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

The editor invited chaplains to reflect on how one's soul shapes ministry and how one's ministry shapes one's soul

Sullender, Scott

SECTION 2 
THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN 
 
Editor’s Introduction 
 
 
For this issue of Reflective Practice, the Editorial Board invited authors 
and readers to reflect upon their ministry from a soulful perspective. 
This theme prompted me to create a forum around the theme “the 
soul of a chaplain.” I posed two particular questions to chaplains and chaplain 
supervisors: 
• How does your work as a chaplain shape your soul? 
• How does your soul shape your work as a chaplain? 
A forum is a section of the journal where readers may share short personal 
reflections, not scholarly essays, on a particular theme. Keeping the 
reflections short encourages more people to write and contribute, readers 
who might otherwise feel intimidated by the task of writing a longer, more 
scholarly essay. The format of a forum is consistent with the purposes of 
this journal, which is to give you, the working and serving religious professional, 
an opportunity to reflect upon your practice and experience of 
ministry. 
As editor, I received a rich variety of responses from a diverse array of 
contributors. Twelve entries were selected for publication. I hope you are 
as impressed as I was by the incredible sensitivity, richness, and diversity of 
those of you who serve as chaplains or chaplain supervisors. 
 
Scott Sullender 
Editor 


English

SECTION 2: THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN - EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Gagnon, Anna

86    THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN 
 
Becoming a Chaplain 
 
The very first time I set out on the floors as a chaplain, I found myself 
walking directly past the door of my patient’s room and into the 
hospital stairwell, where I remained, for the better part of an hour 
rehearsing a single line: “Hello, my name is Anna and I am a chaplain here 
at the hospital.” My hands were shaking; my heart was both terrified and 
awed to utter such words. Even now, as I say them, I still feel their immense 
weight—the responsibility such a statement carries, the burdens and gifts it 
has brought to my life. 
Many outside the field do not realize that the journey to becoming a 
chaplain is one of deep self-exploration and, ultimately, self-awareness. Early 
on, one of my supervisors told me: “As chaplains, we come into a patient’s 
room with empty hands, to remind ourselves that our very personhood is 
the tool we carry.”1 It is my own intimate knowledge of despair and uncertainty, 
joy and beauty that allows me to touch and to hold another’s experience. 
It is my own humanity, in all its flaws and vulnerability, that brings me 
to another in their darkest hour. And so it is with great courage that I must 
try to do the messy work of looking inward just as I courageously reach outward. 
I must constantly be considering my own edges, my own triggers, and 
my own sources of strength if I am to employ my personhood with intelligence, 
care, and grace. This is the heart of chaplaincy as I see it. 
And yet, becoming a chaplain also has everything to do with one’s relationship 
to suffering. I came to this profession with all sorts of ideas about 
the pain of this world. Indeed, I had written pages and pages on sickness, 
old age, and death. But having ideas about suffering and despair is very different 
from being in the room with them. There are no words—no ideas— 
that touch the physicality of standing at the foot of a bed that holds a dying 
child. No theories that prepare one for the rawness of hearing someone 
longing to die or the honor that comes with making space for the prayers 
and pleas for an outcome that just cannot be. 
When I first started my ministry in the hospital, I carried around Nietzsche’s 
famous quote about the abyss in my pocket. I did so because I 
knew that it was true, and knew, also, that it was doing its work on me. I 
knew that when I gazed long into the abyss, the abyss inevitably gazed back into 
 
 
_____________ 
1  Ren Bunce, “The Ethics of Self-Disclosure,” talk given at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, 
Redwood City, CA, November 20, 2009. 
THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN 
87 
me.2 Coming close to suffering changed me, as I imagine it changes many 
chaplains, though not always in just the same way. It takes great heart to 
meet a dying person or someone reeling in the grips of grief and think, 
This too could be me. This, too, is me in another moment, another heartbeat of time. 
Someday I, too, will find myself staring into the dying eyes of a loved one whom I 
cannot bear to lose. I offer what I can as a way of acknowledging this connection, 
this shared experience of humanity. In the end, we do this work together. We try 
our best to comfort and support each other in any way that we can, and in 
return, we learn about the reality of change and loss. We come to know just 
how precious and fragile this life really is.3 
We gaze out over the abyss and feel the abyss gazing back into us. 
We feel its transformative work ablaze in our hearts. 
After my first year of ministry, I remember being struck by the immense 
capacity each of us carry for both extremes, both sides of the human 
condition—the joy and the heartache, the misery and the happiness. I began 
to see it at the grocery store, at the children’s playground, in the face of 
my neighbor down the street. As I shook the hand of a stranger, I started to 
wonder about the moment of their birth, about the things they held sacred, 
the hidden aspirations of their heart. As my ministry developed, I learned 
to listen for the story within the story, the tender threads of meaning that 
weave our lives together. Unbeknownst to me and amidst all my supposed 
failings, all my striving, I was becoming a chaplain. 
 
