Reflective Practice - Formation and Supervision in Ministry (E-Journal)

Brownlee, reviewed by Annette

ENLIGHTEN: FORMATIONAL LEARNING IN THEOLOGICAL FIELD EDUCATION by Sung Hee Chang and Matthew Floding

Rev. Wood introduces how trauma impacted people in this  pandemic crisis

Wood, Nancy

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2021 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
SECTION 2 
TRAUMA AND THIS SEASON OF CRISIS
Editor’s Introduction
Theological educators have long understood that many of our students come to ministerial training carrying within their bodies, minds, and spirits the impacts of trauma. Through didactics, workshops, read-
ing, and presentations of case studies from our work with students, we seek 
to further our own education on trauma and how it impacts learning. We 
understand how crucial it is to consider the power and effects of trauma as 
we work to foster healthy, relational learning communities. 
But what if those learning communities are being formed in a time of 
crisis, in a time when every member, including the educator, is processing 
some degree of trauma? In this section, five writers explore this question, 
beginning with Beth Naditch’s aptly titled article “Building the Airplane in 
the Air: Trauma-Informed Clinical Pastoral Education during a COVID-19 
Summer.”
In the face of the pandemic’s disruption to the Hebrew SeniorLife CPE 
program, Naditch and her colleague Reverend Mary Martha Thiel created 
and supervised an advanced unit of CPE with a specialty focus on the pan-
demic and telechaplaincy, doing so without the benefit of advance planning 
in a time of national and international trauma. Naditch offers us the insights 
she gained through supervising an innovative CPE program on trauma-
informed care.
Danielle J. Buhuro and Jeremy Gilmore share with readers Buhuro’s 
SELF theory, a social justice education theory in CPE supervision. The ac-
ronym SELF reminds educators to address, in order, the “Social Needs,” 
“Emotional Needs,” “Life Meaning and Purpose Needs,” and “Faith Needs” 
27
of African American students. The authors argue that, while many theologi-
cal educators have been trained to begin their supervision of students with 
an emphasis on faith questions and concerns, African American students 
need educational environments that focus first on their social needs, fol-
lowed by their emotional and then life meaning needs. Buhuro and Gilmore 
share a number of ideas and resources with readers so that they may take 
this theory and directly put it into practice in their settings.
In “The Growing Edge: Clinical Pastoral Education in the Midst of 
COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Protests,” Patricia Wilson-Cone explores 
some of the racial, theological, and power dynamics present in the CPE unit 
she supervised in the midst of the COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter pro-
tests. With curiosity, authenticity, humility, and vulnerability, Wilson-Cone 
presents this CPE supervision case study with particular focus on her rela-
tionship with a student who challenged her. She finds wisdom and power 
in Howard Thurman’s call to “look well to the growing edge . . . [when] all 
around us worlds are dying, and new worlds are being born; all around us 
life is dying, and life is being born,” and she invites us to do so as well.
In “Ministerial Formation through the Lens of Suffering: A Theologi-
cal Reflection on Trauma-Sensitive Pedagogy,” Sung Hee Chang challenges 
some popular understandings of crisis: that crisis can be handled methodi-
cally, that it can be a time for developing crisis-management skills, and, 
most importantly, that there is some opportunity to be found in the experi-
ence. She reminds readers that “we should acknowledge that traumatized 
people in times of crisis are in need of clinical attention and care. Without 
knowing what stage of disease they are in, we cannot serve them realisti-
cally.” She goes on to outline what “trauma-sensitive” pedagogy, in place of 
the well-accepted term “trauma-informed,” looks like and how it can foster 
resilience and courage in those we seek to teach and serve.
Finally, in “Let a Brotha Breathe and Grieve: Promoting Healing 
among Black Men and Youth Who Are Grieving through Honoring-Based 
Practices,” Allen Eugene Lipscomb shares the findings and implications 
from his 2018 narrative inquiry study of the grief and healing experience in 
the words of Black men and youth. In his research, Lipscomb asked the fol-
lowing questions: What has your experience been with significant losses in 
your life? What role did your race and gender play in relation to your loss 
experiences? What does healing mean to you? At the heart of his research 
and this article are the words of the Black men and youth. As Lipscomb 
SECTION 2: EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
28
states, the participants’ stories “tell us the meaning [their] experiences have 
had in their lives in relation to family and community, contributing to a 
unique perspective on Black male grief in America.”
While it is likely that for quite some time to come all of us as theologi-
cal educators will have to continue to build our educational airplanes while 
we are flying them, these five authors offer us valuable theoretical and prac-
tical wisdom on how we may more gracefully keep our students and our-
selves moving through space and time.
Nancy Wood
Editor
SECTION 2: EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION


