity or God.
In a Jamaican context this needs not be hard. Ministers can share the use of manses/rectories or whichever ministerial property the church has allocated. Someone from the north of the island could separate his or herself by moving to another minister’s home in the east or west or wherever possible. In the same way, through networking, the minister can move to any one of the countries in the Caribbean, thereby achieving the same thing.
Separation normally gives persons the opportunity deal with issues in ways that are less threatening and intimidating. I believe this aids our spirituality and our wholeness as individuals. Whether this is achieve through acts of prayer, where in such environment it is okay to pray as loud as one feels or quietly as one wishes, the end results often seemed to be refreshing. Pastoral Care in the Caribbean must foster this as it one of the most cost-effective approach to dealing with non-medical and non-clinical issues parishioners are faced with.
Separation also gives persons who need to, the appropriate space to offer confession to their deity or God. Not just confession in the way many may understand, for example, as when a person may believe he or she has sinned against a religious deity or God. But also confession in the literally sense of the word, to speak out loud. And often in this time of separation from, one is able to articulate loudly their future desires, aspirations and goals without having to risk being ridicule. The primary Greek word for “confess” is homologeo which basically means “to say the same thing” and then “agree, admit, acknowledge.”However, in the case of speaking out our aspirations, dreams and desires, a similar and somewhat more emphatic word is exomologeo. This means to “promise, consent, admit, confess or acknowledge” and from this we also get the verb, “to praise.”
Another pastoral care that can be offered to many in the Caribbean is the discipline of silence. It is believed that that Caribbean people love noise. Loud music, loud preaching, loud conversing, loud vehicles characterize our realities. This belief may not be as far fetch as one may think, after all our history has pulled us in certain directions which forced us to cope in ways that are comfortable for us. The drums, African Spirituals, singing, music and so on are products and coping mechanism used during those times (Alleyne, 2002). Today we continue to use loud sound as a form of stress reducer and to get away from reality. This may be the reason the charismatic church is growing in the Caribbean. However, the drawback to using loud music and other forms of loud expressions is the potential to break noise acts and cause noise pollution in many in our states (BBC Caribbean News, 2008).
Like the discipline of separation, silence could bring us in the place where we learn to listen to our innermost being and discover the ‘us” in ourselves and more about our deity or God. Both the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 63:1-2) and the New Testament (Luke 6:12-13), give examples of this. However, in spite of these simple inexpensive forms of pastoral care, only few congregations and denominations in the Caribbean offer this discipline to their congregants and communities as a viable option. In this regards, the Catholic Church must be commended in its continued effort to offer facilities that will ensure persons are able to enjoy silence. The Caribbean Church in its effort towards ecumenism could encourage its members and the community at large, to enjoy these opportunities from the Catholic Church, which in essence are graces from God.
Though for many because of their socio-religious background, silence may be an unnatural discipline to pursue, I believe if the church and other entities promote silence as an appropriate pastoral care response to address specific issues in our congregants’ life, everyone will be the better for it. Thus, pastoral ministry as presenting “silence” as a form of pastoral care is inexpensive path towards wholeness and spiritually to us a Caribbean people.
References
Alleyne, M. C. (2002). Construction and representation of race and ethnicity in the
Caribbean and the world. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.
BBC Caribbean News. (2008, November 23). Forum: Noisy Caribbean. Retrieved October
30, 2009, from BBC Caribbean News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/
2008/11/ 081121_noiseforum.shtml
[i] This definition is from a pastoral care group presentation done by Mr. Kraig Dieleon-Diedrick, Mr.Vonnie James, Ms. Afesha Millette and Mr. Erwin Warner in THEO 2216 Semester II, 2012-UTCWI. Lecturer was Rev.Trevor Edwards.