 
Anna Gagnon 
Emanuel Medical Center 
Portland, OR 
 
 
 
 
 
 
_______________ 
2  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Faber (Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1998), 68. 
3  Anna Gagnon, “Reflections on the Art of Selfless Giving,” The Frederick P. Lenz 
Foundation for American Buddhism, http://www.fredericklenzfoundation.org/file/AnnaGagnonpdf 


Becoming a Chaplain

The work the author does touches his soul and the person he is caring for

Yao-Kotay, Joseph

88    THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN 
 
Soul Connections 
As a chaplain, when I see you with my eyes, because of my imperfections 
. . . I may see your skin tone with shades of black, brown, 
pink, white, yellow, or red. 
When I hear you with my ears, because of my limitations . . . I may hear 
excuses, complaints, pessimism, hopelessness, and despair. 
When I touch you with my hands, because of my fear of intimacy . . . I 
may feel coldness, rigidity, frailty, discomfort, and hostility. 
But when I am able to integrate my soul and connect with the person 
that I see, hear, and touch, skin color no longer matters; I hear hope, love, joy, 
and reconciliation’ and I feel the gentleness, warmth, and tranquility of a 
precious human being. 
The work that I do as a chaplain touches my soul because it connects 
with the soul of the person that I am caring for. I believe that our soul is love, 
creative energy, and the essence of God. When I can maneuver around and 
through the grief, despair, and trepidation that patients, families, students, 
and staff are feeling and connect with their soul, that is when I most feel and 
experience God. My interactions and encounters with patients no longer are 
tasks; they transition and transform into spiritual bonds. Even when it is 
difficult to find words or an intervention to utilize because of the complexity 
of the event(s), my intentions as a loving, compassionate, and empathetic 
person resonate with those persons in my care. 
Moreover, because of my work of a pastoral/spiritual care provider 
and the deep inter- and intrapersonal connection that I make with myself 
and patients, the divine-human connection causes me to learn, grow, and 
develop into a competent and loving spiritual care provider. Furthermore, 
the encounter provides me the opportunity for deeper reflection and conversation 
with God. Ironically, these encounters make me aware of who I 
am as a representative of God. I can proudly say that because of my relationship 
with God and my understanding that God is using me, I am a worthy 
representative of God’s love. Connecting with God, my Soul, and the patient’s 
Soul is the ultimate experience of humility. 
 