English

SECTION 2: TRAUMA AND THIS SEASON OF CRISIS - Editor's Introduction

Haley describes and explores the process of discernment and spiritual direction utilized during this time of pandemic

Haley, Bill

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2021 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
The Practice of Discernment and Spiritual Direction  
during a Crisis
Bill Haley
Discernment, the ability to identify and separate out God’s voice from all the other voices inside of us and around us, is an important capacity for any Christian. Indeed, it is a key practice for our trans-
formation. “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing 
you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and 
perfect” (Rom. 12:2 NRSV, italics added).
For the ministries of spiritual directors and retreat leaders, discern-
ment is the critical capacity. Spiritual direction at its most basic level is when 
one person, who is familiar with the ways of God, comes alongside another 
person and simply helps them to listen, to discern, to be able to identify the 
voice of God in their life at a given time. It is a ministry of presence. A spiri-
tual director listens to God while listening to another in order to help that 
person be able to identify God’s voice for themself.
What happens then when a pandemic strikes, a lockdown is ordered, 
and meeting together in the same room all of a sudden becomes impossi-
ble? Spiritual direction is best offered when two people are actually in each 
Bill Haley is the executive director of Coracle and an Anglican 
priest. Email: execdirector@inthecoracle.org.
234
other’s presence. What happens when the ability to sit with a person, to 
physically be with them, to look deeply into their eyes and read their body 
language, is all of a sudden gone?
Discernment During coviD 19
Such a situation calls for discernment. In fact, this COVID-19 season 
has been one opportunity for discernment after another. It has required a 
constant attentiveness to God and listening for God’s voice, and thus it has 
created the opportunity to be led by God all the more often.
Coracle is a ministry of “spiritual formation for kingdom action.” We 
seek to inspire and enable people to be the redemptive presence of God 
in the brokenness of the world. This takes many forms, including offer-
ing spiritual direction, leading pilgrimages, working for racial healing and 
peacemaking, hosting seminars, writing and speaking, and running a lon-
ger-term spiritual formation program. Much of this has happened in the 
Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and at Corhaven, our seventeen-
acre retreat space in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where we host individu-
als and groups on spiritual retreat. Corhaven means “shelter for the heart”; 
many come here seeking God, and quite a few come here seeking spiritual 
direction. COVID-19 changed that overnight.
Over the past ten years, right up until our governor locked down the 
state on March 16, 2020, almost 100 percent of what we offered was in person. 
And then none of it could be, and along with everyone else we switched to 
being 100 percent virtual within a couple of days. In many ways, for all the 
challenges this season has presented, it has also created opportunities. This 
was in large part because of discernment, listening for the voice of God, and 
then following what we’d heard and being willing to do things we’d never 
been willing to do before or even considered. Because we could not see the 
future clearly, we needed guidance; we needed to listen, to discern.
ADApting
One of the first things to change was how we offered the ministry of 
spiritual direction. Coracle has a network of over thirty trained spiritual 
directors, of which I am one. While some of our spiritual directors were 
already well accustomed to and comfortable meeting with people over the 
THE PRACTICE OF DISCERNMENT AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION DURING A CRISIS
235
phone or with FaceTime or Zoom, I was not. For a long time, I have been per-
sonally somewhat viscerally opposed to what felt like a disembodied offer-
ing of what is essentially a ministry of presence. I appreciated the space for 
reflection that the hour or two-hour drive time created for a person coming 
to Corhaven for spiritual direction and that tangible expression of the value 
that person saw in this special ministry. Our space is set up to facilitate peo-
ple’s encounter with God, be it on the trails in the woods for walking, the 
benches along the creek for praying, the icons on the wall, the comfortable 
chairs arranged across from each other to sit in, or the woodstove to sit by. 
Then none of that was available, and yet still I had my directees. To 
abandon accompanying them in this particularly trying season surely did 
not feel right, so I began doing what I had sworn I’d never do—meet for 
spiritual direction on a computer screen. Discernment said, “Don’t let your 
principles get in the way of needful ministry. Care for people, even if the 