Joseph Yao-Kotay 
Yuma Regional Medical Center 
Yuma, AZ 


Soul Connections

Complete Listing of Volume 37 Reflective Practic

1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION 1: THE SOULFUL PERSPECTIVE 
Editor’s Introduction .................................................................................................... 5
Soulness and the Liminal Work of Soulcare
 Herbert Anderson  ........................................................................................... 10
The Soul Is We   
 Luther E. Smith Jr. ............................................................................................ 26 
Soulwork: Healing Without Faith, Dogma, or Creed   
 Barbara Thiede .................................................................................................. 39
Creative Narration: Finding Soulfulness Through a Desperate Search  
for My Soul.
 Jason C. Whitehead .......................................................................................... 47
Listen to the Neshama: Daring to Speak About Soul in Israeli  
Clinical Pastoral Education
 Einat Ramon ...................................................................................................... 66
SECTION 2: THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN
Editor’s Introduction .................................................................................................. 83
Day One Matthew Lawrence ................................................ 84
Becoming a Chaplain Anna Gagnon .......................................................... 86
Soul Connections Joseph Yao-Kotay ................................................... 88
The Angel of Death Lois Williams .......................................................... 89
Checkmate for the Soul Mantu Joshi ............................................................. 90
It’s My Soul Patricia A. Wilson-Cone ........................................ 92
The Little Things Susan Freeman ....................................................... 94
Belonging Charlie Shin............................................................. 95
Soul Work Joanne S. Martindale .............................................. 97
Prone to Wonder Lisa Jeffcoat ............................................................. 98
A Soul’s Journey Taqwa M. Surapati ............................................... 100
Mystery Seeking Tangibility Melissa Trull   ........................................................ 102
SECTION 3:  REFLECTING ON PRACTICE
Editor’s Introduction ................................................................................................ 105
Army Chaplain as Counselor: An Exploration  
of Self-Reflexivity and Denominational Particularities
 Joshua T. Morris  ............................................................................................. 107
Reflection as the Core of Supervision
 TK Lang and Karl-Erik Tysk ......................................................................... 121
SECTION 4:  CONTINUING CONVERSATIONS 
Editor’s Introduction ................................................................................................ 140
Some Benefits of Using Technology in Supporting  
and Nurturing Student Ministers in Field Education.  
 Ronald W. Baard ............................................................................................. 142
Caring for Families with Disability: Reflections on Using Podcasts in Ministry
 Jeongyun Hur  ................................................................................................ 152
2
Immersive Formation: Reflections on Dislocation  
and Transformation in Seminary Education  
 Odette Lockwood-Stewart  ........................................................................... 169
Formation and Supervision in Buddhist Chaplaincy 
 Tina Jitsujo Gauthier ...................................................................................... 185
THE LEN CEDARLEAF AWARD
For Excellence in an ACPE Theology Theory Paper
Becoming in God
 Mary Ann Brody ............................................................................................. 202
ATFE 2017 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Theological Field Education Across the Divides 
 Joseph E. Bush Jr. ............................................................................................ 214
ATFE BEST PRACTICES ESSAY 
Engaging the Dynamics of Pastoral Imagination for Field Education
 Matthew Floding, Sung Hee Chang, Loanne Lindstrom,  
 David W. Watkins III, Barbara J. Blodgett, Susan E. Fox,  
 Kimberly L. Clayton, Lucinda Huffaker, Susan L. LeFeber,  
 and Catherine M. Brall .................................................................................. 229
BOOK REVIEWS
Judaism and Health: A Handbook of Practical, Professional and Scholarly Resources 
 By Jeff Levin and Michele F. Prince, eds.
  Reviewed by Susan Freeman ................................................................. 242
The Practice of Pastoral Care, Revised and Expanded Edition: A Postmodern Approach
 By Carrie Doehring
  Reviewed by Jen Dillinger ...................................................................... 243
The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy  
and Pastoral Work 
 By Cheryl A. Giles and Willa B. Miller
  Reviewed by Tina Jitsujo Gauthier ....................................................... 245
Practical Theology in Church and Society
 By Joseph E. Bush
  Reviewed by Herbert Anderson ............................................................ 246
Adaptive Disclosure: A New Treatment for Military Trauma, Loss, and Moral Injury 
 By Brett T.Litz, Leslie Lebowitz, Matt J. Gray, and William P. Nash
  Reviewed by Joshua T. Morris ............................................................... 248
Transforming Wisdom: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Theological Perspective   
 By Felicity B. Kelcourse and K. Brynolf Lyon, eds.
  Reviewed by Scott Sullender ................................................................. 249
Enriching Ministry: Pastoral Supervision in Practice 
 By Michael Paterson and Jessica Rose, eds
  Reviewed by Leslie Veen ........................................................................ 251
Spiritual Care in Practice: Case Studies in Healthcare Chaplaincy
 By George Fitchett and Steve Nolan, eds.
  Reviewed by Sarah Knoll Sweeney ...................................................... 253
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3
Chaplaincy Ministry and the Mission of the Church 
 By Victoria Slater
  Reviewed by George Fitzgerald ............................................................ 256
For Freedom or Bondage?: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices 
 By Esther E. Acolatse
  Reviewed by Michael Cobbina .............................................................. 258
The Virtue of Resilience
 By James E. Whitehead and Evelyn E. Whitehead
  Reviewed by Landon Bogen .................................................................. 260
Black Practical Theology 
 By Dale P. Andrews and Robert London Smith Jr., eds.
  Reviewed by Dwight N. Hopkins ......................................................... 262
Injustice and the Care of Souls 
 By Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen Brown Montagno, eds
  Reviewed by Sharon Thornton .............................................................. 264
 
IN MEMORIAM
Peggy Ann Brainerd Way 1931–2016
 By Nancy Ramsay .......................................................................................... 266
LOOKING AHEAD: THEME FOR VOLUME 38 .......................................... 271
SUBSCRIPTION/ORDER FORM ........................................................................ 272
Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
Continues as an Online Journal
Volume 37 is published electronically at http://journals.sfu.ca/rpfs.
Volumes 27–36 of Reflective Practice (as well as previous volumes of JSTM 
starting with volume 22) are also online at http://journals.sfu.ca/rpfs.
Printed copies of Volume 37 and available past or future printed volumes of 
Reflective Practice may be ordered through  
the journal’s website atwww.reflective-practice.org.
Reflective Practice depends on the  
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TABLE OF CONTENTS


4
A Tribute
C. George Fitzgerald
With the publication of volume 37 of Re-
flective Practice, George Fitzgerald will step 
down as President of the Board of Directors of 
Reflective Practice, Inc. George has served as 
Board chair since 2006, when Herbert Ander-
son reconstituted and relocated the Journal of 
Supervision in Ministry to the Bay Area as Re-
flective Practice: Formation and Supervision in 
Ministry. We are grateful for George’s steady 
and supportive leadership these last eleven 
years. George is a well known and well re-
spected figure in the world of Clinical Pasto-
ral Education, having recently been awarded the ACPE Distinguish 
Service Award. He has been a strong supporter of the International 
Congress of Pastoral Care and Counseling, and has traveled widely 
as an ambassador of good will for CPE. Most recently, until his re-
tirement, he served for twenty-eight years as Director of Spiritual 
Care Service and CPE supervisor at Sanford Health Care and in that 
capacity he furthered the development and training of hundreds 
of ministers and chaplains and launched new programs and initia-
tives to reach under resourced areas. Fortunately, George has agreed 
to continue his association with Reflective Practice, but at this mo-
ment of transition in leadership, we wanted to take a moment to say 
“thank you” to C. George Fitzgerald. 
International Advisory Council An Invitation
The Editorial Board of Reflective Practice wishes to make the journal more re-
sponsive to the needs of our international readers. In order to fulfill this goal, we are 
seeking international scholars, teachers, and supervisors in the training and prepa-
ration for women and men for ministry in various cultural and interfaith settings to 
serve on the Advisory Council that guides the journal’s editor in the recruitment and 
selection of authors, the development of themes, and related topics and tasks. 
If you are interested or know someone who we might approach, please contact 
our editor, Scott Sullender. Email: ssullender@sfts.edu.


A Tribute C. George Fitzgerald

The lead off article by Dr. Anderson sets the stage for the discussion of the journal's theme for volume 37