form is not ideal or what you’d choose.”
Given that suddenly I would be spending entire days on a screen, I 
had to do several specific things during a virtual spiritual direction session 
that would set it apart as the sacred space that it is. I learned these as I went 
along.
I soon realized that I could not do this from my normal office setting 
with my computer on my work desk. Something about being at my work 
desk made it feel like a session of spiritual direction was just another work 
meeting, which it is surely not. 
I set up a stool next to the chair where I typically do spiritual direction 
so that the computer would be right at eye level. I pin my directee’s video 
and put their face on full screen so that I can see no other windows open on 
the computer. I leave my phone in another room. I turn off all notifications 
from my computer so that I’m not distracted by texts and emails coming in. 
I use noise-cancelling headphones for spiritual direction. Just as I would for 
an in-person session, I light a candle to remind me of God’s presence, and 
I put it in my field of vision so that I can be reminded that God is with us 
even if we are apart and that the Holy Spirit is actually the spiritual director.
All these things in a sense are more for me than for the directee. I’m 
doing everything I know to do to keep me focused on what we are doing 
and to remind myself that the pixelated face I’m looking at is in fact that 
person as truly as if we were physically sitting across from each other. I’m 
doing everything I know to do to say to myself “This is not another Zoom!” 
HALEY
236
and to be aware that the space and time we’re creating is as sacred as if we 
were able to be physically together. 
As I would do in a normal spiritual direction session, I try not to have a 
hard stop to our session. I do not schedule another Zoom immediately after 
a session in order to give the Spirit room to guide and move. I came to find 
that for me it is most effective to schedule these sessions for the end of the 
day so that I could get out of the head space of being in the office.
And it’s been good. Although virtual spiritual direction is not ideal, 
it is surely better than not having it at all. I’ve picked up a couple of new 
directees who are not within driving distance of Corhaven because we dis-
cerned that God was guiding us to meet, even if in a form I had formerly 
been opposed to. I’ve been able to see some of my longstanding directees 
somewhat more regularly simply because it is quite a bit easier for a person 
to schedule a Zoom for the end of the day than try to find a half or full day 
to physically come out to Corhaven.
As it’s likely I’ll still have “virtual directees” well after this season is 
over, I plan to write a short description for directees about how they too can 
make a virtual spiritual direction session as sacred a space as possible.
ongoing Discernment AnD Decisions
Throughout the pandemic, and then during the seasons of racial reck-
oning and the 2020 election season, we at Coracle have sought to do two 
things. First, we have retained a posture of always looking for God’s poten-
tial redemption of the challenges of these seasons. We live in a very broken 
world, and sometimes in a year like this we are reminded of just how bro-
ken things really are, and yet God is always about redemption. The ministry 
of Jesus at its deepest essence is about God confronting brokenness in order 
to bring new creation. So, the question becomes, “How can we join God in 
God’s work of redeeming in a time like this?” As opposed to merely trying 
to survive this year, we’ve tried to amplify our engagement and step up our 
efforts.
Second, we have remained in a posture of discernment, asking, “God, 
is there something else we should be doing? What would you have us do?” 
We’ve done that individually, as a staff, and as a board. Having asked those 
questions, we then take time to listen. When something is clear, we move 
THE PRACTICE OF DISCERNMENT AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION DURING A CRISIS
237
on it, and having done that we ask those questions again and listen for God 
again. The following are two examples of this process.
First, for all the fear and disruption that the early days of COVID-19 
created, it became clear very quickly that we were being called to engage 
the challenges and opportunities strongly as opposed to simply trying to 
manage and survive. One of my mentors, Gordon Cosby of the Church of 
the Saviour in Washington DC, used to say, “In times of crisis, go deep-
er.” By early April, the Coracle team had launched our initiative called “Go 
Deeper and Bless.” We created ways for people to go deeper into God, go 
deeper into relationships, and bless others in the time of coronavirus. These 
opportunities were mostly virtual, something we’d never done before, and 
they consisted of a series of seminars on topics such as soul-care practices 
during a pandemic. We also hosted regular conversations on questions that 
were on people’s minds, started releasing short devotional videos, kept our 
community rhythms and figured out how to do them virtually, encouraged 
people to seek out spiritual direction because it was all being done virtu-
ally, organized fundraising campaigns, and started agricultural projects for 
COVID-19 relief locally.
As we neared the end of that first initiative, we realized that because 
we’d been recording all of these digital offerings and writing quite a bit, we 
actually had a series of resources that we could bundle together and offer as 
a complete package on our website under the title “Spiritual Formation dur-
ing a Crisis,” a sort of “evergreen” offering (available at any time) for anyone 
going through a challenging season. 
Last year our board undertook a “strategic discernment” approach to 
the next five years of Coracle’s ministry. One of our goals at the time was 
to develop two resource packages by the end of 2020. Because of COVID-19, 
we’ll have four! In some key ways, even while COVID-19 has shifted some 
our longer-range thinking, in other ways it’s expedited some of our plans 
and goals, allowing us to meet them more quickly than we could have were 
it not for this season. 
Second, since its very beginning Coracle has had a deep commitment 
to racial healing and justice in the United States, in part because of my many 
years of ministry in America’s inner-city contexts, mostly in Washington, 
DC. Several months after my family moved from Washington to rural Vir-
ginia to what would become Corhaven, we were very surprised to learn 
that the land we purchased held on it a cemetery that contained the graves 
HALEY
238
of twenty-five African Americans who had lived and died enslaved. It had 
become so overgrown that it was invisible, and it had been forgotten. Over 
the years, we’ve cleared and developed this site and protected it so that 
those who lie there would be recognized for their dignity even if their dig-
nity was never recognized by the dominant culture while they were alive. 
It’s come to be called the Corhaven Graveyard and five years ago was the 
birthplace of the Repentance Project, a national ministry helping Christians 
recognize the horrific past and present of racism in our country, repent, and 
make repair in the context of relationships through the fifty-day devotional 
tool “An American Lament.”
In 2019 on June 19, Coracle offered a Juneteenth work day in the Corhav-
en Graveyard, and it was good. About twelve people were there, including 
some children, and we painted the boards surrounding the graveyard and 
did a few other small projects and had some reflection and prayer. It was a 
small group of people, it was not live streamed or recorded in any way, and, 
as important as the day was, it was limited to only a few and the experience 
is now lost except for the painted boards. We were planning another June-
teenth workday in 2020 in the graveyard, and then the pandemic hit.
Then George Floyd was killed on May 25 and protests erupted around 
the country. For a long time prior, we had a staff retreat on the calendar for 
May 30, which because of COVID-19 was truncated and done virtually. In 
that meeting, however, God laid it on our hearts to offer virtually a lament 
for racial injustice from the graveyard on Juneteenth. We can’t remember 
which of our staff had the idea first, which matters because that indicates 
that it was of God for all of us. By the end of the meeting, we agreed that 
it was clear that God was giving us this work to do. We had discerned that 
God was in this and that we should follow that voice.
The following week we got down to work on what would become 
Coracle’s largest event by far in terms of both partnership and participa-
tion, hosting it with eighteen other churches and ministries and then being 
joined by over six hundred people from around the country on Juneteenth. 
We recorded it, and now that resource is one of the most important offer-
ings on our website. 
These examples, and others like it during the pandemic, made it clear 
to us that God is at work and that we have the privilege of participating in 
God’s work, and we are grateful. 
THE PRACTICE OF DISCERNMENT AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION DURING A CRISIS
239
In his January 30 entry in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Cham-
bers wrote, “Get into the habit of saying, ‘Speak, Lord,’ and life will become 
a romance (1 Samuel 3.9). Every time circumstances press in on you, say, 
“Speak, Lord,” and make time to listen. . . . As we listen, our ears will be-
come more sensitive, and like Jesus, we will hear God all the time.”1
This practice of listening and discernment allows God to create some-
thing better than we can conceive or plan. Taking the next clear step allows 
God to place our feet in the steps that God has for us and leads to great-
er things that are clearly not of our making. While taking time to discern 
God’s voice may mean we move slower, we have found that the fruit of hear-
ing God’s voice and following it has been much greater.
NOTES
1 Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.
HALEY