Anderson, Herbert

Soulness and the Liminal Work of Soulcare

Peggy Way is remembered for her life and career

Ramsay, Nancy

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
ISSN 2325-2847 (print)*  ISSN 2325-2855 (online)
* © Copyright 2017 Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry
All Rights Reserved
IN MEMORIAM 
Peggy Ann Brainerd Way (1931–2016)
Our colleague for more than forty years, Peggy Ann Brainerd Way died July 9, 2016, in hospice care following a brief battle with can-cer. Peggy is survived by her daughter Rebecca Ann Way and son 
Stephen William Way plus four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. 
With Peggy’s death at 85,  the fields of pastoral theology and care as well as 
chaplaincy and many parish ministers have lost an advocate for effective, 
theologically wise practice and courageous witness to the full inclusion and 
support of all persons. The range of Peggy Way’s professional contributions 
defies any effort to summarize the scope of her influence on the fields of pas-
toral theology and care as well as on the practice of ministry more generally. 
Hopefully, these brief reflections will bring to mind your own opportunities 
to learn with and from her across the more than forty years of her academic 
career. 
Prior to receiving her PhD at Princeton in 1979, Peggy was the first 
woman to serve as a full-time faculty member at the University of Chicago 
Divinity School and the first of two women to teach at the Jesuit School of 
Theology in Chicago, and she also taught at McCormick Theological Semi-
nary in Chicago. In 1977, she became the first woman to serve as a full-time 
member of the faculty at Vanderbilt. After a decade at Vanderbilt and a brief 
pause from teaching, she joined the faculty at Eden Seminary in St. Louis, 
from which she retired as professor emerita. Subsequently, she returned to 
teaching at Argosy University in Nashville, where she taught in the Depart-
ment of Counselor Education. When the Association of Practical Theology 
met at Vanderbilt in the spring of 2014, Peggy’s students from Argosy pre-
267
sented in a workshop, and she was there to support them and cheer them 
on.
Peggy Way engaged in pastoral theology and care with the substan-
tial foundation of a BA in psychology, an MSW, an MDiv, and a PhD earned 
with Seward Hiltner when she graduated from Princeton. She used to laugh 
about her two-volume dissertation on finitude (Growth and Finitude: Limita-
tion in Pastoral Work and Thought). Perhaps that early exploration of finitude 
is a clue about the lifelong challenge of engaging her rich range of interests 
and commitments. It is no accident that Peggy and her husband Bill, also 
prepared as a social worker and pastor, began their ministry in Chicago, 
where she was at once a pastor, community organizer, and director of a so-
cial service agency. It is no mystery how profoundly her early experiences in 
congregational and community ministry shaped her; across her career, Peg-
gy always was committed to equipping pastors with respect for the unique 
resources and the complex (she said “messy”) relational possibilities that 
congregational life illustrates. She saw the challenges of congregational life 
and loved the daily witness of staying with the effort to love it in all its com-
plexity. As she would say, in congregations, as in families, we are “stuck 
with one another”; this was her reminder to respect the complexity of lived 
experience and the challenge of negotiating the “messy” differences that are 
part and parcel of relational life. 
Of course, Way’s pithy, colloquial comment “we are stuck with each 
other” was also a core element of her theological anthropology: the chal-
lenge of particularity that punctures any easy presumption that if only one’s 
“correct” point of view were recognized, the world would be so much bet-
ter. She was deeply mindful of irony, and her theology was shaped by Re-
inhold Niebuhr’s incisive challenge to any presumption of the correct point 
of view. She illustrated that theological commitment with a quick sense of 
humor that would not spare her own or other liberals’ pretense of singular 
correctness. Her liberative commitments always informed her academic life 
and expanded across the stretch of her career to resist every form of exclu-
sion and to seek strategies for supporting effective, full inclusion. 
Peggy entered ministry and theological education when the tradition-
al hierarchies were powerfully in place. She first found her voice in resisting 
sexism when it limited access for women with gifts for leadership. Ordained 
in 1960 to ministry in the United Church of Christ, she and her husband Bill 
were that denomination’s first clergy couple.  In 1968, she preached at Rock-
IN MEMORIAM
268
efeller Chapel at the University of Chicago a sermon entitled “You are not 
My God, Jehovah.” She carried her passions for justice and practices of com-
passion into her opportunities to teach and lecture. As a clergywoman and 
professor of pastoral theology, she broke new ground wherever she went, 
and she never forgot that her privilege included the responsibility to open 
doors wider, whether for racial justice, disability rights, or LGBTQ rights. 
In 2002, Peggy Way was the luncheon speaker at the Society for Pastoral 
Theology meeting, which is typically an occasion for a carefully reflective 
presentation. True to form, Peggy chose to make her address of about fifteen 
to twenty minutes in the form of a limerick as if to puncture any pretense 
about the moment. Nonetheless, she packed into the limerick a particularly 
insightful summary of her theological and professional commitments sea-
soned by her unique humor (Journal of Pastoral Theology, 12, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 
63 –73, http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.tcu.edu/10.1179/jpt.2002.12.2.006). We find 
here her deep theological commitments to honor the particularity of each 
person as a unique and gifted creation of God; to the priority for attend-
ing to congregational care in its messy complexity, wonder, and theological 
richness; to the need for humility and humor about human beings’ predict-
able readiness to refuse our creaturely and shared communal status; to the 
difficulty of lasting change and the challenge that alterity brings to honor-
ing the full humanity of all; and to the profound truth that ours is a good 
and finite life in which we are called to love. In a more formal way (minus 
the limerick), Peggy also published a volume that richly reflects her theolog-
ical and professional commitments, Created by God: Pastoral Care for All God’s 
People (St. Louis: Chalice, 2005). 
Without question, Peggy Ann Brainerd Way brought abundant gifts 
to the practice of care and to the theology undergirding it. She did so with 
grace, love, and humor that only deepened the reach of her brilliance for 
guiding our practice. 
Nancy Ramsay
Brite Divinity School
Fort Worth, Texas
IN MEMORIAM


Peggy Ann Brainerd Way (1931-2016)

The job of the spiritual care provider is to walk with the soul as it pursues something tangible to love

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SECTION 2: THE SOUL OF A CHAPLAIN - EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

Becoming a Chaplain

Soul Connections

Table of Contents

A Tribute C. George Fitzgerald

Soulness and the Liminal Work of Soulcare

Peggy Ann Brainerd Way (1931-2016)

Mystery Seeking Tranquility

Adaptive Disclosure: A New Treatment for Military Trauma, Loss and Moral Injury, By Brett T. Litz, Leslie Lebowitz, Matt J. Gray, and William P. Nash

For Freedom or Bondage?: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices, By Esther E. Acolatse

512

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