The Practice of Discernment and Spiritual Direction during a Crisis

Gillman, reviewed by John

THE MILLENNIAL NARRATIVE: SHARING A GOOD LIFE WITH THE NEXT GENERATION by Jaco J. Hamman

Editors set the stage for the articles that make up volume 41

Floding, Matthew

Introduction to Volume 41

A blessing for times when you lose patience with brokenness around you

Bowler, Kate

Richie, Jessica

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2021 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
a blessing for when you’re tired of broken systems
Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie
o God, i am done with broken systems
that break the very people
they are meant to serve.
o God, harness this anger!
channel it into worthy action and show me
what is mine to fix and what boundaries to patrol
to keep goodness in and evil out.
God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.
they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug 
their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Jeremiah 2:13
God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.
blessed are we who are appalled
that brute ignorance can so easily dominate
over decency, honesty, and integrity.
Source: Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 52 Blessings for a 
Life without Perfect (New York: Convergent Books, forthcoming).
289
290
blessed are we who choose not to look away
from systems that dehumanize, deceive, defame, and distort.
blessed are we who stand
with truth over expediency,
principle over politics,
community over competition.
o God, how blessed are we who cry out to you:
empower us to see and name what is broken,
what is ours to restore,
guide us to find coherent and beautiful alternatives
that foster life, hope, and peace.
help us use our gifts with one another in unity.
blessed are we who choose to bear the tension
of leaning into this vision
while living in the not yet.
in God all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17
God have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Spirit have mercy.
stretch out on the ground.
lay out before God all that is broken.
wait for the healing spark that is yours to ignite.
God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
Deuteronomy 33:27
A BLESSING FOR WHEN YOU’RE TIRED OF BROKEN SYSTEMS


a blessing for when you're tired of broken systems

Gierich offer a praer for calming an anxious mind

Gierich, J.D.

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2021 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
A Prayer for an Anxious Mind
J. D. Gierach
Our Father, we have a lot on our minds.  
The past.  
The present.  
The future. 
Help us find the things that are worthy of praise. 
Help us find the people who are worthy of praise.
We give our dissatisfactions to You, 
Thankful for what You have done,
And looking forward, 
with hope, 
To what You will do.  
Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  
Not even our anxious minds that question and doubt.
May we rest in that truth.  
We pray these things in Jesus’ name.  
Amen.  
J. D. Gierach is a student at Duke Divinity School, class of 2022.
291


A Prayer for An Anxious Mind

The author draws a parallel of working in a hospital is what it must have been like for the Israelites walking in the desert. Lucky reflects on her own experience of caring for people during the pandemic

Lucky, E.B.

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2021 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
COVID-19 Nursing
E.B. Lucky
“Momma, where are we going?”  The five-year old’s black-haired mother looked down into the tension that had invaded her daughter’s big eyes.
“I don’t know, honey”, she replied.  It was her best answer with the 
desert sun beating down on the harried Israelites as they fearfully trudged 
through the Egyptian sands in exhaustion.
Some nurses during COVID-19 have felt like they have walked this 
same ancient path out of Egypt.  It has been months of exhaustion and fear 
trudging through the shifting sands of healthcare while the Coronavirus 
burns across their heads and shoulders toward their hearts.  Some say, 
“What else is new?”  After caring for the ill others feel like Job being tested 
by God.  A few may see it as a highway billboard predicting Armageddon.  
Anxiety is off the charts.  The Unknown answers questions.  What is 
“safe care?”  Will I bring it home—on my scrubs?  Is THIS why I’m a nurse 
putting my life on the line for strangers?
PPE is our badge of hard work.  We live alone for weeks because we 
may bring our work home with us.  There’s the roller coaster of hopes raised 
then quickly dropped.  Ventilators!  Increased suicides!  After all we sacri-
fice for patients—they die!
Does death mean we failed?  Hell no!
Find solace through prayer, faith/support groups, and books.  Science 
is God’s tool for healing—and hope.  Nurses personify love amid COVID-19 
… leading people through their deserts.
E.B. Lucky, B.S., M.Div. C.E., LPN is a nurse in the Duke University Healthcare System
299


COVID-19 Nursing

LeFeber, Susan

BELIEVING WHILE GRIEVING: A JOURNEY TO FIND BLESSING IN BROKENNESS by Bonnie Abadie

Caring for Afican American S.E.L.F. in CPE supervisio

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